Mortal Fall Read online

  I remembered hearing from Bowman how fierce a wolverine in the mini log-cabin traps could be. Researchers basically had to rig a long pole with the needle attached on the end in order to poke them with the sedative. “What will happen to the studies now?”

  Pritchard lifted a shoulder. “I’d like to think we can continue. That Ward will take the reins, but I don’t know. I mean, I just help with the implants. The first time they tried to implant the GPS chip into a young wolverine they’d caught, he ended up dying because it was subzero temps and the pup’s body temperature dipped too low because they gave a little too much tranquilizer, a mixture of diazepam and midazolam.” Pritchard sighed. “Like I said, Wolfie was upset, he swore he’d never do an implant again without the help of an experienced vet. I use ketamine and Domitor. It seems to work well. Anyway, I do what I can,” he said humbly. “But I have a family and a practice. Sometimes he has to use Doc Kaufland if I’m not available.”

  I jotted Kaufland’s name down and looked at my notes. “You mentioned Phrimmer earlier? That he had a thing against Wolfie?”

  “Oh yeah, that. Well.” Pritchard half-smiled. “Small town, right. But, apparently Phrimmer’s wife, Kate, you know her?”

  “Sure, I’ve met her several times, here and there, but mostly when she came to headquarters to visit Rick.” I thought of the petite redhead, no more than five feet two. Freckled and feisty. I remembered seeing her all dolled up at some holiday party back in December. I went alone. Most coworkers knew Lara and I had split, but she hadn’t and she had asked me why she didn’t come. She looked sincerely upset that things were in such a state for us.

  “Well, then, do you know she used to date Wolfie years ago?”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “Yeah, I mean, who knows?” Pritchard rolled his eyes. “I don’t gossip much, but Wolfie said it himself, he was kind of laughing about it, but I don’t know, I sensed a seriousness there.”

  “Laughing about what?”

  “That he didn’t know if it was DC that really wanted the research to end, or whether Rick was simply sabotaging things, still carrying a grudge after all these years because he used to date Kate before he met Cathy, and apparently Kate always felt like Wolfie was the one that got away. Supposedly drives Phrimmer nuts.” Pritchard had barely taken two bites from his sandwich when his phone buzzed. He looked at it and bit his lower lip. “I’m sorry,” he said, then excused himself—said that he needed to take it because it was the office.

  When he hung up, he apologized but had to get going—his partner was elbow high in some other emergency and the dog he’d operated on in the morning that was doing fine when he’d left was now exhibiting labored breathing. He then asked Will to bring him a to-go box and tried to leave a twenty on the bar. I handed it back, insisting I wanted to pay for lunch. I handed him my card and told him to call me if anything else that might be pertinent to wrapping up the investigation came to mind.

  Before he walked off, he tilted his head and squinted at me. “You really believe this was an accident?”

  “I can’t say just yet.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “Know how many really dangerous slopes we’ve attempted trying to track those animals? Crampons, ice axes, ropes . . . You name it, just praying the slope would hold. We weren’t idiots, but we did tempt fate more than a time or two. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s like a trucker who’s covered millions of miles getting in an accident a block from his own home.”

  “I guess that’s one way to see it.” He shook my hand, thanked me for lunch, and left.

  • • •

  When my pastrami came, I ate it while writing a few more notes until my phone buzzed. I saw it was Lara and hit Decline to ignore the call and shoved it back in my pocket. I didn’t want to talk to her at the moment, and I had a pretty good idea why she was calling anyway. We had already had words about it the day before. All her relatives were coming into town for a few days for a reunion at our house on the Flathead River. It was complicated, but she hadn’t yet told anyone in her family about our breakup. She said she was embarrassed—that she wasn’t ready for her parents to know until we were sure we were going through with the divorce.

  Lara and I began thinking about the reunion a year before we even split. We had wanted to have it that summer, but several of her brothers couldn’t make it because of other trips they’d planned, so we put it off for the following one, having no idea we’d be separated. Not long after Lara put the emails out about the reunion, she began talking about getting pregnant, and we began to argue all the time.

  “I thought you were sure,” I had told her the morning before when she began to say she was having second thoughts about going through with a divorce.

  “Yes, but, I don’t know,” she had said. “Maybe I should, I don’t know, reconsider.”

  “Reconsider? Lara, it’s been ten months since we split up, and every time we get close to giving it another go, you freak out and say you’re not ready and not sure you can. Well, in the meantime, while you’ve not been ready, have you ever thought that maybe I’d be moving on?”

  She had started to cry, at first softly and quietly until she spoke and her voice sounded choked and strained. I’ve never dealt with weeping females very well.

  Early on, I felt that my connection to her and her family was a lifeline to normality. I liked being a part of a network of relatively sane people always smiling and happy, always talking about church and family outings, always seeming to be there for one another and knowing the consistent domestic and religious rituals. When around them, I sensed there was a system that worked, unlike the fragmented home I came from. One knew their place, knew they belonged and were safe.

