Mortal Fall Read online

  “We don’t want to hike it that way. We want the vertical rise, the hike up. You know, for the workout.” She looked at me incredulously. “It’s too easy to go in from the top.”

  “Well, it is seven miles,” I offered. “From here, it’s only three point eight. Plus you still have to hike back which is uphill and would make it fourteen round-trip.”

  “Like she said,” the blonde chimed in, tilting her head to her friend, “we want the elevation change.”

  In the past few years, we were seeing more and more of the younger generation interested in what kind of a workout they could achieve rather than the enjoyment they could gather from the unsullied scenery. Mountain bikes were not allowed on most Glacier trails because they rutted them out and alarmed wildlife and hikers. Some trails permitted horses and alpacas. Lately, more were jogging the trails—getting their workouts in—and we’d received complaints from elderly hikers and nature enthusiasts feeling startled on narrow, dangerous trails by runners suddenly approaching from behind, obnoxiously yelling, On your right, as if it was a ski hill and the hikers in front should nimbly and quickly hop to the side of the narrow ledges so the joggers didn’t have to interrupt their workout pace.

  “It will most probably be open by this afternoon.” I smiled. “You’re more than welcome to wait.”

  The dark-haired one let out an exasperated sigh and sauntered off complaining to her friend. “Maybe they can catch a Pilates class when they’re done with their hike.” I rolled my eyes at Ken. “I’m sure they’ll get their glutes worked today one way or the other.”

  “I’m sure they will.” Ken chuckled as we grabbed the gear from the back of the car. “And nice glutes they are.”

  I smiled, shut and locked the back of the SUV, and we made our way toward the trail. “Another trip into this ravine,” I said to him once we got beyond the roped off area and made it to the launch spot. “Bored yet?”

  “Nah.” Ken had his gum again and vigorously worked it.

  “Good, I just want to make sure we’re not missing anything.”

  He shrugged his indifference. “Whatever suits you. Can’t imagine you’re going to find anything more than you did the other day, though.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I shoved my hat in my pocket and placed the hard hat on when we reached the spot. “It’s just that I had this idea that if I go down the other side of the first contact spot, down a different line, I might find the memory card.”

  “Like I said, whatever you think,” Ken said as he searched for a sturdy tree to set the first anchor. “It’s this or directing traffic on the other side of the pass where there’s been a frequent-flyer black bear. Or,” he added, “issuing traffic violations and I can’t tell you how many times I heard “You can’t give me a ticket; you’re just a ranger” last week. I don’t even bother saying anymore that I’m Park Police.”

  I chuckled. I’d heard it my fair share as well and the fact of the matter was that some rangers were trained in law enforcement and perfectly enabled to give tickets for violations in the park, just as we were.

  “I like this better,” Ken added. “No fumes.”

  “There ya go,” I said.

  “But I don’t really need any extra trouble from Smith or even Ford for not getting the trail open.” Ken had knelt down to secure a line around the sturdy trunk of a pine and stopped what he was doing to look up at me. “They don’t have the kind of faith in me that they do you.”

  “What?” I said.

  “He trusts you,” Ken said.

  “Who?”

  “Smith. He’s got a lot of confidence in you. You don’t see it?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so. I think he just has confidence in all his people—including you—and good thing, ’cause I think he’s worn out and he needs us to take the reins here, and I’m more than happy to help.”

  “I can see that.” Ken looked at the line and tugged on it a few times. “All set from this end.”

  “You won’t get in any trouble,” I assured him. “This is my call and we’ll have this trail open in no time.” I set the backup anchor around a second pine nearby, then stepped into my harness and secured the rest of my gear and headed down for the third time, this time farther north of the victim’s launch area. When I reached the area a little lower from the sloped ledge with the slide marks and blood spatter, I stopped to look and took more pictures from the new angle. Another day and night of sunshine and summer breezes had faded the spatter even more.

