The Wild Inside

by Christine Carbo

  “Let’s start from the beginning,” I said. “What time did you get the call to go assist Karen?”

  “I’d say it was about quarter to eight. It’s not that far from where I was.”

  “And when you drove out to her, did you notice anything suspicious?”

  “No. Just dirt road and forest. You could tell it was going to be a beauty. A great beautiful, peaceful morning, really. The kind of day we live for out here.”

  Monty nodded in agreement. I knew it well also, that the area had very few sunny days, and its residents had a saying that in the Flathead, there were four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction. “Were there campers at Fish Creek or, wait—” I held up my pen. “It’s not even open for camping, right? You were out there to check on some campers who weren’t supposed to be there?”

  “That’s right. This particular campsite closed on September sixth even though most of the others stay open until October thirteenth.”

  “Why’s that? I just assumed it was closed because of bear trouble.” I leaned back, planting my feet firmly apart. They felt heavy. “Not true?”

  “No, we’ve had bear trouble at Fish Creek all right. But only because people sneak in and camp because the gate’s been open for some construction this fall. It closes on the sixth every year, though, because of the type of water system it has. The pipes aren’t in very deep, and they freeze too easily, so we have to drain them early.”

  “I see. Did you find the campers?”

  “I did and I ticketed them. I have all their information if you want it.” He looked at me, and I nodded that I would. “I told them to pack their belongings and leave and was on my way out when I got Smith’s call.”

  “What did you do when you reached Karen?”

  “I had orders to tape off the trailhead and wait for reinforcements.”

  “Which came how quickly?”

  “Five, ten minutes.” He bobbed his knee up and down and shook his head in small, quick movements. “Smith and two more Park Police, one a bit later since she was ordered to stop and seal off the Inside Road from anyone who might happen to drive out that way.”

  “And then Smith and who else walked in?”

  “Me. Smith and me.” He glanced at Monty, then me, incredulously, astonished that we didn’t know he was one of the first Park Police on the grisly—no pun intended—scene.

  “And . . . ”

  “Well, we went out there and—” He quit bouncing his knee as if the image in his mind sobered him. “Smith made me wait back at the game trail so we didn’t disrupt the site, and he walked close enough to get a better look. Then he radioed for the main office and instructed them to call the county in.”

  Monty glanced at me to make sure I was getting it all down, which I was, and then we let Ken go after he gave us all the information he could on the Fish Creek campers.

  • • •

  Gretchen and her techs were still working, circling farther out, photographing and logging every bush or piece of ground that looked disturbed. I have deep respect for those methodical and patient enough to work an outdoor crime scene. Working an indoor scene is no rodeo; it’s a slow, strategic, and tedious process but add the outdoors and it gets twice as complex.

  “Anything new?” I inquired.

  “Found some poor-resolution boot prints in the brush next to the trail, and it doesn’t match the victim’s print, so whoever else was out here might have walked out next to him beside the trail. I doubt we’ll be able to get plaster. They’re too faint, and we mostly have only identified them because of broken brush and disturbed foliage. We only got a partial toe print in some dirt, and that’s how we know it doesn’t match the victim’s.”

  I turned to Monty. “Deliberate and smart enough to not use the trail.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not that obvious of a trail.”

  “True, but perhaps more obvious than walking through the thicker brush to the side of it. Any scraps of clothing or blood near the print?” I turned back to Gretchen.

  “Not yet.” She wiped her forehead with her forearm. She was sweating even more than earlier in spite of the crisp fall air. “We’ll keep you posted.”

  • • •

  Monty and I drove to park headquarters, where I made a list of all the people we needed to talk to while we waited for more information on the victim: who and where his family was and what kind of trouble he might have been in, based on the fact that he had a record.

  While we were there, we grabbed Joe and headed out to get a bite to eat at a small restaurant still open outside the entrance to the park. Everything in West Glacier had been boarded up for the season, including the West Glacier Mercantile, the restaurant, and the Canadian Visitor Center. The only reason the Glacier Café and a bar in a small chalet were open was because they sat outside the park, directly facing the trestle used for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway trains that cut through the Hi-Line and run along the border of the park. White letters against a beige panel on the railway overpass read: Gateway—Glacier National Park.

  I hadn’t eaten anything except some anemic biscotti cookie thing on the flight over, so when we got to the café, I figured I better put something down even though the nature of the case had made me lose my appetite.

  “What are you guys thinking?” Joe asked after getting our coffee from a dull-complexioned waitress with a nose covered in pimples. She had to have been directly out of high school, if not a dropout, which wasn’t unusual for the area. She told us in an unanimated voice that the bison burgers were decent and that the soup was beef barley.

  “We’re thinking,” I said when she left, “that we need to talk to that couple that were illegally at Fish Creek last night. Greeley gave us the information. A Kaylynn Lowden and a Jarred Mercord from Spokane, Washington. Greeley believes they’re heading east toward the Sweet Grass Hills, so they shouldn’t be difficult to pick up. We’ve got Highway Patrol on it.”

