Mortal Fall Read online

  Praise for Christine Carbo’s The Wild Inside

  “Carbo paints a moving picture of complex, flawed people fighting to make their way in a wilderness where little is black or white, except the smoky chiaroscuro of the sweeping Montana sky . . . an evocative debut.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Sharp, introspective Systead is a strong series lead, and Carbo rolls out solid procedural details, pitting him against Department of the Interior bureaucrats. The grittiness of the poverty-wracked area surrounding Glacier plays against the park’s dangerous beauty in this dark foray into the wilderness subgenre. Put this one in the hands of those who enjoy Paul Doiron’s Mike Bowditch novels and Julia Keller’s Bell Elkins series.”

  —Booklist

  “Stays in your mind long after you’ve put the book down. I’m still thinking about it. Prepare to run the gamut of emotions with this fine treat of a story. Then, in the years ahead, be on the lookout for more from this fresh new voice in the thriller genre.”

  —Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of the Cotton Malone series

  “Fans of Nevada Barr will love this tense, atmospheric thriller with its majestic Glacier National Park setting. The Wild Inside is a stunning debut!”

  —Deborah Crombie, New York Times bestselling author of To Dwell in Darkness

  “An intense and thoroughly enjoyable thrill ride. Christine Carbo’s literary voice echoes with her love of nature, her knowledge of its brutality, and the wild and beautiful locale of Montana. The Wild Inside is a tour de force of suspense that will leave you breathlessly turning the pages late into the night.”

  —Linda Castillo, New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Will Tell

  “Grizzly bears, murder, mauling, and mayhem mix in Carbo’s debut novel. Ted Systead’s past and present intersect in an unexpected—and chilling—manner against the incongruously gorgeous backdrop of Glacier National Park.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The brutality and fragility of Glacier National Park’s wilderness provides the perfect backdrop for this well-crafted, absorbing novel about the barbarities and kindnesses of the humans living on its edge. Christine Carbo is a writer to watch.”

  —Tawni O’Dell, New York Times bestselling author of One of Us

  “If the key to a mystery’s success is keeping the reader guessing, The Wild Inside is a fine example of the genre.”

  —The Billings Gazette

  “As haunting and vivid as the scenery it depicts, The Wild Inside is a masterful portrait of the savagery of nature—both the great untamed outdoors and the human soul. Highly recommended.”

  —Kira Peikoff, author of Die Again Tomorrow

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  For my husband, Jamie

  I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s . . .

  —WILLIAM BLAKE, JERUSALEM

  Prologue

  I SLOWLY SLID ACROSS the torn seat to the open car door where my brother’s friend, Todd, stood braced against the wind. My best friend, Nathan, sat next to me looking equal parts resigned and irritated. The wind nipped my face the second I stepped out. I wrapped my arms around my chest as we walked off the road, into the dried, grassy field toward the tree. We followed my brother, Adam, and Todd, and another friend of theirs, Perry.

  All three were in high school. Nathan and I were four years younger—in seventh grade and still gullible at twelve years old. We’d been talked into going with them. Nathan had warned me that it was just another trick played by Adam and his buddies, but this time, I thought it was different. I had begun to believe—or maybe just wanted to believe—Adam was telling me the truth for a change.

  Plus it was Halloween night, and I was up for something different, something other than staying home watching Dad drink too many beers while trying to convince my mom that the trick-or-treaters knocking on the door weren’t coming to kill us.

  The moon slid out from behind moody clouds, casting a shimmering dust of light. Adam and his friends strode toward the stately tree guarding the old cemetery like a faithful sentry. Confident and sure of themselves, their frames loomed tall in the pale moonlight while their shoes scuffed the tangled grass and weeds. The tombstones squatted to our left, dark bumps scattered haphazardly and surrounded by the overgrown meadow. I tried not to pay attention to them crouched off to the side, tried not to think of them as menacing animals watching us and getting ready to pounce. In fact, I pretended we weren’t in a cemetery at all, when Todd halted about thirty feet before the tree and just stared at it, his head tilted to the side.

