Mortal Fall Page 22

  “Not exactly special ops caliber.” I chuckled.

  “Yeah, well, like you said, what’s a fight when you’ve got three against one?”

  “Story of my life. I looked at the rag she was holding, a few streaks of pinkish red on it. “Look,” I added. “I meant what I said in the car. I’m really sorry about bringing you tonight. I should have thought it could have gotten crazy like that. These guys just don’t like anybody poking around in their business. They’ve got too much to lose.”

  “What exactly do you think they have to lose?”

  “I’m not positive, but Albertson with FWP thinks he might be part of a militia group, stockpiling weapons. He’s on that hate-group site called Whitesquad. I’m pretty sure the guy I got his name from is using meth, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some connection there as well. And now we can add some kind of poaching to the mix.”

  “Is poaching that serious?”

  “It may not seem like it to the average person, but I used to be a game warden and I can tell you—it’s a different breed that can serial-kill animals. Poachers see them as objects existing for their own pleasure, their own games. They love the stalk, the more illegal, the better, because it raises the thrill. They enjoy the slaughter, often leaving the animal’s body to rot, maybe taking the antlers at best. Sometimes, depending on the animal, they take the pelt. Some cases involve huge rings for commercial trade. Guys like Dorian, my brother, they know this land in and out, and they can help people who pay large prices to illegally kill elk, moose, wolves, grizzlies . . . and I mean, opportunities to take in thousands and thousands of dollars. There is a market for the elusive wolverine pelt too.”

  “Sounds like Africa.”

  “Yeah, there’s more of it going on than most people know about.”

  “But why then would Dorian be stupid enough to mess with the law? Seems like it would just invite trouble.”

  “Exactly, but these guys think differently. Force, fear . . . It’s the way they operate. It’s how they know to deal with things. The canyon is a world they feel is unto itself, apart from the norms, I suppose because jobs are hard to come by. It makes them feel like they can get away with more than you or I would ever consider.” I knew I was being partially unfair and a little dramatic. Of course, not everyone in the canyon acted this way, and I was being critical having partaken in the Bear Bait case that involved the making and dispensing of methamphetamines. And sitting with a throbbing head wasn’t helping. “Plus they hate the government, they hate the police, and they hate being told what they can and can’t do, thinking anything can be solved with enough firearms. They have a sense of entitlement that is beyond arrogant and that invites stupidity.”

  “Which makes you think about what happened to Wolfie.”

  “Yeah, sure it does, but I don’t have anything substantial but some hearsay suggesting he and Dorian had some words. Probably similar to the ones he just had with me. Threatening him to stay out of his woods.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Complicated. Now I know why I like the crime scene. I don’t have to solve it, just determine what’s there and what’s not. And, I certainly don’t have to deal with morons like Dorian.” She narrowed her eyes as she studied my eye, then set the rag down on the coffee table before us. “I don’t know. You might need a stitch or two.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve got some of those butterfly bandages around.”

  “Oh good. In the medicine cabinet?” She stood up, and immediately the loss of her proximity was perceptible. “I’ll get ’em.”

  “Do you mind grabbing some Advil while you’re there?”

  She came back and handed me the bottle of anti-inflammatories and grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen. She sat back next to me and placed a bandage on the skin between the corner of my right eyebrow and my eye. Then she took her forefinger and traced it over another scar I had right above my right eyebrow. “What happened here?”

  “Let’s just say this isn’t the first punch I’ve taken in my life.” I sighed. “Look, the guy in there who called Dorian off,” I said. “He’s my brother.”

  “Yeah,” Gretchen drew it out. “I figured based on Dorian’s smugness there at the end of the interrogation. So that’s why he came to the rescue.”

  “Not really. He’s been a bully my whole life. Coming to the rescue isn’t exactly how things go with him. He’s usually the one creating the situation that needs rescuing.”

  Gretchen didn’t say anything. Just waited for me to say more.

  “I haven’t seen Adam in years. It’s a long story.”

  “So you didn’t know he was going to be there?”

  “I had no idea he’d be there or that he hung out with those assholes. I didn’t even know he was in the bar. Where did he come from?”

  “Not sure. I think he’d just walked in unless he’d been at a different table or in the men’s room or something. It was really crowded. You could have missed him easily.”

  I agreed. I thought about telling her more, about Adam’s fight with Phillips that I’d heard about the previous year and about his days at the academy, but something stopped me, perhaps the image of Adam and Mark Phillips crazily going at each other in the same irrational way Dorian had come at me. Suddenly, I felt tired and didn’t want to talk about him anymore.

  “He’s quite a bit taller than you,” she said.

  “You like to be direct, don’t you?” I laughed. “Yeah, he got my father’s height. I, unfortunately, got my mom’s. She was only five three. Thank goodness I surpassed that.”

  “What are you going to do about Dorian?” she asked me.

  “Not sure, but I think I’ll question him again after he’s had a chance to simmer in jail for a bit, thinking about his weapons, and in the meantime, I’ll continue to do what I know how to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Investigate him and his clan.”

