The Weight of Night

by Christine Carbo

  He looked perplexed, his brow deeply furrowed, as if he’d be shocked to find out that there was any connection to anything suspicious at all going on at the Tuckman farm. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t get why you’re here, but no, I don’t. I really don’t. Has someone stolen the Chevy?”

  “No, it’s still at the farm, but have you noticed anyone strange around it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know when Brady drove it last?”

  “I don’t, but I think it’s been a while for him too. He prefers the Ford like I do, but I can’t say for sure.” He stood and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from a kitchen drawer. “You mind if I smoke?”

  “Actually, I do,” I said. “We’re close to finishing. If you could just hold off for a bit, that would be great.”

  He shrugged, threw the pack across the counter, and came and sat back down. I continued to question him, but he had nothing more to offer that Mr. Tuckman hadn’t already given us.

  Ken came back in and said, “All clear,” meaning that the alibi checked out. He told me later that he called some of the men in the golfing group as well as the Northern Pines Golf Club, where a guy named Shelby who worked in the starter booth remembered Paul Stewart checking in to play. Just the same, we told Stewart we might need to talk to him again, and when he asked about going to work, we told him he might want to check in with his boss first. We left him finally lighting up at the doorway as we hopped into the car.

  • • •

  The second man—a Brady Lewis—had already left for work and was heading to the Tuckmans for the day. His girlfriend had answered the door and let us know. She was a tall brunette with rosy round cheeks and a cute smile, but when she saw our badges, she looked frightened and seemed to move the door an inch closer toward us. I couldn’t be sure, but I detected a slight whiff of pot when she’d first opened it.

  “And you’re Mrs. Lewis?”

  “No, I’m Samantha Armstrong.”

  “But, you live here, correct?”

  “Yes, I’m Brady’s girlfriend. Have been for over five years. We came out to Montana together from Massachusetts.”

  “I see. Well, Samantha, we need to ask you a few questions. Do you recall where Brady was on Tuesday, the sixteenth?”

  She thought about it for a second. “That was his day off from both places.”

  “Both places?”

  “Yeah, he works at the Tuckmans and he also works part-time at an agriculture supply store.”

  “The one in Kalispell?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, the one on Idaho Street, but he wasn’t there that day. Like I said, he had it off, and when he has some time, well, he goes fishing.” She said it in a resigned singsong manner like she didn’t like it but that there was not a thing she could do about it.

  “Any idea when he left to go fishing?”

  “Early, like seven a.m.”

  “And when did he return?”

  “Past dinnertime, because I remember wondering if I should make enough for him, but I know better. Once he goes fishing, he’s always staying out as long as he can,” she grumbled. “Doesn’t matter how many things we need to do around this place, like clean the garage or do some lawn work, he’s always just gotta blow outta here on his days off and go fishing, leaving it all to me.”

  We thanked her, left, and called the agriculture supply store. Brady’s boss, a British-sounding woman, confirmed that he had the day off and wasn’t at work. “Probably fly-fishing,” she said, echoing the girlfriend’s sentiments. “He loves to do that on his days off.” We phoned it in to Ali and Herman to let them know to have their guys on the entrance roads keep an eye out for him when he drove up, and to check the amount of gas in the Chevy. If it wasn’t below half a tank, there was a good chance it had been either filled recently or not used at all.

  Before we went back to Kalispell to the nursing home to check on old Mr. Tuckman, and then head back to the Tuckmans’ farm to see if Ali and Herman were making progress, I wanted to make a stop while we were in Columbia Falls. So I turned to Ken and said, “You mind if we make a quick stop while we’re here?”

  “Nah, I don’t mind. Who needs sleep anyway?”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “What for?” he asked.

  “There’s a woman I want to visit. Has to do with those bones Tara and I found the other day. It shouldn’t take more than a minute.”

  “Fine with me,” Ken said, unwrapping the new pack of chewing gum he’d bought at the convenience store. “Who is she?”

