The Wild Inside (25 page)

On the fourth night of the investigation, I finally fell asleep around two a.m. and dreamed I was face-to-face with some large beast, not exactly a bear, but something similar, that snorted and grunted. I pulled my gun out and tried to shoot, but it jammed, and in an endless tangle of fear and frustration, I’d keep trying to fire my weapon unsuccessfully, yelling at Shelly, who was behind me to get clear, to get out of the way. I kept trying to push her aside to get her behind a wall for safety, but each time I reached out for her, she’d vanish. When I finally got a shot off, I only angered it, and no matter how many times I fired, the beast kept coming for me. I frantically ran through the woods, hitting sharp, spindly branches and slipping on thick, long roots of prickly Caragana bushes that snaked out in every direction over the forest floor. While I struggled, falling and slipping on the wet branches, Shelly screamed and called for me from the distance.

I woke up startled and out of breath to a shrill cry and sat up instantly in bed, my T-shirt soaked with sweat. It took me a moment to realize not only where I was but who I was, and another few moments to recognize that the strident and eerie cry in the distance was only coyotes yipping and calling into the frigid night void.

14

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
I was on my way to the office when Karen Fortenson came down the hallway, her shoulders tall in her gray-and-green ranger outfit and her eyes the color of dark chocolate.

“Agent Systead,” she greeted me. “How’s the investigation going?”

“It’s going well.” Not a lie, but not entirely true either. By now, we should have narrowed in on someone more closely instead of thrashing around in so many different directions.

She looked at me with an energetic hope bouncing in her eyes. “Glad to hear that. So you have an idea who did it?”

“The butler.” I smiled. “I’m almost positive.”

She laughed. “I take it that means you don’t want to tell me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to trivialize matters. We’ve got some very good leads, but nothing definitive yet.”

“I see. Well, the paper ran another follow-up article and you were mentioned quite a bit.”

I looked at her.

“About how you work for the department, how you’re a special agent, and all that good stuff.”

I sighed. “A real double-o-seven, huh?” I chuckled. “Do you have it?”

“It’s on my desk. I’ll get it for you.”

I watched Karen walk away, her demeanor much calmer than the first time I met her after she’d discovered the body. Yet, with the tranquility, she was still energetic with a slight bounce in her walk. She seemed in equilibrium—content with herself, her job, and her life. I chalked it up
to how much nature she took in most days. You could see it in her smile, not overbearing but not timid—entirely genuine in the way that always made me feel like I lack something crucial in my own life. I thought to myself that I’d still enjoy having that cup of tea with her and perhaps some of the magic would accidentally sprinkle onto me like dust.

• • •

After she returned with the paper, I sat down in Monty’s and my office and read the follow-up article by Will Jones. My name was mentioned with some information about the Series Eighteen-Eleven position, which not that many people are aware of. He probably got the gist of the information off the Internet.

Honestly, there was only one good reason for why I cared that I was named, and that was that my ma and sister, Natalie, would realize I was in town and would be wondering why I hadn’t called earlier. For that, I had no good excuse other than just being busy. I made a mental note to call them as soon as I had some privacy.

I glanced at Monty, who was on the phone with another hardware store inquiring about duct tape and bear-spray purchases. He was jotting down notes and saying, “Ah huh, ah huh.” I got up and headed outside with my cell phone, thinking it would be as good a time as any to call my ma, but before I even got to the door, my phone started buzzing and I looked at it to find my sister’s number on the screen.

“Theodore Systead,” she said loudly.

“Hey, Nat, what’s up?”

“You’re what’s up.” She sounded excited. “I wondered if you might come when I read about there being a man found dead in the park. Then I figured it wasn’t you since I didn’t hear from ya. How long have you been here?”

“Since Saturday morning, but it’s been crazy.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“Really, it has.” I felt like a child defending myself.

“I suppose,” she conceded. “It definitely looks it from the article.”

“Does Ma know I’m here yet?”

“I don’t know. One of us will probably get a call from her any second. Be nice if you called her first.”

“I was actually just going to do that.”

“Like I said, yeah, yeah, yeah.” She laughed.

