The Wild Inside

by Christine Carbo

  I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. I answered anyway, “I suppose,” I said. “Doable.”

  • • •

  Monty looked up Lou’s address on his laptop, and on the way to the Shelton cabin we made a quick stop at headquarters to get a printout from Monica on the dealer, an Andrew Stimpson, which she rounded up from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

  Two years before, the ATF sent in an undercover agent to work the area because there’d been a major methamphetamine ring running between Spokane, Washington, and the Flathead Valley. At its height, about twenty-five people were involved in trafficking the drug. Eventually, twelve residents, five from the Flathead Valley in Kalispell and seven from the Hungry Horse and Coram area, were convicted and are still serving anywhere from sixty to two hundred months in prison. That left the newbies in the area, like Stimpy, to play around with developing their own connections, and the police didn’t fully have a good feel for which way the newbies might swing. Whether they’d be bringing it in from Washington again or setting up shop and manufacturing more from small-time homegrown operations. Monica found Stimpson in the regional drug-task-force intelligence database with only one offense: he’d been busted for disturbing the peace outside a bar and had dope on him. He was suspected of dealing within the Spokane importation ring, but they had no proof, so he was free as a bird.

  When I walked in, Joe came out to greet me, a serious expression on his face, and with no apparent reason, an undertow of anxiety tugged at me. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “We’ve got the bear.”

  I nodded, felt my stomach grip, my breathing quicken, and even my palms felt immediately slippery. “You’re kidding? So soon?”

  “He was hanging around the McGee area. Maybe thought someone else would turn up dead. Went right to the concoction—a savory little mixture of fermented cow’s blood and rotten fish.”

  “Has anyone found any of his scat?”

  “Not yet. We’re hopeful, though. No one wants to cut this guy open. He’s a beauty, very healthy. He’s put on his hyperphagic weight, probably close to seven hundred pounds. We’re checking his DNA with the saliva found on the victim to be absolutely positive that he’s the right one.”

  I took a deep breath, felt the incoming air fight to expand laterally against my tightly bound ribs. It was such a simple thing—the bear crapping the bullet out—that it seemed too easy. I hoped that’s all it would take. I didn’t want to be in a position to ask the park’s bear committee to have him cut open. Besides the outside chance that we might find other pieces of clothing belonging to the victim in the bear’s gut, plucking the bullet out of a pile of scat with some tweezers certainly was the simplest solution. And looking at Joe, with his experience and fatherly advice flickering in his dark eyes, it all seemed like it could work out. “I don’t want to euthanize him either, Joe. But it still doesn’t solve the problem that he’s fed on human remains.”

  “I know, but hopefully we get the bullet without drastic measures. Bears drink tons of water as they near hibernation to help with elimination, so we’ll make sure he’s got more than enough.”

  I nodded but could see a tenseness in Joe’s face. “Something else?” I asked.

  “Actually, yes,” he said. “Can you come into my office?”

  I glanced at my watch. I didn’t want to be rude, but time seemed to be flying away from me at warp speed.

  “It’ll only take a moment.”

  I followed him, in some ways relieved to have a plan in place with the bear, but still felt a strong undercurrent tugging at me. When I entered, I saw Joe’s daughter sitting in one of his desk chairs. Joe motioned for me to take a seat. “Remember Heather?”

  “Of course.” I held out my hand to her before sitting, hoping my palms were less moist now. She was wearing a lightweight tan coat and had on a dark green scarf knotted around her neck. She gave me a closed-lip smile that seemed genuine. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Likewise.” She shook my hand, her grip light.

  “So what’s going on?”

  “It’s in this morning’s paper. You seen it?” He nodded to the copy of the local daily news on his desk.

  “Yeah.” I picked up the copy and quickly glanced at the small article. “Exactly as I’d expect Ford to handle it.” I set the paper down and flicked it with my finger. “Hardly gave any information at all.”

  Joe nodded, still looking tense, the muscles in his jaw tight.

