The Weight of Night

by Christine Carbo

  By noon, a man and a woman in blue FBI garb arrived. Joe showed them the incident room and had me get them up to speed. I’d met both of them before, when a militiaman involved in a plot to blow up the local county building was on the run, suspected of hanging out up at the North Fork drainage on the northern border of Glacier, near Canada.

  The woman, Ali Paige, looked like she had some Italian in her, with raven hair and olive skin. I recalled that she was from somewhere in New Jersey and her accent confirmed it. Her partner, Herman Marcus, was black, a big guy who wore hip burgundy-rimmed glasses, which made me wonder whether it was time to upgrade my boring wire-rimmed ones. He was from Reno, Nevada. Both looked to be in their midthirties. It was hard not to wonder if Herman ever received threats as an FBI agent in a white-bread state like Montana.

  I told them everything we knew about the family and what we’d done once we figured out the case could be bigger than a lost boy in the woods. I showed them my paperwork, then took them to the Coreys’ campsite to have a look around.

  Gretchen and Ray were still working it. When we walked up to them, Gretchen glanced over and came to greet us. I introduced her to them and she said she’d found nothing so far, other than some possible small patches of tire treads from the side of the road where Roger had taken us.

  “Okay,” Ali said. “Take us to the motel where the Coreys are, then.”

  • • •

  We had relocated the Coreys to the Lazy Fir, a humble place outside the town of Hungry Horse in the canyon that ran between Flathead Valley and Glacier Park. It was the only spot with a vacancy this time of year.

  At the motel, Ron tried to keep his composure and remain the voice of reason for Linda, but I could see the anxiety straining his jaw, the fear like a large wave building higher and higher before the inevitable crash. For now, though, he was holding it together. In both of their desperate, nervous eyes, however, I could see that leaving the campsite and staying at the motel felt like an act of surrender. I assured them again that it wasn’t, that we would do—were doing—everything in our power to find Jeremy and return him safely to them.

  But it was a hellish situation, just entering their bleak, cheap little pine-paneled room and seeing them pop up from those budget bedspreads patterned with pinecones and needles, their shell-shocked faces lighting up with hope when we came in, then sinking back into unfathomable despair. It ripped me into a hundred pieces. I felt like I was entering someone else’s grotesque fever dream, only I could exit—even if I felt sick inside—and they couldn’t.

  The little girl, Cassie, was cranky and crying, her nose slick with snot as she threw her pink plastic Barbie convertible car at the wall and asked for Jeremy. Linda didn’t even try to calm her. And Garret, the nine-year-old, just sat frozen and scared before the Nickelodeon channel, his eyes large.

  “How long do we have to stay here?” Linda asked.

  “For a while longer.” I couldn’t be any vaguer, but I didn’t have an answer for them. Now that the campsite was being handled as a crime scene, whether it actually was a crime or not, it was unlikely they would be allowed back to it for some time.

  I introduced them to the agents, and Linda drew in a sharp breath at the idea of needing FBI agents in general. “I know you’ve been through this so many times already,” I offered in the calmest authoritative voice I could muster, “but Agents Marcus and Paige are going to ask you a few questions. The FBI has extensive resources, and we collaborate closely with them.” I could have rattled off some of the acronyms for some of the FBI’s programs or other resources—ECAP for Endangered Child Alert Program, or the one I’d already mentioned to Gretchen, NCMEC—but decided it might scare them rather than offer them solace.

  Ron reached out to touch Linda’s arm but stopped shy, as if he thought she might slap it away. His hand stayed in limbo, divided by the shards of sunlight filtering around the window frame, not pulling back, but not touching her. The sun caught one long fingernail on his index finger, grown out longer than the others, I presumed, for the purpose of guitar picking. I thought that if we did not find Jeremy, the rest of their lives might be suspended in midair like that. Deferred. Unable to fully commit to anything again because such loss made people numb, incapable of enthusiastic love, and confined them to a purgatory of uncertainty and unanswered questions.

  Agent Herman Marcus took charge first, asking Linda Corey to come with us for yet one more interview with the FBI agents to an office behind the reception area that the motel owners had agreed to let us use. Even though Ken and I had already separated them earlier, it was still standard procedure for Ali and Herman to separate the couple again. Linda followed us, her head down, holding her arms across her chest as if trying to shield her shredded heart. The attendant gawked at us as we crossed the lobby to a small rectangular office. Ali shut the door and motioned for Linda to sit.

  With the four of us crammed into the small room, I felt like we were crowding Linda, but the agents wanted me there to hear her answers, specifically to verify that they hadn’t changed since earlier interviews at the campsite. I leaned back against the wall as if I could fade into it and create more space. Linda immediately began to rock back and forth on the edge of her chair. Her hair was a mess, her face blotchier than the previous day, and her eyes red and swollen. Herman pulled out his notebook and took her through the facts again, nodding and encouraging her as she spoke.

  He had a no-nonsense way about him, but his soothing voice made him seem compassionate, as if he could have easily been a doctor or nurse instead of an FBI agent. Clearly, Ali knew he was a pro and automatically backed toward the wall as I had, to let him do his thing. I sensed she was relieved.

