“What?” She shook her head. “Why are you telling me this?”
I could see a mixture of anger and fear flood into her eyes. I couldn’t answer her question with the obvious: because you need to know since you’re his mother, because he’s never coming back. “We’ve identified his prints, which are in the system.”
“But—” She began to lose her balance. I grabbed her arm and helped her into the La-Z-Boy. She shook her head back and forth, then looked up to me, then Monty for answers, her face now racked with confusion with deep lines creasing her brow. “But how, what happened?”
“I’m sorry, but it looks as though he was mauled by a bear.”
“What?” Her voice was loud and she pulled her head back, a turtlelike move. “A bear?”
“It’s very complicated, Ms. Lance. We have some work to do to figure this out. But it looks as if your boy was forced into the woods by someone. Then, coincidentally, he was mauled.”
Penny began to shake her head violently, her brow still deeply furrowed. “What on God’s earth are you talking about? Jesus Christ, what are telling me?” She sprung out of her chair, her eyes darting from me to Monty and back, her hands by her sides clenched in fists as if she could fight away the truth. “What in the hell is going on here? Why are you saying these crazy things? Is this a prank?”
“No, ma’am. It’s not. I know it’s strange and we don’t have all the details. But it looks as if your son, one way or another, was murdered.”
“By a damn bear?” Her frantic voice sliced the air. She was still unable to grasp it. I asked myself why anyone would.
“No, by the person who kidnapped him. The grizzly is coincidental. The person who left him there is responsible, and that means murder whether the person who put him there meant it to be or not.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist and stood in silence. Monty and I stared at her. I could see Monty’s jaw muscles clenching.
“Where is he?” Her voice was small now, like a little girl’s.
“He’s with our state forensics lab. With good doctors.”
There was no way she could see him, not now, not ever. There were only remains—a bundle of horror that only a pathologist might be able to make sense of. Penny began looking around the room for something, perhaps her cigarettes, her lighter, a glass of water . . .
“Can we get you some water, Ms. Lance?” I motioned to Monty to go to the kitchen to grab some.
“Where do I go?” Her eyes filled with tears. “Where is he?”
“No, I’m sorry, you can’t see him right now. Please, Ms. Lance, please sit down.” I gestured to the chair.
“But—I, this can’t be right.” She kept shaking her head, her mouth agape. “But why?”
“We don’t know that yet. But we promise to find out.” I could hear Monty closing a cabinet and running some tap water.
“Someone kidnapped him?”
“He was bound to a tree. Someone or perhaps more than one bound him to a tree.”
“Jesus.” Her watery eyes widened and a tear slid down one cheek. “But why? Who?”
Monty came back in and tried to hand Penny the glass of water, but she didn’t pay any attention to his outstretched hand. She stared at me with wide eyes.
“I’m sorry that we don’t have many answers for you. If anything, we’re hoping that you might have some information that might help us figure out who’s responsible for this.” More tears began to slide down her cheeks. She slumped back down into the recliner and let her face fall into her hands. A TV commercial selling cell phone services with privileged, childish teenagers came on, its playful silliness mocking the seriousness of this mother’s situation and far too trivial for the tragedy spreading before her. I grabbed the water from Monty and went to kneel before her. “Ms. Lance, I’m going to need to ask you a series of questions to help us find who’s responsible for this. Would you like us to leave you alone for a bit and come back later, or would you like to talk now?”
She shook her head, her face still buried in her hands. She was sobbing harder, almost choking. “No,” she blurted. “Don’t leave.” She said this as if our company could possibly add some comfort to the situation.
I set the water next to her on a side table and looked at Monty standing by the kitchen door. He held out his hands to say, What do I do now? I held up my palm for him to stay put. “We’re not going anywhere,” I said. “Take your time. Can I get you some tissues?” I nodded to Monty to find some in the bathroom. In the meantime, I walked over to a narrow table with framed pictures dominating a lacy runner to give Penny a moment to rein in her sobs.
There were several photos of two small brown-haired children, a boy and girl who I presumed were Victor and his sister. In one, they were in bulky winter jackets, the boy missing several front teeth in his big grin, the girl patting snow onto a snowman they were building.
In another, they were in colorful bathing suits on a small bright yellow raft, giggling and splashing around in a sparkling mountain lake. The camera caught the water spraying up around the kids, the sunlight illuminating the droplets into strings of bright, clear gems.
“Okay,” Penny finally said after blowing her nose and wiping her eyes again. “I’ll try.”
• • •
I made sure she had a few sips of water and led her through it. She had not seen Victor for over two months, which would have been early August. She had seen him at a family get-together, but he was jittery and asked for money.
That’s what he always wanted, she told us. She said that Megan, Victor’s sister, would often tell her that if she’d just taken the time to add it all up over the years, she’d find that she’d probably given him over forty thousand dollars. But Penny refused to let herself believe that. Over the past three years, she said she’d gotten better at not enabling him and giving him so much. But every now and again, she slipped and couldn’t help but slide him a hundred here and there for food.
