The Wild Inside (7 page)

The second came from Monica. The victim’s mother, fifty-three-year-old Penny Lance, lived and worked outside Kalispell in an area or township called Evergreen. She had divorced Victor’s father, a Philip Lance, in 1985, when Victor was only two. She never remarried and worked for an auto repair shop called Travis Auto on LaSalle Road. We were no more than half an hour to her office or home, but since it was Saturday, going on four p.m., I knew we had a good chance of catching her at her place.

The third came from Walsh—a Glacier County deputy had found
the couple that had been camping at Fish Creek at a convenience store gassing up in Browning and insisted they return to West Glacier for more questioning. Apparently, they were very helpful and, although irritated at having to backtrack, they didn’t seem like they had anything to hide. They would be in by early evening.

4

P
ENNY LANCE LIVED
in a neighborhood of about twenty small, brightly colored houses: light blue, yellow, red, green, even a pink one, making the neighborhood seem like one overgrown Easter basket. Small, surprisingly lush, and slightly overgrown and weedy lawns with very few trees lay before each home. I could tell that these lawns normally would be dried out and brown any other year with less rainfall.

Penny’s one-story house was a light eggshell-blue color. A Russian olive tree with silvery slender leaves caressed the side of the house, and a Buick the color of a dark plum sat in her driveway. I took a deep breath. I was relieved that I didn’t have to track her down, but it never got any easier: delivering such news to a parent not expecting it. It almost always hit hard enough that it felt like a physical punch.

I rang the bell as Monty shifted his weight back and forth. I had asked him on the way over if he’d done this before, knowing he probably hadn’t. I was right. He had every reason to be anxious.

“Well, at least it looks like it might be just her for now. No big family to address.” I shrugged. “That might make it a bit easier.”

Monty nodded as a woman looking older than fifty-three opened the door. She was small, no more than five-three, and I could smell cigarette smoke instantly. She had that superannuated blond look, her overdyed, brassy hair hanging to her shoulders with about two inches of dark gray springing from her roots. That’s where my eye went first until I quickly refocused on her narrow blue eyes framed by deep crow’s-feet.

I wanted to tell her to go ahead and grab a cigarette, anything she wanted at all while she could still do it in the comfort of everyday normalcy before we ripped it away. It didn’t matter that Victor had some criminal tendencies or could have been mixed up in something dangerous; this woman would still love her boy no matter what hardships her family might have seen.

“Ms. Lance?” I said. “I’m Ted Systead. I’m a detective for the Department of the Interior. We handle crime in the US national parks. This is Monty Harris with Glacier Park’s police.”

“Hello, ma’am.” Monty tipped his head.

Her eyes narrowed, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s happened now?” She looked irritated. This was a woman familiar with difficulties.

“May we come in?”

“What?” She crossed her arms and gave a heavy-lidded stare. “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“He?” I asked.

She shifted into a one-hip stance, getting ready to go onto the defensive.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Do you mean Victor?”

She shrugged and shifted to her other hip. She was not going to say any more.

I sighed. This was no time for games. “Ms. Lance, may we please just come in for a moment?”

She gave a surrendering little shrug, opened the door wider, and held out a hand. She was wearing jeans and a purple, somewhat ratty sweater. No shoes. No socks. I couldn’t tell if she was cold, but the effect of her small, bony feet on off-white linoleum in October made her look fragile. She followed us in and closed the door. “Can I get you something?”

“No, no, thank you.”

“What it is then?”

The living room was small, with a beige couch and a deep green La-Z-Boy recliner. I made a mental note that if she got unsteady it would be easy to help her into the recliner. The television played some college football game, and I decided not to ask her to turn it off because it wasn’t on very loud. “Ms. Lance,” I said softly. “We have very bad news for you. We very much regret to inform you that your son was found in Glacier Park this morning. I’m afraid it looks as if he’s been killed.”

Penny stood frozen for a moment, her mouth slightly open and slack, as if the words had not yet registered. Then she let out a small squeaky moan and slowly put her palm to her mouth.

“We’re very sorry.”

