The Wild Inside (5 page)

He told me, still as if only a no-big-deal afterthought, that my anger was the part of me that became the perpetrator, and in this instance, that meant the bear, and that in those moments, I could disown myself and would suffer no consequences for my actions. In essence, he told me I had to let go of the perpetrator inside me—to let go of the grizzly.

Ah, yes, I see.

• • •

On the way to Glacier’s headquarters in Monty’s park SUV, I called Monica in Denver, our information analyst who is our main link to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center and to the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System. She would tap into Montana’s state automated fingerprint ID system, which checks fingerprints against a database containing millions in order to link a body to a name. I wanted to see if they’d gotten a secure ID yet and was semipleased to find that they had: the victim was the man from Martin City.

Monty opened a window and took a loud breath of fresh air. “Mountain air.” He sighed. “It’s why we work for the nation’s parks, huh?”

I laughed.

“That funny?”

“It is if you knew how much time I spend in a cubicle in smog-filled Denver.”

“Oh, so what did that gal you called say?”

“That our victim is this Victor Lance.”

Monty nodded. “And they know this because . . . ?”

“The prints on the ring finger match the prints in the system,” I said. “Gretchen used her laptop to get the print from his ring finger into the system before the body even made it to Missoula.”

• • •

With its community dormitory-type structures, various single-story, rectangular houses, and offices trimmed in a government pea-green shade, West Glacier resembles a small military base. The houses are designed for summer park personnel and host various offices like USGS Global Change Science Center and the Glacier Field Station. We parked in front of the main headquarters, a tan 1960s-looking Arizona brick structure in need of some remodeling. We met Joe in the reception area, where a teardrop-shaped wooden desk sat quiet and empty. The receptionist was home for the weekend.

Joe showed Monty and me the room for us to use, and I caught his eye and asked right in front of Monty if I could have a word alone with him. I followed Joe back to his office without even looking at Monty, leaving him in the room that had been set up with a table, chairs, pens, paper, and a long white dry-erase board. “No offense,” I said after Joe shut the door. “But this Officer Harris, well, I think it might be best if—

Joe held up his palm. “Sorry, we’ve got no choice in the matter. Ford was adamant that he tag along.”

I had gotten that unyielding vibe from the get-go, which I suppose is why I was having a hard time accepting the guy, even though he hadn’t been much of a problem, and I had no good reason not to want
to work with him. Yet. “Look, I’m not sure he has a good feel for this. He obviously spends more time as Ford’s right-hand man than in the field. If they want someone with me, I’d rather have one of your other guys, someone closer to you than Ford, maybe that Benton.”

“Benton?” Joe squinted. “Benton’s even greener. Seeing that scene was about all he could take for one morning.”

“And Harris isn’t green?”

“Not as green as Benton. He was pretty good in the field before moving into Ford’s office. Look, I feel your pain, but Harris isn’t bad. Give him a try.”

“We could use him for something else, to man the tip line or something.”

Joe sighed. “I’m sorry, but Ford has already spoken to Sean. It’s a done deal. Sean concurred that you needed an assist on this one. I think we can all agree that this case is just a little weird, huh?”

I sensed that this was more about Ford keeping tabs on the situation than it was about helping us solve the case. But if Sean Dewey had spoken, then I had little choice until I could get a chance to talk to him myself. “Okay.” I held up my hand. “We’ll see how she goes.”

“Come on. I’ll show you around.”

I nodded, trying to decide whether to take it up with Sean or let it lie. Given my status lately, I knew taking anything up with him was not a great option. I’d make do, and maybe Monty would turn out better than I’d given him credit for. Maybe it was all in my head, and he wouldn’t be Ford’s spy and would have more skills than I was expecting.

• • •

“So”—I grabbed my Vermont quarter and began rolling it when we went back into the room where Monty was—“we’ll start with Ranger Fortenson, then we’ll speak to whomever she spoke to first and whoever else went to the scene with her before getting the Park Police involved.”

