A Sharp Solitude_A Novel of Suspense

by Christine Carbo

  Gary forced me to try to put words to the feelings of guilt, to discuss the idea that even when you’ve done something horrible accidentally, people still look at you like there’s something inherently wrong with you—because you must be a sneaky child, because you must be a delinquent in some way if you were in your parents’ bedroom in the first place without permission . . . if you picked up something only an adult should pick up.

  A week after the incident, my aunt forced my mom and me to go out for ice cream, and we rode bikes to a local creamery. At nine years old, even heavy with grief, I could perk up a bit for ice cream, partly because I still did not fully comprehend the gravity of what I had done to Sam. While we were in line, my aunt noticed some friends of hers come in—two women, one with a brace around her knee. She told my aunt that she’d twisted it while playing tennis with her son, who, she said motioning to me, was about my age. When Aunt Diana introduced us only as her sister and nephew, they looked at me curiously, as if they were trying to place me.

  I felt exposed. Shy. My face flushed, and I looked down at the black-and-white-checked floor, hoping they wouldn’t recognize me from the papers. My aunt changed the subject in the uncomfortable silence, telling them to enjoy their ice cream, and we sat down. When they took a table across the room, the one with the metal brace, sitting close to the edge so she could stretch her leg out, began to whisper and glance over at me, prompting the other woman to look too.

  I was unable to eat my cherry-cheesecake-flavored ice cream in its sugar cone, felt it dripping down onto my hand until my aunt handed me a napkin. I’ll never forget the looks, the way they held accusations: Thank god that’s not my child.

  The apathy, though—it’s a weed I’d thought I’d rooted out long ago. But, sitting on the beveled platform of rock, I can’t bring myself to care which way this goes, and it scares me. It frightens me for Emily’s sake. She doesn’t need a father who doesn’t care, who gives up. But nipping at the heels of that always comes the darker thought: Emily might be better off without me.

  I brush the thought away. It’s a selfish one. I look out over the valleys below and the jutting mountains. The ridges to my left have bare rock walls that remind me of ramparts. The swaying trees and the shifting clouds above make the landscape seem to ripple and undulate, as if the mountains and valleys are breathing, conversing, and conspiring, but I know they’re just insolent stone. Still, danger seems to lurk in the bleak light. Down below, I spot a black object that appears to be moving, and I wonder if it’s a bear. I pull out my binoculars and look.

  I should know better. I’ve witnessed this phenomenon hundreds of times: a dark-colored rock appearing as if it’s moving when it’s only an optical illusion—a trick of the light or the weakness of the human eye. I scold myself for falling for it with all my experience in the backcountry. I am not one of those who think every rustle of the leaves is a bear and every snapped twig is Bigfoot watching me.

  I sit and draw the crisp air into my lungs. I can feel the timelessness out here, the sense of eternity mocking me, pointing out my futile efforts to move through it each day, all day, to gather DNA, to survive myself. It’s a terrible feeling, as if the massive, unforgiving wild is snickering at my uselessness. It dawns on me that in all the thousands of miles I’ve walked through these mountains, I’ve never felt this before. Mocked. Heavy black clouds roll in above and darken the trees lurking to my side. One thing I am certain of is how my staying out here will look to Ali and to the police. After a moment, I shove my trail mix back in my pack, stand, give McKay a whistle, and head back down the mountain.

  • • •

  When I emerge from the woods, it’s dark. I’ve had to hike the last thirty minutes with a flashlight, and even McKay wouldn’t leave my side. “You big baby,” I teased him as we went, but he continued to press his body against my legs as we walked, making me trip and lunge abruptly ahead to try to regain my footing several times. I’m happy to see the outline of the truck when we finally arrive at the entrance.

  I start the engine, turn the heater on, and head home, but when we get near my cabin, from across the meadow, I notice that the lights in Ron Wallace’s cabin are on, and I wonder if I forgot to turn all of them off the night before. I drive up his dirt road to check it out. When I reach his place, I see his truck in the drive.

  “You’re here,” I say when he comes out the door and stands on the wooden porch. He cocks his head and squints at me. “I thought you were headin’ out. Thought you’d be back home in Oregon by now.”

  “Changed my mind. You know. Couldn’t get that damn elk. Began to bother me.” He chuckles as if it’s no big deal, but I sense something else there, something heavy and sad in his eyes, and I wonder what would make the old man turn around, change his plans so abruptly. One eye is leaking, but it’s not tears. It could be his age or the wind.

  He invites me in, and I ask him if he minds if I let McKay out of the truck.

  “Of course not,” he says. “He need a bowl of water too?”

  “No, he’s had plenty, but thanks anyway. He’s been fed too.”

  Wallace’s thin, downy hair is blowing the wrong way across his side part in the chilly evening breeze, and I realize I’ve never seen him without a baseball cap. When he turns to go back inside, his shiny bald spot shines under the porch light.

  When we’re inside, he pulls a Bud Light out of the fridge and hands it to me.

  “I was here last night,” I say.

  “I noticed. Had yourself some chili, did you?”

  “I figured I could replace it before you returned.”

