A Sharp Solitude_A Novel of Suspense

by Christine Carbo

  I also felt angry, even though I didn’t know what they were calling me in for. I assumed it was some bullshit with the county sheriff’s office that I was being dragged into for, like a poaching violation by my neighbor who likes to hunt elk. Now I wouldn’t be able to take McKay for his hike, and he’d be a nightmare by midday. At the same time, the whole thing felt somehow inevitable. When you’ve convinced yourself that everything will eventually go to shit, you’re almost eerily prepared when it does.

  But I deeply resented being told what I had to do with my day as if I didn’t have work to do. Because let’s get this straight. I’m no stranger to crime.

  The shooting incident set me off on a rocky path, and by tenth grade I had tried everything from pot to cocaine and LSD. In eleventh grade, I did two separate stints in the Leon Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Tallahassee for ten weeks for selling marijuana to other kids. When I got out, my mother hired a tutor to get me caught up, but I had to repeat my senior year. I finally got a high school diploma, then found more trouble by getting higher than a kite and shoplifting a six-pack at the local 7-Eleven. Through it all, I could never shake the feeling that if something bad happened to me, I deserved it. So when the cops asked me to come in, I didn’t act surprised, probably making them suspect me all the more. “This is simply an interview—a noncustodial interview,” they had rattled off, but they’re sending mixed messages. The door to the hallway is wide-open, so that I’m aware that I can walk out anytime, and that feels comforting. But I’m sitting in a bolted-down chair at a bolted-down table, basically designed so as not to let anyone get comfortable or use the furniture as weapons. Did that mean they didn’t have another room separate from the interrogation room to put me in? Or did that mean something else?

  Even though I’m jumpy as shit, I force myself to sit still, my feet planted wide before me, my hands resting in my lap. Every once in a while my leg begins to bounce rapidly and uncontrollably, but then I catch it and tell myself to stop.

  Finally, when the door bangs open, two detectives come in, one with a smile, one mirroring my stoniness. “How are you?” the smiling detective says.

  I shrug. I want to say, I would be better if you’d let me take care of my dog first.

  “Thanks for coming in,” he says, as if I have a choice in the matter, and I know they’ve told me I do, but it doesn’t feel that way.

  “Yeah, sure.” I know better than to be belligerent, but I have to suppress it. My counselor told me repeatedly that I don’t do too well with authority figures—something to do with anger at my father, which by the way was understandably mutual—and I can feel my annoyance simmering, almost boiling, and I want to tell them both to fuck off.

  “Aren’t you wondering what this is about?” the pleasant-faced detective says while the other, more serious one with graying hair heads over to the video recorder in the corner of the room and fiddles with the buttons.

  “Yes, I am. I’m hoping you’ll tell me soon. I’ve got a dog at home that needs to be let out.”

  The pleasant one winces as if he feels my dog’s pain, but he shrugs as if he doesn’t have a lot of faith that whatever this is will go quickly. He observes my gaze with a smile as I watch the other detective press buttons. In my mind, I’m already labeling him Mr. Pleasant, and I have a flash of recognition that this is Ali’s thing—to nickname everyone. I briefly consider if that’s the secret to getting by in the world of law enforcement: to tag each uniform you meet as if they’re simply separate pieces of luggage—one hard one, one shiny gray one, one soft-covered pink one, one paisley one—so you don’t take anyone or anything too seriously. The pleasant one would be a shiny black streamlined case because he looks well put together, his hair slicked back and his uniform unwrinkled.

  “You don’t mind if we record this, right?” the other detective asks.

  I shrug. “I’m not sure why I’m even here, but you can record if you’d like.” I’m wondering if I need an attorney, but I’m not going to ask for one anyway. I know asking for one right off the bat just makes me look guilty. Also, paying for an attorney to tell me not to answer certain questions doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. Working in a canine research program for a Montana university doesn’t involve buckets of pay.

