Mortal Fall (11 page)

“I remember reading that in the paper, but I had no idea you guys had hired him.”

“After it happened, we all felt really bad and Wolfie especially felt awful. He wondered if our letting him go and not having a job had anything to do with his depression.”

“His name?”

“Brad. Brad DeMarcus. He was actually the brother of Will, who’s the bartender at the Snow Ghost Bar and Grill in Whitefish.”

“Oh really?” I thought of the bartender’s joking about the silly drink and the Wild West.

“Yeah. Anyway, not sure it means anything at all, but thought I should mention it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Every piece of information helps. I’ll look into it.”

Lara was looking at me with wide eyes, her head resting on her hand. She had quit fiddling with her food and she didn’t look particularly irritated anymore, so I’m not sure why I felt my anger prickle. “You have to go?” she asked.

I stared back for a moment. I didn’t have to go anywhere. What Sam had shared was interesting, but nothing urgent. But slowly, I felt myself nod. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Lara looked at her wineglass, took another sip, then stood and began clearing the table.

“It’s okay. I can get that later.”

“No.” She held up her hand. “I’ll get it now. I can let myself out. You can just go if you need to.”

I went to her and placed my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She bit her lower lip as if she was holding back words and nodded.

“Okay then,” I said, grabbing my keys and leaving through the kitchen door. I had a knot in my stomach that I’d just walked away from her like that, leaving her alone in the place I’d made my own—where I wasn’t married to her—to clean the dinner we’d made together, not to mention that it was the first time I had ever lied to my wife.

10

A
NOTHER SPECTACULAR DAY
took shape before Ken and me, and I tried not to dwell on my dissembling with Lara the night before and her pouty face when I left—how I’d gone to the office and looked through Wolfie’s files for any information on Brad DeMarcus, rewatched the surveillance tape capturing Wolfie driving into the park around seven p.m., exactly as Cathy said he would be, then drove by my dorm an hour and a half later to make sure she was gone before going in. When I got ready for bed, I could smell the faint, lingering remains of her flowery perfume in the small bathroom. I tried not to feel guilty about leaving her like that, and finally, after a long period of tossing and turning, I fell to sleep.

Now, by quarter to eight in the morning on Saturday, the sun was drying the dew and the Loop was already busy with cars passing by to head to the visitor center at the top of the pass. Some stopped to use the restroom and take photos of the view, and one car with two twentysomething women—one blond- and one dark-haired—hopped out and strode up to Ken and me in short jogging shorts and well-toned, tanned legs. The one with a long, dark ponytail looping out of the hole at the base of her cap asked if the trail to Granite Chalet was open.

“Not from this end yet, but it is from the top.” I pointed up the mountains where Going-to-the-Sun snaked its way narrowly to the visitor center. “From there, you can take the Highline Trail to the chalet. It’s a few miles longer but much more pleasant since it traverses
below the Garden Wall and isn’t such a big vertical rise as it is from here.” I knew it was two thousand feet worth of elevation change going up from this point.

“We don’t want to hike it that way. We
want
the vertical rise, the hike up. You know, for the workout.” She looked at me incredulously. “It’s too easy to go in from the top.”

“Well, it
is
seven miles,” I offered. “From here, it’s only three point eight. Plus you still have to hike back which is uphill and would make it fourteen round-trip.”

“Like she said,” the blonde chimed in, tilting her head to her friend, “we
want
the elevation change.”

In the past few years, we were seeing more and more of the younger generation interested in what kind of a workout they could achieve rather than the enjoyment they could gather from the unsullied scenery. Mountain bikes were not allowed on most Glacier trails because they rutted them out and alarmed wildlife and hikers. Some trails permitted horses and alpacas. Lately, more were jogging the trails—getting their workouts in—and we’d received complaints from elderly hikers and nature enthusiasts feeling startled on narrow, dangerous trails by runners suddenly approaching from behind, obnoxiously yelling,
On your right
, as if it was a ski hill and the hikers in front should nimbly and quickly hop to the side of the narrow ledges so the joggers didn’t have to interrupt their workout pace.