  He gives a perfunctory wave to brush the apology away. “I don’t care about that. More curious about why you needed to come over so quickly right after I left.” He’s wearing a green-and-yellow-plaid shirt and an old leather vest over it.

  “I don’t usually swing by at night.”

  “Don’t care about when you swing by or how often you check on the place. Just wondering what’s up. You see someone here who didn’t belong?”

  “No, nothing like that.” I glance up at the wallpaper, motioning to it with my chin. “We should get after that next spring when you return. Looks like crap.”

  “Yeah, I know.” His head tilts and his eyes narrow. He’s studying me, I think, and I try to decide how much to tell him. I’m wondering what he’ll think of me, and then it strikes me that at least I care about what this old man with years of living under his belt thinks of me. That’s something, isn’t it? So I tell him. “I came over,” I say, “because the county got a warrant to search my place. I didn’t want to be there while they were doing that.”

  “What?” he asks. “A search warrant? Holy shit. That sounds serious. What on earth for?”

  I don’t answer.

  “I heard on the news about some woman, a reporter, being found dead up this way. This have something to do with that?”

  I nod, and tell him about being interrogated, skipping the part about Anne Marie coming over. I’m still feeling the need to keep my cards close, like I’m speaking to my father, and he’s judging me. But I’m surprised by how easy it is to tell him about the rest of what’s happened since the evening she came over.

  He sits still, one bony hand pocked with liver spots resting in his lap, the other around his beer bottle on the table. The veins are pronounced, and I can’t help but glance at my own hands to see how they’re faring. The constant whipping from the mountain wind and the beating from high-elevation sun does a number even on thirty-six-year-old hands. I feel foolish for my moment of vanity, but he hasn’t noticed. He stares at his Bud label. A silence takes over the room while he considers my situation, like a dark fog leaking in. I wonder if he is sitting there thinking that I’m responsible for killing Anne Marie Johnson. That there is a killer in his kitchen.

  “I didn’t do it,” I whisper.

  He looks up from his bottle but doesn’t nod, doesn’t say a thing. He swallows, and I can see his knobby Adam�
��s apple move up, then down, his neck thin and pale but strong.

  I want to repeat it: I didn’t do it. But then I think of a short story I read in some literature course at the community college about a man who becomes undone because the town thinks he’s stolen something—that he’s a thief. The more he tells everyone that he didn’t do it, the more they think he’s guilty. And I already know I’m guilty. I’ve been guilty my entire life.

  Finally Wallace looks down at McKay, lowers his hand, and snaps his fingers for McKay to come over. He scratches behind my dog’s ears like I do and McKay leans his boxy head into his hands. He says to my dog, “I hope for your sake that things get solved quickly.”

  Ali

  * * *

  Present—Friday

  ON MY LUNCH break, I grab a fish taco from a place that’s decent. The food—specifically the lack of variety—is the worst part about not living out east anymore. It’s hard to find good bread and quality deli meats, and sometimes I miss the endless selection of cafés, bars, and shops owned by people from just about anywhere in the world. After I eat my taco in my car in the parking lot outside the restaurant, I head over to the county building. I want to see if I can figure out what kind of headway they’re making on Anne Marie’s case. When I get to the incident room, Reynolds is at his desk, eating a Subway sandwich and going through files. Several deputies also have food and are staring at their monitors, sliding their mouses across pads and typing one-handedly on keyboards while eating with the other.

  “Agent Paige.” Reynolds puts his sandwich down and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “How are you?” He picks up his phone off his desk, glances at it, but doesn’t do anything with it. I figure it’s like a security blanket.

  “I’m well,” I say.

  “Where’s Agent Marcus?” he asks, as if I shouldn’t be in here without my male counterpart, but then I think I’m being overcritical.

  “Back at the office,” I say. “Where’s Brander? Isn’t he working this one too?”

  “He’s out checking on all of the victim’s past boyfriends. Most are in Missoula, though, but there’s one up this way he’s speaking to—a fellow journalist she dated. You know, that reporter who writes for the Daily Flathead, guy named Will Jones.”

  My ears perk up. “I know him,” I say. Jostling Jones, I think. In fact, my connection to him isn’t a pleasant one. His son, Byron, goes to Emily’s school, and before I knew he was a reporter who covered the crime beat, I made a stink about the fact that his son bullied Emily on a field trip up to a place called Big Creek along the North Fork where Reeve lives, near Glacier National Park. The school offers several summer programs for kids of working parents, and Emily and Byron both were in preschool together, a sort of prelude to kindergarten. She came home from the trip to Glacier with bruises on her arms. She told me that Byron kept picking on her, and of course I take what my kindergartner tells me with a grain of salt, but when she showed me the purplish marks, I took it seriously. I’m not going to apologize for saying something about it to the teacher and to Byron’s mom. I realize kids will be kids, but you don’t grow up with an angry father who puts marks on your own mother’s arms and not feel that a little boy’s aggression should be taken seriously. And to me, it didn’t look like anyone at the school was doing anything, so I said something to the principal about it.

