Mortal Fall

by Christine Carbo

  I fidgeted. Again Nathan’s small, round face flashed in my mind and an anger at my brother—a fury I hadn’t felt so strongly since I was young—surged through me like a drug and made me feel flustered and light-headed. To think that Nathan might have been stalked that night by the stealthiest hunter of the woods—a lion with sharp vision and graceful, undetected moves, an animal capable of leaping great distances—because of Adam’s cruel trick made me shudder. I shook off the image of Nathan’s slight frame being crunched in a mountain lion’s steely jaws and chalked it up to the fact that I was still a little nauseous standing before these corpses with the smell of decay and disinfectant permeating my senses.

  Wilson gave me an Are-you-okay look, tucking his chin in. I could tell he was used to this scenario and made a habit of checking to see if anyone was going to faint on his table.

  I gave a small nod to signal I was fine.

  “Again, entomology will clarify the gestation and that should narrow the time of death to at least the correct day or two.” Wilson pointed to one intact rib. “This is the fourth rib, and we usually can get close to the age by looking at the third, fourth, and fifth ribs through the amount of pitting and the condition of the edges. With this fourth one”—he motioned his finger along the rib’s edge—“I see just enough pitting to suggest he’s past his twenties, possibly into his early forties, but probably not late forties or over. I’m guessing he’s in his midthirties to early forties. I see no arthritis at all in the joints that are left, which also suggests he’s either around or under forty.”

  “DNA?” I asked.

  “Yes, we were able to get some from the eye sockets. Hopefully it’s not contaminated from the lion. It’s possible he’s in CODIS.” He was referring to the Combined DNA Index System, the FBI’s program of support for criminal justice DNA databases. “But I wouldn’t get your hopes up because we’ve soaked the hand with the fingers—the one with the watch still on it—in glycerin and been able to get some pretty accurate prints, but there’s no matchup with anything on WIN AFIS.”

  WIN was a consortium of state and local law enforcement agencies that used a shared network and Automated Fingerprint Identification System so law enforcement services could search criminal and civil fingerprint records of member agencies. So far, Alaska, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming used the WIN AFIS service bureau containing millions of print records and a growing number of palm prints and other record types.

  “And he’s not in the system?”

  “Nope. So, as I said, chances of being in CODIS are slim too.” If there had been no prints supplied for WIN, then he’d never been arrested and the chances of DNA samples were slim, unless a sample had been collected from some other crime.

  “What about the watch or the tattoo?”

  “Ah, yes. I was saving the best for last. So, this tattoo here—we couldn’t have got any luckier, unless, of course, he was in the system and we already had a match. But without that, the tattoo is a very, very good lead. A bison and an arrow . . .”

  “Yeah, almost looks Native American.”

  “Yes, it does, but it’s not. Or, I should say, he’s not. He’s definitely Caucasian. The tattoo is done in a very simple, minimalistic form with only one color of ink. I’ve given it to our chemist to check out the pigment to see how much carbon it contains. I think with a little luck”—he lifted his head to me—“we should be able to track down the artist. Judging by the look of it, I’m guessing he’s local. Plus there’s always broadcasting the tattoo and watch over the media and seeing if it sounds familiar to anyone. The watch is nothing special and won’t tell us anything. Your basic Fossil, could even be ordered from Amazon. There is a serial number if you want to track it.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “That could help. Will you be able to get a good tox screen?”

  “We should. We’ve got enough fluids,” Wilson said.

  14

  * * *

  AFTER RETURNING TO Glacier, I told Ken about the call from Sam Ward regarding Will DeMarcus’s brother working for Wolfie. We decided to head to the Snow Ghost in Whitefish for a visit, but it was the lunch hour and when we went in, another bartender told us that Will wasn’t working. We got his address from the restaurant manager who looked up his paperwork and drove to an area by the railroad district in Whitefish, where Will was renting an apartment in an affordable housing complex, one of only two in the town. The weather was starting to change with bruised, gray clouds forming over the mountains and the temperature dropping rapidly from the midseventies to the low sixties. Green trees vibrantly lined the streets, their leaves quaking and shimmering like opal chimes in the cold, strong breezes pushing in.

  “This bartender? You think he has something to do with all of this?”

  “Not sure. Just checking all tips. I’ve met this guy before when I talked to Pritchard the other day. He didn’t say anything about his brother working for Wolfie, and I find that omission strange, but maybe he just didn’t know about it.”

  Ken looked out to a row of recently built condos housing private residences and various businesses, the town’s attempt to gentrify the area by the railways of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe. A little farther north, I found a spot near the housing complex to parallel-park. I put on the hand brake even though the street was flat because you never can be too careful.

  “So, Mr. Detective.” Ken opened his door. “Do you have any ideas at all about what happened out there?”

  “I don’t,” I admitted, ignoring the Mr. Detective teasing as I got out of the car and locked the doors. “All I can do is follow whichever leads come our way. The thing that’s bugging me is that one had a car”—I pointed to ours—“and one didn’t. It would suggest they’re unrelated.”

  “Hmmm.” Ken humored me. “Just coincidental then?”