  • • •

  Gretchen made some tea and we sat on the couch facing each other and talked about her. I found myself relaxing in her company. She had come to the United States eleven years before when she was eighteen to study economics at a small university in Tacoma, Washington. Money had been available from the Norwegian government for students wanting to pursue business—a push from all the Scandinavian countries to educate their young in the markets of the world.

  “But,” she said, “I was bored with econ and marketing and I took a beginning forensics class on the side because I’d always been curious about it.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  She shrugged, and for a split second before looking down at her hands, it seemed to me that something sad or lonely swam into her eyes. “When I was young someone in my neighborhood was murdered. I remember riding my bike down the road and watching the police work. I asked my mom a bunch of questions about it, but she said we shouldn’t talk about it. That just made me all the more curious. Anyway”—she threw her hair over her shoulder—“I ended up meeting a guy the summer after my last year of undergraduate studies and we got married. In part, we knew we were being hasty and marrying so we didn’t have to face breaking up. We also knew that I could then stay in the U.S., work and save up for graduate school.”

  “Couldn’t you have gone home and taken forensics in Oslo?”

  “I could have, but I didn’t want to.” She flicked her hand away from her. That look, like she was holding something back under her nonchalant expression, flashed again. “I left a complicated family life,” she said. “I didn’t have a burning desire to go back to it. Plus I like America, I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Norway, but I liked America and I figured if I stayed in Seattle, got my degree, I would have options: Jim and I could stay or we could move to Norway.”

  “And obviously you stayed.”

  She smiled. “Jim was from this area, so we came out here. We gave it a try and the county was increasing their law enforcement program to include a forensics team.
So here I am. I like it. There are parts of it that remind me of home: all the lakes and the endless woods full of pine, birch, hemlock, black hawthorns. Believe it or not, there are places in Norway equally remote. And sometimes the mentality is the same. There is the white supremacy, the fundamentalist attitudes, the sexism . . .”

  “And what happened to you and Jim?”

  “We didn’t make it. We tried for three years, but in the end, we knew we should never have gotten married. It was fairly amicable.”

  I smiled. I felt a dull throbbing pain through my post-bar-fight numbness and Advil consumption, and thought of Lara and the distance we’d inserted between us. I wondered if we could bridge the chasm and if not and we divorced, could we remain friends. I guess you could call us amicable, but I could sense it was hanging on only by a thread, and there was something about that notion, something about the thought of letting go of my connection to her and her family that frightened me.

  Gretchen and I continued to talk until I began to doze off on the couch. I was vaguely aware of her getting up and slipping out the front door sometime after midnight.

  30

  * * *

  WITH A BLAZING headache, a sore neck, and a swollen eye that was soon to turn bruised and ugly, I spent the day chasing information on both victims, Martin Dorian, my brother, and poaching rings in the area. I called Shane Albertson and filled him in on the situation with Dorian, just to keep him apprised and to see if he had any additional information on him. I asked him if he knew who Dorian’s girl, Tammy, was, but he said he didn’t. I would need to talk to Adam soon, but I needed more information before approaching him.

  While Ken went to find Melissa to check on Dorian’s alibi, I went to see Dr. Raymond Kaufland, the other vet who sometimes went with Wolfie to implant the transmitters into the wolverines and found more of the same—that Wolfie was a passionate, determined professional researcher. Kaufland had gone with him numerous times to trap sites in the park to perform implants and had attended one in the South Fork region. Thankfully, he had told me, that one was not rigged and he was able to successfully make the implant. He knew nothing of Martin Dorian and no other names, just that Wolfie had mentioned he’d had some troubles with the local trappers.

  I, of course, also chased any information I could on Mark Phillips. I spoke to fellow cartographers in his office, workers at the health club he attended (not that Ken didn’t do a good job at the club; I just wanted more), and even waiters and waitresses at some of his favorite restaurants that Beverly Lynde had told us about.

  Eventually, I found myself on the phone calling the previous owners of Glacier Academy. They now lived in Acadia, California, after moving from the Flathead Valley to Oregon, and were trying their hand at running a tree farm in the area instead of a residential treatment center. Mr. Leefeldt came to the phone in good spirits until I told him who I was, where I was calling from, and that my call related to some individuals he used to employ at the academy he and his wife used to run outside Glacier Park. He got very quiet and when I repeated his name several times to ask him if he was still on the line, he said: “I don’t need to answer any more questions about that place. Understand? I’ve already been through it all.”

  Again, I felt a prick of guilt ping through me at the thought of Adam attending during that time. “Look, Mr. Leefeldt,” I assured him. “This has nothing to do with the lawsuits from years back. I’m simply inquiring about several employees who worked for you then because one of them has died in Glacier and it’s a matter of course to investigate all falls in our park.”

  “Who died?”

  “A man named Mark Phillips.”

  Leefeldt fell quiet again. I could hear a female voice in the background. “Not now,” he said to that person, his voice falling away from the receiver. “So what does that have to do with the academy?”

  “Like I said—it’s a matter of routine investigation and I’m just trying to locate some people that Mr. Phillips hung out with back then.”