Megan wouldn’t speak to her mother if she found out she gave him money because she always said that Victor just used it on drugs, not food. Penny wasn’t sure if she believed that or not. There were times when she really believed Victor was turning things around.
“Did you give him money in August?”
Penny nodded. “Only a hundred. That’s all I had. Things have been tight with the economy the way it is. I’ve taken a cut in pay to keep my job.”
“What did he seem like then?”
“Like usual. Skinny, jittery, pale, but I couldn’t tell whether or not he was using. You have to understand that he’s been this way for so long.”
“For how long?”
“He started drinking when he was around eleven. Pot followed soon after. I didn’t find out until he was about fourteen when he started not coming home at night. When he did come home, he’d be drunk and stoned, and Megan told me she’d heard that he was getting into harder stuff like heroin. I talked to all the school counselors, but nothing helped.”
I nodded. “And heroin’s been his drug of choice ever since?”
“I’m not sure.” Penny sighed, then swallowed hard. “Well, actually—” Tears filled her eyes again, her face strained. “He got into meth about three or four years ago, when he was twenty-four or so. I spent every cent I had in retirement to get him into rehab in Kalispell. He went for ninety days, and it seemed to help for a while.”
“How long is ‘a while’?”
“I think a year or so. Even had a decent girlfriend for a while.”
“What was her name?” Monty was taking notes. I had my notepad out as well and was getting it all down.
“Leslie.”
“Last name?”
“I, I think it was Boone. She had a little boy named Lewis. Cute boy. Leslie seemed to really like Victor. From what Megan has told me, Leslie had gotten into meth too, but
had recently cleaned her act up for her son’s sake.”
“And?”
“And nothing. Nothing came of it. I had hopes that he’d stay straight for them. But then he just started disappearing for longer periods without visiting, and when he did show, he’d need money, he always claimed, for food or rent. When I asked about Leslie, he’d say that was over, done. Never said why.”
“How long ago was that?” Monty asked from his spot on the couch. His voice seemed to surprise Penny because she looked at him wide-eyed. In fact, his voice surprised me. He had not spoken a word since we’d come, and normally I tell whoever is assigned to me to let me do the talking, but it had seemed unnecessary with Monty since he was a guy of so few words.
I decided to let him ask away while I continued to take notes. And I must say, I felt superior, vaguely proud, like a mentor watching his subject learn as he branches out. And since Monty was so close to Ford, it gave me some satisfaction that Monty might actually like to learn investigative work, might actually be good at it, and want to leave Ford hanging at some point in his career. I nodded to Monty to continue and leaned back in the chair I’d brought in from the kitchen earlier so that I could sit across from Penny.
“About six months ago. She hasn’t been in the picture since sometime last May.”
Monty wrote this down, then glanced at me. I lifted my chin to nudge him on.
“Has he had any other girlfriends besides her?”
“Not that I’ve met. Megan said that his old girlfriend, Mindy, was with him now and again and . . .” Penny sighed. “Mindy was bad news. A real druggie.”
“What’s Mindy’s last name?”
“Winters.”
There was a pause. Monty looked at me.
“Did Victor have any other friends who might know his whereabouts over the past few days?” I asked.
Penny shrugged. “Nobody worth mentioning. Always different stragglers here and there. I don’t even know the names of half of them. I would just beg him to not hang out with such people.”
“Such people?”
“You know, druggies. You could tell because they looked skinny and unkempt, just like Victor was starting to look all over again. You might talk to Daniel. Daniel Nelson’s been a buddy of his for some time.”
“Can you think of anyone in particular that would want to harm Victor? Did any of his friends catch your attention for any reason at all?”
A look I couldn’t quite pinpoint, something even sadder than her present grief, swam across Penny’s eyes like a dark shadow of a fish. She looked down. “No.” She shook her head, then put her tissue to her eyes again. “No, nobody in particular, but there have been a lot of bad people in my son’s life because of all the drugs.”
“I understand, but, Ms. Lance, it’s important that you tell us everything and anything that might be pertinent.”
“I will,” she said robotically, her eyes vague and her attention slipping away into deeper grief. “I think, I think I really need to go to my room now.” Her entire body sagged, her frame like a small wounded animal lost in the big recliner as she hunched forward. She folded her arms between her chest and her knees as if she had a stomachache. Her small feet lay pale on the floor with her toes curled under. I thought of a bird perching on a wire.
• • •
“Wow,” Monty said when we got back in his SUV. “Intense.”
“Yeah. Usually is. She took it better than most, though. She’s a tough one.”
“I guess so.” Monty shook his head and made the same low whistle he had made at the crime scene. “Dealing with a druggie son like that, I guess it would thicken your skin.”
“Yeah, but she thought of something near the end there. Not sure if it was important, but something crossed her mind that she either didn’t want to share or simply saddened her even more. Made her fade.”
“I was writing and didn’t see her expression.”
“I could be wrong, but we’ll be talking to her again.”
