The Wild Inside

by Christine Carbo

  “And if they don’t?”

  “We’ll have to cut him open.”

  Monty pushed his glasses up. “From what I’ve heard, I don’t think the committee’s going to let you do that.”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard all sorts of things,” I said resentfully. “But bottom line is that it depends on the chain of command in the DOI at this point.”

  Monty lifted an eyebrow. “Everyone knows the parks make their own calls on their own bears, not the department.”

  “But this is different. This involves a federal murder investigation, and like I said, now we have the weapon.”

  “And you think that will trump the park’s decision?”

  “Look,” I said. “As much as I know how much you like the guy to be happy, I’m afraid I do think it trumps his decision.”

  “Happy?” Monty furrowed his brow.

  “I know you like to please the guy.” I could hear the accusation in my voice. I tried to cover: “After all,” I added, “he’s as good as your boss.”

  “Smith’s my boss.” He stood up to face me. “I’m just doing whatever job I’m assigned to because that’s who I am. It’s not like I’m trying to kiss anyone’s ass.” He spread his hands out to his sides as if to add, Come on now.

  “Oh, please.” I knew I should back off, but I couldn’t just yet. “I know the only reason you’ve been assigned to this case is to keep tabs on things and report back to him.”

  “Really? I thought the reason I was on this case was to help you out. I am a Park Police officer.”

  “Hmm. Well, I’m not sure why they’d take a desk guy who’s practically Ford’s secretary to do real police work.”

  “Maybe I’m good at both?” Monty’s mouth was half open.

  “Well, if you’re good at both, maybe you ought to start acting like a real officer and start making it easy for us to solve this case rather than harder.” I knew I was being completely irrational and unfair. Monty did, indeed, act like a good officer and was extremely helpful, but I couldn’t set my anger aside.

  “How the hell am I making it harder?”

  “By trying to undermine me.” I picked up my diagram, rolled it up, and placed it under my arm.

  “Undermine you?” He furrowed his brow.

  I gathered the files filled with photos of Victor and the crime scene and shoved them in my case. “It’s neither here nor there at this point. Let’s just keep plugging along and get this thing solved.” I let out a loud sigh and went to the door. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “Wait. I want to know why you think I’ve undermined you.”

  I turned to him from the doorway and saw that his brow was still deeply furrowed, his arms crossed before his chest. “Let’s just say that I really didn’t need you filling Ford in on what I’d told you about yesterday.” I turned and walked out the door without waiting for a reply.

  22

  AS SOON AS I got in my car, I called Monica and gave her the serial number and tracked the initial registration to a Robert Stein from Kalispell who often bought guns at one gun show, then bartered them for other things he needed at pawnshops or other gun shows. I visited Mr. Stein at a nice home in Whitefish near the ski resort. He claimed to have traded the Ruger for a piece from a local artist and showed me the painting above his rock fireplace, a rich landscape of an eastern Montana coulee cut into a buttery wheat field lit by a fiery sunset and adorned with handsome pheasants.

  I then tracked the artist down to a residence in Bigfork at the south end of the Flathead Valley on the north end of Flathead Lake. His name was Davis Riggs, and I found his number in the phone book back in my cabin and asked his wife if he was there. She asked who was calling, and I told her the truth. He came right to the phone, no stalling, and I figured he had nothing to hide.

  “How can I help you, sir?” his voice was pleasant and warm.

  “Ah, Mr. Riggs, I wonder if you can help me. I’m wondering if you still own that Ruger Blackhawk .357 you traded one of your paintings for at the Fairgrounds Trade Show two years ago. I believe.” I looked down at my notepad. “It was in August?”

  “The Ruger?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You know, I rarely keep those for more than a week. I take them to a pawnshop and get cash immediately.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Riggs laughed softly at the other end. “It’s the best way to make money during an economic downswing. It’s hard to sell a painting outright during tough times, but everyone wants a gun around these parts when things get pinched.”

  “I see. Do you remember which pawnshop you used and when you took it there?”

