Badlands (31 page)

Kirkbride thought about it for a second, then pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed the dispatcher.

While he waited to be connected, he said, “Keep me in the loop with updates.”

When the dispatcher was on the line he said, “Judy, We need to put out a department-wide BOLO for an individual named Kyle Westergaard. He's ten or twelve years old but small for his age. He was last seen riding a bicycle on Main Street.…”

He went on to ask that a second and third “Be On The Lookout” be issued for Willie Dietrich and two unnamed male Hispanics who might have tattoos indicating they were MS-13 or
Mara Salvatrucha
. He spelled it out for the dispatcher.

*   *   *

WHILE CASSIE
and Davis cruised the residential streets in the old section of Grimstad looking for Kyle and listening to the back and forth on the radio, Deputies Jim Klug and Fred Walker called in.

“We're at the
Home Away from Home
man camp,” Klug said. “The desk guy says two Hispanic individuals matching the description and driving a new model Toyota Tundra pickup with California plates checked in here a couple of nights ago. They paid cash for a Jack and Jill unit and they haven't checked out. Their truck isn't in the lot, but the manager agreed to go with us to knock on the door. I'd like to request backup.”

“Could be them,” Davis said.

Kirkbride came on the radio. “Proceed with extreme caution, Jim. You should assume these guys are armed and dangerous.”

The dispatcher asked, “Are there units in the vicinity?”

Deputy Tom Melvin called in to say that he and Deputy Shaun McKnight were a minute and a half away from the man camp.

Cassie said, “I'd be shocked if they were in.”

“Still,” Davis said, “if we know where they're staying…”

“Right. That could be helpful—if it's them.”

They listened to the cross talk over the radio while the four officers and the manager entered the unit. It was empty except for a pile of clothes, a box of 9mm ammunition, and a couple of votive candles.

*   *   *

THE CALL
came from Deputy Bryan Gregson. “I'm at the corner of Pine and Main and I just saw a kid on a bike matching the description.”

Cassie bolted up straight in her seat and increased the volume on the radio.

Gregson said, “I hit my lights and siren and followed him when he ducked down an alley. But there's a bunch of crap in the alley—Dumpsters and stuff—and my unit can't get through. I lost him.”

Cassie grabbed the mic. “Deputy Gregson, what direction was he going?”

“I thought I saw him turn southeast.”

She turned to Davis, wishing she was more familiar with the layout of the town to know where they could head Kyle off.

“Sounds like he's headed toward the park,” Davis said.

“Then go!” she shouted to Davis. “
Go, go, go
!”

Davis took the corner fast and accelerated down a snow-packed street. He lost traction on the ice but fought to regain control. Parked pickups sizzled by through the passenger window.

“Don't hit the siren or lights,” she said. “I don't want to scare him.”

“Just calm down,” Davis said, sliding into a sharp left turn. The Tahoe fishtailed again on the slick road and when Davis recovered they clipped off the side mirror of a parked oil field utility truck.

“Shit,” Davis muttered.

“Don't
ever
tell a woman to calm down,” Cassie said with heat.

“Sorry,” he said as they cleared the block and the park opened up in front of them.

“There he is,” Davis said urgently.

Cassie peered ahead. A small figure on a bike was racing through the park toward an empty playground located in the center. She recognized the park as the same one where the trunk of Rufus Whitely was found impaled the day before.

The park was one block square, surrounded by chain-link fence. There were openings wide enough to drive a vehicle through on all four sides.

“He's in the park,” Cassie said into the radio mic. “All units in the vicinity—we need you here
now
. Cut off all the exits.”

At that moment, Kyle turned his head and saw them. He was about a hundred yards away, approaching the playground. Then he leaned forward and powered the bike faster through the snow.

Two or three sheriff's department deputies said they were on their way and called out their present locations. Cassie didn't know if they were minutes or seconds away from the descriptions.

“He saw us,” Davis said. “We can only block one entrance. He has three more to escape from.”

