The Wild Inside

by Christine Carbo

  “Damn,” I whispered. I had to work this case quickly, get it over with, and get the hell out. I wanted to get up, but I didn’t. I sat still in the sun, let its slanted rays hit my face. They provided only a low-grade heat at this point. The memories are put away and locked up, as if in a steel vault. Only at certain times do I crack that vault and let a few spill out. I suppose so much pressure builds up behind the door that it has to open a bit or there will be an explosion of sorts.

  That fall day came too quickly after an abbreviated Montana summer. The summer of 1987 gave only forty-two frost-free mornings and never went above eighty-five degrees. It was peppered with heavy, gutter-filling rains, obnoxious, demanding windstorms, and cloudy, cool days, even in August. A funnel cloud formed on Flathead Lake’s waters. My sisters and I drove my ma crazy complaining of boredom. Go outside, she’d say. It’s too cold, we’d yell back. It’s too wet. So when the still-tawny Indian summer came, the people of the Flathead Valley were spring feverish, cabin-bound, and dying to get out and catch the sun’s rays, even as oblique as they were in late September. Hungry for sun, fun, and life: that’s the way the dawning of that long-needed, brilliant, and deadly weekend was all those years ago.

  My dad wanted to take me camping, and I thought, yes, finally something fun to do. Get away from my sisters and all the arguing over stupid stuff like whose turn it was to take out the trash, set and clear the table, sweep the garage, or walk Tumble. Dad was busy in the lab all the time, so to go with him alone and get away from my sisters was like a true idyllic Leave It to Beaver situation. I got ready, remembering my knife and pushing it into the front pocket of my shorts.

  I didn’t have one of those red Swiss Army knives with the small blades, the narrow pair of scissors, tweezers, or a corkscrew, that some of my buddies from Scouts had. For my eleventh birthday, my dad gave me a pearl-handled jackknife with only one six-inch blade that was significantly longer and larger than your average pocket blade. He said I needed to be careful with it because the blade was very sharp, but that I would need a proper knife if I intended to gut fish.

  When my line got tangled while we were casting for trout on some jade-green lake toward Libby, he told me to use my knife to cut the line. When I told him I forgot to bring it, he made a face like he was disappointed in me and told me that one should always be prepared when out in the woods. Afterward, whenever we went camping or fishing, I always took it with me.

  I did have that knife at Oldman Lake. And I can’t say I’m very superstitious, but sometimes those little things just get the best of me. I continued to carry it even after Oldman Lake until I saw that grizzly with Kendra and her dad on the Almeda trail. With the renewed pangs of fear and loss settling in my stomach like acid for weeks after the incident, I decided that maybe the knife brought me bad luck, so I put it away in the top drawer by my bed.

  But that particular day before we left for East Glacier, I did have my knife. We also packed turkey and cheddar sandwiches, beef jerky, filled canteens of water, trail mix with peanuts, M&M’s, raisins, cashews, and dried coconut flakes. I remember oatmeal packets we took for breakfast. I rerolled my sleeping bag several times to get it tight enough to fit into the impossibly short and narrow bag. I shoved my warm clothes, including heavy cotton long johns, into the pack. Not much of the fancy polypropylene stuff was out then.

  When we got to Glacier’s Two Medicine campground, snow that never melted over the summer and new layers that had arrived in late August and early September coated Sinopah and Rising Wolf Mountains. The golden aspen leaves scintillated in the sun and twitched nervously with the breeze. Even then, I remember feeling strong undercurrents of anguish. They came on suddenly and in a rush as if those sensations had been put in a syringe and given to me intravenously.

  I’ve always wondered if my dad felt them too. If there was a moment when his radar picked up on the oncoming danger, if he paused briefly when he looked out with his raven-sharp, deeply intellectual eyes toward the passage between Dawson and Ptimakan Pass, at the massive structures in the distance—the backbone of Montana—as the Blackfeet referred to it.

