The Weight of Night

by Christine Carbo

  I thought of Monty. I had known about his childhood incident, but I had not thought through all the implications—about the guilt he must have felt, maybe still feels. Perhaps we had more in common than I’d ever considered.

  I pulled a notepad from my drawer and began to take notes. I wrote down the names of the missing girls and boys, which ones returned safely, which ones were still missing, which ones were suspected runaways, which ones weren’t. I also looked up all unidentified remains.

  In the early nineties, several older teens went missing. Then, in 1999, a boy by the name of Shane Wallace vanished from a campground at a place called Lake Five, located just outside Glacier Park. The boy was never found, but his bicycle was left on the side of the road. Apparently, the family had been camping and brought the boy’s bicycle along so he could ride around when he became bored.

  I sat back in my chair and stared up at the ceiling, my thoughts scrolling through cases I’d worked over the years since I’d come to the valley. I thought of an incident I had not worked but had heard about after I first came from Seattle to work for the CSI unit.

  There’d been some talk about this case, which had shaken the community to the core. A boy’s remains had been found on the northeast side of the valley near the foothills of the Columbia Mountain Range after he’d been missing for a number of days. It had happened several years before I came, and Ray had told me about the case when a birthday ad was placed in the paper for the boy, saying something like In loving memory of our beautiful boy. It had a picture of him and his name. It also said something about his tragic end having no bearing on the wonderful afterlife he would receive.

  Ray and I were having coffee in the break room, and I had asked him about it. He had told me that the boy was found buried by some bird dogs hunting grouse in the foothills. The hunter followed his dogs and found them digging at the shallow grave. It was fresh enough that authorities were able to ID the boy immediately.

  I found the case easily and studied it. Samuel Erickson had gone missing on July 7, 2007, and was found six days later, on the thirteenth. Definitely a cold case now. Because they found the body so early—I considered the irony in the statement, since clearly it was not early enough. But then again, perhaps after such an abduction, some would consider the boy was better off dead and buried. The autopsy report indicated that Samuel’s time of death was some time on the twelfth, that he’d died between six to twelve hours before he was buried.

  I opened files with photos of the remains. The report was written by an ME named Marcus Prior, who claimed that the cause of death was a severe head wound. Then I clicked on a file that had an ID number and the words “head wound” next to it. I opened it and inspected it. I clicked on another image showing a different angle and leaned in closer. There was a messy, bloody major injury on the left side under the left ear, around the jawbone and spreading to the back of the head, completely disfiguring the side of the boy’s face and head. I read Prior’s report again. Documented clearly, he wrote, The mandible and occipital bones on the left side have been cleaved in two by a sharp object. The victim has undergone blunt-force trauma with a very sharp object, most likely an axe or hatchet.

  My heartbeat quickened at the mention of a cleave, of an axe or a hatchet, and I sat back in my chair, feeling it pound in my chest. My mother always said I had a healthy, blood-pumping heart. When I was little and I’d feel it hammering against my chest after running or when I was told scary stories about the female vette, Mare, or the ugly trolls in the mountains, I’d make her put her hand on my heart to feel it pounding away. Ja da, Gretchen, hjertet ditt er sunt, she’d say. Yes, Gretchen, you do have one healthy heart. Now I could feel my blood racing through my veins—the pulse and rush of being in deep concentration, like a balloon being steadily expanded and tightened with the fill of air. A sense of dread accompanied the feeling. I took more notes.

  The report also indicated that it had, very unfortunately, rained heavily and that trace evidence around the site had been wiped out. I looked up the lead investigator’s name, Carson Belson. He was a detective with the county sheriff’s office who was no longer on the force. I’d met him before, but he’d retired shortly after I came in 2010. He must have been devastated that it had rained so heavily and destroyed evidence, as if the gods were on the killer’s side.

  I wrote his name down, deciding I’d give him a call in the morning to ask him some more questions about the case. I wondered if Monty recalled the case as well. If Lucy was correct and the bones were a minimum of twenty years old, it was a long shot that the cases were related, but worth exploring anyway. I looked at the clock. It was already one a.m. I needed to get home. Still slightly light-headed, my thoughts whirling, I put the files away, turned off my computer, gathered my things, and headed home to get some sleep.

  12

  * * *

  Monty

  KEN AND I stayed at the office. We were waiting for the attorney general to get some law enforcement to bang on doors, do whatever they had to do to get someone into the DMV after hours so we could get that printout. For a while after the briefing with Ali and Herman, I spent some time going over the surveillance tapes to catch the image of the older dark blue Chevy truck edging out the entry gates. It was frustrating to not be able to make out the driver through the windshield and I kept trying to, even though I could see nothing but a wash of reflection from the glass.

  After I got a good look at the truck, I went back to my office. Ali found me in there, going over past abductions. What Gretchen had said only reminded me of something I’d already been thinking and wanting to check out, but I hadn’t had time to look at anything other than the missing persons reports Emily rounded up for me. I hadn’t looked at actual cases where bodies had been found, identified or not. But I knew I had to be careful not to mix the Essex case in with the current situation with absolutely no proof of their relationship.

