The Wild Inside (12 page)

“Great, just make sure they don’t touch the bullet if they come across it.”

“All right, thanks. We’ll do our best,” Bowman said and left the room.

Monty stared at me. I’d forgotten he was even in the room.

“You ready to go?” I asked.

“Yep, I’m ready.” He held up his notepad.

I grabbed for the car keys in my pocket, my palms slippery with sweat and my jaw clenched. “I’m driving,” I said, pulling out the keys.

• • •

I didn’t exactly want to be around when they went grizzly trapping. And I was already way behind in my questioning because of my trip to Missoula and this bear dilemma, which was not helping me get rid of the morning’s headache.

Monty and I headed first to Victor’s sister’s apartment in Columbia Falls, no more than ten to fifteen miles from West Glacier, a town that lies before the entrance to the canyon leading to Glacier. An old aluminum plant sits at the base of Teakettle Mountain and was one
of the biggest employers in the valley for years, but died a slow death as global demand for aluminum shrank and cast hundreds of locals out of work. Luckily, a mill called Plum Creek, an international timber provider, still supplied a number of jobs, but with the recession had to lay off large numbers. Houses suddenly became hard to sell, and banks began foreclosing on people while they looked for jobs that weren’t there. Meanwhile, in Whitefish, just fifteen miles to the west at the base of Big Mountain on Whitefish Lake, houses still sold to wealthy Californians, Texans, and mostly Canadians rich on oil money who were taking advantage of the low market.

As we drove through the canyon, through the succession of poverty-ridden, two-gas-station, three-church, and three-bar towns—Coram, Martin City, Hungry Horse—Monty ran me through his discoveries. They were meager. Lance did have a cell phone but didn’t pay the bill. It was shut off the month before. Records from the prior months were being emailed to me as we spoke.

Then my phone rang twice as we continued through the canyon by the Flathead River past the confluence of the middle and south forks. Monica called to confirm that Victor and Megan Lance’s father, Philip Lance, failed to make the paltry support payment of two-fifty per month that the court assigned him back in the eighties. The second call was from Ford, which I silenced. Of course, not a minute after I killed the ring, Monty’s phone rang and he, being the good little boy he was, answered it promptly. I pulled out my quarter and began rolling it over my knuckles, my right hand on the wheel.

After a string of “Yes, sirs,” and an evil glance from me, Monty said good-bye.

“Your boss angry?” I asked.

Monty shrugged. “I don’t mean to tell you how to do things, but shouldn’t you have called him right away about your decision to trap the bear?”

“Why? It’s not his investigation. Usually the super’s not that in
volved in law enforcement efforts anyway. I’m just wondering why this guy is so gung ho to be involved.”

“He’s always been very hands-on,” Monty offered. “It’s his park, and he has the ultimate say.”

“Really? US National Parks don’t belong to the citizens of the United States?”

“You know what I mean.” Monty stuck his phone back into his jacket pocket. “The bear’s a big deal, and if the press gets ahold of it, this thing’s going to get complicated for the park, and that’s Ford’s deal.”

“Um hmm,” I grunted. “Well, it won’t be the first time a grizzly needs to be captured. Usually, the public’s thankful for keeping ’em safe when it comes to bears.”

“Not this summer. People were outraged over the Lake Ellen Wilson bear they put down.”

I didn’t reply. I’d had enough of talking about bears. “Anyway,” I said dismissively, “I knew Ford would find out faster than I could even pull up his number.”

Monty glanced disapprovingly at my quarter rolling, then stared out the window silently until we reached Megan’s apartment above a small soup café on the main drag in Columbia Falls. She actually worked in the café but had taken the day off under the circumstances. Megan’s mother had given us her cell phone number, and we had called to make sure she would be home and available for us to stop by.

• • •

Megan answered the door smoking a cigarette. She had apparently showered before we came, her long dark hair sleek and dripping wet patches onto on her mauve T-shirt on the mound of each breast. Thick eyeliner and mascara attempted to hide the puffiness in her eyes. She had invited us in and showed us to a small, round kitchen table and plopped herself down in front of a window next to her kitchen sink.
Monty and I sat without an invite. The wet patches, like badges of helplessness, made her look slightly pathetic and made me pause before I found my words. When I did find them, I gave my condolences, Monty following suit.

