The Wild Inside (24 page)

• • •

Mindy Winters was exactly as I expected, a flighty, strung-out basket case with overly enlarged pupils. She couldn’t keep her dates straight when discussing Victor, but in general, her story matched what Megan had said about their relationship: on and off again and highly dysfunctional. Her hair was greasy and appeared to be dyed with some overly strong peroxide mix out of a box. Her features, besides homely, were lackluster, probably from doing drugs during adolescence and from a lack of decent nutrition. At one point, I forced myself to push the thought away that Victor must have known she wasn’t worth keeping around for more than the sole purpose of getting his rocks off, and considering Victor’s lack of morals, this wasn’t a compliment. By the time I completed my questioning, she had grown whiny and teary-eyed and was laying out the rationale that Victor might have treated her better if he only understood how much she loved him. I patted her slumped-over and bony shoulder and told her to get herself a tissue and a cup of water and promptly left to go find Daniel Nelson.

Daniel, on the other hand, turned out to be quite composed and together. He worked for a local appliance center and managed the delivery and hookup department, making sure appliances got installed correctly with no gas leaks or water damage to anyone’s kitchens. He was quite proud of his managerial position, and I thought of my conversation with Rob and how hard it is to get a decent, long-lasting job with benefits in the valley.

I found him at his work, a nicely built (as far as strip stores go) medium-size building with brick accents and blue awnings. Kitchen appliances and washers and dryers stood on one end of the store and agreeably lit stereo equipment and big-screen TVs on the other. One of the salespeople on the floor called Daniel out from a back room and he sauntered up, his movements smooth, and shook my hand. When I introduced myself and told him why I wanted to chat, he motioned for me to follow him through a back door to a small, cluttered desk. It wasn’t an office, just a desk in the corner of the warehouse storage area with a phone and a computer so he could probably arrange pickups, deliveries, and repairs and manage his employees’ work schedules.

When he pulled up a spare chair for me beside his desk and took his own seat, he told me he’d seen Victor’s name in the paper and that he couldn’t believe it. He ran a hand through his sandy-blond hair and even though his movements were fluid, I could see a hint of shock in his eyes. “Can I get you some coffee or something?”

“I’m fine. You okay?”

Daniel shrugged. “It’s, it’s just . . . I wasn’t expecting it. No one called me.”

“Megan didn’t phone you?”

He shook his head. “I called her after I read it in the paper. I asked her why she didn’t let me know. She didn’t know why. I guess she’s pretty stunned by it all.”

“Understandable.”

Daniel nodded back rhythmically, hugging his chest and staring at his feet. “Did you see him? I mean, what happened out there?”

“Yes, I was at the scene on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, a grizzly got him. The medical examiner said it was fast and he was in shock.”

“Tied to a tree?”

“Afraid so.”

Daniel bit a cuticle on the side of his pointer, his eyes slightly glazed.

“I hear you two have been friends for a long time?”

“Yeah, we went to school together.”

“You were close?”

“When we were younger. But not so much since adulthood. We just checked in with each other now and then. Vic, well, you’ve probably heard, kind of went his own way.”

“How so?”

“Drugs. Some bad stuff. Screwed him up pretty good. He got into drinking really young, after his dad left. I did too, but I kept it at alcohol and some—” He paused and looked at my face as if to consider whether to continue, then decided it was all right. “Some pot, you know, stupid teenage stuff. I never got into the hard stuff like he did. We drifted apart, but I don’t know.” He shrugged. “He always came to me for help and I always had a hard time turning him away. You know, childhood friends—it’s hard to not see those differently. Plus he’d had a hard life with no dad and all, and I swear, he’d help me out if I ever needed it.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Let me think. Not since July.”

I wrote it down. “How did Victor’s life seem then?”

“The usual mess—no job, impatient with everything and everyone around him.”

“Was he involved with anyone suspicious?”

“He brought up Stimpy but no one else.”

I nodded. “You know Rob Anderson?”

“No, sir, I don’t. Should I?”

“Not necessarily,” I said, watching his reaction. “He’s an owner of a dog that was beaten up a while back.”

Daniel shut his eyes. “I heard about that.”

“Who did you hear it from and what did you hear?”

