A Sharp Solitude_A Novel of Suspense

by Christine Carbo

  Herman takes a deep breath. “Ali, obviously you found this out after you started snooping, after you put our entire department in a compromising position with the county. After you imposed a major conflict of interest.”

  I should apologize to him, but I don’t. I shrug, but I’m hoping Brander and Reynolds don’t yet know about the interviews I’ve done, and I feel suddenly glad that Vivian is heading back to Seattle today. “I know, but look, I’m only looking into the victim, who happens to be in the Smith file. I’m not looking into their suspect. And I haven’t spoken to him lately.”

  “What’s lately?”

  I wave the question off with a flick of my hand and don’t answer him. I called Reeve early this morning to tell him to stay put and be available for questioning.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he adds.

  “Right, what matters is that you and I figure out how deeply she was involved in our case. And I’ve put a call in to Brander already.” I look at my watch. “Now I understand why they haven’t called me back yet. But, Herman, they need to know about this.”

  “I’ll update them after I look at the file again,” he says, but his expression still shows that he isn’t buying this idea that we’re simply going to hop onto the Smith train and let my actions dissolve into nothing. He’s sitting still, chewing on his bottom lip, and I can tell he’s thinking about how to proceed, when my doorbell rings.

  Emily squeals some happy indiscernible sound and bounds down the stairs, yelling, “I can get it.”

  “Hang on there, Em!” I yell back. “Excuse me,” I tell Herman, and go into the living room. Emily is patiently waiting by the door, her hand on the knob. She’s dressed herself in clothes that are not coordinated at all: a polka-dotted frilly summer tank top and a brown plaid skirt. The mom in me briefly thinks that I’m going to have to get her to change before we go anywhere, and that it’s going to be a fight because it will be an affront to her recent development of independence—that is, before I see through the side window panels that it’s Brander standing on my doorstep. My heart suddenly sinks as reality hits: I just could be in over my head.

  I nod to Emily, and she turns the knob with both hands and swings the door open with great pride. She’s wearing a huge grin on her face, and I feel a stab of love so great that I’m suddenly overtaken with a need to sweep her up in my arms and tell her that I’m sorry, that everything will be okay—that I was probably never really good enough to do this mothering thing in the first place, but that I was going to damn sure do everything I could to protect her now that I’d brought her into this world.

  Reeve

  * * *

  Present—Saturday

  MY DAD DIDN’T talk to me on the ride back from the shooting range. When we got home, I remember my mom’s arms around me, hugging me and telling me that everything was fine and not to worry about it. But my dad—he didn’t look at me or address me for what felt like a very long time. It might have been only a day or two, but it felt like forever.

  I remember my parents arguing in the kitchen that evening after dinner in hushed voices that became louder than they intended. I had just walked into the living room when I heard my mom say, “Maybe you’re being too hard on him.”

  My dad had replied, “He needs to grow up. Look at us! We’re pariahs in our own town.”

  My mom didn’t respond. I stood by our couch, my fingers kneading into the top of one of the cushions.

  “You saw the news yesterday: Sam’s parents are furious that there have been no legal consequences for us. They’ve hired a high-profile attorney. They’re working with that congressman—what’s his name?”

  “Bushnell,” my mom answered.

  “They’re trying to change the law to make adults criminally liable. In the paper, it said they’re channeling”—he said it mockingly—“their anger. They’re channeling their anger by trying to make people like us criminals for an accident. It could have been a car crash and not a gun. Would they still be channeling?”

  Again my mom didn’t answer.

  “What do you think about that?” my dad pressed her. “Huh?”

  “I think,” she said, “they’ve just lost their child. I think they’re traumatized and upset. And other than that, I just don’t know . . .”

  After a moment, I could hear the back screen door slam shut. I guessed that my dad had left the kitchen. I remember hearing my mom start to weep. I remember wanting to go to her so that she could wrap her warm arms around me again and I could cry with her, but I heard my dad’s voice in my head: He needs to grow up. I went to my room instead, where I sat on my bed and tried to read a comic book.

  My dad never asked again to take me to the shooting range, but years later a friend of mine had a rifle and, soaring high as kites one day, we went into the woods where he had some tin cans lined up on a log. He began firing, the sharp charcoal smell of gunpowder choking the air.

  The weed we’d been smoking all afternoon obliterated my senses, so I barely even flinched and was proud of it. When he said, “Your turn,” I took the rifle, buoyed by a drug-induced lack of inhibition, and fired away, hitting only one of the cans. It was empowering. I was a new man. My father was right: I had hopped back on the horse. I should have done it long ago. I could have kissed the sky, taking control like that. I could practically hear Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” playing in my head. I hooted and hollered, and through my own blurred vision, my friend looked at me with a crooked, curious smile. “You’re funny, dude,” I remember him saying.

  A week later, he convinced me to buy the rifle from him because he needed the money for more pot. I bought it for forty bucks and kept it hidden in the run-down one-room apartment I was living in before I almost torched it because I left a bowl of soup on the burner while I passed out on the couch. I woke to flames, jerking the pot off while hot soup sizzled down my calves and sent me to the hospital with third-degree burns on my legs and hand.