  “I have no idea who Phillips hung out with back then and as far as I’m concerned, if he fell in the park, serves him right. If it weren’t for him, probably wouldn’t have gotten into all that nonsense in the first place.”

  “Nonsense?”

  “Forget it. Like I said, my wife and I, we’re done talking about that chapter.”

  “Mr. Leefeldt,” I said firmly. “I’m just wondering if you know a woman named Diane who used to work for you? I simply need her last name.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Mr. Leefeldt,” I said again. “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled. “I’m still here. Hold on.” He must have covered the phone with his hand because a muffled sound took over, and the voices on the other end sounded like they were under water. I waited, turning my Glacier Park coffee mug round and round. Finally, he returned: “Rieger. Diane Rieger. That’s what my wife says her name was. Now, please leave us alone.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Just one more thing. You said that if it wasn’t for Phillips, you wouldn’t have gotten into such nonsense. What did Phillips do?”

  “Never mind. Like I said. We’re over it.” He hung up the phone.

  • • •

  Lara unexpectedly showed up at my office. I’d had trouble sleeping the night before thinking about how I was going to approach her about Adam. She knocked softly on the door and came in smiling while Ken and I were going over Dorian’s alibis. Ken had found Melissa at her bar around eleven when she showed up for work and confirmed that Dorian was with her the majority of the evening on the twenty-second. Ken was also able to get Tammy’s last name from Melissa easily—DeWitt. Tammy DeWitt.

  “One of the guys with Dorian at the bar was DeWitt. Darryl DeWitt.” I pulled out my notepad and double-checked. “Must be her brother or a cousin,” I said just as Lara walked in. She greeted Ken first without even looking at me, and asked about his little boy, Chase.

  “Oh, you know,” Ken said, “he’s getting into everything and keeping Val and me on our toes.”

  “I can imagine.” Lara smiled. She was wearing dress pants and a colorful blouse, and I figured she’d probably been at work most of the morning. Over the years, Lara had worked her way up to managing the entire accounting department for the hospital, the largest employer in the Flathead Valley.

  “So what brings you here?” I tapped my pen on the desk, and she turned to me and took in my face.

  “Monty, oh my God, what happened to your eye?”

  “Hazards of the job,” I said.

  “What? Someone assaulted you?”

  “Pretty much.” I stood up. “I’ll fill you in some other time.”

  Ken lifted his shoulders to his ears to say, don’t ask me. He apparently knew better than to get in the middle of a separated couple.

  “So what’s up?” I asked again to change the subject.

  “I just wanted to go over some things with you.” Her face was serious now, still examining my eye. “Have you put some ice on it?”

  “I have. And taken lots of Advil.”

  She nodded, then continued. “I just wanted to make sure we’re all lined up for”—she bit her lower lip—“you know, all set for the party.”

  I nodded slowly, then looked at Ken, who was watching us both. I set my pen down. “I’ll walk you to your car and we can talk. I need some fresh air anyway.”

  “I’ve been to Costco several times. I have all the coolers and I was able to get a good deal on a new grill there too.” She rattled off the details as we walked down the hall to the exit. “As you know, the party starts at three, and I know there’s going to be at least fifty to sixty people. We’ve hired a caterer to do all the food and have a band and everything else lined up. Are you going to be able to make it?”

  I didn’t answer as we stepped outside. The air felt hot and slightly oppressive—unusual for Glacier. “I’d love it if you could come early, say around two, so we’re both there when eve
ryone starts arriving. And that eye of yours, well, it’ll be a good conversation piece, I’m sure. Maybe a little concealer would help.” She winced.

  I was still holding my pen as we stepped outside. I slid it into my pocket and pictured Lara’s huge family. With all her brothers and sisters now married with numerous children, it had become bigger than I could fathom. She had aunts and uncles, mostly from Butte, Montana, who were all probably driving in Saturday morning. And some were flying in the night before from various places—one of her brothers’ family from San Francisco, another from Tucson, and a sister’s gang from Santa Fe.

  “It’s supposed to be nice, clear skies, upper eighties to low nineties. I’ve already got two large white tents that we’ve rented set up, so we’ll have shade. And if we get any late-afternoon rain, a place to go. We’ll probably need to take them down the next morning, okay?” She looked up at the sky, slightly hazy from distant fires. “I wish it was a little clearer, but it is what it is. I hear there are fires in Idaho.”

  “Washington,” I said. I had read the paper when I first got to work.

  “Oh, well, whatever. So did you hear what I asked you? Are you going to be able to make it at two?”

  I paused, turning to face her. “Why did you tell Adam about the reunion?”

  “What?” she looked from the sky to me. “What?”

  “You know the kind of terms he and I are on and here you’re trying to get me to come and put up false pretenses in front of your family and you invite him? What makes you think that helps your efforts, Lara?”

  “Monty, get real. I didn’t, wouldn’t invite Adam to the reunion. Why on earth would I do that?”

  “I don’t know, but why on earth would he even know about it?”

  She looked at me, I could practically see her eyes flickering with thoughts, possible rationales. “Look, it was nothing. An accident. I ran into him and I was nervous and frazzled, trying to do a million things for this party and it slipped out. You know I talk too much when I get nervous.”