Dakota (8 page)

N
IGHT FELL
fast and hard. Floodlights appeared beside the road, glaring above a series of roadside campgrounds with travel trailers and RVs and pickup campers sardined into spaces meant for a third their number. The man who’d spoken so crudely of Judith in the café had called her “one of the girls from the trailer.” Lola had thought she might end up knocking at the doors of a trailer park in Burnt Creek. Most towns had one. It hadn’t occurred to her there’d be too many to count. A painted plywood sign heralded the town itself. “Burnt Creek. Population 700. Home of the Dinosaurs. 1972 Class-C basketball champs.” Somebody had crossed out Dinosaurs and written in Drillers, sketching a hard hat with an oil company logo atop the cartoon T-Rex that balanced a basketball at the end of one of its tiny, useless arms. Lola thought it impossible that a town of seven hundred people would bring the profusion of neon that lit up the road into Burnt Creek like a Las Vegas boulevard. Lola crawled along with the traffic that backed up three blocks beyond what appeared to be the town’s only stoplight. Lola shielded her eyes against the oncoming headlights. Most of the neon signs turned out to be for motels and, just as Jorkki had warned her, every last one said, “No Vacancy.” There was a camper shell on the back of her pickup. Her tattered old sleeping bag that she’d used far too often in her travels around Afghanistan was back there, along with the newly purchased luxuries of a foam pad and a pillow and down comforter, as well as a plastic tub packed with a lantern and some canned goods—also, the can opener she’d belatedly added after a teasing reminder from Charlie—and a camp stove and toilet paper, standard equipment between September and May for every vehicle in Montana. She didn’t want to have to use any of those things, least of all the toilet paper. She imagined herself crouched by the side of the truck, buffeted by wind and snow, and decided that if nothing else, she’d park next to a twenty-four-hour fast-food place with bathrooms she could bogart. Even though, in her experience, towns of seven hundred people didn’t have twenty-four-hour anything. “But there’s more than seven hundred people here now,” she said to Bub. “A lot more.”

She was already taking mental notes, years of habit kicking in, the frisson of a new place and a new story chasing the fatigue from her bones. People spilled from the door of a bar that looked a lot like a railroad car. Lola squinted. It
was
a railroad car. She belatedly took note of the name. “The Train,” it said. And, in smaller letters, “Pull One.” She worked it out in her mind and flinched. Pull a train. “Otherwise known as gang rape,” she told Bub. He whined at her tone. The Train had to be a strip bar. She wondered if Judith had ended up in a place like that. Tried to imagine the clientele. She reached below the seat, where she’d stashed the little revolver. “You’ll feel better having it,” Charlie had said. Suddenly she did.

The lights grew brighter still, the street more crowded. She and Bub were in Burnt Creek proper now. Bars, bars and more bars. Lola had yet to see a church. There had to be one, if not several. The longer she lived in Montana, the more she marveled at the way even the most far-flung hamlets harbored a variety of congregations, sometimes all in a row, the Seventh-Day Adventists next to the Presbyterians next to the inevitable Catholic church that had begun as a mission guaranteed to try the faith of even the most sacrifice-addicted cleric. It was almost as if some long-ago law had mandated bars and churches in equal numbers, providing the balance of a Sunday morning recovery from Saturday night’s revelries. Maybe North Dakota was different, she thought.

An American flag, standing stiff in the wind above a frame building, caught her attention, along with the most welcoming sight of the very long day. Homestead County, a sign said. And, below it, a smaller sign: “Sheriff’s Department.” Lola flicked the turn signal and pulled into a parking lot and found her notebook and Judith’s photo from the newspaper. She flipped through the notebook until she came to the notes she’d made about Burnt Creek. The sheriff’s name was Thor Brevik. She’d met just enough sheriffs in her brief time in Montana to know that Charlie’s youth made him a rarity. Brevik was almost certainly one of those leathery-skinned specimens whose tarnished belt buckle from his rodeo days would likely outdo his badge when it came to grabbing attention. She imagined him tall, the beginnings of a stoop, another pale Scandinavian like Jorkki, the hair already so light as to render the transition from blond to white unremarkable. She looked at her watch. It was just before five. No matter what Thor Brevik looked like, if his workload were anything like Charlie’s, he’d be at his desk another hour yet.

