Badlands (6 page)

Kyle gestured to the south. “No. Out in the prairie. It was on the ground.”

T-Lock cocked his head while he thought. “Was this around when that car wrecked this morning?”

Kyle nodded.

“Did you see it happen?”

Kyle nodded again.

“And you went down there and found that bag? Did it come out of the car when it rolled, is that it?”

“I think so.”

T-Lock cradled his head in his big hands and held it there for a moment.

“Kyle,” he said, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice, “Did anyone see you grab the bag?”

No
.

“Does anybody know? Don't lie to me, Kyle.”

Kyle didn't lie. T-Lock should know that, he thought.

“The cops don't know?” T-Lock asked.

“No one knows,” Kyle said.

“You're sure?”

Kyle nodded.

“You didn't tell your mom or nothing, did you? You didn't tell your grandma?”

“No.”

T-Lock seemed to be thinking. When he did that he closed his eyes. Then, suddenly, they popped open and T-Lock grasped both of Kyle's hands in his and squeezed hard enough that Kyle took in a breath and held it so he wouldn't cry out.

“Kyle, you can't tell anybody.
Anybody.
You've got to swear to me right here and now you'll keep your mouth shut about finding that bag.”

Kyle wasn't sure. He'd planned on telling his mom about it and then maybe taking it to the police. That seemed like the right thing to do.

“Why?” Kyle asked.

“
Why?
I'll fucking show you.”

Kyle thought, That word again. Just like the two men in the second car. He wondered if they, or T-Lock, could speak without it.

*   *   *

THE CANVAS
duffel bag was unzipped on the dining-room table. T-Lock clicked on the overhead light so it shone down on the bag. It looked like the bag was being interrogated—like on television—Kyle thought.

T-Lock skirted the table and stood on the other side of it. He plunged both hands inside and came up with a handfuls of small plastic clear glassine baggies the size of a penny. The tiny baggies were filled with crystalline powder that looked like snow crust at the end of winter. The powder was bluish in color.

“Do you know what this is?” T-Lock asked.

“Drugs,” Kyle said. He knew about drugs from drug-prevention movies at school, although he'd never seen drugs in real life. The weed he'd seen T-Lock smoke in the garage didn't count.

“Damn tootin',” T-Lock said, letting the baggies sift through his fingers into the opening of the duffel. “Hundreds of little packets. Maybe a thousand, I don't know. I don't know how many because I haven't had a chance to count 'em yet. But there's fifteen or twenty pounds of them in here, maybe more.”

Kyle blinked. Fifteen or twenty pounds sounded like a lot, but not when compared to potatoes or dog food, he thought.

“That ain't all,” T-Lock said, digging into the duffel. He came up with a large Ziploc bag bulging with smaller bags of what looked like black pebbles. Kyle frowned. Rocks?

“This is called black tar,” T-Lock said. Kyle wondered who would want black tar. To himself, T-Lock mumbled, “Gotta keep this shit away from your mom.”

T-Lock shoved the bag of black tar back into the duffel and held up two thick bundles of cash. The money was tied together into bricks by thick rubber bands. It looked like used money, not clean bills. Kyle could only see the denomination of the bills on the top and bottom of the bricks—fifties, twenties.

“I ain't counted this yet, either, but do you know what this could mean?” T-Lock asked.

Before Kyle could answer, T-Lock said, “Yeah, I know, the bills are marked. But there are ways around that.”

He showed Kyle where someone had run a light purple highlighter pen up and down the sides of both bricks.

“I heard about this trick,” T-Lock said. “All you have to do is shine a black light on the edge of a bill and that mark will show up. Otherwise, you'd never know. They do that so the courier can't skim.”

Kyle had no idea what T-Lock was talking about.

“Back to the subject. I said, ‘Do you know what this could mean?'” T-Lock said, his eyes bulging again as he thrust out a brick of cash in each hand, “It means we can take care of your mom.”

Kyle hadn't thought of that but he instantly warmed to the idea.

