The Wild Inside

by Christine Carbo

  “I’m pretty sure I know who it is.” I sighed, and after Monty confirmed my suspicions, I said, “I’m headed there right now.”

  • • •

  Instead of driving all the way to the park to grab Monty, I took a chance that the house would be empty and rolled slowly in and looked for vehicles in the driveway. I parked and went to the window and peeked through, then I knocked. When no one came, I knocked again.

  I looked around. The sun was setting and the fields burned with an amber glow—the perfect photo with tall, yellow-leafed cottonwoods in the distance and the bluish-green mountains in the background. A transient paradise holding so much radiant promise, so much ineffable beauty, but one that would pass in moments.

  I thought I spotted movement at the barn—someone going through the large wooden doors, so I headed up the dirt road, zipping up my coat. When I got to it, I stepped in and saw Heather’s blond hair falling around her shoulders onto a dark wool coat. She didn’t turn to say hi, just kept stroking her horse and gently pushed his head toward the floor. “This releases their spine,” she said, her back to me. “They love it.”

  “What releases their spine?”

  “Pushing their heads down”—she looked over her shoulder at me—“and keeping it there for a bit. It’s kind of like yoga for them. When they pull back up, they make a smacking sound with their mouths. Wait just a few more minutes,” she said.

  I shuffled closer, took in the musty smell of old wood and the sweet smell of hay and oats.

  She gently nudged the horse’s head back upright, and within a minute or two, he started smacking. She smiled. “See, they love it.”

  “I see that.” I wanted to smile too, wanted to ask the horse’s name, but I knew that type of personal conversation was not in order. I felt a great weakness fall upon me, and I wanted to sit down or lean against a wall. It took all my strength to force myself to say: “Heather, I need to ask you some questions.”

  Her eyes looked large, maybe filled with some fright, maybe a certain numbness or even petulance like a teen caught coming in late, but it was getting dim, and I couldn’t really make it out. I did catch an intake of breath.

  “About what?”

  “For starters, about your mother.”

  “What about her?” She began to brush the horse, not mechanically, but with affectionate, smooth strokes.

  “Did you know about Lou and her?”

  Heather stopped brushing the horse’s neck and turned toward me. She nodded.

  “Did you know that Victor knew as well?”

  She didn’t answer, just stood by her horse. Her eyes narrowed as if she were trying to assess me.

  “Did you?” I pushed it.

  “Yes,” she said. “He was trying to blackmail them.”

  “Both of them or just Lou?”

  “First Lou, then my mother.” She walked over and put the brush in a bin.

  I had suspected that Victor may have gone to Elena too, but had no evidence. “Did Leslie know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about your father?”

  “No,” she said, and this time, I could see fear in her eyes, even in the twilight. “And he can’t know. It would kill him.”

  “Heather, there are things that are going to hurt him more,” I said gently and walked closer to her.

  She backed away, the whites of her eyes and her blond hair bright in the pale twilight. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Look, the tape on the victim had traces of a heating rub or spray used for sore muscles, just like the kind you gave Lewis to use. And now we’ve got the gun and the bullet from the bear.”

  She stared at me, her arms by her side and her body stiff. I could see faint plumes of her breath in the cool, damp air of the barn.

  “I saw both the tape and the spray in your mudroom on the shelf. I’ve got a warrant,” I lied. “Even though I don’t really need it now that we have the weapon and the matching slug.”

  Her breath caught and came out as a choked cry. She put her hand to her mouth. Her eyes filled with anguish and a wildness I’d not seen before. Suddenly, she darted for the wide-open barn doors. As if in slow motion, I saw her silhouette encased by the pale light streaming in through the doors as she dashed through. I ran after her, out into the evening light, which seemed bright compared to the inside of the barn but wasn’t. The golden hue had disappeared and transformed into a pale, silvery pallor. She ran toward the river, across the close-cropped hay field—the wheat no longer on fire but beige and bland.

  She was fast, and I ran hard, tripping on divots and gopher holes in the field, my legs and arms whipping and cycling around to try to regain control like some comical pantomime. I got my legs back under me, gained speed, and caught her by reaching out and grabbing a clump of her hair.

  Her head jerked back, and we both tumbled to the ground. She tried to get onto her knees to get back up. I lunged forward again and pinned her underneath me. I don’t know why she didn’t use her skills in martial arts; she could have possibly taken me since my training probably paled in comparison to her routine. I figured she must have already surrendered in some way. I was breathing hard but managed to say, “Heather, Christ, where you gonna go?”

  Her body went weak below me, and I knew there would be no more fleeing or fighting. She looked at me, a deep pain and fear in her eyes. I could smell the damp wool of her coat, the pungent soil below and her shampoo, some kind of coconut smell. She didn’t run. She got into a crouched position, her knees before her. Her expression dazed and her eyes welling with tears, she just sat on the wet field. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t intend for it to happen this way. I didn’t . . .” She dropped her head into her hands.

  I kept my distance, fought the urge to go put a hand on her shoulder. But then she started crying harder, and I knew I couldn’t let her carry on for too long. I went over and reached for her arm and helped her up. “I’m going to need to take you in,” I said. “And I need you not to fight. It will just make it worse.” I grabbed my handcuffs and clasped them on her wrists and led her across the field and up the dirt road to the house.

