The Weight of Night

by Christine Carbo

  “The one without the root has some gray on it, so either the person’s prematurely gray, or is at least middle-aged.”

  “Does the fisherman have gray hair?”

  “I haven’t seen him, but I’ll ask Ali and Herman. They’ll know.”

  “Anything from the floorboards or the carpeting?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes, but I don’t know if it’s significant or not, given that the truck was used for going to the dump and moving gravel and whatnot. There’s the usual stuff you’d expect would be transferred from a person’s work boots: cotton, pollen, dirt, horse manure, broken glass, hay, powdery residue from gravel, a dead ant, other insect remains, cat hair, dog hair.”

  “What kind of dog hair?”

  “Lab, like the ones at the Tuckmans.”

  I nodded.

  “What’s interesting, though, is that there were some asbestos fibers and some flakes that resemble a metal. Aluminum, I think. And the chemical analysis shows there’s some lead, some fluoride, and even some crystallized cyanide.”

  “Cyanide?” I said. “That’s weird. Is asbestos or cyanide normally found at a dump?”

  “Not usually,” Ray said. “You’d need a permit to remove asbestos from a building, and cyanide, well, you can’t just dump a toxic chemical like that at the dump, although people don’t follow the rules all the time.”

  “Hmm, well, given the CFAC sticker on the bumper, the aluminum might be significant.”

  “Might be.” Ray popped another chocolate in his mouth. “But I doubt it. That place has been closed for a while now. I’m going to prepare for more slides. I’ll have them on your desk as soon as I’m finished.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  An hour later, he called to me that he was leaving and yelled good-bye. I yelled back, shutting down my workstation, when I wondered about the Nintendo game again. I knew Wendy was up for the weekend shift, and I had planned to talk to her in the morning because it seemed wrong to snoop around her office. It was a long shot, but if it belonged to the boy, waiting until morning was a mistake. I walked to Wendy’s office and turned the knob to see if she’d locked it. Since the entire lab was under tight security, cleaners weren’t allowed in to vacuum or mop, which meant we rotated the cleaning shift among ourselves. Not exactly glamorous, and definitely not something you’d see on CSI. Since it was only us doing the cleaning, most of us left our office doors open for whosever turn it was to mop and vacuum the floors. Even if it was locked, as the team leader, I had a master key.

  But it was open. I stepped over to the desk with one of the print analysis computers on it and grabbed a glove—we kept boxes of ­nitriles around the lab like others kept boxes of tissues around their offices—and put it on, just to be on the safe side. I shook my head in disbelief at myself. The chances were so incredibly slim that this was Jeremy’s game. But if I didn’t check, it would eat away at me. I thought of what my mother would say—Det er noe som gnager på deg. Something gnaws at you. Monty was probably right: I’d sleep ­better if I checked.

  I slunk into her office, feeling awkward and guilty. I’d been in there without her around many times to clean or to grab files. None of us ever thought twice if we walked into one another’s offices. It was just my intention this time that was making me feel foolish and sneaky.

  Her desk was tidy and clean, all her files put away, except for an in-box with a stack of mail. A framed picture of Wendy and Kyle when he was a young boy—maybe four or five—near a merry-go-round in a park stood in the corner. Wendy, looking much younger, wore a huge smile and Kyle wore only a partial grin, as if he’d just been crying and she had cheered him up for the photo—as if even then something troubled him. Again, I felt bad for both of them, for whatever pain had continued to blossom between them over the years.

  I slowly slid open her top drawer. The shiny, scratched-up Nintendo was the first thing I saw. I grabbed it and turned it over. On the back, at the top, etched into the black coating in a chicken-scratch scrawl were three initials: JRC.

  For a moment, the room seemed to turn inside out, losing all of its air, as if an explosion had sucked it all out. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I’d been dropped through ice to that lower stratum I often dreamed about. My mind whirred. Was this really Jeremy’s game? Could it be? It didn’t make sense, but what were the chances of another game with the same three initials?