“I noticed you didn’t ask about the father.” Monty kept his eyes on the highway.
“Next time,” I said. “We got more than usual under the circumstances. Often they’re too distraught to even undergo questioning.”
Monty nodded.
I thought about our victim, Victor Lance, as I looked to the Whitefish Range, the bare runs of the ski resort cutting down Big Mountain like prominent veins on the underside of a wrist.
5
THE ILLEGAL CAMPING couple seemed like they were out of a sitcom. They were young and constantly bickering. Kaylynn Lowden had crazy, curly, haywire reddish-brown hair, a big smile, and an unrelenting giggle, and Jarred Mercord had a dark, brooding, sulky look that neutralized his girl’s enormous energy and filled up the makeshift interrogation room at park headquarters, making it seem too small for the three of us. All her remarks teetered on the naïve, and it didn’t take long to realize she knew very little.
When we brought Jarred in, it also didn’t take long to realize he didn’t know much either, although it seemed like some kind of a game to him. His comments desperately worked toward sophistication and headiness but fell short primarily because of his youth. When we asked him to try to recall anything strange occurring during the time they were camping at Fish Creek, he said in a deeper voice that “all credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come from the senses.” Then he added: “That was Nietzsche,” as he flipped his head to get his long hair out of his face.
I rolled my eyes.
I have to give it to Monty. He was learning quickly, and he had more patience than I did with this kid. Just when I started to feel like I was going to shove him against the wall and tell him to stuff the sophistication bit, he gave a scrap of information that was at least a tad bit useful when Monty asked if he’d seen any cars driving by.
“I saw several out all day. It was so nice, so people were coming and going, mostly driving up the Camas Creek area,” Jarred said. “But I did see one vehicle more than once, and it was later in the evening than the others.”
“What kind of vehicle?” I asked.
“A dark truck. Black or dark green maybe.”
“The make?
“I don’t know, maybe a Chevy or a Ford.”
“Size? Small pickup or standard?”
“Standard.”
“Why did it catch your attention?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Guess ’cause I saw it twice. And it was close to dark and I was out walking.”
Jarred had first seen the truck sometime around five p.m. It went past him when he drove out of Apgar Village and was turning north on Camas Creek Road to head back to the campsite. Then while walking on Fish Creek Road to take some pictures of McDonald Lake with the sun going down at around quarter to seven, the truck had been heading away from Fish Creek Campground and away from the Old North Fork Road. He didn’t recall who was driving or if there were passengers, and he certainly didn’t notice a license plate.
We got Jarred’s address and phone number. I gave him my card and told him to call if anything else came to mind.
“Right on,” he mumbled, then added, “you know, as Tolstoy said, All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said and sent him back out to Kaylynn.
• • •
Twilight fell upon us, and a bitter breeze soughed outside. The leaves of a maple tree rattled against one of our office windows. Late October and early November comprise the edgy heart of the Montana fall, pregnant with constant weather variations: sunny calm days, endless changes in wind, heavy black clouds refusing to rain for days, then finally releasing angry downpours for weeks. Then, just as easily—unexpected sleet, fog, snow. The entire atmosphere echoed my own restles
sness. There was an anticipatory feeling I was carrying, but unidentifiable and out of reach like a word on the tip of my tongue. A sense that things were on the brink of change, perhaps only because Glacier Park carried this constant crepuscular quality that came with the long, overly enormous mountain shadows, the changing light, the cold ground, and a restless urge to keep moving while the varying shades of yellow-and-red leaves quivered and the squirrels and chipmunks busily gathered food at a frantic pace.
“Sharp kid,” Monty announced.
“Yeah,” I said dryly. “If I ever need to solve a case involving clues with quotes from German philosophers or Russian authors, I’ll give him a jingle.”
Monty chuckled.
I had to admit that Monty had been more helpful than I’d initially expected. He knew several of the rangers, and although he didn’t seem as friendly with them as one would think he’d be for working in the same park, nobody appeared bothered by the fact that he was around.
“Hungry?” Monty arched his brow.
“Not really. You?”
“Getting there.”
We both sat silently. It was that moment where I knew I was at the muddy trailhead of the case, barely taking the first steps. We had people to talk to, and I was hopeful answers would come quickly based on the fact that the victim was mixed up in drugs and was in the system.
“What are you thinking?”
“’Bout dinner or the case?” I asked, knowing very well he meant the case.
“The case?” he said.
I sighed. “I think”—I stood and leaned against the counter—“that Walsh could be right and that we can pretty much assume that the guy was alive when the bear got him. There would be no reason to bind an already dead body to a tree. What would be the point?”
“There would be no point. If he were already dead, you would just toss him out there if you wanted the corpse eaten.”
“Or bury him. You wouldn’t bind him, unless you tortured him first and then killed him.”
“So whoever taped him,” Monty said, “must have wanted to torture him either way, whether they wanted him alive or dead. Then the bear came along.”
The Wild Inside Page 6