The Wild Inside

by Christine Carbo

  “The store in Hungry Horse?”

  “Yeah, then I came home for lunch around twelve thirty and went to clean at Dr. Nieder’s, the only dentist here in town, around two because that’s their half day and they leave by one thirty.”

  “And how long were you there?”

  “Until about three thirty or so. And when I got home, Lewis was already home from school.”

  “And then?”

  “Nothing, we were in for the night.”

  “And was there anyone at the dentist’s office who can vouch for your appearance there?”

  Leslie put her hands on her hips and looked at me like I was an idiot. “Mister, you think they’d let me alone in a dentist’s office with my history?”

  “Good point.” I smiled at her. “At any rate, I’ll need the name and number of whoever was there with you.”

  • • •

  “So what do you think?” Monty eliminated the whistle this time. I pulled out my quarter—noticing that it was still the Vermont—and began rolling as soon as we got back in the SUV. I had finished with Leslie by asking her if she knew Stimpy. She got completely closemouthed and clammed up. Not uncommon for a former druggie, especially a female fearing for herself and her child. When you bring up a dealer, the trained response even if you’ve dried out is to quit talking as if the questioner suddenly puts a kink in the hose and the information flowing like water seconds before abruptly ceases. I figured we’d have to circle back to that one. Eventually, she’d talk. Each and every one of them always does. The unwritten rule among the users is to never snitch on anybody, and they don’t. At first. But eventually, they all do.

  By the time I’d brought up the animal torture, her sudden silence made her energy come out even more in the form of physical movement. She became too fidgety to address any other topic: sitting up and down; bouncing one leg; making that sucking, kissing sound; playing, twisting, and tangling her dark hair; rocking back and forth with a wild, distracted look in her eyes. I decided I’d get the lowdown from the vet before circling back to her on that one too. “I think she’s telling the truth that she was home, in spite of the fact that addicts are good at lying.”

  “And why do you believe her?”

  “Just a sense.” I started the engine and put my quarter back in my pocket. I decided not to set Monty on edge for the drive back to headquarters. “You didn’t believe her?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just, I don’t know, getting the Bible out like that and all. Just weird.”

  I shrugged. “It’s her lifeline. Better life after death than death after meth.”

  Monty half-smiled. “But Bones Church? I thought that was mostly for teens.”

  “Teens. Young Adults. My guess is that it’s pretty harmless. They target the lost generation, right?”

  “I thought they targeted the skateboarders and snowboarders, not the addicts. The addicts don’t have any money.”

  “Boarders have money?” I asked.

  “If they’re trust-fund babies, they do.”

  “True, but the more, the merrier. And boarders or not, the young are the future.”

  “I guess. So you don’t think there’s anything there to look at?”

  “Gotta always be thorough,” I said. “But it’s not high on our list. Other things are, though, so this would actually be a good time for us to divide and conquer. I think you’re ready to handle some of these people on your own. In fact, I’ve been meaning to tell you how great you were with Lou.”

  “Thanks,” Monty said.

  I believe he smiled, but I kept my eyes on the road.

  • • •

  At headquarters, I made a list of all the things I needed done: checking the DMV for vehicles registered under Victor’s name, checking with the bookkeeper at the dental office to verify Leslie’s presence from two until close to four p.m. Checking with Hungry Horse Grocery for her hours there. I needed him to verify Paul Tyler’s employment status at the timber company, to run a background check on him as well, and to look into the local hardware stores that sold duct tape on the off chance that the perpetrator had to go buy it and didn’t already have it on hand. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the tidbit on the capsaicin traces Gretchen had found on the tape. Searching for all the capsaicin sold in the area was a futile endeavor.

  I was off to see the veterinarian whom the dog was taken to while he did these things. But before I left, I looked at Monty, “You good?”

  “Yeah, I’m good.” He pressed a finger against the bridge of his glasses and set them up higher on his nose.

