We went through the woods, planning to sweep from the creek and back up to look for anyone not belonging to the fire crews. The Ole Fire had crossed one of the ridges to the east of Essex and there was a strong column of flame building two hundred feet upward on the next one over. It raged and glowed eerily through the dense smoke less than a quarter mile from us.
Tara coughed, then said, “That’s the ops manager for the fire crews.” A medium-height, stocky man of about forty came toward us. He reported to the IC as well.
I held out my hand. “Officer Monty Harris,” I introduced myself.
“Hutch Wilcox,” he said, removing his glove so we could shake. His hand was rough, callused from digging lines, clearing trees and brush, and assisting the helicopters as they captured and hauled water from the middle fork of the Flathead River. A smeared line of soot ran across his right cheek toward a thick eighties-style mustache.
“Thank you for your hard work out here,” I said. “It’s mind-blowing what you do.”
“It’s just, well, what we do.” He wiped the grit off his face with the back of his hand. “More and more of it each year, it seems. And they’re burning more intensely.”
“Just making sure the area is cleared out for your men. Not that this area is all that welcoming to tourists right now.”
“Definitely not, but I appreciate the extra caution. I’ve been on the lookout too, but haven’t seen anyone other than my men around.” Wilcox motioned to his crew. Near the rear of the line of men setting up to dig a fuel break, I recognized a firefighter named Carl Benson. I’d met him the last time we had a big fire season. Carl was about six feet and all muscle, maybe 175 pounds, with a long mane of dark hair that he kept tied at the nape of his neck. He was known for his boundless energy and constant composure—a natural in the crazy world of wildfire fighting. He seemed to regard it romantically, even, as if he were Captain Ahab and each fire a red, pulsing, vengeful creature moving through the sea of mountains like the great white Moby Dick.
“You can’t fight it; you can only corral it,” Carl was saying to one of the men working next to him as Wilcox, Tara, and I walked up. The kid, tomato-faced and scared, looked like this was one of his first shifts on wildfire detail.
“Hey, Carl,” I said.
“Monty.” He tipped his hard hat to me. “Good to see you. We’ve got some real doozies on our hands this summer.”
“Dryer and hotter than hell,” I said.
“This is Jimmy Taylor,” Wilcox offered. “Second day out.”
“We appreciate the hard work.” I grinned at him. He looked like he could use a little encouragement. Jimmy and Carl left to take their spot on the fuel break line, and Wilcox headed off to talk to some others on his crew who were waving him over. Tara and I trailed Jimmy and Carl for a short stretch, since it was on the way toward the river.
“Remember,” Carl told Jimmy while he hocked a loogie and spit it out, then held an index finger over one nostril and did a farmer blow. Sinus passages didn’t stay in the best of shape when working fire season. “The triangle consists of three legs: heat, fuel, and oxygen. We’re just here to break the fuel leg so that we steer the beast clear of town.”
Jimmy didn’t look like he was hearing a word Carl said and certainly wasn’t answering. I figured that what Carl was explaining was completely obvious at this point in the kid’s training, not to mention that he looked like he was simply trying to survive . . . trying not to puke or pass out from the heat. He was holding one thickly gloved hand across his stomach while the other carried his Pulaski.
“You okay there?” I asked him.
“I’m good,” he muttered.
“I told him”—Carl shifted his heavy pack on his back—“not to try the Copenhagen last night. I warned him it’d just get him sick and now here he is. . . . But you just watch, he’ll probably end up with a lifelong love affair with the stuff like the rest of us.”
“Felt all right last night,” Jimmy said.
I could picture it: Jimmy taking a little in spite of Carl’s warnings—squeezing it between his fingers and gingerly shoving it in between his lower gum and his lip. I remembered the first time I had tried it when I was a game warden on the east side of the Divide, in a town called Choteau. Another warden had pulled a fresh can out, snapped it against the inside of his palm, and offered me a pinch. I had taken some under his squinting gaze and within seconds, my head became light as a butterfly, my muscles slackened, and I simply buzzed and floated for a short time. Luckily, I never made a habit out of it like some of the other game wardens.
Carl eyed the kid as if he was some oddity he wasn’t sure whether to study or curse. Jimmy was sweating so much that his beige Nomex fire suit was drenched and had already begun to turn blackish gray. I didn’t envy him at all. The work was grueling. This was no campfire with steady, lulling pops and crackles. We were talking about the kind of roaring giant that presses in on you, fills your head with its freight train of noise, and makes your gut vibrate. The heat from the flames in the distance surrounded us and the sound engulfed us. The temperature was at least 107 degrees where we were standing.
“Grab your Pulaski and take your spot next to me,” Carl pointed to a dry patch of land in line with the rest of the crew. Jimmy wiped his watering eyes, which had developed crusty granules in the inside corners of each, and took his spot.
The drill was not complex, just exhausting: throw your pick in again and again until the workers could advance. I knew it well since I’d filled in a time or two when I was in college and needed some summer money. This is how it got done—an entire train of mostly men and a few women pitched trowels . . . moving the sequence forward until enough strikes made a nice six-foot-wide break, a canal of sorts that would not get crossed by the roaring monster heading their way. Hopefully.
