Mortal Fall (12 page)

“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.”

“It’s curious all right. When we get these remains to the lab, we should be able to figure out more about the time of death, see how it lines up with the other victim. Is he”—she lifted her brow—“with Pettiman in Kalispell or Wilson in Missoula?”

“Pettiman at first,” I said. “But he’s being transferred to Missoula. I’m guessing this one should go to Missoula too?”

“I need to take a quick look at the landing spot and then I think we should get it up and refrigerated as soon as possible.”

I radioed Joe and told him our plan. After she got enough photos of the area he was dragged from, together we headed back to the rappelling lines carrying the remains of another human being lost to the wild. I thought of the man’s flesh being torn by the menacing jaw of a stealth lion, helping to build his or her sleek muscles. “One way or another,” I said, “I guess we all eventually get reprocessed.”

She looked at me and shook her head. “I don’t think I’ll respond to that one.”

I sighed. “Best not to. But what you can do for me is use whatever clout you have with Doc Wilson to expedite the autopsy.”

She tilted her head and smiled. “That I can do.”

12

T
WO VICTIMS IN
the same area.” Joe scratched the back of his neck.

Joe, Ken, and I were sitting in the incident room. “Yeah, strange,” Ken agreed.

“Coroner called me fifteen minutes ago,” I said. “He just got him on his way to Missoula. Looks like this one’s been out there for several days and that’s what Gretchen thought as well. At this point, he’s unidentified. I’ve contacted missing persons and so far nothing. The coroner thinks once he gets him to Missoula, Wilson might be able to get an ID from the tattoo on the arm. Just might take a little time.”

“And there was no car in the lot?” Joe asked.

“Not that we know of. We’ve considered the possibility that he parked on the east side and hiked over, so I’ve got Schaeffer checking the lots over there.” Marina Schaeffer was Park Police also and stationed on the east side in St. Mary. A twelve-mile-steep trek over the Divide could get you on the west side, but it would be a full day of strenuous hiking. “It’s also possible he took a shuttle up, hitchhiked, or got a ride up from a friend.”

“Your thoughts on the two falls in the same area?” Joe scratched his chin.

“I don’t know. It seems highly unlikely it could be a coincidence unless they both fell at the same time, maybe fighting or something, but since the guy I found today has been out there longer, it rules that out.”

“Serial killer?” Ken offered.

Joe and I looked at each other. “Doesn’t feel right,” I said. “Serial killers like to hurt their victims. I’m not saying it’s not possible. It’s just that a push would be too simple, over too quickly unless there was abuse taking place first and we’re not seeing signs of that, at least not on Sedgewick. But maybe we need more analysis on him.”

“What about one homicide, one accident?” Joe asked.

“I thought about that. First guy is pushed and Wolfie picks up a wolverine signal heading to the area and he, well, he falls. And that might feel right if it was anyone but a field biologist. It just doesn’t make sense given his experience in the wilderness.”

Joe nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“Either way,” I insisted, “I’d like Wolfie’s body transferred from Pettiman to Wilson as soon as possible for further analysis.”

• • •

The next morning was a Sunday, and there was nothing to do in the meantime but focus on Wolfie. With Wolfie, it was a process of elimination: was it suicide? Was it an accident? Was it homicide? There was no reason to believe it was a suicide, possibly an accident, but with a second body in the same area, my suspicion meter went way up. I pulled out Wolfie’s files and looked through them, hoping to find something to point me in some direction or to link Wolfie to anything questionable.

There was file after file filled with notes on wolverine sightings, maps of where they’d been, drainages they’d been up, valleys they’d denned in, ridges and peaks they’d muscled up. There were specific classifications on the different animals, most of them titled M1, M2, M3, and up for males, and F1, F2, and F3 for females. There were personal notes in a separate folder, just scribbles of observations, mostly about his awe of the wolverine:

I see a major self-respect, a self-reliance and a dignity in the tenacity of the creature, the way it fearlessly scales precipices and wants to rip us apart for interfering with their routines to try to implant our transmitters. Gotta love these little bastards! They do not go gentle. But, they are playful too. Saw three playing hide-and-seek on a snowfield above Avalanche Lake, hiding, peeking, chasing, somersaulting and sliding—all for fun because they would climb back up and do it several times in a row.

He would also comment on the grizzlies he’d come across and how when he’d see one, he could practically feel its air of unfettered power descend upon him and make him feel very small and humble.

Sadness overwhelmed me to think the love, awe, and respect emanating from Wolfie so effusively was suddenly vanquished. I sensed some deep understanding in him of the natural world he engaged with more than I’d seen in our own tribe of rangers and Park Police—some part of Wolfie’s soul, perhaps, that identified with the wild animals and their quest to keep moving and to remain ungoverned.

Then I thought of his family, of Cathy and the kids, and how they deserved more and how I’d fleetingly considered Sam Ward might have something more going on with her. A twinge of guilt shot through me again. The Sedgewicks seemed graced with the ability to have a loving, connected family. Suddenly, I felt that strong need welling again, an urgent necessity to somehow help them and to try to make things right in whatever small ways were possible. And layered beneath that urge, from someplace dark and tangled, I sensed that such an urge stemmed from the knowledge that I would never be able to revel in a normal, warm family myself. Judging by my separation after eight years of what I considered a good marriage, ultimately, a happy home life eluded me.

I moved on and opened another file. I read about the population of the wolverine. How the estimate for Glacier was between thirty and thirty-five, and how in Montana as a whole, there were maybe somewhere between a hundred and a hundred fifty and that there might be a handful in the Tetons, in Idaho, and in Washington in the North Cascades, a fragmented number at best. There were genealogy charts linking
offspring to the parents and notes on which wolverines had died, some accidentally by violent avalanches, some at the jaws of other predators, possibly even other wolverines, and far too many by human hands.

At the end of the file, an undated personal note written by Wolfie read:
Call from DOI—high ranking official—pressure about report
. Then I saw a smaller, index-card-size note tucked between some pages. It read:
South Fork—Rowdy? Outlaw’s.

I grabbed Ken and when he asked where we were going, I replied, “Down the Line.” I was referring to the canyon between the Flathead Valley and Glacier Park, which was known for gimmicky tourist spots as well as a tough population of often-lower-income and unemployed folks.