The Highway (25 page)

Isabel looked down at her robe and said, “Besides, he’s very handsome.”

“For a killer.”

“How did I raise a girl to be so judgmental?” her mother said, distracted by the difficulty of the childproof cap on the bottle of Tylenol.

Cassie bit her lip. She wanted to say,
You never raised me at all. You dumped me with Grandma and Grandpa while you chased around the country for your causes. Sometimes I saw more of Bill than I saw of you.
But it was a fight she couldn’t have, because she needed her mother there for Ben. Isabel had spent the first half of her life neglecting her and the second half engaging in unspoken extortion.

“Let me open it,” Cassie said, and her mother handed over the bottle.

Cassie unscrewed the cap and gave it back.

“What’s so important that you need to keep me awake all night with your
clacking
?” her mother asked, shaking three tablets into the palm of her hand.

“I’ve got a pair of missing teenage girls and now a missing partner,” Cassie said flatly.

Her mother paused and looked at her with discomfort. She was sixty-two years old, wide-faced and blousy, with once-red hair that was so infused with gray it looked pink. She didn’t like uncomfortable subjects, like missing people.

“Here in town?” her mother asked.

“No. Somewhere out on the highway.

“Why is it your concern?”

“
I’m a cop.
”

“I know,” her mother said, turning to fill a glass of water, “I just like to pretend you aren’t.”

“What would you rather have me do?” Cassie asked, feeling the heat rise in her neck. And immediately regretting she’d asked.

“I don’t know,” her mother said with a sigh, and Cassie was grateful she’d diffused the question. Anything to avoid an argument with her strong-willed daughter. After all, nasty little asides and innuendos worked better for her over the long run and always had.

“Mom,” Cassie said, “I’ll probably have to go out of town for the day.”

Her mother swallowed the pills one by one before saying, “When will you get home?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

“I have my book club at six. You know that. We’re doing a Wally Lamb book and you know I have some things to say.”

“I know,” Cassie said. “I don’t ask you to do this very often. But I might not be able to get back by five.”

“This is happening with more frequency,” her mother said. The words weren’t said in anger, but in a kind of martyred resignation.

“This is important, Mom. I really appreciate you being able to take care of Ben, and I know it’s tough on you. But we’re talking about the lives of two girls, and who knows what with my former partner.”

Isabel screwed up her face at the mention of Cody Hoyt. They’d not hit it off when they met for the first time the previous summer. Cody and Cassie had been headed toward the Justice Center to clock out for the evening when they saw half a dozen people chanting on the courthouse steps. Cody pulled to the curb to ogle them, and Cassie pointed out her mother, who had brought Ben along to the Occupy Helena demonstration. When Isabel walked over with Ben in tow, Cody had sized her up from head to foot, from stocking cap to Keen sandals, with a sneer on his face. He waited until Ben was out of earshot and told Isabel, “Only lazy slackers on food stamps have the leisure time to chant slogans. The rest of us have to work.”

Isabel said, “He’s the awful misogynist redneck you work with?”

Cassie nodded, surprised by the half-smile pulling at her mouth. “He’s not a misogynist, necessarily,” she said. “He hates everyone equally.”

“Well, if I were you—”

“You aren’t,” Cassie said, cutting Isabel off. She closed her laptop harder than necessary.

*   *   *

Cassie had dressed and driven her Honda to the Justice Center and exchanged her car for the Ford at the transportation desk. The officer behind the counter was surprised she was in so early and wanted to talk, but Cassie signed out the vehicle, took the keys, waved him off, and walked down the silent halls of the sheriff’s department. She hoped she could find somebody interested in going with her to find Cody, even though the prospects were slim.

As she passed forensics, she saw a bar of light under the door and knocked. Alexa Manning, the young crime scene tech, let her in. They were both surprised to see each other. Alexa was tall and slim with bone-white skin and short-cropped black hair and small brown eyes. Cassie didn’t know Alexa well, but the two had a bond because they were both single women in the department and had each heard grumbling and whispered asides about their unavailability because “one was fat and stuck up and the other one’s a dyke.”