  When he scratched the razor stubble on the side of his face (I remember he hadn’t shaved that day), had he wondered if we should just stay in the campground and not go into Oldman Lake? Or had he chalked it up to the fact that that’s just the way the eastern front felt to everyone most of the time—wild, untamed . . . ominous?

  And if he hadn’t and I had, should I have said something and would it have mattered? Should I have told him that the gently lapping water of Two Medicine Lake had given me goose bumps for no good reason, that when the aspen leaves shook in the light breeze, I felt nervous, not calm? All of this, in retrospect, is essentially to say I had some tabs on the future, some radar picking up on events about to occur, which I didn’t.

  • • •

  The police didn’t find anything under the first two small bridges on the way out from McGee Meadow, a relatively shallow creek that was easy to search with metal detectors and no divers. Now Walsh’s men were working under the McDonald Creek Bridge on the way out from the Inside North Fork Road, a medium-size, much deeper body of water flowing out of the Lake McDonald and feeding the Middle Fork drainage.

  After my jog, I had just enough time to shower and visit the dive site with Monty before heading to Nat’s. The sun set softly through the trees as we parked before the McDonald Creek Bridge, and the temperature dropped quickly. We stepped out and walked toward the riverbank where the divers had set up their operation. The underwater search unit consisted of four divers, one of whom is a dive supervisor. Essentially, all of them are regular county officers who fulfill their diving roles as an additional duty for a small amount of extra pay. Now two divers still slinked along the river bottom in the freezing water in their dry suits and with their underwater metal detection devices. The supervisor and one other diver stood on the side with several gear bags and two bright yellow tanks lying on the bank.

  I glanced at the deep and darkening jade-colored water sliding past. In the spring, during the runoff phase, I knew McDonald Creek turned bright turquoise, and at the point where it met the Middle Fork, you could see a clear demarcation between the bright, milky turquoise water from Lake McDonald and the brown muddy water of the Middle Fork. Now the water was clear and mysterious, and the smell of damp soil rose to my nose. I introduced myself and Monty to the supervisor, a man named Otto Burns.

  “Any luck?”

  “Nope. The usual—cans, a beer bottle or two. A kid’s toy truck.” Otto pointed to an old rusted, metal army truck, covered with a growth of green algae. “And a pocketknife; don’t suppose that could have been your weapon?”

  “Nah.” I shook my head. “How much longer?”

  “We’re pretty much done here.” He looked to the setting sun. It was getting dark quickly, and the sky was turning a deep lavender. “If we come up with anything, I’ll let Walsh know immediately.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate you guys doing this. I know it’s extra work for your men and that you’ve been busy lately over in Flathead Lake.”

  “It’s our job. No problem.”

  Monty thanked him too, and we walked up to the bridge and halfway over it. We peered down into the clear water and could see the bubbles from the divers farther out as they quartered back and forth. “My father used to say,” Monty spoke in a low voice, “never trust a guy whose name can be spelled backward and forward.”

  “That so? Well, he looks pretty trustworthy to me.” I smiled.

  Monty chuckled.

  “What does your dad do?” I asked.

  “He runs a construction company in Kalispell.”

  “And you didn’t get sucked into that business?”

  “Nah, I did my time with it when I was younger, before I got into this.” Monty rested his arms on the bridge railing and peered into the water. I had been curious as t
o Monty’s roots. But I made it a habit not to pry into the history of any of the partners temporarily assigned to me. I often thought of detectives I remembered on the Kalispell force, officers who partnered for life and knew each other’s moves and comments like married couples, who’d fight over some significant detail in a case, then slide right back into a routine the next morning as if nothing happened. A part of me envied that, but my job didn’t afford that kind of partnership. And even if it did, I didn’t know if I’d understand what do with that kind of companionship. In general, I’d learned to not get into anything too deep or personal. However, with the bubbling sound of the river and cool breeze in my hair, a dozen other questions for Monty popped into my head out of nowhere, about where he lived in the valley, which high school he went to, whether he shared any of my same teachers, which college he attended, and how he came to choose Park Police. Yet instead of probing, he asked me, “What about your family? You call yet?”

