She used the time it took for the computer to boot up to call one of the two motels in town and make a reservation. The woman on the other end laughed and said, “Reservation? You’ll have the run of the whole place. I’ll give you our best cabin…”
The motel owner described the virtues of the motel unit while Cassie focused on the monitor.
“You’ve got your own kitchenette, a queen-sized bed, free Wi-Fi … all for seventy-five dollars per night.”
“It’s a deal,” Cassie said. She was distracted and she terminated the call.
* * *
IT TOOK A WHILE to get the hang of the video folder system Bodeen had set up. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason why certain folders were where they were and the labeling didn’t help. The folders contained at least three years of digital video from when the system was installed. Bodeen didn’t appear to use the computer for much of anything else except accessing the Internet.
Before opening any of the folders, she downloaded them all onto a 128-gigabyte thumb drive she’d brought in her purse. That way, they’d have a clean backup of all of the files on Bodeen’s entire hard drive in case she accidentally deleted anything. The data on the thumb drive would, she hoped, insulate Sheriff Verplank from being accused of planting or manipulating evidence.
She quickly determined that the “Cam#1” folders were clips taken from the outside camera, while the “Cam#2” folders were made up of raw unedited videos taken in the women’s bathroom. Except when they weren’t.
She thought she found the folder for Cam#1 for September but it turned out to be what she thought of with disgust as a “Best of” anthology of woman after woman using the bathroom over the past few years. Bodeen must have spent hours amassing the collection and putting them into a sequence that pleased him.
Like the close-up of the victim in the hayfield, she couldn’t un-see it afterward.
* * *
SHE PROCEEDED BY IGNORING all the Cam#2 folders entirely and she focused on the Cam#1 files. She was heartened to see that the surveillance video provided a time stamp in the lower left corner and she was able to zero in on the right dates even though the video quality was very poor.
When she found a series of Cam#1 files starting with September 9 she slowed down her search and became more methodical.
When Cam#1 went live it was programmed to take a wide-angle shot when a customer pulled into the pumps. She guessed it was triggered manually by Bodeen inside when he heard a vehicle arrive. Bodeen then had the capability to zoom the camera in on the vehicle and focus on the plates in back or on the fuel dials on the pump itself. After that, she noticed, he usually turned the camera off.
Some days he had as few as four customers, others as many as twenty.
Most of the cars captured on video were ranch and utility vehicles that she guessed were local. Montana offered a slew of different license plate designs—from Montana Livestock Board to Montana Quilters to Montana Hunter to Support the NRA—but every fifth or sixth vehicle was from out of state. South Dakota, Wyoming, North Dakota.
When she reached September 16 she took a deep breath. The first customer was a Montana rancher or cowboy in a new-model GMC pickup. The second was a group of local students, likely high school, pooling their cash and putting four dollars and cents worth of unleaded into their older SUV. The kids did a round of “paper-scissors-rock” to determine the loser who had to go inside the station and hand over the change to Bodeen.
The third customer drove a battered beige crew-cab Ford pickup with North Dakota plates. The bed of the truck was piled high with duffel bags, full black trash bags, and tools.
She could see the silhouettes of two people inside the cab—a man and a woman. The angle of Cam#1 made it impossible to see further inside the vehicle.
A man got out of the driver’s side and quickly turned away but not before there was a split-second view of his face lit up by early morning sun. The driver wore a bulky tan coat and baggy jeans and a ball cap pulled down low.
He inserted the fuel dispenser into the gas tank and stepped back while it filled. He stretched, removed his cap for a moment, and smoothed his hair before pulling it back on.
When he was done filling the tank he said something to the woman inside the truck and he vanished from the frame.
To pay Bodeen, she thought.
She wished she could see the woman better but the angle of the camera prevented it. At least she thought it was a woman.
But something about the man triggered recognition in Cassie. The stiff way he moved, his posture, his squared head.
“No,” she said loud enough for Sheriff Verplank to hear her through the glass and look up. “No.”
* * *
IT TOOK A FEW MINUTES to figure out how to run the video back and freeze it. Her fingers trembled on the keys while she did. Her heart whumped in her chest.
Five times, then six, she watched the driver exit the vehicle and turn away. The flash of sunlight fuzzed out a clear view of his face but each time she viewed the clip she thought she could see more: wavy black hair, bushy eyebrows, prominent cheekbones set in a face that had gone to fat. Huge hands, stocky build.
And something on a lanyard hanging from his neck when he got out that wasn’t there when he went into the office. Obviously, he’d zipped up his coat while filling up so it couldn’t be seen.
Before sliding back behind the wheel, the man turned slightly and addressed the back of the cab. Did he have a dog back there?
Cassie sat back and rubbed her eyes. She could barely breathe.
When Sheriff Verplank tapped her on the shoulder she jumped.
“What is it?” he asked, obviously surprised at her reaction.
“I think my mind is playing tricks on me,” she said.
“Meaning what?”
“This guy who got fuel on September sixteenth looks a hell of a lot like the Lizard King.”
