The Weight of Night

by Christine Carbo

  I didn’t budge, just looked over my shoulder, back at the once-­clandestine grave and the box of tools flung like a metal skeleton next to the disturbed earth. I glanced beyond it up the ridge. The flames were over three hundred feet high, ominous and massive like blazing tidal waves of fire. It had become so opaque I couldn’t see anything but the furious, lashing fire.

  “Jesus, Gretchen. Come on,” he repeated as he turned around and headed back for me.

  “I’m coming.” I quickly shoved the tools back into the case, grabbed it, and ran toward him. We sprinted the rest of the way to the ranger station, clumps of grass trying to trip us and the smoldering air choking us in spite of our face masks. Finally we reached the car, my lungs on fire, my heart pounding.

  Wilcox waited for us in the lot, his face grimy and flushed. “Get in your car and go now. One mile west and you’ll be out of range. You’ll see other vehicles there, including the firemen and the medic who’s treating Tara.”

  “Where’s Ray?” I asked.

  “He went with Tara.”

  Monty set the equipment in the back of his SUV and urged me to hurry. I crammed the rest of the gear in, shut the back hatch, and jumped in the passenger seat.

  Monty hopped in and turned on the ignition. His face was intense, his hair wet and spiky with sweat. I was still panting, and tried not to think about how I’d just done an incomplete, shitty job excavating a pile of bones that at one time was a living, breathing person.

  • • •

  Neither of us said a word until we made it to the holding spot a mile down Highway 2, a large field that had been rented from a local rancher for the purpose of setting up the fire camp. Monty pulled up next to the van where Ray stood waiting. “Sorry for grabbing you like that,” Monty said.

  I nodded but was still trying to regain my composure. I opened the door and went to the back to transfer the remains and the gear. Monty looked across the lot to a trailer labeled Medic, then turned toward Ray. “They have Tara?” he asked him.

  “They’re on their way to the hospital.”

  “Hospital?” Monty asked.

  “Just a precaution, I’m sure. We were making our way back and she got worse and had to sit. The captain saw us and called the medic. Thank goodness they were already on standby here.”

  Monty shook his head, chastising himself. “I knew she shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have let her.”

  “She’s okay,” Ray said. “They’ve got her on oxygen.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was still trembling from the adrenaline rush and Monty shifted his gaze to me again. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, though I was scowling.

  “You sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Gretchen, a fire moves fast. I couldn’t chance it.”

  Ray stood silently listening to us.

  “I know. I know.” I was still trying to catch my breath. I glanced at Ray, embarrassed that I was so shaken, and he was polite enough to excuse himself.

  “I’m going to find some water.” He motioned to a tent that looked as if it was stocked with food and beverages about twenty yards from us across the lot.

  Monty turned back to me after Ray shuffled off. “Look, I’m sorry you couldn’t finish—”

  “It’s fine,” I interrupted, crossing my arms in front of my chest.

  “You don’t seem fine.”

  “I was about to come,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I actually was. There was no way he could understand that my job was how I coped—that since I left Norway, the only thing that made me feel human was when I could return someone’s body to their family or help some detective better comprehend who hurt the family’s loved one and why, just so that they could move a little further along in the recovery from their loss. There was no way he could fathom the desperate need to disappear when life shattered into irreparable pieces—the need to make the best of things by losing yourself in your work and performing it flawlessly. “I didn’t need you to tell me how to do my job,” I added.

  “It had nothing to do with your job or my job. It was about a fire that is plowing through this place at jet speed.”

  “I’m aware of how fast a fire moves.”

  “It didn’t seem like it out there.” Monty lifted his chin to the direction of the site and to the mountains that are usually our haven this time of the year.

  “Give me a break. I’ve worked these parts long enough. I know what the hell I’m doing. Why don’t you just stick to your job and let me do mine.” I knew I was being completely unreasonable, but I couldn’t help it. My knees had now begun to shake and my lungs were still screaming at me.

  Monty held up his palms in front of him, either in surrender or as a typical male calm-down gesture, which angered me even more.

  “You’re shaking. Would you like some water?” He studied me with dark, narrowed eyes.

  I ignored his question. I looked around the camp and saw rows of RVs, portable toilets, and tents for sleeping. I had heard that the RVs were equipped with state-of-the-art kitchens and showers for the camp workers and the fire crews. I turned back to Monty. “I didn’t get all the lower ribs,” I finally said. “And the ones I did collect have been cracked. I heard snaps.”

  “But you got everything else? The most important parts: the skull, the pelvis, right?”

  “Yes, but I shouldn’t have left anything behind. If that fire doesn’t cross the line, I’ll need to go back.”

  “Fair enough,” Monty agreed. I wondered if he noticed my watering eyes and the trembling that had now moved up to my arms. I was glad to be hiding behind my suit, but he was staring at me as if I were completely exposed. “Look,” he finally said. “I didn’t want to botch that up any more than you. It’s Park Police’s jurisdiction first and foremost, and I take full responsibility for the excavation. But we needed to be safe.”

