A Sharp Solitude_A Novel of Suspense

by Christine Carbo

  “Because she’d done this before—gotten involved with a married man?”

  Vivian gives me a surprised look again, then resigns herself to it. “Yeah,” she says. “She had, and we both—Rachel and I—didn’t like it, and told her it was a bad idea, but I suppose Rachel must have come across harsher than me.”

  “So this time?”

  “I still told her it was a bad idea. I told her I didn’t understand why she kept putting herself in these unhealthy tangled situations that would never go anywhere. She got mad initially and said, ‘How do you know it won’t go anywhere? He plans to leave his wife, and I really like him.’ After she was defensive, I didn’t say much more. To each his own, right?” She looks sad, her eyes heavy, as if talking about it is only weighing her down more rather than relieving a burden.

  “I mean,” she says, “she was so pretty, smart . . . talented. I couldn’t see why she needed to get involved with guys who weren’t available, but then I figured some people actually probably don’t want to commit themselves, so having a relationship with someone unavailable is the perfect solution.”

  What she’s saying hits me on a level deeper than I would like. I shift in my seat and take a sip of my coffee. It’s disappointingly weak and doesn’t taste nearly as good as the heady aromas wafting through the coffee shop would suggest.

  “I figure it had something to do with her father. Nice guy, but totally unavailable. Always working. Always traveling. Never home. It always begins there, right?”

  “What?”

  “For girls—it always begins with a shitty father.”

  That nicks me too. “Don’t know about that,” I say. “Shitty mothers wreak their havoc too. And at some point you have to take responsibility for yourself. You can’t hide behind whatever your childhood dealt you. Everyone has wounds.”

  “I guess. I just don’t understand why Anne Marie wouldn’t give a nice guy a chance. Trust me, there were plenty that would have stepped up. But . . .” She shrugs to signal, It’s too late now.

  “Was there some reason you thought Jeff O’Brien wasn’t a nice guy?”

  “No, no.” She holds up her hand. “I’m not saying that. I know hardly anything about the guy. Just that Anne Marie was hot for him—you know, that smart, scientific type who’s into the wild. There were a few like that. She used to date a guy here who was engaged to someone else. I think he’s married now to his fiancée at the time.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Will. Will Jones. He’s a local reporter here.”

  I nod. I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall when Brander and Reynolds talked to Jones’s smug self. “I’m assuming you’ve told Detective Brander and Reynolds about all of these past boyfriends?”

  “Yes, I have, in one way or another. I didn’t say she actually was having an affair with O’Brien. I mean, is it really my place to say?”

  “Actually, yes, it’s absolutely your place to say. It could be very pertinent to finding who shot her. You should probably call them and fill them in.”

  “Can’t you?” she asks innocently.

  “I can. But it’s best if they hear information like that from the witnesses so it can be documented correctly.”

  She nods, as if she buys my answer, although all she’d have to say to call my bluff is Can’t you document witnesses’ statements correctly? Aren’t you part of this official investigation? I move on before she does: “Did Anne Marie know O’Brien’s wife?”

  “I think she knew of her, but hadn’t ever met her. If she had, she didn’t mention it.”

  I’ve seen it all in this line of work—sex dungeons in Montana backwoods homes; homeschooling where children are taught to take up arms against anyone who crosses the property line; a man who has killed an entire family who simply stopped to give him a ride because he thought they were making fun of him—so I’m rarely surprised at the boundaries people cross on a daily basis without ever thinking of the consequences. I’m not surprised by Anne Marie’s recklessness, either, but I am confused about Reeve and her. I think of the hair tie I found in the bed, yet the serology and body fluid reports came back with no signs of forced sexual intercourse, and possibly no intercourse at all. Of course I can’t be positive about that unless I speak to the pathologist myself or see the current report.

