A Sharp Solitude_A Novel of Suspense

by Christine Carbo

  “Reeve,” my dad calls me. “This way, this way!” I turn to see him coming for me. He swims with the tide, reaching me quickly. He pulls my life vest toward him. Relief comes like a sweeping sensation, as powerful as the tide itself. I reach for him and miss, then reach again and grab onto his arm with every ounce of strength in me. He gets ahold of my life vest and yanks me in, my small body pulling into him. “Grab around my neck,” he tells me, and I do, hanging on so fiercely that I make him choke and feel him grab my arms and pull them slightly lower, away from his windpipe. I still hang on to his slippery neck with everything I’ve got as he swims us safely to shore and he pulls me onto the warm sand. I lay on the ground looking up at the sky, at the palm trees in the distance.

  Except the ground is not warm and sandy soft. It’s rock hard and cold and they are not palm trees I’m seeing as I open my eyes; they are skinny lodgepole pines, their tall spires reaching up very high against a pale blue sky. Through blurry vision, beyond the tree spires, I see mountain ridges poke into the edges of my vision. I also see my own breath puff in small plumes above me and hear a low, persistent growl. McKay. His warm body presses into my side. I also think I hear a human’s voice.

  I try to prop myself up on my elbow, but I can’t make it happen. I’m too weak. I’m shivering even though McKay’s warm hip jabs against mine. I can’t even move my arms. I turn my head to look around, and as things begin to come into focus, there’s something familiar about where I am, even from the vantage point of lying prone on the ground. My pack is next to me, and I’m unsure how and when I took it off. I must have gotten my sleeping bag out and crawled into it. Part of it is pinned under McKay.

  A logging road spans the far end of a snow-dusted field, and I see a dark object in the distance. A truck. My Toyota. It dawns on me that I’ve given up and collapsed in the dark with the poor visibility of the snowstorm only a hundred yards away from my own vehicle. Someone is near it, though, moving around it. I squint through frosted or maybe blood-hardened eyelashes to see an official-looking person in uniform, a police officer. He’s looking around, peeking into my truck windows.

  I try to open my mouth, to call for help, but my face feels hot and numb at the same time. Every fiber in my body aches and burns. I try to use my voice again, to yell for help, but I’m not sure if I’ve said anything at all. He doesn’t look my way. I try to call out again, louder this time, but still, I can’t hear anything. It’s like being in a dream and screaming to someone, every part of me willing my voice to be heard, but on some level of consciousness, I know that that call isn’t breaking into the fabric of the real world.

  The officer backs away from my truck, lifts his radio to his mouth, and begins to talk into it when his eyes scan the field and fall upon me. I see him lower his radio and come slowly toward us, his head cocked in curiosity. McKay sits up, and the sleeping bag falls away from his body and lets cold air filter in. A bigger, more aggressive growl emanates from his throat.

  “Whoa.” The officer holds up his hand as he approaches. “It’s okay, pooch.”

  “It’s okay,” I try to tell him too, but it’s only a mumble, and I’m still not sure McKay hears me. I’m not sure I’ve heard me.

  He takes another step to test McKay out, to see if he will react. McKay growls again.

  “I can help you,” he says, taking another step forward, holding his hand out for McKay to sniff. McKay isn’t happy. I’m on the ground, and he’s not going to let anyone near me. He begins to snarl louder.

  The man backs away, pulling up his radio again to his mouth. I can’t hear all that he’s saying, but catch some words and phrases. “Officer Harris here . . . situation . . . North Fork . . . might need . . . services. Stand by.”

  “It’s okay, McKay,” I say, and McKay must hear me because he noses my face, licking my cheek and whimpering. I squeeze my eyes shut with the sting of his hot tongue on my cuts. The officer must have heard too because he takes a step toward me again, calling my dog’s name. “McKay? Is that your name? McKay, it’s okay, buddy.” He crouches down so McKay isn’t so threatened by him. His brow knits together with concern when he looks over McKay’s head at me lying on the ground, snow covering our sleeping bag. My bandages, which I know have torn to shreds in places, feel like they’re hanging loose around my head. The sleeping bag covers my legs and arms still, even though it slid down when McKay crawled out and stood up.