“It will most probably be open by this afternoon.” I smiled. “You’re more than welcome to wait.”

The dark-haired one let out an exasperated sigh and sauntered off complaining to her friend. “Maybe they can catch a Pilates class when they’re done with their hike.” I rolled my eyes at Ken. “I’m sure they’ll get their glutes worked today one way or the other.”

“I’m sure they will.” Ken chuckled as we grabbed the gear from the back of the car. “And nice glutes they are.”

I smiled, shut and locked the back of the SUV, and we made our
way toward the trail. “Another trip into this ravine,” I said to him once we got beyond the roped off area and made it to the launch spot. “Bored yet?”

“Nah.” Ken had his gum again and vigorously worked it.

“Good, I just want to make sure we’re not missing anything.”

He shrugged his indifference. “Whatever suits you. Can’t imagine you’re going to find anything more than you did the other day, though.”

“Yeah, I know.” I shoved my hat in my pocket and placed the hard hat on when we reached the spot. “It’s just that I had this idea that if I go down the other side of the first contact spot, down a different line, I might find the memory card.”

“Like I said, whatever you think,” Ken said as he searched for a sturdy tree to set the first anchor. “It’s this or directing traffic on the other side of the pass where there’s been a frequent-flyer black bear. Or,” he added, “issuing traffic violations and I can’t tell you how many times I heard “You can’t give me a ticket; you’re just a ranger” last week. I don’t even bother saying anymore that I’m Park Police.”

I chuckled. I’d heard it my fair share as well and the fact of the matter was that some rangers were trained in law enforcement and perfectly enabled to give tickets for violations in the park, just as we were.

“I like this better,” Ken added. “No fumes.”

“There ya go,” I said.

“But I don’t really need any extra trouble from Smith or even Ford for not getting the trail open.” Ken had knelt down to secure a line around the sturdy trunk of a pine and stopped what he was doing to look up at me. “They don’t have the kind of faith in me that they do you.”

“What?” I said.

“He trusts you,” Ken said.

“Who?”

“Smith. He’s got a lot of confidence in you. You don’t see it?”

I shrugged. “I guess so. I think he just has confidence in all his people—including you—and good thing, ’cause I think he’s worn out and he needs us to take the reins here, and I’m more than happy to help.”

“I can see that.” Ken looked at the line and tugged on it a few times. “All set from this end.”

“You won’t get in any trouble,” I assured him. “This is my call and we’ll have this trail open in no time.” I set the backup anchor around a second pine nearby, then stepped into my harness and secured the rest of my gear and headed down for the third time, this time farther north of the victim’s launch area. When I reached the area a little lower from the sloped ledge with the slide marks and blood spatter, I stopped to look and took more pictures from the new angle. Another day and night of sunshine and summer breezes had faded the spatter even more.

Then I shimmied over so I was even slightly farther north of the ledge. I hung shy of a drop-off that concaved inward. I was careful to go no further. I knew I didn’t want to free-rappel—to lose contact with the wall—since it’s more dangerous and I was already off my descent line where the lines were most secure. There were several outcroppings on this side, so I rested my feet on a small one and scanned the area looking for the disk, looking for anything. I peered around to see if it had flung against the cliff, bounced down, and nestled onto some small rock projection.

For a moment, I took in the view. With my ass hanging in the air in a seated position in the rope’s webbing of my harness, I peered out at the colossal sky, the mountains indifferent and braced against it. That really brought it full circle for me. Even as Wolfie tumbled to his demise, those mountains didn’t flinch. I was viewing the pristine sweep of the Great Divide, specifically the Livingston Range marching northward into Canada. The stubborn, unforgiving whisper from the vast carved rock faces felt more intimately dangerous than ever before, their soft murmurs humming and vibrating, engulfing me. Usually it didn’t affect me, but today it was making me edgy and making the thin hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

People were often shocked and captivated by the news of grizzly or other animal attacks. Such freak occurrences made them feel unsafe in
the wild. But these folks didn’t fully consider the uncomplicated fact that something as simple as falling in Glacier was much more frightening because it was much more likely to happen, like a car accident could take your life in a split second way before a serial killer was ever going to take it.

