The Wild Inside

by Christine Carbo

  I nodded. “Torture him, hold him, make an example of him. But what a risk to leave someone alive out in the woods. If someone discovered the victim before he was attacked, the guy would be completely exposed.”

  “So whoever did this, if they left Victor Lance out there alive, took a huge risk—actually went out of his way—to leave his victim alive like that.”

  “If that’s the way it went,” I said. “It could be to torture or to stage. It could also be a lesson or display of some sort. Maybe to make a point to other druggies who don’t pay up?”

  Monty shrugged.

  “At any rate, either way, our guy got lucky. The bear did get Victor Lance.”

  “Yeah, and that makes me wonder . . .” Monty drifted off.

  “Wonder what?” I asked.

  “The burn area. It’s my understanding that not many bears or other predators go through that area much, so if the killer knows anything about animal behavior, he must have known he was taking an even bigger risk that the guy would not be attacked by an animal. Maybe he didn’t want him attacked and just wanted to hold him there, like you said.”

  “But that’s not true about burn areas. Fresh vegetation and new roots popping up attract all sorts of animals. I’ll double-check with Bowman, but I’m pretty sure about it.”

  “Then again”—Monty raised a shoulder—“we’re probably giving the killer way too much credit. He probably doesn’t know a damn thing about animal behavior or burn areas.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He could just be some psychopath,” Monty said.

  “If that’s the case, once we start digging in, he shouldn’t be too difficult to track.” I looked at Monty, his short dark hair, pale skin, and wire-rimmed glasses perched on his pointy nose, and wondered what would make a guy like him become Park Police, then end up tagging along behind the super, probably picking up the guy’s dry cleaning, and sitting on his ass before a computer all day writing reports.

  Most Park Police and rangers I know take the jobs because they want to be outdoors. Joe Smith was the perfect example. Some are jacks-of-all-trades and can still pack a horse and handle a chain saw and some are educators, historians, and naturalists. But most of them understand that without warning, their job can turn from the leisure pace of helping a tourist who’s lost their keys, warning people that their dogs aren’t allowed on the trail, and clearing out bear traffic jams to the high stress of dangling thousands of feet in the air to rescue overzealous hikers or sightseers who find themselves in dangerous crevasses.

  Most want the job because they know that on a clear summer day, it can be the kind of job where they almost feel guilty for getting paid for it. And on a bad day, they find a frozen body in one of the fast-running streams: an old grandpa who slipped backward off a rock while taking pictures of his wife and was washed downstream.

  Monty didn’t look like any of the above. He had an obsessive-compulsive-accountant look with what appeared to be premature gray hairs beginning in his sideburns and begging the question of his age. “So, Monty.” I cocked my head. “How come you wanted to work for the Park Service?”

  “What?” He seemed surprised I asked.

  “Why did you become a park officer?”

  “Uh, the usual reasons.”

  “Which are?”

  He pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “Which are none of your business.” He stood up and grabbed his coat.

  I smiled and slowly my grin turned to a laugh. “Right answer, Officer Harris.” I grabbed my coat as well. “Right answer.”

  • • •

  The cabin assigned to me by either Joe or Ford had two bedrooms, a bathroom, a small kitchen, and a main room with a river-rock fireplace, deeply scarred wide-planked wooden floors, and several west-facing windows darned with old red-and-blue-plaid curtains.

  The wind had picked up from bubbling, playful tousles to forceful shoves, and the cabin creaked with each gust. I was tired but wired. I felt small in a cabin in a place like Glacier, cold and deserted this time of year with the gusty weather, the mountains, and the icy waters a reminder of my insignificance—my thread-thin presence in the great fabric of nature around me.

  I knew I wouldn’t sleep well. I never did on the first night of a case. There were too many images, details, and questions darting through my mind. And, of course, there was the lingering rawness that at first drapes over you after breaking bad news to a victim’s family, but by bedtime, presses into you, squeezes into you like shrink-wrap. I kept picturing Penny Lance’s frail frame curled up as she hugged her stomach.

