Mortal Fall

by Christine Carbo

  “And why would he want to buy your truck?” I asked.

  “It’d fit all those log traps of his nicely.”

  Halloway held up his hand for Dorian to say no more. Dorian’s lip curled because clearly he didn’t like taking instruction, even from someone trying to help him out. “I’ll answer if I damn well please,” he grumbled.

  “Mr. Dorian—” Halloway tried to speak calmly to him, but Dorian swatted his hand in the air and looked at me.

  “And how would you know he had log traps if you had no interaction with him?” I asked quickly to egg him on further. This was my only hope, getting Dorian to spout off without caring what his attorney’s advice was because his ego would make it leak out in spite of himself.

  “I told you. I knew of him. Doesn’t mean I talked to the guy.”

  “Several witnesses, including your girlfriend, Melissa Tafford, said you did. Not to mention that your ex-attorney friend, Rowdy, said you were asking some questions about what kind of trouble you’d get into for messing with federal traps. Now, I wonder, why would you do that?”

  “You don’t have to answer that,” Halloway shot out his palm again.

  Dorian glared at me. “I told you. She’s not my girlfriend and good thing, because she’ll pay—”

  “Mr. Dorian, please—” Halloway said louder.

  “That a threat to Ms. Tafford?” I glared back at Dorian. “I’ll be sure the magistrate in Missoula understands the consequences—that people may be in danger if you’re let loose on the streets.”

  I could hear Dorian’s breathing through flared nostrils. He wanted to rip my head off as well as his attorney’s. Halloway swallowed hard, then put his long, thin hand up again, this time slowly and tentatively. “Look, no need for that,” Halloway said. “Mr. Harris, your guy Sedgewick’s been all over the paper. That’s how my client knew that he used log traps for his wolverines.”

  I resisted the urge to say, Good for your client, glad to know he knows how to read. Dorian smiled at me and asked: “You talk to your brother yet? Maybe people are getting confused. Maybe he’s the one who had an altercation with your guy.”

  “Our witnesses have it correct,” I said.

  We continued to go round and round like this for a few more minutes, with me trying to get Dorian to explode in a fit of rage and let something slip that he didn’t mean to. But he was clamming up further with every question and wore a shit-eating grin now that he’d brought Adam back into the picture.

  Finally, I had no choice but to wrap it up. Bottom line, the guy was lying, and I knew I wouldn’t get squat from him. I stood up abruptly, making Ken and Halloway flinch. Dorian stayed as still as a mountain, his arms folded and propped on his oversize chest. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Halloway.” I tipped my head, then turned to Dorian. “Hope you make it safely for your arraignment. I wouldn’t want you to miss that,” I said to him as I exited the room.

  The last I heard was Dorian mumbling something to Ken about me being a little faggot and wondering how could he stand to kiss my ass.

  37

  * * *

  I WAS FINALLY READY to go see Adam. I had called him and arranged a meeting at his place by telling him that I was willing to listen to him about the money he wanted if we could meet and talk. He laughed because he knew it wasn’t true, but said come on over anyway, as if we’d been on great terms our entire lives. If it weren’t for the bitter undercut of his laugh, you’d never have known better. Just come on over, bro!

  I clenched and unclenched my fists the entire drive to his house—a run-down cabin built years ago. I had no idea whom he’d bought it from or how he saved enough to get it, but it was his all right. I looked the title up with Public Records and found that he’d purchased it seven years before and was current with his payments.

  I’d been putting off asking Adam about the fight for some obvious as well as some vague notions. Clearly, we made no music together and had chosen different paths in our lives, and blood or no blood, I’d just as soon avoid the guy altogether. But there was something extra cautioning me, something vibrating in my head akin to the high-pitched, maniacal fervor of beating wasp wings buzzing at me to stay away.

  It didn’t matter. Not in this line of work. I would need to question him if the Adam in Diane Hanson’s story was indeed my brother. If it was, Adam had a possible, although distant, motive. On the other hand, I was well aware that it was old history and wondered why someone would take action all these years later.