  “Which branch do you think they hanged her from?” he asked in a loud whisper.

  “That one.” Adam pointed to a thick, longer arm that reached out to the side as if to point toward the headstones. Perry had told us that he learned from his history teacher that there had been a woman hanged years ago in the cemetery for being a witch.

  “Probably,” Perry said. “Let’s go closer. Check it out. They say you can hear the tree whispering if you stand under the spot it happened, can hear it saying her name: Lucinda, Lucinda, Lucinda.” Perry turned and looked at us, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide.

  “You two, you go first,” Adam said.

  “No way,” I protested. “You go.” But before I knew it, Adam had my arm, and Todd and Perry had Nathan’s. “Hey, stop,” I screamed. My brother’s fingers dug into me like steel clamps as he pulled me in front of them toward the tree. With one hard shove, I went plummeting forward, and I saw Nathan tumbling to the ground next to me. Nathan yelled too, but before we could stand, my brother and his crew darted back to the car.

  “Hurry,” I yelled to Nathan as we pushed ourselves up. We ran, trying to catch them, but we were too small and they were much faster. I saw them reach the Pontiac and dive in, hooting and yipping like coyotes. The chassis rocked with their shifting weight, the doors slammed, the engine sprang to life, and the headlights fanned out on the gravel road.

  Nathan and I stopped and stood gasping for air when we reached the spot the car had just left. The dust from the tires still lingered, and our panting plumed urgently before us. We watched as they sped off, the exhaust streaming behind them.

  Something inside me wilted. I looked at Nathan, at the sheer anger in his eyes. After all, he had warned me. I wanted to say I was sorry, but I was breathing too hard to speak, and I wasn’t sure what to say anyway. To this day, I don’t know what I could have said, if anything could have made a difference. But that was the last time I trusted my brother, though a part of me never quit wanting to.

  • • •

  Memory is a tricky devil. Twenty-two years later, I recall the headlights sweeping across the pale dry grass stooping sideways in the wind, the cluster of birch trees with golden leaves clinging to their branches, the dusty red Pontiac with torn black vinyl seats, the yellowed stuffing pushing out like infected, swollen tissue. I remember the smell of sweat and dirty tennis shoes. I also have an image of steam rising from ripples under pale moonlight. But the condensation isn’t something I’m sure I actually saw. How could I? I wasn’t near water. But I’ve always known that with that night crept something much darker—something more threatening that sneaks through my dreams and slouches just under my awareness, nudging memories forward like a black wave pushing debris ahead of itself. I’ve always promised myself that I would find a way to stay ahead of it, to avoid its pull and not get swept away in
the undercurrent.

  1

  * * *

  I LIKE DETAILS, EVIDENCE, and organized notes. When I possess facts, I can clear the detritus around me, think straight, and proceed cautiously. Some might argue that this response is an overreaction to a complicated upbringing, or an overzealous affection for order; and in fact, that might be true. So when my intuition niggled at me that something wasn’t quite right with this particular accident, I tried to ignore it. The facts are that every summer in Glacier Park, there is at least one if not several hikers or climbers who stumble on unstable rock or lose their balance on wet, slippery boulders, sliding wildly out of control and catapulting to their demise on the jagged terrain below or into a raging stream, whisking them away.

  All of us Glacier Park Police officers and rangers know that the most dire situations are frequently born from small, seemingly insignificant errors of judgment where a hiker is impatient, for example, and thinks the shortcut across an early-season snowfield is a stellar idea. So this tragedy was no different other than the fact that the Loop—the hairpin curve on the west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road—was an odd place for a hiker to go down. Although incredibly steep in places close to the pass, it was, after all, near the main road and a small buildup of natural stone formed a roadside barrier at the curving, sheer edge.