  Once I understand why I’m here, I can decide whether to answer the questions or not. Staying silent is a difficult thing for most people. For me, it’s not really that hard. I spend entire days and nights without speaking a word except to McKay. Silence has become a way of life for me; it’s the talking that’s sometimes hard.

  “Good. It’s pretty much standard procedure at this point.” When the serious-looking guy comes over and sits down too, Mr. Pleasant introduces them: “I’m Detective Brander and this is Detective Reynolds.”

  I give them a curt nod and wait for them to say more as they get comfortable in their chairs. Pleasant—Brander—opens a notebook and pulls out a pen. Reynolds just rests an elbow on the table and waits for Brander to get set. I notice that Reynolds’s nose looks crooked, like it was once broken, and he has pockmarks on his cheeks. He’d have a broken zipper and frayed, worn corners.

  Brander says the date, the time, and my name for the recorder. “I get that right? Reeve Landon? R-E-E-V-E?”

  “Correct,” I say.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  I shake my head.

  “For the recorder, please,” Detective Reynolds says, pointing to the steady red light on the machine in the corner.

  I clear my throat, fold my arms over my chest, and say, “No, I have no clue.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Has something happened?” I ask.

  Both detectives stare at me for a moment, then give each other a glance. I don’t move a muscle, but it’s getting more difficult as my anger rises. I can feel a twitch start in one of my tense shoulders. I feel the same sensations I used to feel when my father used to yell at me, like I’m going numb and being erased by a giant pencil. I try to keep my knee from bouncing and my breathing steady while I wait for an answer.

  “Hang on.” Brander holds up a pen. “We should tell you that you are free to leave at any moment, and that you are not obligated to say anything unless you want to do so, but anything you do say can and will be given as evidence. Is that clear?”

  My stomach does a flip when I realize that along with the “you are free to leave” comment, I’ve just been cautioned, in spite of the fact that I’ve come of my own volition and they’ve told me this is only a voluntary interview. I bite my bottom lip hard. My mind begins to reel, and it’s the first time in a long time I’ve felt the need for a swig of something strong like whiskey or a long draw of weed. I’ve been clean for seven years now—haven’t touched a single drug since an entire year before I left Florida. I still allow myself a little alcohol—the occasional beer or a glass of wine—but rarely let it get out of hand, and can’t remember the last time I was all-out drunk.

  When I moved to Montana eight years ago, after many hours of therapy in Tallahassee, I left all my bad behavior behind. I was fortunate enough to have a smart counselor—a guy with a blond ponytail down to his ass who smelled like patchouli. He cared, though, and it made all the difference. I stopped the drugs, said good-bye to my mom and dad, who had divorced several years after the incident, and headed to Montana to begin a new life. I had been to Montana once before with my family as a seven-year-old to visit an uncle who lived in Kalispell and logged timber for a living. He took us to Flathead Lake and to Hungry Horse Reservoir to fish. We visited Glacier Park and the surrounding state parks. I was immediately enchanted by the mountains and knew I wanted to return.

  The first year I was in the Flathead Valley as an adult, I found a job at a local restaurant, made good tips, and enrolled in the community college. I took general electives, biology, and geology and found I enjoyed them, discovered I could actually get lost in my studies and forget about the life I had left behind. After I r
eceived my associate’s degree, my adviser at the college convinced me to continue on and enter the University of Montana’s environmental sciences program. I did, and that’s where I got involved in the dog-handling operation. “There are a thousand ways to ruin your life,” my counselor in Florida told me. “But there are also a thousand ways to make it good.” I figure I was lucky enough to stumble upon one of them.

  “That clear?” the detective asks again.

  “Yes, it is,” I say.

  “Let’s just start from the beginning, okay?”

  “Okay.” I try not to laugh because it sounds ridiculous to mention a beginning of something when I have no clue what that something even is. “The beginning of what?”

  “The beginning of your day yesterday.”

