Mortal Fall

by Christine Carbo

  The rains had passed through and were replaced by blazing sunshine. Northwest Montana is usually dry, but an unusual humidity pressed in as I drove through a conifer forest, up a long hill, and turned right to the big log building. It looked like some money had been pumped into the place since I’d seen it years ago, the window framing sparkling white against the cinnamon-colored logs. Additional buildings had been built off to the sides and the landscaping looked more professional compared to the rough lawn and encroaching weeds from years before. The grass was cropped evenly and several flower gardens were carved into their own enclaves amid the lawn. Orderly, I thought. It looked proper compared to before, like an orphan taken in and cleaned up.

  Off to my left was a clearing with a volleyball net and a bigger glade past it with goal boxes on each end of the old makeshift soccer field, now completely level, freshly fertilized and appropriately lined.

  I parked, locked the car, and sighed. “Probably just pissing in the wind here,” I mumbled to myself, thinking it could be a shameful waste of my time when I was already five days into the investigation, but my curiosity about the place had been piqued. I considered that there might be some important connections to Mark—that perhaps he’d stayed in touch. I also understood that information gathered from all directions would most likely provide context. The more avenues I went down, the more terrain I could confidently rule out. I would go down as many as needed to make sense of things.

  I found the main office easily on the entry-level floor below the side deck and went in. The smell of the logs hit me. It had a certain bittersweet tug.

  “Oh, hi, sorry.” A woman at a desk on her computer smiled at me. She had a cup of coffee in one hand, was staring at the screen, and had startled when I entered. “I wasn’t expecting anyone. Good morning.”

  “Morning.” I smiled. “I’m Monty Harris.”

  “I’m Penny.” She stood up and set her coffee down. She was wearing a white cardigan over a pink top, had slightly graying hair and glasses. “What can I help you with?”

  “I’m a police officer for Glacier Park and I just had a few questions for you if you don’t mind.”

  Penny’s eyes opened large. “Oh,” she said shyly. “Okay, what for?”

  “Well, for starters, can you tell me who owns this place now?”

  “The Bremers own it. They bought it about fifteen years ago from some organization that, I think, disenfranchised. Before that, I’m not sure.”

  “Are the Bremers around?”

  “Dr. Bremer is. Gets in early every morning to prepare his therapy plans.”

  “Did you work here when it was owned by the last people?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve only been here for about three years.”

  “Do you know why they sold it?”

  “Just that they were moving to a different area. I believe Portland or somewhere closer to the coast. And”—she pursed her lips like she knew a secret—“heard there were a few lawsuits here and there, but I don’t know. That was some time ago.”

  “What were the suits about?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really know. Did you want to see Dr. Bremer?”

  “I don’t have an appointment, but if he has a moment, that would be great.”

  • • •

  Dr. Bremer wore his wavy, graying hair to his shoulders and was deeply tanned, as if he was much younger and lived the life of a surfer. But when he walked, he moved a little crookedly and with a slight limp like he’d played too hard. He came toward me, studying me with his slightly narrowed eyes after Penny introduced us, then smiled and shook my hand and told me to call him Pete.

  “What can I do for you, Officer Harris?” He motioned for me to sit and I did so before his oak desk.

  I wasn’t quite sure what angle to lead into it with, so I decided to hit it head-on. “I’m investigating the death of a man who used to work here.”

  “Here? At our school?”

  “Yes, but it’s been years. Perhaps before you bought it.”

  “Oh, so how can I help then?”

  “First, I was wondering if you had any records on any of the employees that were here under the previous ownership?”

  “I’m afraid just a few. I think the Leefeldts cleared most of those out when they left, but I can double-check files in storage for you. Who, may I ask, are you looking for?”

  “A guy named Mark Phillips. Worked here in the early nineties.” I wrote the Leefeldts’ name down in my notebook.