  “Depending on what kind of time they’re making, they shouldn’t be much farther than Cut Bank or Shelby, unless they’re running,” Joe said in a monotone voice between sips of coffee. “What about the bear?”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “You need it for evidence?”

  “Not until Wilson reports. I suppose from your perspective it’s important to know whether the victim was alive or not when the bear went after him for public safety purposes.”

  “Even if he was alive”—Joe shook his head—“I’m not sure I’m interested in putting this grizzly down. Not when the damn body was bait for him, dead or alive. Not to mention that he might still be in hyperphagia, eating everything in his sight for hibernation.”

  “Have you discussed it with your guy Bowman?” Joe, who’d acted as lead ranger for the park longer than as chief of Park Police, and one other guy, Kurtis Bowman, were considered the bear specialists. They usually led the committee in charge of making the recommendation on whether to take a bear’s life. I’d never met him, but it was just one of those things I knew from the reading I’d done. I had seen Bowman’s thesis on how the drought and warming trend of the past decades increased beetle bug infestation of the whitebark pines because the beetle bug was rarely eradicated in the winter without sustained freezing temperatures. Blister rust, a fungal disease, also killed the trees. This affects the grizzlies in Yellowstone, who depend on the caches of white pine nuts stashed across the forest by red squirrels to fatten up for winter hibernation. Grizzlies entering the den for the winter with less fat bear fewer cubs. And if their body fat is too low when they go into hibernation, they will often abort their pregnancies. Luckily, the grizzlies in Glacier rely more on huckleberries to fatten up than on the whitebark pine nuts.

  “I have.” Joe nodded and pursed his lips like he was deep in thought. “Know him?”

  I shook my head. “J
ust heard about him.”

  “I know him,” Monty added.

  I glanced at Monty and resisted the urge to say to him, Great, want your Boy Scout points now or later? “Look,” I said to Joe, “are you not worried . . .” and had to pause midsentence until a loud train passed. “About the bear now being habituated to human flesh?” I felt that clench again, and a subtle shortening of my breath, just enough to make me shift in my seat and straighten my back to open up my shoulders. It’s not like I necessarily wanted this animal put down either, but I was curious as to what Joe, Bowman, and Ford were thinking. I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow this bear’s fate was significant, interwoven into mine, although I knew I was just being superstitious.

  “Oh, we’re worried, all right. Especially if the guy was alive; that makes it worse. If the guy was dead, we’re not thinking it’s grounds to put it down. But even if he was alive, we’re just not sure it’s enough to put a federal bear down, especially when he’s in a prehibernation state.”

  “Do you know which one it is?” Monty asked.

  “We have a pretty good idea. It’s most likely our Fish Creek bear. He’s been around the area for some time. Doesn’t cause much trouble, other than pound on the garbage cans. But I’m guessing it wouldn’t be too hard to trap him.”

  “How old?”

  “About four. Big for his age. Strong specimen. The committee will take that into consideration. Males can be sacrificed more readily than females, but the gene pool for males is getting watered down because of inbreeding since the patches of forest available are shrinking, and that prevents them from breeding with bears great distances away. This guy”—Joe took a small sip of his coffee—“he’s only been away from mama for about a year and a half now.”

  “You make it sound like he’s so cuddly.” Monty gave a half smile.

  “Not cuddly, just a normal grizzly,” Joe said.

  “We’ll have more information after we get the time and sequence of death figured out,” I added. “Unless there’s an absolute reason for why we need to cut this bear open, I agree that there’s no point in euthanizing him.”

  • • •

  It was a fact that humans were each other’s worst enemies in the woods. For example, in the last two centuries only about a dozen Montana hunters have been killed in bear attacks, and none by wolves or mountain lions. More hunters have been killed in plane crashes or even murdered by hunting buddies. And many, many more have been killed accidentally, where they’ve been mistaken for game by other hunters or been the recipient of an accidental firearm discharge while taking the gun out of a car, a boat, a tent, crossing a fence, or even tripping and falling on it.

  In Glacier Park alone, that number is eleven for grizzly bear attacks (resulting in fatalities) in the last one hundred years, my father being one of those unlucky statistics. And here’s the deal: it’s not like I want anyone to think that my life isn’t normal because of it. Other than the fact that I’m a detective and see a few mind-blowing and evil things that reveal the utter baseness of humans now and again; for the most part, my existence in Denver is fairly routine and uneventful, full of a little too much tedious paperwork and a fair amount of traveling to the nation’s Northwest parks for criminal activity that isn’t always so interesting.

  Obviously, such a traumatic event at a young age can be life-altering, but because I was young, I’d like to think I was resilient. Change didn’t leave much time for grief as other influences soon swept me away in the wave puberty brings.

  I’d have to admit that I’ve been largely unsuccessful at relationships. There had been other girlfriends since Shelly that didn’t work out well, but I live my life calmly and in control, and this case should have been no different for me, only something felt off-kilter. Just a small reeling sense, like I was sitting in a rowboat safely at the shore of some high mountain lake and somebody just gave me a nudge out to the middle of the lake without a paddle. But the lake was calm, and there was no storm, so it was kind of enjoyable in a strange way—as if I’d simply drift back to shore.