  Monty and I had gotten some dinner at the Glacier Café, the same place we had lunch because of the lack of dining options in West Glacier. I knew I’d have to hit Hungry Horse, the closest town with a decent grocery store, and stock up on some things as soon as I had a moment. In the meantime, I went next door to the café and grabbed a six-pack, some beef jerky, and some OJ for the morning.

  After dinner Monty drove me back to headquarters to meet Joe, who had a park vehicle gassed up and ready for me. He had finished the paperwork, making it legit for me to use it while I was on the case. We said good night to Monty, and I followed Joe down the road to my new home away from home, which really wasn’t so bad. Aside from the damp cold and the musty smell, the cabin was homey enough.

  One good fire would push out the chill. I made one with some leftover logs and some paper I had ripped out of an old Trout Magazine, grabbed a beer, and sat in an old-oak Adirondack-style chair to go over my notes. I took out a quarter and was surprised to see that it was still the Vermont. I’d used change at the convenience store but apparently managed to hang on to it. I began rubbing the quarter between my thumb and forefinger, its surface quickly made smooth by the natural oils from my fingers.

  Victor Lance, drug problem. Penny Lance, the enabling mother. Father—absent, but I had Monica on it. She would come up with his whereabouts and access divorce papers to see what kind of role he played in Victor’s life, at least financially. The rest I would find out from his sister and Penny. As far as girlfriends—one decent, one not so decent. Probably a host of others that Mom didn’t know about. This was just the beginning. Tomorrow would have to bring more, much more. The old adage about forty-eight hours was sort of a cliché but not entirely; the first forty-eight are the most important. Cases can go cold quickly if strong leads are not established within a two-day time frame. Often, you could get a suspect and a strong lead if you did your homework, canvassed correctly, did extensive background checks and copious interviews. Over the years, though, forensic science and information technology had dovetailed in a way that both complicated things and made them easier. What you found in forty-eight often needed to wait for days or weeks anyway for testing and lab results. And in other ways, tests and computer technology sped things along drastically, shoved you in directions you might not have considered otherwise.

  The fire popped and grabbed my attention. It never failed to make me uneasy. The orange flames fingered around the logs, waving and flickering. I thought of my mother. I would call her and see her when I came across some time. I would have to visit my middle sister, Natalie, as well. She lived in Whitefish, a small town north of Kalispell at the base of the ski resort with her husband, Luke, and their two boys, Ian and Ryan.

  My oldest sister, Kathryn, lived in Minneapolis and worked for Merck Sharpe & Dome. She’d been divorced for over five years after finding out that her husband had cheated on her more than once over the years. Their divorce, long and ugly, ended up with a fifty-fifty split of their kids. I hadn’t seen Kathryn in about three years, but I’d seen Ma and Natalie last year for Thanksgiving. They’d be happy to know I was working within driving distance less than a year after my last visit. Although, any mention of Glacier Park usually set my mother on edge. I never discussed that actual night much with either my mother or my
sisters. By the time I got out of the hospital, everyone walked on eggshells around me.

  I peeked outside. The temperature had dropped considerably. I brushed my teeth and found an extra blanket in a closet in the bedroom and went to bed. I tossed and turned until thoughts of my father pushed into my mind. I was investigating a case involving a grizzly in the park he so desperately wanted to get to know, to grow old near. He had told us on our drive to Montana in the dead of winter (we moved from Florida in time to start school in January after Christmas break) that he wanted to hike an average of sixty to seventy miles per summer, about five or six ten-mile hikes, so that by the time he was sixty-five, he would have logged over thirteen hundred miles of Glacier’s terrain under his feet. Very doable, if only he had lived past his second summer of residing in Montana. I pushed the thought away; it was no use going there.

  After his death, I never stepped foot into Glacier until I became a junior in high school, when heading to Glacier to hike became the hip thing to do. At first it was just picnics, playing Frisbee and drinking beer and whatever else we could get our hands on in out-of-the-way places, but then I began dating a girl named Kendra, whose father loved the park and insisted every Saturday that she join him for hiking.