  “Headed to my sister’s in Whitefish for dinner now.”

  “Good boy.” Monty nodded.

  “It was definitely past time.” I leaned on the railing as well and looked up the river to the mouth of McDonald Lake. The yellow larch framed the opening of the lake from both sides.

  “Beautiful,” Monty said. “Never ceases to amaze me how incredible this place is.”

  “Yeah,” I offered. “My family used to come here for picnics after we first moved to Montana.”

  “When did you move here?”

  “In the early eighties.” I pointed into the now dark gray water. “Bet there’s some trout down there,” I said, then added, “You were probably an infant then.”

  “Actually . . .” Monty smiled. “Thanks for the compliment, but not quite. I was born in ’77.” Monty lifted his chin to the bank where the two divers surfaced, slick and black. “Looks like they’re done, and”—he glanced at his watch—“you better get to dinner.”

  I was about to ignore his comment, ask him about how he got into law enforcement, but something inside me made me stop. The damp smell of the cool breeze piggybacking over the cold river water and its wet banks swept up and onto the bridge and filled my nose, wild and full of the park’s ancient layers as if it was casting spells. I shook off the urge to keep talking and realized that he was right. I did have to get to Natalie’s, and I was beginning to get very hungry.

  15

  SECOND-GUESSING EVERYTHING DOESN’T always make you the kind of guy people want to hang out with, and sometimes you end up not even liking your own company. I don’t consider myself irrational, but when you’re always in the critical zone, a good dose of superstition, whether you want it or not, comes along for the ride. Also with questioning comes a ton of self-analysis, the kind that, after enough years of doing it, shows in your eyes like thin venetian blinds pulled down over the pupils, dulling the brightness.

  My sister Natalie didn’t have eyes muted from self-analysis. Hers were childlike and joyful in spite of our childhood tragedy, and I considered it some kind of genetic trait that she got such a happy demeanor. When she opened the door at her house in Whitefish, she immediately enfolded me in a vigorous hug, reminding me of how she also possessed that enthusiastic no-holding-back quality that didn’t seem to come from the family I remembered being a part of. Kathryn, Ma, and what I recall of my dad, and I all had that amicable, semidistant politeness that showed itself in awkward moments like around greetings and compliments. There was always a pause before a hug hello, good-bye, or before an I love you. Not with Natalie.

  “Come, come.” She ushered me in, taking the flowers and bottle of wine I’d brought with a big cheerleader smile, her cheeks bunching up into doughy balls. “You must be exhausted, getting into town like this and going right to work.”

  “I’m used to it. That’s what I do: fly in and get right to work. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.”

  She waved her hand in front of her as if shooing off a fly. “Here, give me your coat. Mom’s up with the boys.” I could hear the sound of kids upstairs, the patter of feet running down a hall and some louder thumping. “What can I get you?”

  I smiled. “I’ll have a beer if you’ve got one.”

  “Of course I have one.” She walked down the hall and I followed her. As she passed the base of the stairwell, she yelled up, “Ian, Ryan, your uncle’s here”—then turned back to me—“Budweiser okay?”

  “Great with me.”

  “They’re bottles, not cans.”

  “Doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Luke’s not here?” I asked.

  “He’s working.”

  “As I should be.”

  “Well, you have to eat.”

  “So does Luke.”

  “Trust me.” She laughed. “He eats plenty. You, on the other hand”—she opened the refrigerator door and paused before it, scanning me up and down—“could use a good home-cooked meal.”

  “You’re wasting energy.” I lifted my chin to the open fridge.

  She turned back and reached for a bottle. “Plus he’ll be here in about an hour.” Luke owned and managed a glass company in Whitefish that he’d bought about five years before.

  “Boys,” Natalie yelled again. “Your uncle’s here. Mom.”

