Mortal Fall (50 page)

Nathan and I didn’t budge until Adam opened Nathan’s door from the outside and tugged at his arm. “Come on, you two. What? You too afraid to check out some tree in the dark?”

“No,” Nathan said, but stayed put, staring at the black leather of the seat in front of him. The frigid wind from outside continued to penetrate the leftover warmth of the car, biting at our cheeks.

“Come on, guys,” Perry said. “Let’s just go check it out.”

I slowly slid over to the open door where Todd stood, and I saw Nathan look at me. He looked resigned, shook his head slightly, then, as
only a true friend would, he turned to the door and placed his Adidas-clad foot out.

Now, in the light of day, two decades later, I walked up to the maple, still standing tall and proud off to the side like it didn’t belong, but as long as it was there, it was going to make the best of it and guard the cemetery, maybe offer a pathway for the dead to the big, sweet summer sky above. Its full, thick branches were bathed in yellow sunlight and reached to all sides and upward. Its roots looked strong.

I ran my hand over its thin-banded, gray bark, layered like a puzzle, and thought about Adam driving off with his buddies, hollering and laughing. I knew Perry still lived in the area. He worked for one of the local timber operations. I’d lost track of Todd, but vaguely recall someone saying he had moved to Bozeman and ran a company that sold carpets and countertops. Tragically, Mr. and Mrs. Faraway eventually divorced as most do after the loss of a child. And Molly—I heard she lived in Kalispell, had a few children, and was also divorced.

I considered Adam and the price he paid in his own way the following years. I backed up and looked up at the whole tree, green and lush, then out past it toward the forest that we’d ventured into to head toward town. A shiver went up my spine thinking how something that was supposed to be a silly joke had gone so wrong and affected so many lives so tragically. The thought occurred to me that beyond the physical, real, and catastrophic act of Nathan never making it home, sometimes people just didn’t find their way even when they had a home, good, bad or otherwise. My whole family might be that set of people, and it was okay, for now. I thought of Lara. Yes, there had been loads of pain and anger, and, yes, there had been loss and most likely more on its way.

In the distance, I heard the humming motor of a helicopter and wondered if it was heading to the park. I closed my eyes and inhaled the warm, sweet air and allowed myself a moment to remember Nathan: his reddish-brown hair straight as nails falling into his eyes, his fair, freckled skin, his bubbling laugh, and his hurt, angry voice the last time I saw him.

I didn’t know what to make of what Adam had said about the river, but if, I considered,
if
I found out that Adam or his friends had something more to do with Nathan’s disappearance than originally thought, I would make sure they all paid, one way or another. That was the least I could do for Nathan.

50

I
WAS NERVOUS TO
visit Cathy and the kids, but it felt right to go. It was late afternoon, the sun bright and glorious just as it was the day the case started. When I pulled up, Max came running and barking, whipping his tail back and forth. “Hey, buddy,” I said, kneeling down and petting him. Cathy followed and slowly walked toward me. She looked smaller, drawn inward, but she gave me a friendly smile. I was relieved to see she was wearing gardening gloves—that she’d resumed some of the things she must have found pleasure in.

“Working in the garden?” I asked as she took off her gloves, one at a time.

“Someone needs to do it or the weeds will take over.”

“You don’t enjoy it?”

She shrugged. “It’s hard to enjoy much of anything these days. Come on.” She motioned to the porch. “I’ll get you some lemonade or tea or something?”

“Lemonade sounds perfect.”

Max and I waited on the porch for her to grab the drinks and sat listening to the late afternoon quiet. I could hear a squirrel busy in the woods nearby, and Max lifted his head and stared intently in that direction.

When she returned with lemonade and took a seat, she dove right in. “Tell me, Monty. Why did Will DeMarcus kill Phillips in the first place?”

I took a sip and leveled my gaze on her, trying to decide what was the best response. Normally, Cathy wouldn’t comprehend the revenge—going to such violent lengths wouldn’t typically register for her. Most of us, we hope, are like that, but grief made people think things they never thought they could or would consider.