  If I wanted to spend time with her, I had no choice but to go along. And they were hiking machines. I ended up hiking Gunsight Pass with them, twenty-three miles in one day. I could barely walk up steps the following morning. Then Siyeh Pass, Huckleberry Mountain, the High Line Trail, Mount Brown Lookout, Piegan Pass, Snyder Lakes, and more. I was terrified of grizzlies, but we never camped and were always out of the woods by dark. I walked with my hand on the shiny black plastic safety of my bear spray attached to my belt.

  I came to appreciate the beauty of the park, and after getting in shape, the way my body felt after a long hike—the lactic acid buildup in my thigh muscles. The way the summer high-elevation sun felt on my face and the mountain air in my lungs. I felt empowered that I could jump back on the horse, overcome my fear to be in the place at all. After two summers of extensive hiking, I came to realize that the woods were a part of me. I liked to learn the names and identify the wildflowers: Indian paintbrush, fireweed, bear grass, arnica, glacier lilies, purple-and-gold alpine daisies, monkey flowers, and pasque blossoms. I enjoyed seeing the striped chipmunks, the marmots we call whistle pigs, the moose, the scruffy spring sheep and goats, the golden eagles, the elusive elk. I saw several pine martins, black bears, and even the extremely rare family of wolverines running across a snowfield. I didn’t see a grizzly during either of those summers, not even far away on a hillside or from a car in a bear jam. I considered myself protected, as if I’d done my time. I would be spared from coming across a grizzly ever again, even if I played in their backyard.

  But even more than the beauty of it all, I felt the pull of the park in the way an extreme athlete feels the rush that comes from heading headfirst into fear, topping the next highest peak, the largest ocean wave, or the triple aerial off the tallest outcropping. Only I didn’t need to go climb the world’s highest peaks. This was a different kind of purpose, something more subtle, yet just as potent. I suppose it was my youth, my aggression, my desire to tackle something and win. Glacier Park had taken my father from me, and it became my private battlefield. If I could nudge just close enough without getting hurt as I did before, I could enter the pastoral, be that woodsman. It would be what my father wanted.

  Taking forestry was also my attempt to nudge up to the half-ass woodsman in myself. I could study the forest in a safe setting, among students and professors. But reality hit when getting a job in the field stared me right in my naïve face. The clenched fist of fear settled in as I discovered that being a loner in the woods was not an option for me. Ultimately, human crime, with all its unpredictability and craziness, was nothing in comparison to the predictable, pitiless austerity and order of nature, its definitive underlying pattern that would fundamentally always mock the human call for world peace.

  I listened to the wind still picking up outside, breathing through the trees like heavy sighs of a death angel. Whether I wanted to believe it or not, this place, with all the horror it held in my heart, was somehow home. Even with its rarity, power, and ominous vibrations making me want to pull the covers up over my head and kick and scream like a child, I felt its arms enfold me in an embrace of history and familiarity. I did not know what I expected from it. Obviously not to see my dad, with his unruly hair and Sonny Bono mustache, striding up like the Ghost of Christmas Past. No, I didn’t know. Not safety. Perhaps familiarity, beauty, rhythm, truth, even danger. And something unidentifiable—something for the dark threads that ran through me to spool onto.

  6

  I WOKE READY TO tackle a busy day ahead. When I peeked outside to check the weather, I saw the wind had ceased, the sky had completely clouded over to a milky gray, which hung low and oppressive, dissolving halfway down the lower mountains into the blue-green pines. I hoped it wouldn’t rain because it was best if it stayed dry as long as possible. Even if Crime Scene Services was done, the longer you could hold a scene close to its original state, the better.

  I drank some OJ, took some stray Tylenol I found at the bottom of my toiletry bag for the pounding I felt in my left temple, and called Dr. Wilson in Missoula to see if he was ready to give me a rundown on his results. It was only quarter after seven, but I thought he might be in early. Sean had also called Wilson to back Gene Ford and gotten the case pushed higher on the priority list due to its strange nature and the fact that we had a federal bear situation potentially involving public safety.

