* * *
FOR THE hundredth time, Kyle studied the map he’d printed off at school. He tried to tune out what was being said in the living room.
The Missouri started in southern Montana and flowed north through Great Falls then across the entire state until it entered North Dakota and Grimstad. On the western side of the river it was Mountain Time and on the eastern side it was Central. From Grimstad, it flowed south and east, through Bismarck, Pierre, Omaha, Kansas City, and Saint Louis. In Saint Louis, the river joined the Mississippi and continued south through Memphis and finally to New Orleans, Louisiana. Even the names sounded exciting and exotic. Raheem said he’d never been to New Orleans but he wanted to go there because it was warm, unlike North Dakota. Plus, Raheem said, that was where the Saints played in the Superdome and women walked around on the streets flashing their bare breasts at everyone.
So when the ice broke up on the river in the spring and after the high water, they’d launch their boat. Kyle still hadn’t figured out what he’d tell his mother about it. He knew she’d miss him, and he’d miss her.
But the pull of the plan enflamed his imagination. He thought of long days on the river with Raheem catching fish and camping on the shore. He thought of weeks and months of floating away until they eventually arrived at a city where it was warm and foreign. They’d likely be greeted as pioneers and heroes, he thought: two twelve-year-old boys who took a rowboat from the northern border of the country to the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe they’d call him “Captain Kyle,” or “Wandering Westergaard.”
Kyle drank to the name “Captain Kyle.”
* * *
WINKIE: “JUST because you got it doesn’t mean you can just go out and sell it. You know that, right? You can’t go out to the bars and man camps with your bag of meth like you was selling hot dogs. And if you just jump into the market, well, you’ve got competition out there. They aren’t going to like that—especially if you show up with this high-quality shit. That is, unless you plan to snort it all up your nose yourself.”
T-Lock: “Jesus, I know that. We need distribution. We need to tap into a network that’s already there. That’s where you got to help me, man. You know guys.”
Winkie: “I know users. I don’t know many dealers.”
T-Lock: “But they know, man. They know who they buy from.”
Winkie: “What about Willie Dietrich? I’ve always heard Willie is hooked up.”
T-Lock: “That guy has hated me since we were in junior high.”
Winkie: “But he don’t hate me. He used to bang my sister, remember? I know him. I can talk to him. But what’s in it for me, man?”
T-Lock: “I’ll cut you in.”
Winkie: “How much? What’s my cut?”
T-Lock: “I’m still figuring it out. But it’ll be enough to make you rich, I’ll tell you that right now. But we’ve got to do this right. We can’t let anybody know I’ve got all this shit. If assholes find out, they might try to come and get it.”
Winkie: “I’m excited but I’m also starting to get a headache. This might not be easy, you know. It might get scary as hell.”
T-Lock: “You don’t worry about that. I’m the one doing the thinking here. I’ve got it handled, man. I’ve waited my whole life for something like this. I’ve already figured out a way to launder that marked cash. You just go out and sniff around Willie and his guys and see what you can find out. See if you hear about anyone missing a shitload of meth and cash but don’t tip anyone off about what we have. Just leave it all to me.”
* * *
KYLE STOOD unsteadily. The bottle was empty. The sounds from the next room seemed to meld together into a kind of background noise, like when the house was buffeted by wind.
He thought, So this is what being drunk feels like. And he wondered why adults spent so much time and money wanting to feel this way. All he wanted to do was to go to sleep.
Kyle staggered across his room and fell face-first onto his bed. Even though his room was messy he always made his bed. He always had.
He went to sleep with the droning sounds of T-Lock and Winkie scheming and arguing.
Then he dreamed about his boat, and what it would feel like to push it away from the riverbank. What it would feel like when the current took them away.
