Mortal Fall

by Christine Carbo

Through the roaring waves of their laughter, I heard it—a low mumble, a car motor . . .the crunch of tires on pavement in my drive. I woke with a start and instantly thought, one of Dorian’s clan. I felt my heart pound in my ribs. For a moment, I was frozen with terror because I felt helpless, as if Adam might be right, as if he really had protected me all along, and I wasn’t capable of defending myself. I shook it off and eased myself up and off the couch and slowly reached for my gun from the coffee table where I had placed it while working, the waffle grip of the handle and the weight of it instantly reassuring.

  I walked across my tiny living room in small steps, trying to move sleek as a cat, but my toe caught with a rip on the lounge chair’s leg and I shot forward, lunging toward my front door. I caught myself before slamming into it and stood between the door and the front window. I cocked my elbow and held my gun before my chest. I craned my neck and peeked through the side of the window as I heard a car door carefully shut.

  It was dark outside, one inky-black blanket spread across the entire front patch of lawn and driveway, and I fought for my eyes to see through it as I heard the shuffling sound of footsteps. I braced the pistol with both hands and made my wrists firm and held it close to my side, my heart now in my throat. When my eyes finally adjusted and I made out who it was, I heard myself make a sound—half sigh, half moan. It was Lara. As she gently knocked, I relaxed my grip, hit the porch light, and opened the door.

  She looked down by my side at the gun. I walked over, turned a lamp on, and set it back on the table.

  “Your gun.” She motioned to it. I suddenly felt ashamed. In all the years we’d been together, she’d never seen me have it out like that. I always had it stored safely away in a drawer at home and never had felt the need, even when we’d heard strange noises outside. A gun was never a solution to any situation when I was at home and off duty, and she knew it. “Did I scare you?”

  “I had dozed off. You took me by surprise.”

  “I called you, but you didn’t answer.”

  I grabbed my phone off the coffee table and looked. Sure enough, she had called twice, and I noted the current time: eleven thirty. “I guess I forgot to put the ringer back on.”

  She stood quiet for an awkward moment, then said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. I know it’s late. I guess I shouldn’t have just come like this, but I couldn’t sleep.”

  “No, no, it’s fine. Here, have a seat.” I held my palm out. “It’s no problem. I was wanting to get more work done anyway. If you hadn’t have come, I probably would have slept right through till morning.”

  “Is, is everything okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I was just going to ask you the same. What brings you here this late? Is everyone all right?”

  “Oh, everyone’s fine. Most of my family has left by now. I just wanted to see you.”

  I offered her some tea, water, or wine and she said, “No, thanks,” then added, “Are you angry I came?”

  “No, no, of course not. Look, I know I shouldn’t have left you like that, but . . .” I sank into my armchair, my legs still shaking slightly from the instant push of adrenaline, then relief that it was only Lara, then fear that it was Lara and that something serious had happened to bring her by so late. I was going to continue speaking, but then realized I didn’t really have anything to say. I wasn’t interested in apologizing to her, not for what happened at her family reunion. If anything, I was still on the angry side, but I pushed it down and asked, “How’ve you been?”

  “I’ve been okay.”

  “And your family? How’d they take the news?”

  “I . . .” She looked down at her hands. “I didn’t really fully explain the situation.”

  “Seriously? How’d you explain to your mom that I left, headed home?”

  “Told her that you were really busy on a case that required you to stay up in Glacier for a few days.”

  “And she bought that?” I squinted at her.

  “Kind of, I mean, your black eye sort of demonstrated that you were in something serious. Maybe she and my sisters didn’t buy it completely, but they didn’t push it. I don’t think they really want to know either. I think they probably suspect something, but no one wanted to deal with it while we were all together for a reunion.”

  Here I had been thinking that I’d left Lara with a major drama on her hands, dealing with her humongous family and her critical parents who would be disapproving and outraged at first, pumping her for the truth and endlessly encouraging her to get back together with me, just as she’d been claiming they would if I didn’t help out and put on false pretenses that we were fine. A part of me had felt sorry for her to have to handle it all, and now I realized, she’d just sidestepped it, avoided the conflict altogether. And they were happy to do the same. The thought of it made whatever warmth I was feeling to see Lara so unexpectedly, quickly vanish. “I see,” I said. “So why are you here?”

  The repetition of my question made her fidget and she looked irritated that I’d asked it again. “I told you, I wanted to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know exactly why, Monty. Do I need a reason?”

  I didn’t answer. I knew I wasn’t making this easy on her, but I didn’t care. She certainly hadn’t made the past year a walk in the park.

  “I just, I don’t know, wanted to check on you. See how you’re doing. I felt bad about the way things were left.”

  “I did too, Lara. I did too.”

  “And Adam?”

  “What about him?”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because”—she bit a cuticle on her thumb—“because, I don’t know, because of the way things ended that day. It was so crazy and you were so angry, and . . .” She dropped her hands and plopped them heavily into her lap.

  “I was angry for a reason, Lara. You had lied to me. Did you forget?”

  “I just didn’t tell you everything because I know how you feel about him and I knew you’d overreact. It was just a fib. You’re making it into a huge deal.”

