“Medical marijuana is legal and you know it, Bebe.”
“And you’ve got a card to prove it you can show me?”
“I’m gonna get one,” Bodeen said. “I promise.”
The sheriff looked over his shoulder at Cassie and winked. He was enjoying himself.
She wasn’t and he could tell that.
“Okay, enough foolishness,” he said to Bodeen. “We need to know if you remember any particular customers you might have had about a month ago. Late in the night on September fifteenth or early the next morning September sixteenth. I assume you were working on those days.”
Cassie saw panic on Bodeen’s face. He said, “Man, how do you expect me to remember that far back? What is this, anyhow?”
She wondered that herself. She knew what she’d been doing those days only because they were among the most traumatic days of her life.
“Think, cousin,” the sheriff said. “For once, think.
“Tuesday the fifteenth through the twenty-second,” the sheriff said. “Who bought gas from you?”
“How can I possibly remember?”
“Don’t you keep records?”
“We’re an all-cash business, Bebe. I don’t take no credit cards so there ain’t any receipts.”
Embarrassed for Bodeen, she looked down. It was obvious Bodeen had no memory of those dates or of any customers on those dates.
And there it was: a small computer monitor tucked away up under the counter where it couldn’t be seen by a customer on the other side.
“Maybe it’s on his security camera,” Cassie interjected from behind the counter. “There’s a monitor back here.”
Verplank put his hands on his hips and leaned toward his cousin. “You have a camera?”
“No!” Bodeen shouted. He raised both hands toward his cousin as if to ward him off if he attacked. Then: “The camera don’t even work.”
“Which is it, Bodeen?” the sheriff asked. “You don’t have one or it doesn’t work?”
“Both,” Bodeen cried. He dropped his hands to the rims of his chair and tried furiously to get around the sheriff to where Cassie was behind the counter. The sheriff stepped to the side and blocked Bodeen’s path.
“What have you got back there, cousin?”
“Nothing. Now go away and leave me alone.”
Cassie found the power button on the monitor and turned it on. It took a moment to warm up. While it did she looked up to see Bodeen’s face twisted up with rage.
“Get that bitch out of my store!” he screamed. “She’s got no right to be here.”
Again he was correct, she thought. But she was in Sheriff Verplank’s county and she deferred to his judgment.
Then the monitor lightened to blue and the forms it showed came into focus.
It was a view from above looking down. She could see a sink, a stall, a toilet inside the stall, and the top of a sanitary napkin dispenser.
“You bastard,” she said to Bodeen. Then to the sheriff, “He’s got a camera in the ceiling of the women’s bathroom.”
“I told you he was a pervert,” Sheriff Verplank said.
*
BODEEN SAT SLUMPED OVER with his head in his hands as Cassie tapped the keyboard of the monitor to zoom in and out. It was aimed squarely at the toilet seat.
“You’re sick,” she said.
He mewled.
Then she noticed a series of icons on the bottom of the screen and she clicked one with the mouse. It was a video folder.
When it opened she could see at least twenty-five video files. She chose the most recent file and clicked on it and watched herself enter the bathroom, put aside the key, take off her coat, and enter the stall.
Cassie watched no more.
“You sick bastard,” she said again. “I’m on this, Sheriff.”
Sheriff Verplank bent over Bodeen and asked, “Where’s the hard drive?”
“Please, leave me alone. I never touched any of them.”
“Where is the hard drive?”
“Under the desk,” Bodeen said through wails.
Cassie turned and saw it down there. Two blinking green lights in the dark.
“Now, Bodeen,” the sheriff said, “I’m going to take that with me. Then I’m going to go into the women’s bathroom and tear that camera out of the ceiling. You aren’t ever going to use it again.
“Then I’m going to come back here tomorrow and arrest you. That gives you a little time to call your lawyer and get your affairs in order. You’re going to Deer Lodge for a few years.”
She could barely hear Bodeen as he spoke and cried at the same time, but she got the gist of it. The sheriff, Bodeen was saying, had no reason or right to come into his gas station and search, much less remove anything.
For the third time, Bodeen was legally on track.
But Sheriff Verplank said to Bodeen, “I’ve got every right in the world, cousin. It’s called probable cause. Cassie here told me she had a very strange feeling when she went into the women’s bathroom today. She said she felt she was being spied on. Turns out, she was right.”
Cassie mouthed “What?” to the sheriff, and he winked at her to play along.
Bodeen bent further over in his chair and wept.
To Cassie, the sheriff said, “How about you unhook all that equipment and I’ll go pull that camera from the bathroom. We’ll take it all with us.”
She nodded in agreement and the sheriff grabbed the key to the women’s and went out the door.
*
WHILE SHE BENT UNDER the desk she could hear Bodeen’s wheels rolling slowly across the floor toward her. She paused and reached inside her purse and gripped the handle of the Glock inside.
“What do you want?” she asked him. She used her flat cop voice.
“I don’t want to go back to prison. I hate Deer Lodge.”
“You’ll have to talk to the sheriff about that.”
“He don’t have any right to take all my equipment without no warrant. Those cameras are expensive.”
She unplugged the server and it wound down into silence. It was warm to the touch and she picked it up and placed it on the desk. Then something struck her and she slowly turned around and leaned over the counter at Bodeen.
“Cameras?” she asked. “You said cameras. Is there more than one?”
He looked up blankly. Then, “Yeah. There’s two.”
“Where is the other one? In the men’s?”
“Shit no,” he said, offended. “I ain’t queer.”
Then he nodded toward the front of the station and raised his eyes to indicate where it was.
“It’s out front under the eave where it’s hard to see from the pumps. It’s there so I can get the license plates in case somebody fills up and don’t pay me. Drive-aways are a real problem. Of course, our great sheriff could care less about real crime like that—crime against small business owners trying to make a living. Not when he can spend his time abusing his cousin—”
“Stop,” she commanded.
He shut up and looked like he was about to cry again.
“Do you have video records of all of your customers on this server?”
He nodded.
“How far back does it go?”
He shrugged, “Maybe a couple months. I don’t look unless I have a drive-away. I haven’t had any for—”
“Stop.”
CHAPTER