  Reeve is the type to think of consequences, but he’s more than capable of throwing them to the wind. Still, I wonder if he even knew about Anne Marie and his boss, and if he did, would he really go as far as to sleep with his boss’s mistress? Would he jeopardize his job, the one thing that allows him to live in this area and do what he loves—being in the woods every day with his dog—and still be somewhat present in Emily’s life, at least every other weekend, just to get laid? Of course he would; he’s a guy, I think cynically. I know I’m being unfair, but I can’t help it. And although Reeve thinks of consequences, he’s got a self-destructive streak. He keeps it in check now, no longer doing drugs or drinking himself into oblivion as he did in Florida, but I see it come out in tiny ways, in the ways he sometimes tempts fate: staying out in the woods a little too long when he knows it’s going to get dark soon, all too willingly taking an untrodden, unmapped trail that might get him lost, driving onto private property that he has no business being on. “Just to check it out, see where it leads,” he’ll say.

  I ask Vivian a few more questions, wrap things up, and thank her. We put on our coats, and I follow her out the glass door. When we step out into the cold, she hugs herself and shivers.

  “Guess you’ll be glad to get out of this area.”

  “Yeah, I suppose,” she looks sad. And something else. Stressed, I think. It’s in the way her eyes dart around, taking in her surroundings. She looks anxious.

  I say good-bye and begin to walk away, but then I stop and turn around. She’s heading in the opposite direction, to the parking lot. I watch her go to her car, but she doesn’t go to the driver’s door. She walks around and hops into the passenger side.

  I hurry over and catch the car just as it begins to pull out. The driver, a blond-haired man, stops the car when he sees me. I motion for him to roll down his window. He does and waits for me to say something.

  He’s older than she is, but somehow he manages to look young and old at the same time. His smile and the style of his hair are boyish, but there’s hardness too. Crow’s-feet fan out from each eye, and his skin is leathery around the edges of his face.

  “Hi,” I say. “And you are?”

  “A friend of Vivian’s.”

  Vivian has her head tilted forward so she can see me and is looking at me, but doesn’t offer anything more.

  “I didn’t realize you were with anyone else here,” I say to her.

  “I wasn’t. Tate’s just helping me. I’m not in the best shape right now, as you can imagine. He’s going to drive home with me.”

  “So you’re from Seattle too?”

  “I am. I came out yesterday after Vivian called me and told me about what happened. Like she said, just helping her out.”

  “You mind if I ask you what your last name is?”

  “Austin,” he says.

  “Tate Austin,” I say. I think it sounds slightly fake, like a stage name, so I say it. “Sounds like an actor’s name.”

  “Yeah, people tell me that.” He smiles boyishly, but there’s something confident about his smile that I feel like I’ve seen before. I decide that he’s got to be at least ten to fifteen years older than Vivian.

  “Vivian,” I say, grabbing a card from my pocket. “I forgot to give you this, just in case you think of anything important and want to give me a call.”

  “You already gave me one, at the hotel. Remember?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” I say. “My bad. Well, have a safe trip.” I hold up the card to wave, then pull out a pen to write Tate Austin’s name on the back of the card.

  • • •

  At my house, I tell Rose to go. “You’ve done enough, Shor
ty. Go rest up some more. You look tired. Maybe not as recovered as you think?”

  Rose claims she’s fine, but doesn’t argue with me. She grabs her things, says good-bye to Emily, and slips out the door. Emily is thrilled that I’m back before she’s even done watching cartoons. She’s still in her unicorn pajamas, her potbelly sticking out and her brown ringlets a wild mess. The house is warm and cozy, and Rose has made coffee. I grab a cup since the one at the café wasn’t very satisfying and tell Emily she can watch for half an hour more. “Then,” I say, “the TV goes off.” She nods absently, her full attention on the screen.

  I go into my office and call Brander right away, leaving a message for him to get back to me. I want to tell him about Anne Marie’s connection to Smith. In the meantime, there are so many other loose threads to follow up on first before I get Brander or Reynolds on the phone. I want to check on O’Brien’s wife, and there’s something else that’s bugging me: the small startle I noticed on Vivian’s face when I asked her about work on Monday. It’s not lost on me that Vivian slightly resembles Anne Marie. Both of them have curly dark hair. Anne Marie’s hair is a little longer than Vivian’s, although not by much, and at night it would be easy to confuse the two women.

  And who was this Tate Austin waiting for her in her car?

