A Sharp Solitude_A Novel of Suspense

by Christine Carbo

  “Before you go,” Herman says, “you hear about that woman up the North Fork?”

  My ears perk up. “What woman?”

  “Possible homicide, from what I’m hearing on the police blotter.”

  Word of homicide spreads quickly to all factions of law enforcement in the area, and I’m surprised I haven’t heard anything until now, but I’ve had my head in a case involving an anti-government gun-smuggling anarchist who’s been attempting to organize a group to target law enforcement personnel. Herman and I have been making headway on the case, gathering data and transcripts from other agents around Montana and Idaho who have also been tracking the guy.

  “Homicide?”

  “Yeah, not far from Glacier.”

  “Our jurisdiction?” I ask. Glacier Park is federal land, and it’s always a bit tricky when there is a crime on its property how we manage it and divvy up resources. Usually it becomes a collaboration between park law enforcement, the county sheriff’s office, and sometimes the Kalispell police department.

  “From what I’m hearing, no. Apparently, it happened at a cabin a few miles from the park’s border.”

  “Interesting,” I say. “Perhaps I should swing by the station and see if they need our help anyway?”

  “You could. Are you bored?” Herman sits back into his chair and slides his pen behind his ear. “They’ve already been on it all day. If they needed us, they would have already called.”

  “True,” I say, grabbing my bag. “But I’ve got errands to run anyway, so I’m out of here. Let me know if anything comes up on the Smith case.”

  I leave the office and head north toward Columbia Falls and up the Flathead River’s North Fork drainage toward the northwestern border of Glacier Park. Reeve lives near Polebridge, Montana—a place where the wildlife still greatly outnumber the people, which is part of the reason he and the rest of the full-time residents reside there—as far from crowds as they all can manage while still making a living.

  But living there is also conducive to his research. Much of the land he traipses through to grab his samples is right out his back door and traversed by faint game trails from all sorts of wildlife, mostly ungulates—deer, elk, and moose—but also bears, cougars, and other predators. When I met Reeve, he was working on finding bobcat scat. Romantic, I know, but you have to understand that it’s one of the things that drew me to him initially—not the scat part, but that he was a person with the slow-burn intensity of a man on a mission that very few people understand. He was concerned with nature’s details for the sake of preserving nature. He could have been flying over the North Pole to gather data on snowcap levels and I’d have felt the same way, because that kind of focus—that kind of quiet commitment—was the opposite of the chaotic life I came from.

  When I got to know him, I didn’t get that a person could seem at one with nature only because he wasn’t at one with himself. Then, of course, I’ve never been good at seeming “at one” with anything, either, so I figure I shouldn’t cast stones.

  I drive up a gravel road that runs beside the North Fork of the Flathead River, a rugged countryside of the Northern Rockies clogged with brush, deadfall, and skinny lodgepole pine trees, many of them distressed from pine bark beetle infestations. After about twenty miles of gravel road, I pull up to his cabin and am surprised to find a deputy from the county sheriff’s office in his car in the drive keeping an eye on the place. He steps out when he sees me and doesn’t let me pull all the way up, and I realize he wants to preserve the drive in case they need to lay plaster for tire prints. My worry over Reeve and what’s happened with the woman he and Herman have mentioned rises higher.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, you live here?” he says as I step out of my car.

  There are perks associated with being an FBI agent, and I pull out my badge. “Agent Paige,” I say. “I’m here to grab the dog.”

  The deputy’s not stupid, though, and he looks at me with a confused expression that says, What the hell does the FBI have to do with pets these days?

  I don’t offer anything more, just begin to head to the door.

  “Excuse me,” he says again. “This place is off-limits, at least for now. What’s this about a dog?”

  “There’s one in the house, and someone needs to get him out. It’s that simple.” I stop and turn back to him, tucking my unruly hair behind my ear. I’d like to ask him a few things, but I’m afraid if I talk to him and give him a chance to get less confused, he’ll be the one asking me questions instead.

  “But this place will potentially be searched soon. They’re going to get a warrant. I have orders to keep anyone who wants to enter out.”

  I realize that means they’re in the process of trying to gain probable cause to get the warrant in the first place. I think of Reeve’s being questioned for hours, as he said. I try to read the deputy’s badge, but I can’t see it from where I’m standing. “Deputy?”

  “Polly,” he says.

  “The dog needs to go the bathroom, Deputy Polly.” I say his name correctly, although words and phrases like polyester, Pollyanna, and Polly want a cracker have already popped into my head. “And I don’t think you’ll want to have to clean that up or explain to the CS techs why the dog peed on their evidence, will you.”

  “I haven’t heard any dog barking.”

  “Apparently he’s a good dog.” I turn and walk away, giving the drive and the entryway a wide birth so the deputy won’t say anything about my creating more unwanted prints. Polyester must not want to tangle with an FBI agent, because surprisingly he doesn’t follow me and stays by his car while I go find the key around back and let myself into the kitchen.