  “Sure, First National Pawn, on Highway 93. Like I said, I never typically wait more than a few days. So if the gun show was in August, it was probably still August.”

  The owner of First National hemmed and hawed and made no promises that they had a record of who bought what from that long ago. “You know, most people buy with cash,” he said, but did kindly agree to go through all his August records from two years ago and get back to us with any purchase of a 1970 stainless .357 Ruger Blackhawk. I gave him the details, politely asking him to write them down. “A 1970 stainless,” I repeated, “with a six-inch barrel and an adjustable rear sight and composite grips with ‘Sturm, Ruger and Co., Inc.’ and ‘Southport, Conn. U.S.A’ stamped on the left side of the barrel. And,” I added, “it has ‘Ruger .357 CAL’ and ‘Blackhawk’ on the left side of the frame beneath the cylinder, and the trademark phoenix logo to the right of the words.”

  In between pacing around the cabin, I tried to study everything I had and not think about Tom Hess, Ford, or even Monty now. Since I’d been at Ma’s the night before and hadn’t had the heat on or a fire going, the place felt cold and fusty. I turned the electric heat up and sat on the couch to look at all the photos of the crime scene with the tree and the corpse bound to it, shot from every conceivable angle—close-ups of the bloody duct tape, his chewed-up cheek and jaw, his skull, his ripped arms and legs, and his abdominal area, where large gaps of flesh were taken. When thoughts of my father started to creep in, I shut the file angrily and hoped like hell that the ballistics lab wouldn’t take long to call with some useful information on the Ruger.

  I unrolled my diagram and continued to work on it, unsuccessfully attempting to brainstorm anything that came to mind. I knew there was a connection somewhere right in front of me. I felt as if I was peering through a kaleidoscope, and I only needed to make one or two more turns and a different pattern, the right one, would emerge before my eyes.

  I spoke to Gretchen to see if anything else had come up, and she said that there was nothing new to report. I spoke to Dr. Wilson again to recheck my notes on everything he had told me: the gunshot, the angle, the amount of time the victim spent bound to the tree, the possible time of death.

  I went back over Tom Hess’s file. As bad as Stimpy seemed, a guy who could beat a dog to near death was probably worse in terms of violence. I made myself a turkey and cheese sandwich, read more notes, then began pacing, and when that started, I knew I needed to get out. I grabbed my coat and headed to the Inside Road.

  When I parked and got out, I could see my breath. Mosquito-size flakes of snow started to slowly drift down from the sky, and I held out my palm to let one land on it and watched it melt. There was something comforting about the snow, how just a touch of the flaky white stuff drifting and swirling in the dark, empty forest could alter the fall mood and make it seem less eerie.

  I walked on the overgrown trail and expected a raven to caw, but all was silent except for the creak of the trees and the rustling of a ground squirrel somewhere off in the brush. The ground had become firmer as the mud began to freeze, and I could feel the cold, bumpy earth poke the soles of my shoes.

  By the time I made it to the site, a thin veil of snow laye
red the forest floor. White flakes gathered on golden and red bushes, on dead leaves, pine needles, and old leftover yellowed grass from the summer. It began to dust the baby firs springing up, as well as the crisscrossed jumble of fallen branches.

  I walked slowly to the tree, to the bloodstained grayish-brown bark and stared at it. The trunk had a thick triangular, naturally caused groove that exposed a lighter-colored ash-gray part of the tree underneath. I suppose it grew that way, around some disease or ailment.

  It was a tall tree. There were no branches until the top, and it seemed to stretch a long way up to touch the sky. It looked solitary—a one-man show. I walked away from it, to the side where a fallen log lay, and brushed off the film of snow and sat, not caring if my pants would get wet. I opened my thermos and poured a steaming cup and stared at the tree in the clearing. Suddenly, an owl sailed by, its wingspan long, brown, and silently flapping. I thought of how that same owl might have flown by Victor during his night of hell, maybe shrieking to prompt its prey to startled movement. I tried to imagine who brought Victor and bound him. How he endured a night of torture—a child’s worst nightmare: alone in the woods, freezing, unable to run and coming off a high, the rough bark against his skin, and the tape too thick and tight to wiggle out of. Bait for anything that wanted him. My heart rate began to rise, and flashes of Oldman Lake shot through my mind. I pushed the thoughts away.

