Mortal Fall

by Christine Carbo

  Ken seemed happier now after seeing the roommate, Marisa, whom he commented was cute, asked me if I’d noticed her big breasts and wondered if I thought they were real or, as he put it, store-bought. When I said I wasn’t entirely sure, but that I thought they were real, he said he was hungry, so we grabbed some soup at the West Glacier Café. When we came back, we only waited five minutes for Beverly to show, and we watched her pull into the large lot in the white vehicle with GOING TO THE SUN ROAD SHUTTLE written across its side and overlapping a graphic design of large peaks. GLACIER NATIONAL PARK stood under those words.

  She stepped out, and locked it up. She was tall, maybe five foot nine or ten, with a thick braid of reddish-blond hair over one shoulder. She wore a cap, khakis, and a white T-shirt, the shuttle driver’s uniform, and threw on a raincoat as she walked toward us. She angled her head slightly to the side as if tilting it a certain way would make the slanted rain miss her.

  I walked toward her and held out my hand and introduced myself and Ken. “I hate to interrupt your break, but do you mind if Officer Greeley and I have a quick word with you. We just have a few questions.”

  She looked at us both, her hazel eyes clear and large. “Sure. Have I done something wrong? Is there a report against my driving?”

  “No, no.” I held up my hand. “Nothing at all like that. This is about a man you apparently used to date, Mark Phillips?”

  “Mark? We broke up over a year ago.”

  I held out my hand to motion to the deck with an overhang to the side of the building. “Here, let’s get out of this.”

  She followed us over, and I motioned for her to sit on one of the wooden benches reused from native trees in the cleared area. “That’s okay,” she said and leaned against the wood railing instead. “Been sitting a lot already.” I stood against it too, and Ken sat on one of the large rock platforms surrounding a massive log pillar supporting the roof over the deck.

  “So what’s this about?”

  “Working up here, I’m sure you’ve heard about the two bodies we’ve found below the Loop.”

  She nodded, her brow furrowed. “Horrible deal. I had several trips delayed because of those incidents.”

  “I’m sorry to inform you that one of them was Mark.”

  “Mark?” she put her hand to her mouth.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She stared at me, stunned, dropping her hand to her sternum, her mouth open in shock.

  “Do you know if he was currently involved with anyone else?”

  She shook her head slowly. “I don’t.” She swallowed hard. “I heard things here and there. That he had a date or two. Oh my God, Mark? Really? Are you positive?”

  “Yes, we’re certain.”

  She put her head down, cupping her face in her hands, then looked up, pursed her lips and shook it off. “What happened?”

  “We’re not sure. Right now, all we can assume is that we had two accidents in the same place.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard, but holy shit. That’s insane.”

  “You can say that again,” Ken chirped up.

  “Ms. Lynde, when was the last time you saw Mark?”

  “It’s been a while. Last fall, before the service closed for the winter. He took my shuttle up for a hike. He hiked a lot. That’s how we met. Before they built this place.” She motioned to the building and new parking area. “The old shuttle system we ran out of Lake McDonald Lodge. I was waitressing there back then. He used to come in for oatmeal and coffee before catching a seven a.m. shuttle to wherever he planned on trekking for the day. He did it every weekend.”

  “Did he continue that ritual after you broke up?”

  “I think he did. Like I said, just last September he was headed up for a hike—that was a few months after we ended things.”

  “So you have no idea what was going on in his life for the past few weeks here?”

  “None. But”—she sighed—“I do know his habits. We dated for over six years.”

  “What happened?”

  She sighed even louder and blew out a large breath. “Mark was a complicated guy. Never happy. I’m pretty sure he was an addict. Always running from himself, could never sit still unless he was making a map or working on something.”