  They both came crashing down the stairs, and, as always, I genuinely showed my amazement at how much they’d grown as I gave them each a hug. The older, Ian, was nine in September, if I remembered correctly, and the younger, Ryan, turned six in February. Ian had gotten taller and a bit lanky, his shoulders bonier than I remembered, like mine when I was his age, and Ryan still looked completely proportionate as far as kids go, like a nimble little gymnast.

  “Uncle Ted, Uncle Ted,” Ryan said loudly, “you want to come play Mario Cart with us?”

  “Are you kidding?” I smiled. “Do I ever. But let me say hello to your Nanny Mary first.”

  • • •

  Ma likes to talk about my work. A lot. Almost too much for my liking. She wants specifics, but I prefer to speak about it in the most general of terms. So after our hugs and kisses and you’re looking greats, the boys went back upstairs to play Mario Cart on the Wii, and Ma began to finely chop a garlic clove and slice some tomatoes. Natalie motioned for me to take a seat at the counter. Once Ma found her chopping rhythm, she dove right in. “So your first murder case in Glacier after all these years?”

  “First and only,” I said. Natalie grated cheese into a pot filled with what looked like a creamy mixture of green beans and mushrooms. “Go figure. Not a lot of homicides in Glacier in the last decade. A lot of accidents: drowning, climbing incidents, disappearances.” I left out maulings, but it would be on all of our minds without me saying. “And some potential suicides, but not much in the way of foul play until now.”

  “So?” Ma said sharply. “What’s the case about? Some kid from up the Line was kidnapped?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then mauled?”

  “I hate to admit that I don’t really understand what happened yet.”

  “That can’t be good. It’s been a few days already.”

  “What? You been watching the same crime shows as Nat?”

  She pointed her knife at me for a second and made a funny face in a mock scold, then tossed the stem of the tomato in the sink. “How many of these you want cut?”

  “Two’s enough.” Natalie looked over her shoulder.

  Thinking Ma might drop the subject and focus on her slicing, I asked about her golf buddies.

  “They’re fine.” She waved her hand before her face. “Up to all the usual boring stuff. You’ve got anything to go on?”

  “I’ve got some good leads.”

  “Which are?”

  I shrugged. “The usual—friends, family. Need help cutting some of those veggies?”

  “Of course not.” She looked at
me like I was crazy for asking, her brow crinkled and her chin pulled in. She paused for a moment. I could feel some tension subtly insert itself into the room like a change in the lighting or the air pressure. “You’ve seen that Ford yet?”

  I considered saying not yet—just to keep it simple. “Yeah, I’ve seen him.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Still the same creep?”

  “Don’t really know him,” I said. “I’d never met him before.” I took a sip of beer. Ma set aside the tomatoes, pushed a clump of thick graying hair behind her ear with the back of her hand, and began chopping cucumbers, more vigorously than she had the tomatoes, the blade hitting the cutting board too hard, no coincidence after mentioning Ford’s name.

  “I don’t know him either, but I can read people and it doesn’t take a genius to see that that guy’s no good.”

  “Someone likes him, or at least thinks he does a good job up there,” Natalie offered. “Otherwise he wouldn’t be around for so many years . . . decades.”

  “Well, I . . . I just never liked that man,” she said.

  “No kidding?” Natalie said dryly, then smiled.

  “What? It’s not a joke,” Ma said. “How he portrayed things with your father and all.”

  “That was a long time ago.” Natalie looked at me, her eyes wide. I couldn’t tell if she was looking for backup from me or just curious about my reaction.

  “He know who you are?” Ma asked carefully, gently. Suddenly, perhaps because of the unexpected softness in her voice, I felt something fragile welling up.

  “I don’t think so. Like Nat said, it was a long time ago.”

  She looked up, her eyes serious. I fidgeted in my stool. “How could he not if he knows your name?” The edge back in her voice. Time, apparently, had not taken care of it.