  I stood for a moment, hesitant. Monty raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  I shrugged and left. I’m not sure why I paused. Perhaps I’d gotten used to having him along. The truth was I was beginning to like his company. For me, a little human companionship in Glacier was like having a drink or taking some pain-relieving medicine to take the edge off. Or maybe I just lingered because I had an urge to ask him about Ford. Because for some reason, Ford’s presence, even when there was no direct link, seemed to layer into all that I was trying to accomplish on the case. I didn’t even need to hear from the guy or have a conversation with him, but I felt his existence, like a deceiving, barely visible layer of ice coating the ground I was trying to cross.

  11

  THE NORTHWEST MONTANA Animal Hospital was between Whitefish and Columbia Falls on Highway 40. The assistant at the desk—a young woman with a pretty round face in a pale-blue uniform with a pattern of pink paw prints—told me that Dr. Pritchard was just finishing up with a patient, so I thanked her and drifted over to a corkboard plastered with thank-you cards and pictures of dogs and cats. One picture reminded me of Tumble, the black Lab my family got when we moved from Florida.

  A door opened to my left. “Can I help you?” Dr. Pritchard asked.

  He had a deep voice, which I expected, because he was at least my height, six-two or -three, and had fine features, almost effeminate: dark, but surprisingly kind eyes, high cheekbones, russet skin. But he wore his hair disheveled, so he didn’t appear prim, and his face was weathered and lined in that Montana way—maybe from squinting in the wind, the cold, and the high-altitude sun.

  “Dr. Pritchard,” I said. “I’m Ted Systead. I work as a homicide detective for the Department of the Interior. I’m just here to ask you a few questions if you have a moment.”

  He looked to the gal behind the desk, and she looked back at him with wide doe eyes. His own appeared tired, heavy-lidded, but under the lids, I could see surprise and an ounce of curiosity since he had an unusual visitor, a break from the routine. “Okay, sure.” He shook his head slightly in the way people do when they have a sudden shiver, but I think the move was to simply shift himself into a different and unexpected gear. “Who’s waiting for me, Rose?”

  “Just Mrs. Phelps, but I can send Elizabeth back with her to explain the phenobarbital dosage.”

  “Okay, that’s fine.”

  He brought me into a small office where he had a laptop angled toward him. A picture of a woman and two children and another of him somewhere in the backcountry beside what appeared to be a wolf or maybe wolverine trap stood on the other end of the desk. He sat back languidly in his chair and motioned for me to sit. “What can I help you with?”

  I told him about Victor and waited for his reaction, but there was no response. No good, he deserved it, as if he knew him or no overdramatic What? Are you kidding? Or oh no, that’s awful As if he couldn’t believe such a thing would happen in his neck of the woods. He just sat silently and waited, perhaps exhaled a little louder than usual, and I saw his body slump a bit as if he was used to carrying a good amount of the world’s pain.

  “I’m here because you treated a dog that was beaten badly last spring, and there’s a small chance that there may be a connection to the victim.”

  �
�I see.” He nodded, complete comprehension crossing his face; he knew which dog I meant. “A connection?”

  “Yeah, it’s a long shot, but in my job, I’ve got to follow up on everything.”

  “Makes sense. Well, here’s what I know.” He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, and looked at me intently. “It was a shitty, shitty thing. One of the worst I’ve seen in my career.” He looked down for a moment. “I’ve been a vet for twenty-eight years now and I’ve seen a fair share of animal cruelty cases: horses underfed and left in overly small enclosures, dogs left outside in the cold until their hearts have nearly stopped, cats left trapped in trailers, puppies and kittens tied up in plastic bags and thrown in Dumpsters. One guy thought it fun to burn his kitten’s ears off on a stove burner . . . . But this poor Lab.” He shook his head and ran a hand through the wavy, gray-flecked hair above his ears. “Whoever did this beat the poor dog so badly with a bat that his intestines exploded inside of him, the contents poisoning him. His skull was fractured, his shoulder and hip fractured. His spine broken.”

  “Who brought him in?”

