Badlands (14 page)

Cassie stood uncomfortably in the back of the room behind the last row of chairs. It was obvious to her when she entered that the men inside had certain chairs they sat in every day within certain groups, and she didn't want to encroach on anyone's territory and be thought pushy on her first morning on the job. Several other men, two in sport coats and ties—no doubt the federal drug guys—stood in back as well, as if signaling they were participating in the briefing at arms length.

The room smelled of freshly shaved and showered men and brought-in hot coffee going on day shift, and lingering cigarette smoke from the fabric of some of the uniforms ending their midnight shift. It was the one time in the day when everyone could be there. Deputies stole glances at her in the back and when they did she nodded in acknowledgment. She'd been in these situations before.

At the front of the room was a podium occupied by Undersheriff Max Maxfield, whom Cassie identified from his name badge. Maxfield reviewed a three-ring binder before him. Sheriff Kirkbride was on his left leaning back in an office chair. He looked affable and slightly bemused. Kirkbride sipped on a mug of coffee and joked with his employees, chiding them for one thing or other. When she'd entered the room he smiled at her.

To Maxfield's right was a middle-aged woman at a small desk. She was tiny, pert, and had a severe black haircut. She wore a dark suit. She was the only other woman in the room, and she and Cassie nodded to each other with a kind of silent kinship. She was Judy Banister, Cassie guessed, Kirkbride's office administrator. Cassie had communicated with Banister previously on employment details. Banister had at one point said, “It'll be nice to have another female in the building.” Cassie, though, reserved judgment on that. She'd found that in too many situations, a lone woman could be the most territorial of all.

Most of the forty-plus deputies in the room fit a certain type, Cassie noted. Generally, they were fresh-faced, eager-looking, and young. She recalled Kirkbride saying that when he first became sheriff the department had six deputies.

What was unusual—for Cassie—was the impression of camaraderie she got from interactions of people in the room. Unlike full-staff briefings she'd experienced countless times back in Helena that were charged with resentment and ill feelings, this group seemed to be bubbling with a shared sense of purpose and high morale. She'd never been in the middle of a unit of well-trained soldiers or a close-knit football team, but she thought it must be something like what she was observing. And she knew that the atmosphere of an organization was set at the top, whether for good or ill. Sheriff Tubman in Montana ruled by fear, dirty politics, and innuendo and his people resented it. Kirkbride, in contrast, created an atmosphere of energy and professionalism.

It was a good first impression.

The exception were two older men sitting together in the back row who, she guessed, had been around for a while. They had that old cop I've-seen-everything weariness in their eyes. She wondered if they resented all the young, gung ho deputies in their midst.

She'd been up most of the night too wired to sleep, and she'd read and reread the files and case reports Kirkbride had given her. There were three men she wanted to identify right away: Cam Tollefsen, who was the first on the scene of the rollover, Lance Foster who was second, and Ian Davis, the department's only undercover operative. She guessed that one of the old guys in the back row was Tollefsen because the incident report was written in a terse, cover-your-ass style that was perfected only through years of law-enforcement experience and countless court appearances in front of aggressive defense attorneys. Davis was easy to pick out because he was the only young deputy with a scruffy beard, long hair, and street clothes. Lance Foster, though, could be anyone in the room.

“Before we get started,” Kirkbride said, rising from his chair and pausing until he had everyone's attention, “I want to introduce everybody to our new Chief Investigator Cassandra Dewell.”

With that, every head in the room swiveled toward her. She tried to smile but she was afraid it came across as a grimace.

“Investigator Dewell comes to us from the Lewis and Clark Sheriff's Department in Helena, Montana,” Kirkbride said. “A few of you might have come across her name before if you read anything about the Lizard King case a while back. She's the one who broke up the kidnapping and sexual abuse ring and she had a shoot-out with a corrupt Montana state trooper. We're just happy as hell to have her on our team.”