Alexa was working late on the Tokely case, she said, because her vacation started that day and she wanted to get as much work done as possible before she and her partner went to Moab for the holiday weekend. Cassie sighed, resigned to the fact that Alexa wouldn’t be able to go with her either, and asked Alexa what she’d found out. Alexa beamed.

“We’ve got B. G. Myers at the scene,” she said.

Cassie sighed. “I know about the wrappers you found in the trash can.”

“We’ve got more.”

“Really? What?” Cassie was genuinely surprised.

“On the south side of the house there was a set of tire tracks and boot prints frozen into the mud. Do you remember seeing them?”

“No.”

“Cody pointed them out to us and we made plaster casts. And guess what? The tire treads match up with the tires on Myers’s pickup. And the boot prints are the same size and sole as Myers’s work boots.”

Cassie took that in. “So that means…”

“We’ve got that guy dead to rights that he was absolutely there at Roger Tokely’s house.”

“So the wrappers and the stuff we found in the trash?”

“That’s good, too, but we can’t use them because Cody put them there. Luckily, they steered us in the right direction and we found more to corroborate the theory. The more evidence, the better, right? That’s what you guys always tell us.”

Cassie looked at the plaster casts on the workbench and the photos Alexa had taken of the tires and B. G.’s boots. They matched up.

“Good work,” Cassie said.

“You don’t sound that excited. Shouldn’t you be more excited? I am. This is the first murder investigation I’ve been on and we cracked it, man.”

“I am excited.”

Alexa laughed uncomfortably, as if she couldn’t figure out what she’d done wrong.

“Really,” Cassie said. “This should do it. Thanks for working late to nail it down.”

Alexa nodded, still perplexed.

“One question,” Cassie said.

“Shoot.”

“If you and Tex didn’t have that receipt and the wrappers, would you ever have thought to go up to B. G.’s place and photograph his tires? Or his boots?”

Alexa looked at Cassie as if she were crazy.

“Of course not,” Alexa said. “What—do you think we’d drive around the whole friggin’ county trying to match up this plaster cast to a hundred thousand random tread patterns? Do you realize how many old trucks there are in Lewis and Clark County?”

*   *   *

Sheriff Tubman padded down his driveway in a blue bathrobe cinched tight and fat moccasin slippers. His hair was mussed and his ankles were skinny and mottled and so white they almost looked blue in the dawn. As he bent over to retrieve his newspaper he heard the sound of the motor and looked up, puzzled.

Cassie watched him closely as he registered who was in the county Ford. As she pulled up in front of him and stopped, he rose to full height and squinted at her through the windshield, holding the newspaper down at his side. His studied arrogance hadn’t kicked in yet, which is what she counted on.

She shoved the big Ford into park and climbed out. The front bumper of the vehicle was just a few feet away from him. She got out and shut the door but kept the engine running. The purr of the motor was the only sound.

“Nice place,” she said, walking up alongside the vehicle. She took a side step at the front and leaned back against the grille and crossed her arms under her breasts. It was a posture she’d seen Cody Hoyt assume many times; passive but judgmental at the same time. She’d been surprised how many times perps started yapping and volunteering information they never would otherwise because they assumed Cody had the goods on them.

“Why are you here so early, Officer Dewell?” Tubman asked. “I haven’t even had my coffee yet. Did something happen during the night and you couldn’t get ahold of me?”

“I never tried,” Cassie said. A burst of dawn wind came up hard and cold and she saw leaves flee from trees in her peripheral vision.

“So what brings you up here to my home?” he asked, trying to smile. But it looked like a grimace.

“I’ve got a request.”

He seemed to recover from the surprise for a moment and he stood tall and relaxed his shoulders. “What kind of request?” he asked, assuming command.

“No,” she said, “It isn’t a request. It’s a demand.”

He snorted, and looked over his shoulder at his house, as if expecting reinforcements.

She said, “You took advantage of me. You set me up to bring down my partner because you never liked him. I resent what you put me through and I don’t like the results. You put a good man out on the street.”