  In those moments of walking back, the pale light meekly hanging on and straining my perspective, my fingers wrapped around her upper arm, the gravel on the dirt road scuffling under our feet, the smell of wood smoke in the cold air, my mind racing with the horrible consequences to follow—even under all those layers—it occurred to me that I felt a kind of deep contentment with her because she was like me: a decent person, but she had the bear in her.

  As we came closer to the house, a car drove up, and Heather stopped in her tracks. “It’s my father—please, he can’t see me like this.” She held up her wrists.

  I thought about going for my keys in my pocket because I knew I wanted to not hurt Joe more than I wanted to make sure I handled the suspect properly.

  “Please,” she pleaded.

  I really did think about fumbling around for the small key that opened the cuffs, but it was too late. Joe had slammed his car door and had come running. “Jesus, Ted. What’s going on here?”

  “Joe, I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “But . . .”

  “Ted, what’s going on? Let my daughter go right now.” His face was contorted with confusion. “Heather? What is this?”

  “It’s all right, Dad, I have some explaining to do.”

  “What do you mean? What the hell? Ted.” He looked to me, to the cuffs. “Get those off.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. She’s a suspect.”

  “Bullshit she’s a suspect. Get them off now.”

  “I can’t,” I repeated. “I’m sorry.”

  “This is crazy.” Joe started to go for his gun.

  “No, Joe,” I said loud and firmly. “Don’t do that.”

  He froze with his elbow cocked and h
is hand on his pistol still in its holster.

  “Dad, it’s all right. For right now, it’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not.” His voice was louder and shakier than I’d ever heard it. “It’s not okay. Why are those on you? You haven’t done anything.” He stared at her, pleading, his brow in deep creases.

  She looked at her feet without answering.

  His face, illuminated now by the porch light, went sheet white. “No.” He shook his head. “Not you, not this one.” His voice got smaller, and he dropped his hand away from his gun.

  I swallowed hard. “I just have to take her to the station for some questioning. It would be best if you waited here. I’ll call Monty and tell him to swing by for you. He can bring you. You shouldn’t be driving right now.”

  Joe stared at me blankly, his eyes like I’d never seen them, engulfed by pain, haunted and choked by the cruel realization that this might be the beginning of the loss of yet another child.

  • • •

  I took Heather to the station in Kalispell, then sat her down in one of the interrogation rooms and had an officer at the station grab her a cup of tea. I excused myself and called Monty and filled him in briefly. He was silent, didn’t whistle. I told him to go to Heather’s place and check on Joe, then come to the station to meet me. I told him it was all right to bring Joe if he insisted, but that he must stay in the waiting area and not come back to interfere with the questioning. I also made sure Monty bagged the tape and the bottle of muscle spray at her house from her mudroom. In light of her partial confession, I was able to swear in telephonically as soon as I got to the county jail so that I could get the warrant immediately. We needed it to acquire the items from the suspect’s home to corroborate the confession. Then I told him to come to the station when he had finished.

  I went back in and asked Heather if she needed anything—coffee, water, more tea, and she just shook her head. “Please, I need to get this over with.” She was hugging her knees to her chest, her feet on the edge of her chair, as if she could form a protective cocoon away from the harsh lights. She looked smaller than usual—pale-skinned in the fluorescents.

  “That would be good,” I said, not feeling particularly eager to get down to business. I stayed sitting casually back in my chair in an effort to keep things at ease. The sadness I felt for Joe and her overwhelmed me, but I needed for her to tell me everything and not clam up. We would need to corroborate her story with the evidence we had to make sure she wasn’t confessing to save someone else’s ass. The gun, the tape, and the muscle rub would go a long way in terms of corroboration. “I’m going to need you to start from the beginning, explaining your association with Victor. Obviously, I know he was involved with your sister.”

  She nodded. “He was, and as you know”—her voice was shaky and small—“he treated her poorly. The entire time he was with my sister, he used to make lewd comments to me and anytime she wasn’t around, tried to make the moves on me. He, he”—she shook her head and closed her eyes—“was disgusting. I don’t know what she saw in him and how she could have exposed Lewis to him. I guess”—she frowned—“he was some kind of a charmer to her.”

  “This was how long ago?”

  She covered the same things she’d already told me in her kitchen. As she spoke, her voice became stronger. She talked of her sister and Victor’s unstable relationship and how she’d talked Leslie into getting a restraining order, but not succeeding, and how eventually, none of it mattered because Leslie just took him back. “None of us have ever been able to influence my sister for very long.”

  “And Victor hit on you all along?”

  “Yes, and, in the end, he started threatening me and”—she looked at the table—“he threatened my nephew.”

  “Lewis Boone, you mean?” I knew exactly whom she meant, but I wanted it clear for the recording.

  “Yes. He was out of control.”

  “Can you tell me what day the actual incident that precipitated his night in the woods was?”