  It seemed like a second chance to have the happy household I’d missed out on. But I was wrong. Very little alters what you’ve been born into. Her family, which seemed fascinating and comforting at first, eventually began to bug me, began to seem naïve and judgmental, and even righteous. They’d act as if they had no problems and that their religion not only guarded them from all sin, but placed them above the muddy transgressions that plagued other people.

  I became ashamed of my upbringing and was reluctant for Lara’s family members to meet any of mine. In fact, when we married, Lara and I fought over the fact that I didn’t even want my parents or brother to come. To make her happy, though, we invited them. My dad and Adam came, drank way too much, while my mom stayed home. She couldn’t make it because she was in the throes of a bad spell. Now, ironically, here Lara was in the system I initially found comfort in—not feeling safe enough to tell them the truth about our separation, which was her idea in the first place.

  “Look, look.” I was silent for a moment, then she sighed. “Just don’t worry about it, Monty, okay? I’ll deal with it.”

  “Deal with what? Have you forgotten that this was your idea?”

  “Deal with my family, I meant.”

  “We can talk about your family later. Okay? But you know what I think—that you should tell them. It’s crazy not to tell them.”

  She didn’t answer and while I stayed on the phone listening to her silence and the chickadees’ long, casual morning whistles outside, I got the call from Joe Smith and told her I needed to get going. We’d been down this road so many times, and I knew nothing was going to get accomplished by lingering on the phone.

  I finished eating and waited for Will to swing by to pay the bill. When he brought it over, I said, “Do you work here in the evenings?”

  “Sure do, this is my only day shift of the week. I work nights Monday through Thursday.”

  “You know a couple a’ locals named Paul Sedgewick—known as Wolfie—and Sam Ward?”

  “I think so—know of them, not personally.” He grabbed the bill with my credit card on top. “Is that the guy that . . . ? In Glacier?”

  I nodded.

  “I heard about that. Crazy.” He shook h
is head. “Just falling like that.” The waitress with the dark, bobbed hair working the floor stomped up and handed Will a ticket of drinks to make. He looked at it and wrinkled his nose. “A slippery nipple? Now?”

  “That’s what the lady wants.” The waitress smiled.

  “She just turn twenty-one or something?”

  The waitress splayed both palms up and shrugged. “It’s Friday,” she said.

  “What’s happening to the Wild West?” Will rolled his eyes, then ran my credit card and set it and the receipt back down for me to sign.

  “Yeah, so you were working the other night when he and Sam stopped in for a beer?”

  “I was.”

  “Notice anything unusual?” I handed him the signed slip.

  “Unusual?” he looked confused. His face was flushed and a sheen of sweat shone on the back of his neck and I could tell he worked hard during these busy months.

  “Yeah, like was he angry or worried or anything?”

  Will shrugged. “Honestly, I couldn’t tell ya. I mean, they both seemed normal to me, but I was busy, so it’s not like I spend much time people watching. And I didn’t really know them. Just seen ’em in here a few times is all.” He grabbed a bottle of butterscotch schnapps to start making the slippery nipple, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Monica,” he called. “She want Irish cream or Baileys with this?”

  I thanked him and left. He had work to do, and so did I.

  8

  * * *

  I WAS BACK AT headquarters. Ken had finished checking the phone records and saw nothing unusual there either. Most of the calls were to Cathy, texts to the kids, calls to Sam and Pritchard. Bowman also called and told me what I already knew—that no other biologists aware of the camera stations in the park had picked up the memory card at the Loop site.

  I called Dr. Pettiman and rechecked with him as well that there was no disk in the victim’s clothes and he said he had not sent the body to Missoula yet, but would in a few hours. Right as I hung up, Brenda, the receptionist at headquarters, knocked on the incident room door to tell me that Wolfie’s wife was here to see me. I straightened out my shirt and pants, and tucked the wolverine files away in a cabinet under the counter so she wouldn’t have to be pained by seeing her husband’s research.

  She came in and I was struck by how her face looked so different than the day before—grief having zapped the joy from her eyes. They looked bruised with dark circles and were rimmed in red. Her cheeks looked as if they’d been slapped, but I knew nobody had slapped her; they were just mottled and swollen from crying. I stood up and motioned for her to sit.

  “Thank you.” She took a seat.

  “You’re welcome.” She sat before me and looked around at the bare walls.

  “How are you faring?” I sat across from her and leaned on my elbows.

  “As best I can.” She pursed her lips and looked at me intensely.

  “And the kids?”

  She shrugged and tears sprang to her eyes momentarily, then she fiercely swiped the back of her hand across her eyes, working to keep it together.

  “So, as I told you on the phone”—I cleared my throat—“I simply would like to ask you a few more questions.”

  She said nothing, just stared at me and for a moment—other than two lines ironed deeply into creases between her brows—I thought she looked like a sad, but angry, child. She held her lips in a thin, stretched line and they’d gone nearly white.

  “Let’s start from the beginning if you don’t mind.” I rechecked the things I’d already asked her: the last time she’d seen him, when he left the house, what his plans were, his mood. When all of that stayed consistent with what she’d told me the evening before, I added, “Do you have any reason at all to think that Paul has been depressed or down about anything lately?”