As if he couldn’t help it, he lifted the small rolled-up newspaper, like there was something in it she must be angry about. She hadn’t seen the paper that morning but realized there must be a story about Cody being fired. Tubman had likely called it in himself to make sure he was portrayed as a man who wouldn’t tolerate dirty cops.

“Look,” he said, “I haven’t seen the story yet. I do know I praised your work to high heaven, the way you exposed a dishonest officer. You’re probably going to come out of this as a big hero, so I don’t know what your problem is.”

“My problem,” she said, “has nothing to do with your story. It’s about two missing teenagers you’ve never heard of. Even though you screwed him, Cody drove down to Livingston last night to try and find them. He did it because he wanted to do the right thing.”

“Livingston?” Tubman said, shaking his head and appealing to the shaft of sunlight that had flashed over the mountain and sequined the frost on his yard, “That’s out of our jurisdiction. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Dewell, and I think you need to consider what you’re saying to me. And think about the fact that you’re at my house in a county vehicle giving me a ration of shit for no reason I can think of.”

She noticed that his face was flushed and if he had a chin it would be thrust at her. For a moment, she was taken aback. Then she remembered why she was there.

“Those girls I mentioned are missing,” she said. “Teenagers from Colorado, aged sixteen and eighteen. They vanished last night off the highway between Yellowstone and Helena and they haven’t been seen since. Cody’s son knew them, so Cody drove down there to try and find them and as of a few hours ago he hasn’t communicated back to me or to his family. We’ve got three missing people in Montana in the last thirteen hours. You know that every minute that goes by something bad could happen. I know how you feel about Cody, but this is bigger than that. I want the time to go down there myself and help him if I can to figure out what happened. And I want you to approve it.”

Tubman again glanced over his shoulder at his home, as if to verify where he was. Then he turned his head and locked her eyes in.

“Cody Hoyt is drunk in some county jail or passed out on the side of some low-rent bar,” he said. “This thing about missing girls is news to me and we’ll deal with it through the proper channels if we’re requested to even get involved. I’ve not heard a damned thing about it. So if you’re asking to take leave right now, in the middle of a murder investigation and after I’ve praised you up one side and down the other to the media for your good work, you need to think long and hard about this.”

He paused, and glared at her. “Because if you run away right now for your own stupid reasons, I can’t defend you and I won’t even try. You’re needed here. We’ve got a murder investigation. You’re the primary on it. And everybody’s watching.”

She said, “You’re not hearing me. This isn’t a debate. I’m taking the county vehicle down south and I’m going to find out what happened to Cody and those girls. Roger Tokely was murdered by B. G. Myers. We’ve got the proof. If you don’t believe me, talk to Alexa Manning. Your renter, B. G., killed your other renter, Roger Tokely, over drugs.”

At the word “renter,” Tubman flinched. He simply stared at her with contempt she’d never seen from him.

“I know the deal,” Cassie said. “Cody told me. I know what’s going on with you and your payments. And when I look at this place,” she said, gesturing toward the house and the recreational vehicles and the fifth-wheel trailer, “I know he was right. You let that feud go on in the Big Belts because you didn’t want your rent checks to bounce. And you put me out front with the press because you’d get credit for bringing me into the department. And you sent me up there to shadow Cody to get rid of the one guy who could take you on. So don’t patronize me now. I won’t stand for it.

“I’m taking this Ford,” she said, and patted the bumper of the vehicle without looking down, “and the authority of the department down to Park County. You need to notify the sheriff down there I’m coming, and request they cooperate with me as if this is the highest priority item on your list. And you’re going to organize the whole department and impress upon them that they’re to do everything they can to find these girls and Cody.”

She stopped talking and was as appalled at her words as Tubman was. The seconds mounted up in silence except for the burbling of the exhaust pipe of the Ford.

Finally, he said, “You know that as of this moment everything has changed between us.”

“I do.”

“And you know if you go down there like you’re talking about you’re just going to find that miserable drunk in some bar or whorehouse?”

“Maybe.”

Tubman broke his gaze and looked past her, as if there was something fascinating over her shoulder. She almost turned to look, but she didn’t.