  I glared at him, ignoring the sting in my eyes. I felt silly, and I sensed that the anger that had begun stirring in me when I’d woken up to my stacked books had been intensified by the incomplete dig. I looked up into the dense gray smoke falling around us and ran my palm over my head. “I just didn’t want to mess this up,” I said. “I think . . .” I shook my head and wiped the water draining from the corners of my eyes. “Never mind.” I walked to the back of the van.

  “You think what?” Monty followed me.

  “I think it may be someone young.” I turned to face him again.

  “Young? How young?”

  “That I can’t say, but I don’t think the coronal and sagittal sutures were fused yet.”

  “And that means younger than what age?”

  “Probably younger than thirty or so.”

  “That’s a big range.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, but still. I have a strange feeling about it, that it’s younger than that.”

  “Because?”

  “I don’t know for sure.” I didn’t want to sound foolish by telling him that if you do this long enough, there are things you just sense. That there was something about the skull and the flimsy metal buckle that whispered younger man, but I couldn’t be sure at all. “But of course the FA should be able to narrow it down much more.”

  Monty nodded solemnly, studied me for a second longer. I excused myself and went over to the back of the van. “I’ve got some rearranging to do here before we drive back to the lab.” I went to work as he walked away, still quivering, still frazzled by my own anger and frustrations, but having no sense of the heavy weight that was about to descend upon me, upon us all.

  4

  * * *

  Monty

  I WANDERED TOWARD WILCOX, who was talking to some of his men across the lot. I wanted to see if there were updates on Ole. He looked busy, and I figured that meant he and his crew were gearing up for another rou
nd. I shuffled over to a boulder by the side of the field close to them and sat, waiting for a decent moment to grab his attention.

  My eyes and lungs burned. I thought of what Gretchen had said: I think it may be someone young. Damn. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. I knew we did our best and had to get the hell out, but Gretchen had treated me like I was some unreasonable jerk who was getting in the way.

  I knew that the remains would first be sent to the local morgue, where a coroner would take a look, and if available, a forensic osteology expert would weigh in as well. From there, they’d end up on the third floor of a stucco high-rise housing the University of North Texas Health Science Center for Human Identification, the only academic DNA lab in the country equipped to identify human remains.

  My heart sank when I realized how long the identification process could take. At least we had saved most of the remains and had prepped a good portion of them for analysis. And if the line did hold, and we had rushed for no reason, we could return when it was safe to complete any odds and ends.

  While I waited, I thought of the missing boy at Fish Creek. On a regular, smokeless day when I could actually see the sky, I could easily tell by the color of the choppers whether they were S&R or tourist joyrides, visitors paying to fly through the sky over the tall mountains to get an eagle’s perspective. Now, with the smoke jumpers flying all around, the intense heat, and the fatigue from digging, I felt disoriented. Earlier, during the dig, while endlessly pouring soil through the handheld sieves Tara and I had used to collect dirt samples, I had to admit that my mind had continually flitted to the missing boy.

  When my friend Nathan disappeared, the world tilted off its axis, though at the time, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for things to get any worse, given my parents’ miserable states. My brother, Adam, played a Halloween trick on us that ended in disaster: Nathan went missing after he and his friends dumped us in a cemetery to scare us. Adam, who never expected for Nathan to go missing, began to descend further into drugs and alcohol after the incident, so my dad sent him to a “therapeutic” boarding school that harmed him more than it helped. I never got over my anger at him, though, and Nathan’s disappearance, a dark cloud that hung over most of my young adult life, haunts me to this day.

  I pulled out my cell to see if we had any service and saw that we still didn’t, so I grabbed my radio instead and called Joe Smith. IC had flown a repeater up to the top of a nearby peak called Scalplock. I was thankful for good old-fashioned radios.

  “You back at the camp?” Joe asked as soon as he picked up.

  “Affirmative. The excavation, at least for the time being, is halted. Probably completed, if Ole blows through. You find that boy yet?”

  “Negative. We have not.”

  “No?” I did the math in my head. We’d been out on the site for over five and a half hours and the child had already been missing before we left. “How long has it been now?”

  “Over nine hours,” he said. “We’re intensifying the search. We do not want this boy out in the woods overnight. We’ve called in Two Bear for when it gets dark.” Two Bear was a search and rescue service that used thermal-imaging technology to detect a person’s heat profile in the woods, but it had to get dark first. “Between the fires, this, and the evacuations, it’s a shit show.”

  Normally, when someone goes missing, we all get on it right away. We begin sweeping down nearby trails, asking other hikers if they’ve seen the missing person, and questioning neighboring campers. With a teenager whose family is from out of town and claims the teen would never be gone for so long of his own volition, we sometimes dispatched the S&R choppers if the group in question was backcountry camping or hiking in the higher elevations. But Smith said the teen had gone missing near Fish Creek Campground, a heavily wooded area at the base of Howe Ridge, and choppers would not be able to spot anything until nightfall.

  “I’ll be right over as soon as I check in with Wilcox.” I released my finger from the transmission button. Wilcox was wrapping things up and his men dispersed quickly, their faces intent as they gathered their supply packs and other gear. I stood and approached him as he was lifting his radio to his mouth. I called out to him. He stopped and turned, gave me a curt nod and lowered his radio.