  Of course, there was the obvious, that I was working a case involving a quasi-grizzly mauling in the very park that took my father. But his death was something I’d lived with my entire life, and I couldn’t see how it could have any bearing in this instance and why it would make me feel that something was on the verge of snapping in or out of place. But it was there, and the only thing to do was shoo it away and get back to work.

  So after I looked over my notes, Monty and I spoke to three out of five more rangers who had been in the area over the past four days, all of whom noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

  Then we got three calls in ten minutes: one from Gretchen—the body was at the lab in Missoula, which actually has a state-of-the-art crime lab and a noteworthy pathologist, Reeve Wilson, whom I’d dealt with before. We would be able to talk to Wilson by the next day. Wilson had agreed to come in on a Saturday evening because a federal bear was involved and apparently, Gene Ford, the park’s superintendent, threw his weight around, adamant that this thing needed to be handled in a timely fashion.

  The second came from Monica. The victim’s mother, fifty-three-year-old Penny Lance, lived and worked outside Kalispell in an area or township called Evergreen. She had divorced Victor’s father, a Philip Lance, in 1985, when Victor was only two. She never remarried and worked for an auto repair shop called Travis Auto on LaSalle Road. We were no more than half an hour to her office or home, but since it was Saturday, going on four p.m., I knew we had a good chance of catching her at her place.

  The third came from Walsh—a Glacier County deputy had found the couple that had been camping at Fish Creek at a convenience store gassing up in Browning and insisted they return to West Glacier for more questioning. Apparently, they were very helpful and, although irritated at having to backtrack, they didn’t seem like they had anything to hide. They would be in by early evening.

  4

  PENNY LANCE LIVED in a neighborhood of about twenty small, brightly colored houses: light blue, yellow, red, green, even a pink one, making the neighborhood seem like one overgrown Easter basket. Small, surprisingly lush, and slightly overgrown and weedy lawns with very few trees lay before each home. I could tell that these lawns normally would be dried out and brown any other year with less rainfall.

  Penny’s one-story house was a light eggshell-blue color. A Russian olive tree with silvery slender leaves caressed the side of the house, and a Buick the color of a dark plum sat in her driveway. I took a deep breath. I was relieved that I didn’t have to track her down, but it never got any easier: delivering such news to a parent not expecting it. It almost always hit hard enough that it felt like a physical punch.

  I rang the bell as Monty shifted his weight back and forth. I had asked him on the way over if he’d done this before, knowing he probably hadn’t. I was right. He had every reason to be anxious.

  “Well, at least it looks like it might be just her for now. No big family to address.” I shrugged. “That might make it a bit easier.”

  Monty nodded as a woman looking older than fifty-three opened the door. She was small, no more than five-three, and I could smell cigarette smoke instantly. She had that superannuated blond look, her overdyed, brassy hair hanging to her shoulders with about two inches of dark gray springing from her roots. That’s where my eye went first until I quickly refocused on her narrow blue eyes framed by deep crow’s-feet.

  I wanted to tell her to go ahead and grab a cigarette, anything she wanted at all while she could still do it in the comfort of everyday normalcy before we ripped it away. It didn’t matter that Victor had some criminal tendencies or could have been mixed up in something dangerous; this woman would still love her boy no matter what hardships her family might have seen.

  “Ms. Lance?” I said. “I’m Ted Systead. I’m a detective for the Department of the Interior. We handle
crime in the US national parks. This is Monty Harris with Glacier Park’s police.”

  “Hello, ma’am.” Monty tipped his head.

  Her eyes narrowed, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s happened now?” She looked irritated. This was a woman familiar with difficulties.

  “May we come in?”

  “What?” She crossed her arms and gave a heavy-lidded stare. “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  “He?” I asked.

  She shifted into a one-hip stance, getting ready to go onto the defensive.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. Do you mean Victor?”

  She shrugged and shifted to her other hip. She was not going to say any more.

  I sighed. This was no time for games. “Ms. Lance, may we please just come in for a moment?”

  She gave a surrendering little shrug, opened the door wider, and held out a hand. She was wearing jeans and a purple, somewhat ratty sweater. No shoes. No socks. I couldn’t tell if she was cold, but the effect of her small, bony feet on off-white linoleum in October made her look fragile. She followed us in and closed the door. “Can I get you something?”

  “No, no, thank you.”

  “What it is then?”

  The living room was small, with a beige couch and a deep green La-Z-Boy recliner. I made a mental note that if she got unsteady it would be easy to help her into the recliner. The television played some college football game, and I decided not to ask her to turn it off because it wasn’t on very loud. “Ms. Lance,” I said softly. “We have very bad news for you. We very much regret to inform you that your son was found in Glacier Park this morning. I’m afraid it looks as if he’s been killed.”

  Penny stood frozen for a moment, her mouth slightly open and slack, as if the words had not yet registered. Then she let out a small squeaky moan and slowly put her palm to her mouth.

  “We’re very sorry.”