A Sharp Solitude_A Novel of Suspense

by Christine Carbo

  I smile. My daughter already knows how to handle my bad attitude. “That sounds fun,” I say, and let her get back to explaining the rest of her day down to every single detail, which takes another ten minutes. She’s at the age where she’s found her voice, and she uses it. I remind myself to enjoy her motormouth phase now because there might come a time, as a teen, when she offers very little, if anything at all. When she comes to the end of cataloguing her day for me, she says, “Mommy?”

  I know that when she says “Mommy” in a questioning voice, she waits for a reply before she’ll continue, so I give it to her. “Yes?”

  “How come Daddy came by?”

  “To say hello to you and to get McKay.”

  “And how come you had McKay with you?”

  “Oh, I just did a favor for your daddy. He was tied up and McKay needed babysitting.”

  Emily thinks that’s funny, throws herself back on the beige carpeted floor, and says through giggles: “Babysitting? A dog?”

  “I guess you’re right, smarty-pants. I should say dogsitting.”

  Emily’s still laughing, and I’m tempted to tickle her, but I resist because it’s bedtime, and I don’t want her to get worked up when she needs to wind down. “Come on, pumpkin.” I stand and hold out my hand to her. She pauses like she’s thinking about something, and I brace for the question she asks at least a few times a week: But, Mommy, why can’t Daddy and McKay come live here with us?

  “Let’s go get your teeth brushed,” I say before it comes out, and by the time we reach the bathroom, she has let it go.

  When Emily is tucked away snugly in her bed, I go to my office and sit and stare at the wall for a moment. “Damn you, Reeve,” I whisper into the quiet room. I lean back and rub my face, trying to decide if I believe Reeve or not. The fact that he didn’t tell the detectives about her coming over continues to nag at me. In my heart, I don’t think he’s capable of hurting someone, but in my work, I’ve known far too many family members who have said the exact same thing about relatives who have killed someone. My experience begs me to be logical, but I think of kissing Emily good night, the small closed-lip smile on her lips as she snuggled into her pillows, and my heart tells me to follow my intuition: Reeve Landon would never intentionally hurt a living thing—unless, that is, that thing threatened to hurt someone he cared about.

  Reeve

  * * *

  Present—Thursday

  I DRIVE UP THE windy North Fork road to go home. It’s pitch black with no moonlight or starlight. A wet mist shines in my headlights and the paved part of the North Fork road reminds me of glazed donuts and feels like it’s purposely trying to make me lose control of my vehicle. My stomach grumbles because I haven’t eaten anything since morning and I just want to get home, eat, and light a fire, but I’m not sure what to expect. I’d been entertaining the notion that perhaps the chances of the county’s getting the appropriate people rounded up to drive all the way out in the evening seemed slim.

  When I’m within a half mile of my cabin, I can see across the meadows that the lights are on, and I try to recall if I left them that way, but I’m sure I didn’t. Ali must have left them on when she picked up McKay. But as I get closer, I see a large white van and a county sheriff vehicle parked out front. First I feel irritation at the invasion of my privacy, and then fear at what it could mean. I picture the two wineglasses I left unwashed on the counter, the plates and utensils from the lasagna left in the sink, and curse myself for being such a slob.

  When I pull up, Reynolds meets me at my truck. I get out and face him. I had entertained the notion that I was taller than he was, but I can see I’m wrong. He’s about the same height as me, and I stare directly into his face. Even in the dark shadows, with only the lights from the cabin and the forensic lamps lighting up the place, his face looks smug.

  “Mr. Landon,” he says, “nice to see you again. As you can probably tell, a search warrant has been issued on your place.” He passes me the document. I reach out and take it.

  At first I find it hard to focus. I feel like I’m spinning with anger, and my heart is pounding too fast. The globe light from my cabin isn’t reaching out far enough for me to be able to read, so I find the flashlight on my cell phone and turn it on and light up the official-looking document. I force myself to focus on the information. It lists the time frame during which the search needs to be completed—the next twenty-four hours—as well as the address, a description of my cabin, and the reason for the search: that the evidence of trace is expected to be found to provide proof that the victim was in the residence. A magistrate has signed it at the bottom and a seal of notarization is near the judge’s name. I hand it back.