  Still, Adam had been in a fistfight with Phillips—and now Dorian, as unreliable as he might be, was somehow suggesting that Adam was involved in a poaching ring that was clearly unhappy about Wolfie researching wolverines in the South Fork. My brother just happened to be the only person I had found with a link to both victims.

  Adam’s cabin hunched at the end of a dirt road among a spread of lodge pole pines. When I pulled up, I saw one of the curtains flutter. I stepped out and walked toward the front of the house, passing Adam’s Jeep on the way. Sunlight fanned through the tall canopy of pines and lit up portions of the driveway and the hood of the army-green Jeep. Off to the side of the house, in the shadowy forest, deciduous bushes and smaller trees glowed lime green and gold in the sun’s rays.

  Adam opened the door before I knocked and stood looking at me. He bowed his head and gestured for me to enter, saying, “That took a while. Losing your punctuality as you get older?”

  I didn’t reply. The cabin was clean and bare—tidy, like my dorm. It took me by surprise because I was expecting something slovenly with pizza boxes and empty beer cans strewn about. There wasn’t much, but what there was—a blanket over the back of a small couch, a remote control on top of the TV, a candle on a shelf—seemed to have its place. The floorboards were worn and faded, and pale-yellow curtains hung on the windows. There were no pictures on the log walls and the place smelled of old wool-woven rugs, pinewood and fireplace ash even though it was summer, and he’d probably not used the fireplace for weeks. Adam watched me step in with no expression, his face completely blank, and I wondered if he’d practiced that look, honed it over the years. “What really brings you here?” he asked, not asking me to take a seat.

  “Several things, but let me ask you, the money, why do you need it?”

  He eyed me suspiciously, probably trying to surmise if I might be game for giving it to him after all.

  Not a chance in hell, I reminded myself.

  I walked to his small wooden table near the kitchen and swung a chair out from under, placed it near the fireplace tool set—ornate with curlicue designs—and took a seat. I didn’t need my brother picking up anything long, sharp and made of iron in a possible fit of rage. “Nice little cabin you’ve got here.”

  “Thanks.” Adam pulled out his own chair across from me, clearly out of reach as well, as if I was contagious. He sat down casually but his shoulders were braced. “I’d offer you a drink, but I take it you’re on the job.”

  “Sort of,” I said. “But if you’d like something, help yourself,” I motioned to his kitchen, figuring he was talking about a beer or maybe whiskey.

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “So, about that money . . . what’s it for?”

  “Gotten behind on my mortgage.”

  “No, you haven’t. I checked.”

  Adam laughed, a harsh, hollow sound. “Of course. Of course you have.”

  “So, the money?”

  “What’s it matter to you? It’s not like you were going to give it to me anyway.”

  “Then why’d you bother asking?”

  “Couldn’t hurt to try and you never know. Maybe you’d surprise me.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Anyway,” he said. “I didn’t think it was Park Police’s job to find out why I need a few extra dollars in my life. Why does anyone need a few extra dollars? People get behind, especially these days.”

  “Okay then.” I grabbed my notebook and my pen out of my pocket an
d opened it up to the page with notes on my interrogation of Dorian. When I looked up, Adam’s blank stare had turned to a smug look, and he had folded his arms in front of his chest. I resisted the urge to ask: Do all you guys sit and stand in the same cocky way—like kings of your own universes? “I guess it’s personal.”

  “I guess it is. So tell me why you’re really here.”

  “Fair enough. I won’t waste your time. Might as well get to the point—just as you said at the reunion the other day.”

  A smile crept to Adam’s face. “Oh yeah, the reunion. How was it after I left? Guess I missed the big storm. Those tents hold up?”

  I ignored his question. He couldn’t have cared less, and I had no intention of admitting that I didn’t know—that I left and haven’t returned any of Lara’s calls. That, basically, he had that kind of power over us. Just thinking it made my anger twist tighter inside me. I shifted in my seat and pulled my thoughts back to my notes. “I guess you’ve probably heard by now that we went in after you left the Outlaw’s and arrested your friend, Dorian.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Not really something to make me weep.”