“What?” She shook her head. “Why are you telling me this?”

I could see a mixture of anger and fear flood into her eyes. I couldn’t answer her question with the obvious:
because you need to know since you’re his mother,
because he’s never coming back
. “We’ve identified his prints, which are in the system.”

“But—” She began to lose her balance. I grabbed her arm and helped her into the La-Z-Boy. She shook her head back and forth, then looked up to me, then Monty for answers, her face now racked with confusion with deep lines creasing her brow. “But how, what happened?”

“I’m sorry, but it looks as though he was mauled by a bear.”

“What?” Her voice was loud and she pulled her head back, a turtlelike move. “A bear?”

“It’s very complicated, Ms. Lance. We have some work to do to figure this out. But it looks as if your boy was forced into the woods by someone. Then, coincidentally, he was mauled.”

Penny began to shake her head violently, her brow still deeply furrowed. “What on God’s earth are you talking about? Jesus Christ, what are telling me?” She sprung out of her chair, her eyes darting from me to Monty and back, her hands by her sides clenched in fists as if she could fight away the truth. “What in the hell is going on here? Why are you saying these crazy things? Is this a prank?”

“No, ma’am. It’s not. I know it’s strange and we don’t have all the details. But it looks as if your son, one way or another, was murdered.”

“By a damn bear?” Her frantic voice sliced the air. She was still unable to grasp it. I asked myself why anyone would.

“No, by the person who kidnapped him. The grizzly is coincidental. The person who left him there is responsible, and that means murder whether the person who put him there meant it to be or not.”

She wrapped her arms around her waist and stood in silence. Monty and I stared at her. I could see Monty’s jaw muscles clenching.

“Where is he?” Her voice was small now, like a little girl’s.

“He’s with our state forensics lab. With good doctors.”

There was no way she could see him, not now, not ever. There were only remains—a bundle of horror that only a pathologist might be able to make sense of. Penny began looking around the room for something, perhaps her cigarettes, her lighter, a glass of water . . .

“Can we get you some water, Ms. Lance?” I motioned to Monty to go to the kitchen to grab some.

“Where do I go?” Her eyes filled with tears. “Where is he?”

“No, I’m sorry, you can’t see him right now. Please, Ms. Lance, please sit down.” I gestured to the chair.

“But—I, this can’t be right.” She kept shaking her head, her mouth agape. “But why?”

“We don’t know that yet. But we promise to find out.” I could hear Monty closing a cabinet and running some tap water.

“Someone kidnapped him?”

“He was bound to a tree. Someone or perhaps more than one bound him to a tree.”

“Jesus.” Her watery eyes widened and a tear slid down one cheek. “But why? Who?”

Monty came back in and tried to hand Penny the glass of water, but she didn’t pay any attention to his outstretched hand. She stared at me with wide eyes.

“I’m sorry that we don’t have many answers for you. If anything, we’re hoping that you might have some information that might help us figure out who’s responsible for this.” More tears began to slide down her cheeks. She slumped back down into the recliner and let her face fall into her hands. A TV commercial selling cell phone services with privileged, childish teenagers came on, its playful silliness mocking the seriousness of this mother’s situation and far too trivial for the tragedy spreading before her. I grabbed the water from Monty and went to kneel before her. “Ms. Lance, I’m going to need to ask you a series of questions to help us find who’s responsible for this. Would you like us to leave you alone for a bit and come back later, or would you like to talk now?”

She shook her head, her face still buried in her hands. She was sobbing harder, almost choking. “No,” she blurted. “Don’t leave.” She said this as if our company could possibly add some comfort to the situation.

I set the water next to her on a side table and looked at Monty standing by the kitchen door. He held out his hands to say,
What do I do now?
I held up my palm for him to stay put. “We’re not going anywhere,” I said. “Take your time. Can I get you some tissues?” I nodded to Monty to find some in the bathroom. In the meantime, I walked over to a narrow table with framed pictures dominating a lacy runner to give Penny a moment to rein in her sobs.

