Mortal Fall (29 page)

“But you never said you weren’t coming either. Please, Monty.” She put her hand on my chest. “I’m sorry about Adam. Really, it was a mistake mentioning the party. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wish we could just be happy again.”

“Well, we’re not, and it’s not realistic to think we can be. Not after all this.” I looked at her pointedly. I’m sure there was accusation in my eyes, and hurt, and I could see guilt and tears welling in hers.

“Please, Monty. I can’t dump this on my family at the last minute like this. It will destroy my parents to find out that we’re split.”

I took her hand off my chest and placed it by her side, then turned to go back in.

“Monty, where are you going?”

“Back to work, Lara. Back to work.”

• • •

With my heart thumping, I grabbed my notebook from my desk and my keys and drove to Lake McDonald to get out of the office. The sun shone hot on the water and the haze over the peaks gave them a surreal
quality, as if they had been painted on a canvas. I got out of the car and sat on a picnic table, stretching my legs over to the side.

My pulse quickly slowed to normal. I sat motionless, regarding the still water and the tourists mulling around. A family picnicked farther down the beach. An older boy skipped pebbles across the glassy water, and several younger children played, splashing in the lake and yelping gleefully.

Farther down the shoreline, a family of ducks dipped in and out of the shade. I thought of my brother and felt a wave of self-pity come over me. All these years later and he was still messing with me. I felt foolish for taking pity upon him while looking into the past events at Glacier Academy. I hadn’t seen him in four years and suddenly I find he’s been poking around Lara’s and my separation like a mountain lion sniffing out a weakness and going in for the attack, helping to put the fatal bite into our marriage.

I could hear something small scuffle under a rock, probably a chipmunk coming out for some morsel a tourist had dropped then darting back under. I touched the corner of my eye, swollen and tender. Was it always going to be like this—Adam lurking in the shadows of my life even when I’d made direct efforts to stay out of his? Still, he knew how to press my buttons and that was no one’s mistake but mine. I knew Adam had chipped away at me until he created a weak spot, a frailty in me, years ago, and he still wanted to play on that. But I wasn’t going to let him.

“No,” I said out loud, surprising myself. A passing couple looked at me. Embarrassed, I opened my notepad and made like I was busy. No, I was not going to let him affect Lara and me. My issues with Adam should not be taken out on her. I could imagine him running into her at the store, her arms full of grocery bags, in a hurry. Adam towering over her and grinning, making her nervous. Of course, she’d say,
How are you? I’m fine, just getting ready for a big family reunion
.

A lot had happened in just months to make us unravel, and absurdly, presently, and against all logic, I was feeling like it had something
to do with him. I knew better, though. Sure, we had our share of troubles before the separation. I could become too focused and ignore the relationship too much when working. She could be selfish and inconsiderate, sometimes absentminded. . . . But we loved each other, and we were both aware of each other’s flaws. Our real problems didn’t begin until she decided she wanted to start a family, and I couldn’t find it in me to compromise and had let her down.
That
, I told myself, had absolutely nothing to with Adam.

I didn’t come from a normal family, but so what? It was Adam who cast a pall in the center of my being when I was a kid. It was Adam who was toxic, who unwittingly destroyed the Faraways and made me feel like something would forever be off-kilter, something that excluded me from the right to a healthy, loving wife and children.

No, this wasn’t Lara’s fault. It was silly that she didn’t want to tell her family about us, but they were oddly traditional and had strict ideas about marriage and divorce. I could see her not wanting to broach the subject until the festivities were finished and everyone went home to their lives, a good time had by all. And I had no desire to leave her in the lurch for something we had planned together an entire year before so everyone in her huge family could make it work with their schedules.

I pulled out my phone and rang her. She answered on the first ring, her voice small and somber. “Lara?”

“Monty, I’m sorry.”