  “Someone drove by and saw him tied to a fence. Collapsed and bloody on the ground. They stopped and checked his tags and saw my clinic’s name, so they brought him here. It was a Sunday and they called me on their way over. I met them here, not knowing how bad the situation was. I figured a few bruises—that he’d need some stitches.” He blew out a long breath, making his cheeks puff out with air. “They were a nice couple. Helped carry him in on a blanket they had in the back of their car and they stayed until I examined him. I knew I had to put him out of his misery as quickly as I could.”

  “And that’s what you did?”

  He rubbed his eyes as if he could smear the blackened bruise of the experience from his mind. He nodded. “I called the owner first. Gave him morphine intravenously to ease the pain until he could come. When he got here, I told him about his dog’s condition, then I got his go-ahead and euthanized him.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “Poorly. As you’d expect. He couldn’t believe it. He, he”—Dr. Pritchard sighed heavily—“he wanted to pound my walls down once the reality that someone could have done this to his dog sunk in. But he contained himself and got through it. He comforted the poor thing as best he could as I administered the dose.”

  “Who was the owner?”

  “Guy named Rob Anderson. Lives in Columbia Falls. Loved his dog.” He knit his brow. “Logan. That was his name, if I recall correctly—after Logan Pass in Glacier.”

  Logan Pass was the passage for the infamous Going-to-the-Sun Road that cut through the steep terrain and crossed the divide in the heart of Glacier. So much in the area was named after something in or about Glacier. You couldn’t drive far without seeing signs with names like Grizzly Property Rental, Glacier Dental, Glacier Eye Clinic, Northwest Glacier Mechanics, Glacier Bank, Going-to-the-Sun Café . . .“Did Mr. Anderson have any idea who could have done such a thing?”

  “Not that I recall. He was totally shocked. Very devastated.” Dr. Pritchard nodded again. “We reported it to the police and they came here to question us, but they never found who did it. Not sure how much time they spent on it, although it did make the paper, and many of my clientele brought up how sickened they were by the whole thing. I believe the entire Flathead Valley was somewhat enraged that someone could, and would, do that to an animal.”

  For reasons I can’t explain, I imagined the grizzly I had not yet seen trapped in his heavily fortified cage, still alive, his three- or four-inch claws curling around the thick steel wires. I shoved my hand in my pocket and felt for a quarter among several coins, what felt like a mixture of pennies, dimes, and quarters now. I gripped one of the quarters between my thumb and forefinger. “So,” I said, “Mr. Anderson had no leads to give the police?”

  “Not that I remember.” Dr. Pritchard suddenly looked up like he understood why I was before him. “You think the guy who beat the Lab murdered the guy in Glacier?”

  “Not exactly.” I brought my quarter out, not sure if it was still the Vermont, and I didn’t bother to check because I caught Dr. Pritchard glance at my hand, so I wrapped my fingers around it and pressed it into the point of my chin. I can’t exactly say why I felt uneasy. I had no bad feelings or intuitions about the man before me. Perhaps it was simply the smell of animal mixed with the medicinal smell that always permeates a vet’s clinic that somehow triggered something inside me: the distant sound of beeps and voices of orderlies somewhere in my memory bank. “As I said when I came in, it’s a long shot, but what we’re trying to discover is whether or not the guy who was murdered was one of the guys who actually beat the Lab.”

  “Oh, I see.” He pursed his lips, his eyes murky with serious thoughts. Then he scratched the side of his cheek and I could hear the sound of his razor stubble like sandpaper. “Yeah, it was a bad thing to happen to a sweet animal. I hope you discover who did this, and if he’s not your guy in the park, that he’s punished accordingly.”

  “I hope so too, Dr. Pritchard.” I stood and extended my hand. “Thank you for your time.”

  As I left, I glanced one last time and saw him turn to his computer. But he wasn’t looking at it. He was staring at the floor, his head drooped as if I’d zapped his energy—as if he wasn’t expecting to pause on this particular day to mourn the loss of one of his former patients.

