Free Badlands by C. J. Box

horizon was perfectly horizontal. She knew she was nearing her new job when the grasslands gave way suddenly to pipeline fields, heavy equipment yards, tool companies, and muddy pickups merging onto U.S. Route 2.
    Her sense of both excitement and dread had increased by the hour. She was a third-generation Montanan, and had always thought the state was big enough there was no reason to ever move anywhere else. Her father Bill claimed he had driven his semitruck on every single road in Montana and it took him most of his life to do so.
    And here she was, soon to uproot her son (and mother) to move east to a state that had always served as the punch line of jokes in Montana. To a place people used to be from , but were never headed to. To one of the few states that until recently had lost population in every census. To a place where there were Scandihoovian farmers rather than raw-boned ranchers, and where polka music was a staple on the radio and Sven and Ole jokes were relevant.
    But that was back before they made the largest discovery of domestic oil in North America and one of the largest found anywhere in the world and figured out how to get at it: by hydraulic fracturing or fracking. That was before, according to the tagline from the single local AM radio station she could get, Grimstad became the “Oil Capital of North Dakota,” where nearly a million barrels of oil a day were being shipped out. And that was before the sheriff’s department could offer to pay their new lead investigator $80,000 per year in salary plus family health insurance and benefits—including a subsidy for housing.
    *   *   *
    AFTER RETURNING from North Carolina, Cassie had found Sheriff Tubman in his office looking over artwork for new billboards urging Lewis and Clark County residents to vote for him for reelection. As usual, his Stetson was crown up behind him on the credenza. That used to drive her old partner Cody out of his mind because Cody had grown up on a ranch and knew real cowboys always placed their hats crown down to preserve the bend of the brim. For Tubman, the hat was an affectation.
    As soon as Tubman saw her enter, he covered the artwork with his forearms and eyed her warily.
    Their relationship had deteriorated since he’d hired her as an investigator, primarily so he could burnish his diversity credentials within the county, and he made no secret of it. In the first year of her employment, she’d been personally dutiful, even going so far as to serve as his spy on other cops, including Cody. But Tubman had betrayed her by citing her findings and firing Hoyt, and he’d followed it up by his active benign neglect of her pursuit of the Lizard King. She knew Tubman saw her as a threat and also knew the only reason she hadn’t been fired was because of her gender. But that didn’t mean the sheriff wouldn’t undermine her at every turn, and plant rumors about her character and morality and sexual orientation as a way to turn up the heat to convince her to leave on her own.
    When she told Tubman about the offer from North Dakota and asked if he wanted to match it, he’d laughed out loud. She hadn’t been surprised. And when she gave her two weeks’ notice, he countered with two hours .
    They were reprogramming the electronic entry code to the Lewis and Clark Law Enforcement Center even as she left it for the last time carrying a cardboard box of personal items.
    When she’d called Sheriff Kirkbride in Grimstad to say she could be available to start the job sooner than they’d discussed, he told her she was already late.
    *   *   *
    THE HEAVY truck traffic in town surprised her, although she thought she should have expected it. The big tractor-trailers and oil field pickups slowly clotted the few streets and made her think of a highly mechanized army moving through a country village en route to the front. It took her twenty minutes to navigate