  “You,” Ali said.

  I looked up from my desk at her standing in my doorway. “It’s Monty,” I reminded her. I knew she hadn’t forgotten my name, and probably hadn’t decided on a nickname for me yet, and she certainly didn’t have time for me to correct her, but I didn’t care what she thought of me. I knew she was just trying to get the job done, but she didn’t need to be impolite about it.

  “Excuse me. Monty. There are thirteen registrations for a Chevy Z71 1500 between the years of 1988 and 1993 registered in Flathead County. We need to visit each address associated with each registration. I want you to check out these vehicles even if it means waking people up in the middle of the night.”

  “Of course.” I stood up from my desk and reached to take the printout from her, but she simply tossed it onto my desk. I looked her in the eye for a second, wanting to ask, Why are you so angry? We were all scared for the boy, and certainly angry and disturbed that we lived in a world where such things even occurred, but I didn’t understand the need to be so gruff. Still, I kept my mouth shut—I’d had a lot of practice in my life doing that with both my brother and father—and simply picked the printout up from my desktop instead. “Will do.” I tipped my head.

  “Out of the thirteen, two have expired, and the rest are current. Divide them up between you and Ken, and Tara and Herman. That gives you and Ken about six or seven places to visit depending on how you divvy it up.”

  I wanted to say, I can do the math, then chastised myself for being pissy and ridiculous when a boy was missing. She was just doing her job, and she just had a different style than I did. I wondered if it irked her that she’d put so much stock in the Minsky lead when the new evidence was leading away from him, since the tire tracks at the yurt site didn’t match the ones Gretchen and Ray pulled near the bridge. Although, if we didn’t come up with anything by morning, I could imagine her saying, Vehicles can be borrowed or he could own more than one and we should still locate Minsky.

  Which was true; we should, but
in the meantime, I was happy to be checking out the registrants of a Chevy Z71. I refocused on the printout. We needed to visit each address associated with the registrants regardless of the status—current, revoked, expired. Herman, Tara, Ken, and I divided the names according to region. One of our thirteen registrants had died and his offspring had never sold the truck, transferred the title, or renewed the registration, which was why it was expired, but we still planned to visit the offspring. The other expiration was due to the truck getting totaled when the owner rolled it on a washboard country road. It now sat in a junkyard south of Kalispell.

  That left us twelve. Most people would be shocked to get a call from law enforcement at ten at night, but it didn’t matter. Time was of the essence. Herman, Ken, Tara, and I headed out. We split the list evenly, so Ken and I had six people on our end.

  • • •

  The son of the guy who died showed Ken and me the truck behind his house. He had it jacked up, parts stripped from it, the tires gone, the wheel wells gaping like wounds. We could easily see that it had been that way for some time, with rust on its fenders and debris and dust from surrounding trees covering it. “Boy, sorry I can’t help ya out, but we retired this thing when the engine broke down after 220,000,” the guy said.

  The next registrant wasn’t home and several days’ worth of newspapers cluttered the sidewalk and entryway. We took some extra time to check with the neighbors, who all confirmed that the retired couple liked to take their RV to different parts of Montana for a week or two in August. Everyone said that they’d been gone for at least four days and no one had noticed anything suspicious or unusual. One neighbor said he was in charge of taking in their papers and mail and felt embarrassed that he hadn’t done that yet before we stopped by, adding that he’d pick up the stray papers first thing in the morning. He had a key and planned to water their plants for them as well.

  The next three registrants on the list were in Kalispell, and all were normal, average families and altogether unsuspicious: older, retired couples, moms who owned minivans while the fathers drove the trucks, as they claimed, to make dump runs, haul firewood, move furniture, or transport their snowmobiles or motorboats. All showed us their trucks without ado, and none had a front license plate missing or a CFAC Aluminum plant parking sticker on the front bumper.

  The last address on our list was out toward the Swan Mountain Range, or as the locals liked to call it, the Columbia Range, which framed the eastern border of the valley. The dark mountains loomed like monsters in the distance, and we kept our windows down to get some cool air on our faces, to keep us as fresh as we could manage at the hour. The blowing air provided a reprieve from Ken’s aftershave, which still surprisingly clung to him after nearly eighteen hours. Axe, I thought.

  We drove a long county road called Church Road for some time until we eventually found a smaller gravel one that led to the driveway of the Tuckmans. We turned east onto a tree-lined drive and went at least three-quarters of a mile, passing several dirt roads sprouting off the main driveway, but figured staying on the main drive was our best bet. Eventually, we pulled up to a large white farmhouse at the end of it. Our headlights flashed across a bright red-and-white-trimmed storybook barn towering off to the side of their home in a wheat field before we turned onto their paved circular driveway.

  “Hmm,” Ken had said. “Big barn. Always interesting.”

  “Seeing as this is a farm and knowing how many of those are around the valley, I’d hardly call that unusual, but yeah, never hurts to be curious.”