  When I enter, I think McKay might bark, growl, or charge me to protect the place, but I’m wrong. He sits rigidly right inside the door before the refrigerator, staring up at the top, where a red ball perches near the back. He can’t see it from where he’s sitting, but he must know it’s there. I shake my head in disbelief. “Okay, buddy.” I kneel beside him. “How long have you been here? Staring like this?”

  I pat his head, even though I remember Reeve telling me not to pat him on top of his head because it will make him lose confidence, as if I’m forcing his head toward the ground, pounding it out of him. Pet his chest and stroke upward like this, saying, “Good boy.” That instills self-assurance.

  “Hours?” I ask him, still patting his head in spite of Reeve’s advice. Finally he breaks out of his trance, stands, and begins wagging his tail and trying to lick my face. He remembers me, and I feel a pang from the image of the first time Reeve walked me from the restaurant we’d met at for dinner over to his truck to “introduce”—as he called it—me to him. We’d eaten at a nice place on Flathead Lake and the air had been warm, almost tropical. I still remember how the breeze lifted my curls and caressed my neck when Reeve kissed me for the first time. When we stopped, we laughed when we noticed McKay looking up at us intently, waiting for Reeve to tell him what to do.

  I look around the kitchen. It’s as I remember it: rustic, with old-style appliances, tattered green throw rugs covered with brown dog hair lying at the base of the fridge and oven, the small sink filled with a few dirty dishes, including two wineglasses. My heart warms to see familiar messy, colorful crayon drawings made by Emily on the fridge. I pull out a pair of plastic booties from my pocket and put them over my feet out of habit and consideration. I’m not worried about my trace—hair or other fibers from my clothes—being found in his place. After all, my daughter comes here regularly and transfers all sorts of fibers from my home to his, but I’m hoping whatever this is doesn’t get that far.

  I’ve done an especially stellar job of keeping my personal life separate from my professional life. The only ones outside my personal life who know I have a daughter or was ever involved with someone locally is Herman and an agent named Barney Willis, the other resident agent in the Kalispell office who was here before Herman when I went through my pregnancy and took maternity leave.
He transferred to the Salt Lake City office when Emily turned two.

  Herman knows Emily, but isn’t aware of all the details. The one time he asked about her father, I shut the conversation down quickly, and he took the hint. One of the perks of being in a remote resident office is that there aren’t lots of other agents around to pry into my business, and there’s no large squad of alpha males trying to shoulder me around or feeling threatened that I might get a promotion ahead of them. With Herman, there are no misogynistic jokes bubbling up behind my back like there were in Newark. Herman treats me like an equal, and mostly he respects my privacy. The other deputies and police officers in town who know me might gossip about me, about my gruffness, about my Jersey accent, but I suspect the rest of what’s said is just rumor.

  In the main room, I find everything the way I remember it—a statement of subdued ruggedness, of the independent loner Reeve has become or perhaps has always been. Muddy boots line up by the front-door entrance; Field & Stream and Outside magazines and some of Emily’s coloring papers lay strewn across the wooden coffee table before a worn dark leather couch. An easy chair sits in the corner with a deer-and-elk-patterned blanket carelessly draped over its back. I shake my head. Reeve is the ultimate guy’s guy, the irresistible hermetic male, seemingly hewn from a place like Montana—someplace vast and craggy with caves and spears—not from the narrow, soggy, crowded state of Florida. At least it seems that way on the outside.

  I go to the bedroom and stand beside the bed. Twisted covers drape at the foot of it, and I think the faint smell of sweat, or maybe sex, lingers in the small room, but then I wonder if I’m only imagining it. There’s something tiny and black between the pillows. I lean over and see it’s a hair tie, one of the soft cloth ones. I have no idea whose it is, but I have a sinking feeling in my gut that it belongs to the woman Reeve is being questioned about. It could belong to any woman, though. Reeve is tall and handsome, and since he rocks that quiet, unassuming look of the mysterious, irresistible mountain guy who can handle himself out in the wild woods, he has a certain appeal. He has thick dark hair and a defined brawny fitness that comes from being outdoors all the time.

  And he’s single. Some women—psychologically healthy women—probably know enough to stay away from him, but you’d be surprised how many smart women don’t trust their instincts when it comes to men who might be broken. These women believe they will be the ones to change them, make them see the light, and that in turn will restore some missing piece inside themselves. Obviously, I speak from experience. I look back at the hair tie. I know it’s not Emily’s. She doesn’t wear the cloth scrunchies. Hers are thin, bright bands—the colors of the rainbow.

  It’s been over five years since I’ve been in Reeve’s bedroom, and the memories accost me. Images of Reeve’s caressing my shoulder, memories of our eating Häagen-Dazs in bed and chuckling over a silly story that I told him about getting drunk with my friends on the Jersey Shore and rearranging the letters of a business owner’s sign in the middle of the night.

  Then I think of Emily. My daughter, our daughter. Rage bellows up. I know better than to get so far ahead of myself, but I can’t help it. I picture him sitting behind bars in jail and having to take her to see him during visitation hours. I’ve always known of Reeve’s capacity for self-destruction, his history as a rebellious, reckless teenager. I don’t want to think it, but I can’t help let it slip through the cracks and leak into my mind: Could he have unconsciously found a way, short of suicide, to completely self-destruct?