  Anne Marie. I have a flash of her heart-shaped face, her luminescent smile, of her biting her messy braid . . . I snap out of the memory quickly. “Yesterday?”

  “Yes. We understand you were interviewed by a journalist?”

  “Is she why I’m here?”

  “Please just answer the question,” Reynolds says.

  “Yes, she’s a journalist with the Sierra Club—from Missoula. She came along yesterday with me out into the field to observe what my dog and I do. What’s this about?”

  “Actually, please start from the very beginning,” he says without answering my question. “From when you first heard from her.”

  He’s trying to sound nice, but I don’t like his tone. “Right. Okay.” I tell them about what I do, about my boss’s calling to tell me that a journalist from Sierra magazine wants to learn about my work. “He pointed her in my direction first,” I say.

  “Why’s that?” Pleasant asks.

  “Why my direction in general? Or why me first?”

  “Both.”

  “Because there’s only two of us trained so far to do this in Montana and the other is a gal, Lydia Mack, who lives past Bozeman. She’s mostly collecting samples from bison around Yellowstone to study brucellosis and their stress levels, you know, since they’re always being hazed back into Yellowstone or sometimes shot if they stray too far out of the park.” I realize I’m probably giving more information than they want—talking more than I normally would—so I try to slow myself down and go back to the original question: Why my direction? “I’m not sure,” I say. “I suppose I’m farther away from Missoula than Lydia,” I offer. “About three and half hours. Maybe she wanted to take the longer trip first, or maybe she just wanted to head north first and then head south later. Anne Marie . . .” I clear my throat, a slight embarrassment washing over me that I’m on a first-name basis with her, as if they can detect what happened between us, and I can see it’s not lost on them, since Pleasant sneaks a quick glance at Serious. “I mean, Ms. Johnson”—I correct myself—“intends to visit Lydia next week, as far as I know.”

  “And so Ms. Johnson”—Reynolds says it mockingly, as if to let me know he’s caught the fact that I’ve just corrected myself—“contacted you?”

  I’m beginning to wonder if I should answer any of their questions at all, but I do. “Yes, about three days after I heard from Jeff. She asked if she could come along. I told her I wasn’t sure if I could have someone with me all day because I go for fairly long treks—anywhere from ten to fifteen miles a day. I told her we could meet for coffee. I thought I could meet her and answer her questions and that would be enough without her coming along. Maybe take my dog out of his kennel and let her see him by the Merc without going out into the field.”

  “And is that what happened?”

  “No, she was adamant about coming along. About shadowing me and actually seeing how my dog works out in the woods. I don’t mean to sound rude, but if she was out of shape, you know, or unprepared, there was no way I was going to let her come along. But she came properly dressed and everything, so I agreed.”

  “So you deemed her fit enough?” Reynolds asks, a look in his eyes that borders on sarcastic, but I can’t tell for sure. I realize they might be thinking that I’ve considered Anne Marie some object to be measured. I can’t tell if these cops aren’t very bright and are pissing me off inadvertently or if they’re pouring on the attitude for a reason, trying to make me nervous. Either way, it’s making me not want to cooperate.

  “I only mean,” I say, in an attempt to clarify, “it would have been unfair and unprofessional on my part to take someone incapable of handling the terrain along. So, yes, if you know her, she’s athletic.” I search their faces to see if they seem like they know her, but their expressions show nothing.

  “Okay, so she looked like she could handle it. What then?” Pleasant sits back and rests his notebook in his lap.

  “We got coffee. She asked me questions about the job and the program. Then she got her backpack out of her car—like I said, she came prepared. She came with me.”

  “And where was that?”

  “Up the North Fork, the area near the Wedge and Hornet mountains. That was where I intended to collect my samples.”

  “What is the make and model of your truck?”