  The man holds out his hand, and McKay stretches his neck and sniffs his fingers, then begins to wag his tail.

  “Good doggie, that’s it. I’m here to help.” He scoots a little closer to me.

  “Are you the owner of this truck?”

  My vision goes from blurry to clear, then back to blurry. My body is shivering, but my head feels as if the storm from the night before is still raging inside it, the force of a blazing hot Florida sun beating against my temples. I must be getting sick because I’ve been shivering most of the night in spite of McKay’s heat, although we are lying in snow. Then the bear flashes into my mind so forcefully, I flinch. It comes to me. I don’t just have a fever, I’ve been pounded and bitten on the head by the force of a four-hundred-pound animal. I try to scurry away. “Where is she? Where is she?”

  “It’s okay.” He holds up his palms. “It’s okay. Stay still. It’s going to be all right. You’re safe now. Are you having any difficulty breathing?”

  “My chest . . .”

  He studies me, perplexed. “Your lungs? Are you short of breath?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, good. You’re going to be okay. A grizzly do this to you?”

  I manage a nod.

  “Here?”

  “No, high. Up.”

  “This morning?”

  “Yesterday. We hiked,” I manage to say.

  “Okay. Just stay here. I’m calling for help.” He stands, raises his radio again, and begins to report. “Grizzly-attack victim. Victim hiked out, so I don’t think there are broken femurs, but he has got puncture wounds and severe lacerations. Breathing seems okay, but he’s lightheaded and having trouble speaking. He’s shaking, but it’s cold out. He and his dog have been out in the cold for a while, but he could have a fever. He could be going into shock, and he might be on the verge of losing consciousness. There’s enough space here for the helicopter.” He continues to rattle off instructions on how to find us. Then he swivels back to me and crouches again. I’ve never been so glad to see another person.

  “Can you stand?” he asks. “I want to get you to my vehicle where it’s warm. Do you think if I help you, you have enough strength to get to my vehicle?”

  The thought of moving terrifies me. I want to stay perfectly still so my pounding head doesn’t explode anymore. I don’t answer him.

  “Do you know your name?”

  “Reeve,” I whisper.

  “Do you know your name?” he repeats, and I realize he has not heard me, that my voice is fading again. “Are you Reeve Landon?” he asks.

  I try to give a single nod, but I wince from the pain.

  “Okay, so you’re the owner of this truck?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hello, Reeve. I’m Park Police Officer Monty Harris. The county asked me to swing by since I was out this way checking on a few things on the northwest end of Glacier Park. They wanted me to see if your truck was still here, see if you’d decided to come out on account of the storm. Guess it took more than the storm to get you out, eh?” He continues to inspect my wounds, places his palm on my forehead. “A grizzly, huh?”

  “Mama,” I say, but again I can’t tell if anything is escaping my lips or if I’m only imagining talking. “Wasn’t her fault. Protecting cubs,” I mumble.

  “Rarely is,” Officer Harris says, and I realize he’s heard me. “If they’re startled, their first defense is often offense. Come on, let’s get you someplace warm. Someplace drier than this.” He slowly unzips my bag, lifts the flap, and inspects me. McKay noses my arm, then my leg as the of
ficer unfolds the top flap of the bag. “Come on, McKay,” he says, pulling McKay back by his collar. When he sees my limbs, more concern crosses his face, and he pauses to think.

  “So you hiked down after it happened? After you bandaged yourself?”

  “Yes,” I say, but it sounds like a hiss, like esss.

  “I know this is going to be painful, but I really think we should get you into the car.” He gently hooks his arm underneath mine and hoists me up. A crushing pain shoots through my head and my ribs explode in agony. I cry out.