CHAPTER NINE
AFTER CRUISING through the pre-boom residential areas and new developments that were going up in every direction on the outskirts of Grimstad, Kirkbride cursed under his breath as he merged into the nonstop convoy of huge muddy trucks on Main Street headed north. Steam and exhaust rose from the pavement and from beneath the vehicles. Kirkbride pointed out the trucks belonging to the major players in the oil boom: Halliburton, Sanjel, Baker Hughes, Whiting, Continental Oil, Marathon Oil, Scorpion, and Nabors.
The problem with the traffic, he said, was that the city and county had not yet had the chance to build new infrastructure that could handle the sudden tenfold increase in vehicles and machinery. The oil field traffic going north or south had to be funneled through the middle of town on roads designed to accommodate residential traffic flow, thus almost impenetrable bottlenecks were created.
“We don’t even know what our population is,” he said in answer to the question Cassie asked. “It’s growing that fast. A few months ago, I would have said thirty-five to forty thousand in the county. There are over ten thousand units in the man camps alone. But I was talking to the director at the water treatment facility and he says they’re handling sewage now for sixty thousand plus. Imagine that,” he said with a snort, “we guess how many residents we have by the sewage they produce.”
She shook her head as he reeled off positive talking points he’d no doubt repeated many times:
• A million barrels of crude from the Bakken Formation were being shipped every day by thirty-five to forty tanker trains that stretched over a mile long each;
• North Dakota was now the second-biggest oil-producing state in the country having surpassed Alaska;
• The state’s population was increasing by the thousands each month;
• The unemployment rate in Grimstad was less than half of 1 percent;
• The success rate for drilling of the hydraulic fracturing oil wells was over 99 percent;
• The power companies couldn’t keep up with getting electricity to the oil wells and were more than eight hundred behind, which meant generators had to be installed on site;
• Per capita, Bakken County was first in the nation in building permits, Carhartt clothing sales, and the sale of Corvettes;
• The single bustling Walmart paid new employees $18 an hour plus benefits plus employee housing—as did practically every new business going up in town. New fast-food employees, retail clerks, and even newspaper carriers were being given signing bonuses;
• Once with the oldest demographics at sixty-plus, Bakken County now had the youngest population in the state;
• The county which five years before consisted primarily of Norwegian and German descendants now had residents from all fifty states and dozens of countries, and the previously 95 percent white population was now wildly diverse.
• The average salary in Bakken County was $80,000. Blue-collar oil field workers, drillers, oil service hitshots, and some truckers pulled in well past double that.
Then he outlined many of the negatives.
• Housing was a severe problem. Existing rooms rented for $1,000 each per month and the average two-bedroom house rented for $3,500 per month;
• Locals who didn’t own their homes when the boom hit were being evicted for high-paying oil field employees;
• There was no homeless shelter, not a single psychiatrist, and plenty of stress;
• Horses on farms and ranches in the county were dying of dust inhalation kicked up by the sudden army of big trucks on unpaved county roads;
• All local business owners now had to become landlords as well or they couldn’t retain employees. Every new business w
as accompanied by a nearby apartment building;
• Although most of the new workers were men, there were enough women and families to impact the schools, meaning not enough teachers or rooms, schoolkids living in RVs, and transients hanging around the playgrounds;
• Prostitution, drug abuse, and violent crime had all spiked in relation to the increase in population.
Cassie sat back and simply took it in. She was astounded and couldn’t decide if she was in the middle of an economic miracle or a disaster.
* * *
WHILE HE talked, Kirkbride took a muddy side road and parked at the top of the highest hill on the north edge of town. The view, Cassie thought, was astonishing.
As far as she could see out onto the dark prairie were natural gas flares, twinkling lights from man camps, pipe yards, pumping units, truck yards, and heavy equipment operations.
“At night you can see it from space,” Sheriff Kirkbride said. “I’m not kidding. There are satellite photos where if you didn’t know better you’d say it’s bigger and brighter than Chicago or Minneapolis.”
She said, “What about the stuff you always hear about with fracking—earthquakes, drinking water that catches on fire, that kind of thing?”