  I pull up Timberhaus’s website and look at the company page. I click on the tab that reads Our Team. She’s in the accounting department, so I realize she’s probably not high up enough on the corporate ladder to be listed. I’m right. Only the senior management team is listed. I google Vivian, which I’ve already done before, and go over the usual: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram . . . Facebook and LinkedIn both list her as an employee of Timberhaus.

  I look through my notes for the name of the friend who is a musician in Seattle. He hasn’t returned my call. I know it’s an hour earlier there, and if he had a nighttime gig, he probably sleeps late. I’m surprised when he answers, though—sounding chipper too. I introduce myself to him and ask him if he’s heard about Anne Marie. I know the answer from Vivian, but I want to start from scratch with him.

  “I have,” he says sadly. “I’m kind of in shock.”

  “Were you two close friends?”

  “On and off over the years. I knew her in college, and we stayed friends.”

  I don’t ask about whether he was in love with her, as Rachel had indicated, at least not yet. I go through all the usual questions: “When was the last time you saw Anne Marie? . . . How did she seem? . . . How often did you speak to her or see her? . . . Is there anything at all about her that seemed strange or different from usual?” He answers with standard fare, nothing ringing any alarm bells, so I move on to the crush.

  “Your mutual friend Rachel,” I say. “She mentioned that you wanted to date Anne Marie at one point.”

  He gives a half-laugh, half-snort, and I sense some resentment or at least embarrassment in the eruption of that sound. “I guess you could call it that. That was a long time ago, though.”

  “How did you manage to be friends with her, given that awkward situation?”

  “Wasn’t hard,” he mumbles, then goes quiet.

  I wonder if there’s more to it, but I can tell I’m not going to get much more out of him on the phone like this. “But you’re closer to Vivian at this point?”

  “As friends, yeah. I mean, we live in the same city. It’s easy to get together, and she likes to come watch my band.” I can hear the high-pitched siren of an ambulance in the background—maybe out his window or maybe he’s at a coffee shop—and it reminds me of my apartment in Montclair, a twenty-minute commute to Newark, where the field office was.

  “And have you chatted much with Vivian since she’s been in the Flathead?”

  “No, only when she called me to tell me.”

  “And how did you take it?”

  “I was shocked. Vivian was crying, really upset, and my first priority was to calm her down and be there for her. I was supposed to see her before she left for Montana, but it didn’t work out, so I was completely taken aback when she called me so upset. For me, it hit later, and I’m having trouble sleeping. It’s the loss of a friend, of course, but it’s also the idea that someone would want to harm someone in your own circle of friends. It’s just freaky.”

  It’s an honest answer, and I’m impressed with his insight. I tell him that that’s normal and to be expected. “And Vivian,” I say. “You were supposed to get together before she left?”

  “We were supposed to get a coffee before she headed out. She was supposed to take off some time in the afternoon. I’d made a CD of my recordings for her to listen to on the long drive. My stuff hasn’t made it to Spotify yet,” he explains sheepishly. “Soon, though,” he adds. “She canceled, though. Said she had to pack up her office.”

  “ ‘Pack up her office’?”

  “Yeah, I know. I was surprised too. She sounded a little stressed. We were supposed to meet, but like I said, she called to cancel, said she needed to pack up—that she’s resigning. I asked her why she hadn’t mentioned it. I mean, we’re good friends, and it seemed so sudden, but she got really quiet. I figured I’d stepped on her toes somehow by calling that out, but I don’t know, I couldn’t believe that she’d quit without telling me. Obviously she must have been putting some thought into it for some time. You don’t just quit a good job like that on a whim. She had a good thing going with TH. Super stable, benefits, great pay. She’d worked herself up the ladder.”

  I find the information interesting. His instincts are correct. You don’t just quit a job like that on a whim, and why wouldn’t she tell me that same information when I questioned her? “And you had no idea she wasn’t happy there?”

  “None, but I’ll talk to her about it when the time is right. When the grief about Anne Marie subsides a bit. But I can’t see how all of this is important. I probably shouldn’t be sharing Viv’s personal information with you like this. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go off subject like that. I guess I’m just still reeling a bit.”

  “Hey,” I remind him, “I asked you. You never know what will help in the long run. By the way, do you know a guy named Tate. Tate Austin?”