  “He mentioned you during the interrogation.”

  Adam shrugged.

  “Don’t you want to know what he said?”

  “Whatever he said was probably a lie.”

  “Tell me about the poaching ring.”

  Adam laughed again, good and hard. “So that’s what he said. And you believe anything that guy says?”

  “He certainly listens to you. Did in the bar the other night.”

  Adam tilted back on his chair, balancing precariously on its back legs. “He knows I can kick the shit out of him.”

  “That’s right. Tough Adam,” I said. “I almost forgot. How could I?” I knew I shouldn’t be going there, getting him pissed, but something inside me was waiting to pounce like a cat. I could feel my muscles grip and twitch. The more I tried to tamp my irritation down, the more it wanted to come out in small, electric ways. I gripped my pen tightly. “Dorian’s in a lot of trouble,” I said. “Could do some serious jail time.” I eyed him. His face was well worn and hardened, but clinging to handsome, like some Marlboro Man. His hair was razed to a stubble, his chin set wide, strong, and angled. “I’m guessing you will too if Fish and Game finds that true.”

  “They’re not going to find anything.”

  “Why is he saying they will?”

  “ ’Cause. He’s a damn liar, that’s why. Look.” He placed the front legs of his chair back down and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his biceps flexing, a bluish-purple vein bulging down the side of each one. He was wearing a plain, short-sleeved white T-shirt and worn, beige Carhartts. I kept my space, leaning stiffly against the back of the wooden chair. “I met some guy from Pennsylvania last fall in one of the bars in Columbia Falls. He was in town hunting, striking out. We got to talking, and he wanted to know if I knew the area and I said I did, like the back of my hand.” He smiled slightly—crookedly, and I could tell he was proud that he knew the surrounding wilderness like he did. “He ended up offering me some decent money to take him to the spots I knew we could get into some elk, so I did. It was legit—right smack dab in the middle of hunting season. Anyway, I took him to a spot and he shot one. I had Dorian drive up with his truck to help us get the meat out. I paid him for helping.”

  “That it?”

  “Then, several months later, I heard a rumor that he and that guy from Pennsylvania had some gig going. Guess he’d developed his own relationship with the guy. That he was coming out with friends and even some business associates for hunts, and word had it, not necessarily during the legal season.”

  “And he didn’t include you in on it?”

  “He called me a few times, but I declined.”

  “Thought you two were closer than that, good buddies and all. Why would he get something going without you—and you all able to beat the shit out of him as you said?”

  “We’re not that close and there’s a reason he knows I can beat the shit out of him. We haven’t always seen eye to eye on things, which is why he pointed to me in your interrogation. He’d like nothing better than to throw the scent off himself and onto me.”

  And you’d like nothing better than to throw it back onto him, I thought. “You got this guy’s name. The one from Pennsylvania?”

  “Look, Monty. I’m no rat. I ain’t going there.”

  “Ain’t going there?” I mimicked him and he shot me a frigid look. “You may just have no choice.”

  Adam shrugged as if he didn’t care. “I start ratting people out in these parts, I’m in a lot of danger. Anyway, since when did you rejoin with Fish and Game?”

  “I haven’t, but you know what I’m investigating and that’s the main reason I’m here. So far, you’re the only suspect with personal connections to both victims—a Paul Sedgewick and a Mark Phillips.”

  “Wow, wow.” Adam held up a hand and sat back up straight. “I have zero personal connection to your wolverine guy.”

  “That’s not what your friend, Dorian, claims.”