  I know better than to pull on such dark threads, to think such ridiculous things. Reeve is not capable of taking someone’s life, I tell myself.

  I know I shouldn’t do it. If it belongs to the victim, I’m removing evidence, but I reach over anyway and grab it. I’m not sure why. If Reeve has killed a woman, then I don’t want to stand in the way of justice. If they had sex in this bed, they’ll most likely find plenty of evidence anyway. I just can’t wrap my head around it—the murder part. The room seems like it’s tilting. I feel like I’m floating in a dream world.

  At times when I contemplate Emily’s future and all the possible consequences from events gone right or wrong, I think my heart might rupture into a thousand pieces. I picture her earlier in the week as she dived through a blanket of gold maple leaves in our backyard, tossing them into the air and giggling as they fell onto her head and clung to her wild hair. Automatically and with years of practice long before my daughter came along, I switch my thoughts to the things I have control over, the tasks before me that need to be done. I slip the hair tie into my pocket and go back to the kitchen. Not capable of that. At least not on purpose—the persistent thought drips through my mind before I wipe it away. “Come on, McKay, let’s go outside. Time to potty.”

  • • •

  Now that I’ve given McKay some water and let him do his business on the side of the cabin, I usher him into my car, into the back, but he immediately moves to the passenger seat. “Well-trained, my ass,” I mumble to myself as I see his muddy prints all over the light-gray leather, then head over to the deputy.

  He’s sitting in his car, sipping coffee from a thermos. “Fine-looking hunting dog,” he offers, rolling down the window, spitting a squirt of tobacco out the corner of his mouth onto the ground.

  “That he is,” I say.

  “Where’re you taking him?”

  I don’t answer, just look around. “So what are you thinking happened here?”

  “Don’t know, but if anything is messed up in there”—he lifts his chin toward the cabin—“it’s on you, not me. I haven’t stepped foot in there.”

  “Definitely on me,” I say. “But all I did was find the bag of dog food and his leash, grab the mutt, and come out. I wore my booties.” I pull them out of my pocket to show him. “Doesn’t look like a crime scene to me, though.”

  “It’s not. The crime scene’s a few miles that way.” He points south. “Some cabin where the victim stayed at a friend’s.”

  “So what’s the interest in this place?”

  “Suspect,” he offers.

  “How so?”

  “Don’t know,” he says. “They didn’t fill me in. Obviously didn’t fill you in either.” He looks smug, as if he feels special that I don’t know much more than him even though I’m carrying an FBI badge.

  He’s not really asking me anything, but I answer anyway as if he has: “Only that I should grab the dog.” I continue to play the part.

  “Must have something on him, though, if they want me here looking after the place.”

  “Must have.” I smile and shrug, knowing that they’re probably in the process of getting a search going. “And the friend? She’s not a suspect?”

  “Not sure.” He shrugs.

  “I’m off with the dog, then.” I walk away from him and get in my car before I get the lovely chance to watch him spit again. McKay stands and bounces from seat to seat, wags his tail, and tries to lick my face some more. I tell him to settle down. He plops his butt down on the passenger seat and stares at me, panting either happily or nervously. I look at him and shake my head. So you’re still his salvation? The reason for Reeve’s stability? Statistics show that released prisoners who adopt pets have a low recidivism rate, and I can see how one can bask in the unconditional love of a pet like McKay.

  But then I think of Reeve sitting in an interrogation room, and I frown and once again force away the biting thoughts. I drive us straight back to the heart of the Flathead Valley to the county building before I realize I’ve forgotten the damn ball.

  Reeve

  * * *

  Present—Thursday

  I SIT IN THE interrogation room, antsy and nervous. The deputies approached me when I was picking up some coffee and a pastry and asked me if I wouldn’t mind following them straight to the station because they wanted to ask me some questions. I wasn’t sure if they had planned to talk to me beforehand or not, and if they had, how they knew to find me
at the Merc. I assumed that they’d probably stopped in to ask about me, and Fran, the owner, told them to stick around, that I routinely come in for my morning coffee anyway.

  When I asked what they wanted me to come in for, they didn’t tell me, just that there’d been some trouble and they needed to talk to me. When I said sure—because I wanted to be cooperative—but that I wanted to go let my dog out first, they said they’d prefer it if I could voluntarily come immediately to help them out. They stressed the word, saying it with a pause before and after, as if to make an unspoken point that the opposite was to be brought in by them if I didn’t obey. Being strong-armed into changing my plans for the day didn’t exactly please me.

  I drove straight there as they’d requested, fear rising inside me, replacing the irritation. Clouds had rolled in again in spite of the gorgeous weather Anne Marie and I had the day before. It had rained in the night and the cold air had a nasty hook to it—a rawness that snagged my bones. I could smell stagnant woodsmoke as I went to my truck. A misty fog draped over the mountains, dissolving most of them into nothingness, as if they simply hadn’t existed for billions of years.

  At first I thought it had something to do with Emily. But I figured I would have heard from Ali, and if anything had happened to Ali herself, I would have been approached differently, not asked or practically forced to come into the station for questioning.