“I heard it from Rick Pyles. A buddy of ours from school. Ran into him at some bar and we got to talking about Vic. He said he’d heard he was involved in that but didn’t know for sure.”

“Was it just Victor that he mentioned?”

“No, he mentioned another guy. Tom Hess.”

“You know him?”

“No. Not personally. I’ve seen him around here and there, but I don’t really hang in those circles. Victor would make an easy target for that guy, though.”

“How so?”

“When we were young, a lot of the kids bullied Vic since he was on the small side and somewhat insecure. Vic really just wanted to fit in, and he’d do anything to please guys like Hess.”

“Would Victor do something like that to a dog?”

“I would have said no. Not the Victor I knew.” Daniel shook his head slowly. “But the drugs made him crazier than he was. The Victor I knew wasn’t that bad. I mean, he could be a really cool guy.” Daniel looked tearful suddenly. “He did have a heart. There were lots of times when he was a really good friend to me.”

“I’m sure there were.”

“And Megan doesn’t admit it, but he adored her and would have done anything to protect her if she ever needed it. She just never did, self-sufficient as she is. But Megan, she didn’t take the brunt of their dad’s poor parenting like Victor did. He used to say that his mom, Megan, and I were his family and he’d do anything for us. I mean,” he said, “I’m not making excuses for him, but people get it wrong sometimes for why people like Victor are sometimes cruel.”

“How so?” I lifted my brow.

“It’s not that Vic didn’t like people or animals. He just didn’t like himself, and when people don’t like themselves, they usually have to find someone other than themselves to hate, or else fess up to their own self-loathing.” He shrugged, then looked vacantly at me.

I could see that he wanted to be left alone to process, perhaps to remember a more trouble-free and happy Victor Lance from childhood. The picture of Victor and Megan swimming and laughing popped into
my mind. “Do me a favor,” I said, handing him my card. “Give me a buzz if anything else comes to mind that might be helpful.”

• • •

I didn’t find Hess at a local tannery in Columbia Falls where Daniel said he worked. His boss, Reggie White, was there: a short, plump guy with about ten strands of hair above each ear. He was working in the dismal and smelly lime pit, in which he treated the hide after it soaked. He said that Tom had taken a week off and, as far as anyone knew, had gone hunting.

“East or west side?” I asked, because I knew that if he was east of the mountains hunting deer or antelope, then he was probably going to be away all week. If he was hunting on the west side of the divide, then he might be going home in the evenings.

“East side.” He shrugged. “I think anyway. Said he’d be gone for a week, maybe two.” He told me that Hess had his ways, and he never asked him much of anything. Then he started to give me an earful of local stories about poaching and never getting caught. About people waking up and seeing ravens circling above, only to go out on their property to find the smelly innards covered with buzzing flies. I couldn’t tell for sure if he was referring to Tom or not, but figured he was. I did get it out of him that Tom owned an ATV and that he and his buddies liked to head east of the mountains, out past Lewistown, as far as Winnett even, to run down antelope.

And
run down
, I was certain, was exactly what a guy like Tom Hess probably did. It was common practice with some to chase antelope, animals designed for high-speed running. With an ATV, you can run them through the wide-open sage fields until the antelope are fatigued, then blast away.

I thanked Reggie and was more than ready to leave the dank and acrid-smelling atmosphere of the tannery. When I walked to my car, I breathed the fresh air deep into the lower lobes of my lungs. Even though I’d never met him, I had this image in my mind of Tom and
his buddies drinking cheap beer and whiskey, eating junk food, and haulin’ ass on ATVs, hootin’ and a’hollerin’ with their pride blooming—kings of their own universes. Then I imagined it as a warm afternoon with the sun baking the sage fields. I pictured Tom not paying attention, going too fast, and skidding out, falling off his ATV into a nice, large, and active rattlesnake pit.

• • •

When I returned to headquarters, it was late, and I was surprised to see Ford. He came down the hallway holding a rolled-up newspaper, his pointy frame swaggering as he walked.

“Just now getting to the daily news?” I offered.

His face looked slightly agitated, his eyes seeming beadier than usual. “I’ve heard that you’ve told that reporter to come to you if he needed information.”

“I told him that he should come to me before getting himself in the middle of my investigation.”