  “Just the mother of a boy who disappeared without explanation a long time ago. The father refused to submit a saliva sample to the center in Texas, so I’m hoping she’ll be game.”

  “You think the bones you found might belong to that boy? We are talking about your friend from years back? Right?”

  Ken knew bits and pieces of the Nathan Faraway story, but I didn’t know if he’d remember much at all, and to be honest, I’d have been perfectly fine if he didn’t. Apparently I’d underestimated him. “Yeah, that’s right. The time frame fits, but who knows.”

  “So, this is, Mrs., Mrs. . . .” He squinted, trying to recall the name.

  “Faraway,” I mumbled, not really wanting to talk much about it. I just knew she lived nearby, on Nucleus Avenue where it dead-ended close to the Flathead River. We were coming up on the road any second and I needed to fill Ken in if I was going to drag him along, even if I did plan to go in alone and let Ken wait in the car. “She and Mr. Faraway are no longer together,” I added. “But she’s kept the name.”

  “Makes sense,” Ken said. “You’d never change your name from that of your missing boy’s. Ever.”

  I pictured Ken going home and hugging his boy just a little harder and longer now that Jeremy had gone missing. “No,” I agreed. “You wouldn’t.”

  • • •

  Alice Faraway answered the door. She was still much like I recalled—slight and child-size with chestnut hair and a wide smile. I had remembered her as beautiful, and her prettiness had faded some, her face sagging with age and her large eyes even more prominent on her delicate face. She still held a certain beauty, though, like a washed-up model that the industry had spit out, but in her case, it was no industry; it was the cold dark underbelly of a parent’s worst nightmare. When I introduced myself, she didn’t flinch as I’d expected or show a spark of hope, or fear, at the sight of an officer. Then I understood why.

  “I knew you’d come,” she said. “Peter warned me.” She stood in the doorway in a floral shirt, baggy jeans, and a pair of dirty tennis shoes. She didn’t invite me in.

  “Mrs. Faraway—”

  She stopped me. “It’s Ms. Faraway now. Peter probably told you we got a divorce.”

  “He did,” I said. “I was—am—very sorry to hear that.”

  “Why? Why does it matter to you?”

  I didn’t answer. What should I say? That I cared about them as a family when I was little and that I still did? That not a week in my life went by without Nathan entering my mind in some way? “Listen—”

  “I don’t care, Monty”—she shot up her hand to stop me again—“I don’t care what you have to say. We’re not going to give saliva.”

  I asked her the same thing I had Peter. “But don’t you want to know if it’s him?”

  I thought I caught a small, soft wave of hope, a sort of plea in her eyes that said, Yes, dear God, yes, I want to know what happened to my baby, then watched it fade as she took a deep inhale and gathered her wits. “It’s not him, Monty. Those bones, they’re not my boy’s.”

  “I’m not saying they are, just that they could be. The time frame is the same, Mrs. . . . I mean, Ms. Faraway. The bones are being sent to Texas for analysis. If it’s Nathan and they can get DNA from the tissue inside, then they can put this to
rest. You can put this—”

  “To rest?” She gave me a piercing and incredulous look, as if I’d assaulted her senses.

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant, maybe have a service. Say a sort of good-bye.”

  “How would you know what we’d do, Monty? Say good-bye? There’s no good-bye when you lose a child.” Her blue eyes sliced me like small razors. “Our family was broken and always will be, service or no ­service.”

  I stood before her, my entire body wilting like a flower without water, like she’d cut my stem. Exhaustion and a whole new level of sadness ensnared me. “I . . . I just thought that it might help, that’s all.”

  “It doesn’t. We both said no, so please just leave.” I could see straight through to her pain like I was looking into a pool of stream water and noticing a complex palette of rocks and stones. I hadn’t seen such intense pain in even my own mother’s troubled stares.

  But still I had a sense that she was of two minds about the whole thing, wanting to do as Peter had told her, but also wanting, perhaps needing, to help identify the bones. “Ms. Faraway, if it’s not Nathan, then wouldn’t it be good to eliminate his name so that maybe other families have a chance to find their missing? Wouldn’t you like to do that?”

