Cassie got an early lunch in Butte on her way to Anaconda and she couldn’t stop thinking about her encounter with Kyle Westergaard. Despite what he’d done, he made her smile.
Kyle was a survivor, a kind of sweet feral operator who did what he had to do to keep going. Kyle had a unique and fearless naivete in how he approached life. When he wanted to visit New Orleans in his early teens before he could legally drive, he set out to accomplish it by boat. When his Grandma Lottie needed financial help, he decided to find the treasure that hundreds of people were scouring the West to find. That he’d broken into Cassie’s office to try to find information on her client but made a point not to disturb anything fit into his profile. She sent him a quick text: It was good to see you, Kyle. Keep in touch.
He didn’t reply.
The Uptown Cafe was located in the heart of Butte. Inside it was intimate and well-appointed, with white tablecloths and beautifully presented food. Bankers, attorneys, and doctors seemed to occupy most of the tables. Or at least people who looked like bankers, attorneys, and doctors.
The building where the Uptown Cafe was located had been there since Butte was the most important city in Montana, and if the walls could talk she knew she’d get the skinny on the boom-time schemes and machinations in the “Richest Hill on Earth.”
From her small table in the corner, Cassie observed Butte’s executive class as they entered and discussed issues at their nearby tables. Golf scores, bond issues, and the physical moving of one of the city’s biggest Copper King mansions out of town to another location.
“I can’t imagine putting that house back together,” said a rotund bald man in a suit. “What a ridiculous project.”
She ordered heirloom tomato salad and clams maison with iced tea and she felt quite smug about it. When she was through, she charged the meal to her company credit card and silently thanked Candyce Fly for lunch.
Butte was unlike any other city in Montana and she was reminded of it when she went out of the restaurant to her car. The city block she was on looked a lot more like historic San Francisco than rural Montana with closely packed multistory brick buildings lining narrow streets. The steep hillside where the city was built gave it a vertical rather than horizontal feel.
She looked up the street. A faded painted sign on the side of a building read: BRONX LOUNGE/SUPPER CLUB/ITALIAN CUISINE. The neighborhoods—some restored, many crumbling—were diverse with bars on every corner and churches on every block.
The charm of uptown Butte was countered by the Berkeley Pit that hemmed in the east side of town. The Berkeley Pit, now closed, had been one of the largest open-pit mines in the world and was now a Superfund site. The stunning colors of the water within the massive hole—azure, gold, green, blue—were due to the toxic mix of arsenic, cadmium, copper, zinc, and lead within it. The vibrant colors, when Cassie had first seen them as a teenager, had reminded her of thermal pools in Yellowstone Park. She recalled a controversy a few years back about a flock of geese who landed on the water of the pit and had all been poisoned to death.
Having grown up in Montana, Cassie knew that residents of Butte were proud, almost clannish (they referred to their community as “Butte, America”), and they sometimes came off as having chips on their shoulders associated with the fact that their city’s prominence was behind them and their statewide ascendency had been denied due to the cold decisions by multinational mining companies.
There was no doubt Butte’s importance had declined. In the boom years of the 1920s, it had more than forty-two thousand residents. It now had barely thirty-four thousand. Butte had been such an up-and-comer in the Roaring Twenties that Dashiell Hammett set his novel Red Harvest there.
Along with Anaconda, Butte was the heart of the strident western labor movement and it was known at one time as the “Gibraltar of Unionism.” Although it still had more residents of Irish descent by percentage than any other city in America, Butte was the most diverse community in Montana with distinct Italian, Polish, Slavic, Scandinavian, and Chinese neighborhoods.
Now, Our Lady of the Rockies towered above the community and watched it change and cope.
Before leaving town, Cassie drove up the hill to the twenty-three-room Copper King Mansion that had once belonged to Montana senator William Clark. The historic home had been restored and tours were offered to visitors. Across the street, another mansion had been converted into a bed-and-breakfast.
Next to the Copper King Mansion was a gaping hole. She assumed that the missing structure was the one she’d heard the city fathers talking about at the restaurant.
As she took the ramp to I-90 West, Cassie’s phone pinged with a text message. It was from April:
Man, there are A LOT of writers in Montana. Can you tell me where to start?