  Herman asked question after question. In reference to the gaming device, he asked: “Would he have taken it with him? How often did he play it? Did he prefer to play alone or with others? Please describe it again.” Linda snapped, jumping out of her seat and shoving her hands into her hair. She yanked on it as if she might actually pull clumps out. “How many times do we have to go over this? We’ve told you this so many times already. Find our son. Just find my son. Find that truck.”

  Herman sat stone still.

  Ali pursed her lips for a moment and took a big, impatient breath in through her nose. She pushed off from the wall and took a step toward Linda as if she felt she needed to get the show on the road. I couldn’t have agreed more, but Ali had a brusqueness about her that could set the family even more on edge than they already were. “That’s exactly what we’re aiming to do, Mrs. Corey. Now please, sit back down. Just a few more questions. Is there anyone in this area who knew you were here that your boy could have known?”

  “No, no. No one that Jeremy would know.” She slumped back into the chair, putting her face into her palms. Ali and Herman let her sit quietly. Then suddenly she peeked her eyes out from her hands and looked at them. “Unless, the only other thing I can think of,” she said in a confused voice, “is that I’ve got an estranged uncle that came out to Montana years ago. He’s kind of weird and he’s never met the kids.”

  My ears perked up. I was surprised she hadn’t mentioned him earlier.

  “Weird how?” Ali asked.

  “Like, wants to live off the grid. Hates the government, that kind of thing. Paranoid. In fact, I’ve only met him a handful of times. But, yeah, come to think of it, he did call a few weeks before we came out here. I guess he heard about Ron hitting it big with his single. Wanted to borrow some money, but I said no. We didn’t really get into an argument or anything, but it wasn’t exactly a pleasant conversation. I was shocked that he’d called out of the blue like that and was put off that he was asking for money, of all things. I got off the phone quickly, and I guess I was kind of short with him.”

  “Did you tell him you were coming out here?”

  “I . . . I don’t remember.” She scrubbed at her cheeks with her palms. “M
aybe, maybe at the beginning of the call, making polite conversation. Yeah, I do think I mentioned it, that we’d be out in his neck of the woods, visiting Glacier, but, but, I can’t see how . . .”

  “What is your uncle’s name?”

  “Minsky. Alfred Minsky. He moved out here years ago. Decades ago. My family barely mentions him. He’s an embarrassment. Was tied up with some strange groups for a while. Some group called the Identity Believers, racists. He’s come home back to Ohio maybe twice, but I always kept him away from the kids because, like I said, he’s pretty strange.”

  My ears perked up. The ATF had a list of people they paid attention to—mostly conspiracy extremists, guys interested in the disintegration of the social order and in stockpiling weapons for the purpose of fending off the ever-intrusive, poison-breathing feds. Since Glacier shared the Canadian border where many of them liked to hang out, we kept an eye on the list as well.

  “Alfred Minsky,” Ali said, writing the name down.

  “I think he lived in someplace called the Yap.”

  “The Yaak?” Ali asked.

  “I guess, yeah, Yaak, not Yap.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the officers”—she motioned with her pen to me—“that you have an uncle living in Montana?” She said it accusingly, and I noticed Herman cringe at Ali’s insensitive tone.

  “I didn’t think of it. He only asked about my mom and dad, my siblings . . . but why does it matter?”

  “It might not, but it’s interesting that he called you asking for money.”

  Linda snapped her head back like a turtle. “What are you saying? That my own uncle would steal my child?”

  “I’m not saying anything, but we certainly need to check out all possibilities. You said yourself that he’s not a typical uncle, that you’ve even kept him away from the kids.”

  “Yeah, because he’s a racist, not some, you know, pervert.” Linda shook her head back and forth in a daze. “I don’t understand this. It makes no sense. The Yaak? What is that?”

  “It’s an unincorporated community in Lincoln County, in the Kootenai National Forest. It’s in the far northwest corner of Montana, north of a town called Libby, near the Idaho and Canadian borders. It’s about an hour from here.”

  “What kind of people live there?”

  “All types. Just like here, but because it’s fairly remote and close to the border, it’s a draw for people that want to live off the grid or are antigovernment.”

  “And you think it’s possible that my uncle has Jeremy and that he might have taken him to this place?’

  “We don’t know that, but at this point, we’re investigating all possibilities, including your uncle.”

  After we finished with Linda, we escorted her back to the room with the kids, fetched Ron, and went through the same drill. Eventually, Herman brought up the uncle and asked him some questions. He knew of Minsky, but not about him calling. When we finished and took Ron back to join his family, Ron immediately turned to Linda and addressed her with a bite of irritation: “How come you didn’t tell me that your uncle called asking for money?”

  “Because it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to give it to him anyway.” She pushed her hair behind her ear and I could see her hand was shaking. “There was no reason for me to think anything could go wrong.” She paused, her brow crinkled. “I don’t get it . . . what would my estranged uncle want with Jeremy?”

  Everyone looked over at Ali. “We’re not sure,” she said. “We’re just speculating at this point, covering all bases. We’ll look into it and let you know what we find.”