“Hasn’t happened,” Kirkbride said. “That’s not to say that someday one of these companies might get sloppy and screw up. But so far, nada.”
* * *
WHEN THEY headed back into town, Kirkbride said, “Like every job you’ll ever take in law enforcement, you’ve always got to remember that most of the people we serve are just good folks. All they want to do is make a good living and take care of their families. They pay our salaries. A big number of the new residents were unemployed for years somewhere else and now they’ve got a second chance at creating a prosperous life.
“Of course,” he said, “we rarely deal with those people. We see the pimps, the drug dealers, the whores, and the scum that shows up on the periphery. We’ve always got to remember they’re here to prey on the good people who were here before the boom and the new folks who are living the dream. Our job is to protect the good folks and make sure the bad guys get punished. Simple as that.”
He sighed. “It used to be that if I ran across Ole the farmer out driving drunk after a big night of whiskey drinking and polka dancing, I’d follow him home to make sure he was okay and he didn’t hurt anyone else. Maybe give him a stern warning or something. We can’t do that kind of thing anymore. Ole has sold out and moved to Arizona, and the drunk driver may be some Idahole with a bad attitude and a pistol on his front seat. There’s no such thing as North Dakota nice anymore,” he said wistfully.
“And when I was talking about the stress of living here, I wasn’t kidding. We’ve always had drugs and we’ve always had fights. But the types of calls are just more traumatic now. Bar fights are more vicious. Domestic violence calls are more bloody. Bad actors from other parts of the country bring their lack of manners with them. Once in a while the crews from the different oil field outfits get in big fights with each other. It’s something out of a Western movie. Think cowboys versus sheepmen or sailors versus marines—that kind of thing. They ride for the brand.
“The drugs of choice have gotten worse also. It used to be weed and blow. Now it’s meth and heroin, both the black tar and white powder versions.”
Cassie said, “You said there was a lot of stress. Does that come from money, or change, or what?”
“My theory is there’s a lot of mourning going on beneath the surface and it builds up until they lash out. The locals are mourning what they had, and the newcomers are mourning what they lost when they moved here.”
Cassie sat back and looked at him. She said, “That’s profound. What keeps you here?”
He grinned ruefully. “You mean because I’m obviously so damned old I could retire?”
“I didn’t say that exactly. Remember, you said I was getting old myself a while back.”
“I think I’ll be hearing about that for a while,” he said with a wink. “Just don’t tell my wife.”
“I won’t. So what keeps you here?”
He merged into the heavy traffic for the slow ride back into downtown Grimstad. “My horses, for one,” he said. “I used to ride ’em in team penning events. Now they’re too old to win me any money and I’m too old to ride ’em. So I keep ’em fed and doctored, and maybe we’ll time it right so we’ll all ride off into the sunset together.”
He paused. “And I guess I just feel like I need to see this thing through. I was here when it started and I want to try to make sure the good guys win in the end.”
Then: “You hungry?”
“Starved.”
* * *
EN ROUTE to the Wagon Wheel, Kirkbride continued to play tour guide by offering anecdotes on places they passed.
The mega Walmart parking lot was packed with cars as if it were the day after Thanksgiving. “Up until a few months ago, they didn’t even bother stocking the shelves because they couldn’t keep up. They’d just bring pallets of stuff in and stack ’em in the aisles. There’s actual merchandise on the shelves now, so I guess we’re gaining a little ground.
“Last year, a garbage truck in the alley started lifting up a Dumpster when a guy jumped out who’d been sleeping inside on old mattresses. The guy started screaming and luckily the driver heard him. Last time I saw him he was working at Walmart.”
At the Amtrak station, he said, “Every single day the train stops and a few men get off. Some of ’em don’t even have coats. Saddest sight you’ll ever see—something straight out of the Depression. You’ll see them walking through the parking lot toward the downtown looking for work. If they aren’t bleeding or obviously high on drugs, they’ll be employed by sundown.”
