The Weight of Night

by Christine Carbo

  He told me to stay home and get some rest, but I couldn’t sit still. After making myself something to eat and some tea, I paced. I felt like a nervous wreck. The department still had not found Jeremy and now my coworker and her family were somehow linked to the case. I went back to the office, figuring I could at least continue to look at the evidence we had collected from the truck at the Tuckmans’ farm. There was still some trace to analyze.

  At the office, I plowed through the paperwork piled on my desk, then went over to one of our microscopes to study the trace we’d picked up from the truck again, specifically from the driver’s side floor and the pedals. I slid the slides Ray had prepared using Permount and cover slips, seeing all the elements he’d said he’d found: cotton, pollen, dirt, manure, hay, gravel dust, broken glass, grass, a dead ant, other insect remains, cat hair, dog hair—all of them made sense for someone walking around a farm. Then I found the slides with the asbestos fibers and the aluminum—the trace that didn’t make as much sense—and studied them under the stereomicroscope, which allowed me to see the various colors and diameters of the objects.

  I sat back and pinched the bridge of my nose, wondering where to go with it. I thought of all the places that might contain asbestos: a shipping yard (clearly we didn’t have those in Montana), trucking facility, or perhaps a train depot where hazardous material was broken down and disposed of.

  I thought of the decal on the bumper of the truck. I had just read an article in the paper about how CFAC, the local aluminum plant that had been in operation since the 1950s, had been completely shut down for several years and had sat vacant for some time while politicians had recently begun to argue over whether to try to get it on the EPA’s Superfund site list. The owners, some company out of Europe, wanted to keep it off the list, along with some local politicians who felt the stigma associated with it becoming a designated federal cleanup site would hurt the already economically depressed town of Columbia Falls, assuming people would not want to buy homes in an area that is a national cleanup project. Other politicians wanted it properly cleaned, even if putting it on the Superfund site meant more red tape and it would take longer to get the job done.

  The article said that asbestos found in the plant was being moved out while they were still trying to decide what to do with the cyanide and other toxic chemicals used in the large barrel containers. Those same chemicals mentioned in the article were found on the tires of the truck.

  I googled the case, and an article came up on the site of the local paper. It mentioned a structure known as the Black Tower, the paste plant used for making briquettes out of coal tar, and another large building, the biggest in Montana—a 1.75-million-square-foot structure that spread across forty acres and held 451 aluminum reduction cells that weighed sixty tons each and were filled with toxic chemicals. I wondered if it was worth a visit to the Planning and Zoning Board to see a list of all the buildings with licenses or permits to house asbestos in the area, but it was Saturday and they were closed.

  I called Monty to fill him in, but he wasn’t answering, so I hung up. I could have left a message, but there was no point. I still felt irrationally angry at him for reasons I knew had to do with being exposed. I knew what my psychiatrist in Norway would say, and it would probably be true: that I was simply afraid of being discovered and my fear of that was manifesting as anger as a form of self-protection, and that one day I’d need to get over that fear if I ever wanted to experience real, trusting relationships. I wouldn’t be able to hide my real self—­Marerittjente—forever.

  Pictures of waking before a confused Monty in the river flashed in my mind like lightning and I wondered how much he suspected. I couldn’t imagine telling him about my past. It was too difficult to swallow that someone might understand what I’d done and still receive me without judgment, without recoiling. I recalled my mother’s disdainful look, the accusations in her eyes slicing me like daggers.

  In spite of all that, I knew Monty was busy at the church, and I certainly had nothing substantial to report, just more hunches. It was sheer dumb luck and coincidence that my intuition about the Nintendo 3DS actually panned out. I considered that the chances of my hunch being spot-on a second time were slim.

  I called Ray instead. He wasn’t picking up either, and I was certain he was elbow deep in evidence while he processed the church site. It bugged the hell out of me that I wasn’t there working. Part of me wanted to head to Hungry Horse and join in regardless of what my boss had ordered, but I knew I didn’t need to; Ray and Paxton were more than capable of processing the site thoroughly.

  The more I considered it though, the angrier I became. Damn it, I was the lead and Ray had worked just as many hours in a row as I had. Why did the higher-ups always assume it was the woman who couldn’t cut it, couldn’t keep up under the pressure? On the one hand, I knew there was actually some truth to it—that I shouldn’t get overtired, that I needed to take care of myself to not exacerbate my condition. On the other hand, my job was my sanity, and I felt I was as competent as Ray, regardless of the fact that I was friends with Wendy. Ray was friends with her too. How could he not be? We’d all worked together for a number of years.

  I felt adrenaline surge through me. I was competitive by nature. It ran in my family. My father relished a challenge and rubbed it in when Per or I lost a game of cards, checkers, or chess. And everything was always a race with Per. When he’d have friends over, he’d always propose a contest: Who could run to the flagpole the fastest? Who could jump the highest? Who could ski across the field quickest? Who could score the most goals? Who could be the first to see where the ice ended in our bay?