“That’s easy. She radioed me first.” Joe leaned against the long, green counter in the room and crossed his arms. “I asked her if there was anyone else in the immediate area that she could see—anyone injured—and when she said she couldn’t see anyone, I told her to get her pepper spray ready in case the bear returned but to get back to the road immediately and wait for assistance.

“I was out at the West Glacier Café having my Saturday breakfast.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “So I called Ken Greeley, who I knew was supposed to be out checking on some folks who were reported for camping out at Fish Creek Campground when they weren’t supposed to be. Plus, there’d been some bear trouble there about five days ago.”

“Ahhh,” Monty said, as if we just got some great clue that would solve the case. “Same bear?”

“Might be. Probably. But won’t know unless we find the one we think it is and get its DNA. Or worst-case scenario—euthanize it and inspect its stomach contents. And I don’t know if we’ll allow that to happen until there’s proof that it was a grizzly that did this guy in and not the perp. If the guy was already dead, then the bear didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, other than go for a carcass that happened to be human.”

“Yeah, there’s been a lot of bear activity this fall,” Monty added.

“I’ll say.” Joe sighed. “It’s been a very cool and wet summer, and the berries came out very late. They’re all scrounging for what they can get. We’ve had problem bears all over the Flathead Valley this fall and several around the campsites here.”

I didn’t say anything. Through the door, down a corridor leading to a back entrance, I could see a female ranger come in who appeared to be our Karen: medium height, average weight, and a tail of no-nonsense dark, slightly graying hair tied back. For some reason I didn’t want to discuss the grizzly and felt a strong, childish urge to yell at both Monty and Joe,
Forget the goddamned bear
. But I shoved the urge down, knowing that it would be out of character for me.

And it
would
be out of character for me; usually, I loved to discuss in detail what would be typical behavior for a grizzly, that they don’t characteristically attack and eat human flesh, that a bear usually bluff-charges or hurts someone only because they get between a mama and her cubs. I cleared my throat instead and pointed down the hall to Karen, where she stood talking to the officer she came in with.

Monty and Joe looked.

“That’s her with Officer Greeley.” Joe nodded. “I’ll get her, and she can tell you the rest.”

• • •

After we got set up Karen came in with her head held high and strength in her dark brown, liquid eyes. I greeted her first, and she already knew Monty. She didn’t seem as shaken as Moran had mentioned in the helicopter, but I used my boyish smile and calm voice with her anyway. I could see Monty out of the corner of my eye take out his notebook and a pen.

“Would you like some coffee or tea?” I asked.

This brought a laugh from her. “I already made the coffee before you arrived. Maybe
you’d
like a cup?”

“Maybe I would.” I smiled. My mom and sisters, Shelly too, always told me that I had a one-dimpled grin, another slightly boyish feature that came in handy with a female or two, but I was sort of glad that I didn’t have a dimple on each side like my mother, because the cute-guy role only went so far and sometimes pissed more people off than you’d expect. As far as I was concerned, I was glad to be over six feet with long, lanky, sinewy arms that counteracted my face and made me again, seem like a contradiction of sorts.

Karen had that unimpressed-with-my-type-or-any-man’s-type quality that women over forty sometimes possess—that they’ve lived enough lives to know what we’re all about and that it might not actually be worth even a smile, much less a flirt.

“I’d love some.” Monty ran a hand through what there was of his military-cut hair. “If you don’t mind.”

“No, no, sit.” I held out my palm to her. “Tell me where and I’ll grab us a couple of cups.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Been working here for over twenty years. I’ll get the coffee.”

It was when she returned with two white ceramic cups—one in each hand—that I noticed she was shaking. Monty and I thanked her, and we all took a seat at the sturdy cream-colored rectangular table. “Okay,” I said even more soothingly than I originally thought I needed to after observing her unsteady hands, “we know you’ve had quite the shock, not that you haven’t been around plenty of grizzlies around here, but this, well, this . . .”

She held out her palm, still quivering, to signal,
Say no more
.

“Let’s just begin with what you were doing this morning before you came across it.”

Karen bit her lower lip. “Well, it’s weird. So coincidental, but this year, I thought I’d get a jump on the cross-country markers and make sure they were all in place. I’d been talking to Joe, Joe Smith,” she reminded us, “’bout putting new ones up because the old ones are so rusted. They used to be bright red and easy to see, but now they’re difficult to spot.”