  I should have checked right when I returned from seeing Monty in the park, but I hadn’t really believed it could be the same one. The overhead light streaked the black reflective coating on the device with shiny bands and when I tilted it parallel to the ceiling, it reflected the oval light brightly, perfectly. Then I breathed in, slowly and carefully. I could feel the blood rushing through my body, could feel the pulse of it in my neck and in my temple. Unsure if my suddenly trembling legs would work, I walked back to my office to call Monty.

  18

  * * *

  Monty

  I KNEW WE WERE all haunted by things done to us and things we’d done to others throughout our lives. The incident with Nathan Faraway proved I was no exception. Now I sensed the same was true for Gretchen. I had no idea what was making her so skittish, but something about her episode in the river and the desperation in her haunted eyes clung to me, and I couldn’t figure out why or seem to let it go, even though I could tell that she wanted me to.

  I’ve always confessed to a sort of tunnel vision when it came to things that pique my interest, and at times it caused issues in my marriage—­how I could escape for hours into a task or investigation. It’s part of what made me a good officer, if not always a great husband. I didn’t really even have much time to focus on Gretchen earlier during the day because of the cases we were working on, but I couldn’t seem to shake her from my mind.

  I had called Ali and Herman to check in for the evening. They were making no leeway with the Tuckmans or with the farmhands even after the judge surprisingly did order a mandatory printing of Brady’s fingers and palms. I guess you can’t underestimate what people will do when a child’s life is at stake. So now they had his prints, but even with a match to the prints from the truck, it proved very little since he’s had legitimate access to it, so they’d had to let him go for the time being. We were still hoping Gretchen’s gang would make an identification to the unknown other set from the truck, but it wasn’t looking good. Without hard evidence, they had once again turned their focus to known sex offenders within a twenty-mile radius of the farm.

  While they worked on that relatively short list, I set my sights on two things: one, the files Gretchen had shown me about the pattern she thought she detected, and two, the mystery of Gretchen Larson. For the first, I called Detective Belson, and he confirmed everything Gretchen had said. I wrote all of it down and studied it. I reconsidered telling Ali and Herman about it, not because of the time frame Gretchen proposed, but because of the head injury on the left side of the skull, and her discovery that an axe or axelike instrument was probably used. I decided they should be aware of Gretchen’s theory in case they had come across any suspicious instruments at the Tuckmans—although on a farm there were a lot of instruments that might qualify. On the other hand, it really was a stretch and I did not want to piss off Ali Paige any more than I already had.

  So I turned to my other task—Gretchen. I had never considered it before, but I decided to do a search online. First I confirmed things I already knew, that she’d gone to the University of Washington and studied forensics. That she’d worked for the Seattle Police Department’s CSI Unit. That she’d taken a job with Flathead County in 2010. There were some images of her from a piece on the CSI team in the Flathead Valley a few years back.

  When I searched for her adding the term “Norway,” several entries came up. It seemed Gretchen Larson was a popular name among the Norwegians. I came across some Norwegian Gretchen Larsons on Faceb
ook, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. I saw directory listings for women in Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, and Kristiansand. I found a marketing analyst for a makeup company, a photographer who liked to capture images of the fjords in the northern tip of Norway, a ­Nordic ski racer who often came to America to compete, a speech audio­logist in Bergen. I clicked on their photos and none of them looked anything like Gretchen. I continued to surf, clicking on random mentions in selected biographical essays and other news articles, including one on Norwegian musicians and their interpretations. I had almost given up when I saw another article dated from 2001 that read, “Parasomnia, a category of sleep disorders that involves often unwanted abnormal behavior, movements, emotions, perceptions, and dreams that occur while falling asleep, sleeping, between sleep stages, or during arousal from sleep.” Buried behind several names and an ellipsis, it continued, “fifteen-year-old Gretchen Elin Larson from Sandefjord, Norway.” Then another ellipsis next to a doctor’s name, Finn Petterson.