  “Not one of my favorites,” I say to Reynolds. “Always seems to be poking around where he doesn’t belong.” Which is true, but I don’t say that he’s never been very favorable about me in his write-ups ever since the ordeal with Byron. When I worked the Glacier Park abduction case, Jones covered it and made sure the community got the impression that I was ineffective. In every article, he intimated the FBI was botching everything and gave Glacier Park’s law enforcement credit for making any steps in the right direction. He would somehow get ahold of the most unflattering photos of both me and Herman, both of us looking like deer caught in the headlights.

  Reynolds chuckles. “I like him.” That bugs me, but it doesn’t matter. Of course Reynolds would like a weasel like Jones. “But we do have to check him out,” he continues. “He moved here from Missoula. Got his journalism degree at the U of M, so he must have met the victim there, because that’s where she’s been living since she got out of college. The others, we’re checking by phone—crossing most of them off the list, since they all have alibis.”

  Small world, I think. I want to say out loud: What are the chances that Will Jones, the father of the boy who bullied my daughter, would have dated Anne Marie Johnson? “So . . .” I proceed casually instead, taking the gamble that they haven’t yet figured out my connection to their primary suspect. The phrase sits like acid in my stomach—primary suspect, aka the father of my child. “Heard you got a warrant.”

  “Yep,” he says, “the guy lied to us. She was definitely in his place—fingerprints, trace—it’s all there.

  “That prove anything?”

  “Not alone, but it’s mighty suspicious, don’t you think?”

  “It is.” I sneak a quick peek at the stack of paperwork on his desk, wishing I could take control of the case and have access to all of it. “But he might just be a private person. Just because he was the last to be seen with her and she visited his cabin doesn’t mean he killed her.”

  “We get that.” He glances casually at his phone again. “That’s why the guy’s not under arrest right this moment. But my bets are on him. Because what we have to ask is: What is he hiding?”

  I don’t respond. The other deputies have leaned back in their chairs and are listening to our chat. My heart is beating faster than I want it to, standing among the county guys, chatting up a case that is way too close to home.

  “Next step is bringing him back in to see what he has to say about it all, but we’d like to get a little more information first before bringing him back in—maybe a possible motive.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Don’t know yet. But there’s the obvious. Guy spends the day with her. She comes over for some wine. Thinks she’ll put out for him, and maybe she doesn’t. He gets pissed and you can figure out the rest.”

  “Is there evidence that she was killed at his place? Any blood or anything?”

  “No, she was definitely killed at the friend’s cabin. Body wasn’t moved.”

  “How do you explain that? Were his tire tracks at the friend’s cabin?” I ask, already knowing the answer. He explains about the gravel—that they couldn’t even get the owner’s tracks from it. That Reeve could have driven there and they couldn’t prove it, or that he even could have walked there, given his ability to cover far greater distances. “Apparently walking miles and miles is no problem for the guy,” he says.

  “In the middle of the night? That pissed off about not getting laid? Seriously?” I ask.

  He shrugs and shoves his phone back into his pocket. “Why not? It’s his area, and it’s only a few miles. He knows it like the back of his hand. Might not have had condoms at his place. In fact, none were found, but we did find a pack in her overnight bag at the friend’s, which suggests she wasn’t on any other form of birth control. It’s possible she invited him over and he followed her there. Outside the heat of the moment, maybe she has a change of heart. He gets angry and snaps and he either drives back home or walks back home, if he rode with her.”

  “Any footprints through the fields to prove that?”

  “No, but it’s grassy meadows—dried, dead wild grass this time of the year. It had been sunny that day. Warm. Footprints wouldn’t have shown anyway.”

  I don’t want to say too much, but I can’t help pointing out how far-fetched it sounds. “A bit of a stretch, huh?”

  “Maybe, but something’s not right about the guy lying to us. What’s he got to hide? And who the hell else is going to be out in the boonies at that time of the night? What seems more far-fetched is that someone else just happened to come along in the middle of the night, away f
rom her own town, and do her in.”

  He has a point, but I don’t acknowledge it.

  “Guy has a kid too, but he didn’t mention that. By the looks of the place, seems like she’s only around part of the time.”

  My insides do a flip and my legs go weak. It’s not like I wasn’t expecting it, because I definitely knew what they’d discover at his place, but it still takes me by surprise, makes me realize how much I shouldn’t be discussing this case. I shrug and change the subject: “Did the autopsy indicate if she was sexually assaulted?”

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “Any sign of sexual intercourse?”

  “No, but if I’m wrong about going to her place for a condom, and they used one, we wouldn’t get any DNA anyway. She might have had one with her, in her pocket or something.”

  “Well, if she did have one on her, that blows your theory.”

  “Yeah, and my guess is she didn’t, and they didn’t sleep together. That’s why I’m thinking he got irritated,” Reynolds adds. “Snapped.”

  “Any history of violence on his part?” Immediately I want to take it back, because I know what the answer is. What I should have said was: Any pattern of assault or abuse in his adult life? But it’s too late, Reynolds is already on it, nodding vigorously and licking his lips like he’s about to catch a big fish. The pocked scars from acne he must have had when he was younger seem to grow redder, lighting up like tiny beacons.