  Then I shimmied over so I was even slightly farther north of the ledge. I hung shy of a drop-off that concaved inward. I was careful to go no further. I knew I didn’t want to free-rappel—to lose contact with the wall—since it’s more dangerous and I was already off my descent line where the lines were most secure. There were several outcroppings on this side, so I rested my feet on a small one and scanned the area looking for the disk, looking for anything. I peered around to see if it had flung against the cliff, bounced down, and nestled onto some small rock projection.

  For a moment, I took in the view. With my ass hanging in the air in a seated position in the rope’s webbing of my harness, I peered out at the colossal sky, the mountains indifferent and braced against it. That really brought it full circle for me. Even as Wolfie tumbled to his demise, those mountains didn’t flinch. I was viewing the pristine sweep of the Great Divide, specifically the Livingston Range marching northward into Canada. The stubborn, unforgiving whisper from the vast carved rock faces felt more intimately dangerous than ever before, their soft murmurs humming and vibrating, engulfing me. Usually it didn’t affect me, but today it was making me edgy and making the thin hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  People were often shocked and captivated by the news of grizzly or other animal attacks. Such freak occurrences made them feel unsafe in the wild. But these folks didn’t fully consider the uncomplicated fact that something as simple as falling in Glacier was much more frightening because it was much more likely to happen, like a car accident could take your life in a split second way before a serial killer was ever going to take it.

  A speck of dust on the cliff’s edge, my existence felt intensely connected to the fabric of it all, but still a mere glitch; my rappelling ropes seemed inadequate and unsafe. I knew finding the disk was a hope in hell. Suddenly I considered myself extremely unwise and perhaps irresponsible for wasting Ken’s and my time, not to mention keeping a good number of tourists, including those women, from hiking the Loop Trail to Granite Chalet and affecting the chalet’s business as well.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said out loud to it all, my voice faintly bouncing off the rock cliff. “I’m foolish enough all right, looking for something so small out here.” I set the camera down against my chest and was just about to shimmy back over to my descent line, when from down below, from the different vantage point, I caught a glimpse of something shiny about seventy-five feet below me. I squinted at it and brought the camera with its telephoto lens back to my eye, but could only make out a shiny pinpoint of light. For all I knew, it was a piece of broken glass from someone having dropped a bottle while hiking up above.

  A little voice inside my head echoed Ford’s sentiments: Enough already, Monty. Just because you took a couple refresher courses doesn’t mean there’s a crime. Go back up and open the damn trail. I grabbed the radio from my belt. “Ken, you read?”

  “I’m here.”

  I paused, the radio at my mouth.

  “Ten four. I hear you,” he reiterated.

  But why not, I thought. It was going to bug the hell out of me if I didn’t. No one was ever going to accuse me of being sloppy, and I had made a promise. “I crossed the line over the nose,” I told him, “and I see something shiny down below from this side. I’m going to head back over straight below the anchors and go back down and walk over to check it out. It’s farther north of where we searched yesterday, like I said, around the nose.”

  “Ten four,” Ken said. “Your wish is my c
ommand.”

  “Thank you.” Carefully, I made my way back to my original descent line and lowered myself to the ground. I removed the roped carabiners from my harness and began picking my way through the talus and around the front of the cliff to the other side of it to where I spotted the shiny object.

  It took me some time to get to the spot, but once I arrived, something inside me recoiled. It was like I was looking at a puzzle at first, then as I put things into perspective, noted the rocks, the brush, and the surrounding dirt, the dark stains, I realized what it was.

  I was viewing part of an arm and its hand.

  A large hawk let loose a brash caw from above, startling me into the stark present. An acrid taste formed at the back of my throat, and I swallowed hard. Flesh was still on it from the elbow down and a sports watch remained clasped around the wrist. I wiped the sweat on my forehead and squinted at the dismembered limb. Slowly, I made my way closer and noticed several yards away and covered in dirt, other parts of the body—part of a torso with some bare ribs exposed, a head, and part of a dirty and ripped denim-clad leg.