  In the hospital, finally sober, I realized what could have happened with my friend that afternoon in the woods—that I could easily have had another accident, this time while in an altered state of my own making. When I got out of the hospital, I decided to make a big change. I chose Montana because somehow I knew or hoped that a place so vast and unknowable would change me. I had these difficult-to-describe notions about Montana: not just beauty, but a kind of dignity in its harshness, in its starkness. I had the idea that you could live an authentic life in the mountains, a reality that isn’t blurred by heat and humidity, seasons that barely change, and people who rely on gossip to find meaning. In Montana, the environment provides clear boundaries and truths: Hypothermia will kill you. A bear with its cubs should not be provoked. Unstable layers of snow might slide and create an avalanche. Getting lost in the woods without proper gear might be the end of you. Drought causes fire and fruitless crops. The leaves and pine needles change colors and drop to the ground. The lake water turns to ice, the ground freezes, and snow falls. In the warming spring, the fields turn lush and the crops grow. The mountains and the fresh air seem like possibility; each season brings new beginnings; and finally, each day holds promises under an expanding sky, not suffocating routines that smear together like a muted impressionist painting.

  Now I couldn’t even tell you the name of the friend I was with that afternoon, but I know his initials are BC because they’re inscribed on the side of the stock. He was just someone I got high with for a month or two. I never saw him again, and other than hanging on to the Winchester for emergency purposes since I was heading to Montana, I never intended to fire one ever again in my life.

  • • •

  In the distance, a pack of wolves begins to howl, their pitch escalating as more join in. I’ve found a good place to camp—out in a small meadow tucked beside a great escarpment that looms black behind us. We’re close to the tree line, and stunted dark pines off to the side provide a modicum of warmth, some protection from the cold. I’ve pitched my tent, coll
ected kindling and the driest dead logs I could find for a fire. I made one, watching the damp logs steam and take their sweet time to get going. In the meantime, I fed McKay his dog food, and eventually, when the fire was hot enough, I cooked dinner for myself from a packet of freeze-dried stew by adding hot water I’d boiled.

  Now we’re sitting by the fire, McKay on a pad I’ve laid out for him and me on a thick log I’ve dragged over. It’s not entirely dark yet, but close, and twilight smudges my surroundings. A band of deep-indigo sky darkens over the mountains under a lifting layer of clouds while I sit and poke at the fire and watch the wood burn and begin to morph into coals that pulsate with a glowing intensity.

  McKay tilts his head at the mournful sound of the wolves and begins to whine. He moves closer to me and leans his shoulder, damp from moving through the wet underbrush all day, against my thigh. His hair prickles upright and separates, exposing the natural oils that keep him warm. It reminds me of a porcupine. “Scaredy-cat,” I say to him. “You’ve smelled their scat a million times. No big deal.”

  But it is eerie, in spite of knowing they’re far in the distance. Wolves won’t get near us unless McKay does something stupid, like wander away from camp, but he won’t. He’s too well trained. Wolves and coyotes are smart enough to send a female to lure a male dog into the woods where they can surround him, but McKay is neutered and obedient. He won’t budge from my side. I reach down and pat his chest. “You’re a good boy.” I grab the long stick I’ve been using to move a log that has tipped to the side into a better position on the fire.

  The wind blows the smoke away from us, but every now and again it shifts, and I have to shut my eyes while I get a full blast of it in the face. That’s the way I’m sitting, taking in the sound of the rustling tree branches with my eyes closed while I wait for the breeze to shift, when I hear the breaking of a twig from a footstep. I jump up immediately, opening my eyes to a face full of smoke, and look behind me. McKay growls, and I see the bright, assaulting beam of a flashlight. My heart races until I hear a familiar voice: “It’s just me, you fools.”

  “I’m a fool?” I say after I recognize Wallace’s voice. “What kind of person is out hiking up here at dark?”

  McKay’s tail has already begun to wag ferociously when he hears the familiar voice, and when Wallace steps into the circle of the firelight, McKay runs up to him like a long-lost friend. Wallace leans over stiffly and pets his head. “Easy, boy,” he croons. “Easy. I saw your firelight up on the ridge. Wanted to see who it was all the way up here.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s foolish. What if it wasn’t me?”

  “Had a feeling it was.”

  I shake my head. “Have a seat.” I gesture to the log I’ve been sitting on. “Hungry?”

  “Sure. What you got?”

  “Nothing good. Freeze-dried stuff.”

  “Hmm, no fresh trout?”

  “Nope. Didn’t stop to fish.”

  “You never fish.”

  “Not when McKay’s with me. You kidding? He’d try to fetch the fly with every cast. So you want some or not?”

  “Tell you what, let’s cook these up.” He reaches into his pack and grabs a plastic bag containing some filleted trout.

  “I can’t believe you’re hiking out here with the smell of fish in your pocket.”

  “I’ve got a rifle,” he says.

  “That won’t stop a four-hundred-pound adrenaline-fueled animal from killing you. It might die later, after it bleeds internally, but by that time, you and the fish will be long gone.”