“I was.” I smiled. “I was walking out with my phone in my hand when you rang. Scout’s honor.”

“Tell you what, you call her now; then I’ll call you back later and let you know what time to come for dinner tonight.”

“Nat—”

“I don’t accept no.”

“Natalie,” I tried again. “I’ve got a lot of work—”

“Oh, come on. You’ve had your forty-eight.”

“Forty-eight?”

I shook my head. With this day and age, it was hard to say whether she got that from a CSI-type show or from reality TV.

“Maybe later this—”

“I told you; I don’t accept no.”

I wanted to protest further, but then the thought of being another night in the cabin trying to make sense of this crazy case hit me like a wet blanket. “Give me a time,” I said. “And I’ll be there as close to that as I can.”

I sat down on the sidewalk outside. The sun just peaked high enough to escape tree branches and warmed the parking lot. It had to be getting close to fifty and it was still morning. The day was glorious. I’d been too busy to really take it in, but it occurred to me that the foliage must have turned late in comparison to other falls since the entirety of each deciduous tree—each and every leaf—still burned rich with color. I saw a bright yellow birch leaf drift by and settle near the end of the parking lot. I called my ma.

She didn’t answer, so I left a message and immediately felt better
for having done so. I wondered why such little things, like making a phone call to a family member, felt so difficult to execute at times. I pictured her with her golfing buddies having coffee. It was too late in the season to golf, but she was close enough with the three of them that for years they got together once a week at a café in Kalispell for coffee after the golf season ended. I stuck my cell in my pocket and headed into the office.

• • •

Monty was off the phone.

“What have you got?” I asked.

“Not much to go on as far as duct tape or capsaicin purchases so far. And everything Leslie told us checks out—the store, the dental office.”

“What about the timber company where her boyfriend works?”

“That checks out too. He was on his shift until five that evening. All week, in fact, including Thursday, and the manager confirmed that he didn’t leave. Had lunch with the coworkers every day. His only day off was Tuesday. So if he was with her by six, that wouldn’t leave him much time for taking a little jaunt to the Inside Road.”

I took a seat, placed my elbows on my knees, and rubbed my face. I could still see the brightness of the sun under my eyelids in the form of red squiggly lines when I closed them.

“What time did she leave the store on Thursday? Around noon?”

“At twelve thirty. One of the checkout clerks verified it.”

“And she got to Dr. Nieder’s office at two?”

“That’s correct. The office manager there verified that as well.”

“So she had a break from twelve thirty until two.”

“Yep.”

“That enough time to get out there and back?”

“It is, but it sounds so unlikely. I mean, I asked the gal at the dental office how she seemed when she came in. If there was anything strange at all and she said no, nothing at all.”

I propped the side of my forehead on my fist, my elbow still on my bony knee. “Yeah, and she’s so small. She’d need help.”

“Yeah, and Tyler was at work on Thursday as well. And according to Leslie, she and Paul were home with Lewis on Thursday evening.”

I grabbed a dry-erase marker and went to the whiteboard and wrote
Thursday
and
Friday
down with a line between them. Then I wrote Leslie’s, Paul’s, Lou’s, Stimpy’s, Rob Anderson’s, and Megan’s names down and began filling in where they were on most of Thursday and at the key times on Friday: between twelve and eight p.m.

“If I might offer some help,” I heard Monty say behind me. I turned. He unrolled a large poster-size paper and spread it on the table. “I took the liberty of already charting the information that I’ve been acquiring.” He raised his brow as he waited for my response.

“Oh.” I walked over and looked down at it. It was color-coded to each suspect, blue for Leslie, red for Stimpy, green for Lou, and so on. I cocked an eyebrow at him. “You get up early to do this?”

“Been doing it as I go.” He grinned.

“You want your scout points now or later?” I said dryly. The smile on his face faded. “Actually,” I added, “this is useful. Very useful. And it saves me a bunch of time.”

His smile reappeared. “Thought it might.”

“I owe you a beer for this one.” I grabbed the rollout and some tape from a drawer under the counter. “You mind?”