  In fact, it had become high enough of a priority that as soon as I hung up from leaving a message for Wilson, Sean called to inform me that he’d requested Nicholas Moran to fly me to Missoula to meet with Wilson, rather than talking to him on the phone as we normally would. It was always best to get the information from the pathologist firsthand, but I wasn’t thrilled about leaving when I had a lot to accomplish. In addition, Gene Ford showed up at the hangar to come along.

  I had spotted him at the hangar with his coffee-colored leather briefcase, his full-on ranger garb, including army-green olive pants and matching jacket heavily pocketed with shiny badges. I had thought, here we go again. He wore a round-brimmed hat the color of hay, which made his downward angling face look even longer in contrast.

  As a greeting, he simply said, “Too bad we don’t have yesterday’s sunshine for today’s flight.”

  We, I had thought. “I take it you’re heading to Missoula?”

  “Thought I’d join you. See what the pathologist has to say. Besides I’ve got business at your old stompin’ grounds at the College of Forestry to give a talk on invasive water species. So I’ll be staying on.”

  The trip took no more than twenty-five minutes. I sat in the back of the helicopter with my earphones on low, feeling lucky that the noise deprived Ford of the privilege to press me for information. I couldn’t exactly pinpoint why he rubbed me the wrong way other than I knew he was keeping close tabs on me by assigning Monty, who was practically his personal secretary, to me, and now coming along to Missoula. I wondered if he’d be joining me to view the remains. Part of me hoped so, because I didn’t think this man was up for it. Not many people are up for the slicing, poking, and prodding of the stone-white flesh, as if the victim is some random meat being prepared by a butcher for later use. So by the time we were in Missoula in the Forensics Science Division of the Montana Department of Justice’s State Crime Lab on 11th Avenue, and Wilson came out to greet us, I was secretly dying to see Ford hit the door running with his palm covering his green mouth.

  “Hello, gentlemen.” I turned to see Dr. Wilson in a white lab coat approach us. Ford introduced himself and they shook hands. “And Detective Systead.”

  “Pleasure to see you again.” I shook his hand as well.

  With his olive skin, broad nose, and slightly red-
rimmed and watery eyes from probably working most of the night under fluorescents, Dr. Wilson wasn’t more than thirty. He looked as if you saw him at the grocery store, his tennis shoes would be untied, his hair gelled into a faux hawk, and he’d be buying chocolate milk for himself. Again, I was forced to register that, at forty, I was actually considered old in my field. The younger pathologists knew the latest and greatest in technology, the older ones had the experience. Usually experience won, but because Wilson was extremely bright, he was known as one of the best in the Northwest. The University of Washington wanted to keep him, but he apparently liked the idea of living in Montana more. “You both all right with seeing my work?”

  “I’m good,” I offered, then glanced at Ford, lifting my brow and making it obvious to Wilson that Ford was the one who ought to concern him.

  Wilson followed my cue and studied Ford. “Have you been to a postmortem viewing before?”

  “No, but I’ve seen all sorts of remains in the woods. I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay then.” Wilson waved for us to follow.

  We went through double-swinging hospital-type doors, the smell of formaldehyde pushing through my nostrils. We walked down a long, wide hallway and into a large windowless, clinical white room with five autopsy tables, sparkling stainless-steel sinks along a sidewall, four square stainless freezers, and two taller refrigerators, the kind that looked like they might hold groceries.

  The entire room spoke of sanitation and sterility, as it should. But the stark austerity—the remains splayed on the cold table—would remind anyone of the dark, primal dysfunctions, and instincts that bring such pale and bloody flesh—such broken life—to the table. My routine encompassed this reality too, but when I did my job well, I saw the whole spectrum: the motive, the circumstances, the personalities surrounding the victims, the other crimes adjoining the homicide. The pathologist sees only the dead body, the disease, the rape-victim samples, piecing together a context to put it all in.