  “You’ll find that out anyway by getting their DNA samples. You don’t need ours.” She stared at me, her eyes hollowed in her skull.

  “It’s just a simple saliva test. All you have to do is go to the station, or I can even have an officer swing by.”

  “Monty, please leave. Just”—she began to close the door—“please just go away.”

  I forced myself to stand tall and brave while the scuffed white door shut in my face. I could feel Ken’s eyes on me from the window of the car, but the night of no sleep and the agony in Ms. Faraway’s eyes—still so many years later—made my legs begin to tremble. Several robins plucked worms at the far end of her lawn near a chain-link fence. I turned back to the car, strode back, and hopped in.

  “You get what you needed?” Ken asked.

  “Just what I deserved,” I said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Let’s go visit the senior Mr. Tuckman.”

  • • •

  We pulled into the parking lot of Mission Mountain Manor, Richard Tuckman’s assisted-living facility. Russian olive trees draped over the side of the two-story building, and the breeze rattled their delicate leaves. One porch light hung above the entryway to the facility, leading to a brightly lit lobby. A dog barked in the distance, and a visitor—a middle-aged woman talking on her cell phone—walked out to her car.

  Stale antiseptic air hit us immediately as we stepped in. The receptionist, a middle-aged woman with short, spiky hair, stood up behind the long counter and asked us if she could help. I showed her my badge.

  “We didn’t call for any assistance. What’s this about?”

  “Our apologies for disturbing you. We’ve been working on locating the owner of a vehicle. We understand from his son that he now resides here and we’d like to speak to him.”

  “Owner of a vehicle? That’s all? Goodness, you scared me.” She placed her palm over her chest. “Seeing your badge and all. I thought something had happened to one of our residents without me knowing.”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Who are you looking for, then?” She chuckled. “Our residents certainly aren’t driving.”

  “We figured that, but we still need to check in with him. His name is Mr. Richard Tuckman.”

  “Mr. Tuckman? Let me get his nurse,” She excused herself and went into a back room and came back out after a few seconds with a narrow-faced woman with deeply set eyes that were close together, giving her a slight simian appearance.

  “You’d like to see Mr. Tuckman?” she asked.

  “Yes, we would if that’s possible.”

  “Well, he’s not doing so well. You probably wouldn’t get much out of him. He’s had a stroke and has lost most of his speech faculties.”

  “Can he talk at all?”

  “Very little. He has good days and bad days. He’s taking his midmorning nap now, and if I wake him, he’ll be completely disoriented, and that won’t help at all.” The nurse pursed her lips in a tight, thin line. I got the feeling she made that expression to deal with family members and to cope with the cold reality of some of the patients in the place.

  “We understand. His son, Walt, filled us in.” I looked for a name tag on her robin’s-egg blue uniform. She wore a cream-colored sweater over the top, but you could still see her name tag peeking out. “Ms. Learner, we’d appreciate your help on this. Unfortunately, this is a situation where we don’t have that kind of time. Can you please go wake him and bring him out? We’d also be happy to go to his room if that’s easier.”

  She searched my eyes, then Ken’s and said, “Well . . .” She squinted, mulling it over. She seemed wary. I could tell she was protective of her residents—a good thing, I considered. “If it’s urgent like you say, then it’s probably best you come to his room. If I bring him out, it will take some time. You do understand that most people are here because they cannot care for themselves? They suffer from strokes, dementia, ­Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or some other debilitating conditions.”

  “We understand. Does the senior Mr. Tuckman have a wife?”

  “Used to. I heard she passed away and that it wasn’t long after that he had his stroke. Very debilitating. Give me a minute to wake him, give him something to drink, and then I’ll show you in.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Learner,” I said. “We appreciate your help.”

  Ken tipped his head to ditto my sentiment as she walked down the hall.