  “Seems unlikely, but stranger things have probably occurred,” I said as we walked over to the apartment complex. “In this line of work, we kind of stick with the adage that there are no coincidences.”

  “Hmmm,” Ken said again.

  I smiled, glad to have him along even though he wasn’t offering much. We climbed to the second floor of the two-story complex. Will lived in the third one on the right. We stopped in front of a paint-chipped brown door and I knocked.

  “Who is it?” the voice barked from inside.

  “Mr. DeMarcus?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Park Police Monty Harris.” I glanced at Ken and whispered, “Not as friendly as I thought.”

  Ken shrugged.

  “We’d like to talk with you a bit,” I said.

  He opened the door wearing jeans and no shirt. His hair was crumpled, and he wiped his eyes. He must have been sleeping, which explained his grumpiness. “Oh, yeah, I remember you. From lunch the other day.”

  “That’s right. Can Officer Greeley and I come in?”

  “Sure. I worked the late shift last night. Just trying to catch some shut-eye. Can you tell me why?”

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “I already told you I don’t know anything about that guy you were asking me about.”

  “Not only about that.”

  Ken glanced at me and then eyed Will DeMarcus. Will was about the same size as Ken, pale-skinned and muscular in the arms, but a soft paunch beginning to form around his waist. Will opened the door farther and stepped aside to let us in, motioning grandly with his hand for us to enter.

  Will’s living room was small and cluttered, opening to a balcony that looked out to the ski runs of the Whitefish Mountain Resort. The ski hill used to be called Big Mountain until, rumor had it, online booking options increased, and Big Sky Ski Resort in the Bozeman area started popping up instead of Big Mountain, so the ski area’s management decided to change its name. The locals would forever call it Big Mountain.

  Ken walked over to the window and peered out. “Nice view,” he said, flicking his gum forward on his lower teeth
. The room smelled like smoke. A dirty ashtray and some Bud bottles sat on the coffee table along with an open and empty pizza box.

  “Thanks, yeah, it was an unintentional perk. I didn’t rent it for the view. I had a buddy who was living here and when he left, I took it over. Hard to find good rentals in this town for the right price.”

  I motioned to a beige chair by the couch. “Okay if we sit?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Will moved some clothes off the side of the couch and Ken took a seat while I took the chair. Will sat next to Ken.

  “So I hate to bring this up, but we’re here to ask you about your brother.”

  “My brother?” Will squinted.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry for your loss, but I’ve been informed that he used to work for Paul Sedgewick—the guy who lost his life in the park a few days ago.”

  “Wolfie was the guy my brother was working for? The guy who died?”

  “Yes, weren’t you aware that your brother worked for him?”

  Will shook his head, grabbed a box of Camels, and fished out a cigarette and tapped it on the side of the pack. “Okay if I smoke?”

  I personally hated cigarette smoke and, thankfully, working in the park required very little of my time in its presence, but I said, “Sure, no problem.”

  “Anyone?” He held up the pack and moved it between Ken and me. We both declined.

  “I knew he worked a short stint in the park in the spring,” Will said as he put the cigarette to his lips. “But I didn’t know exactly for who and doing what. My brother and I weren’t that close. He was kind of a recluse. Liked to keep to himself a lot. I called him one day last summer and he said he was working up there, helping some guy with some research or something, but he didn’t say what kind, and that made sense to me because I figured that most seasonal workers for the park came from all over the nation for just the summer months. I figured he had to be working for someone local doing something in the park, and not the Park Service itself.”

  “And you didn’t know Wolfie—Sedgewick—was a biologist doing some research in the Park?”

  Will shook his head as he lit his cigarette, drawing in a few times to get a strong glow at its tip. “I think I knew he was some kind of a scientist, but not sure what kind and no, I didn’t know that he was doing anything in the park workwise.” He furrowed his brow and studied me, “But”—he sighed—“my brother committed suicide. There was no foul play or anything. What in the world would he have had to do with this? Are you concerned there was some kind of foul play with my brother?”

  “No, nothing like that and not necessarily Sedgewick either,” I said. “We just have to look at all angles, for insurance purposes, for the family, and all that. You can understand.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “But what does that have to do with me or my brother?”

  “Just that your brother used to work for him. Again, just checking all angles. Wondered if you knew something we didn’t.” Suddenly, it began to rain and all three of us looked to the windows where heavy drops flew sideways, popping against the glass.

  “I knew our June had been too nice so far,” Will said, but his face looked suddenly sad and tired.

  “June moisture keeps the August forest fires at bay,” Ken offered.

  I looked down at my notes. “Your brother,” I said. “How did he take his life?”

  Will looked at the floor for a moment and rubbed the back of his neck in a fatigued gesture. “He OD’d on Vicodin. Respiratory failure.”

  “Did he have drug issues?”

  Will shook his head. “He had depression issues.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” I, if anyone, understood what it was like to have a family member with such issues. “Who found him?” I asked.

  “His landlady. After a few days when she didn’t see him coming or going, but saw his car out front hadn’t moved the entire time.” DeMarcus crushed his cigarette out in the dirty ashtray and looked at me, his face serious and sad. “It took us off guard. It’s been hard, especially for my mom.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. Hearing the rain tap against the glass, I felt a pang of empathy and melancholy for him.