  I stood with Ken Greeley, another Park Police officer, Charlie Olson, one of our seasoned rangers, and Joe Smith, chief of Park Police, on the short rock divider with Heavens Peak to our left. Nearly nine thousand feet of mass pushed to the sky and dominated the view west from the Going-to-the-Sun Road. Scraps of clouds reached northward from the permanently snow-coated peak like silk pennons.

  “Looks like a bad fall.” Ken chewed a piece of gum vigorously as he peered down at the foot and leg twisted at an unnatural angle. “Any chance he hiked in from a different route and is still alive?”

  “Unlikely,” Joe said. “He hasn’t moved since Charlie reported it. But I’ve got S&R on standby.”

  We had gotten word an hour before from Charlie. A tourist had spotted something white poking out from a dark shadow in the steep ravine, found Charlie talking to some folks near the outdoor bathroom facility, and asked him to take a look. Although difficult to make out details with the tricks shadows like to play on rocks, Charlie did agree—with the help of some binoculars—that it appeared to be a shoe, a light-colored sock, and an ankle illuminated by a bright strip of sunshine piercing the crevasse.

  “Think maybe it was a suicide?” Ken asked.

  Joe shrugged. He’d been particularly quiet for the past eight months since the well-known case dubbed Bear Bait, in which we’d found a man bound to a tree near McGhee Meadow in Glacier Park. The victim, Victor Lance, was killed and fed on by a grizzly, and one of Joe’s family members had been involved. I’d assisted a lead investigator from the Department of the Interior on the case.

  “Possibly,” I offered on Joe’s behalf. “Can’t tell for sure, but from the looks of where he is, I don’t think he actually fell from this roadside after all. There’s some slippery rock.” I pointed my chin to a spring seep that coated part of the slope across from us. The June sun spread across my back like the hot palm of a hand. Summer often arrives late to these parts, the fresh tang of spring sometimes hanging on until past solstice, but today seemed to mark the season’s first solid lunge forward. It was going on eleven a.m., and Glacier Park vibrated with new life and promise. Here today, gone tomorrow, I thought morosely. “He might have gone off trail to take a picture or a piss and misjudged how slippery those rocks are when they’re wet.”

  “Maybe,” Joe said, then sighed and looked at me. “Monty”—his voice sounded tired and the brim of his cap shadowed his eyes—“you’ll handle the investigation. And you”—he turned to Ken—“will assist. Once you’re down there, I’ll need you to assess the scene. Like I said, if he’s still alive, we’ve got Rescue ready to go.” Then he turned to Charlie. “You and I will secure the area and begin directing traffic. When the victim’s ready to be removed,” he added, “I’ve got a short-haul team on standby. Looks too steep and rocky to haul him up without the chopper and we’ll need to close the road for a while. Tourists are going to get way backed up today.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, Ken and I had our anchors set and we were ready to gingerly rappel over the edge, down two hundred vertical feet into the shadowy ravine. Two other experienced rangers, Karen Fortenson and Michael Bridwell, were brought in to man the anchors and assist with the ropes from above so that the weight was transferred appropriately through the pulley system. Each full-time park ranger and all Park Police officers are trained in basic emergency medical service, including Search and Rescue and rope rescue, but some have more experience than others. I was glad to be with Ken who I knew had been on a fair share of rope rescues in the past few years.

  In addition to some on-the-job training, I had been scaling mountains since high school. I joined a local hiking and rock-climbing group in Columbia Falls, my small hometown located at the mouth of the canyon leading to Glacier Park. I had seen a flyer for the group on a bulletin board at a grocery store and called because I wasn’t the type to mope around at home after completing my schoolwork. Since it was just getting started and had only a few members—a few mellow twentysomethings—they welcomed me, even though I was only a teen.