  “No. Never heard of him. Should I?”

  “Not necessarily. He’s driving her home today. Says he’s a friend of hers. You know most of her friends?”

  “Most of them, but there’s quite a few people from work that I’ve never met. I don’t know everyone in her life.”

  He doesn’t seem alarmed. I thank him for his time and let him get on with his day.

  Reeve

  * * *

  Present—Saturday

  SNOW CRUNCHES UNDER my boots with each step. The air up here is cold but moist, and the snow has the consistency for making snowballs. The damp air in my lungs makes me feel out of shape, and that alone angers me—stubbornly pushes me to walk faster, to cover more ground. McKay darts back and forth just ahead of me. I’ve put a fluorescent orange vest on him so that hunters won’t mistake him for a deer or a small bear. It’s a hunter’s dream, this layer of snow, and they’ll be out tracking.

  We’ve haven’t found any grizzly samples yet, but we have come across all sorts of different tracks: rabbit, black bear, deer, elk, moose, and even some kind of a cat, probably lynx or small mountain lion. A cat’s prints are always easy to detect because they splay outward, and since their claws are retractable, there are no visible claw points as there are in canine prints. I photographed all of them, even the whitetail tracks, just for my records. You never know when someone in the department might need extra proof that lynx or bobcat or other species reside in the North Fork area. Not long ago, the whole place was teeming with mule deer. Now you rarely see a herd, and researchers are still trying to figure out why, whether it’s drought, disease, fire decimation of their favorable foliage, or an increase in predators.

  The buzzing in my head has steadily quieted as I’ve hiked. Now that I’m out in the mountains,
I can think. It’s Saturday, and I haven’t heard from anyone from the county. Even though they told me I shouldn’t go far, they know this is my job. It demands that I go long distances out in the boonies. They can’t expect me not to go to work. That’s exactly what I’ll tell them if they do call. But in the back of my head, I hear their voices, imagine their questions: So why did you pack so much? Why did you take a tent and a sleeping bag? Extra food?

  “Because,” I practice answering, seeing the plumes of my breath in the cool air, “we just had our first lower-elevation snow, which means the grizzlies are going to be moving higher and farther into the backcountry, searching out their hibernation spots.” I’m talking out loud, like a crazy person. McKay keeps glancing at me, but I continue. “And since they’ll be farther back, I’ll need to go more miles, take longer trips. Perfectly normal for my work this time of the year.”

  But as I say it, I know I’m stretching the truth. It’s rare for me to camp this late in the fall, with the temperatures dropping below freezing at night. McKay peers at me again, his boxy head tilted to the side, trying to figure out if I’m giving him commands or not. “You’re fine,” I say in a lighthearted voice to him. “Heel up.” I call him closer to my side. “Good boy.”

  He wags his tail, and I take my glove off, slip my hand into my pocket, and grab a dog biscuit and slip it into his mouth. “We’re good.”

  The snow begins to melt, wet weeds and mottled leaves choking the already faint game trails. I can begin to smell the wilderness waking up as the day warms a bit—the autumn soil’s musky scent. When I spent those years in juvie, the noise of the other kids yelling, jeering, and banging was an intolerable roar that I hated not being able to escape. But here it’s the opposite. Anger has a way of dissipating out here, and I’m relieved to know that I can disappear into the black sea of trees against the jutting mountainsides.

  That night we spent together, Anne Marie said, You’ve turned things around . . . You’re doing something worthwhile. I wanted to believe her, but part of me knows I’m still hiding. The wild doesn’t solve or even erase your problems, it simply helps you balance them. Helps you find a fulcrum between your inner and outer focus—like the space between the sky and the ground—so you don’t drive yourself crazy. That’s exactly what I thought I’d achieved over all these years, day in, day out, taking each step with McKay into the woods, but the whole situation with Anne Marie and the cops has set my seesaw out of whack—sent one side thudding heavily to the ground and back into anxiety. I continue steadily up a ridge, where thick fog shrouds the surrounding mountains and the spires of the tall trees fade into white smears. Thorny fingers of hawthorn bushes grab at my arms and legs while the November sun sits low in the sky, weakening with each passing day.