  Because he always beat me, I didn’t think I was that way myself until I got into college and realized that I was driven to get the highest grade in the class, to lift more weights, or to jog farther than any of my friends, to be the first in the class to get an internship with the Seattle Police Department. When Jim taught me to play golf, I spent hours at the driving range, determined not to let the little white ball get the best of me. It’s as if the need to compete lay dormant in me until I got older and was out on my own, with Per no longer around to do the winning. And sometimes I couldn’t help but consider the notion that my competitive nature had somehow subconsciously erupted in the night, making sure that Per would never beat me at anything ever again. But I knew that thinking would get me nowhere, and I needed to stop it. I could still hear my therapist’s voice from all those years ago: Don’t you beat yourself up enough, Gretchen?

  I thought about Jeremy, about the picture I’d seen of him on the news. It seemed that in every young boy I’d come across lately, I was seeing pieces of Per, fitting him together like some collage made out of other boys’ parts: Kyle’s glacial blue-green eyes, the golden hair of the boy in the abandoned-hotel drug den, and now Jeremy. It was his smile, the way his mouth stayed straight until it curved up on each end like brackets instead of the parentheses that most people’s smiles evoked. All these boys needed help, and the one who needed it the most—Jeremy—we couldn’t get to. Kyle and the stranger in the hotel were choosing their fates; Jeremy hadn’t chosen his any more than Per had. Jeremy had been hunted, had been taken, and God only knew what had been done to him.

  I couldn’t think about it anymore. If I was right about Jeremy’s abduction being linked to the other boys—specifically, to the boy whose body was found by the hunting dogs in the rain and whose time of death had been determined—then Jeremy had only five days to live. And if that was the case, this was the fifth, and it was well under way. Daylight had arrived hours ago. Monty said I shouldn’t mention it; that it was circumstantial and simply a theory. I knew what he was getting at. You don’t need to tell a pilot to fly safely because he’s got your child’s life in his or her hands. In reality, he or she is going to fly safely no matter what—for his or her own life, for every life on the plane. Monty, Ali, Herman, Ken, and every other police officer
were working their tails off because they intended to find Jeremy as fast as they could, regardless of how many days anyone predicted we had. If they couldn’t find him, it would haunt them for the rest of their lives, just as it did Detective Belson.

  I knew Monty had a point, but again my anger raced inside me like the flames licking at the forest trees. “To hell with this,” I said out loud and stood up, thinking today could be the last day of Jeremy’s life. I’d be damned if I was going to sit around my office all day. I was on the forensics team and that meant something—it meant there was always some evidence to collect. I left Ray a message, reminding him to make sure to look for trace of asbestos or aluminum fibers in the church and that I planned to swing by the county dump to ask some questions. Then at the last minute, I couldn’t help myself—I told him I’d swing by the church a little later to check that everything was going smoothly.

  22

  * * *

  Monty

  AFTER AN HOUR, Ali and I reconvened with Ken and Herman by our cars in the church drive to formulate a plan. The county had brought scent dogs to search the property and the surrounding forest for signs of Jeremy while Ray and another CSI dusted for prints on the glossy wooden pews and looked for trace.

  Ali had told Ken to call the Great Falls hotel Mr. Combs had stayed in, as well as the RMA, and she also asked me to look into Reily ­Terrance.

  “Conference and hotel checks out,” Ken said. “Hampton Inn says he checked in on Monday and stayed until Wednesday. Lady from the RMA said he registered on Monday afternoon, even gave a talk that evening.”

  “So he’s clear. Good thing for Mr. Teen Angst and his mother. What about the helper from down the road—Reily Terrance?” She turned to me.

  “Mr. Terrance came by and opened the church on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings. Went to work after he opened it up. Swung by and locked it up each of those nights around eight p.m.”

  “So, basically, the damn thing just stays empty and open all day long?” she asked. “Anyone and their dog could enter.”

  “That seems to be the case,” I said. “Neighbor says she didn’t see anyone coming or going, but she didn’t pay close attention. Was inside for most of the day because of the smoke.”

  Ali kicked the tire of my SUV, growling. “Why can’t this thing get any easier?”

  “You check Terrance’s alibi?” Herman asked.

  “Yes, he works at a property management place in town. His secretary says he was there as usual and worked through lunch.”

  Herman asked, “And the neighbor?”

  “Working on it. The missus says he was with her inside all day, but you never know with spouses.”

  With the break of day, an eerie orange glow began to paint the sky over the mountains. The fires were still not under control and the smoke had pushed back into the canyon, veiling the rising sun and once again offering an omen of something painful. “There has to be a connection between this place and the Tuckmans,” I said as I watched a deputy load one of the police dogs back into the van. So far, the dogs had found no scent of the boy in the surrounding areas—just in the drive, into the church, and around the pews, which is how we knew which pew Kyle found the device in.

  “So what might that be?” Herman asked. He leaned against their black SUV and had his legs casually crossed in front of him, his large coffee-colored eyes calm and unwavering behind his glasses. I wondered how he could seem so cool while his partner always remained coiled like a spring, ready to launch. “Anyone have any ideas?”

  “No,” I said, pushing up my own glasses. “But we’ve got the county on it. Pavement makes it hard to get tread marks, but hopefully there’s something here that links the truck and this place, some fingerprints that can be lifted from the pew the dog led us to. How far back did you go when you looked into the owners of the truck?”

