“Why is he slowing down?” Tibbs demanded from the backseat. There was panic in his voice.
“Doing a three-point turn,” Walker said. “So he can back up to the dock like he’s supposed to.”
Cassie could hear the grinding of the gears of the Peterbilt although she couldn’t yet see the truck.
“Back her on in here, big boy,” Walker said to no one in particular.
The big silver trailer behind the yellow tractor aimed at the open dock door and moved into view just as Ian Davis lowered his pallet near the rest of the load. Hydraulic brakes wheezed as the rear of the trailer pulled within inches of the dock.
Cassie could hear the rumble of the huge diesel engine as it idled. From the angle they were sitting at she could see just the back half of the sleeper cab but not the front of the cab where the Lizard King sat.
Kirkbride, on her left, had a better view.
“Is it him?” she asked.
“Can’t tell,” he said. “I can see there’s a profile but I can’t see his face.”
Then Walker said, “Okay, I’m going to go get the man himself to sign my paperwork.”
Walker punched off.
“Damn it,” she cursed. “He turned his phone off. I wanted him to keep it on so we can hear his conversation with the driver.”
“Call him,” Tibbs said.
“Not now,” she said. “Not with him this close to the cab.”
Walker emerged from the warehouse and walked across the dock to the stairs on the side. He carried his clipboard and looked natural, she thought. His Dakota Remanufacturing coveralls were a little baggy and open in front. She guessed he’d done that so he could reach inside easily for his weapon if need be.
She couldn’t see the deputies on either side of the opening. That was good.
Cassie leaned into Kirkbride so she could see better and the sheriff squished himself into his door so she could.
Walker strode the length of the big truck and knocked on the driver’s side door and stepped back.
“Be careful,” she whispered.
The massive flash was followed a quarter-second later by the boom as the cab of the truck blew out and up. The ground shook with the explosion and rocked the Yukon back on its springs.
Then shards of metal and grass rained down. A football-sized piece of steel bounced off the windshield and shattered it.
There was a beat before the fire in the cab ignited the dual 125-gallon fuel tanks on each side of the rig.
It was later reported that the resulting fireball could be seen as far as Watson City, twenty miles away.
*
CASSIE FELT HEAT on her face from the fire as she jogged toward the burning truck. Curls of black smoke roiled into the sky and small flakes of gray ash fell around her like snow.
Walker’s body was splayed out on its back twenty feet from where he’d stood to receive the driver. His arms and legs were bent in grotesque angles, and his coveralls were on fire.
She stopped and raised her arm to her face to protect it from the blistering heat.
The trailer behind the cab was now on fire as well, and she thought about the prostitute from Wisconsin who was likely in the tiny kill room directly behind the cab.
Behind her, Tibbs shouted, “Oh my God, oh my God, what just happened?”
She turned around to see if the county attorney was right behind her, but he wasn’t. He was still in the Yukon.
Sheriff Kirkbride was out, though. But instead of standing behind her he was down on his knees, his hat knocked off, holding his face in his hands. Blood poured through his fingers.
Then she thought of Ian.
The forklift on the dock had been blown over on its side. There was no sign of him in the cage of the equipment or on the dock itself.
There was panicked shouting and cursing from inside the warehouse.
Someone yelled, Officer down, officer down …
CHAPTER
FIVE
“WHAT WAS that?” Raheem Johnson asked Kyle Westergaard after the ground shook with two explosions. “It was like bang and then BOOM. Something really blew up, bro.”
Kyle nodded and looked over his shoulder in the direction the sounds had come from. The concussions had quieted the ducks preening themselves on the river and squelched the squirrels in the trees, and for the moment, the silence was awesome. Dried leaves floated down from river cottonwoods as if shaken loose. He’d felt the impact through the soles of his worn Nikes.
Kyle said he didn’t know what had blown up but that it sounded like it’d come from Grimstad.
“No shit,” Raheem said. Then: “This might be good. It might work for us.”
Kyle was thinking the same thing. “Let’s get the boat packed and get it in the water.”
*
THE TWO FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLDS HAD BRIBED a neighbor of Raheem’s named Burt with a twelve-pack of Busch Light beer to load the fourteen-foot wooden flat-bottomed johnboat into the back of his pickup and take it down to the timbered bank of the Missouri River two days before. Burt was fat and unshaven and he apparently lived on disability paychecks from the oil company he’d been employed by at one time. He lived next door to Raheem and he was always at home with his television set on. Burt liked game shows and baseball games at high volume. And he liked the Busch Light that Raheem had stolen from his father’s stash in the garage.
The boat was much heavier than Kyle had suspected and it took the three of them to lift it into the bed where they secured it with rope and bungee cords. The two boys rode in the open boat in the back of the truck and directed Burt down to the river.
After unloading the craft, Burt left with his beer and the boys piled branches and debris on it so it wouldn’t be spotted easily from the two-track that paralleled the river. For the next two days they’d used their bikes and a four-wheel ATV to ferry gear they’d need from town to where the boat was cached. It took fourteen trips back and forth before they had everything down there that matched Kyle’s checklist.
The river bottom itself fascinated Kyle. It was a different, wilder world than he was used to. While the prairie in all directions was flat and treeless and marked only by old farmhouses and silos and new directional oil rigs, the river bottom was an impenetrable jungle of thick cottonwoods, dense brush, and the hushed flow of the river. White-tailed deer ghosted through the trunks of the trees at dawn and dusk, then vanished within the undergrowth.
Both Kyle and Raheem lived in fear they’d be discovered before they could push off. So many things could go wrong. Someone could see them taking duffel bags and equipment down to the river and call them out. Someone could be driving down there along the bank and find the boat and steal it or vandalize it. Raheem’s dad could discover his missing twelve-pack, the $600 gone from the shoebox on the top shelf of the closet, or realize the johnboat that had been on the side of his house when he bought it three years before was now gone. Or Ben Dewell, Kyle’s twelve-year-old friend, could squeal on the two of them to his own mother or Kyle’s Grandma Lottie.
Kyle was still stinging from telling Ben no. Ben had been upset and asked why.