  “See,” she said, more anger spilling into her eyes. “That’s just it.” Cathy stood up and put her hands on my desk. “People are saying he committed suicide or that he was on drugs, but I’m here to tell you that he would never commit suicide and my husband did not do drugs. Let me repeat: he did not do drugs.”

  I held up my hand. “I completely believe you, Cathy. I’m only asking for the sake of the investigation. We need to be thorough and check out all possibilities. But you need to know it’s early in the game and when the autopsy is performed, a toxicology screening will occur and the issue of drugs can easily be cleared up.”

  “Like I said. You won’t find anything. He did not do drugs.” She began pacing by her chair, little short steps back and forth. “Then”—her eyes began to pool with tears, but she swiped them quickly away—“and this whole suicide issue . . .”

  I couldn’t tell if she was pausing before saying more or asking me a question. “Well,” I answered, “that’s a little harder to understand, but if there was no reason for a grown man—no depression or other signs pointing in that direction—then it’s not like we’re just going to assume he went that route.”

  “Good. Because I can tell you he didn’t do that.”

  “He had no medical history with depression or anything else that you know of?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “No heart disease or something that would have hit him out of the blue?”

  “No. None. He had to get a full checkup for our insurance company just three months ago. Everything was good.”

  “What about the wolverine stuff? I mean, was he upset about the park or what was going on in the South Fork with the trappers?”

  “Yeah, of course he was upset about that, but not abnormally. I mean, hello, he’s a biologist. It goes with the territory.” She threw a hand outward as if motioning to the mountains outside us, surrounding us. “He loves those animals, but he’s not crazy. He knows what it entails to study any wild species. And he’s done it all—fishers, lynx, wolves, grizzlies, pine martins. He’s seen plenty of destruction and yeah, it bothered him, but not like what you’re suggesting.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just trying to gather the evidence.”

  “And you better, because look, I don’t mean to be out of line here, but, yeah, well, I’m upset.” She stopped pacing and faced me, her hands on her hips. “In fact, I’m angry. Paul was a professional and that’s how my kids should remember him. I don’t want them exposed to all this crazy talk.” Again, she threw her hand out and circled it frantically around. “And worse, I was a stay-at-home mom. I had to be because Paul’s job took him away a lot. Yeah, I do some meaningless, low-paying part-time work at a used bookstore when they’re at school now, but before that, I was home with my kids. It was our plan from the get-go. Paul and I talked about it and we took out a good-size life insurance policy in case something like, like”—she took a deep breath—“well, happened to him while at work. It’s not a secret or something to feel guilty about.”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “It’s responsible. But I never—” She began to tear up again and suddenly sank back into the chair, the wire frame squeaking. “We never, we never thought anything would really happen.” She stared into some foreign space, her eyes pained and momentarily distant. “But the kids and I”—she refocused on me and her gaze held mine intensely—“we need that money. If your investigation claims this is suicide”—she looked at me with real fear—“I don’t know what we’ll do.”

  “So far, there is no evidence suggesting he took his own life. We can assume it’s much more likely an accident.”

  “But see, that doesn’t seem right either.” And suddenly, she burst into a full sob. She cupped her face into her hands, her shoulders hunched and shaking.

  I got up quietly, went down the hall and grabbed a box of tissues from the bathroom. When I reentered, she had gained a bit of composure and pulled several tissues from the box.

  “I’m sorry, I just . . .” Her shoulders were still shaking.

  “Cathy, please, no apologies. I know this is very tough.”

  “It
’s just that none of this makes sense. Like I said, Paul was a professional. Do you know how well Paul knew the park? He lived and breathed it. There’s no part of it he hasn’t trekked, on- and off-trail tracking those animals and others. How could he possibly have just”—she held both palms up, tissues threaded through the fingers of one—“just have slipped?”

  “I know,” I said. I felt like a broken record. I was repeating the same conversation I had with both Ward and Pritchard. Apparently, anyone who knew Wolfie couldn’t make sense of an accidental fall. “We are asking those very same questions. Trust me, all of us here in the park, police, rangers, administrators know what kind of ground these researchers cover. We are taking this very seriously. That’s why I wanted to talk to you today. I mean, do you have any reason to think it was deliberate?”

  “I just don’t know. No, I mean—no,” she repeated. “Everyone loved my husband. He was just”—another fresh and sharp sob rose in her throat—“a nice guy. I know he didn’t commit suicide, but I could never, ever think anyone would want him gone. I’m just very confused and I don’t know what to tell the kids.” She put her forehead in her hand. “It’s so sudden and strange.”

  “I know it is. The autopsy will help considerably.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, but for what it’s worth I promise you that I will do everything I can to understand what really happened here. What about alcohol? Could he have been drinking?”

  “No. I told you. He was a professional. This is what I’m talking about. People are coming up with crazy ideas like this out of the blue. What? That he stumbled out on that trail to go grab the memory card? I mean, yeah, he liked a beer or two like anybody else, but he never got out-of-control drunk and I highly doubt he stopped for a beer before heading out to the park that evening anyway. I kissed him good-bye from our house around five.”