  I felt dizzy as I grabbed the radio. “Ken,” I said. “Looks like we’re not going to be opening the trail this afternoon after all.”

  11

  * * *

  TWO HOURS LATER, we had a team of people working the top again, including Joe, Karen, and Michael who had joined Ken. Also, Gretchen Larson, the lead crime scene examiner who worked for Flathead County was called in. Luckily, she wasn’t afraid of much and insisted on rappelling down with a backpack full of forensic gear. Ken helped her down and I walked her to the spot where we both spent another few hours examining the second body we’d found in three days below the Loop trail. “You keep agreeing to come down these steep areas, and they’ll have no use for me anymore.”

  “I don’t intend to make a habit of it,” she said.

  Since the west side of Glacier Park was contained in Flathead County, the county held concurrent jurisdiction with the feds and could be used for law enforcement matters. I knew I could use the extra expertise on this one since it had been out in the elements longer and had been fed on by some type of carnivore. I liked Gretchen and I was happy for the help, not to mention that she was easy on the eyes with baby blues and honey-colored shoulder-length hair pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck. She made me feel like I was in some TV crime show where the crime scene investigators were all ridiculously beautiful and perfectly dressed. I was pretty certain it didn’t go that way in very many counties around the country. Gretchen wasn’t fashionably dressed and maybe not quite the right type for one of those shows, but she was cute. I was pretty sure she got quite a bit of male attention on and off duty, but she was the type to buy her own round anyway. She could put anyone not treating her as she saw fit in their place with a cutting glance or a few brief words.

  “Possibly a lion or a lynx,” I said to her. “I found some tracks around the area that look like cat—four round toe prints widely spread, no claw points suggesting retractable claws, and the leading edge of the heel pad has three lobes.” I stopped a good twenty feet from the remains. “Probably too large for bobcat. My guess is lion, although it’s unusual for cats to feed on something already dead. They like their prey alive unless it’s a young one that’s hungry and been pushed out of territory, and these prints look on the smaller size.”

  “I see,” she said. Gretchen was from Norway and from what I’d heard, she’d come to the United States for college about ten years earlier and ended up staying, but she still spoke with a slight accent, adding a bit of unintentional sexy to the cute. “No bear prints?”

  “I’m not seeing any so far.”

  “This is as good a place as any.” She looked around at the rocks, removed her pack, and set it on a large flat boulder. “Any chance this lion or whatever it was is coming back for trouble?”

  I tapped the capsaicin on my belt. “Since there’s flesh left,” I offered in an attempt to make her feel safe while she worked, “it’s likely whatever got it is temporarily storing it and coming back for more. But we’re large enough to scare whatever it was away, or at least keep it to the sidelines, unless it’s a griz, and like I said, I don’t see any evidence of that. But I’m here with plenty of spray.”

  Gretchen pushed her dark-rimmed glasses higher on the bridge of her nose and stared at me for a moment, as if she was considering whether to mock me or just continue giving me a look. “Thank goodness you’re here,” she said with sarcasm. Her th sounded like a t—tank goodness—then mumbled, “because gee, I’ve never worked cases out in the woods before.” She reached into a front pocket of her pack and slid out a bottle of capsaicin bear spray and placed it on a rock.

  I looked away. “I didn’t mean it that way,” I offered. “I just, you know, wanted you to know you could focus without keeping one eye over your shoulder.” I was definitely out of practice with women, and it didn’t really matter. I knew there would never be any others, even while separated from Lara. It wasn’t my style to cross those kinds of lines—to do things I’d later regret or feel guilty about.

  She laughed, but didn’t reply. I couldn’t help but smile, even out among the macabre and wild aspects of it all—the stench of rotting flesh, flies and insects buzzing frantically, hawks cawing, several picas throwing out their squeaky warnings, the roar of McDonald Creek rising and echoing off the carved canyon walls. I was still a sucker for pretty women, and I certainly hadn’t made any promises to myself to not notice when someone was attractive.