Cassie used Siri on her phone to reply:
Rule out the female writers and all the dead ones.
She drove the twenty-four miles to Anaconda, past the exit to Fairmont Hot Springs and the state highways to Wisdom and Opportunity. The immense lone smokestack rose into the sky above her as she approached the town and she drove past the mountain of jet-black coal slag that sparkled in the high sun.
Although the two towns were inexorably linked—Butte mined the copper ore and Anaconda smelted it—they couldn’t be more different, she thought. There were no tall buildings in Anaconda and the homes were solid little bungalows sometimes no more than a foot apart. It was as if the early residents hadn’t quite grasped how much space there was available in Montana. The town had the feel of an enclave.
Mountains rose straight up on all four sides of the town, which was crowded into the valley floor. She noted HOME OF THE COPPERHEADS and ANACONDA STRONG posters in the windows of retail shops and individual homes.
Cassie used the map feature on her phone to find the Deer Lodge County Courthouse on Main Street. It was a magnificent neoclassical three-story stone building, backed into a hillside, that looked to have been built to preside over an eventual metropolis that would never quite fulfill its promise. Carved in stone over the front door was AD 1898.
Near to the courthouse was the Anaconda–Deer Lodge County Law Enforcement Center. It was built of modern blond brick and it looked out of place next to the historic courthouse. Three police cruisers were lined up at the entrance. Cassie pulled into a space designated for visitors and got out.
Inside the lobby was a counter protected by ceiling-high Plexiglas. A woman behind the counter looked up as Cassie entered.
She was striking, Cassie thought. Mid-fifties, slender, coal-black hair, light green eyes, very pale complexion.
“Are you Margaret?” Cassie asked.
“I am.”
Cassie recognized her from her voice.
“I’m Cassie Dewell. I talked to you this morning.”
Cassie dug her credential out of her purse and slipped it through the opening on the bottom of the Plexiglas. Margaret retrieved it and looked it over.
“Bozeman,” Margaret said. “I think I’ve heard of you.”
“It’s possible,” Cassie said. “I’ve been involved in some high-profile cases around the state.”
“You were in the middle of that cock-up in Lochsa County a couple of years ago, right?”
Cassie nodded.
“That was a wild one,” Margaret said. “I remember reading about it on Facebook.”
No one read the local newspapers anymore, Cassie thought. Not even law enforcement personnel.
“So,” Cassie said, “have you given the sheriff my message? I’d like a few minutes with him if possible.”
Something passed over the receptionist’s face. She looked down at her hands, apparently embarrassed.
“Actually, I haven’t seen Sheriff Westphal today. So I haven’t given him your message.”
“Could you call him?”
Again, the look. “He isn’t picking up.”
Cassie frowned. “That’s kind of odd, isn’t it?”
Margaret looked over her shoulder to see if anyone had come into the lobby from the back. Cassie assumed the officers’ workstations were all beyond the back wall, as well as the county jail. That’s how most sheriff department facilities were set up.
Assured no one was there to overhear, Margaret said, “It is just sort of odd. Sometimes he doesn’t come in if there’s nothing going on. It’s been really quiet in town except for the usual stuff—traffic violations, public intoxication, that sort of thing. But it is unusual that he hasn’t checked in at all.”
“For how long?” Cassie asked.
“A few days,” Margaret said. Again, she checked over her shoulder.
“You haven’t seen the sheriff in three days?”
Margaret shrugged.
“Isn’t this something you should be worried about?” Cassie asked.
“It isn’t my place to say,” Margaret said. “I haven’t heard anything from our officers about it. Maybe the sheriff has been in touch with them individually, I don’t know. I’m just the receptionist, as I told you.”
Cassie studied Margaret’s face. She believed Margaret’s story about the sheriff but thought there must be something else she wasn’t being told.
“Well,” Cassie said, “is there someone else I could talk to? At least until the sheriff decides to show up?”
“The officer in charge is the undersheriff and chief investigator,” Margaret said. “He has both titles.”
“That’s impressive. Is he here? Could you please put me in touch with him?”
“I can call him,” Margaret said.