The Lizard Kind reference got the attention of several of the deputies, who immediately whispered to their colleagues around them. She knew she was blushing now, and she could feel her neck get hot. Especially when most of the men in the room applauded.

She said, “I'm happy to be on your team, Sheriff, and I look forward to working with all of you.”

She didn't think she was expected to go on, and she didn't.

Kirkbride asked all the personnel in the room to briefly introduce themselves to her, even though, he said, “You probably all look alike to her right now—like the bunch of square-headed Midwestern boys you are,” which was true and also brought a laugh.

One by one the deputies stood up, stated their names, and sat back down.

“Jim Klug.”

“Tom Melvin.”

“Shaun McKnight.”

“Bryan Gregson.”

“Fred Walker.”

Cassie made eye contact and nodded toward each deputy as they said their names.

“Lance Foster, or as the guys call me, Surfer Dude.”

She smiled and recalled when Kirkbride mentioned him earlier. Foster was blond and beefy, with a buzz-cut haircut and cherubic red cheeks. She noted who he was but didn't let her eyes linger on him.

A dozen other deputies barked out their names and sat down.

“Cam Tollefsen.”

Tollefsen was, in fact, one of the older men in the back row. He was nearly as tall as Kirkbride and he had a thick cowboy-style mustache that was flecked with silver. His large gut strained at his uniform shirt. Unlike the younger deputies, he seemed put out having to introduce himself.

The round-robin of confusing introductions wound their way to the front of the room.

“I'm Leslie Maxfield, the undersheriff. Everyone calls me Max.”

Then, “And I'm Judy Banister,” she said.

“She's the one you want to talk to if you really want to know anything that goes on around here,” Kirkbride said, turning to Banister. “Judy has been with the department since before I came on the scene. She knows where all the bodies are buried, don't you, Judy?”

Banister demurred and shook her head, but Cassie could tell she appreciated the recognition. In Cassie's experience, every sheriff's department had a Judy Banister, and every department needed one. She was the individual who kept the place running and who provided institutional knowledge as employees came and went. Along with Sheriff Kirkbride himself, Cassie thought, she vowed to never cross Judy Banister.

Kirkbride gestured to Maxfield, and said, “Take it away, Max.”

*   *   *

“BEFORE WE
get to the new stuff,” Maxfield said, “there are a couple of updates.”

Cassie listened as Maxfield went over cases and crimes that were familiar to everyone in the room except her. “Honchos from Halliburton” were putting more and more pressure on the department to both find the thieves who were stealing their equipment from their facilities and to recover the stolen vehicles. A long-running property and mineral rights dispute between a local farmer and a drilling company could result in trouble between the farmer's sons and company employees. A restraining order had been granted by the judge for an ex-wife against her ex-husband who she swore she'd seen sneaking around the neighborhood.

Although her eyes were on Maxfield, she had trouble concentrating on the initial part of the briefing. She was running primarily on a combination of adrenaline and caffeine and there was a dull headache growing in the back of her head. Some of the details she'd read in the files on the two unsolved homicides had horrified her and set her on edge.

The two Sons of Freedom victims had obviously been tortured, and by professionals. The coroner speculated that both men had been kept alive for hours while the murderer snipped off their fingers joint by joint, severed the tendons of their legs, drilled into their kneecaps, mutilated their sexual organs, gouged out their eyes, seared their skin with blowtorches, and finally beheaded them. The abuse was systematic and well-planned, it seemed, and specific tools were used to carry it out. It was awful, she thought. There was no way to know if the murderer was trying to get information, send a message, or he was simply enjoying himself. Maybe all three. She wasn't easily shocked or sickened, but reading through the files and seeing the photos had gutted her.

She contrasted the Sons of Freedom victims with the body found at the rollover. That vic appeared to simply be on the losing end of a fatal car wreck. There were no outside injuries beyond those occurring from the crash itself, although his body had practically been severed in two.

If there was a gang war taking place, she thought, she knew which side she'd bet on.

