Mortal Fall Page 17

  I felt my pulse instantly race and set down my cup of water. Bremer had told me it had happened in Utah, and I figured I would remember something like that from the local papers, but I realized I would have been readying myself for college around the time and probably not paying attention to every bit of local, breaking news. “A student hanged herself here? At this academy?” I pointed to the honey-colored oak floor as if it symbolized the entire academy.

  “Afraid so.” Ferron sighed. “It was awful, all right. Took me a long time to get over it, to feel okay about this place again even though I didn’t know Miranda well or anything. But I’m sure that’s why Phillips left and then when the Bremers bought it, they pretty much changed the whole staff up. For the best, if you asked me.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “Not really—just rumors. I was new and an outsider, having just begun working, so not that many people talked to me. But from what I remember, she was pretty disturbed and”—he shook his head with a look of disappointment on his face, as if he was saddened by the behavior of one of his own children—“this was a different place back then.”

  Again, I noticed my pulse picking up and my palms suddenly going moist. Back then meant back when Adam attended.

  “Some of the disciplinary measures being used didn’t really help her at all,” Phillips added. “If that isn’t an understatement,” he huffed. “I heard one of the counselors made her carry water for several days straight because she’d been finding thin, sharp rocks—shale I think—and sanding ’em down farther on large rocks so she could cut herself since no one’s allowed to have razors and whatnot. So they gave her a large bucket and made her haul water back and forth from the creek”—he pointed out the window—“to an area near the garden for a really long time. Even after the garden had been watered enough, they made her continue to just dump buckets full in the woods off to the side. And water, shit, it gets heavy in a big bucket.”

  I flipped through my notes. “Dr. Bremer mentioned the water hauling, but didn’t mention a suicide. He said the hanging was in Utah . . .”

  “Oh yeah.” Nick stood up and walked over to his veggies. “You mind?” He glanced at the clock. “Dinner will be late if I don’t get to work.”

  “No, of course not, chop away.”

  “So yeah.” Ferron pulled out a large heart of elephant garlic from a supersized stainless fridge and expertly began slicing like he was on one of the Food Network shows that Lara loved to watch. “That’s right. There was another in Utah. Very similar to this one. People said it was a copycat. That word had gotten around to other schools owned by Global and some of the kids had gotten wind of what Miranda had done and, well, someone followed suit. Crazy, huh?”

  I nodded. I felt a little sick in my stomach for reasons I couldn’t quite pinpoint. I also wondered why Bremer would mention the Utah incident but not Glacier Academy. “So the Bremers? They bought this”—I checked my notes—“in 1996, not long after the incident?”

  “Yeah.” He scraped the finely chopped garlic into a stainless pot that already contained an assortment of beans and turned his attention to the peppers. “And thank goodness for that. These folks really care about the kids here, and they have a very high success rate. None of that brutal disciplinary stuff. All counseling, communication, and accountability.”

  “That’s good. Why do you think he would mention the Utah incident but not the one here? Surely he knew of it.”

  “Oh yeah.” Nick lifted a shoulder. “Probably isn’t interested in drudging up bad, old memories of this place. He’s worked hard to change the image.”

  “And were there other incidents that you knew about when Global owned it?”

  “I just heard things here and there.” He held up his spoon and stared at it for a moment, lost in some recollection, then looked back at me seriously.

  “Like what?”

  “I think other boys were sometimes locked in some form of solitary confinement.”

  I stood quietly, waiting for him to continue.

  “Before the Bremers remodeled the place, there used to be a small shack over by the creek that the counselors would lock the kids who’d violated rules into. Crazy shit. As if this was some prison we were running.

  “Tell you what”—he jammed the spoon back in the pot—“if that shit would’ve continued, I don’t think I would have worked here for very long. Again, I’m grateful the Bremers bought the place.”

  “And you think Phillips was involved in the mistreatment of the students?”

  “Not sure.” Ferron dumped some finely sliced peppers into the pot. “I remember seeing one of the counselors, I thought it was him, but I’m not positive, go into the shed a few times with kids and not come out for a good hour or more. When I questioned Mr. Leefeldt about it, he said it was just a disciplinary counseling session, but I’d heard some yelling and”—he sighed—“I don’t know, the whole thing didn’t feel right to me. Like I said, I was already thinking I’d be leaving by the end of the year, but then the Bremers came in and bought the place, offered me a raise and such.”

  “Did you ever talk to any of the kids who had been locked in the shed?”

  “Not really, but I overheard them over dinner. One kid said that Phillips and a guy named Ryle—can’t remember his last name—held him on the floor for a really long time, twisting his limbs into painful positions until he quit yelling and resisting. Again, when I brought it up with the owners, they just said that the school had a ninety-eight percent satisfaction rate and to trust the process. He said these kids are tricky, very manipulative, and chances are that they were making it up and exaggerating. And trust me, they sure can be manipulative. That’s the reason many of them are here. A lot of them make stuff up so they can cause drama or be sent home, or worse, just because it’s ingrained in them to lie and be dishonest for no particular reason at all. It’s mostly attention-seeking.” A sad look suddenly washed across his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “I was so new, I had no idea what to make of it all at the time. Poor Miranda. She was a sweet girl as far as I could tell. There was no reason to abuse her like that for cutting herself. They didn’t get it.”