Cassie folded her arms across her breasts and waited. After what looked like an internal conversation with herself, Margaret mounted a pair of headphones on her hair and punched a button on her phone set. Then she rolled back her chair and swiveled around with her back to Cassie so she couldn’t be heard her through the hole in the Plexiglas.
The conversation lasted less than fifteen seconds. When Margaret turned back around her face was flushed red.
“Did you talk to him?” Cassie asked.
“I did.”
“Did you convey my request?”
Margaret nodded her head.
“And?”
“He said, and I quote because I don’t use these kinds of words myself: ‘Please tell her to fuck off and go home.’”
Cassie raised her eyebrows. “Seriously, that’s what he said?”
“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry.”
Cassie slipped her business card to Margaret across the counter through the opening. “Here’s my card,” she said. “Please ask the sheriff or the undersheriff to contact me. This is an official request. I’m not going to fuck off and go home. And if I have to come back here without hearing from either of them, I’m showing up with friends who can make their lives miserable.”
“Friends?” Margaret asked.
“Friends,” Cassie said. “They’ll know who I mean.”
Before going back to her car, Cassie paused at the door.
“Margaret, I know this isn’t about you. You’ve got a job to do and being the go-between is part of that. My problem is with your bosses.”
Margaret nodded wordlessly.
“Feel free to call me anytime,” Cassie said. “But you might want to do it off premises and from your own phone, if you know what I mean. I can meet you anywhere.”
“I try to stay out of things the best I can,” Margaret said. “That’s how I keep my job around here.”
To cool down and regroup, Cassie didn’t go straight to her car but instead strode across the lawn outside to the courthouse next door. Amid historical plaques about city hall and the Butte–Anaconda Historic District, she thought over her threat to show up again at the justice center with friends.
Who were her friends? She had no idea. But she’d worked in the heart of sheriff departments before. Sheriffs and undersheriffs were political animals. As such, they had people to avoid at all costs and enemies to be kept at bay. The enemies might be journalists, county commissioners, the mayor, or local activists. If the political animals in that building thought they might be confronted by their adversaries, it might give them the incentive to cooperate with her.
She’d let them determine who the enemies might be who would accompany her.
It had been a calculated risk, and one that might not pay off. If it didn’t, her leverage was shot to get their cooperation.
Cassie paused and looked down the hill at the compact town of Anaconda that stretched across the valley floor.
She thought: Here we go …
She spent the early afternoon visiting local hotels and motels. There were five within the town of Anaconda and another dozen within thirty miles. In Montana, thirty miles were nothing.
None of the local accommodations were chains and all were privately owned. They ran the gamut from the large-scale Fairmont Hot Springs Resort to the east to crumbling motor lodges.
After her experience in Lochsa County staying in a motor lodge, she now saw them in a different—if undeserved—light.
At each, she introduced herself and showed the desk clerk a photo on her phone of J. D. Spengler. She’d copied the portrait from the website of Spengler’s agency in Florida but had cropped it so it looked like it was in her own personal photo archive. As if she’d taken it herself.
“He should have checked in on May nineteenth,” she said.
At the fourth local motel, called the Flint Creek Motor Court, she got a hit.
The man behind the counter wore a heavy flannel shirt and suspenders, despite the warm day. He had tufts of white hair above his ears and a bald, freckled head. He narrowed his small brown eyes at the mention of the name. Cassie felt a satisfied flutter in her stomach.
“Yip,” he said. “He checked in for two nights and disappeared.”
“Do you mean he walked out on his bill?” she asked.
“No, not that,” the man said. “I got his credit card when he checked in. I charged him for both nights.”
“Then what do you mean?”
The man shrugged. “He checked in and I never saw him again. He left his suitcase in the room and never came back for it or called later to ask if we found it. I’m not sure he ever really used the room at all. Our housekeeper said he didn’t sleep in the bed or use any towels.”
“So he checked in, dropped off his bag, and went back out?” she asked.
“Yip. I never saw him again.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Yeah, kind of strange. But we get all kinds,” the man said. “Two nights ago a couple from Oregon left two goats in a room when they went to dinner at Fairmont. We allow pets, but goats aren’t pets. They defecated on the carpet and chewed up a lot of the wallpaper. Have you ever had to clean up goat shit?”
“Not that I can remember,” Cassie said.