Jimmy took his place and drove the axe side of his Pulaski into tall dry grass, rock, and dirt to cut the break up a sidehill. He was second from the back. Carl was last, the caboose bringing up the rear.
Tara and I left them to their work and headed toward the creek. A loud crunching sound marked each step we took through the dried foliage, reminding us why the forests were burning in the first place. Everything crackled like tissue paper. I could hear no birds, no squirrels, no chipmunks, only the fire booming in the distance and the sound of the loud backhoe ripping the smaller trees out.
We made our way down the bank of the creek for a stretch. It babbled quietly as if it didn’t care about the blazing mountain. The rest of the forest felt subdued, as if the woods were on hold, waiting patiently to see what damage Sheep and Ole would bring. Many animals had already departed or burrowed deep underground.
Twenty minutes later we were back near the line where the men were digging. The sequence had already begun to make headway in clearing the ground, and I spotted the end of the line. Carl and the rookie were still bringing up the rear. I watched Jimmy throw his axe, watched it land, and saw him pause and lean over at his waist.
“Oh no,” I said to Tara, “looks like he might lose it after all.” We headed a little closer. Jimmy picked up his axe and went for another blow, only this time his swing was gentler and smaller. I wondered if he was too weak to take a full swing when he kneeled down next to the ground and started scraping at something. As we came closer, I could see a dirty, yellowed rock.
“Time,” Carl yelled, meaning time to move.
Jimmy continued to scrape at the ground. Tara mumbled something, and I was just going to ask her what she’d said when Jimmy announced, “Look at this.”
“What?” Carl asked.
“Look.” Jimmy sank to his knees and brushed dirt off a round object and ignored the line as it began to shift to the northeast again. I could still see it in the dirt, and had a quick thought that the rocks out in this area were typically oyster gray, blue green, or reddish purple, maybe, but not ta
n.
“What’s the holdup?” I asked, leaning forward to get a better angle.
Jimmy was brushing it off with his gloved hand, when suddenly he startled, jumped back, and fell on his butt.
“Jesus, boy.” Carl laughed. “What’s your deal?”
Jimmy pointed at it. Tara, Carl, and I shuffled in closer, stuck our necks out and peered down at the ground.
“Holy shit,” Carl grunted as we stared at the exposed skull.
I knelt down for a closer look.
“Shouldn’t we—” Jimmy stopped midsentence, rotated his body away from us, wrapped his arm around his gut, and threw up unto the brown grass at his feet.
“Shit, kid,” Carl said, backing away. “I had a feeling that nothing about you would be easy. Leave it to you to be the only firefighter out here to find a damn skull in a fire break.”
• • •
“You’re talking human skeleton?” Joe Smith’s voice came through my radio.
“Yes, I am.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” I said. In Glacier and the surrounding wilderness, it wasn’t entirely uncommon to come across some rotting animal bones, and skeletal remains of a bear’s paws are often mistaken for human hands, but the skull and the fact that they were buried discounted that these were animal bones.
“Remind him that there aren’t exactly many monkeys around these parts,” Tara whispered.
“What have you done so far?” Smith asked.
“Tara and I roped it off and told ops to divert the line around it, closer to the fire. Everyone’s got a hundred things going on with the state of things, but this is serious.”
“Definitely serious,” Joe said.
“And I’m worried about how close Ole is getting. We need a forensics team on it sooner than later. If Ole hits this line,” I added. “I’m not sure what kind of a beating these bones will take.”
“I’m not sure either. Probably wouldn’t incinerate them, but might destroy any chances of mitochondrial DNA.”
“How do you want me to proceed?”
“Call the county and get forensics on it. I know Walsh”—he was referring to the sheriff of Flathead County—“is busy with evacuations as I am. I’ll contact him. This is going to need to go through the IC as well now, since it’s under their umbrella, but we’ll want to give them as much information as we can about how we and the county usually handle this type of a situation.” When a human skeleton is found, it’s standard procedure to report it to the law enforcement system that has jurisdiction, get someone with experience to carefully excavate it, then send it to the local morgue, where the coroner and forensic experts examine it and decide if it can be identified locally. If not, it gets sent to a center in Texas that identifies bones.
“I’ve spoken to Wilcox. He’s here with me now. I’ll let him know that we’ll need the county up here as soon as possible to get this bagged and processed.”
“Shit,” Wilcox said as I signed off with Smith. He’d come over to check on the holdup when he noticed the end of the line wasn’t moving. “A skeleton out here. Wild. Think it’s some drifter from the trains?” he asked, seemingly delighted to be talking about something other than wind speed and direction. “Someone who died out here in the cold or something?”
“I have no idea. Although someone who freezes to death doesn’t get buried under the soil without a little help.”
I knelt down again to look at the bones. Tara followed suit. Even through all the noise, I could hear a wheeze in her breathing as I stared at them and she waited for me to say something. I didn’t want to put her on the spot, so I didn’t ask if the smoke was getting to her. I just pulled out some latex gloves and ever so gently nudged the skull to angle slightly upward so I could see its profile.