T-Lock said, “You don't know this, but your mom got a notice from the landlord last week evicting our ass. These pricks around here can charge big money for rental houses now that the oil boom is on. They don't need hardworking people like us anymore.”

T-Lock only worked when it was warm outside, which wasn't often in North Dakota. The rest of the time, like now, he hung around the house in his T-shirt and jeans and flip-flops. Freezing. Kyle didn't know what else T-Lock did during the day. He guessed he watched TV.

“Well, your mom didn't want to tell you we might have to move, but it's been worrying her sick. She's a good lady, Kyle, you know that. She works her ass off to give you a good home and stuff to eat. You love your mom, don't you?”

Kyle nodded.

“You don't want her to go back downtown to work the pole again, do you?”

“No.”

“Damn right you don't. I don't either, even though it was good money and it paid the rent,” T-Lock said wistfully.

Kyle had overheard his mom and T-Lock arguing about her job as a dancer. She wanted to quit for a long time and her hours were being reduced now that the club owners were bringing in professionals from around the country. She'd told T-Lock she was used as a backup when one of the “hotties” didn't show up. T-Lock argued that she should keep the job since he didn't have one.

Kyle wanted his mom to be happy. If quitting her job made her happy, Kyle was on her side.

Luckily, she'd quit dancing and had recently gotten a job at McDonald's in Grimstad when they started paying $17 per hour plus benefits. It was weird seeing her come home in that McDonald's uniform, but usually she had a bag or two of cheeseburgers and fries for dinner. Sometimes it was Big Macs or Filet-O-Fish, Kyle's favorites.

“Your mom,” T-Lock said, “she's struggled for you. Just struggled,” liking the word enough to say it twice. “She got clean and convinced them people to let you come back. And she's stayed clean. She doesn't deserve to get thrown out of her own house, right?”

Kyle nodded. He visualized the scene: large men in coveralls pitching his mom out the door into the snow so she landed on her rear end.

“Ain't it time you and me took care of her for a change? She deserves better, don't you think? Don't you think your mom is entitled to the life everybody else around here seems to have? Why should she do all the struggling, anyway?” T-Lock asked, raising the bricks of cash as if making an offering to the overhead light.

Kyle was confused. He understood about the money, that was obvious. But what about the other?

T-Lock said, “I know some guys. Other roofers and guys I see around. You think of me as a construction guy, but I got connections.”

Kyle never thought of T-Lock as a construction guy, but he kept his mouth shut.

He continued, “There are what—thirty, forty thousand single men out there in the county now? They're looking for stuff. I'll figure this out. We'll take care of your mom.

“The one thing,” T-Lock said, “is if you truly love your mom like you say you do and want to make her happy, the one thing is you gotta keep your mouth shut. You can't tell anybody about this bag. We want to surprise her, you know? Christmas is just around the corner, so you just let me handle it.”

Then T-Lock smiled that wide stoner smile and shook his head and chuckled.

“I don't know why I'm asking you of all people not to fuckin' talk.”

Kyle said, “Can I take my coat off now?”

T-Lock threw back his head and laughed. Kyle had rarely seen the man so happy, so giddy.

He looked at the duffel bag on the table and the scene that morning came rushing back: that bloody man trying to claw his way out of his wrecked car, the two men who had forced him off the road, the cops.

At least it made T-Lock happy, he thought.

 

DAY TWO

 

CHAPTER FIVE

Wilson

THE PREVIOUS
night at the Wilson Medical Center, the doctor who looked too much like Ed Begley, Jr., had said to Cassie: “It only takes eleven pounds of pressure placed on both carotid arteries for ten seconds to cause loss of consciousness. To completely close off the trachea, you need thirty-three pounds of pressure. If strangulation persists, brain death will occur in four to five minutes. This man has very powerful hands. It's very fortunate they were able to pry him off of you when they did.”

She would have nodded if she could.

*   *   *

ON THE
way to the Raleigh-Durham Airport and her flight back, Cassie propped her head uncomfortably against the headrest of the backseat. She wore a stiff plastic brace. In the mirror that morning, she'd seen the bruises under her jawbone that spread down to her breasts like a blue-black lace collar. They looked hideous.