  I did not know Gretchen’s middle name, but I vaguely recalled her saying that she came from a town named Sandefjord. I clicked on the link. An article from a news source called Dag og Tid popped up. The headline was in Norwegian: “Søvngjengeri Tenåring Dreper Sovende Bror.”

  I didn’t know what it meant. There was a photo of a young blond girl, her head turned away from the camera, being escorted into an official-looking building, and below the photo were some more Norwegian phrases with the name Gretchen Larson listed. I couldn’t be sure, but thought the girl in the photo could easily pass for a younger version of the Gretchen I knew. I pulled up Google Translate and typed in Søvngjengeri tenåring dreper sovende bror.

  My stomach took a nosedive when the translation instantly popped onto the screen: Sleepwalking teenager kills sleeping brother. I stared at the screen. All the evening sounds, the birdsongs and the chatty chipmunks outside my office, faded away, and I felt every muscle in my body freeze. I tried to make sense of the article, but couldn’t, so I googled Gretchen E. Larson and several medical journals on sleep disorders in English came up, articles about somnambulism, automatism, and pavor nocturnus. Several articles included names of individuals over the years who had committed crimes unwittingly while sleeping—a well-respected community man who’d even gotten into his vehicle and driven five miles to a different house while still asleep and killed his mother-in-law. A devoted husband who strangled his own wife because he thought she was a demon. Another husband who killed his wife and used automatism as his defense—saying that his mind was not in control of his body—was convicted anyway because the jury remained unconvinced that he did all that he did while he sleepwalked, including putting his wife’s bloody clothes in a plastic bag and hiding them in his garage. His doctors, however, still insist he was capable of doing that in a state of automatism.

  I pulled up another article in a different journal written in English about Gretchen and stared at it for a moment without reading. The headline read “Sleepwalking Violence: A Disorder, a Dilemma, and a Psychological Challenge in a Norwegian Town.” I was nervous about what more I’d find. I must have stopped breathing because my head felt light and my pulse raced. I went to the window and looked at the dry yellowing lawn. The headline of the Norwegian article itself pointed to something unimaginable, something very tragic, and I was nervous about reading this one. I was acutely aware that Gretchen wanted to keep her past in the past and left alone. By reading about her, I was an unwelcome witness to that history.

  But I needed to know the details. I needed to know more fully what kept her at a distance. I turned from the window, went back to my desk, and began to read.

  Of course, as an investigator, I had heard of cases like it before, but they were rare. As I read on, absorbed and deeply bothered, Gretchen’s behavior began to make perfect sense, but knowing that this was her life felt unbearable. I was placing the pieces of the puzzle into their correct positions, but the final picture was difficult to view.

  Apparently, under Norwegian penal code, acts committed while unconscious were generally not punishable. In Gretchen’s case, the issue was whether she had the ability to control her behavior, including taking early precautions to avoid loss of control. Since the rest of her sleepwalking habits were fairly innocuous, she was not held accountable. She was deemed a juvenile with a disorder and was sent for evaluation and treatment to a facility in Bergen.

  I sat back and rubbed my eyes, feeling overcome by sadness and compassion for her, finally understanding why she kept herself so guarded. I was still thinking about it when my cell phone rang. I found it on my desk and saw that it was her. I felt guilty, as if her radar had somehow registered what I was doing. I picked up the phone.

  “Monty,” she sounded breathless. “The 3DS. It’s got the same initials. On the backside.”

  “Whoa, whoa, what?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly, and shook my mind clear of all other thoughts.

  “The game. I finally checked it. I went into Wendy’s office and found it right where she’d left it. It’s got the initials JRC on it.”

  I sat up straight in my chair. “You’re certain?”

  “Yes, certain.”

  “Were they on the front or the back?”

  “The back,” she said.