  “Is there anything else? Because I really need to get some sleep this afternoon or I won’t be worth shit at work tonight.”

  “Just to dot the i’s and cross the t’s,” I said. “Have you been up in the park for any reason in the last week or past few days?”

  Will smiled and half-squinted as if to say, Is this for real, then shook his head. “No, no, I have not. I’ve been working a lot lately. Feel free to ask my manager.”

  I closed my notebook, thanked him for his time, and Ken and I headed into the pouring rain, letting it splatter our jackets as we ran down the street to the car.

  15

  * * *

  WE’VE GOT AN ID on the body,” Gretchen said as she came into the incident room. She was wearing her hair loose on her shoulders and not tied back as it usually was when she was on duty. She had on khaki cargo pants and an I Heart Montana T-shirt with a report in one hand and a dripping raincoat in the other.

  I reached out as she handed me the report.

  “The tattoo turned out to be helpful after all. We were able to locate the artist who uses the ink, and he remembered the tattoo, even took photos of it for future design selection for his own records. Said the guy’s name was Phillips—even had his name and address on file with the photo. Once we had a name to go on, odontology clarified it. We checked and found he lived alone and worked in his office only part-time, which is why he never hit missing persons.”

  “Entomology clarified TOD also. The hatch of the bluebottle blowfly larvae looks to be about five to seven days underway before we got to the body on the twenty-fifth. They took into consideration the day, evening and night temperatures for that week using forty-five to fifty degrees at night and midseventies during the days.”

  I took the report out of the manila folder and skimmed it. Phillips, Mark. Forty-year-old male with a Whitefish address. “Mark Phillips,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, Mark Preston Phillips.”

  “Huh. I think I knew him.” It occurred to me how strange the undergrowth of our lives was, how roots, weeds, and shrubbery tangled themselves and looped around in peculiar, and sometimes grotesque, ways.

  “You knew him too?” Gretchen said. Rain still steadily fell and everything outside my window was a lush, deep green. Gretchen’s skin looked clear and dewy in the natural light. I stared at her, perhaps a moment too long. I was not only taking in the complete view of her fair skin and vivid blue eyes, I was also remembering Mark Phillips. The attractive, vibrant person before me contrasted with the old, faded image—like sepia in my mind—of the man I’d found eviscerated on the side of the mountain. She fidgeted, waiting for my answer.

  “I, uh, yeah,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Some time ago.”

  Mark Phillips. The name burned a hole in my mind. I had not heard it in years and with it came a link like an anchor to things dark, things under the surface that I’d long ago gotten a grip on and stopped thinking about. Now, all of a sudden, like a mean wave from the past, it was pushing, dirty and murky into the present through nothing but chance, coincidence . . . I hated to think, fate.

  Something in my face must have shown strain. “Something bad happen with him?” She tilted her head to the side, her blond hair fanning across her shoulder.

  “Nah,” I said, and it was true. Nothing bad had happened with Phillips. It was what happened before Phillips—what happened to send my brother to the place Phillips worked at. “Just trying to remember. I knew him years ago. Must have been in his early twenties at the time. He was a counselor at Glacier Academy.” I threw my head in the direction of where the academy still resided about seven or eight miles down the road. “My brother used to go there his last year of high school and our family would visit him on Sundays. I remember seeing him around.”

  “What’s he do now or w
hat did he do I should say? Does he still work there?”

  “I have no clue. I haven’t thought about the place in years.”

  “It’s still running, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Last I heard, it was.” I made a mental note that I should check into it. It was at least twenty years ago that I’d remembered Mark working there, but perhaps he continued to work at the place for many more.

  I could picture him now. For a counselor, he seemed wild and reckless, and slightly complicated. All the kids there were supposedly troubled in one way or another, and I really had no idea what kind of snags their lives might have had. In my mind, they still seemed unburdened, sane, and well ordered in comparison to mine and my brother’s, riddled with all its complications.

  My mother, dealing with her severe bouts of paranoia and depression, stayed in a lot, while my father, a functioning alcoholic and prone to his own bouts of moodiness, held the fort down, eventually running one of the largest construction companies in the valley at the onset of its boom in the early and midnineties and going through a six-pack or more every night after work.

  This left large pockets of time for my much larger and older brother to—shall we say, take me under his wing. Although “wing” is much too delicate a description for my brother. Wing implies feathery softness and gentle nurturing. My brother’s definition of care was accusing me of being a candy-ass and showing me that bucking up and taking the pain was the law of the land—that bullying was acceptable and, in fact, a man’s way—a sort of survival of the fittest.

  Eventually, my brother got himself into all sorts of trouble, drinking and doing drugs until my father, suddenly rolling in some dough from his booming construction business, sent him to the Glacier Academy, a therapeutic school for troubled teens mainly used by wealthy families from other parts of the United States who could afford to send their kids somewhere in the hopes that counselors, teachers, and the unforgiving Wild West would set them straight. Tough love at a premium price.