  “If you’d been talking to my brother, you should have told me.”

  “I had no idea he’d show up there. I was just as surprised as you.”

  “You didn’t seem all that surprised.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Jesus, what’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing’s going on with me.”

  “You look, I don’t know, tired and stressed, and for goodness sake, getting your gun out?”

  In that moment, I almost told her to go to hell and to leave. My resentment surprised me, how easily it ballooned, making my head spin and say things I knew I’d regret. As hurt as I was when I moved out, I’d never felt this rush of fury before. How dare she walk into my small haven in Glacier Park where I came to lick my wounds, to grieve the fraying of our marriage, and have her tell me I looked stressed? “Look,” I said when I was sure I’d reined it back in, “I don’t want to fight. I’m just, I guess I’m just really frustrated right now. I told you that when your reunion was done, I wanted to get this solved. Are you ready to do this thing?”

  Lara looked down at her hands. She was holding her keys in her left hand. She had quit wearing her wedding ring months ago, and then I had followed her lead. That had stung too. “Do what thing exactly?”

  “You know, move forward with things . . .” It was difficult to say the word. She looked up at me, her eyes drooping and sad. She looked like a child. “With the divorce.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  I stared back at her. I wanted her to leave, but I also wanted her to stay because I wanted answers, and I was so tired of living in limbo, of feeling like no matter what I did, there was my wrecked marriage sticking to me like it was steel and I was a magnet. It seemed as if she could go on and on living this way, and that thought alone made me lose respect for her. Problems needed to be solved, no
t just splayed all over the place for you to trip over every minute of your life. “I don’t know exactly what I want, but I know I don’t want this anymore”—I waved my hand between the two of us—“and I’m sensing we can’t go back, so that leaves one last option.”

  “So you just want to give up, just like that?”

  My bubble of patience was shrinking. “Lara, what the fuck do you want from me?”

  She looked at me horrified, her eyes widening—two large pools of blue. I never swore at her.

  “To just to sit on the sidelines forever?” I continued. “To wait here for you whenever you need me? In the meantime you can do whatever you please, including getting a relationship going with my estranged brother?”

  “You know that’s not at all what I’ve done. You’re being totally ridiculous.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes, Monty. Yes, you are. Why do you have such a problem with your brother?”

  “You know why. Why are you sitting here acting like you don’t know me?”

  “I don’t know everything about you. I don’t know why you’d pull a gun out when the Monty I know would never have done that. I don’t know why you’d hate your own brother so much after all these years and wouldn’t let bygones be bygones. Just because he did some bullying and made some bad choices as a teenager doesn’t mean he’s some evil villain trying to ruin your life now.”

  “I never said he was. But I’m also adult enough to decide who I want to have in my life at this point. Who’s toxic and who’s not, and quite frankly, I think my brother is pretty damn toxic.”

  “Well, maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you don’t know everything and have every little thing figured out—squared away all perfectly like you think you do.” Lara held her chin high and proud.

  “Okay, okay.” I rubbed the back of my neck and took a long, deep breath to try and find logic. “Maybe I am, so here’s the deal, forget about my brother. This isn’t about him. Clean and simple: you changed your mind about having children and when you couldn’t persuade me to come to your side of things, you wanted to split. So here we are, and I, well, I still haven’t changed my mind.”

  “Because you won’t even consider it, Monty. You made up your mind when you were young and because you are who you are—”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean, like I was saying, because you like everything neat and squared away, all the answers in place, you think that the whole baby issue is simple—a readable case of genetics—and you’ve put that aside, nice and neat and squared away in your mind and you won’t even consider it. But there are two of us and marriage requires compromise and sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice if it’s coming from my end, not yours.”

  Lara’s back arched off the couch, rigid and ready to fight, and her mouth twisted in disgust at what I’d just said, but she didn’t have a retort.

  “How do you know what I’ve considered and what I haven’t?” I said, trying to make myself sound calm and together, before she racked her brain for some lame example of sacrifice on her end. “I’ve spent months alone, Lara. You think this has been fun? I’ve had plenty of time to think through all our issues, just as you wanted, and guess what? No matter how I thought it through, it just didn’t work for me. I still feel the same way, and, well, you know that. You’ve known it all along, so the ball’s in your court. It’s simple, stay with me as we planned when we got married or move on. But either way, I’m not doing this anymore.”

  “So my indecision is going to become your decision?”

  “Yes, yes.” My head was bobbing up and down ridiculously fast. I hadn’t been this direct with her since we split up, with this kind of impatience and anger fueling me. I’d always been straightforward, but the patient and understanding one no matter how clean I tried to be. And I certainly hadn’t planned on saying any of these things to her this evening. Now, I felt like I was flying a jet and about to release a bomb right onto our marriage for good. It made me feel strange and scared—almost dangerous and slightly off-kilter, like my mind was shifting, floating with hypoxia, and I was just going to go with wherever it went whether I had planned to or not.

  Lara held her brow in an angry pinch, her eyes narrowed and on fire. “Fine.” She stood up and gripped her keys. “Fine, Monty.” She went to the door.

