C. Box - The Highway

But if the killer wasn’t local, if he was simply passing through the state and would be gone again in hours, how could law enforcement track him down? And if a serial killer was strategic and diabolical, what better profession to take up than becoming a long-haul trucker?

She shivered and felt the hairs on her arm rise.

* * *

And Cody hadn’t checked in with her. She’d expected a reply of some sort to her text telling him she was on the way. Either warning her off or telling her where to meet him. But there had been nothing.

Her mother walked heavily across the linoleum in the kitchen in her bare feet, her robe billowing around her.

“Your constant clacking is keeping me awake and giving me a headache,” her mother said dramatically. “I hope I haven’t used up all the Tylenol.”

“My clacking ?”

“What you do on your computer,” her mother said, mimicking Cassie by holding her hands up and waggling her fingers as if typing manically on a keyboard.

“I’ve tried to be as quiet as I could.”

“Plus, I can hear you moan. And sometimes you snort.”

Cassie sighed and sat back, her concentration broken. She stared at her mother. She was wearing the robe Cassie disliked, the one with the huge batik face of Che Guevara wearing his beret across the front. “I know,” her mother said, gesturing at her robe. “I know you hate it.”

“He was a totalitarian and a cold-blooded murderer.”

“You have your opinion,” her mother said, sniffing.

“It’s not my opinion. He was a brute. Do some research, Mom. He’s nobody to celebrate. Around Ben, especially.”

“It’s just a sentimental thing to me,” her mother said. She’d once claimed she bought the robe from a vendor on the way to Woodstock in 1969. Around the time she’d changed her name from Margie to Isabel because Isabel sounded more exotic and revolutionary. Cassie knew Isabel’s participation at Woodstock never happened, although she had no doubt her mother had come to believe it over the years. If all the people of her mother’s generation who claimed to have been at Woodstock had actually been there, Cassie knew, the concert would have hosted millions more kids than were actually there. But there was no point in getting into that argument again.

Isabel looked down at her robe and said, “Besides, he’s very handsome.”

“For a killer.”

“How did I raise a girl to be so judgmental?” her mother said, distracted by the difficulty of the childproof cap on the bottle of Tylenol.

Cassie bit her lip. She wanted to say, You never raised me at all. You dumped me with Grandma and Grandpa while you chased around the country for your causes. Sometimes I saw more of Bill than I saw of you. But it was a fight she couldn’t have, because she needed her mother there for Ben. Isabel had spent the first half of her life neglecting her and the second half engaging in unspoken extortion.

“Let me open it,” Cassie said, and her mother handed over the bottle.

Cassie unscrewed the cap and gave it back.

“What’s so important that you need to keep me awake all night with your clacking ?” her mother asked, shaking three tablets into the palm of her hand.

“I’ve got a pair of missing teenage girls and now a missing partner,” Cassie said flatly.

Her mother paused and looked at her with discomfort. She was sixty-two years old, wide-faced and blousy, with once-red hair that was so infused with gray it looked pink. She didn’t like uncomfortable subjects, like missing people.

“Here in town?” her mother asked.

“No. Somewhere out on the highway.

“Why is it your concern?”

“ I’m a cop. ”

“I know,” her mother said, turning to fill a glass of water, “I just like to pretend you aren’t.”

“What would you rather have me do?” Cassie asked, feeling the heat rise in her neck. And immediately regretting she’d asked.

“I don’t know,” her mother said with a sigh, and Cassie was grateful she’d diffused the question. Anything to avoid an argument with her strong-willed daughter. After all, nasty little asides and innuendos worked better for her over the long run and always had.

“Mom,” Cassie said, “I’ll probably have to go out of town for the day.”

Her mother swallowed the pills one by one before saying, “When will you get home?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

“I have my book club at six. You know that. We’re doing a Wally Lamb book and you know I have some things to say.”

“I know,” Cassie said. “I don’t ask you to do this very often. But I might not be able to get back by five.”

“This is happening with more frequency,” her mother said. The words weren’t said in anger, but in a kind of martyred resignation.

“This is important, Mom. I really appreciate you being able to take care of Ben, and I know it’s tough on you. But we’re talking about the lives of two girls, and who knows what with my former partner.”

Isabel screwed up her face at the mention of Cody Hoyt. They’d not hit it off when they met for the first time the previous summer. Cody and Cassie had been headed toward the Justice Center to clock out for the evening when they saw half a dozen people chanting on the courthouse steps. Cody pulled to the curb to ogle them, and Cassie pointed out her mother, who had brought Ben along to the Occupy Helena demonstration. When Isabel walked over with Ben in tow, Cody had sized her up from head to foot, from stocking cap to Keen sandals, with a sneer on his face. He waited until Ben was out of earshot and told Isabel, “Only lazy slackers on food stamps have the leisure time to chant slogans. The rest of us have to work.”

Isabel said, “He’s the awful misogynist redneck you work with?”

Cassie nodded, surprised by the half-smile pulling at her mouth. “He’s not a misogynist, necessarily,” she said. “He hates everyone equally.”

“Well, if I were you-”

“You aren’t,” Cassie said, cutting Isabel off. She closed her laptop harder than necessary.

* * *

Cassie had dressed and driven her Honda to the Justice Center and exchanged her car for the Ford at the transportation desk. The officer behind the counter was surprised she was in so early and wanted to talk, but Cassie signed out the vehicle, took the keys, waved him off, and walked down the silent halls of the sheriff’s department. She hoped she could find somebody interested in going with her to find Cody, even though the prospects were slim.

As she passed forensics, she saw a bar of light under the door and knocked. Alexa Manning, the young crime scene tech, let her in. They were both surprised to see each other. Alexa was tall and slim with bone-white skin and short-cropped black hair and small brown eyes. Cassie didn’t know Alexa well, but the two had a bond because they were both single women in the department and had each heard grumbling and whispered asides about their unavailability because “one was fat and stuck up and the other one’s a dyke.”

Alexa was working late on the Tokely case, she said, because her vacation started that day and she wanted to get as much work done as possible before she and her partner went to Moab for the holiday weekend. Cassie sighed, resigned to the fact that Alexa wouldn’t be able to go with her either, and asked Alexa what she’d found out. Alexa beamed.

“We’ve got B. G. Myers at the scene,” she said.

Cassie sighed. “I know about the wrappers you found in the trash can.”

“We’ve got more.”

“Really? What?” Cassie was genuinely surprised.

“On the south side of the house there was a set of tire tracks and boot prints frozen into the mud. Do you remember seeing them?”