“Where are the other cars?” Cassie asked. “We need them to block the other openings.”

“They're coming,” Davis reassured her as he pumped the brakes to slow down. The Tahoe skidded on the ice but came to a stop inches away from the north opening of the fence.

Inside, Kyle looked at them again over his shoulder and turned straight away toward the south exit from the park.

Cassie felt desperate. If Kyle shot through the south opening he would cross the street and vanish in a big bank of Russian olive bushes. By the time they backed the Tahoe out and drove around the park, Kyle could be gone for good.

But Kyle suddenly turned an abrupt left as a sheriff's department vehicle appeared from the direction of downtown and blocked the south gate.

“No need for lights or sirens,” Cassie said over the radio. “But we need units on the east and west sides of the park and we need them now.”

Kyle powered toward the eastside fence. Cassie thought he looked winded by the way his bike swayed from side to side as he pedaled. He turned when another unit appeared and nosed through the east gate and stopped. She felt for Kyle. There was no adrenaline rush as if she were boring in on a suspect. This was a twelve-year-old kid and they were trapping him like an animal.

When a fourth unit plugged up the westside gate, Kyle desperately rode away from it toward the playground again in the middle of the park. The bike swayed dangerously from side to side.

Cassie grabbed a handheld radio and turned it up as she stepped out of her vehicle.

Davis opened his door to get out and Cassie held up her hand. “Stay inside, Ian. Let me do this. We don't want to spook him.

“Everybody stay put and watch him so he doesn't figure a way out,” she said into the radio, walking past the grille of the Tahoe. “I'm going to approach him on foot when he stops. Remember, he's just a kid. We don't know what he's going to do, but be careful not to hurt him if he tries to get away. We just want to question him.”

Kyle stopped near an empty jungle gym on the side of a silent swing set. She watched him drop his bike and clamber up a ladder to a kind of crow's nest. The metal structure of the jungle gym was covered with frost that looked like thick white felt.

She fitted an earpiece into her ear, keyed the mic open on the handheld, and dropped it into her parka pocket so the other units could hear what would take place. She guessed Kirkbride would listen in as well.

“Can you hear me?” she said softly.

“Roger that,” Davis said. The other officers surrounding the park checked in as well.

“Okay. I'm going to talk to him.”

“Don't tell him to calm down,” Davis said.

“This isn't the time,” Cassie said, taking a deep breath that instantly froze the hairs inside her nose.

*   *   *

KYLE WAS
hunched in a squat hugging his knees as she approached. He watched her closely like a feral cat. She could see his face was red from all the pedaling, and his exhaled breath hung around his head like a thought balloon.

“Kyle Westergaard?” she said.

He didn't move. He looked scared. His eyes were moist and small.

“Kyle, I'm Cassie. You have nothing to be afraid of. I'm here to help you.”

Nothing.

“I don't think you trust the police,” she said. “I understand. You've had some bad experiences with them, or at least with a couple of bad cops you might have seen recently. But, Kyle, they're not here. One man is dead and the other is in jail. They can't hurt anyone now.”

Kyle grunted and hugged himself tighter. Cassie could see that his cheeks were glazed with frozen tears. Involuntarily, her eyes teared up as well.

She said, “Kyle, I have a son of my own. His name is Ben. When I see you up there I can't help but think of him in the same situation. I would hope that if he's ever scared or in trouble someone would try to help him. I think that would happen because most people are good. I'm good, and you are, too. Will you let me help you?”

Kyle croaked, “They have my mom.”

Cassie wasn't sure she understood.

He said it again, but this time his voice broke on the last word.

“They have your mom?”

“And my Grandma Lottie.” It was almost a shout.

“I stabbed T-Lock in the neck. Are you going to arrest me?”

Cassie felt terrible asking him to repeat it. When he did she understood the words “stabbed,” “T-Lock,” and “arrest me.”

She said, “Kyle, it sounds like you were defending yourself. You have a right to protect yourself in a situation like that.”