Finally, I said, “It’s complicated. It sounded like Bradley DeMarcus was a bit mentally ill, and I wonder if some strands of that didn’t run in Will as well. He just hid it better and for much longer.” I thought of my mom. In a strange way, my decision with Lara not to have children felt fortified by the investigation. After all, this case had always been about families, and somehow I had sensed that from the beginning. With no solid logic, it was what had led me to follow a long-shot lead to Glacier Academy on not too much more than a few weak strands of evidence and a niggling intuition.

“Perhaps it took losing his twin to make him go over the edge,” I continued. “His brother’s suicide got to him . . . made him lose his sense of composure, his sense of stability, and he began, I’m sure, to feel extreme amounts of rage. Sometimes, the only thing that quiets such rage is to begin fantasizing about payback, hurting the person who destroyed the person he loved.”

Cathy shut her eyes and nodded. “I can relate,” she said in a monotone voice.

“I know you can, but I’m telling you that picturing it, dreaming about having been able to stop him before he came across your husband is not going to help.”

“No.” She sighed. “I know it won’t. My first priority is the kids. Making sure they—we—get through this.”

“And I’m confident you will.”

“Why are you confident of that?”

Before I replied, I could hear someone begin softly to play the piano from inside. I tilted my head in the direction of the sound.

“It’s Abbey,” she said. “She’s our musician.”

“That’s why,” I said, definitively.

Cathy gave me a faint closed-mouth smile. “It’s just still so hard. When does it get easier?”

“A bit at a time, but it will. You’ll begin to replace the pain with all the wonderful memories, all the treasures you’ve shared with Paul over the years. And, Cathy,” I added, “you have to understand, the things that Paul loved: you, the kids, Glacier, Max, the animals, the ecosystem, the wolverines . . . they’re all still here, carrying on to the best of their abilities, and carrying on is the greatest gift you can give to Paul and your children. There’s nothing to feel guilty about in continuing to live when you begin to feel less numb. And you will. In time.”

“Thank you, Monty. I appreciate you sticking with it. It doesn’t bring him back, but somehow it helps.”

“I’d hoped it would, at least a little.” We finished the lemonade while I filled her in on a few more details about how the case came together in the end. After a bit, Jeffrey came out and asked if he could go to a friend’s house, then added, “And can I have something to eat before you take me? I’m starving.”

I set my glass down and stood up. “Looks like you’ve got some things to attend.”

“It certainly looks that way now, doesn’t it?” Cathy peered lovingly at Jeffrey. “Thank God for hearty appetites.”

“He’s a growing boy,” I said, thanked her for the lemonade, and left her to her children.

• • •

After attending a mandatory critical debriefing session with a therapist, I got back into the usual swing of things in Glacier right away. A sow grizzly had charged a couple at the Virginia Falls trail on the east side of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, and the husband was carrying a firearm and shot at her. He didn’t think he hit her, but other hikers complained about the discharge.

I was sent to assist the rangers since a gun was involved. I calmed everyone down at the trailhead and established some order, took the
shooter’s information and statement, and explained to him that firing at a federally protected bear required an investigation. And after I explained to him how capsaicin was always—and I mean always—the better option, not only to preserve the bear’s life, but because it was more effective in stopping a charging bear since it disables their senses temporarily when a bullet doesn’t, I headed back over the pass.

I drove over the summit and part of the way down near the Weeping Wall where I stopped and got out, just like a tourist. I wanted a moment to take in the view. Then farther down, when I neared the Loop, I pulled over again. I walked over to the rock divider beside the treacherous road and put one foot on its well-worn surface. I looked down below, where I could have ended up several nights before. A shiver stretched down my spine. I shook it off and thought about my day back at work in Glacier.

I had just driven over the Going-to-the-Sun Road cutting through and clinging precariously to the mountainsides. The road was an engineering feat at the time, finished in 1933 after workers spent years surveying and constructing. Several men lost their lives. But ultimately, their persistence made the heart of the park accessible to millions, who otherwise would never experience the wonders within.