  “Doesn’t sound familiar to me. He might have left before I bought the place. I can have a look around, but unless he stayed on through the transition, it’s unlikely we would have an employment file on him. Not that many employees from the previous ownership stayed on. Our chef and a few others long gone now.”

  I nodded. “Why’s that?”

  Peter Bremer looked out the window. There was a tapping coming from outside. “Damn woodpecker. Excuse me for a sec.” He went to the door and poked his head out. “Penny, that woodpecker is at it on one of the beams again. Can you please have Mitch scare him off?” He closed the door and came and sat back down. “Sorry about that. They do a lot of damage, you know.”

  “Try a decoy owl,” I offered. “Doesn’t always work because eventually they figure it out, but it might distract him in the beginning, just long enough so he finds some other wood.”

  “I’ll do that.” He smiled, crow’s-feet fanning out from the corners of his eyes, and pointed his pen at me. “So, where were we?”

  I felt like I was buzzing, like I had a humming motor inside me broadcasting my eagerness to ask questions. “I was wondering why not many employees stayed when you bought the place.”

  “Mostly, it was our decision: my wife’s and mine and the other two therapists who were part of our team. There were some lawsuits associated with the last place and we didn’t want to bring any of that—shall we say, energy—into our new model for running things.”

  “Model?”

  “I don’t know how much you know about these types of schools, but there are different frameworks for running programs, sometimes no system at all and just a free-for-all. There are no federal laws, like there are in public education. Anyone can hang a shingle and use whatever behavior modification programs they choose for these troubled teens. Often the people running them are more interested in the money than in the well-being and maturation of the children sent to them. Families pay anywhere from forty to sixty a year for their child to get”—he hung quotation marks in the air with two fingers hooking on each side—“straightened out.”

  “So there’s no federal oversight?” I felt silly for not knowing such a thing given the fact that my own brother attended such a school. I’d put very little thought into it as it was a decision made by my father and that was that. In retrospect, it hadn’t really helped Adam all that much and now I wondered how much my father paid to have him attend, not because the money mattered, but because it seemed an injustice that no real benefit seemed to come from it. Adam was still an angry, miserable alcoholic with little maturity or ambition.

  “None. So the states can oversee the facilities but state regulators often hesitate to step in because the programs exist in such an ill-defined area of the law, many of them running under religious affiliations that can avoid government oversight, which, of course, includes the state. Anyway, our team tries to make this place”—he gestured with one hand to his surroundings—“different. We really have good outcomes here because we really do treat our young adults, not just discipline and punish them. We’ve worked very hard over the past seven years to make this a state-of-the-art facility with a high success rate.”

  “So were the suits against the last place because their model was based more on discipline and less on treatment?” I thought of Adam again and his sulky, angry face, and wasn’t sure I wanted the answer, but I still felt the hum inside me, revving, wanting answers.

  “I’m not sure of all the details, b
ut that’s the idea I got. There were allegations of mistreatment and abuse by some of the adolescents and their families. They filed suits. The Leefeldts . . . they weren’t the owners; they just managed the place. The actual owners were a corporate entity called Global Schools. Apparently”—he cringed—“one of their schools paid four million even without the company admitting liability some years after a seventeen-year-old girl hanged herself in a bathroom stall at one of their facilities in Utah. Since then, the place closed, and after that, other suits came rolling in.

  “Global Schools divested ownership of them. A number of them closed and some of them survived like ours, but many of them continued to use the disciplinary template of Global, which in my humble opinion is quite ineffective.” He sighed, then proudly lifted his chin. “I have an MD in psychiatry, and I fully believe there can be no effective treatment without a well-thought-out and careful multipronged approach of counseling, education, academics, physical exercise, and duties that lead to individual successes. Fostering maturity through confidence is key.”

  “Sounds difficult,” I said. I could still hear the tapping coming from outside, like a persistent dare.

  “It’s a challenge, but worthwhile.” He smiled and seemed truly sincere. I thought of my mother and her lack of proper care: various doctors all prescribing different medicines with none of them taking the time to talk to each other to get the protocol straight.”