  • • •

  Ten minutes later, Ms. Learner showed me down a hallway with a border of flowery pastel wallpaper to Richard Tuckman’s private room. Ken stayed back in the waiting room to make some calls to headquarters. We’d decided with the nurse that it would be best if just one of us went in so that we didn’t overwhelm or confuse him with two strange faces.

  “Richard,” Ms. Learner said loudly and with cheer, “as I told you, you have a visitor today.”

  The old man’s eyes fluttered open. She had said she’d already woken him, but that he might doze in and out. Mr. Tuckman’s glassy eyes looked like small round marbles the color of pewter. His frame was gaunt and small, and I could see bony knees protruding under his blanket.

  “Hello, Mr. Tuckman,” I said.

  He turned his head slightly toward me and simply blinked. He lay in a recliner in the corner of the room next to a round side table that had several pictures on it. I studied the pictures while Ms. Learner straightened his blanket and gave him a sip of water from a blue plastic cup with a crooked straw. A black-and-white wedding photo of a younger couple smiling before church doors angled toward his recliner. I could see it was Richard and his wife. The dark-haired bride wore a lacy wedding dress, held white roses, and smiled with pearly teeth. The younger Richard stood tall and proud, his chest broad and his chin high.

  I looked at the man now before me. This man certainly was not what he once was. I felt a familiar bittersweet pang in response to witnessing the transient nature of life. Most of the time we simply looked away from it, ignored it, but there were certain times when it hit so strongly that it felt like a deep ache. I suppose the case was magnifying my emotions in spite of my training.

  Ms. Learner said she was going to leave us to it, showed me a button on a remote control to buzz her with, and said not to hesitate if we needed anything. I told her we’d be fine, then shuffled closer to the recliner.

  I introduced myself again and slowly, but loudly explained why I was visiting him—that his son, Walt, had directed us here to get some assistance on a very important matter. That neither he nor his son were in trouble, but that we’d been looking at his
old truck and that we needed to know who had access to it when he still ran the farm. I heard my own voice as I looked into his confused eyes and realized that I probably wasn’t going to get anywhere with this old man. He just stared at me, and a tiny dribble of drool even escaped his mouth and trickled down the right side of his chin. I wasn’t sure whether to grab a tissue and wipe it for him or not. I didn’t want to upset him by invading his space in the wrong way.

  “Do you think you can help with that, Mr. Tuckman? Can you remember the individuals who had access to your farm trucks?”

  Mr. Tuckman nodded slightly, but didn’t say anything.

  “You do remember?”

  He gave a very slight nod again.

  “Can you tell me?”

  A slight mumble came from him, but faded as soon as it began, like a trickle of water drying up.

  I continued trying to get him to talk for a few more minutes, but it was useless. Eventually his eyes closed. I grabbed a tissue and wiped the drool from his chin, but his eyes stayed shut. I threw the tissue in a small wastebasket in the corner of the room and looked at his wedding picture again. I thought of my own wedding picture. Since Lara kept the house, she had all our old pictures. She asked me if I wanted any, but I didn’t know what I’d do with them, so I said no. It was one of those confusing things about divorces—what you did with pictures. Displaying them or even keeping them in a box somewhere meant you were hanging on to something that had not survived. But throwing them away felt equivalent to tossing years away—time sewn together with the merging of each other’s existences.

  I looked at the other pictures on the table. One was of Richard, his wife, and the three kids on vacation at what appeared to be the Grand Canyon, based on the layers of terra-cotta landscape behind them. I could tell the third picture was from the farm because I could see tall green stalks of potato plants in the background. A large group sat around a picnic table on the back patio. I recognized Richard, his wife, and the kids. About five other men and women sat around the table as well. I thought it was some kind of extended family gathering, perhaps aunts, uncles, and cousins. One man had dark, close-cropped hair, the other had shaggy red wavy hair and a scraggly goatee. I shook Richard’s shoulder to wake him and held up the framed photo. He opened his eyes and looked at me as if he didn’t know who I was. “Mr. Tuckman. Richard. Can I call you that?”