“I thought we already discussed this in Missoula.”

“We did.” I held up my hand. “And trust me, I’d like nothing better than to not have to deal with him. But when something interferes with my investigation, I’m going to take a stand.”

“Orders are orders, Detective. And our office is handling the press, not you.” He flicked the paper with his free hand, “You had the nerve to mention kidnapping and murder on top of a mauling?”

I looked at him, my brow furrowed. Then I laughed, and Stimpy’s crazy laugh echoed in my mind. “I didn’t mention a word about any of those things. The guy had already gotten all he needed from snooping around locally. It’s investigative work 101: give the press just enough to keep them out of the way. Bottom line—your office didn’t give that guy enough. To make matters worse, Harris and I found him pestering the victim’s sister, and a local meth dealer turned around and pestered her for mentioning his name. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

Ford glared at me—trying to sum me up. His lips pressed together and his eyes squinted. He even lifted his chin a bit, and if I wasn’t over six feet, he’d be looking down the line of his face at me. “Of course I do, but I have a job to do here.”

“And so do I, so if you’ll excuse me—” I gave a curt nod and left him standing there, just as he had left me on the trail.

• • •

I went back to our makeshift office and sat. I thought of Ford’s tightly wound face, and suddenly I felt very tired. I looked around. It was early evening and I could hear a slight breeze. Monty had left. Joe had invited me to dinner with him and his wife, but I politely declined, saying I had too much to do. He had smiled and said maybe later in the week and I had told him that by then, hopefully it was a celebration for a closed case.

I sat in the quiet of our office and listened to the battery-operated clock on the wall tick out an almost achy beat that made me feel a bittersweet pang deep down, as if the ticking persistently tapped into the exact moment in my childhood, when I realized that not only would everyone, including me, die, but that you go it alone from your own tangled path. I remembered reading “The Solitude of Self” in college, the line always staying with me: “We come into the world alone, unlike all who have gone before us; we leave it alone under circumstances peculiar to ourselves.”

A vehicle started its engine outside and I wondered who was leaving. I leaned back in my chair and looked out the window. I could see the branches of the maple tree reaching across the window, its golden leaves making a vivid collage in the paling light outside. Once the car drove away, everything stilled, and I was reminded of the bottomless quiet in the park.

I thought about Rob Anderson. How the anger and hatred filled his eyes when he thought about what had been done to his dog and
whether the crime against Victor was committed out of revenge. I’d been around homicide enough to know the degree of loathing that occurred toward a person or institution responsible for the harm of a loved one. Family members of victims, in weak, helpless moments, would sometimes confess to me that they were capable of spending entire nights awake conjuring up detailed and violent fates for the person who took their loved one. That they’d like nothing better than to see them dead: run down, tortured, incinerated, crushed down to nothing . . . But, of course, imagining and doing are two separate things.

• • •

I continued having trouble sleeping and would often find myself lying awake in the chilled cabin, the tip of my nose cold and the covers pulled high. I could hear every sound Glacier had to offer: the wind caught in the fireplace fluke, an owl screeching, the scuffling sound of deer hooves crossing through fallen leaves, an intermittent high whistle of a cow-elk call or a lower, deeper, bull-elk bugle, a train passing by in West Glacier and an occasional honk of a vehicle from Highway 2 in the distance.

But what was more penetrating and irritating to me was how Glacier held back sound. I would hear nothing at all for hours: no car tires swishing on a road nearby, no honks, no animals, no wind, no raindrops, no voices, no nothing, as if I had been transported into the dark void of outer space. I would toss and turn, often finding myself halfway falling asleep, then dreaming of some person who’d come to the cabin (perhaps Monty, who needed to tell me something important, or Gretchen because she had new evidence or Sean, who wanted me to hurry up and solve the case). They’d let themselves in without my permission, stand in my room near my bed, and try to tell me something important that I couldn’t make out, something essential and purposeful, yet unspecific. I would desperately try to move my arm or lift my head, but felt like I was in a sleep paralysis, aware that I was
half-dreaming and also aware that I was attempting to rally myself out of the dream state, but incapable of it. When I’d finally wake, I’d feel impotent and panicked that I’d turn out to be utterly useless for the rest of the day.