  “Can I ask what type of disciplinary procedures were in place here before you took over?”

  “That I couldn’t say. I’d just be speculating, but if you were really interested, I suppose those suits are public record. I did hear one story from a cook that stayed on with us that one student was required to carry buckets of water for hours and hours as a disciplinary measure for cutting herself; whether that is gossip, I can’t confirm. Again, I just want to stress that these facilities can be highly effective if done with proper therapeutic supervision and care, and this one is.” He narrowed one eye at me. “You’re not here to generate old, bad press for us, are you? I mean, we had enough of that when we started and we’ve worked hard to make this place what it is today.”

  “No, doctor. Absolutely not. Just trying to understand the poor fellow we found at the bottom of a cliff, that’s all,” I said, trying to decide if I liked Peter Bremer. I usually do with a guy who likes to get the job done, but I wasn’t quite sure about him. “Last question, Dr. Bremer.”

  “Please, Pete.”

  “Pete,” I called him. “The chef you mentioned—does he still work here?”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “Do you mind if I ask him if he remembers Mark Phillips?”

  “Go right ahead. His name is Nick Ferron. Penny will know when he comes in again for his shift.”

  He paused. “And I have a question for you: Does this have something to do with the guy found below the Loop? The man I read about in the paper?”

  “Possibly.” Since it hadn’t been released yet that the second man we found was Mark Phillips, I didn’t want to say much more. I flipped my notebook closed and stood up. “I’ll check with Penny on the way out.” The tapping continued as Dr. Bremer walked me to his door. “Better get that owl,” I said as I left his office.

  • • •

  Some amount of adrenaline had surged through me while talking to Dr. Bremer and had me amped up. I told myself to be careful, that I was not, most definitely not, getting paid to look into Adam’s young adult life. I figured I better watch my motives and use of time, but I was feeling a strange sort of revving hunger after talking to the doctor, and I wasn’t sure if it was coming from the fact that I was now not only a policeman, but I was an investigator. And, let’s get this straight: I was really liking detective work. I thought of that woodpecker determinedly tapping away. I could relate.

  I stepped outside. The air smelled of spruce and fir needles and the sharp tang of recently passed rainstorms. For five and a half years, I was a game warden, four of them spent manning game stops to check that hunters had the appropriate tags matching the game in their vehicles, patrolling the field, testifying in court, and listening to poachers’ excuses and flat-out lies for why the female pheasant was shot, why the grizzly was accidentally killed, why the lynx was taken without a permit. Then, as Park Police, I was often still in the field of lies and dishonesty: some poor excuse for why someone was speeding, stole something from another camper, or was camping without a permit. Or worse—having to put myself in the middle of a married couple fighting at their campsite under the brilliant stars or trying to negotiate with neighboring campers jumping into petty rows over parking spaces.

  All of that involved common sense, a keen eye, and wits, but with detective work, it was a different kind of game of gotcha involving a finely tuned intuition and lots of research. A comment from Wolfie’s notes flashed in my mind, that wolverines seem to come into this world wired with mega amounts of attitude. There were several accounts describing their ferocity against even the most formidable foes, such as hungry grizzlies at feeding time. I couldn’t help feeling that same surge of power within me—that even though I felt far away from answers, I was equipped to conquer this case with the combination of my wits and my skills. I was pretty certain that was what was making me feel electric. This was no simple case of issuing a speeding ticket.

  However, I was no idiot. My thorough nature compelled me to pay attention to a yellow flashing warning light in the corner of my peripheral instinctual vision signaling to me that I could be getting matters confused—that I was somehow crossing the desire to understand some element of my past—hence all the thoughts of Adam and Nathan breathing down my neck lately—with the investigation at hand.