*   *   *

MAXFIELD FINISHED
up with status reports and updates before turning the pages in his binder.

“New items,” he said. “First, somebody found a foot.” He paused and his silence attracted the attention of the entire room, including Cassie.

“Just a foot?” someone asked.

“Mine's right here,” someone else said, and half the room laughed.

“Just a foot,” Maxfield repeated. He didn't smile. “Four miles east, in the middle of the prairie between two pumping units. Couple of Schlumberger guys found it this morning when they reported to a well to replace a part. They nearly ran it over in their truck.”

“Just a
foot
?” one of the deputies echoed.

Maxfield held up an eight-by-ten color photo, displayed it, then handed it to a deputy in the first row to pass along. Cassie noted that it was a man's bare foot cleanly severed at the ankle. The photo was taken against a background of blood-flecked snow.

Maxfield said, “Because it's bare and not still in a boot, it indicates something other than a run-of-the-mill oil field accident. We've checked at the hospital, and nobody walked in on a bloody stump. We're checking hospitals and clinics in a two-hundred-mile radius, but so far no hits.”

“What happened, then?” a deputy asked Maxfield.

“Too early to say,” the undersheriff responded. “All we know is the coroner packed it in snow and brought it back to the building. He says it was barely frozen, which says it might have been cut off last night or early this morning. No one has called in and reported missing a foot as yet.”

Cassie saw several deputies repressing smiles at that.

“Seriously, though, the lack of significant blood on the ground where the foot was found suggests it was cut off postmortem. So keep your eyes open for other body parts, gentlemen.”

Kirkbride gestured to Ian Davis, the undercover cop, and Davis nodded that he understood. Cassie watched the wordless exchange: Davis should ask around on the street about who was missing a foot … or missing in general.

“Item two,” Maxfield said, “is another weird one. The morning man at the Missouri Breaks Lodge called in to say the night shift manager was missing when he showed up to relieve him at the registration desk this morning. Just wasn't there. The missing man is Phillip Klein, thirty-four. There are no signs of foul play, but the computer server that stores all the video from the interior and exterior closed-circuit cameras is missing as well.”

Cassie could tell from the murmuring in the room that item two aroused more puzzlement than interest, but she didn't know why.

“Here's his photo from his company ID,” Maxfield said, handing around a second print.

“I don't get it,” one of the deputies said. Cassie recalled his name as Jim Klug. “Guys go missing all the time from administrative positions. They decide they can make more money out in the oil field, and they just take off for the hills like old-time gold prospectors.”

Several deputies agreed.

Maxfield shook his head. “Klein is a thirteen-year manager with a wife and kids back home in Minnesota. The wife says she hears from him every morning when he gets off his shift—he calls her or texts her—except for this morning. His company vehicle is still in the lot. According to the morning manager, Klein isn't the type to get oil fever.”

“So he left with somebody else,” a deputy said.

“Probably a whore,” Cam Tollefsen said from the back in a weary voice. “She showed up, did her thing with him in the front office, and he panicked when he realized the whole act was caught on video. So he jerked the server out, climbed in her car, and he's shacking up with her in a double-wide outside of Minot.”

Several deputies nodded their agreement to Tollefsen's speculation. Cassie looked from Tollefsen to Maxfield.

“That could be,” Maxfield said. “Stranger things have happened. But we'll get copies of Klein's head shot out to all of you and we want you to ask around to see if anyone's seen him.”

“Maybe this is his foot,” a deputy said, holding up the first photo. “Maybe it's connected.”

The photo finally was passed to the rear of the room and Cassie studied it. There was a crude skull-and-crossbones tattoo on the top of the foot a few inches from where the ankle would have been. But what alarmed her was how similar the amputation looked to the photos she'd seen during the night of the mutilated Sons of Freedom victims. The cut looked to be scored through the flesh with a sharp knife, then the bones cut cleanly with a saw.

She looked up to find Kirkbride watching her. His eyes said he thought the same thing she did: a third torture-murder victim.