  “Bah,” he says. “Here, cook ’em up.” He hands me the bag and then rummages around his pack for some tinfoil. “You’re in a lot more danger than I am, stalking grizzlies out here. What about those stories of photographers who’ve been mauled by the grizzlies they were trying to follow?”

  “We don’t stalk them, you know that.”

  In fact, with all the time McKay and I spend out in these woods, we’ve seen a grizzly only three times: twice from a distance, and one time when McKay startled one and luckily the bear took off in the opposite direction and didn’t follow McKay straight back to me, which can sometimes happen with people who hike with their dogs out in the wild. There’s nothing quite like being in grizzly-bear country. At its best it’s surreal, an existential experience to walk among them in their territory, puncturing the human illusion that we’re always in control of our world. But Wallace and I would both be fools to not admit the real danger of being in their territory during autumn when they are facing hibernation and storing up on fat reserves. At the same time, we wouldn’t have it any other way. These woods would never be the same if the bears weren’t living among us.

  “You hear those wolves a few minutes ago?” Wallace changes the subject.

  “I did.”

  “Pretty cool,” he adds.

  “They won’t bother us,” I say in case he’s wondering, but the look on his face tells me I’ve insulted him by telling him what he already knows.

  He wraps the fish into foil and hands them over. “Here, set these on the coals. My knees are too old to lean down after a day of hiking up here.”

  Wallace offers me a slug from the flask of whiskey he brought while we wait for the fish to cook. “So tell me,” he says, “why are you staying all the way up here? You don’t usually come up this high.”

  I give him my line about the grizzlies’ movement to the higher northern slopes with the first snowfalls.

  Wallace looks at me skeptically.

  “I’ve camped out here plenty of times,” I say, poking at some of the coals with a stick.

  He gives me a dubious frown, then shrugs, like he’s decided to accept it or simply drop the subject. I watch the blue flames circling the base of the tinfoil. When it’s ready, we unwrap it and eat the flaky white flesh. Afterward we sit quietly, and I’m glad for the company. Eventually—maybe it’s the whiskey, which I don’t usually drink—but for no good reason I ask, “Ever feel like there’s no place left to go, like all we have are these mountains?”

  Wallace hangs his head toward his knees and laughs. His head bobs up and down a little with his chuckles. “You have no idea.” His voice sounds somber.

  “How’s that?” I ask.

  He lifts his head and stares at the fire. “It’s just messy out there, that’s all.”

  The sadness I saw on his front porch washes back onto his face. I look away, back at the pulsing of the coals and the shifting of the flames in the wind. The soles of my boots are hot, and I shift my feet farther away, the tread scraping on the dirt and gravel. “What’s going on in Oregon? Why didn’t you go back?”

  “I told you,” Wallace says, taking another sip from his flask. “Didn’t get my elk. Can’t go home empty-handed.”

  It’s my turn to look at him with skepticism. “Seems to me you’ve gone home plenty of times in the past without getting your elk.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m getting old. Can’t afford to do that much longer.”

  “What about your wife? Everything okay with her?” I’ve met Susan only once before when she came out with Wallace for a few weeks in the summer. She helped fix up the cabin. From what I recall, she’s a painter. Watercolors. In the summer months, she prefers to paint the Oregon coast rather than the Montana mountains, so she usually stays back.

  “She’s fine.” He stands. “All right, I’m hittin’ it early tomorrow. If I don’t see you, be safe out here.” He then heads off to his tent, with the fire popping behind him.

  “You too,” I call after him.

  Ali

  * * *

  Present—Saturday

  “MOMMY,” EMILY WHINES, “you said we’d do something.”

  “I know, sweetie, but that’s before Detective Brander showed up and asked me for help. Now I need to go to work, just for a little while. When I’m done, I promise we’ll do something then. This won’t take that long.” I glance at Herman, hoping for a quick nod of affirmation to back me
up in front of Emily, but he doesn’t flinch.

  “Where did Brander go?” I ask.

  “He said he’d meet you at the county building in a half hour.”

  I point to my driveway. “Then why is his car still here?”

  “He asked who lived in the apartment around back. I told him that Emily’s nanny did, so he went to chat with her. I guess he figures that Rose would know the suspect.”

  I think this is ridiculous, and I’m irritated that’s he’s bothering Rose when I know she isn’t feeling well and is probably in bed recovering, but I keep my mouth shut. Clearly my snooping has drawn too much attention already. Maybe I’m making things worse for Reeve.

  “Mommy,” Emily bleats, “you promised. You said we’d do something.”

  “I’m going to go back there,” I announce. “If he needs me to come to the county building, then I’m going to need Rose to watch Emily,” I say on my way to the door.

  “But, Mommy,” Emily cries. She loves Rose, but she has her mind set on going to do something with me instead.

  Herman turns to her and makes a funny face to placate her. “Emily, want to go get some ice cream with me?”

  She’s still frowning, but once Herman’s question registers, her face lights up and she licks her lips and nods. I’m thankful that she’s placated, and relieved that Herman is still acting like a friend, at least for now.