  “I told you. He’s not a friend. He can claim whatever the hell he pleases. It’s not true. I didn’t know Sedgewick—never met him.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Adam, studied him. It had been so long since I’d spent any significant amount of time with him. I couldn’t remember what he looked like when he lied, but what did come crashing back to me was how cunning and lethal his presence felt. His eyes danced with excitement but looked sharp as daggers. Our conversation was controlled, and he was being completely pleasant, but underneath it all, I sensed secrets and devices I would never understand even though we came from the same bloodline. It made me edgy. It made my heartbeat pick up, and I wanted to shift in my seat again, but resisted and tried not to show it. Our dad always claimed that very cunning people were like the devil; they mixed lies with truth. “You may have never met him, but you knew who he was.”

  “Yeah, I knew who the guy was. He was the talk for a bit. You know, the guy who was single-handedly gonna screw up all our land-use rights because he wanted more wilderness for his wolverines.”

  “And you’ve seen him before? Even if you’ve not spoken to him.”

  Adam nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen him.”

  “Where?”

  “At the Outlaw’s. He came asking around for Dorian. Asked Melissa. Wanted to talk to him about his traps.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why. Said he just wanted a civil conversation, was sure he could shed some light on what he was doing and that once they understood, everything would be fine.” Adam shook his head and looked down at the wood floor. Two rectangles of light angled and lengthened across it, picking up dust, as if exposing the flaws and hopelessness inherent in the idea of a levelheaded, educated guy like Wolfie trying to reason with a man on Whitesquad. I sensed that same burden of sadness that I had picked up on at the reunion with no clue why it would show up on him, with his messed-up, perfidious ways. It was only a flash across his face—resentment laced with a guarded frailty—and it receded quickly back into the hardness of his expression.

  “What was happening that he wanted to work out?”

  “You know what.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Apparently, his traps were being messed with. I don’t know how or why he came to figure Dorian for it.”

  “Was it Dorian?”

  Adam sat back in a sprawl again, tilting even farther back on his chair and shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you.”

  I waited for him to say more. A brief image flashed in my mind of being very small and seeing who could make the other one laugh first. I wondered if he was thinking the same ridiculous thing—if he was even capable of having that kind of memory.

  “What about Phillips?” I finally said when it was clear he was going to offer nothing more.

  “What about that prick?”

  “Why did you fight with him last yea
r?”

  “Because we ran into each other in some bar. Because I never liked the guy and he never liked me. Because there were a lot of assholes at that place you convinced Dad to send me to for”—he held up his fingers to create quotation marks—“you know—therapy.”

  “Don’t tell me we gotta go down altered-history lane here. I didn’t even know about the place. I was all of what? Thirteen?”

  “Just the same. You ratted me out for smoking pot and drinking. Like who the hell didn’t do that as a teen in our school?”

  “You just keep telling yourself that lovely little story, Adam. Your twisted version against mine.”

  “You forgot to say twisted before yours too.”

  “You can tell yourself whatever you want, but I clearly remember Dad getting the shock of his life when he checked out the tracks on your arms. Yeah, so tell me again it was just pot and drinking.”

  “Dad, shocked? Dad, the concerned father? Shit,” he said, disdain saturating his voice. “Dad wanted nothin’ more than an excuse to get me out of the house once you were old enough to look after yourself. Before that time, I took care of you.”

  My blood pressure was starting to go way up and I let loose a sharp laugh. “Are you kidding me? As if I wasn’t taking care of myself from way before thirteen. Way before you ever left the house.”

  “And you just keep telling yourself that nice, little lie.”

  I glared at him. Suddenly I was angry at myself for not bringing Ken along to keep us in check. Neither one of us would be going down this ridiculous black hole, spouting off about long-past family drama, if someone else were along. I held up my palm to halt things. “Look, when was the last time you saw Mark Phillips?”

  Adam’s right hand had instantly balled into a hard fist, the whites of each knuckle showing, and before he answered, he massaged it out with the other hand, let his fingers go long again. I thought of my own pumping fists on the drive over. “The last time we fought,” he finally answered. “A year ago.”

  “And where were you on the evening of June twenty-second?” I didn’t have Phillips’s exact time of death, just the surveillance tape showing the day he entered with his truck, which he’d clearly driven home safely to his garage. But Wolfie’s would do for now. “That would have been a Wednesday.”