Monty leaned back and took a sip of his coffee.

I stayed leaning in, one elbow on my knee. “Makes sense.”

“So I drove up the Inside North Fork Road and parked.”

“Which side of the road?”

“Right side, following traffic, not that there is any on that road.”

“And what time was that?”

“Around 7:30. Us rangers, we’re up early. Sun hadn’t been up long and everything was still on the dark side in the shadow of the mountains.”

Monty scribbled in his notepad and she glanced over at him.

“And then . . . ?”

She drew in a deep breath so that it hissed, as if she were taking in air through a cocktail straw. “I found the marker and the trail, pretty covered this time of the year, but game keeps it somewhat recognizable before the skiers cut the trail.”

I nodded.

“I decided to walk in a ways to see if any of the other markers were visible farther down the trail. And as I got in just a little ways, I smelled bear—that strong, earthy, skunky smell, and got out my capsaicin bear spray. I was about to turn around and leave, but then something off to my left caught my eye.” She massaged her hands nervously together.

I gripped the quarter in my palm. “What was that?” I spoke gently to nudge her on, as if she were fragile, but knew it was unnecessary. This woman had more guts than half the guys I’d ever worked with in DC or Denver—including myself—being out in the woods of Glacier Park alone at dawn in the fall.

“The, you know, the tree where he was . . .” Her voice was escalating. “Just, just horrible . . .” She stared at me, her eyes concentrating as if she were trying to make the image vanish. Her brow wrinkled, and I noticed age spots on her forehead near her hairline, revealing that she’d been out in high-elevation sun for many years. I knew she must have many wildlife stories to tell. I suddenly had an urge to take her to a nice coffee shop and sit and tell stories that had nothing to do with this situation.

I let out a deep breath before speaking, “Okay, so when you noticed the body, what did you do?”

“Well, I stood there shocked for a few seconds and tried to understand, I mean, you have to understand, these weren’t ordinary remains, I mean, Christ Almighty, bound to a tree like that?” She shook her head rhythmically.

I waited and was thankful Monty also assumed the silent role.

“But it came fairly quickly to me that the body had been mauled by a bear, so I looked around afraid the bear might still be there. I—I . . .” She looked down at her hands.

“Take your time,” I offered.

“You have to understand that this was upsetting.”

I snatched a quick glance at Monty again, fairly certain he would continue to keep quiet, but with someone you’ve never worked with, it’s hard to know. Plus I could be wrong, but he seemed to be getting an impatient, glib no-kidding look on his face. I reined in her attention by nodding and speaking more softly. “I very much understand that.”

“So I know this wasn’t professional of me, but I . . .” she said. “I ran. I ran back to the road. I was afraid, and I’ve seen plenty of grizzly in my time, and have definitely not run away, but this, this . . .”

“Is that when you called Smith?”

“Yes. When I got to my car. He told me to look for others and then to get to the road for safety. I don’t think I told him that I was already
at
the road. I—” She looked down at her lap. “I just said, ‘Yes, sir,’ and waited until Park Police got there. Ken. Officer Ken Greeley.”

“Again. Completely understandable, but I need you to think hard now, was there anything at all in the woods surrounding the area or maybe near the road that seemed strange, any noises or people when you first drove out or were out walking that caught your eye? Any tourists? Any cars that you remember?”

“No, it was completely quiet except for the birds and a slight breeze, enough to make the trees creak. Just as I’d expect in October on the Inside Road. There aren’t that many people on the Inside Road in the heart of the season, much less in October. And the burn has made it even less desirable for people to go that way. Sometimes we see a researcher or others interested in seeing wolves heading out toward Logging Lake trailhead, which is known for frequent sightings of the North Fork wolf pack. But I hadn’t seen anyone for over a week.”

“Any little things that come to mind?” I continued. “Tire tracks
on the road? Footprints on the path? Did you smell anything besides the bear? Maybe cigarette smoke or a cologne scent? The smell of a campfire?”