  “We’re good. We’ll take it slow.” He takes one step.

  I follow. My entire body has gone stiff, and it’s hard to take a step with even my good leg. My bad leg barely moves at all, but I manage to push it forward. “That’s it. Let’s get you warmed up. You’ve made it this far,” he coaxes me. “We’re almost there.”

  Ali

  * * *

  Present—Wednesday

  THE NEXT MORNING, I wake up groggy until the reality of the night before hits me and questions come flooding back into my mind. I wonder whether Rose has confessed to killing Anne Marie, if they’ve arrested her, if she’s gotten an attorney. I also ache for Emily, to put my arms around her, but know she was better off sleeping through the night at Kaylee’s rather than having me pick her up.

  After I left the county building and went home, I couldn’t sleep. I called Reeve, but again his phone went to voicemail and the automated voice informed me that his mailbox was full. I paced and paced. I made myself toast, but couldn’t eat it. I wasn’t hungry. I felt confused, my head pounding with questions and complicated imaginings about Rose, about how the rest of the interview went, about her life and how I could have been so blind. There should have been more clues that she wasn’t right, but other than a few small things—errors and moodiness any young woman might have or make—there really wasn’t much that set off alarm bells. Did that make me a bad mother? And did it make me a bad agent? That I didn’t detect them?

  But then again, I wasn’t with her as much as Emily was. The whole point of hiring Rose was so that I could work. I should have known that a background check means nothing in the scheme of things.

  I couldn’t sleep, but somewhere in the early morning hours, I finally drifted off. Now I go into the bathroom and look in the mirror. My eyes look colorless and swollen, and the fear and anger I feel in the pit of my stomach is temporarily overlain by a film of groggy numbness. I splash water over my face, hoping it will make me feel alive again, and when I’m drying it with a hand towel, my doorbell rings.

  My heart speeds instantly, shattering the grogginess. I run into my room and grab a sweater and head down the stairs. I see Herman through the glass. He’s holding two to-go cups with lids. My pulse slows down and I feel myself soften when I see he’s brought me coffee. I open the door, letting the crisp air filter in and wash over me. I step to the side to let him enter.

  “Americano?” He hands me the cup.

  “Thank you.” I want to say more. I would like to tell him how important it is to me that he’s brought me a cup in the first place. What it means to me to simply see him taking the time to swing by and fill me in, but my throat thickens and I don’t. I wave him to the living room and follow him in. He takes off his overcoat and begins to fold it neatly over the back of the sofa.

  “Would you like for me to hang that up?” I hold out my hand, and I realize it’s trembling. I pull it back in and hug myself.

  “No, it’s fine here. Don’t bother.” He takes a seat on the couch, and I sit kitty-corner to him in the easy chair.

  “How are you holding up?”

  “Okay.”

  “When did you leave? Shackley told me that he asked you to go about halfway through the interview.”

  “I left when she was talking about Kimmie. Justifying her actions, saying that something needed to be done about her. How much did you end up getting from her?” I look down, as if I’m embarrassed. A part of me is self-conscious. Rose has been like family—there’s no denying it—and I should have known something. I shouldn’t have been so trusting.

  “Everything.”

  “Everything?” I look up. “Without an attorney present?”

  Herman takes a slow sip of his coffee, then sets it on the table. “She didn’t request one. It was like she wanted to unload, to pass the burden on finally. I think she thought she could handle it all, but actually killing someone was harder than she thought it would be. As each day passed, she felt worse and worse.”

  “She flat-out admitted to shooting Anne Marie?”

  “Yep. Anne Marie had called her weeks before to discuss the shooting that took place in her home when she was a teenager.” Herman pauses.

  “And?” I want to hear the details. I need to know how it all happened so I can begin to try to make sense of it, if that’s possible.

  “She refused to talk to her then. Said she didn’t know him other than through the trial. But when Anne Marie got to town on Monday, last week, she came to see her, after she had already picked Emily up from school.”