“I know. I’m sorry too.” I recalled how her hand felt slight and smooth when I took it off my chest and placed it by her side. I thought of a wounded bird and suddenly felt very protective of her, and I didn’t usually feel that way. It was one of the things Lara had liked about me when we dated—that I wasn’t particularly shielding and overbearing like her own father could be. Her father was a big, lovable man, but the type of dad who gave his daughters huge bear hugs and referred to them as his baby girls that needed to be sheltered and taken care of at all times. “I’ll be there at two,” I offered.

“Thank you,” she said.

“But . . .” I exhaled loudly and looked up at the large, prominent sky turned hazy—obscure and fuzzy like our relationship had become. “When this is over, we make a decision: move on with our lives, either together or apart, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll do that.”

31

W
HEN I GOT
back to the office, Ken and I discussed how we could get ahold of records from Glacier Academy. The additional surveillance footage from the West Glacier entrance station finally arrived, so Ken got busy with the tedious job of watching car after car line up outside the gates, drive slowly to the station, pay, and enter the park. He was looking for Mark Phillips’s car, any other signs of him or anyone else suspicious on the days of June 16 through 19, when we suspected Phillips went missing.

Then we went to find Tammy DeWitt. She lived in a very small wooden A-frame house in Coram, which is in the canyon north of Hungry Horse closer to the park. The house had a metal roof sloping down on each side, and a chain-link fence surrounded a dry and patchy yard with overgrown weeds to the side and a small porch in front. On the way in, I noticed several
PRIVATE PROPERTY
,
NO TRESPASSING, NO HUNTING WITHOUT PERMISSION
signs posted on some of the pines.

When we pulled up, three mutts of three different sizes came running—a Chihuahua-size yapper, a pit-bullish-looking tan one, and a scruffy long-haired collarless one. The woman I remembered from the bar stepped out of her screen door onto her small, rotting porch and shielded her face from the sun so she could see who was driving up.

I coasted to a stop, killed the engine, and checked out the three mutts gathering around my door, jumping and barking. None were snarling or baring teeth, so I slowly stepped out, while Tammy stood and watched without lifting a finger to come grab the ones wearing the
collars or at least to call them back away from the car. “Easy boys, easy,” I said, and let them sniff my hand.

When I got some tails wagging, Ken stepped out and we walked toward Tammy with the three of them staying close by, the small one continuously yapping and jumping up on my ankles. I touched the brim of my cap and gave a small nod to Tammy and introduced myself and Ken.

“I recognize you,” Tammy said without inviting us up. “And I got nothing to say to you.”

We walked up onto the deck anyway. I could smell turpentine and sun-heated wood. I said, “Are you Tammy DeWitt?”

She nodded that she was.

“Aren’t you interested in how long your boy’ll be in jail?” One of the dogs sat next to my feet, panting hot air on my leg.

She pushed her bottom lip out and placed a hand on her very round hip. She was wearing tight cutoff jeans with some shiny, silver beading across the pockets, and a tank top that showed fleshy, freckled arms, her big chest, and an extra ring of fat right above her waistline. She had blond streaks painted into her red, frizzy hair which made it look more like a color job gone wrong than anything hip or attractive. A tattoo of a rose climbed her ankle and another of a vine peeked out from the low V of her top. “How long?” she asked.

“Few days longer, at the least, until his arraignment in Missoula. So he is your boyfriend?”

“I didn’t say that, now did I?” The dogs left the hot deck and went to find some shade off to the side, which looked like a good idea to me, but Tammy seemed fine standing in her flip-flops, sweating and glaring at me. She didn’t look like she was going to budge.

“Whether he is or not, I need to ask you a question or two. It won’t take long.” I could feel the sun heating up my shirt and biting the back of my shoulders.

“And if I don’t answer ’em?”

“Then you could ensure that Dorian stays in longer.”

She pulled her hair up and began fanning the back of her neck with her hand. “Make it quick then.”

“You want to go in where it’s cooler?” I asked as I pulled out my notepad.

“No,” she said abruptly, and I wondered what she may have had to hide inside. There was also a small, run-down Winnebago trailer off to the side of her property with its windows boarded up that looked suspicious. I couldn’t help but wonder if there might be some crystal meth getting cooked or a stash of illegal weapons inside.