  “All the way. We’ve told you,” Ali said. “Only one previous owner before the Tuckmans. A Mr. David Selkirk.”

  “Did he work at CFAC?”

  “Ken looked, but didn’t see his name. We asked Tuckman about the sticker, but he said he didn’t know where it came from. Said it’s always been on there. Is there a Combs or a Terrance on the CFAC list of past employees?”

  “I’ll check,” Ken offered.

  “Yes, do that,” Ali said. “So if the first owner didn’t put it on there, someone working at the farm might have. How far back did you go with the farmhands?”

  “As far back as Tuckman remembers, but he doesn’t recall that many. Only three guys before the current ones, and they’ve all checked out. He doesn’t know who put the sticker on it. Walt’s only been running the farm for the past ten years now. Before the farm, he lived in Spokane, where he went to college and met his wife. They came back here when his father had his first stroke.”

  “So someone needs to talk to Mr. Tuckman Senior again. There must have been more farmhands over the years—maybe someone who borrowed the truck to go to work at the plant?” Ali asked.

  “We tried,” I said. “Can’t speak. Nurse says he just stares into space, and that’s exactly what he did when we visited him. And Anna, Walt’s wife, tossed out all of his old files when she remodeled the house the first time around.”

  “What about the list of church attendees?” she asked.

  I deferred to Herman, knowing he’d just begun to go over the list Combs had recently supplied from his member mailing list. Herman planned to run checks on everyone on it, looking for any name that might seem suspicious. It was a tedious task, and each person—over a hundred people—needed to be run through our databases for priors, but even that took us only so far. The ones without prior offenses would also need to be located and tracked down for questioning by all the floaters we could manage to bring onto the job.

  “What about the community feeds?” I asked.

  “On that as well,” Herman said. “But that’s an entire logbook of names, and I’m guessing half the people are homeless and im­possible to track down. Many of them only sign with a first name or a nickname.”

  Herman turned to watch a burgundy sedan drive up a little too fast and come to an abrupt halt behind some of the police units. Wendy threw open the door and strode toward us. “What the hell are you doing here? Tearing my father’s place apart?”

  “Ms. Combs,” Ali said. “We need to—”

  “He’s been out of town. He wasn’t even here when that boy went missing.”

  Ali held up her hands to calm her. “We realize that, Ms. Combs. You can relax, but we still need to search the premises.”

  “My dad said you told him he needs to stay here.” Wendy’s face flushed with anger. “Why does he need to do that?”

  “We’re not holding him anywhere against his will. But the game was found on his premises, so we need his cooperation. We’ve asked him to make sure he’s available in case we need him.”

  Wendy calmed considerably, but still looked frayed and nervous after having her son missing for several days, watching him get pulled into the station, and now seeing the focus of the investigation shift to her father’s church. She ran her hands through her short hair and looked around, taking in the scene of cops swarming the property.

  “Where is my father now?” she asked.

  “He’s over there.” I pointed to one of the deputies. “He’s with Deputy Brander.”

  “Can I take him to get some something to eat at least?”

  “Yes,” Ali said, “but make sure he stays on his phone and doesn’t get out of range. Signal around here is spotty, and I don’t want to struggle to reach him if we have a question.”

  Wendy nodded and headed over to Deputy Brander. I turned to Ken and told him I would help him scour the lists.

  • • •

  Half an hour later, Ken and I sat in our office at Glacier headquarters going over the lists Herman gave
us to expedite matters. Ken had the list of attendees and I had the list of all the homeless or hungry who had stopped in for a Thursday evening meal and signed the rosters. The rosters were actually logbooks—about eight of them full of names. We were mainly cross-checking them with the names we have from our sex offender list and our lists of individuals involved in incidents related to missing children, attempted abductions, peeping, or flashing. We’d already scanned for the farmhand, Brady Lewis, to see if he’d ever come to the church, but we didn’t see his name, and when we’d asked Combs about him, he didn’t recognize him. We were also cross-checking names against people who had called the missing hotline number. Sometimes the abductor liked to call in, just to get closer to the investigation or to give a false lead. So far we’d received over a hundred and fifty calls.

  Ken and I barely said a word. Both of us worked feverishly, running down the names, taking notes on anyone who rang a bell. We’d come across two men that had priors, but our team had cleared them. It was a time-consuming process, and already, several hours had flown by.

  My thoughts blurred as my finger glided down the page. I thought of Gretchen. If she had really done what I’d read about in the articles, she might be much more troubled than I imagined. But how did she hide it so well? I forced myself back to the names, telling myself to slow down, not to rush. I’d gotten to the bottom of the page, Mina Lipfield, Marshal Nailer, Gunner, Frances Trippet . . . then turned the page before my mind caught up with what I’d just read. I flipped it back and read it again: Gunner. A nickname. I had heard it before, and it only took a few minutes to recall from where.

  “Ken,” I said. “I’ve got something.”

  “What?” Ken looked up eagerly.

  “Gunner. I’ve heard it before. I think it’s an alias for Linda’s uncle. When Ali and I visited Chiles, he called Alfred Minsky that—he called him Gunner.”