  “So, what’s the problem, then?” I looked from daughter to father, took in their similarities—pale eyes and fair, weathered skin.

  “Well.” His gaze stayed on Heather as he began. “When you met us earlier on our way to lunch, Heather had wanted to meet with me for a reason.”

  I sat still.

  “Turns out when she read the victim’s name in the paper, she was shocked because she knew the guy. In fact . . .” He looked down, picked up a pencil, and began rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. “This is sort of hard for me.” His voice sounded small, vulnerable, something I’d not witnessed before. Jack-of-all-trades, always-in-control ranger, who becomes chief of Park Police didn’t get weak. “I have another daughter.”

  “Uh huh.” I nodded, glanced at my watch again; it was almost four p.m., and I wanted to get to Lou Shelton’s place.

  “She’s been in and out of trouble with drugs since she was a teenager.” He rubbed his forehead. “She was even screwed up on meth for some time. Anyway, long story short, Heather came to tell me that she had dated this guy for over a year. I had no clue.” Joe shook his head.

  Now Joe’s tenseness made sense. Leave it to family matters, the one thing that can drop a person to their knees. I looked at Heather, then back to Joe. “Your daughter’s name?”

  “Leslie,” Joe said.

  “Still last name Smith?”

  Joe shook his head. “No, she’s been married and divorced, but never took our name back. It’s Boone now.”

  “The victim’s mother mentioned her. Liked her, in fact.”

  “How sweet,” Joe said with sarcasm, then his face seemed to suddenly droop and he looked down. I could see that there were demons in this closet.

  “Leslie’s been difficult for my mom and dad.” Heather’s voice was soft but matter-of-fact, as if she had only said, the bathroom’s down the hall.

  “She’s, she’s just”—Joe picked it up again—“been a very frustrating kid, and now . . .” He trailed off. He looked down again and the room became silent.

  “She has a boy?” I asked.

  Joe nodded. “I hate to say it, but I’ve had no contact with her for some time. Call me stubborn, but I got fed up. Tough love, whatever you want to call it.” He brushed his hand in the air as if swatting a fly away. “I’d have no clue who’s in her life. It’s better that way. But, yes, I have a grandson, and Heather’s nice enough to make a habit of bringing him by to see me at times.”

  “And his name?”

  “Lewis,” Heather offered. “Lewis Boone.”

  “Where is Leslie now?”

  “Around, at home, with Lewis. She’s moved on, seeing some other guy named Paul Tyler, but I figured Dad better know that his daughter had a relationship with, you know”—she paused, her head twitching to the side as if searching for the right term for the victim—“this guy. I knew he didn’t know who she was involved with these days.” She looked at her father, now less confident, checking in to see if she was saying something wrong. He nodded her on. “We don’t talk a lot about her, it just upsets everyone.”

  “Did you meet Victor?”

  Heather nodded. “I saw him numerous times over the course of their relationship. I think they were together for about eight months or so.”

  “How did it end?”

  Heather shrugged. “He treated her po
orly. But so do all her boyfriends. She makes less than optimal choices in that department.” Again, she glanced at her father.

  “So she broke it off?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. We’re not talking about high levels of monogamy with this guy or my sister. He could’ve just as easily started seeing someone else.”

  “Your sister doesn’t talk to you about these things?”

  “Not really. A little but she’s, well, she’s fairly private.”

  “How was Victor with Lewis?”

  Heather shrugged again, her eyes flickering to her father, then back to me. “I guess I couldn’t fully say, but I don’t think Lewis particularly cared for him.”

  “How much time do you spend with Lewis?”

  “Just a bit here and there,” Joe broke in. “He’s a pretty decent kid considering what he’s grown up around.”

  “And you?” I turned back to Heather.

  “I help my sister out with him now and then, when she’s busy. He comes and helps me with my horses. And sometimes I pay him to ride my mower in the summer. I taught him how this year when he turned eleven.”

  “Do you know how they met?”

  Heather shook her head.