The sheriff's deputy who'd been the first into the interrogation room to save her drove the cruiser. Behaunek sat next to Cassie in the backseat in a much-appreciated show of sisterhood.

The night before both Behaunek and Sheriff Puente had come to see her at the hospital to check on her condition. Agent Rhodine was apparently too busy.

“What you did was brave,” Behaunek had said softly, shaking her head in what appeared to be wonder. “You gave it up for the team. You probably don't know that when he attacked you I was in the process of getting up from my chair to come into the room and put a halt to that particular line of questioning.”

Cassie had nodded. “I was wondering about that,” she said. She could speak either in a reedy whisper or a honking croak and it hurt to do either. Simply swallowing water brought tears to her eyes.

“I've never seen anything quite like it,” Behaunek said. “Did you know he would react that way?”

Cassie shook her head. She had to edit her words in advance because each one was painful. “Just guessing.”

“Well, you guessed right. You found the one thing that would cause him to flip out. I've never seen a man his size move so fast.”

Cassie grunted in agreement.

“There's no way I can spin what happened into an admission of guilt on his part, but the assault charge will keep him locked up for a while. You bought us time, Cassie.”

Cassie had tried to smile.

“And it looks like we'll be seeing you again when you come back to testify against him in court.”

“How long?” Cassie croaked.

“Three or four weeks, I'd guess,” Behaunek said. “We filed the assault charge this morning and the preliminary hearing will be tomorrow. I can't see the judge allowing him to be released prior to the trial. Especially if we show him that videotape.”

“Does he have a lawyer?”

“Yes—court appointed,” Behaunek said. “I'm curious to see if he hires one on his own. In my experience, monsters like that often think they can represent themselves because they think they're so much smarter than anyone else in the courtroom. I hope he does that because I want to be the one who nails him.”

*   *   *

AFTER BEHAUNEK
and Puente had left her the night before and before the swelling in her neck had really set in, Cassie had used the landline phone next to her bed to call her mother, Isabel. Although Cassie's sentences were halting and she was still half in shock, she told her mother what had happened and asked her not to tell Ben. She didn't want her son worrying about her condition.

And she didn't tell Isabel who had tried to kill her. She referred to him as “the suspect.”

“I'll talk to Ben when I get back,” Cassie had said. She didn't recognize her own voice.

“What? I can't hear you.”

Cassie enunciated more clearly, grimacing while she did so.

Isabel said, “You don't want me telling him that his mother was strangled in North Carolina?”

Cassie had rolled her eyes. Isabel was a free spirit and a child of the sixties. She'd insisted on being called Isabel instead of Mom or Mother. She made no secret of the fact that she still thought most cops were pigs. She'd never approved of Cassie's line of work and had never hesitated to say so.

“Please, Isabel, not now.”

“When will you get back?”

“At least a day later than planned,” Cassie had said. “They need to take photos of my injuries, and the doctor still has to release me. I know I'll be here at least tonight for observation.”

“Will the injuries cause permanent damage? Will you always talk like that? No offense, but you sound like a really fat person.”

“No offense,” Cassie had repeated. Her mother didn't possess any kind of internal governor. Whatever she thought came out through her mouth. It seemed to be getting worse.

Isabel said, “You know I have my zumba class tomorrow night. I'd hate to miss that.”

“You might have to.” Cassie envisioned Isabel writhing around at the YMCA in her flowing robes, or worse, in tight workout clothes.

“Maybe I can find someone to watch Ben for the night. Maybe I could ask Ripster…”

Ripster was a formerly homeless man and recovering meth tweaker Isabel had made her new project. Isabel's life was strewn with failed projects like Ripster who, in Isabel's mind, qualified as victims of bourgeois oppression.

“Mom,
no
. Not Ripster. Absolutely not.”

“You don't have to be so judgmental, Cassie.”

“When it comes to Ben, I do.”