  “That’s where his mom said they were—right on the top, in the center on the back side.”

  “That’s exactly where they are,” she said, her voice low and serious.

  I felt a jolt of excitement to have some kind of a break. I stood up, pacing back and forth in my small office. “Gretchen, this is significant.”

  “I know.”

  “Can you run prints?”

  “Monty, I obtained it illegally by opening her desk drawer without permission. Doesn’t that pose some kind of problem?”

  I considered it, drumming my fingers on the desk, then said, “If she took it from her son as you said, she doesn’t own the item. In fact, she suspected he didn’t own it either. Since she had no idea where it came from, the evidence will still likely be admissible. Now that we know it potentially belongs to the victim, the suspect cannot have an expectation of privacy in the office of the mother of the kid that took it, if that makes sense.”

  “I guess,” she said, but I could tell she was nervous.

  “But, shouldn’t I put it back? Call Wendy and explain that the boy had a 3DS and just ask for permission to go look at it in the first place? Would that be a better approach? I just didn’t do it that way from the start because I didn’t want to insult her, and I didn’t think it would end up being the device.”

  “I see what you’re saying and I know you don’t want anything to come back to bite us in court, but we’re talking about a child’s life here and we don’t have much time. I’m going to check with Ali and Herman, but I’m sure they’ll say the same thing—to photograph it for the parents to look at and to run the prints ASAP.”

  “Okay,” Gretchen said. “I’ll wait to hear from you, then.”

  “You’re aware that they’re going to need to pull Wendy’s son in for interrogation? Kyle, right?” I wrote it down in my notepad.

  “Yes, I’m aware. It’s Kyle Grove. Different last name from Wendy’s, which is Combs. Wendy and the father split when he was young.”

  I thanked her, then told her to be prepared for some visitors very soon. I was still so shaken from what I’d read before our phone call, but I tried to ignore it. It wasn’t pertinent to what we were discussing.

  “Monty,” she called out before we hung up.

  “Yes?”

  “Once they question Kyle, do you think they’ll give the press his name?”

  “I don’t think they will.”

  “He’s seventeen,” she said.

  “I know. You told me.”

  “It’s important for Wendy, for him, that this stays quiet.”

  “It
will,” I told her. “I’m sure it will.”

  • • •

  The Coreys continued to live their nightmare in the middle of paradise. The clear mountain air, pine trees, and grand peaks stretched in all directions toward the freedom of the mountains, yet they remained trapped. Those of us who lived in the area felt the ebb and flow of the wilderness and its seasons and knew it defined our way of life—knew that the wilderness always presented its challenges and demanded respect, much like those who lived by the ocean knew to respect its tides, storms, and other dangers lurking beneath the water’s surface. The ­Coreys weren’t from here, yet suddenly they’d become hostage to an unforgiving vastness they hadn’t had time to even fully appreciate. They existed in the small motel, knowing their child might be swallowed by the wilderness or worse, at the mercy of human evil.

  I had spoken to the chaplain before coming. From what I gathered, Linda had insisted on buying sandwiches for the volunteers and brought them a grocery bag of snacks during each day. She reprinted posters and made sure all the volunteers had those. Ron often met with Ali or Herman, and when the agents gave the go-ahead, he would be the one to speak to the reporters. Linda did a load of laundry for the family even though the chaplain volunteered to do it. She had a small breakdown over it when Ron had suggested she stay with the kids while he went and did it instead, crying and yelling that she would do it—that she would do her damn job for her other two kids and refused to be one of those moms who sunk into worthlessness for the remaining children once something awful befell one of the others. I was not looking forward to stopping in.

  Flowers and gifts left by well-wishing community members were spread before the door across the walkway under the motel patio lights. Two reporters were also still parked in the lot and the chaplain had informed me that they assaulted the Coreys every time one of them came out the motel door. I parked at the far end of the lot, fended them off, and walked up to the motel door—room 16.