  “You may stay on the premises,” Reynolds informs me, “but we’d appreciate it if you stayed outside and didn’t go in while our forensic specialists work. Besides, you won’t like the process one bit.”

  I’m pissed, and I can feel my entire head heat up from the anger, even out in the cold night. “I don’t plan to.” I hop back in my car, and McKay lets loose an edgy cry.

  “But again,” Reynolds says, “I wouldn’t go far.”

  I don’t answer. I throw my truck in reverse and back up, practically spraying gravel with my tires. I cringe at the thought of them in my place, invading my space. I’m not sure where to go since it’s late. When I pull out onto the road, I see my neighbor Ron Wallace’s driveway a little way down. I make a quick decision to go to his cabin, which is only a field away from mine.

  Wallace isn’t around full-time, but he’s been visiting for the past month for hunting season, looking for an elk to shoot. He packed up and left yesterday to go home to Oregon, empty-handed, which is unusual for him. Usually he leaves town with the meat from a six-point already hung, quartered, bagged, and on ice for a meat processor back home. He won’t mind if I go to his place and wait this one out.

  Alder branches brush and scratch the side of my truck as I drive up the narrow road. When I let McKay out, he runs happily around the cabin as if he’s going to find the old man. He sniffs some bushes by the side of its foundation and marks his territory by peeing on several of them. I find the spare key under a log in the wood stack. Ron had showed me where to find it one day when he asked if I’d check up on the cabin once a week, since several others had been broken into and robbed earlier in the spring. I do as he’s asked and regularly take a peek, make sure nothing’s broken and no pipes are leaking.

  Inside, a cold chill clings to the rooms. I find the thermostat and see that he’s turned it down to fifty degrees—warm enough for the pipes not to freeze, but low enough to keep from racking up an electric bill. I crank it to sixty-seven, then go into the kitchen and find a can of chili and a pot to heat it up in.

  While I wait for it to cook in the cold kitchen, I take a seat at the table and calm myself by petting McKay under his ears where the fur is silky. The old yellow wallpaper is peeling from the tops of the walls, almost creating a uniform roll around the top perimeter of the kitchen, and parts of it are streaked with water stains from leaks from heavy-snow years. I entertain the thought that I should help the old man take it down and replace it next time he comes. But then I think of Ali and how serious she looked—worried—and the idea suddenly seems trivial.

  I eat my chili in the cold silence. McKay settles down on the only mat on the linoleum floor, his head resting on his front paws, and stares at me with liquid-brown eyes. If I make any moves at all that appear as if I might get up, he instantly stands to attention, ready to play fetch, ready to do anything. He has not had enough exercise today, and he knows we’re not in the right place, so he’s more anxious than usual.

  I have found some crackers in the cabinet to have with my chili, and when I bite down on one, a sharp piece of it turns upright while I chew and stabs the roof of my mouth. “Ouch,” I say out loud, taken aback. McKay is immediately at my side, his tail wagging nervously. Feeling ridiculous that a shard of a cracker can cause such inte
nse pain, even if only for a few seconds, I say, “Who’d think a piece of cracker could feel like a goddamn ice pick?”

  He cocks his head, trying to make sense of my words.

  When I’m done, I put my coat on, hook McKay’s leash to his collar, and head out to the thick copse of trees separating our two properties. An inky darkness and the sweet smell of pine enfolds me when I enter. I don’t want to turn the light on my phone on, so I stumble through the woods, tripping a few times over the uneven ground. The cold against my face makes me alert, and in spite of feeling clumsy, I’m happy for the cover. The lumpy, grassy ground, in its early iterations of freezing and unfreezing, squashes in an oddly pleasant way under my soles.

  For a moment, before I get close to the meadow across from my cabin, I feel that the world is mine again, as if I’m privy to the special secret that evades so many people because they’ve unintentionally used concrete or a million other barriers to separate themselves from the truth: that the tall, slender trees beside me and the spongy soil beneath my boots are the lifeline to all that is real, all that sustains—all that matters.