  “How’s it looking?”

  “Not good,” he said. “The line held in parts, but it’s broken it in others, still too close to town. We’re basically just trying to save structures and livestock at this point.”

  I thought of the small ranches with cattle, horses, and goats and the many houses, barns, sheds, log cabins, and historical lodges in the area that the firemen would be trying to save. “Any idea if it burned the area around the grave?”

  “Not yet, but my guess is that it did. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out,” he said as his radio came to life. “Gotta grab this, though.” He turned away and started toward his men. The camp workers helped the hand and field crews, and the firefighters grabbed their supplies and were piling into trucks and buses.

  I stood for a moment, rubbing the back of my neck, gritty from sweat and dirt. There was nothing to do now except let the firefighters work to save Essex. I got back into my car and watched all the workers hurrying around. Then I headed northwest—away from the grim, frantic scene of firefighters rushing to save houses and buildings, out of the smoldering canyon where I couldn’t see more than twenty yards in any direction. Milky smoke dispersed evenly toward the blocked sun, which gave its heat but wouldn’t shine.

  • • •

  When I reached Fish Creek Campground, it was eight thirty. The sun had not yet set, but it was sinking. Between that and the smoke, it felt darker than it normally would on a Montana evening in August when the sun doesn’t set until around nine. The sky in the west glowed orange as an ember through the haze. I went straight to campsite 23A, the one where Joe said the family had been staying.

  A Park Police vehicle belonging to one of my coworkers, Ken Greeley, sat on the shoulder of the narrow, curved road leading to the site. I couldn’t decide if the anxious feeling in my gut was more about the rushed dig or the missing boy, who had been gone now for longer than I wanted to think about. I decided it was probably both.

  Ken greeted me first as I stepped out of the car. He tipped his head, but his usual grin was missing.

  “How’re they doing?” I asked in a low voice. It was quiet, except for a soft murmur emanating from other occupied campsites. In fact, the grounds were full. All of the ones that remained open were at capacity. Even during fire season, visitation was at an all-time high, topping two million already by early August.

  He shook his head as if to say, Not good. Ken liked to chew gum pretty much whenever he wasn’t eating, and I could see his jaw moving and working on a piece now. He had a wife and a young boy, three or four now, and I knew whenever a child was involved in any dangerous situation in the park, it scared the crap out of him.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go have another chat, but maybe lose the gum. You know, out of respect.”

  Ken, big and burly, plucked it out of his mouth and wrapped it in a tissue. He was amicable, and usually never took offense at instruction. He let me take the lead since I was the more senior investigator.

  I had stopped briefly at headquarters on my way and knew from the statements taken earlier that the missing boy’s name was Jeremy. They were the Coreys. The mother, Linda; the father, Ron. They were in their midforties, visiting from Ohio. He was a musician, played guitar locally, and sometimes traveled around his state. Ken had informed me that he’d apparently had a hit single in the last year, some sort of a ballad on lost love. Linda was a fourth-grade teacher.

  I could see them from where we stood. They looked like normal tourists, both in khaki shorts and T-shirts—Linda with her dark hair in a ponytail and in her hikers still, pacing by the picnic table, and Ron with wavy, longish brown hair and we
aring Teva sandals. They seemed like sensible people, but one can never rely on first impressions.

  I remembered another piece of information from the statement: they had spent the early morning at the campsite, eating instant oatmeal and drinking coffee with water heated on a Coleman stove. No camper, in the sites or in the backcountry, would be allowed to make a fire during fire season for fear a small glowing spark might float off and embed in a nearby larch branch, a cluster of dying witch’s moss, or a dried bed of needles and end up igniting another inferno. It might sound foolish, but I couldn’t help feel that saving Essex was somehow linked to finding the boy, even though I knew there was no connection. It was simply a trick of the light—of the smothering smoke, like a full moon effect that had people doing crazy things when it swelled large and round. Full moon nights were some of the busiest shifts at police stations.

  We walked to the table and they both stood, their faces expectant. I tried to shoo away the hard squeeze of dread that gripped me.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m Officer Harris. No news yet. I’m sorry.” I wanted to get that out of the way from the get-go. Any other way would be cruel.

  Both of their postures deflated with my announcement. The Coreys’ two other children played with plastic figurines, perhaps Tech Decks, in the dry, dusty dirt near the trunk of a small cedar. I only knew the name of the things because my ex-wife’s nephews loved them.

  Ken had filled me in that Jeremy was the oldest, and that the middle brother, Garret, was nine. The youngest child, seven-year-old Cassie, kneeled next to him, tracing lines in the dirt with her fingers. Ken had said they had two tents, and I saw them now: a bright blue three-man for the parents and Cassie, and another gray and yellow-trimmed two-man set up for Jeremy and Garret.

  We sat at the wooden picnic table at their campsite. Normally you’d be able to catch a glimpse of Lake McDonald and its clear blue water through the trees surrounding us, but the darkening sky and the air quality, only just beginning to clear as the wind pushed the smoke east, clouded the view. Cedar trees dangled above us. Their normally lush plumes were now dry and trimmed a yellowish brown, as if they’d been dipped in mustard.