“It ain’t no fun,” the man said. “The smell lingers.”
Cassie nodded. “Did Mr. Spengler have any visitors while he was here?”
“None that I seen.”
“What did you do with Mr. Spengler’s bag?”
“I still got it,” the man said. “I didn’t know what to do with it. There’s no name tag or nothing on it.”
He sighed. “People leave stuff here all the time. You know, clothes, that kind of stuff. Phone chargers are the worst. I put that stuff in storage and wait for the guest to call and ask that whatever it is can be returned. I get their credit card and charge a modest service fee and send it back to them. Sometimes it takes weeks to figure out what they forgot to pack. I kept waiting for Spengler to call me but he never did. I called the number he left on his registration form and it went straight to voicemail.”
“Interesting,” Cassie said again. “Do you think I could take a look at his bag?”
The man eyed her suspiciously. Then: “I don’t know if I should do that or not. Are you related to him in some way?”
“He’s my uncle,” Cassie said. “He was on the way to our family reunion in Helena and he never showed up. The last we heard of him he was going to stay over in Anaconda and come up on the weekend.”
Since she’d become a PI, Cassie found it easier and easier to lie. She tried to do it only when the stakes were low and she couldn’t think of another way to get the information she wanted. It was a line she rarely crossed when she’d been in law enforcement, but she knew she’d been the exception.
“Man, I don’t know,” the man said, running his palm over his scalp. “It doesn’t seem right. It’s your uncle’s property.”
“Yes,” she said. “But it might give me an idea where he went after this. I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, either,” he said.
“Would a hundred dollars help?” she asked. “You can consider it your service fee.”
“A hundred?” he asked.
“A hundred and fifty, I meant,” she said.
He looked her over carefully, obviously considering what he’d do next. Then, without a word, he turned and walked across the lobby to a door that said STAFF ONLY.
“You coming?” he asked over his shoulder as he opened the door and went inside.
She followed him into a storage room. An industrial washer and dryer sat in the back. High shelves were piled with thin folded white towels, cases of thin shrink-wrapped bathroom soaps, older television sets that had been removed, and a large container in the corner of items that had apparently been left by guests in individual rooms. A nondescript black rolling bag was next to the box.
“There it is,” he said. “That’s where we put our lost items. You can put his suitcase on that folding table over there but please put it back where you found it. And don’t take nothing.”
“I won’t,” she said, digging into her handbag for three fifty- dollar bills. She kept a roll of them specifically for bribe money. “Thank you.”
He slid the bills into his back pocket and shouldered past her back to the counter.
The contents of the bag revealed nothing, she determined. A few shirts were folded neatly inside, as well as two pairs of trousers. Spengler had “borrowed” a pillowcase from somewhere to use for soiled underwear.
His shaving kit was jammed with items he’d also taken from other motels as well as a razor and a pack of condoms. There were three plastic bottles in the kit prescribed to Jonathan David Spengler. She recognized the drug names. One was for high cholesterol, another for heart disease, and the last was mail-order Viagra.
Condoms and Viagra, she thought. That told her something about the man when he traveled.
In the bag there were no receipts, documents, or notebooks. No weapons or other gear. Nor cell phones, laptops, or digital recorders.
For a PI in the field, she thought, he traveled very light. Unless he kept his weapons and working gear inside the rental car with him at all times.
She took a photo of the items displayed on the table with her phone but she wasn’t sure it would be of any value.
Cassie repacked the bag and placed it in the rolling bag of recovered items. She glanced inside the container. She’d never seen so many phone chargers in one place.
As she left the room she noticed that the motel manager was peering intently out his window toward the parking lot. She wondered for a moment if J. D. Spengler had come back.
“Looks like you’ve got company,” the man said.
She paused at the lobby door before going outside. A sheriff’s department SUV was parked outside and a large officer in uniform leaned casually against it. He wore dark aviator glasses and he had a toothpick in his mouth.
He was obviously waiting for her.
Cassie turned to the manager. “Did you call him?”
“Didn’t need to,” the manager said. “He called me. I said you were just about done looking through your uncle’s possessions in the storeroom.”
She glared at him.
On her way out the door, she activated a compact digital audio recording device and left it in her handbag.