“Really?”

Her heart was breaking. She fought back tears and said, “Kyle, please come down. We can go over to that warm car and you can tell me everything. And then we'll figure out a way to keep your mom and grandma safe.”

“How are you going to do that?” he asked.

She didn't quite understand what he said, but she got the meaning through his inflection.

Cassie said, “We're going to do it because we're the good guys.” And she smiled.

Kyle nodded and climbed stiffly down the ladder.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

FIDEL ESCOBAR
disconnected the call he'd placed from his cell phone when it went—once again—straight to voice mail. The cop, Foster, for whatever reason, wasn't picking up.

Escobar, along with Diego “Silencio” Argueta, Dietrich, and the woman they had taken from McDonald's, were all in the home of the old lady. It was warm in there, which Escobar appreciated, and he'd sent Silencio outside twice already for more wood to feed into the stove.

Outside, the last shafts of sunlight poured through the branches of the old trees on the west side of the road to the old lady's house. The indoor-outdoor thermometer on the kitchen counter said it was seventy-six degrees inside and minus thirty-four degrees outside. Escobar parted the vinyl miniblinds over the front window with two fingers and peered out. The road to the house—the
only
road to the house—was white and empty.

To the old lady, who they had bound with silver duct tape to her straight-back kitchen chair, Escobar said, “That's a hundred and ten degree swing, old lady.”

The old woman's eyes flashed at him. She couldn't talk because of the tape over her mouth. But she wanted to sass him again, he could tell. She reminded him of Auntie Beatriz. Auntie Beatriz would not be shut up by anybody and she felt it was her right and her duty to speak her mind. She could use some tape, Escobar thought. But he'd never smack Auntie Beatriz the way he did the old lady when she ordered them out of her house. He'd broken her glasses with the blow and her left cheek was bruised and swollen. But she was still feisty.

Escobar's toolbox sat by the back door. He'd had no reason to use it except to retrieve the roll of tape. His machete was on the table in full view of the old woman, who looked at it often. He had a 9mm semiauto in the waistband of his pants.

Silencio was slumped in an old overstuffed chair in the living room with his feet up and his 9mm on his lap. He was watching a station with nothing on it but cartoons. Silencio had been upset there was no Univision in North Dakota. Escobar could tell just by looking at him that Silencio, who had kicked his boots off, welcomed the warmth as well and was getting comfortable in the chair.

Escobar gently patted the old woman on the top of her silver head—she didn't like it and tried to jerk her head away—and went into the front room.

Dietrich was on the couch with the woman, Rachel. At first, she'd been scared and crazy until Dietrich shot her up with a hit of black tar heroin. Silencio had to hold her down on the backseat floor of the pickup while Dietrich found a vein. It wasn't long after that the woman calmed down and moaned. Escobar had seen enough junkies to know this Rachel liked heroin and was no stranger to it. The drug gave her peace and soon she told them about T-Lock, about her son Kyle, about her mother's house just outside of town.

They believed her when she said she didn't know where T-Lock had hidden the duffel bag of product. There was no reason not to believe her because she told them everything else they wanted to know.

“I think Kyle knows where the duffel bag is,” she'd said, making her eyes big. “I
know
T-Lock does.”

“So call him,” Escobar had said to Dietrich. “Call him from her phone.”

*   *   *

THEY'D PARKED
the Toyota Tundra behind the old lady's house so no one could see it from the access road. Rachel was more than willing to knock on the back door. Escobar, Silencio, and Dietrich flattened themselves against the back of the house so they couldn't be detected by the occupant inside.

When the old lady realized that it was her daughter outside, the door opened and the old lady said through the storm door, “What are you doing out in these conditions, Rachel? And where is Kyle? I was hoping you'd have him with you.”

Then she said, “What's wrong with your eyes? You aren't using again, are you?”

Rachel stepped aside and Silencio bull-rushed the door, sending the old lady sprawling across the kitchen floor.