  Wolfie, I thought. Think of Wolfie. That’s where the case began. I pulled out my phone and listened to my messages. Cathy Sedgewick left a message wondering what progress I’d made on the case, and Lara wanted me to ring her back. I called Ken to see if he’d had any hits on a man named Rowdy because I wanted to ask him about the wolverine traps. I also wanted to speak to Nick Ferron, the Glacier Academy cook, who would be coming in at three in the afternoon to prepare for the school’s five p.m. dinner. As for Cathy and Lara, I’d put those calls off for the time being.

  22

  * * *

  SO IT’S THE traps you’re wondering about?” The man, Rowdy, said to me in the Huckleberry Stop Café in Hungry Horse. Ken hadn’t found anything about Rowdy—who he was or his whereabouts—so I went back to Melissa’s at the Outlaw’s Nest and she told me to try the café because he apparently hung out there a lot.

  “Yes,” I said. “The ones the biologist set out up the South Fork, near the reservoir and toward Spotted Bear Campground.”

  He stared at me, his face wrinkled and leathery and his hair turning white as cotton above his ears, around his temples and on his scraggly beard. I figured he was around sixty. The rest of his lighter brown hair fell in an uncombed mess, parting in various greasy gullies to reveal his scalp. I thought of the times my dad had asked me to help my mother brush her long, brown hair when she was too depressed—too lacking of energy—to do something as simple as that. I pushed the thought away. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m investigating some suspicious falls in the park.”

  “So I’ve heard,” he said, smiling and chuckling.

  “Do you think that’s funny?”

  “Not funny.” He shrugged. “I just smile when I’m sad.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “So, you’re a cop?” Rowdy pulled out a small flask and added a good amount of what looked like whiskey to his afternoon milk shake which he had explained to me was strawberry because the huckleberries weren’t out yet and wouldn’t be for two or three more weeks. “Need a splash for your coffee?”

  I ignored his offer. “I’m a police officer for the Department of the Interior. I work in Glacier Park.”

  “Woo hoo,” he said sarcastically. “Big-time crime.”
>
  The exhilaration I’d felt earlier was quickly evaporating. “I hear you wish you were a game warden,” I threw his way, trying to find some higher ground, then took a sip of my coffee.

  “Me? Nah, are you kidding? Game warden? Who’d you get that from?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know that’s what you’re referred to ’round here? But, yeah, I know you’ve never been one, at least not in Montana.”

  He quit smiling and for a split second, his face contorted into a sad frown, then he forced a grin again and stared at me with his head cocked to one side.

  “So, what’s the story? Why do they call you a warden if you’re not one?”

  “I guess ’cause I know law,” he said, “and I know a thing or two about trapping laws. I’ve given advice to some folks around here on some legal matters involving poaching charges and whatnot.” He waved his hand in the air.

  “Legal advice?”

  Again, a flicker of sadness flashed across his face before he plastered another grin onto his face. “I used to be an attorney,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Attorney?” I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not.

  “I went to law school at the University of Montana in the early seventies, and I practiced in Columbia Falls for a number of years, but in the long run, things, well, things just didn’t quite work out the way I’d planned.”

  I sat silently, taking in what he was saying. He wore a dirty white T-shirt and baggy cargo pants stuffed into untied boots. He was wiry and bony with no belly at all and a jagged scar traced from his collarbone to somewhere under his shirt, toward his right shoulder.

  “What?” he pressed. “You don’t look like you believe me?”

  “I believe you,” I said. “So why didn’t things work out the way you planned?”

  “Just didn’t.” He took another sip of his whiskey-spiked shake, and I had a feeling that booze had some role to play in his plans going awry. I suspected drugs too, possibly meth, given its copious supply in the canyon and Rowdy’s jaw looking too sharp and slightly caved in, one of the effects of meth use. If I knew his real name, I was certain I could find him in the system. But in general, he looked like a guy with many secrets. His eyes reminded me of what I could recall of my brother’s: almond-shaped and flashing with a life’s worth of harm, sadness, and a sprinkle of satisfaction derived from all the mischief created in the process.