  “Aren’t these questions for Leslie?” Joe broke in.

  “Yeah, sure.” I reached in my pocket for my notebook. Joe shifted in his seat as if he couldn’t get comfortable. “I’ve already got Leslie’s address because we planned on questioning anyone involved with him, but”—I fingered through my notepad—“let me double-check that I’ve got the right place. Lodge Avenue in Coram?”

  Heather nodded.

  “Does she work?”

  “Cleans for small businesses. Mostly in Hungry Horse and Coram. Hungry Horse Grocery is one of ’em.”

  “Anyway . . . ” Joe got up, his features flat, as if he’d had enough of a boring school lecture. “I just thought you ought to know, but I’ve got a bear to attend to.”

  I stood too.

  “Want to come see him?”

  His question took me off guard, as if I were a little kid who wanted to check out a grizzly in a zoo. “Ah.” I cleared my throat. “No, thanks. Got too much work to do. Too many people to visit yet.”

  “Suit yourself.” He shrugged. “But he’s a beauty.”

  “I’m sure he is.” I couldn’t help but feel like I was being toyed with, the butt of a joke. I’d never told Joe about my history, and I was pretty sure he wouldn’t connect the dots even if he had heard about it down in Yellowstone. Back in the eighties, he was stationed as a ranger there. As far as I knew, he didn’t come to Glacier until about ’87 or ’89. There was the slight chance that Ford had remembered and clued him in, but even if he had, it wasn’t Joe’s style to toy with anyone.

  “By the way,” I said, “what do you know about a Lou Shelton who lives by Fish Creek?”

  “Nice enough guy. Keeps to himself and his family. Why?”

  “He has a family?”

  “I think so, a wife or a lady friend. And a son, a teenager, I believe. Might be hers, and he’s the stepdad ’cause I think he’s been divorced and his children are adults now.”

  I nodded. “Any chance you know what he drives?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Black Chevy four-by-four. See him coming and going all the time around here. It’s a small world in Glacier when the tourists are gone. Do you have something on Lou?”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t know that he was Victor’s uncle?”

  Joe looked at me, wide-eyed. “Ah, shit—you’ve got to be kidding?”

  I shook my head. “We’ll talk to him, just as we’ll talk to your daughter and everyone else.”

  “I reckon you will.” Joe sighed and walked out the door.

  9

  WE FOUND LOU’S place without difficulty. Just as Joe said, a black Chevy with an extended cab sat in the narrow gravel driveway beside a gray-planked cabin with burgundy shutters.

  I had an intuition about this guy, and my feeling was sharpening. Although I had considered the spotting of the truck by Jarred a long shot since the guy lived in the area, the idea that this case could be quickly put to rest by discovering evidence in a truck was a pretty juicy carrot before me. In fact, I felt strongly enough about him that I told Monty on the way over that there was a good chance we might need to go for the oldest trick in the book: good cop, bad cop. Just to see if we could make him nervous enough to slip if he had something to feel guilty about. I briefed him, telling him that it was his job to be nice and courteous, which he is anyway, but more outgoing and talkative than usual, helpful when I’m not, so that the guy would feel he had someone he could relate to and not completely clam up.

  Monty had smiled and said that he’d taken some acting classes in high school and had been in a few plays, including Julius Caesar and Comedy of Errors as the servant twin. I couldn’t imagine Monty acting on a stage, and it made me chuckle, but I quickly stopped myself and just said, “All the world’s a stage.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  When we pulled up the narrow drive, I saw who I assumed was Lou raking dried and withered leaves that had fallen from a maple beside his cabin. He had on a brown denim jacket, faded yellow gloves, and a baseball cap. He peered over to us with an impenetrable squint, even though the day was not bright. He leaned on his rake like some tried-and-true but tired mountain man, and I couldn’t help but think of Jeremiah Johnson. He was medium height and fit, not in the gym-workout way with bulky muscles and smooth skin, but in the consistently outdoors way—sturdy and weathered. I recalled Gretchen’s description of Victor, how he had a small frame. Lou set his rake against the cabin and came toward us.