  “What was he using?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Some painkiller. I have no idea where he’d get them from, but I’d seen them around. He saw some doctor for back pain he claimed to have, but it didn’t seem to interrupt his lifestyle. I guess he had a bulging disk. Said hiking helped it. Drank a lot of alcohol as well and probably mixed the two. He liked to gamble and was always broke because of it. Loved to exercise like crazy too, not just by hiking. He went to the gym a lot. Superfit. But, you know, I figured he was addicted to adrenaline too.” She glanced at Ken’s muscles and looked away. “I’m not saying everyone fit is addicted to adrenaline or anything,” she added, I presumed for Ken’s sake.

  “As far as I know,” I said looking at Ken, “the only thing this guy is addicted to is Juicy Fruit.”

  Ken chuckled and Beverly looked confused, even though Ken was clearly working a piece as we spoke.

  “Anyway, my point is that you can simply just be an addict about a lot of things and don’t necessarily need just one drug of choice.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.” I thought of my dad and Adam too. “So is that why you broke up?”

  “Yeah, among other things.” She glanced at the flagpole off to the side of the building, droplets of water clinging to it. “He could really be mean at times. I figured it was all part of his addictive nature. The edginess. And I was lonely with him. He didn’t seem to love or be at peace with himself, so how could I expect him to love me?”

  “Sounds complicated,” I said as if I’d never had a hand in that particular game with complicated people, Adam in particular. Probably my father. Maybe Lara too, and I just hadn’t fully recognized it until the past several years.

  “He could be a great guy too, really charmed me in the beginning—superbright and enjoyable to talk to, but somewhere along the line, he just kept more and more to himself as if the closer we got, the more he pushed me away. I was always catching him in stupid little lies that I swear he told only out of habit. I wanted to get some couples counseling, but”—she threw her hand up in the air—“I don’t know why I’m babbling on like this. Bottom line is that addicts don’t change. They sacrifice anything and anyone around them to keep their vices.”

  “Well, if hiking was a vice, it sure was a healthy one, but it looks like it got the best of him,” Ken said.

  Beverly bit her top lip and she looked like she was holding back tears. She looked at her van, then said, “I should probably go inside before I have to go back on the road.”

  “Just one more question: Do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt Mark?”

  “Mark could piss a few people off, for sure. God only knows if he pissed off someone in Chicago. That’s where he called to place his bets. Some guy named Lucky.” She shook her head and laughed. “Sounds like a bad movie, doesn’t it?” A tear sprang to the corner of her eyes and she wiped it with the butt of her hand. “See, that’s the shit I needed to get away from.”

  I thought of Mark Phillips’s ex, Lisa, and her son, Devlan, moving all the way to Ohio. “Know a last name?”

  “No. I just know the name Lucky.”

  “Where did Mark work out?”

  “That big community one in Whitefish.”

  “Anything else you can think of?”

  She looked at Ken, then me and shrugged. “Like I said, I think he had a few people along the way who didn’t like him much. It didn’t take a lot to set him off, and I pulled him off a few fights here and there when we’d been out having a good time in the bars over the years. I’d heard rumors that when he was younger, he was quite the bully. One guy called him that in the bar after we dated for about a year and when I asked him why, he didn’t have much to say. Just shrugged hi
s shoulders and said the guy was an asshole and a troublemaker, but I always got the feeling there might have been more to the story. Plus I found a Dear John letter from an old girlfriend among some of his old pictures one time and when I asked him about it, he got really angry at me for looking through his things.”

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “It was signed Diane, She must have meant something to him to have kept it. I mean, the letter was dated in the early nineties, maybe ’92 or ’93. I can’t remember exactly, but he had to have been only in his early twenties at the time.”

  “Did it mention anything in particular?”

  “Just the usual young love thing—that she thought he was the one, that it would be the real deal with him, but that he had let her down. That she couldn’t date someone capable of the things she knew he was capable of. That’s what I’d asked him about and that’s when he got so mad and turned it around on me—that I was in the wrong for looking at his personal things. And I suppose I was. But secrecy begets secrecy.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “It does. You still have that letter?”