CHAPTER TEN

T
he man in the sheriff’s office wasn’t particularly old. And it was impossible to tell if he was leathery, despite the discomfiting amount of flesh on display. Tattoos from wrist to shoulder wrapped bare arms that bulged like boulders from a denim shirt with the sleeves ripped out and buttons long gone. The visible strip of chest and stomach appeared to be similarly adorned, albeit covered with such an impressive mat of hair—she’d been right about the blond, at least—that it was nearly impossible to make out the designs that twisted like so many snakes through the shrubbery. An inked strand of barbed wire provided the only demarcation between neck and jaw. In some trepidation, Lola shifted her gaze upward. Thor Brevik’s blond curls framed a cherubic face that in no way went with the body below it. His pretty pursed lips parted in a smile of surpassing sweetness. A gold tooth shone. Lola blinked.

“Aren’t you cold?” she blurted, looking at the exposed arms and flesh.

“Wouldn’t be if you’d shut the door behind you.” Something soft and Southern in his voice, a little syrup to flow pleasingly over all those crags.

Lola slammed the door shut. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

He waved her apology away with a hand weighted with silver rings that reached to the knuckle of every finger, including his thumb. Lola saw a skull, a cobra, a Stars and Bars, and one featuring two carved silver women, hands grabbing one another’s ankles, mouths bent to . . . she looked away. Each of the rings stuck up at least half an inch, rendering Brevik’s fist a fearsome weapon.

The tooth flashed again. “Help you?”
He’p.

Lola slid her hand into her pocket, ran her finger along the ragged edges of the clipping with Judith’s picture. It seemed obscene to show the photo to this hulking aficionado of girl-on-girl action. If the people of Homestead County had elected this man as their sheriff, the county was rougher than she’d thought, reluctantly conceding to herself that Jan may have had a point.

“Y’all probably want the sheriff, right?”

“You mean—” Lola’s sentences kept stopping before she was finished with them. The final cup of coffee, just before she drove into Burnt Creek, probably hadn’t helped.

The man’s laugh exploded in the small room, ricocheting off the walls, blasting Lola back against the door. She felt for the knob. “You thought I”—
Ah
—“was the sheriff? That’s a good one. I’m Dawg. This here”—the rings beat a drum solo on an inner door—“would be Thor.”

T
HOR
B
REVIK
, like Charlie, was still at his desk. All resemblance ended there. Charlie’s style with anyone, whether criminal suspect, stranger in town, or lifelong acquaintance, was to let the other person start the conversation, and also do most of the heavy lifting once it was under way. But Thor came out from behind his desk in a half-crouch, hand extended, talking, talking. “You must be Lola. Thought you’d never get here. Of course, it’s a rotten drive. But we were starting to worry anyway.” He urged her into a chair. Lola twisted. Dawg loomed behind her.

“Told you she’d get here fine. Y’all get acquainted now.”

Thor flapped a hand as the door to the outer office was closing behind Dawg. “Don’t forget, we roll at seven tomorrow, Dawg.” He turned back to Lola. “I’ve been listening to the weather station all day, figuring you might run into snow. A front’s supposed to blow through any time now. But it sounded like clear sailing all the way for you. How about some coffee? You’re not one of those people who can’t drink it after noon, are you? I can’t imagine you are, not in your line of work. You reporters are the only people I know who drink as much coffee as cops. Take our local gal, Susie Bartles. I swear she goes through a gallon a day. Says she drinks a cup at bedtime to help her sleep. Sugar? Cream? Powdered is all I’ve got.”