  “Get what?” I asked.

  “That she was already punishing herself. That’s what cutting is: punishment, healing, re-punishing, healing. . . . Punishing her even more probably tipped her over the edge. It really makes me sick when I think of it.”

  “Yeah, I can see that it would,” I said, fully meaning it.

  “You talking about that ghost?” A young kid with dark, shiny short hair stood in the doorway, startling us both.

  “Gee whiz, Connor.” Nick turned to the door. “Ever hear of knocking?”

  “Oh, sorry about that.” He shrugged and seemed sincere.

  “You here for your kitchen shift?” Nick asked him.

  “Yup, that okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s good.”

  The teen came in, went to the sink and began washing his hands. I was impressed he did so without being told. I thought of what Dr. Bremer said about fostering maturity through confidence.

  “Ghost?” I said to Ferron after he introduced me to Connor and put him to work measuring out large quantities of rice.

  “Oh yeah.” He tsk’d. “Even though Bremer’d like to keep it quiet, the word’s kind of taken hold ’round here over the years among the kids.” He turned to Connor. “What have you heard?”

  “Me?” Connor looked surprised to be asked. “About that Miranda girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just that Sam said he saw her a few months ago on his way to the bathroom, really creepy. Still has the old rope she found in the woods dangling around her neck, all frayed from where they cut it to get her down. Bleeding cuts all over her arms.” He rubbed his palm up one of his arms and made a dramatic shiver.

  “Hmm,” Ferron said. “You see?” he turned to me. “Like some Sleepy Hollow or Harry Potter scene. What’re you going to do?” He roll
ed his eyes. “Teens like ghost stories, especially when they’re derived from real events.”

  “I suppose,” I said, flipping my notebook shut and standing up. I half-expected to feel dizzy and was thankful when my legs felt sure and strong. This place had literally been a nightmare when Adam was here. “Thank you very much, Mr. Ferron.” I shook his hand. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  • • •

  On my way back to headquarters, I stopped at a convenience store to get some gas and called Shane Albertson from the parking lot. Shane was the game warden assigned to Region One’s Middle and South Fork districts. I knew him personally from my days with FWP. I asked him if he knew anything about the tampering of wolverine traps up the South Fork drainage and Hungry Horse Reservoir area.

  “I’d heard some rumors about it but nothing official,” Shane said. Shane had the deep voice of someone tall and megashouldered with sharp features but was really a medium-height, stocky guy with a baby face.

  “Sedgewick never reported it to you or to Fish and Game?”

  “Nope, if he had, I would’ve been on it. Where there’s tampering going on, there’s usually other weird shit going on too.”

  “Do you know of anyone in the past involved in wolverine poaching?”

  “I haven’t seen or heard of it in a while. Lots of black bear and grizzly poaching going on lately. Just made an arrest with some couple who had taken a minimum of fourteen black bears illegally and killed at least three grizzlies last month.”

  “I heard about that. Congratulations on breaking that one,” I offered.

  “Yeah, thanks. I worked it for some time. It was a good bust. They were total lowlifes.”

  “So what were the rumors you heard?”

  “ ’Bout that Sedgewick guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I just heard from someone in Hungry Horse one day that there’d been an altercation between the wolverine researcher and a guy named Martin Dorian—someone I like to keep my eye on. We’ve fined him numerous times in the past for poaching elk on the off-season. There’s some other things about him and his clan that I’m looking into. I was surprised that he would have anything to do with wolverines, but I know he has a temper and would throw a fist at pretty much anyone who crossed him the wrong way.”

  Martin Dorian was one of the men on Rowdy’s list. I put a star by his name and jotted “altercation” in the margin. “What kind of other things?”

  “Well, I don’t have enough evidence yet, but I’ve got a source that says he and his boys have been stockpiling weapons and some illegal explosives as well. They’re definitely part of a neo-Nazi group and are members of a social network hate group called Whitesquad. It’s like a dating site for supremacists.”

  “Lovely,” I said. I had heard about the site and knew that the members had issues with many different groups of people, complaining about crimes committed by blacks against whites, about the influx of Latin Americans, about gays and feminists living unholy lives, and about Jewish people, who they feel are controlling our government. “You hear any specifics about the disagreement with Sedgewick?”

  “Not really. Just that they got into it over at the Outlaw’s in Hungry Horse. I don’t think it got physical. Just some yelling and name-calling. I have no idea what about, but I could do some checking around for you.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. I didn’t want anyone scaring these guys before I had a chance to look into matters, and I figured some Glacier Park Police guy outside their area of interest was a lot less threatening to them than a game warden, at least at this point. “Hold off on that for now. I’ll let you know if I need you. Just keep me posted if you hear of anything on the wolverine front, will ya?”

  “Definitely, I will,” Shane said.

  After hanging up, I called US Fish and Wildlife Services and the national office of Rocky Mountain Research Station, with the USDA, in Fort Collins, Colorado, to ask if one of their grantee partner-program managers, specifically Paul Sedgewick or Sam Ward from the Glacier Park wolverine study, had made a complaint to them about the tampering of traps made from federal grant money. They had no complaints on record either.

