Mortal Fall (21 page)

I picked up my phone and texted:
I can swing by after work.

23

I
DROVE BACK TO
Glacier Academy at three p.m., the time Penny told me that Nick Ferron would be in to start prepping for dinner. When I pulled up, a group of kids—all shapes and sizes and varying ages—were out in a clearing playing volleyball. An instructor wearing gym shorts and a whistle around her neck stood watching them and yelling praises:
That’s it, Bodey. All right. Way to go, Spencer. Good get!

I parked and went in and asked Penny where I could find the kitchen. She said Nick was expecting me and walked me out of her office, up some stairs to the upper level of the large lodge, and to the wing opposite the main office.

In the kitchen, Nick Ferron had his head down and was cutting red and yellow peppers. He was wearing a white, well-worn chef’s apron and a purple bandanna around his head in a do-rag style. He looked up when Penny introduced me, his eyes curious to have a visitor. He wiped his hands on his apron and held one out to shake.

I asked him if I could talk with him since he’d worked here the longest. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. Penny left and he motioned to a small table in the corner, walked over to it, and removed some manila folders and stacked them on a shelf holding dozens of cookbooks off to the side. We both took a seat. “Would you like something to drink? Tea, coffee?”

“Maybe a glass of water.”

“Sure.” He grabbed a cup and filled it with tap water. “Ice?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Water’s good here. From a well—fresh and cold.”

“Thank you.” I took the glass. “Look, Mr. Ferron, I know you’re busy, so I’ll try not to take too much of your time. Do you remember a man who used to work here named Mark Phillips?”

He nodded. “Sure, I remember him. Only knew him for about a year. He was here sometime before I was hired.”

“When were you hired?” I asked.

He scratched the side of his face, screwing up his mouth to think. “I believe I started in ’95. Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “Yeah, 1995, because that was the year I finished cooking school down in Hamilton and then moved up here. I saw this position advertised and got it right away. I only planned on it for a year or two before moving onto something bigger, something high-end—you know—some fancy restaurant. But this paid fairly well and they were eager to keep me once they tasted my cooking, and I was in no hurry to go. I kind of enjoyed feeding the kids, you know, like I was doing something more meaningful than only cooking for people’s pleasures for a night out. Now, holy shit.” He chuckled. “Who would have thought I’d be here going on so many years now?”

“That’s a long time, all right. You must enjoy it.”

“I do.” He shrugged. “Has its ups and downs, but I run the whole shebang. Nobody tells me what to do, nobody’s breathing down my neck, and nobody’s pissed off at me for not pleasing some uptight customer in some hoity-toity restaurant. Sometimes I miss the high-end stuff, and with kids, you can’t get too sophisticated, but a few times a year, the parents come and I get to be really creative then. Plus, to this day, it feels like I’m contributing to the kids’ mental health through the physical sustenance of their bodies. These kids—they’re not growing up on crap fast food, not while I’m doing the cooking.” He placed his palm flat on his chest and smiled with pride.

“And Phillips?” I asked. “He was here in ’96?”

“Yeah, but only for like a year or so. I’m not positive, but I think he left in ’96, the year after I got here.”

I did the math in my head. Adam fell apart the year following the Nathan Faraway incident. Adam would have been at the academy five years before Nick Ferron arrived. I briefly pictured Adam pushing away his spaghetti, refusing to eat it, his cheeks puffed out with anger. But Phillips would have been here then because I remembered him. “So Phillips was here from at least ’90 until ’95?”

“I suppose. I couldn’t tell ya when he started, but I know he left in ’96 because it was after the whole Miranda thing.”

“Miranda?”

“Yeah, you don’t know about that?”

“No,” I said. “What happened with Miranda?”

Ferron thoughtfully traced a finger along an irregularity in the wood. “Apparently not that many people really know about it. They did a good job of keeping it out of the papers and such since she was a minor. I don’t think the family wanted it to go public. Plus the lawsuit was filed against Global, which was headquartered in another state.”

“What happened?”

He bit his lip and studied me for a moment. I couldn’t tell if he was making me wait, setting up a little suspense for some self-satisfying reason, or if he was thinking it through—deciding exactly what to share with me. After so long, he must have felt a certain loyalty to the place, as if the school was family, and family secrets weren’t to be blabbed about in any carefree fashion. “Miranda hung herself,” he said at last. “In the bathroom stall about five months after I started here. Bless the poor girl.”

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 rolled 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?”