“I have. I haven’t heard anything unusual, She-Bear.”
Cassie usually chuckled at the name but not now. Judi had been calling her “She-Bear” ever since she’d heard an angry trucker use the term for a female police officer in a rant as he rolled out of Grimstad in his unit. Cassie had ticketed the driver for exceeding the speed limit on county roads after he blew by her in her civilian car. For a half hour after receiving the citation the driver complained over his radio about the “She-Bear” who had pulled him over. He was especially incensed that she asked to look through his cab and into his sleepover cab. He had no idea what she was looking for or why she was looking.
Cassie didn’t mind the name because she liked to think she had the protective qualities of a she-bear when it came to her family and her principles. Nevertheless, she told no one including Ian about the nickname she’d been given by an angry truck driver.
“You’ll need to get your people out of the building,” Cassie said. “I don’t want any of them to get hurt, including you. If we could borrow some uniform shirts for my guys that would be great, too. I’ll write you a receipt for them.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Judi said, waving it off.
“I’m sure one of our deputies knows how to drive a forklift. If not, we might need to ask your driver to give us a quick tutorial.”
Judi agreed. “Any of the guys can do that. They load and unload about a dozen trucks a day. It used to be that all of the dirty equipment was coming in for us to clean up and retrofit for the Bakken. Now, we’re shipping most of the pallets out. Things have changed, you know.”
Cassie nodded. The boom had come so fast that it was hard for many of those who’d lived through it to grasp the fact that the oil field exploration activity had slowed to almost nothing. Judi Newman, though, had adapted her business to the new reality. She was now an oil field parts exporter rather than an importer.
“I’ll call you as soon as it’s over,” Cassie said. “Will you be at home?”
“I’ll be at the Wagon Wheel drinking dirty martinis,” Judi said. “Maybe you can join me.”
“Maybe,” Cassie said, trying to grin. But she was so tense her mouth wouldn’t let her.
“Looks like you need one now,” Judi said, gathering up her coat.
*
SHERIFF KIRKBRIDE AND COUNTY ATTORNEY Avery Tibbs had entered the warehouse together and were striding toward the loading dock. Kirkbride was in his department fleece and Stetson. Tibbs wore a long overcoat that was usually open as it was now, Cassie observed. She speculated that Tibbs liked the coat because of the dramatic figure he cut when it flowed behind him as he walked.
It was an odd juxtaposition to see them together, Cassie thought. She knew they didn’t get along at all. Kirkbride had vocally supported the old county attorney who’d been challenged by Tibbs in the past election. It had been a nasty campaign that was unusual in Bakken County, where elections had previously been low-key coronations of incumbent politicians. Tibbs had outspent the previous county attorney seven-to-one and had brought in political consultants from Bismarck to help sharpen his attack on the old man. It had worked and Tibbs won the seat by twenty-seven votes.
At his victory party, Tibbs had vowed to continue to “clean up Bakken County,” which everyone took to mean that one of his goals was to replace the sheriff who’d been in office over twenty years. Kirkbride had backed the wrong horse.
“There she is,” Tibbs said when he saw Cassie come out of Judi Newman’s office. He turned on his heel toward her and the sheriff reluctantly followed.
Tibbs wore a dark gray suit and a lime-green tie. He had close-cropped hair, a thin face, tiny dark eyes that were usually in a squint, and a downturned mouth without visible lips. It was no secret that Tibbs planned to run for North Dakota’s single U.S. Congressional seat within a year as a law-and-order candidate.
“Chief Investigator Dewell,” Tibbs said as he approached Cassie, “you’ve got some serious explaining to do or I’ll shut this whole thing down right now.”
Cassie looked to Kirkbride who was a few steps behind Tibbs. Kirkbride rolled his eyes. He’d been trying to get along with the new county attorney but he wasn’t very good about disguising his true feelings toward him.
Tibbs said, “I’m not real fond of the idea that I’ve got a cop who has been conducting a one-man vendetta against a target without ever once informing the County Attorney’s office. I don’t like finding out about it with two hours’ notice and the FBI on the way.”
He stopped so close to Cassie she could smell his bodywash. It smelled pretty good, she thought. Maybe she could get Ian to …
“I don’t like it either,” she said. “I’d just about given up on the chance that it would ever happen, much less this quickly. This is the first time everything finally fell into place.”
Tibbs took a deep breath and when he did his narrow eyes squeezed together so tightly Cassie couldn’t tell if the man could see her.
He said, “The sheriff said you’ve been baiting this trap for quite some time.”
“Four years,” Cassie said. “I briefed the former CA on it when we began. I assumed…”
“Never assume,” Tibbs interrupted. “When you assume you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’ If you didn’t get that, I just spelled ‘assume.’”
Behind him, Kirkbride rolled his eyes again.
Cassie said, “I’ve got to get our team in place and we’ve got a lot of work to do here. I’m going to run out of time explaining everything. What do you want to know?”
Tibbs jabbed a single finger at Cassie. “Do not use that tone with me.”
“What. Do. You. Want. To. Know?” she said. She wanted to reach up and bend his finger back.
Tibbs said, “I know about the Lizard King or whatever he’s called. The sheriff told me all about him on the way over and he told me you had a traumatic experience with him back in Montana. He told me you killed a dirty Montana State Trooper in a shoot-out but the Lizard King got away. And he told me that you were flown to North Carolina two years ago when they had a suspect in custody they thought was your guy, but the case against him was botched from the start.
“What I need to know,” Tibbs said, “is if that’s going to happen again here. Are we going to bring this guy in under false pretenses only to have him released again? You know who will be on the hook if that happens, don’t you?”
“I do,” Cassie said.
“That’s right—me. You’re handing me a case that could make or break me in the eyes of the voters.”
She nodded.
He paused. Behind him, Kirkbride looked away.