  “But, but if he’s with him, that’s a good thing,” Linda said, hope flooding her eyes. “I mean, not great, but better than some. . . . Oh, God.” She put both hands over her face and started to sob. She seemed to be hanging on by a thread, upset that she’d forgotten to mention the uncle, but still confused as to why we were even discussing one of her family members as a possibility.

  Suddenly the little boy, Garret, pointed the TV remote straight at Ali, Herman, and me. “Go away,” he yelled at us, as if the gadget would make us dissolve, make the entire situation fade, return his family to happy normal. “Go away,” he said again, this time in a softer voice.

  I nodded. “We’ll do that, son. We’ll do that. Come on.” I motioned to the door, hinting to Ali and Herman that the Coreys needed some space.

  • • •

  We left the room and walked toward our vehicles, leaving the fractured family in the room looking like ghosts, their eyes glassy with shock, confusion, fear, and too many unknowns. While we were there, I could tell our presence didn’t really help, that they wanted us out searching, not interrogating them. But on another level, leaving them alone frightened them more. They appeared as if some alternate universe witnessed only by the severely wounded and the nearly dead might swallow them alive. I’d seen the look before in Nathan’s parents’ eyes when I was a teenager. It’s one you never forget.

  Ali and Herman slowed and started talking in hushed voices, motioning for me to continue on. It irritated me, but there was nothing I could do. A part of me was relieved to have their help and expertise, and another part of me felt like a useless appendage now, unable to do much to help Jeremy or his parents.

  But I also knew that the idea of the FBI coming in and usurping cases was a myth—maybe true in the fifties and sixties, but times had changed and the Bureau had worked hard to change that image. But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was an outsider on my own turf. When they finished talking, they came over to my car.

  “Thank you, Officer Harris. You’ve done a good job with the situation, with this family.” Herman motioned to the room we’d just left.

  Then Ali piped up. “Agent Marcus and I are going to track down this Alfred Minsky up in the Yaak, run a check on him, see if he has a record. We’d like you to stay here with the family.”

  I nodded. Of course, babysitting duty. I didn’t mind entirely. It was obvious they were hurting and someone needed to be with them, but it seemed like a job for a victim’s specialist and not the lead investigative officer of Park Police. If the feds were sidelining me, I didn’t like it one bit. But for now I could deal with it, because I had other things to look into, like a pile of bones in a shallow grave near Essex. “Look,” I said, “if you don’t need me, that’s perfectly fine. But I’ve got another case to work. I can stay with them for a bit, but you’ll need to call in a chaplain or a victim’s specialist for this. I’ll give you an hour. I’ll get them started on making some flyers and posters to place around the valley.”

  “Good idea.” Agent Marcus smiled. “That will help them feel a tiny bit less helpless.”

  “But if you want to find Minsky,” I told them, “you’ll need a little help.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Last I heard, he wasn’t in the Yaak.”

  “You know him?”

  “I don’t know him, but I know where he’s been living. Or at least was living in June, but I’ve heard he’s still there.”

  “How do you know this?” Ali asked.

  “About two months ago, in early June, I’d been sent to the area to visit a guy who owns property up at the North Fork Road with access to the park. There had been some complaints that the man, a Mr. Chiles, had been riding an ATV on Glacier’s land.” Using ATVs and snowmobiles on any part of Glacier Park is strictly prohibited because they destroy vegetation, harass wildlife, cause erosion, and ruin the peaceful experience of the park for others. Landowners who share the park’s boundary hate these restrictions with a passion. “I’d been asked to go remind the guy of the rules,” I told them.

  “I bet that went over well,” Herman said.

  “Not as bad as you think. He kind of looked at me like I was only a harmless ranger, not Park Police, and he didn’t really seem to associate me with the feds, the
real right hand of the devil, even though we actually are,” I said. “Feds, I mean, not the devil. Treated me like an annoying fly buzzing by. Didn’t really care or listen to what I had to tell him.”

  “And?” Herman asked.

  “I had a look around while I waited for Chiles because he wasn’t there when I arrived. I wanted to see how much of his property bordered the park, so I hiked around a bit from the park side and noticed a yurt through my binoculars near the back end on Chiles’s land. You know what that is? It’s a Turkish or Icelandic tepeelike structure, only there’s no—”

  “Of course we know what a yurt is.” Ali cut me off and shook her head with annoyance.

  “Just asking.” I shrugged. “Not everyone does.” I remembered the tan octagonal structure with a collapsible frame set back in a grove of buckskin tamaracks. “One was set up on the border of his property. When Chiles finally returned, I mentioned it to him, and he waved a hand in the air and casually explained that he’d been letting some guy shack up on his lawn as a favor. When I asked for his name, he told me: Alfred Minsky. I got the feeling Chiles didn’t care for Minsky all that much and that’s why he gave up his identity so easily. I took note, and when I checked on the name back in the office, I saw that he’d been listed on the AFT watch list.”

  “You talk to Minsky?”

  “No, never saw him. Just Chiles. I warned him about the kind of fines he was looking at if they broke the rules on federal land and that he ought to keep an eye on his new guest.”