  “Oh no, he took all his stuff when he moved out. It’s probably at his house though, unless he finally got rid of it.”

  “Would Mark have taken a shuttle up this year?”

  “Possibly.” She squinted to think about it. “Most of the old drivers know him, but some of the newer ones might not.”

  I thanked Beverly for her help after finding out where Mark’s cartography office was in Whitefish and left her in whatever sadness would fall upon her as she took in the death of her ex-lover.

  20

  * * *

  THAT EVENING, I sat in my dorm apartment and took a break from scouring Phillips’s phone records. He had very few incoming or outgoing calls, mostly to coworkers and to several friends around town that we had already checked out. As far as I could see, he had no current relationship going and no particular hiking buddies.

  I was sitting in the old small couch that came with the place and gazed at the system-provided pictures flashing across on my laptop screen saver—scenes of lush rainforests, bronzed deserts, and African savannas. The drizzle had ceased for the evening and in the typical coyness of the park’s spirit, sunlight dipped low enough to break under the clouds and spray the lush foliage with coppery light as if to say, See it’s still stunning here even on the rainy ones. The upper branches of a tall birch outside cast yellowish shifting shadows on the wall beside me and I thought of what Beverly Lynde said about Mark Phillips’s personality. Then I considered his house again. It was not as neat as my place, but I had to admit, it was obvious I lived alone too. I had very few personal touches even though my orderliness showed with my dishes clean and put away, my bed made, throw blankets neatly folded, and my counters tidy.

  Then I thought about Adam. Last I heard, he was living in Coram in a run-down log cabin he’d helped a friend build years ago and doing odds and ends around town for people in the canyon: construction, maintenance on buildings, grounds-keeping for some local hotels, mechanical work on some cars. . . . I had no desire to visit him, but was beginning to wonder what he and Mark Phillips fought about so violently that the police became involved. I didn’t know what I could ever do for Adam, what he expected from me, if anything, and what compensation he needed from me for—as he would claim—“ruining his life.”

  The room felt quiet and peaceful and in my solitary stillness—and because I’m a positive person—I tried to remember the good things about Adam before things turned bad for him, before my dad sent him to the wilderness academy. I had a vague image of a child pulling at my mom’s skirt and trying to ask questions as she shooed him away while frustratingly trying to feed me as I sat in a high chair. I was probably conjuring it up because I couldn’t imagine my memories going that far back. The image was wispy like a feathery cloud, ready to float away at the slightest interruption, and I strained to hold it in my mind but couldn’t. Instead, my thoughts once again drifted to that Halloween night.

  It was appropriately windy and moody with creaking trees dropping their golden leaves under shadowy clouds. The night sky held a pale-purple glow from the three-quarter moon, lighting the bruised clouds creeping across the western horizon. I remember thinking that Nathan had a point as he yelled at me, spittle flying from his mouth, “Crap, Monty. Why can’t you ever stand up to him?” He kicked his foot across some dried, dead weeds. “Can’t you tell by now he was just going to play some trick on us like always?”

  My brother and his friends had just left us in a cemetery north of town—just driven off after cajoling us out of the car.

  “I do stick up to him,” I said in a meager defense.

  “Stand, not stick,” he said, disgusted. “And, no, you don’t.”

  “Stand,” I corrected myself. “But I . . . I swear, I didn’t know. I thought it was about Molly. That’s all.”

  ‘Well, great.” He shook his head angrily. “Fucking loser. That’s what your brother calls you. I think he’s right.”

  “Don’t say that. You’re a fucking loser.”

  He stared back at me, his face twisted in anger. I could feel it heaving from him in waves like the fierce wind pushing through the dying leaves and bending the branches. And it wasn’t just anger; there was something else. Perhaps fear. “I trusted you,” he said, and I realized it was disappointment I was seeing in his expression, not just worry.

  “I know, Nate. Really, I’m sorry, but I thought they wanted our help this time.”