  It was a stroke of bad luck that he wasn’t inside so that Monty and I would have more time to look around his truck—check for anything suspicious and maybe even measure the width of the tires in case Gretchen had come up with anything more on the tracks from the Inside Road.

  “Mr. Shelton?” I avoided looking too closely at the truck so that he wouldn’t get the idea that we were curious about it and then clean it just in case we came up with enough cause to get a search warrant.

  “That’d be me.”

  I introduced ourselves, told him we’d like a word with him, and I noticed Monty following my instruction beautifully, smiling fully with bright white teeth, shaking Lou’s hand vigorously, saying, “What a nice spot you have here.”

  Lou nodded, his eyes still narrow, inspecting us. “Been in the family for generations.”

  “Yeah, as Agent Systead mentioned,” Monty said, “I work for the park, so I’m fairly familiar with a few of these homesteads.” He looked around, up the gravel driveway we came in on, toward the lake and the mountains. “You know. How the park owns about twenty-some cabins on the lake, but that there are a number of other ones that are privately owned and are not part of the EA.”

  I knew Monty was referring to the Environmental Assessment Program that was exploring alternatives for the management of its cabins owned by the National Park Service.

  “That why you’re here?” Lou looked like he could spit.

  “No, sir,” Monty said. “Not at all.” Monty explained the reason for our visit and Lou sighed, scratched his close-cropped beard with the side of his glove, then nodded that he understood. He had heard about Victor from his sister. He took off his dirt-stained gloves and set them on a woodpile, then led us to his front porch, where two old Adirondack-style chairs sat. I looked around to see if any neighboring cabins had people around when Lou caught my glance.

  “Nobody ’round here,” he said. We can sit out.”

  I followed Monty and took a seat. “Nobody home here either?” I pointed my thumb to Lou’s cabin.

  “My wife’s at our boy’s soccer practice in Columbia Falls.”

  I nodded, then glanced at Monty, hoping he�
��d go ahead and make a little more small talk, ease us into this one.

  “How old’s your son?” Monty followed on cue.

  “Fifteen. Ninth grade. He’s my stepson.”

  I whipped out my notebook from my pocket and leaned forward, dug my elbows onto my knees, and fixed my gaze on Lou. “I’m sorry for your loss, but I need to ask you some questions about your relationship with your nephew.”

  “That’s fine.” He still held his squint, deep crow’s-feet fanning out from the corner of each eye. “I might just ask you some questions too—like what the hell happened out there? My sister’s a wreck.”

  “That’s exactly why we’re here, Mr. Shelton.” I leaned back into my chair as if I was in it for a long, good story. “Let’s begin with you telling us how your relationship with Victor was.”

  He scoffed. “Could hardly call it a relationship. Let me just say from the get-go that I’m real sorry this happened. I feel sick about it. It’s . . .” He shook his head and fully opened his eyes for the first time since we’d arrived. “It’s horrible, what happened, but I don’t spend a lot of time with my nephew. Never have.”

  “And when was the last time you saw him?”

  “August. Here. At a birthday party Becky threw for me.”

  “Was that the last time you spoke to him?”

  Lou nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Listen, I’m not gonna lie to ya. I didn’t much care for Victor, for the way he treated my sister. She always breakin’ her back to give him money for his trash habits.”

  “As long as we’re being honest here, Mr. Shelton.” I leaned forward again. “I need to ask you what you were doing Friday afternoon and evening.”

  “What the hell.” He pressed his palm to his chest. “Are you implying I had something to do with this?”

  “Not necessarily.” I kept my gaze steady. “But could you please answer the question.”

  “I . . . I was, I don’t know. Let me think.” He removed his cap and rubbed his forehead, then replaced it. “I worked around the house most of the day. Then”—he sighed—“I had a fight with Becky, so I stormed out. It was afternoon. I guess it was around four or so. I went to the store in West Glacier and got some smokes.”