She turned in her chair. Verplank had a confused look on his face. He indicated his skepticism by closing one eye like he was trying not to chuckle.
“He’s dead,” he said. “You of all people should know that.”
She said, “I have my doubts about that.”
“Why do you think it’s him?”
“I’m one of the few who have ever seen him up close,” she said.
She turned back around and ran the clip. This time, she managed to freeze it before the driver turned away.
Frozen, she thought, it looked less like him than she imagined. But when he was moving, that stiff but sure gait …
“Now I’m not so sure,” she confessed.
“Who else is in the truck?”
“It looks like a woman in the passenger seat. I can’t see anyone else.”
“I don’t recognize him,” the sheriff said. “He must not be from around here.”
“North Dakota plates,” she said, letting the clip run until the field of view narrowed in on the front plates.
“JLS-011,” she called out.
“I’ll run ’em,” Verplank said after writing it down.
* * *
“THE PLATES BELONG to a guy named Floyd T. Eckstrom of Sanish, North Dakota,” Verplank told Cassie.
She looked up from where she’d copied the video clip of the man in the blue Ford from the hard drive onto her thumb drive.
“Something about that name is familiar,” she said.
“He was reported missing three weeks ago,” Verplank said. He’d printed out a report in his office and as he skimmed it he read from it. “Eckstrom was reported missing September twentieth after a couple of local hunters went onto his property to ask permission to construct a duck blind. Apparently he owns a little tract right on the Missouri River inside the reservation there.
“But instead of talking to Eckstrom they found his trailer burned to the ground. Eckstrom wasn’t around and his truck was gone. The local officials there think it might have been an insurance deal. Apparently the guy had back payments
due on an 18-wheeler from a dealership in Bismarck and maybe he burned his own place to collect on it.”
Cassie nodded her head. “That was it. That’s where I heard the name. He was one of the missing persons in the area around the time Raheem and Kyle were reported. So he’s a long-haul trucker?”
The sheriff continued to read. “Yep, looks like it. His employer is an outfit out of Dickenson. His rig is there now because he left it there for some service work. They reported that he didn’t show up to pick it up and he hasn’t called in since the twentieth. Apparently they’re on the hook for his truck as well.”
“Do they list a description of him?” she asked.
“Let’s see … yeah. Thirty-two years old, six-foot, brown eyes. We’ve got the photo from his CDL.”
She rose and stood shoulder to shoulder with Verplank. In the photo for his Commercial Driver’s License Eckstrom looked bug-eyed into the camera. He had dark hair, black-framed glasses, a small mouth, and an intense, unnerving stare.
“Tell me,” she said to the sheriff while pointing at the frozen image on the monitor, “does this guy look to you like that guy?”
He studied the photo and then the screen. “Nope.”
“So who was driving his pickup and why?” she asked. “And what was he doing in Ekalaka?”
The question hung there.
Finally, the sheriff said, “I think you might have a better idea than I do.”
She rubbed her eyes and then her temples. She said, “I need to sit down with a glass of wine and my files and this new information and puzzle it out. I need to talk to a couple of people and get their take.”
“And I need to get home and feed the dogs,” he said.
Cassie looked up and the sheriff smiled at her. “Don’t forget to get some sleep. And don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything. You have my cell phone number after all.”
She said, “I’ll come by here in the morning.”
As she shut down Bodeen’s computer and gathered her belongings she knew she’d be up all night.
Because the scenario that was forming in her mind was too disturbing to push aside.
* * *
THE STATE LIQUOR STORE was closed for the night but Cassie bought a bottle of cheap red wine at a gas station/convenience store and checked into her cabin at the Home Ranch Motel. The owner, a jolly round woman in a housecoat and slippers with her television blaring in the background, outlined where the thermostat was located and scribbled down the password for the Wi-Fi. Cassie listened with a pleasant expression on her face and pretended she was listening but her mind was back at the sheriff’s department.
* * *
HER CABIN WAS LARGE, spare, clean, and paneled with knotty pine. It smelled like disinfectant. The walls were decorated with Frederic Remington and C. M. Russell cowboy prints as if to remind her she was back in Montana.
With a full glass of wine in a flimsy plastic cup, she sat down at the small desk and tried to get her head right before she called home. Cassie wanted to think “Ben” and not “Lizard King.”
Unfortunately, Isabel answered the landline.
“What do you mean you may not be home tomorrow?” she asked after Cassie explained that her plans had likely changed. “I have things to do, you know.”
“I know. But I might need to extend the trip. Progressive Grimstad can wait a day or two, can’t it?”
“I also have my Zumba.”
“That’s during the day when Kyle is at school.”
“I hope this doesn’t become a habit.”
Cassie bit her tongue. Isabel shared the house, didn’t cook or clean, and paid nothing toward the mortgage. But she loved Ben and was a wonderful caretaker. Plus, she was family. Finding someone to be in the house with a twelve-year-old in Grimstad wasn’t easy.
Cassie said, “I appreciate you being home when Ben is there, I really do. I couldn’t do this without you.”
She took a big gulp of wine after that. It warmed her throat and built a fire in her belly and took the edge off the guilt she felt for being such a manipulator.