  Dread darts through me again. On top of the earlier cautioning, it seems grim if they also want the make and model of my truck, but then again, I tell myself they could just be ruling me out or trying to scare me. I can’t tell if I’m being paranoid or not, but the sense that I should keep my cards to myself grows stronger. My leg begins to bounce maniacally again. I feel like a caged cat with someone jabbing a sharp stick through the links at me. I’m tempted to resort to “No comment” from here on out, but I don’t. “A Toyota Tundra, 2007.”

  “And how long were you out hiking?”

  “All day. We covered a lot of territory.”

  “And then?”

  “I took her back to her car at the Merc. Dropped her off around five thirty. It was getting dark already. I hate the time switch—losing that extra hour of light at the end of the day like that.”

  Brander writes a few more notes, then looks up at me and assesses me.

  I sit frozen, still peeved about the way they’re treating me. Stupidly and for no thought-out reason other than I do not like their attitudes or the sensation of being that kid again, the one trembling under the accusing glare of my father, I don’t tell them about how we sat in my truck, reluctant to say good-bye. How she stared at me, her rosy cheeks freckled and her slender fingers—with natural, unpainted pale pink nails, the same ones that had dug into my flesh earlier—reaching for the door handle. How she didn’t open the door and instead giggled a bit, then said, “You have any beer or food at your house? I’m starved after a hike like that.”

  Ali

  * * *

  Present—Thursday

  AFTER I GET back to Kalispell, I go to the Flathead County sheriff’s office. The town is small enough—population about 30,000—that most of the officers and workers there either know me or recognize me. I walk up to Brenda, who is usually attending the desk behind the glass in the entryway. “Hey, Smiley,” I say to her. I call her that for obvious reasons, and she beams me a bright one when she greets me. My sister would tell me that I give people nicknames so I can keep them at arm’s length and stay detached. She might be right, but I find it makes a few people smile as long as I don’t cross any PC lines.

  “What can I help you with?” she asks.

  “Not much. Just checking in on that new murder case up by the park. They still have a guy in now for questioning?”

  “Yes, apparently someone who lives up that way.”

  She nods and rings the buzzer to let me enter the county building. I walk in and head straight for the observation room. In a small town like Kalispell where the county sheriff’s office, the local police department, and the FBI office are all within a mile of each other and frequently share the facility for interrogations and other resources, no one will bat an eye at me entering the observation room to check things out, especially with a homicide. I’ve got what I plan to say lined up anyway, though, jus
t in case anyone asks—that obviously since the crime took place very close to the park, near its border, it’s standard procedure for me to be checking into it.

  When I walk in, a deputy and the detective division commander are watching. Commander Vance, whom I also know from previous cases where we’ve utilized the county’s resources, must be observing Brander and Reynolds. She has dishwater-blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail and her hands in her pant pockets. She looks at me and says, “Hey, Agent Paige. You’ve got an interest in this one?”

  “Maybe.” I give her my line about the proximity to Glacier and the Canadian border. Herman has already informed me that it didn’t take place on federal land, but like I said, no one’s going to think anything of me hanging around unless one of them figures out my connection to the guy in the interrogation room. I look at Reeve through the glass. He’s sitting, feet planted apart, shoulders squared, and mouth set into a tough line. A rigidness freezes his face, telling me he’s good and angry. Only his arms folded defensively across his chest and the jiggling of his right leg tell me he might be anxious as well.

  Detective Reynolds leans forward, watching while Detective Brander asks Reeve a question. “Earlier,” he says, “you asked if she was okay. Why did you ask us that?”

  “Because you brought her up and I’m sitting in a police station, getting interviewed,” Reeve says. “So I figured it might be serious.”

  “It is serious, but it could be a number of serious things. It doesn’t necessarily have to involve her safety.”

  “True, but I don’t picture her being involved in anything criminal, so I just asked.” Reeve unfolds his arms and places both palms on the table. His knuckles are red, and I realize he’s been squeezing his arms tightly into his hands, which have been shoved into the grooved fabric of his corduroy shirt. “Glad she’s okay.”