Megan sat, framed by the gray sky, still dismal at two thirty in the afternoon. Her shoulders slumped downward as if her arms were weighted. Her eyelids draped heavy with grief and perhaps caution, even skepticism. Past the mascara, she had the type of eyes that could change from dark brown to tan to hazel with the slightest shift in light. I began to think my initial impression of her vulnerability was wrong, and in the partially shaded hardness of her eyes, I thought I saw a flicker of contempt. She might not be as helpful as I thought the little sister would be. “Smoke?” she offered.

“No, thanks,” I said.

She looked at Monty as if weighing him. “You?” She stretched out the pack of Camels to him.

“Uh, no, thanks.” He sat up straight, poised.

She shrugged and took a few draws of her own and held it in her lungs with her chin lifted.

“Ms. Lance.” I sighed. “Finding who did this to your brother involves us trying to dig up as much information as possible about him, especially the days leading up to when this awful thing occurred.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea of what he’s been up to for months now.” The edge in her voice didn’t match my initial impression either.

“And why is that?”

“In case you haven’t figured it out yet, my brother wasn’t exactly a pillar of the community.”

“Your mother told us about his addictions, and we know he was charged with theft at a local convenience store.”

Megan pursed her lips together and tapped her cigarette into a glass ashtray spotted with dirty black spots. “I didn’t much approve of his lifestyle, so we stayed clear of each other.”

“When was the last time you saw your brother?”

“I believe it was this summer. In Aug—” She caught on the word, suddenly betraying her sorrow or perhaps guilt for not seeing him sooner before his life was taken. I waited, the silence not going anywhere, providing enough space for her eyes to well up. I could hear the cars driving below on Nucleus Avenue. She peered out the window toward a flattop roof across the street, but she looked as if she weren’t seeing the things in front of her, only working the task to push back tears. “In August,” she said firmly and crushed her cigarette into the tray. “I saw my mom give him some money and it pissed me off. We were at a barbecue for my uncle Lou’s birthday out at the cabin. And you know, even at a fucking family barbecue, he had the one-track mind going, like a dog sniffin’ out a bone.” She shook her head angrily. “After my mom gave him some money, he left, and then I had some words with her about it. I ended up leaving early and angry.”

“So August—what was this barbecue?”

“Eighteenth. Uncle Lou’s birthday.”

“And where’s the cabin?”

“In Glacier. My mom’s family is one of those that, somewhere along the line, got grandfathered into being able to keep property in the park, near Apgar.”

Surprised, I glanced at Monty. I made a note that I needed Monica to run a full background check on the mother’s family. I hadn’t expected Victor to have a connection to the park. There are a number of people who still have cabins and even a few who reside year-round in Glacier. “Near Apgar on Lake McDonald?”

“Yeah, near Fish Creek, you know, up that dirt road from McDonald Creek, near those other cabins.”

“The north Apgar Road?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“And someone stays there year-round?”

“My uncle Lou does. My grandparents have both passed on. They
wanted Lou to have it. He loved it the most and spent a lot of time there in his life. He takes good care of the place. Plus Lou works in Hungry Horse, closest to the cabin.”

“So your uncle, his last name?”

“Shelton.” She took out another cigarette with a limp hand, lit it with a blue lighter, and folded one leg up under her. The picture of her with her brother on the raft came to my mind, and I imagined her lazily dangling her toes in cold Lake McDonald, enjoying her brother’s company in happier times. “My mother’s maiden name.”

“Were they close?”

She blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth so that it plumed before the window. “My mom and Lou?”

“No, Victor and your uncle?”

“I doubt it, but you’d have to ask Lou.”

I glanced at my notebook, the black stripes across the yellow paper, my chicken scrawl tilting backward like most lefties’ writing does. I lifted my gaze back to her with intensity to stake claim to the idea we needed to get down to business. “Help us out here, Megan.” I lowered my voice. “What’s the deal with your brother? What trouble was he mixed up in?”

Megan took another drag. “I don’t know what he’s been into lately. I honestly don’t.” She looked tired, caught between grief and anger like a semicolon between sentences, resigned to the loss, but pissed about the waste of her brother’s life. We knew she was two years younger than Victor, twenty-five, but her eyes held hardness the way shells hold the ocean, as if on some level, she considered that Victor chucking his life away perhaps made no difference—that perhaps it didn’t matter if he tossed his life into a Dumpster at age eleven or lived an entirely different life—nurturing it with care until it took root and blossomed, then withered into old age.