  I spent many weekends roaming the surrounding mountains of the Flathead Valley with the guys in the group, who asked me very few questions and basically treated me with respect, something I wasn’t used to from my own father or brother. They taught me what they knew about backcountry hiking, camping, rock climbing, and rappelling. I loved the notion that I could challenge myself by moving through untamed places that forced me to handle myself and my emotions on a grander scale. And, Jesus, to simply escape! To leave the house for hours to cleanse the mind under an endless sky, to be away from where the air always seemed thick and the ceiling heavy.

  With a hard hat on and the sit harness around my legs and waist, I walked backwards out and away from the cliff where Ken and others stood. I controlled the brake with my right hand and descended slowly, keeping my feet close to the cliff until I made it down into the ravine.

  I removed the carabiners from my harness and watched Ken make his descent. He was a large, muscular guy with almost no neck, a shaved, shiny head, and shoulders perpetually raised toward his ears with the bulk of his muscles. I was the opposite: lean and just shy of five foot nine, thick hair with graying sideburns that contradicted that I was only thirty-four, and dark, determined eyes that looked like I trusted everyone, but rarely took no for an answer. When Ken reached the ground, we hiked over cool, shadowed rocks and through brush.

  A few yards from the victim, I stopped, took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. I could feel my own heart thumping in my chest. The surprise and shock I felt from seeing the damage inflicted upon bone and flesh from smashing into rocks, the violation of our everyday perception of the human body, was something I never could get used to. I held out my hand for Ken to halt as well, then I let out a low, soft whistle.

  I put my glasses back on and took in the scene. It felt suddenly quiet and intimate, as if the breeze had quit rattling the leaves, the hawks had gone silent, and McDonald Creek below us had ceased to roar from its full flow of spring runoff. But I knew none of this had happened; it was just an effect of my shocked senses in spite of how many times I’d seen it before: five to be exact. Three climbing incidents on the popular climbing peaks at the top of the pass, one fall into McDonald Creek, and one hiking accident in which the man had slid down a snowfield and off an abrupt ledge.

  Before us, blood had stained the rocks around the back of the victim’s head. His skull was flattened, broken open like an egg with cerebrospinal fluid, gray brain matter, and blood drained out onto the rocky ground. His face was crushed, torn, swollen, and unrecognizable, but I could see what looked like facial hair streaked with blood and dirt. Every single li
mb lay twisted in awkward and unnatural angles, badly gashed and coated with dried blood. He had hit rock probably several times on the way down, using his hands instinctively to try to break the first slam. His hands and wrists were shattered up to his elbows, one thumb completely ripped off. The other arm lay hidden and abnormally cocked under his back with his shoulder joint dislocated. He looked like a badly broken Ken doll.

  There was something familiar about the illogically crooked, disfigured body and at the same time, nothing at all recognizable. The man had long, dirty-blond and curly locks, also marbled with dirt and caked blood that had turned the color of rust. He had on army-green shorts and a tattered T-shirt that looked like it might have been white or yellow, but it was torn, covered in grime and body fluids and was hard to tell. One foot missed its hiking shoe, which had probably popped off on impact and been cast into some bushes even farther below.

  I could hear tiny insects buzzing and zigzagging. Small blowflies had already swarmed into the mucus in his eye sockets, his mouth, and other wounds. My mouth went dry, then began to water. He smelled of death, a copper odor mixed with beef gone bad. I ignored the queasy sensation in my gut and pulled some nitrile and vinyl gloves out of my pocket, put them on, and walked to him. The instinct is to offer comforting words as if the person was still alive, to say, Are you okay? Help is on the way, but I shook the urge away and knelt beside him. Still grasping for the ordinary, I began to reach out with my two fingers toward his neck to check his vitals, then stopped. Checking for a pulse was as futile as trying to console him. It was obvious his neck was broken, his skull lacerated, and the life gone out of his one partially open eye, already gone opaque. The other was swollen shut. I withdrew my hand and shook my head to Ken.

  Ken didn’t say anything. I could hear him breathing—strong exhales through his nostrils and he had ceased smacking his gum. He was usually hard to keep quiet and was not acting like his chatty and eager self. I chalked it up to the task at hand.