  “And Reeve’s rifle?”

  “She took it out of the locked case in the back of the truck the day her car was in the shop, on Tuesday, the day after Anne Marie came to see her. She said she took it just in case, in order to have something to scare the journalist with in case she didn’t understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  Herman sighs. “Who knows. Whatever lies she wanted Anne Marie to buy—her rationalizations for her pact with Vince Reiko. So she brought Reeve’s rifle here and hid it in her apartment. She knew he probably wouldn’t even realize it was missing since he kept it at the bottom of the storage cabinet, underneath a bunch of his other supplies. She had planned to return it to him and actually tried, the night he was here, on Thursday, but it was locked, and she didn’t have the keys this time.”

  Suddenly I recall how Rose leaned over Reeve’s backpack where he had placed it in the kitchen next to the back door. I thought she was moving it so no one would trip over it, but now I realize she was probably searching for his keys. They weren’t in his pack, though. He keeps them in his pants pocket. “But how did she know where Anne Marie was staying?”

  “When Anne Marie came to see her the first time, on Monday, Rose cut the interview short when she realized what was going on. Anne Marie told her she had a photo of her and Reiko together and Rose told her to leave. She said it wasn’t a good time because she was taking care of Emily.”

  I feel a pang of deep sorrow at the mention of Emily. Was she protecting Emily or simply using her as an excuse to get rid of Anne Marie?

  “So Anne Marie asked her for another meeting when she was leaving,” Herman says. “And Rose began to reconsider—figured it was best if she cooperated and kept her on her good side. Rose said she could talk on Wednesday, when her car wasn’t in the shop, that she could meet her somewhere. But Anne Marie said she couldn’t on that day because she had plans to stay at a friend’s cabin in the North Fork and spend the day out in the woods with a dog handler who works up that way.”

  “But how did Rose know where Vivian lived?”

  Herman continues to fill me in, slowly drinking his coffee and taking his time explaining all of the details. When his cup is empty and we’re done talking, he leans back as if he’s exhausted too. I thank him for going through it all with me and praise him for his fantastic work in the interrogation room.

  “It wasn’t that hard.” He waves it off. “She’s young. Manipulative and calculating, yes, but immature and frightened by her own actions. She didn’t think it all through very clearly. Shooting Anne Marie was impulsive—a half-baked plan. In the long run, she wasn’t going to be able to live with the fact that she had killed her. She was struggling to contain it all, and once she got started, it all came pouring out. You know how it goes, Ali, we’ve seen this so many times before.”

  “I know. It’s just . . . it’s just so . . .” I close my eyes and
feel the sting of my lids. I can’t find any words because I don’t exactly know what I want to say—that it’s unfair, that it’s so crazy, that it’s unbelievable, that it hurts . . . When I open them, I look around the room as if the walls and floor hold the answers for how to deal with all of it. I look out the window at the pale blue sky above, then turn to Herman the same way, as if in his intelligent eyes, he’s got better answers for me, better explanations for why Rose did such a terrible thing. An empty sadness weighs me down, as if I won’t be able to move from my chair. He must see the pain in my expression because he scoots to the edge of the couch, leans toward me, and reaches over with one large hand. He places it on top of my arm resting on the armchair. The warmth of his palm goes through my sweater sleeve and radiates up my arm. That warmth—it’s what Rose wanted too during the interrogation, from her parents. It’s what we all want.

  “Herman,” I say, “I’m so sorry for all of the running around behind your back. For snooping around.”

  “Hey,” he said, “you did help us out in the end.”

  “Were they onto her at all?”

  “They traced Anne Marie’s calls to Rose. But when Brander questioned her, she said Anne Marie just asked her about gun violence and its aftereffects in her household. Beyond that, they didn’t have any further reason to suspect Rose until you called after she’d run.”

  “I should have noticed things much earlier. I mean, she was under my roof, Herman. All this time.”