  When I get closer, though, and stand behind a pine and peer across the meadow to my own cabin, that righteous feeling quickly dissolves. The lights shine bright yellow through the small windows and little parallelograms spill out to the narrow side lawn flecked with fallen aspen leaves. They’re still at it, and worry stabs me. Reynolds’s vehicle and the white van sit in the same place on the drive—a little way back—and I suspect they’ve studied the part-gravel, part-dirt drive to find evidence of Anne Marie’s tire treads. I wonder what they could still possibly be looking for besides the dishes. I wonder if they’re tearing things apart like I’ve seen in movies, or have heard Ali mention when she’s talked about messy searches that have left homes in shambles. I have to draw several deep breaths of the cool air to prevent me from marching right out of the trees and across the meadow to tell them that they need to get the hell out of my house, even though I know it would be a useless gesture.

  I think again of how I have no desire to get an attorney, as Ali suggested, so the next best way to no comment myself out of the situation is to remove myself completely from it. I haven’t been arrested, so there’s no reason I need to be around these people until it all passes. Leaning against the pine, I feel the weave of bark and the soft lichen clinging to it under my palms. Dead wet pine needles cling to the edges of my boots. I look up at the starless sky and can barely make out the tops of the trees. There’s no light pollution up the North Fork drainage, and it’s heavenly not to have it. But watching the intrusion into my cabin take place makes me no longer feel safe. The dark bellies of the clouds press down on me, pushing me into something small and insignificant, something expendable. When I look back over to my cabin, I see someone in a hazmat suit walk out to the van.

  The ghostly alien-looking suit takes me back. Holy shit, I say to myself: a fucking hazmat suit? I hadn’t expected that. For god’s sake, couldn’t they just go in with some gloves and grab the damn forks and wineglasses?

  I feel like I’m in a bad dream and need to wake up. McKay lets out another loud whine to protest our strange venture to a place so near our home but not all the way to it, and the sound of it pierces the still night. The CSI—a woman, judging by her size and shape—jerks her head in our direction. I shush him, yank once on his leash, and hold up my palm for him to sit.

  The woman continues to stare out toward us, her chin lifted, her ears probably peeled for the sound of a bear. When you hear something in the woods out in these parts, it’s not a human you think about: it’s a mountain lion, a bear, coyotes, wolves. After a moment, she turns to the van and opens the back door and throws in her bags, then heads back in, calling something I can’t make out to someone inside.

  Droplets begin to fall onto my head and my face, and I realize the heavy clouds have opened and begun to rain. I gently pull McKay toward me and quietly tell him to heel, making him hug close to my legs as we walk through the dense trees back to Ron’s cabin.

  • • •

  From Ron’s kitchen window, I watch across the field to see the lights of the van drive by on the North Fork road and disappear into the blackness to head back to the Flathead Valley. I turn the heat back to fifty, finish cleaning up the kitchen, and make a mental note to call Ron and let him know that I stopped in and checked on everything ahead of schedule.

  When McKay and I arrive back at our place, I go in cautiously, as if I’m being watched, even though I know they’ve left. When I enter my back door to the kitchen, I don’t see anything amiss. As I figured, the glasses are gone, and so are the forks we used. The plates are still waiting to be washed in the sink. I go into the main room, and not much there is different either. Fingerprinting dust is spread in various places: on the doorknobs, on the table, on the coffee table, on the faucet in the bathroom . . .

  When I go into my bedroom, I see the sheets have been taken from my bed. That pisses me off. Why the hell do they have to go and take my sheets? I’m no Suzy Homemaker; I have only one extra pair of bright-flower-patterned sheets around, and they’re for Emily when she comes over. She sleeps in my bed in a pair of polka-dotted flannel pajamas she keeps at my place in the third drawer from the top of my dresser. I sleep on the pullout couch. She usually wants me to sleep with her, but I’d prefer she didn’t get used to that routine, so I say no. When I talked to Ali about it, she agreed, and said she doesn’t let her sleep with her very much either, unless she has a nightmare, which Ali says she’s been having a lot more of lately.