“When we were first heading this way,” Tara said, “even when I could barely make anything out, I knew something was up because I could see that that wasn’t a rock.” She pointed to a partially exposed longer bone that looked like a femur.
I didn’t want to disturb the scene any more than it already had been, and I realized we were going to need a proper FA—forensic anthropologist—but I wasn’t aware of one in the area. I told Tara that there was one person, though. A woman named Gretchen Larson whom I’d worked with several times before. Most of us in the local law enforcement arena knew her, since she was the lead of the Flathead County forensics team. “She or someone in her unit can maybe process the area and transfer the skeleton to the appropriate anthropologist or at least know who to call in to do it.” I looked up at the ridge and turned to Wilcox. “Do you think your lines are going to hold?”
“We’re trying our best,” he said, “but it’s a hot one. Afraid I’m going to have to pull my men by evening if the wind shifts as it’s supposed to by later today. IC has established Trigger Point A for Ole. Java Creek. And for Sheep—Dickey Creek.” He was referring to the predetermined lines that the fires might reach, and if either fire reached either point—in this case Java Creek for Ole, which was in the park—it was time to pull the crews.
“Okay.” I turned to Tara. “Until we determine otherwise, we’ll need to treat this as a crime scene, which means no one gets by the tape.” I tapped my pocket where my cell phone was, well aware that there was limited cell service in the area. I would need to walk back out to the lot, the one place we could get reception, because, strange as it seemed, the railroad tracks acted as huge antennas, and with the booster in my SUV, I could amplify the signal of my cell phone.
She coughed and nodded.
Suddenly she looked pale to me. I wondered if it was just the unearthly light reaching through the woods like a specter and making me feel like I was in some alternate universe. “You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, just a touch of asthma. I’ve got my inhaler, though.”
“You should get out of this smoke, is what I think. I can get someone else to guard the area. You’ve already been a huge help with taping it off.”
“Don’t patronize me, Harris.” She smiled, adjusted her hard hat slightly, but didn’t go anywhere, just stood looking toward the ridge. I followed her gaze to the tongues of flame in the distance and the thick, dirty, tumor-colored smoke stacking above us like thunderclouds, then glanced back down at the shallow grave. Ash particles the size of mosquitoes slowly drifted around us and fell on to the grave.
Even though I felt smothered by the intense heat of the nearby wildfire, and troubled by the bones that lay at our feet, I was foolishly energized to be thinking about even the minuscule possibility of some kind of a case. “If you’re okay, then I’ll be right back,” I told Tara. “Make sure no one enters while I go notify IC and call the county.”
• • •
Tara and I waited for Flathead County’s Crime Scene Team—for Gretchen and whoever else she was bringing with her—at the parking lot of the Essex train depot. The frailest of the sun’s light filtered through the congested sky, but I could still feel summer’s strong rays penetrate, making the air stuffy and warm. The fire, looming over the ridge, radiated its own heat through the entire area.
We sat silently in the Park SUV I was driving, keeping the door shut to block out the smoke, turning on the AC periodically to cool it down and drinking bottles of water. Tara read a magazine, and I noticed her breathing was much quieter than at the site. I was writing some notes and looking at the digital pictures I’d taken and thinking about the bones, about a person buried in a place meant to be hidden forever—a clandestine grave. Whoever had put the body there had not anticipated a fuel break line being dug in the exact same area. Who would think of that? Then again, no one would think of burying a body anywhere at all other than a cemetery unless they had something to hide. I wondered how long it had been there—not all that deep under, the railways not far away, vibrations running through the ground each time a train
barreled through.
My radio went off as I turned the ignition back on along with the cool air when I noticed Tara begin to fan herself with her magazine. “Monty here.”
“Harris,” my boss’s voice came through. “How’s it going?”
“Officer Reed and I are waiting for forensics. They should be here any minute.”
“You know,” Smith said, “you’re probably not going to have the leisure of an entire day or two to complete this thing, so you’re going to have to keep everyone working quickly.”
“I’m on it, sir.”
“Good, ’cause we’ve got another problem: a missing camper—a thirteen-year-old boy. I’ve got Greeley and a few others searching for him. He was at the campsite—at Fish Creek—when the rest of the family went for a walk around Lake McDonald. Wanted to stay back and play his DS—some gaming thing—but when they returned, he wasn’t there.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“The family called pretty quickly after they returned and they were gone about two hours, so we’re not sure. No more than two and a half at this point.” Joe sighed and it came through the radio as an airy, hissing sound.
Immediately, out of instinct and because of the boy’s age, I thought of my best friend from childhood, Nathan Faraway. When I was twelve, he had gone missing in the woods in the night. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that this incident fueled a large part of my ambition to work in law enforcement. But, here in Glacier, the kid had most likely just gotten a little lost and would be found wandering down a nearby trail in a short while, or hanging out at some other campsite where he’d met a new friend.
“They should be able to find him,” Joe said. “Probably just walked somewhere, then got sidetracked or turned around.”
The Weight of Night Page 2