  I stood up and watched her open it. Moths danced in the cone of light on the porch behind her and for a second I felt dizzy, watching wings of papery white flit behind her head like a halo. “You don’t think it,” she said. “But I’ve sacrificed plenty.”

  “Oh, what?” I heard myself throw out a quick and knifelike sarcastic laugh. “That you held off on going out and getting yourself pregnant? Is that your sacrifice?” I knew I was being a total asshole, and I couldn’t help it. The months of waiting for her to decide had piled up on me and created something with teeth, and I wanted her to feel the bite of pain I’d been feeling all along—that she seemed to so easily sidestep all the time, just like Adam always did when we were younger.

  Lara glared at me one last time, slammed the door, and ran to her car. I watched her through the window as she backed out and drove away, her taillights like angry eyes in the night.

  43

  * * *

  I GOT UP EARLY with the chorus of noisy birds, showered, shaved, and made some instant oatmeal and coffee. I didn’t ring or text Lara, even though I thought about it. I felt horrible about the way I had treated her after she took the time to drive all the way out to see me, but a part of me felt justified and the iron fist of stubbornness still had me in its grip. I surprised myself that I had pushed the divorce issue as I had, knowing that there were things couples couldn’t ever recover from once you went down certain paths. It made me feel shaky, but when I shaved, my hand was steady and sure.

  Ken was ready and waiting for me when I got there, sipping coffee that Karen had made and staring at his computer. He smiled as I came in and set my carrier case on the table. “Gretchen just sent this to me.” He flicked his computer monitor with a fingernail.

  “What’s that?” I had had enough coffee at my dorm, but I grabbed a cup from the cabinet and filled it anyway out of habit.

  “She was able to enlarge the footage so we can see the exiting vehicles.”

  “Yeah? Find anything?” I walked over and peered over his shoulder at his screen at a magnified view of the back of a Toyota. The license plate was blurry and grainy, but the numbers could be made out. “The numbers match. So it looks like our boy Phillips did leave on the evening of June eighteenth.”

  “Yeah, at least his truck did. I guess there’s no way to tell if that’s him or not in the driver’s seat.”

  “No, Gretchen said there’s just not a clear enough shot, so it’s just a shadowy blob—the back of his head. If that’s him, he most likely hiked a full day on June eighteenth, a Saturday, drove to the Loop, took the shuttle to the top as our driver indicated, then hiked the Highline Trail back to Granite Park Chalet and back down to the Loop to his car and drove out. Unless, that is, that’s not him in the vehicle and someone else.”

  “If it’s someone else, shouldn’t we be able to find some fibers in the car?”

  “We should, but it would be a long shot. It could be fibers from anyone—a mechanic or friend or girlfriend who might’ve driven it. But you’re right. It’s worth a look. I’ll have Gretchen get someone on it right away.”

  “Is it possible he went over the cliff on a later date?”

  “Wilson said entomology shows five to seven days, so he could have come up a day later, this time with someone else, but I’m betting that’s unlikely. Everyone we’ve spoken to that knew Phillips claims he usually hiked on Saturdays. He was expected at work on Monday, so I’m thinking he wasn’t planning, at any rate, to go hiking the next day as well. So someone else must have driven him back up that same night or the next day, and if that’s what happened, that person could be our killer.”

  “Un
less that person drove him, dropped him off, then he simply fell.”

  “Makes no sense.” I was pressing my lips into my knuckles, thinking. “This has been all over the news. If someone innocent gave him a ride or brought him up, they would have come forward by now. And why would he go back to the same hike unless he lost something and was going back for it. And if that were the case, wouldn’t he drive there in his own vehicle, look around for it, then get back to work? Not leave it sitting in his garage?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Makes no sense.”

  “No, someone most likely drove him up, and it’s possible they went in the North Fork entrance where there are no cameras.”

  Ken nodded that he agreed.

  “Good work,” I told Ken. “And just to make sure, I’d like for you to double-check the footage from the time he drives out of the park for the next two days for any other suspicious cars or signs that he’s with someone else. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth continuing to go over even though it’s tough to discriminate the passengers in the vehicles.”

  “I’m on it.” Ken turned back to his screen, looking pleased with himself for the work he’d accomplished. I went over to the sink, dumped my coffee, and watched the black liquid splash against the porcelain sink, staining it a brownish black, the color of dried blood.

  • • •

  I left Ken at headquarters to scour the videos again for any sign of suspicious vehicles and headed to the county offices in Kalispell to see what Gretchen had found. I parked in the large courthouse parking lot and stepped out onto the hot pavement. I had picked up some tuna salad sandwiches at a deli to bring to Gretchen and Wendy, her print examiner, and went in to their offices, signed in at the front desk with a receptionist behind glass, and waited for her to get ahold of Gretchen so she could come out and fetch me. She handed me a visitor’s badge to show I was official. I clipped it onto my shirt pocket, took in the cool air-conditioning of the county building, and waited.

  When Gretchen walked up, I felt the same frisson of excitement I’d felt around her when she touched my arm in the restaurant the other day. Her smile and bright eyes lit up the room. I could feel my stress abate, my shoulders melting back down into a comfortable position.