Cassie asked, “The oil companies hire users?”
“Oh hell no,” Kirkbride said. “The companies run clean outfits. If you can’t pass a drug test you can’t get a job out in the field. Same with drillers, pipeline outfits, tool pushers, truck drivers, whatever. But there are plenty of jobs that don’t test. And believe it or not, we’ve got our share of lazy bastards who refuse to work. They’d rather live on government cheese, even though—these days—they could pull down a pretty good income flipping burgers.”
As they drove by the strip clubs Kirkbride told her, “The dancers rotate through here from Chicago, Phoenix, Seattle, Denver, Philly. We’re talking hot women, and they make top dollar entertaining the troops. Thing is, they wouldn’t even have to be all that good-looking around here to get attention. One of the bars has a big sign inside that says, ‘Welcome to Grimstad, where even ugly women get lucky.’”
* * *
CASSIE SAW why Kirkbride had called the Wagon Wheel in advance. Despite the cold, Carhartt-clad knots of young men stood outside the front door drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and waiting for a table to open. Inside, every table and booth was filled with rough-looking men and women, the bar area was shoulder to shoulder, and the clamor was ferocious. Above the bar, a live hockey game from Canada and a recorded NFL football game were on.
The owner, a fleshy square-headed man, obviously knew Kirkbride and he waved them over to a booth near the kitchen. Cassie sat down while the sheriff shook hands with a few locals on their way to the booth. The locals seemed to genuinely like him, she thought, in contrast with the reception Sheriff Tubman used to get in public back in Helena.
There was a raucous group of five men at a table. They were still wearing their oil-stained coveralls and they eyed her with interest. Two of them were obviously whispering about her. All five of the men had beards and wore ball caps. Dozens of empty beer bottles littered the table. She looked away and hoped she hadn’t flushed red. Cassie couldn’t recall a similar situation since the high school cafeteria. It was as if testosterone circulated through the air.
Kirkbride and Cassie ordered beer and cheeseburgers from a teenage waitress wearing a Grimstad Vikings hoodie. She told Cassie her beer was o
n the house, since it was company policy that women drank for free. When the waitress was gone, Kirkbride said, “You can see why I don’t go out much anymore. They’re building more restaurants but they aren’t open yet because they can’t find employees. Do you cook?”
“Not enough,” Cassie confessed. “But I can see that I should get better at it. My mother will be in for a shock, that’s for sure. She’s a vegan and she’s into sustainable and organic.”
“Whatever that is,” Kirkbride said, taking a long pull of his beer. “She’s in for a culture shock.”
A line of foam stuck to his mustache. “So tell me about the Lizard King.”
Cassie relayed what had happened in North Carolina. Kirkbride leaned forward so he could hear her over the din. A frown formed on his face.
“So they haven’t charged him with any abductions or murders yet?” he asked.
“Not that I’ve heard,” she said. “I’m in close contact with the county prosecutor, and she’s good. But right now the only thing they’ve got to hold him is his attack on me.”
“From what you tell me it sounds a little shaky,” Kirkbride said. “Not that I don’t admire the hell out of what you did to provoke him—I do. That took guts. But I wish they had more than that. If there ever was a beast that deserved the needle or the chair or whatever they do down there, it’s that guy.”
She agreed. “The FBI has their top people going over his truck and trailer, so I’m confident they’ll find something that will tie him to a murder. The guy is smart and cagey, but no one is that smart and cagey. They’ll swab every inch of that truck for DNA.”
Kirkbride nodded, but his frown remained. “Let’s say they find some,” he said. “Then they have to try and tie it to one of a thousand or two thousand missing truck stop lot lizards who may or may not have left any usable DNA to match up with. Man, talk about a needle in a haystack…”
He paused and looked hard at Cassie. “Are you sure it was him?”
“Ninety-five percent. He’s changed his appearance.”