Isabel sighed her familiar sigh. It was the sigh of a martyr.
Cassie ignored it. “Is Ben there?”
“He’s doing his homework but I’ll go get him.”
Cassie heard the receiver on the other end clunk on the kitchen counter.
“Mom—did you find Kyle and Raheem?”
Cassie was startled by the question. “Who told you I was looking for them?”
“Grandma Isabel.”
Cassie briefly closed her eyes. “No, I haven’t found them yet. I’m looking hard, though.”
The last thing she wanted to do was mention the headless body in the hayfield to Ben or anyone else until she was absolutely sure of the identification.
“So where are you?” Ben asked.
“Montana.”
Ben said, “It’s weird. I can hardly remember Montana. I can remember our house and all of that but I can’t remember Montana. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
They discussed his homework and his day. When she asked if anyone gave him any trouble at school because she lost her job, he said none of the kids mentioned it but his gym teacher gave him a weird look.
“Does that bother you?” she asked.
“Naw. Nobody likes Mr. Schustler anyway. He’s kind of lame.”
Ben talked more to her on the telephone than he did in person anymore. She found that interesting.
When he handed the phone back to her mother, Isabel said, “I didn’t hear. Did you find them?”
“No,” Cassie said. “And please don’t tell Ben everything I’m doing. I don’t want to give him false hope that we’ll find those boys.”
The sigh, again.
* * *
SHE OPENED THE ROAD ATLAS showing the North Central United States and it was large enough to cover the entire desk. With a black pen she circled Eau Claire, Wiconsin; Grimstad, Sanish, and Dickenson, North Dakota; and Ekalaka, Montana.
They had video of the Lizard King from the truck stop in Eau Claire on the night of September 14. On the fifteenth, his truck was sighted east of Dickenson en route to Grimstad, which meant he’d driven west on I-94 from Wisconsin. From Dickenson north to Grimstad, the logical route was U.S. 85 through Watson City.
Cassie drew a line connecting those locations and sat back. Sanish was northeast of Watson City and not on the way to Grimstad. To go there and still get to Grimstad, the Lizard King would have had to backtrack in the wrong direction. Unless …
Unless he took two-lane North Dakota State Highway 22 which went north through Manning, Killdeer, and within eight miles of Sanish.
They’d assumed he took U.S. 85 that day, she recalled. But they didn’t know it.
A stop in Sanish might account for the one-and-a-half-hour delay they’d experienced before he got to the industrial park.
She said, “Damn,” and finished the cup of wine and poured another. On a fresh sheet of her legal pad she began to construct a timeline.
* * *
CASSIE WAS INTERRUPTED FROM HER work when her phone lit up and skittered across the desk. She grabbed it and was surprised to see the caller was Jon Kirkbride.
“Hello, Sheriff.”
“I’m not the sheriff anymore. How’d things go in Ekalaka?” he asked.
“Actually, I’m still here.”
“You are?” She could hear the smile in his voice. “I spent a month in Ekalaka one night,” he said.
“Thank you for putting in a good word with the locals.”
“You bet. Glad I could help.”
She filled him in on the discovery of the body outside of town and what they’d found at Bodeen’s gas station. He listened quietly.
When she was done he said, “Damn. This is getting interesting.”
“It is.”
She was grateful he’d called to check up on her but she guessed that wasn’t the only reason.
&
nbsp; He sighed and said, “When I left the department I swore to my wife and myself I’d leave it all behind me—all the politics and bullshit. I didn’t want to be one of those bitter old guys who spends his retirement criticizing the new regime and telling everybody who will listen how I would have done things. I know too many former sheriffs like that and feel sorry for them.”
“Right,” she said. In the back of her mind she sincerely hoped that despite Kirkbride’s preamble he wasn’t going to do exactly that. It would be too distracting.
He said, “But as you know, I still have a lot of friends on the inside. I worked with some of those people for years and I hired just about all of them. They call me and I can’t just not answer the phone. I heard something today that I thought I ought to pass along to you so you won’t be blindsided if it happens.”
Cassie perked up. “If what happens?”
“Well, apparently your old FBI contact has been meeting with Tibbs.”
“Special Agent Rhodine?” she asked.
“Him.”
“What about?”
“You, I suspect,” Kirkbride said. “I do know they requested your personnel file from the department.”
Cassie suspected his source to be Judy Banister. She was the only employee with access to personnel files.
He said, “Think about it, Cassie. Both of those guys are ambitious as hell. They went all in on getting the Lizard King at the industrial park because they both wanted to take credit for it. Then things turned out the way they did and you became the scapegoat. They’ve got to figure out a way to come out on top again.”
Cassie shook her head. “Wasn’t forcing both of us out of the department enough?”
“Apparently not.”
“So what are they up to? Why are they meeting?”
Kirkbride said, “That I don’t know—yet. But whatever it is they’re hatching is being done on the sly. They’ve met at restaurants and other nonofficial locations but not in the office.
“I do know Tibbs seems especially interested in your activities of late. He’s been asking around about where you are and what you’re doing.”