  We pulled up, quickly peeked in the garage windows using our flashlights, and spotted a shiny red pickup and white Subaru parked inside. Dogs began barking ferociously from inside, jumping up and down and snarling. “Doing their job,” I said to Ken.

  Lights from inside began turning on, first upstairs, then down the stairway leading to the foyer. Someone in a dark robe peeked through the side windows, turned on the outside light, and looked out. I saw it was the man of the house. I held up my badge for him to see, and said loudly so he could hear my voice over the barking, “Sorry to disturb you so late. Urgent matter. Could we please have a moment with you?”

  “Quiet, quiet,” he commanded the dogs, which I could now see were two chocolate Labs with bright orange collars. One was plump and stocky, the other sleek and athletic.

  The front door clicked and he swung it open, holding both dogs by the collars. They strained toward us, sniffing, trying to get a sense of us. “They bite?” Ken asked.

  The man considered the question for a moment, then decided we weren’t pulling any fast ones, and said, “Nah, they’re all bark. But what’s this about?”

  “Walt,” a woman’s voice came from behind him. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s two officers. I’m not sure.”

  He turned back to us with a questioning look, the dazed hint of sleep still in his gaze.

  “Are you Richard Tuckman?”

  “No, that’s my father. What do you need with him at this hour?”

  “Is he here?”

  “No, he lives in an assisted living facility in Kalispell. We had to put him in it just about three months ago after he had a stroke and he needed more care than we could handle here.”

  Walt’s wife came closer, trying to peer around his arm, which was on the doorframe. When he saw her, he dropped it, and she quietly regarded us in her pink robe and messy strawberry-blond hair. “What do you want with him?”

  “We’re here about a truck that was registered in his name. It’s routine but important. Otherwise we wouldn’t bother you at this hour. We’re looking at all trucks in the valley that fit the description.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “Sir, can we ask what your name is then?”

  “I’m Walt. Walter Tuckman, and this is my wife, Anna.”

  “We’re checking all Chevy trucks from the late eighties and early nineties in the valley, and your father happens to be an owner of one of them. Do you know where he keeps it? I’m assuming not at the facility.”

  “God, no. No one there can drive at all, but sure, of course I know where it is. It’s here on the farm. We’ve got all sorts of old vehicles out here. You tell me the name of a farmer that doesn’t have a collection of old trucks, and I’ll tell you he isn’t a Montana farmer.”

  “I believe you. You mind showing it to us, then? Like I said, routine check.”

  “Sure, just give me a minute. I need to get some clothes on.”

  “That’s fine. We’ll wait out here.”

  He shut the door and we heard his footsteps as he ran upstairs, his wife following him and asking questions as he went, the dogs still by the door making sniffing sounds. After a few minutes, he appeared, jiggling his keys and wearing faded jeans, steel-toed cowboy boots, and a flannel shirt hanging loosely over a T-shirt that was once white but now was the color of a manila folder.

  “Thank you,” I said. “We appreciate it. What kind of a farm you have here?”

  “Potato.” He punched numbers into a keypad by the garage doors, hit Enter, and one of the garage doors started to slide up.

  “Potato?” Ken said. “I thought that was Idaho that did the potato thing.”

  “Potatoes from Montana are better. You can follow me.” Walt pointed to a relatively new shiny red truck in the garage.

  “Follow you?” I asked. “The Chevy’s not here on your farm?”

  “It is, but it’s too long of a walk in the dark. We’ve got over five hundred acres here, with numerous buildings and sheds scattered around.”

  “How many outbuildings including your barn?” I asked.

  “Five. Two old barns, two sheds, and a Quonset hut for additional equipment storage. Two of our trucks are kept out by the strawberry barn. It’s got a side carport on it to park the trucks under.”

  “Strawberry?” Ken a
sked.

  He chuckled. “We don’t have strawberries, other than wild ones around. Just potatoes. We just call it that ’cause if you go upstairs in the barn, there’s a nice view of Strawberry Mountain. All right, so I’ll pull out and you can follow me. That good?” He opened the truck door and both Labs happily jumped in, looking like the Grinch’s dog excited to go for a sleigh ride. Their tails thumped back and forth.

  Ken and I caught each other’s eye, thinking of the possibility of him driving off, trying to run, but he—like all the other registrants so far—looked wholly unsuspicious, and with two joyful retrievers jumping in next to him, he was unlikely to be going anywhere. “We’ll be right behind you,” I said.

  “It’s just the second left off the main driveway.”

  • • •

  When we reached the strawberry barn, I could see in our headlights that it was less stately than the one by the house—rust-colored with chipped paint. About twenty yards off to the side, the carport Walt mentioned stood alone. I could see the outlines of two trucks under it. An old Airstream trailer stood beside the carport.

  Ken and I got out, turning on our flashlights, and a neighing sound drifted over the fields toward us. “You have horses?”

  “Two. I like to ride and so did my daughter before she went off to college. This way,” he said.

  Ken and I followed him a short distance from the parking area before the barn down a short drive, with dry, tangled grass on either side and in its center, toward the carport. The dogs frolicked back and forth for a bit, excited to go for a walk even though we weren’t walking far.