“Black is fine.” When he brought the coffee to her, his back remained bent as though in a bow. But whatever was wrong with his back, the rest of Thor Brevik was just fine. More than fine. Lola thought of old movie posters, the square-jawed guy in the white hat, one arm curled around the waist of a little lady who stared adoringly into his handsome face. Lola yanked her own stare away, fearful that some adoration of her own might have crept into it. “How’d you know who I am?”

“Why, your sheriff, of course.”

Lola choked on a mouthful of java so strong it put her own muscular brew to shame. “Charlie?”

Thor swung his arms behind him and hoisted himself up onto his desk. He wore the belt buckle she’d expected, showing a bull flinging its hind feet high in the air, a cowboy balanced improbably on its back. “He called to let me know you were coming. Told me to keep an eye on you. Burnt Creek can be hard on new folks.”

She could have sworn he winked. She raised the mug to her lips. With anyone else, the long sip would have been a delaying tactic, a way to keep the person talking. But Thor Brevik didn’t need tactics to keep talking. “It didn’t used to be this way. Time was when we were mostly just a bunch of dirt farmers barely hanging on. Now you’ve got folks who’ve been here their whole lives taking vacations in places like Paris. Coming back all prissy and perfumed. And the likes of the people showing up looking for work—well, they’re from whatever the opposite of Paris is, I suppose. Your Sheriff Laurendeau is right to worry.”

My
sheriff? Lola stopped herself from saying it aloud. What in the world had Charlie said? She took another sip and looked at the clock. A half hour had flown by. She wondered how long it would take her to find a place to settle for the night.

He rubbed his hands together. “Is it cold in here? I swear as soon as it gets dark, the temperature drops ten degrees inside for every twenty outside.” He hopped down from the desk and fiddled with a thermostat. Heat curled around Lola’s ankles. She leaned toward it. Thor Brevik snapped the cover back over the thermostat. “How can we help you while you’re here?”

Judith’s photo, deep within a hip pocket, burned against her thigh. Lola hesitated. He’d already had one conversation with Charlie. What if he had another? “I’m assuming I won’t be able to get a room tonight, or any night while I’m here,” she stalled. “Is it okay if I park my truck in your lot for the night?”

Thor flung his arms wide. “Be my guest.” A phone buzzed on his desk. He leaned back and hit a blinking button. Dawg’s voice came tinny through the speaker. “I’m calling it a night, sheriff.”

Lola had thought him already gone. She wondered if he’d lingered at the door, listening. She was glad she hadn’t asked the sheriff about Judith yet.

“I’m right behind you.” Thor hit the button and the phone went dark.

Lola gestured toward the phone. “That guy. Dawg. He’s—”

“He’s what?” Thor parried. The corners of his eyes crinkled, as though the two of them were about to share a delicious joke.

Lola thought any number of words could apply to Dawg, none complimentary. She went with tact. “He’s
unlikely.
What does he do here?”

Thor chuckled. “Little of this, little of that. He’s sort of a deputy. That’s where he gets his nickname. You know—Deputy Dawg.”

Lola thought the nickname an insult to the portly cartoon character. “What do you mean, sort of a deputy?”

Thor leaned toward her and stage-whispered, bringing her into a cozy conspiracy. “I call him a reserve deputy. He can’t be a real deputy, of course. He didn’t pass the background check. But he’s a tremendous help.” He patted his belt buckle. “Back in the day, a bull stomped right on my backbone. The older I get, the harder it is to deal with. But Dawg deals just fine. And then there’s the way he looks. What with the element we’ve got coming into town, it actually works to my advantage to have him along on some of the calls we get. Otherwise it’s just me. Towns like Williston in the next county up from here, they’ve gotten big enough to justify extra law enforcement. But Homestead County’s still too small, at least when it comes to permanent residents. The old-timers here might not like the looks of Dawg, but until they approve the money to let me hire a real deputy, this is what they’re stuck with.”