  • • •

  The first grizzly bear I did see subsequent to my father’s death came four years later, right after I graduated from high school. I was still dating Kendra, and her father, Jack, wanted to hike to Almeda Lake up the Middle Fork drainage, which is adjacent to the park, but not in it. Parts of the area where the trail cuts through have been logged, leaving broad, rectangular bald spots on the hillsides that provide thick, brushy areas with huge huckleberry bushes perfect for bears.

  I did not know about the clear-cuts and figured the trail was similar to ones in Glacier, broadly buffed out and nicely maintained with open vistas as soon as you gain elevation. The Almeda Lake trail, however, meandered through lower elevation for some time, alternating between dense clear-cut areas where the bushes were over fifteen feet high and Hansel and Gretel wooded forest with green ferns and sturdy ponderosas.

  Each time we strode through a clear-cut patch, my chest tightened and my breathing quickened because I knew that this was the most predictable spot to startle a bear. I carried my capsaicin spray as usual and hurried through the logged patches, the brush scratching my arms and legs. I was frantically expecting a large, furry beast to charge out from the overgrown bushes at any moment and felt calmed each time we made it through one with no surprises. Kendra kept asking me why I was walking so fast. I just ignored her until she got mad and decided not to speak either.

  We had just come out of what I figured was the last clear-cut because we were about to hit a turn leading us up and away from the huge scars on the mountainside. I felt relieved, and in my respite, I was just about to reach out to grab her hand and say something sweet (hey, babe, you put your sunscreen on today?) when Jack stopped abruptly in front of me and slammed to a halt. I saw him fumble at the side of his fanny pack where the holster for his spray hung.

  “Two cubs,” he whispered with a forceful airy quality. “Up ahead. One just crossed right in front of me ’bout ten yards.”

  My chest and stomach instantly seized. I could feel my pulse hammer my chest and shoot through my neck in forceful shoves. I felt like I was suddenly being trapped in a shaft with syrupy darkness narrowing around me. I fought the urge to turn and bolt, to just keep running until some light at the end of the tunnel showed.

  I felt Kendra dig her fingers into my arm. “Where?” she whispered back to her dad.

  Jack pointed down the trail into the shade of the darkened forest. About twenty yards from us, two small moving blobs of fur crossed and disappeared into the br
ush beside the trail.

  Then I heard the grunt—a low guttural sound somewhere between a bark, a woof, and some loud, deep incomprehensible forced exhalation. All noises ceased. I heard no hawks. No ravens or jays. No squirrels. I saw her rise up on her haunches, her height rising against the trees as if she might turn to stone and become one of them—a great sturdy statue in the forest among the firs. She sniffed the air, her head bobbing and slightly angling to the side, one, two, three, four times. Her paws dangled before her as if she were getting ready to play some grand piano. She woofed again, and somehow I managed to raise my arm, heavy like lead, the spray in my shaking hand.

  “Remove the cap,” Kendra whispered.

  I fumbled with the top and got the safety off with my left hand. Jack already had his held out before him. I couldn’t speak if I tried. I’m certain I didn’t.

  “Let’s go back,” Kendra whispered, her high-pitched voice sending painful reverberations up my spine.

  Jack shushed her with an urgency I’d never heard from him before. He placed his forefinger to his mouth. The grizzly stood before us, her broad silvery snout lifted, trying to read the air like braille. Then she dropped back to all fours. Her front feet hit the ground with a boom, and although in retrospect I’m sure it was just my imagination, I could have sworn that the return of her mass to the ground made the forest floor vibrate. She panted three very specific times: huff, huff, huff. Then she rocked back and forth, to show aggression, to signal Don’t mess with my cubs, and turned and left.

  I still couldn’t breathe, and I stood frozen, thick, and trembling. Her skunklike odor strangled the air. We listened, the forest still quiet, save the sound of her large body moving through brush, branches breaking, leaves rustling. We could hear her making her way up the ridge, traversing to one side, then stopping and we’d hear her: huff, huff, huff. A heavy, breathy sound that seemed to swing with her body. Then she’d traverse to the other side and do the same. She continued to zigzag from side to side, moving her cubs along, panting three specific times with each pause.