  My butt began to freeze. I stood and tossed the last cold bit of my coffee onto the ground, shook the thermos cup out, and screwed the lid on. I brushed the gathering flakes, rapidly growing bigger and now the size of moths, off my pants. I knew that I had come to the spot to tackle at least one thing: to see if anything new came to mind about what happened to Victor Lance. I stood silently, waiting for an epiphany, hoping each small twitch in the forest held an accessible clue.

  I walked around the tree studying the blood spatter on the bark. Then I continued around it wider and wider until I increased the circle beyond where Gretchen and her crew had worked. I climbed over fallen logs and parted branches, carefully studying them for any signs of blood or breaks. I looked for dislodged logs or flattened foliage not already noted. I tried to put myself in both the perpetrator’s and Victor’s position.

  How did they get Victor back here? Did they force him? Did he fall? Were his hands bound? I saw nothing out of the ordinary. The woods formed a tangled pattern. Branches were intertwined, and people and animals had traipsed through the area, including the rangers checking for bear scat, but I found nothing that obviously broke the interwoven network. I thought about the motivation.

  Anger, I considered. Revenge. A combination of both? I thought of Anderson and kept coming back to Tom Hess and the dog. Anyone nasty enough to do that to an innocent animal must be—and this is an understatement—difficult to have a friendship with. I wondered how he and Victor got along and if something went wrong enough for Hess to take his partner-in-cruelty to the woods and leave him there. It almost seemed too restrained, too controlled, for a poaching, instant-gratification personality. We’d already notified Highway Patrol on the east side of the mountains to keep an eye out for Hess, but I decided to again stress the need to locate him and to also put the word out to all Fish Wildlife and Parks game wardens working the hunter-access areas. The vastness of eastern Montana provided a multitude of places to hide.

  As I circled back in, I found myself by the bush where I’d dropped my quarter. Its leaves were fire-red and now covered in white. I thought of Monty and me laughing. I bent over and peered through the branches to the dark ground not yet touched by the snow. No quarter. I walked around to the other side, stepping through thick clusters of underbrush, yellow, red, and brown. The legs of my pants were soaked. I separated the branches again and searched.

  In the mud, I saw an edge of silver. I smiled, grabbed it, and rubbed its wet and muddy surface to a clean sparkle. Its tactile exactness amid all the unanswered questions churning in my mind gave me a vague sense of hope. I walked out of the woods with my thermos and no answers. But for that moment, I had my Vermont quarter and only a moment or two of an increased heart rate.

  • • •

  I drove back to the office. I figured they’d be completely empty now that it was turning dark, but Monty was still in, and when I entered, he lifted his chin and gave me a curt dip of his head. “Ted,” he acknowledged me.

  “Didn’t think you’d still be here.”

  “I’m just leaving.” He shuffled his work together. Then he carefully slid his files into his satchel and left without another word or eye contact.

  Again, I stared at his color-coded poster as if it held the answers. Getting no smile and the cold shoulder from Monty hit me square on. I knew I deserved it. I sat without taking my coat off. A numbness began to take hold of me, and I continued to sit still, chilled in my wet pants, for I don’t know how long until my phone rang and made me snap out of it.

  “Ted, what the hell is going on up there?”

  It was Sean. I didn’t answer—tried to collect my thoughts.

  “I get a call from Ford about your goddamn history in Glacier. Are you kidding me? A grizzly attack in 1987?”

  “So?” I said.

  “Why didn’t I know about this?”

  “I don’t know.” I stood up and began to pace the room, but my legs felt weak, so I sat back down. “Why should you?”

  “Why should I?” His voice was getting louder. “If you’ve got a water phobia, I shouldn’t know about it?”