  Then I called the county and ordered a printout of all and any criminal activity associated with any names with the nickname Rowdy attached to them as well as anything on Martin Dorian. All I found on Dorian was a DUI five years before. Rowdy, a Mr. Louis Rowland, was busted for possession of cocaine in the early nineties and suspected of, but not charged, with possessing methamphetamines in 2007. He did pass his bar examination in 1988, and later filed Chapter 11 in 2001.

  24

  * * *

  ON MY WAY into Glacier, I decided to stop and speak to Sam Ward, Wolfie’s coworker and friend of the family. I thought again about how I had briefly suspected him of cozying up to Cathy, letting the idea trickle back in for no good reason other than I felt it was my duty to keep considering all possibilities whether they went against my intuition or not.

  I found him in the small extension office set up, in part, by RMRS, one of the funding partners—among others—for the wolverine project. It was only around the corner from headquarters and not far from my own dorm. He brought me into his tiny office and I took a seat among stacks of files against the wall.

  “How’s it going, Monty?” Sam sat down and looked at me, his eyes big and brimming with hope as if I might have brought Wolfie back from the dead or at the very least, had all the answers for why such a thing had occurred.

  “I’ve got a lot of irons in a lot of fires,” I admitted, trying to make it sound like a good thing and not a complicated mess.

  “And?”

  “Well, I wanted to ask you if Sedgewick had said anything to you about the traps in the South Fork. If he knew who was sabotaging them?”

  “Oh.” Sam held up a finger. “Oh my God. Yes. I never even thought of that. But, yes, of course you’d investigate that. Why didn’t I think of that.” He bonked his head with the palm of his hand in a “I should’ve had a V-8” motion. “Yeah, he had some ideas. Some guy named Dorian and his crew.”

  “I’ve got that figured out. What I don’t understand is why Wolfie or even you—your office—didn’t report the tampering to the state or even your federal office?”

  Sam looked at me, his head tilted, and bit his lower lip, considering my question.

  “I mean, the traps were the property of the US government, were they not?”

  “Yes and no. But mostly yes. We’re certainly funded by RMRS and other grants, but we also get private donations and funding through the park for the work in the park. But, yes, we thought long and hard about whether to report it.”

  “Why? Wasn’t it a no-brainer?”

  “Again, yes and no. On the one hand, it felt like our duty to report it. On the other, you can see how alerting the state wardens or worse, the feds, and having them looking into it would inflame an already tense situation in the area.”

  “But why would you care?”

  “You know the locals have their own way of dealing with things sometimes. Plus Wolfie didn’t want the US Forest Service sticking their noses into the situation either.”

  “Because?” I canted forward, listening with my arms resting on my knees.

  “Because in the past, some administrations have not been so kind about our research. Believe it or not, we got a call from the secretary of the interior—Steven Garcia. He had the nerve to tell us that we needed to put some very careful thought into what we put into our reports about the wolverines and their habitat. Look, I know you work for the park, but I don’t know how much you know about RMRS.” Sam leaned into his desk toward me. “As a branch of the US Forest Service, we’re the leading force in midsize forest carnivore studies, but generally, wildlife research is not high on the Forest Service’s list. Priorities lie with foresters and engineers focusing on timber harvesting and road building. With RMRS, we were designed to remain independent of political pressures. It was supp
osed to be a beautiful thing.” He nodded. “So when conservationists started pressuring federal agencies to figure out the wolverine, we became passionate about our assignment because wolverines are one of the rarest and least known carnivores in the American West, you know, because of their low numbers and inaccessible habitat. They’re very difficult to study, like studying phantoms, but one of the coolest animals you’ll ever see if you begin to understand them.

  “Up until the past decade, just a few field studies have been done. Compared to other carnivores like grizzly bears and wolves, we know so little about gulo gulo. Uh, that’s the Latin name for wolverine, but you know that, right? Means glutton.”

  I nodded that I did. Most who worked more than seasonally in the park knew that. Wolverines were also sometimes referred to as skunk bears since they belonged to the mustelid family, which people originally thought skunks also belonged to, but later discovered through DNA analysis that they didn’t. Weasels, otters, badgers, ferrets, mink, martens, and the like belonged to the mustelids. Hang around the park enough and you begin to learn these things whether you’re into biology or not.

  “But Wolfie and I,” Sam continued. “We’ve been hell-bent, obsessed you could say, on changing this because the more we know about them, the better we’ll be at making decisions on how to sustain them into the future. And it’s not just them; it’s the whole ecosystem—all living systems. If the areas we do protect aren’t big enough and interconnected, then we aren’t really protecting them. They’re just islands unto themselves. Like Glacier. With only islands, the species interbreeds, becomes weaker. They need access to other animals in other protected areas that are connected to stay strong as a species. We’ve seen it with the grizzlies. Their numbers may look better in Glacier, but as they continue to interbreed, the species weakens. Just like people if they are forced to interbreed.”

  “And what does this have to do with not informing the feds about the tampering of the traps?”