  “It was a Thursday. I ran into him at a gas station, and he wanted me to go for a drive with him. I could tell he was high. I told him to get lost and to leave everyone in my family alone, but it just angered him. I drove away, went to the grocery store, and went home. I was in my kitchen unloading some groceries when I heard him pull up.”

  “Pulled up in what?”

  “An old motorcycle. He followed me home. He came to the door and said he wanted to come in and that he wanted to talk about Leslie, that he was worried about her.

  “I knew it was a bunch of crap, so I wouldn’t let him in. I stepped out onto my porch and shut the door behind me, and he was getting more and more angry that I wouldn’t let him in. He was saying that I’d been a bitch to him all along and that I should try to be nicer. I told him to leave or I’d call the cops, and then he said if I ever call the cops on him, he would”—tears sprang to her eyes—“he said he would hurt Lewis.”

  “Did he say in what way?” I asked.

  “No, I didn’t know what he meant exactly, but I knew it wasn’t good, and I knew he was capable of it. But you can imagine how enraged I got. I asked him what he meant. ‘What do you mean, hurt Lewis?’ But he just smiled, that disgusting, meth-teeth grin. He knew he had me when it came to Lewis.”

  I could see the hate in her eyes, in spite of the ultimate outcome.

  “‘You could remedy that,’ he said. ‘All you need to do,’ and he came closer to me and touched my cheek—” She wiped her face with the back of her hand as if she could still feel his touch. “‘Is play nice for a change.’ Then he grabbed me behind my head and tried to pull me in to kiss me, but out of instinct”—she fixed her eyes on the cinder-block walls—“I grabbed his wrist, twisted it, and turned him onto the ground.”

  I wanted to say, good for you, but I knew it wouldn’t come across so well on camera. All I said was, “And?”

  “And he was really pissed. He got up, brushed his pants off, and said I’d regret it. He started to head for his bike, and I was frantic, thinking about how Lewis would never be safe, how I knew there was no way I could prevent him from finding a way around him in this small town, and with my sister so unpredictable.” She put the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and squeezed her eyes shut as if she had a headache.

  “So what did you do?”

  “Nothing.” She looked up, her eyes wild. “I didn’t do anything then, other than I told him if he ever lays a hand on Lewis, I would break every bone in his body. But—” She shook her head. “He, he just laughed. ‘You do that,’ he said, pointing at me, ‘and I’ll just turn it around to Lewis. You hear me’—he came back and pointed in my face—‘you touch me again that way and it’s Lewis’s ass.’

  “It took everything I had to not grab his arm and lay him flat. Then he turned and started to go for his motorcycle, but on his way, he stopped and walked over toward the storage shed on the other side of the driveway where Brady was leashed. I had no idea what he was doing until he got to him. I hadn’t taken him off his chain yet since I’d gotten home from my errands. He walked right up to him and started kicking him, really hard, and stomping his boot down on him. He’s such a sweet dog, he would never have expected it or fought back. He yelped loudly; Victor was really hurting him, he . . . ” She shook her head, caught her breath, and swallowed hard.

  “I was stunned, then enraged. I ran over there and side-kicked him in the head. It dazed him, then I did it again, a really hard one to the temple.” She pointed to her own. “He fell over and just lay there. I realized that I had knocked him out. Then I started to panic, Brady was whimpering. He couldn’t walk, so I took him off the leash and carried him into the house and put him in his bed.”

  “Then?”

  “I ran back to check Victor’s pulse. He was still out cold, but he had one. I lifted him up and put him in my truck.”
r />   “You lifted him?” I knew she was strong and Victor scrawny, but still.

  She turned back to look me in my eyes. “Well, not at first. I had one of those plastic sleds by the shed, so I grabbed it, rolled him onto it, and slid him to my truck, but then I had to lift him. I was worried he might come to, so I grabbed my backpack from my truck. I knew I had duct tape in it because I had it in there so that I could bring it to the gym to tape some of my sparring bags that were starting to rip.”

  “And?”

  “I taped his wrists and then, well, he, he was surprisingly light,” she said softly, sadly. “All those drugs, I guess, and I was panicking and full of adrenaline and was able to use the back edge of the truck for leverage.” She spoke louder again. “I didn’t even know where the guy lived and I knew that when he came to, he’d take it out on Lewis, not to mention my . . .” She looked at me, then the camera, didn’t finish what she was going to say, and I didn’t push for it.

  I knew she was going to say, my mother, but that she didn’t want that piece of information out there. Her face looked deeply strained, and I wondered at that moment whether she was calculating it all: the statement, the trial, how it would affect her parents, how it would destroy her father.

  “What did you do?”

  “Once I had him in the pickup, I threw a tarp I use to cover hay over him and I did the only thing that came to my mind besides taking him to the ER, which I had no intention of doing.” She crossed her arms before her chest stubbornly. “I needed to think and I needed no people around, so I took him to the place I knew best, to the place I grew up around—the park. I didn’t really have a plan at first. I just knew that if I could get to the woods without anyone around, I could figure it out, deal with him on my terms, not his. I knew he was a coward, a total wimp, but I also knew he would hurt Lewis, just like my dog. I think”—she started crying—“that he might have already scared Lewis. I can’t get Lewis to talk, but I know he’s afraid of him.”