There were several photos of two small brown-haired children, a boy and girl who I presumed were Victor and his sister. In one, they were in bulky winter jackets, the boy missing several front teeth in his big grin, the girl patting snow onto a snowman they were building.

In another, they were in colorful bathing suits on a small bright yellow raft, giggling and splashing around in a sparkling mountain lake. The camera caught the water spraying up around the kids, the sunlight illuminating the droplets into strings of bright, clear gems.

“Okay,” Penny finally said after blowing her nose and wiping her eyes again. “I’ll try.”

• • •

I made sure she had a few sips of water and led her through it. She had not seen Victor for over two months, which would have been early August. She had seen him at a family get-together, but he was jittery and asked for money.

That’s what he always wanted, she told us. She said that Megan, Victor’s sister, would often tell her that if she’d just taken the time to add it all up over the years, she’d find that she’d probably given him over forty thousand dollars. But Penny refused to let herself believe that. Over the past three years, she said she’d gotten better at not enabling him and giving him so much. But every now and again, she slipped and couldn’t help but slide him a hundred here and there for food.

Megan wouldn’t speak to her mother if she found out she gave him money because she always said that Victor just used it on drugs, not food. Penny wasn’t sure if she believed that or not. There were times when she really believed Victor was turning things around.

“Did you give him money in August?”

Penny nodded. “Only a hundred. That’s all I had. Things have been tight with the economy the way it is. I’ve taken a cut in pay to keep my job.”

“What did he seem like then?”

“Like usual. Skinny, jittery, pale, but I couldn’t tell whether or not he was using. You have to understand that he’s been this way for so long.”

“For how long?”

“He started drinking when he was around eleven. Pot followed soon after. I didn’t find out until he was about fourteen when he started not coming home at night. When he did come home, he’d be drunk and stoned, and Megan told me she’d heard that he was getting into harder stuff like heroin. I talked to all the school counselors, but nothing helped.”

I nodded. “And heroin’s been his drug of choice ever since?”

“I’m not sure.” Penny sighed, then swallowed hard. “Well, actually—” Tears filled her eyes again, her face strained. “He got into meth about three or four years ago, when he was twenty-four or so. I spent every cent I had in retirement to get him into rehab in Kalispell. He went for ninety days, and it seemed to help for a while.”

“How long is ‘a while’?”

“I think a year or so. Even had a decent girlfriend for a while.”

“What was her name?” Monty was taking notes. I had my notepad out as well and was getting it all down.

“Leslie.”

“Last name?”

“I, I think it was Boone. She had a little boy named Lewis. Cute boy. Leslie seemed to really like Victor. From what Megan has told me, Leslie had gotten into meth too, but had recently cleaned her act up for her son’s sake.”

“And?”

“And nothing. Nothing came of it. I had hopes that he’d stay straight for them. But then he just started disappearing for longer periods without visiting, and when he did show, he’d need money, he always claimed, for food or rent. When I asked about Leslie, he’d say that was over, done. Never said why.”

“How long ago was that?” Monty asked from his spot on the couch. His voice seemed to surprise Penny because she looked at him wide-eyed. In fact, his voice surprised me. He had not spoken a word since we’d come, and normally I tell whoever is assigned to me to let me do the talking, but it had seemed unnecessary with Monty since he was a guy of so few words.

I decided to let him ask away while I continued to take notes. And I must say, I felt superior, vaguely proud, like a mentor watching his subject learn as he branches out. And since Monty was so close to Ford, it gave me some satisfaction that Monty might actually like to learn
investigative work, might actually be good at it, and want to leave Ford hanging at some point in his career. I nodded to Monty to continue and leaned back in the chair I’d brought in from the kitchen earlier so that I could sit across from Penny.

“About six months ago. She hasn’t been in the picture since sometime last May.”

Monty wrote this down, then glanced at me. I lifted my chin to nudge him on.

“Has he had any other girlfriends besides her?”

“Not that I’ve met. Megan said that his old girlfriend, Mindy, was with him now and again and . . .” Penny sighed. “Mindy was bad news. A real druggie.”

“What’s Mindy’s last name?”