  It’s getting late, and I’m too tired to try to clean the dust, so I get Emily’s set of sheets from the closet and lay them out on the bed and try to fall asleep. I’m aware that eventually Emily will need more space—her own room, her own dresser, her own bed—but that all seems very far away right now.

  McKay curls up in a ball on his dog bed near the base of my bed, and within minutes, I can hear him breathing more deeply, his feet scuffling in his sleep as if he’s chasing something in his dream—maybe a rabbit, a pheasant, or a turkey, but then I think that it’s most probably a red ball, and I hope he’s getting it each time and that the ball doesn’t elude him like so many things elude me.

  Ali

  * * *

  Present—Friday

  I GET EMILY READY for school. She goes to a local public elementary school and loves it, but this morning she’s cranky. She refuses to eat her oatmeal, as if she has subconsciously absorbed that something puzzling is going on with someone she cares about. She argues and whines about having to put on her clothes until I lose my patience and snap at her, sending her into a pout the whole way to school.

  When we arrive, I manage to get a hug and a kiss from her before she runs over to some other kids that she knows, smiling and giggling, her mood completely transformed within seconds of getting to her homeroom.

  I drive to the office with a pit in my stomach. I’ve tried to call Reeve twice, but he’s not answering, and I wonder if he’s been called back in for further questioning. The search at his place would be well under way by now, possibly even done last night if they could get anyone from the crime scene unit to process it so late. I consider that Reeve might be out at his cabin, too angry to answer his phone.

  When I arrive at my office, Herman is already there, busy working on the Smith case, and he lifts an eyebrow when I walk in. “Tough morning?” he asks.

  “Why?”

  “You’re late and you look a little frazzled.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “Good to see you too, Hollywood.”

  He winks at me. He knows he can say most things to me and get away with it even though I have a reputation for being somewhat difficult. When we worked a kidnapping case that took place on federal land in Glacier National Park, I took no punches from anyone and was considered a hard-ass, or in my case a bitch. I don’t really care about that, but Herman knows what I’m actually like, and he certainly doesn’t walk on
eggshells around me.

  “I’ve put a stack of files on the Smith case on your desk,” he says. “Stuff that came from the Bozeman office yesterday while you were out.”

  I nod my thanks to him.

  “So what were you doing? I heard you visited the county after all.”

  “Yeah, thought I’d swing by.”

  “How’s their case going?”

  I feel like I’ve been caught with my hand in the cookie jar and avoid his gaze. I pick up the files he’s put on my desk. “Okay,” I say. “They haven’t gotten anyone yet. Just one suspect, but the case is weak if you ask me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Woman was last seen with the guy, but there’s no motive.” The means is possibly there, given that Anne Marie’s cabin is about three miles from Reeve’s place. If he drove with her to her place, shot her, then walked home, which would be a skip in the park for him with the distances he’s used to covering, they could discount the fact that his truck had never been to the scene of the crime. As far as method, any person with a rifle could have killed Anne Marie.

  “Motive is always the hardest to figure,” Herman offers. He’s referring to the triad of motive, method, and means. To establish probable cause, most detectives know they need to have strong evidence in all three.

  I shrug, indicating that I don’t have a whole lot more to give him on the subject.

  Herman watches me for a second longer, studying me, and I look up at him, my brow raised in an obvious question.

  “Nothing,” he says back. “You stressed about something?”

  “No. Do I look stressed?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Gee, thanks. You’re really making me feel good today.”

  “Sorry, never mind. I just worry about you sometimes. That’s all.”

  “Oh my god, Herman. Please.” It’s true. Herman does have a nurturing side, and sometimes he pesters me about whether I’m eating right or getting enough sleep. Mainly he wants to make sure that I’m behaving, and that I’m not upsetting anyone higher up or calling attention to us. He knows I have a live wire in me always ready to cast about, and that sometimes I walk a fine line between productive and obnoxious. I blame it on my pushy Jersey side, and that line works on most people here, but I know it has a lot more to do with my childhood and the need to take control. “I’m good,” I say. “Get back to work.”