Sacrifice, I thought. There was plenty of that. Sacrifice of the natives to relinquish their sacred hunting grounds. Sacrifice of the men who built it to carve a way through unmapped, untamed territory. Sacrifice of Wolfie to record and try to make sense of the behavior of unknown and misunderstood wild creatures. And Will, wrongly attempting to make things right by killing in the name of revenge, for fairness, for justice, to somehow make amends for the wrongs dished out to his brother. And Nathan. He had sacrificed for me, had been a friend to me. He had come along, had gotten out of the car even though he didn’t want to because that’s what friends did. And that’s what husbands were supposed to do—make compromises to keep their marriages working.

Lara. She was sacrificing our marriage to pursue her need to have a child. It was not my place to judge it. I knew I was being selfish for not
compromising on that front, but ultimately, I too was sacrificing. Just like her, I was surrendering the marriage itself because deep down, I knew she would forever be unhappy if she did not fulfill her need. And I was certain I did not want a child plagued with the kind of despair my mother and Will’s brother, and possibly Will, were troubled with.

I tilted my head up to take in the long, crashing waterfalls, frothing lines cutting straight down between the ridges like white veins, thousands of feet long. I stood and watched the tourists take pictures of the panorama surrounding them, enfolding them, struck by its finely etched peaks and razor-sharp inclines and trying to get the perfect capture in their lenses. I thought of Phillips, of the strange mix of a man brutal enough to abuse others and driven enough to map the topography and hike a place like Glacier, perhaps trying to find peace with his tormented self.

But even though mapped and remapped by the likes of Phillips and other cartographers, the sense of longitude and latitude fell shy here, leaving the tourists temporarily disconnected from the ticking of the daily clock and the call of technology. I pictured Wolfie’s determined wolverines loping across the vistas and scaling the peaks before me. This was my office, and one could do worse, much worse.

The shifting light danced on the ridges. The clouds passing over created gigantic shadows moving across the emerald slopes, missing the tips and leaving the points, no longer covered in snow, bathed in a gleam of silver. Sunlight flitted off the ragged edges like new promises, and hope rose inside of me. This was more than my office. This was me finding hope, and it was never too late to have hope. So much sacrifice demanded it.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the amazing team of publishing professionals at Atria Books for their dedicated hard work and enthusiasm in seeing this novel through to publication: my editor, Sarah Branham, for her expertise and brilliant feedback, Kathryn Santoro for her untiring, enthusiastic help in publicity, Arielle Kane and Jin Yu for their guidance and hard work in marketing, and Albert Tang for his fabulous design work. Thank you to copyeditor Toby Yuen and production editor Isolde Sauer, and thank you to Haley Weaver for assisting. I must also express my gratitude and admiration to Judith Curr, the revered president and publisher of Atria.

I owe huge thanks to my friend and wonderful agent, Nancy Yost, for countless things, but especially for her unwavering support, keen guidance, and for always making me laugh when I need it most. Thank you also to Adrienne Rosado and Sarah Younger for being so helpful.

To my dear friend Suzanne Siegel, who—lucky for me—is a former librarian and always seems to find exactly what I’m looking for when I need assistance. My gratitude is beyond words for all her valuable research, reading of drafts, excellent feedback, wise counsel, and endless encouragement.

I have an enormous amount of gratitude to my family for providing the emotional support and inspiration as I continue to write. To my husband, Jamie, I could have never completed and found my path through the publishing world without his help and reassurance. To my children, Mathew, Caroline, and Lexie, for continually motivating me with their enthusiasm. To my parents, Robert and Jeanine Schimpff,
for believing in me and providing a lifetime of support, wisdom, and love. To my brothers, Cliff and Eric, and their wives, Pam and LeAnn, for bolstering me in countless ways. To my aunts Janie Fontaine and Barbara Dulac, for always sending me deeply appreciated, caring thoughts from afar.

As a lay person, I relied on generous help from Frank Garner, former chief of police in Kalispell; Bill Dial, chief of police in Whitefish; and Gary Moses, former lead ranger in Glacier National Park. Thank you to Dan Savage, veterinarian and passionate outdoorsman, for taking the time to help me better understand some of the issues surrounding wolverine research programs in Glacier. All accounts of the wolverine research program in this work are fictional and are not meant to recount the actual esteemed five-year wolverine study concluded in 2009 in Glacier National Park by a group of amazing biologists and other volunteers.