But perhaps I was being overly dramatic because of the bear growling at me from the corner of my mind. “Somewhere along the line”—
she sighed heavily—“things just went wrong. They say some people are just born bad apples, and I’ve wondered if my own brother was one of them because even though he could be really sweet at times, he just always seemed to make bad choices. That day at the cabin, when my mom gave him money, I wasn’t upset because he was using again. I’d long since surrendered to the idea that he was a fuckup, and ain’t never going to change that. But my mom, see, she’s a good apple, and I didn’t want to see her pissing any more money away on him.”

“Understandable.” I leaned in closer, my full interest on her. I could sense Monty shifting slightly closer too. “And why a bad apple? Why not just someone troubled or someone hurting with a nasty addiction?”

Megan shook her head, her lips tightening again as if she might clam up. I sat back again to give her space. She didn’t speak.

“I mean,” I tried again, “there’s the obvious—the meth. Was there something about that or any other bad-apple stuff you can think of that could get him killed?”

“Honestly, mister, I wouldn’t know. It’s just an expression. Basically, my brother could piss off a lot of people.” She lifted her chin, anger now full in her eyes, the grief going somewhere else for the moment, as if it had gotten a nibble of relief and scurried back to its hiding place.

“Do you know any names? Who his dealer was?”

“No, they were always changing. Last one I knew was a guy called Stimpy. I think ’cause his name was Stimpson. Don’t know his first name and this was at least a year ago.”

I saw Monty write it down. “Do you remember any others?”

She shook her head.

“What about girlfriends?”

“Oh Jesus, he had all sorts of winners in that department. Some girl named Tara for a while, don’t know her last name. And someone named Rita. Don’t remember hers either. And Mindy. Mindy Winters. And Leslie Boone. And there were lots of others here and there.”

“Would any of them have any reason to hurt him?”

She shrugged. “My brother could be pretty mean, verbally and physically, but he could also be a charmer. If he set his eyes on you, he could make you feel like the most special person in the world.”

“He hit any of them?”

“Not sure, but I saw a black eye once on Mindy, if I remember correctly. Not to mention . . .” She trailed off, looked out again. A group of chickadees flew perfectly in unison, zigzagged before the window, then all landed together on a wire linking to a roof across the street. I could tell she saw them because her eyes darted as she tracked them.

“Not to mention . . .” I nudged her on.

She cradled her cigarette in the ashtray and stood up, leaving the smoke to rise in a cloudy, borderless bundle between Monty and me. “Look, can I get you some water or something?” She shuffled to the kitchen, her slippers scuffing across the floor.

“No, thanks.” I reached over and nonchalantly put the cigarette out. Monty had already backed his chair a few inches away from the table, and I could tell by the slightly strained look, the tightening between his nose and his upper lip, that he was trying to avoid inhaling too deeply. I figured not many park employees were used to cigarette smoke. “You were saying?”

“Nothing.” Megan opened a pumpkin-orange cabinet, the paint chipping along the edges and exposing a darker wood underneath. “Not really sure.” She had the type of body where, from the waist up, she was very thin, but her hips were round and curvy, her jean-clad thighs rubbing against each other when she walked. She closed the cabinet door a little too loud and brusque, her anger definitely outweighing her sorrow.

Monty and I stayed seated. “Look, Megan, I know your brother wasn’t a good brother, but good or bad, he was your brother, and he still deserves a thorough investigation of this crime. Were you about to say
not to mention that he hit me
?”

“Oh Jesus.” She laughed a cold laugh, moved her wet hair behind her shoulders, and shook it out while raking her fingers through it. “Are you fucking kidding? Plenty. But it’s not like I didn’t hit him back. We weren’t exactly your average Disney family. But, you know, I eventually learned to stay clear of him. But that’s not what I was going to say.” She wiped the back of her hand across her cheek as if there was a leftover tear there, although I didn’t see one, perhaps a trail of salt. “What I was going to say was, not to mention his more recent craziness. Just something I heard”—she waved her hand in the air and looked at the floor—“maybe involving animals.” She leaned against her Formica counter the color of dirty river runoff and crossed one leg over the other.