  She removed the rest of the items from her pack one by one and I noted much of her cache was similar to mine: her evidence log, storage bags, mask, evidence markers. I’d been sent to Georgia was because, in the park, although we needed to treat each death with extreme care, there was no need to bring a crime scene specialist into dangerous, steep areas to work a scene that was most likely an accident. This time, however, it was just getting too strange with two bodies in the same vicinity.

  She pulled out biohazard coveralls and shimmied them over her hips and onto her shoulders and zipped them up. I was impressed that she bothered with them this far out with scattered remains. “Hey,” she said reading my mind. “A crime’s a crime, and what are the chances they were both accidents?”

  “Not sure,” I said. I pulled out my water bottle and took a gulp. I could feel the heat from the rocky ground intensifying and rising up. “It’s strange all right, but I’m wondering if maybe this guy went down first and Sedgewick, the man we pulled yesterday, was only tracking his wolverines, knowing they were in the area, but not knowing why. Maybe a wolverine was going to feed on some of the leftovers down here.” I knew wolverines were the ultimate scavengers, their jaws strong and capable of mincing bone.

  Gretchen held up her palm. “No need to figure out a story for me. I’m only here for the facts. Story comes later.” She put up her mask and headed to the lone arm and wrist with the shiny watch face.

  • • •

  I stood a few feet off to the side and gave Gretchen space to work while I studied the scene, trying to envision what the hell had happened that would produce two bodies in the same area. She called out to me several times, filling me in as she worked. “I think you’re right. Looks like a mountain lion,” she said. “Although considerably eaten, victim fell first. Remaining bones are severely broken and consistent with a long fall. The neck and skull are not punctured by teeth, just crushed by rocks.”

  “I was wondering about that,” I said. “If this victim had taken a different route in from lower down by McDonald Creek or he’d fallen, just like Sedgewick.”

  “He definitely fell,” she said. “By the looks of what’s left of his cranium, he hit headfirst.”

  “I thought the same thing when I first looked it over, but the animal covered him with quite a bit of dirt. If you’re okay here, I’m going to look around,” I told her. “I want to follow the drag marks and find the spot he fell.”

 
“Good with me,” she said. “But if you hear me screaming, best come runnin’,” she winked at me.

  “You can count on it,” I gave her a half smile.

  It didn’t take long to find the spot since there was a blood trail and skid marks that the body left from the animal dragging it from its original landing spot over the slope to the rocky, brushy area where I found the arm. The landing area was literally just around the nose of the cliff from where we found Wolfie.

  I took copious photos from as many angles as possible of it all: the drag marks, the lion prints, the blood spatter at the original spot. There was a lot of blood, so I assumed this person only hit once. After I finished studying the area, I went back to Gretchen, and she came over to me, wiping her forehead with her sleeve. “I’ve got the remains secured in the body bag. Looks like there’s so little left of this guy, I don’t think it’s worth taking him out by air. And since he’s been moved by the lion—I think we can literally transport what’s left of him in our packs.”

  I nodded. “I’ll radio Smith and let him know. Any chance of ID’ing him?”

  “The watch might help, but I’m more hopeful about that arm you spotted first. There’s part of a tattoo left, and we’re very lucky it hasn’t been eaten yet.”

  “Prints?”

  “Possibly, the hand is still intact on that arm, but the elements and decomposition have dissolved the ridges. You find where he hit?”

  “I did.” I pointed my chin up the talus slope. “Since it was around the nose of that cliff, it wasn’t one of the areas in the grid that Ken and I searched the day before, so we missed it entirely.” It was below the area that I had been careful not to free-rappel into since it cut inward. “But from up above,” I told her, “the launch spot for the victim would not have been far at all from Paul Sedgewick’s spot.”