  “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, sir.” I tried to take a deep breath, but it caught high up near my throat. “But it’s just something a long time ago. There’s no phobia and it has nothing to do with the present. Seriously, what does it have to do with anything now?”

  “Let me think,” he said sarcastically. “Maybe because you’re in charge of a case in the same park that it happened in? Maybe because this case involves a grizzly bear?”

  “So?” I said again, trying to sound cavalier, but not sure I was pulling it off.

  “So? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  “Look, sir, I honestly don’t see the relevance. I’ve been working this job over ten years and I’ve been in many parks with grizzlies around: Yellowstone—”

  “You’ve never been this close”—he cut me off—“to . . . to a situation like this before.”

  “It’s not like anything is wrong, sir.” I ran my fingers through my hair and squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. “If my father had died in a car accident that I’d been in with him when I was a teen, would I not be able to investigate a murder at a car dealership?” I knew what I had just said was completely ridiculous.

  “That’s different and you know it. Besides, you should have solved this by now.”

  “It’s happening, just a little more slowly than some. But definitely not the slowest. We’ve taken longer, a lot longer,” and I almost said and some have never been solved, but stopped myself when I imagined the rage he might go into about me thinking that was acceptable. In fact, I didn’t think not solving a case was acceptable at all, and the few in the department that went that way, one involving a thirteen-year-old boy, bothered all four of us deeply.

  “Look, Ted. Clearly, we originally missed something in your initial psych evaluations.”

  I knew what he really meant: clearly, you did not give all the information you should have about your background, but I appreciated his tact amid his anger.

  “You need to wrap this thing up quickly, and as soon as you do, you’re coming back for another evaluation and a committee review. And if you don’t solve this case soon, like within the next week, you’re coming back anyway, and I’m sending LaMatto in.”

  • • •

  For the next two days, Monty and I hardly spoke, as if we were in some lovers’ spat. I have to take responsibility for it because I am somewhat stubborn and
was still angry that he told Ford about my history. I felt broody and quiet, and worse, knowing a psych evaluation was looming in the near future made me withdraw even further into my shell.

  At the risk of sounding like I’m some kind of Holmes and Monty my Watson, I can say that I actually sort of missed him and felt a little lost without his eagerness buoying me up. Not making any further headway on the case wasn’t helping either. The place felt tense, stifled, and awkward, and all I could think about was Jeff LaMotto coming in, having Monty bust his ass to bring him up to speed while opportunity and preparation intersected, so that he could come in last minute as the hero when I got transferred to border patrol with my tail between my legs.

  Monty and I did communicate but only to exchange whatever trickles of information we garnered regarding the case and the efforts to find the owner of the Ruger. The report from the ballistics lab in Missoula had come up with no fingerprints, and at this point, we needed the slug to verify a match between weapon and bullet so that we knew we even had a link between the weapon and the actual crime. Margaret, one of the lead ballistics specialists at the university, told me that it was a pre-1973 model and like all other older Ruger single-action revolvers, it didn’t have a transfer bar between the hammer and the firing pin, so that the gun is less safe to carry loaded with six rounds when the hammer is down. “With this one,” she said over the phone, “there were four cartridges left in the cylinder with only one round fired, so that means whoever fired it knew enough to not carry it with six rounds but didn’t know that the empty chamber should be directly under the hammer.”

  “So that it won’t accidentally go off if the hammer gets hit.” I thought of the angle of the shot fired—how an accidental discharge would account for the strange trajectory of the bullet.

  “That’s right,” she agreed.

  I thanked her and told her to call if anything else of interest came up.

  Monty informed me that there’d been no leads from any of the local stores on duct tape purchases that seemed like potential suspects. There’d been just a few purchases by credit card here and there from random people: a mother from Kalispell, a man from Oregon who’d just been passing through, a general-contracting business from Whitefish, and the rest untraceable because cash was used. He was still focusing on the grandchildren, trying to find some possible in, but was coming up short.