  “You should’ve known.” Nathan turned, mumbling and swearing under his breath, and marched off into the woods. He crossed a fallen log and went into the darkness of the trees, which swallowed him almost instantly.

  It was complicated. My acquiescence to my brother’s proposals and demands wasn’t just borne from stupidity or blind faith. There were a whole host of emotions that played out inside of me: the need to fit in, the hope for my brother’s approval, the raw fear of rejection . . . of abandonment.

  “I really did,” I yelled. “I thought they’d be nice for a change,” I called out and started to follow him. I stepped on the same log he’d gone over, but my foot caught a soft, rotted-out piece and came crashing down into a dip in the ground. My heel jammed backward under the log, and I had to take a second to pry it out, leaning forward like a track racer at his starting line with my fingers splayed in the wet leaves.

  By the time I stood back up, I couldn’t see him. I called to the trees, the patches of darkness from the tall pines swallowing the surrounding landscape, and the clouds shrouding the pale moonlight casting like a film of silvery dust.

  I called several more times, “Aw, come on, Nate. I’m sorry. Come on, wait for me. It’s creepy out here. And freezing. We should stick together.”

  But Nathan didn’t answer, and I kept walking into and through the woods, searching for him in the murky shadows, through the trees, listening for his footsteps but only hearing the groan of the angry wind and the sound of creaking branches. I went farther and farther for I don’t know how long until, cold and exhausted, I saw the lights of a neighborhood and eventually found my way home.

  I never saw Nathan Faraway again.

  • • •

  Afterward, it was the not knowing that cut Adam and me more deeply, and I can’t imagine what it did to Nathan’s family.

  Adam had sworn up and down that it was only supposed to scare us—only to be a trick—that they slowly wove through the cemetery, out to the highway to stop at the 7-Eleven three-quarters of a mile down the road for some Snickers and Mountain Dews and then returned to fetch us, the radio blaring. They had no idea we’d take off into the woods for home.

  I stared at Adam from the doorway to his bedroom. His eyes burned big and round as if they’d never relax again, his mouth stunned and half open. Then, suddenly his brow plunged into a deep furrow, and he broke into a full sob. I’d never seen him cry before, and I was certain he’d been taught some
kind of lesson—his bullying backfiring like a pistol. Teachers said bullies were insecure deep down, and it wasn’t until I saw Adam break down and later drinking too much and getting into more drugs that I was convinced it was true.

  I was full of hope that they’d find Nathan, but I had a sinking feeling in my gut, some instinctive blade—sharp and dangerous as a scythe—slicing into me that things were only going to get worse. Each day that passed without finding Nathan was laced with blackness, and slowly shock gave way to grief. Later, the police’s words to my dad rang in my ears: “We’ve searched every corner of those woods and every house in the neighborhood, and we’ve also looked for large animal tracks—bear and mountain lion. Sometimes we never find what we’re looking for in the woods. Animals have a way of clearing things completely.” I knew then, deep in my bones, things were never going to be the same again, not for the Faraways, for me or my brother. And as I realized that my brother had received some type of lesson that night, I wondered more fiercely what had come Nathan Faraway’s way.

  21

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING I got up, showered, shaved, and put my contact lenses in. Usually I wore my eyeglasses because they were easier and more comfortable, but sometimes I used my contacts if I knew I’d be outdoors so I could just wear my nonprescription sunglasses. And sometimes I simply liked to change it up. I was well aware that I could appear a little too serious, too studious. I didn’t care most of the time. But once in a while, for the sake of how approachable I was in an investigation, it didn’t seem like such a bad thing to pay attention to.

  I headed straight for Glacier Academy for no great reason other than because of my conversation with Phillips’s girlfriend, Beverly, and what she said about Mark being a bully. Plus the fact that the date on the letter from Diane that Beverly mentioned would have been around the time Phillips worked at the Academy also snagged my attention. It sort of fit perfectly into my vague memory of him on the porch yelling at some kid to sweep it, “or I’ll . . .”