A speck of dust on the cliff’s edge, my existence felt intensely connected to the fabric of it all, but still a mere glitch; my rappelling ropes seemed inadequate and unsafe. I knew finding the disk was a hope in hell. Suddenly I considered myself extremely unwise and perhaps irresponsible for wasting Ken’s and my time, not to mention keeping a good number of tourists, including those women, from hiking the Loop Trail to Granite Chalet and affecting the chalet’s business as well.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said out loud to it all, my voice faintly bouncing off the rock cliff. “I’m foolish enough all right, looking for something so small out here.” I set the camera down against my chest and was just about to shimmy back over to my descent line, when from down below, from the different vantage point, I caught a glimpse of something shiny about seventy-five feet below me. I squinted at it and brought the camera with its telephoto lens back to my eye, but could only make out a shiny pinpoint of light. For all I knew, it was a piece of broken glass from someone having dropped a bottle while hiking up above.

A little voice inside my head echoed Ford’s sentiments:
Enough already, Monty. Just because you took a couple refresher courses doesn’t mean there’s a crime. Go back up and open the damn trail.
I grabbed the radio from my belt. “Ken, you read?”

“I’m here.”

I paused, the radio at my mouth.

“Ten four. I hear you,” he reiterated.

But why not, I thought. It was going to bug the hell out of me if I didn’t. No one was ever going to accuse me of being sloppy, and I had made a promise. “I crossed the line over the nose,” I told him, “and I see something shiny down below from this side. I’m going to head back over straight below the anchors and go back down and walk over
to check it out. It’s farther north of where we searched yesterday, like I said, around the nose.”

“Ten four,” Ken said. “Your wish is my command.”

“Thank you.” Carefully, I made my way back to my original descent line and lowered myself to the ground. I removed the roped carabiners from my harness and began picking my way through the talus and around the front of the cliff to the other side of it to where I spotted the shiny object.

It took me some time to get to the spot, but once I arrived, something inside me recoiled. It was like I was looking at a puzzle at first, then as I put things into perspective, noted the rocks, the brush, and the surrounding dirt, the dark stains, I realized what it was.

I was viewing part of an arm and its hand.

A large hawk let loose a brash caw from above, startling me into the stark present. An acrid taste formed at the back of my throat, and I swallowed hard. Flesh was still on it from the elbow down and a sports watch remained clasped around the wrist. I wiped the sweat on my forehead and squinted at the dismembered limb. Slowly, I made my way closer and noticed several yards away and covered in dirt, other parts of the body—part of a torso with some bare ribs exposed, a head, and part of a dirty and ripped denim-clad leg.

I felt dizzy as I grabbed the radio. “Ken,” I said. “Looks like we’re not going to be opening the trail this afternoon after all.”

11

T
WO HOURS LATER,
we had a team of people working the top again, including Joe, Karen, and Michael who had joined Ken. Also, Gretchen Larson, the lead crime scene examiner who worked for Flathead County was called in. Luckily, she wasn’t afraid of much and insisted on rappelling down with a backpack full of forensic gear. Ken helped her down and I walked her to the spot where we both spent another few hours examining the second body we’d found in three days below the Loop trail. “You keep agreeing to come down these steep areas, and they’ll have no use for me anymore.”

“I don’t intend to make a habit of it,” she said.

Since the west side of Glacier Park was contained in Flathead County, the county held concurrent jurisdiction with the feds and could be used for law enforcement matters. I knew I could use the extra expertise on this one since it had been out in the elements longer and had been fed on by some type of carnivore. I liked Gretchen and I was happy for the help, not to mention that she was easy on the eyes with baby blues and honey-colored shoulder-length hair pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck. She made me feel like I was in some TV crime show where the crime scene investigators were all ridiculously beautiful and perfectly dressed. I was pretty certain it didn’t go that way in very many counties around the country. Gretchen wasn’t fashionably dressed and maybe not quite the right type for one of those shows, but she was cute. I was pretty sure she got quite a bit of male attention on and off duty, but she was the type to buy her own round
anyway. She could put anyone not treating her as she saw fit in their place with a cutting glance or a few brief words.