Peter Collinson
The Northeast Kingdom
Before the first day
Chapter 1
There are two types of police traffic stops: “high risk” and “unknown risk.”
“High risk” are stops of vehicles fitting the description of a stolen automobile or of one suspected of being used in the commission of a crime. Every other stop represents an “unknown risk” because a police officer never knows, as he or she approaches a vehicle, what might be going through the operator’s mind at that moment on that particular day. The element of surprise, and therefore the advantage, is always on the side of the driver. The “low risk” traffic stop does not exist, unless the officer finds that he has pulled over his own mother.
The big man wedged behind the steering wheel of the white Ford cargo van was not Deputy Sheriff Brian Kearney’s mother. Brian’s mother was a fading violet named Annette who, at six o’clock on a dusky August evening in Huddleston, Montana, was already settled in on her back porch not three miles away, a second small bottle of Michelob Light soaking a water ring in the imitation redwood patio furniture Brian’s father had been assembling for her on the night he died. Brian’s mother’s second husband, Perry, a semiretired bank manager and the reigning Border County Tenpin Champion, always took care, Brian had noticed, never to set his own drink, nor the little cigarillos he left smoking in plastic Bank of Huddleston ashtrays, on any of the porch furniture, the assembly of which Brian had completed himself that long night between his father’s wake and funeral. That bit of family respect was what had sold Brian on his stepdad, that and the fact that his mother was happy again and no longer alone. At this hour Perry would be sitting right next to her looking up at the mountains and the sun dipping behind, content to share her small beers from the beat-up Igloo cooler between them and tapping his foot in time with the rockabilly music playing through the screen door. Brian lived just a couple of streets away from them, the same mountain shadows falling over the ranch house he shared with Leslie and their twin daughters. Leslie had mac and cheese on for the girls, who were both fussy eaters, and last night’s leftover Shake ’n Bake heating in the microwave for Brian who, when he pulled over the Ford van with Arizona tags, had been on his way home.
Brian was alert as he left his Bronco and approached the suspect vehicle. Huddleston was a small farm town, but being just south of the Canadian border, it saw its fair share of trouble. Some drug couriers got lazy, thinking they were home free after passing the border checkpoint, and let their attention to lawful driving slide. That part of Montana, the furrowed brow of its northwestern face, was also separatist country, a small but militant portion of the population saw the police as invasive agents of an unfriendly government. Six years before, on a stunted mountain named Paradise Ridge, just down the road from where Brian now stood, a white separatist facing eviction from his cabin home had held the FBI at bay for more than a week in a standoff that had culminated in a near-riot in which a federal agent died preserving order. Since then Paradise Ridge had become a monument for antifederalists and reactionaries of all stripes, a wailing wall for militant radicals, and the adopted Pearl Harbor of a local fanatic order of separatists known as The Truth. The Truth had fallen on hard times since their church-bombing, race-warring sociopath founder, Jasper Grue, had been sentenced to life plus life plus forty years in a federal penitentiary; but the movement was still alive in the area, and always a law enforcement concern.
The van was long and windowless in back. As Brian walked past the rear bumper, he saw the driver watching him in the side mirror. Brian twirled his finger in the air to get the man’s window down, then put his thumb and forefinger together as though turning a key.
The driver’s side window went down obediently and the engine shut off. The driver placed both hands on the wheel where Brian could see them, and Brian moved to the window with more confidence. The driver appeared to be alone.
The first thing Brian noticed about the man up close was his scar, thick and bubble-gum pink, drawn across the base of his neck just above his sternum. A shirt with a collar, such as the flannel one crumpled on the passenger seat, would have covered it.
Beyond the scar, there wasn’t much to see. A beefy white male wearing a Marlboro baseball cap and a faded yellow T-shirt, cheap sunglasses hanging on a bright orange cord, sparkless brown eyes. Peanuts and coffee, those were the smells.
Brian didn’t make a practice of hassling out-of-state motorists, so he told the driver straight out that he had been stopped for speeding. The man had his license and registration ready, as well as a shipping invoice for the cargo he was carrying: a load of ladies’ dresses.
Brian took the paperwork back to his Bronco. The van was registered to a company in Tempe and the driver’s name was Durwood Roby. The tag and the license both came back clean. That nagged at Brian. There wasn’t much call for profiling offenders in Border County, but the man’s necklace of scar tissue had raised Brian’s antenna. He took a second look at the registration, noting the model date. The vehicle year was listed as 1995, though it seemed to him clearly a newer ’98 or ’99. Brian and Leslie had been over at the Ford dealership in Little Elk the month before, as the girls were out of car seats now and the repair bills on the station wagon were testing their budget, and Brian had admired the sleek lines on the millennium models, more curved and aerodynamic like this one. It was another pebble of the suspicious side of the balance scale. Brian radioed for police backup — the sheriff was on a two-week angler’s holiday in Idaho — and returned to the van.
Roby was waiting patiently, drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel, the skin around his cuticles picked raw. Brian stood with his holster away from the door. “Mind my asking where you’re coming from?”
Roby smiled, an unfriendly man trying to be friendly. His teeth were like little pills. “Alaska.”
Brian saw Canadian coins in the open ashtray. He saw some dresses behind the driver’s seat. “Do you know what model year this van is?” he asked.
Roby shrugged. “Got me. It’s a company car. I just drive it. I’m a workingman.”
Brian nodded, stalling, still deciding. Backup was minutes away, but waiting meant being even later for dinner and enduring Leslie’s scolding. This was not the first time Brian had pulled someone over on his way home. He glanced up and down the road. It was hedged by woods to the turns at each distant end, quiet and untraveled at dusk.
Brian backed away from the door. “Mind stepping out of the vehicle for me, sir?”
Roby’s first expression betrayed that he did in fact mind. “No problem,” he said, opening the door and stepping out. Brian was awed by the man’s size and his right hand moved casually to the pepper spray canister on his belt.
Roby strolled toward the rear of the long van. He seemed used to being hassled, a big, ugly-looking guy with a scar, and the thought of such discrimination shamed Brian but did not deter him. Beneath the tight cuff of Roby’s T-shirt were two letters seared into his triceps, raising a scar.
“Quite a tattoo,” Brian said.
The man looked down at his arm and proudly fingered the brand.
“BR” read Brian. “I have your first name as Durwood. Ever serve any prison time, Mr. Roby?”
Roby was still admiring his arm, smiling like a flat-nosed dog pressed up against a wire fence. “Naw. I did this myself.”
A police car rolled down the road earlier than Brian had expected. His hand eased away from his belt and his confidence again lifted. “Okay if I take a look inside your vehicle, Mr. Roby?”