“Help yourself, by all means.” Monty was still smiling, his teeth still irritatingly bright, and I thought of cop shows where the IA guys are always thin and clean-shaven with wire-rimmed glasses. I taped it to the wall and sat down to look at it. I definitely recognized its usefulness, but something petty inside me reared its ugly head, and the chart instantly got on my nerves for reasons I couldn’t quite pinpoint. I began bouncing my right leg up and down, but then the manic quality reminded me of Leslie or Stimpy, so I stilled it. I suppose it was the fastidious and tidy nature of the damn thing. Even though I could’ve
told you from day one that Monty was the type to make a visual aid like this, with the first forty-eight over, I was beginning to feel like I was missing something, that I wasn’t being careful enough, and the chart seemed to accuse me of the very thing I woke up feeling. I had a strange subconscious notion that I’d walk up to Monty any hour now and he’d look at me laughing and say,
Why didn’t you tell us about Oldman Lake? Here, let me put that piece of information on my tidy chart as well.

“Damn.” I slammed my hand down on the table hard.

“Whoa.” Monty snapped his head to look at me. “What was that for?”

“No witness, no weapon, no ballistics except in a grumpy, constipated grizzly bear. Shit, we haven’t even been able to pinpoint who the last person to see the guy alive was.”

Monty stared at me.

I grabbed my quarter. “Okay, okay.” I held up my free palm as if I were calming Monty down instead of myself. “At least they’re searching some of the water today. Maybe we’ll luck out.”

“Maybe,” Monty said.

“Let’s spend some more time on these phone records.” I handed Monty a few of the printouts and kept half the pile for myself. His cell service had been cut by the end of September, so we were winging it in terms of finding something we could sink our teeth into. At this point, we were looking for patterns. It was clear that Victor and Leslie were seeing each other from the previous fall until August. Leslie’s number showed consistently during that time frame with a mixture of long- and short-duration calls. A number, which we determined belonged to Stimpy, showed up arbitrarily pretty much every month, which didn’t surprise me. And there were consistent calls to another number, which turned out to be Mindy Winters, and other random calls to several other girls, including a Tara Rhodes, whom Megan had mentioned.

I was looking at the report closely and one number in particular
caught my interest. “This one here,” I said to Monty, “this two-one-two-five-nine-seven-four, shows up in kind of a weird pattern.”

“How’s that?” Monty asked.

“Well, I’m seeing it only in January until March once a week on the same day of each week, a Monday, and then again from August until the phone was disconnected, once a week, again same day.”

Monty ran his finger down his copy. “This two-one-two number?”

“Yeah.” I picked up my phone. “Let’s see whom it belongs to.” I left a message for Monica while Monty studied the pattern. “In the meantime,” I said, “we still don’t know where Lou was on Thursday evening. I guess I’ll be paying him another visit today.”

“You want me to go?”

“Nah, you finish the stuff you’re working on. We still need to know if Tom Hess was really on the east side hunting when this happened, and I need you to verify that Rob Anderson was really online when he says he was.”

“Roger,” he said. “But don’t you need the good cop?”

“What? You nervous ’bout the way I’ll behave with the guy?”

“No, it’s just that you look, well, like you might need a small break.”

“Break? Shit, it’s not even noon.”

Monty stared at me through his glasses. He definitely knew when to keep quiet, and I reminded myself why I had begun liking his company.

“Well,” I reconsidered. “I’ll take one later. After I go talk to Lou.” I thought how a jog or something might make me feel better—to sweat out the whiskey. “Don’t worry.” I stood and walked to the door. “I’ll behave.”

• • •

On my way to go talk to Lou, Monica called.

“I have your number,” she said.

“And?”

“It belongs to Louis P. Shelton.”

“No kidding?” I said.

“That help?”

“Considerably,” I said, immediately feeling lighter. “In fact, I’m going to see him right now.”

• • •

This time I met Lou’s wife, Becky. She answered the door looking like she had the day off, her hair in a messy braid, and she wore a pair of baggy, faded jeans, but she was surprisingly pretty. I only took note of this because I was having a hard time imagining any woman interested in Lou, but perhaps I wasn’t being fair.