“That’s fine.” I leaned against the railing. Ken stood next to me, his hands by his sides. Tammy checked him out and licked her bottom lip, then pushed her boobs out a little farther and fluffed up her fuzzy hair. “You live here alone?”

“Yes,” she said.

“So, Tammy,” I said. “Do you recall what you were doing on the afternoon of June 20?” This was not the day I cared about, but I wanted to see if she was going to automatically say she was with Dorian to cover for him.

“I was out of town. I have family on the east side and I was visiting them.”

“Okay, what about on the afternoon of June twenty-first?”

“I was driving home that day. I got home late because I didn’t leave my parents until later in the day. I remember because it was the solstice.”

“Okay then, what about the next day, the twenty-second?” This was the day we were sure Wolfie had died.

A raven flew over and cawed and she looked up at it, her bottom lip still pouty. “Damn birds,” she grumbled. “I hate those things.” Her face had a sheen of sweat and I was just about to ask her again when she said, “Oh, I was at the Outlaw’s Nest in the afternoon?”

“By yourself?’

“No, I was with Dorian. I remember because he wanted to get some lunch and a drink after I got back from my trip.”

“And how long would you say you were with him?”

“From about noon until three or four, but then we left.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I don’t know. We’d been there awhile and we wanted to go.”

“And where did you go?’

“He brought me home. I wanted to go somewhere else, have some more fun, maybe go dancing later, but he said he had a headache. Didn’t feel like going out, so he brought me here around four thirty or so.”

I wrote it all down in my notepad while Tammy asked Ken if he was from around “these parts” and continued to lick her lips. I had a feeling that what she told us would square up with what Dorian claimed, even though I was disappointed to not catch him in a lie. I decided against telling her about Dorian heading to Melissa’s. There was no leverage I could see gained from doing that, so I thanked her for her cooperation and left, the dogs not bothering to get up to see us off.

32

L
ARA WAS IN
full-on director mode when I arrived at the reunion. She was giving orders to the caterers, requesting for tables to be rearranged and checking with the hired bartender to make sure he had the correct reds and whites and all the booze her family liked on hand. When she saw me, she came over and said, “Oh good, you’re here, and on time. Thank you.” She gave me a kiss on my nonbruised cheek.

Her three sisters were there arranging flowers on the tables, her mother and father were standing in the shade of one of the tents, and two of her brothers and their wives were over at the bar helping themselves to drinks. Bright sunlight bounced off the white tents, and I could already feel sweat gathering on the back of my neck. The wind had changed because it was no longer hazy, but crystal clear with the peaks of Glacier standing proud to our north. To the southwest, huge cumulus clouds stacked higher and higher above the smaller mountains.

I regarded the mountains of Glacier, thinking how I’d like nothing more than to be in them, away from false pretenses and fake smiles. I could be spending my precious time working on the cases, and the reunion itself was a sacrifice on more than one level.

“Come say hi to Mom and Dad.” Lara started toward her parents and I followed. “And please don’t look so serious.” She leaned in and whispered to me: “Smile.”

Lara’s mom, Doreen, came up and embraced me and Lara’s dad, Walt, gave me a big, manly shake and a tough pat on the shoulder. “Hey, Monty,” he said. “Good Lord, what happened to your eye?”

“Just something stupid from work.” I brought my hand to it.

“Hmm, well, good to see you. You taking good care of my baby girl?”

I gave a fake laugh and didn’t answer. I considered the question rhetorical since he always asked it, but this time, without his intention, it carried an edge. After going through similar motions with the rest of her siblings and their spouses, Lara made sure I met two new additions to the family—a two-month-old boy, her youngest sister’s first baby, and a sixth-month-old girl, her brother’s third child. I smiled at them both, saying how precious they were, while Lara’s mom and oldest sister watched me like hawks. Finally, Lara’s oldest sister, Teresa, said, “So, when are you two going to start your own family?” She was looking at me—the question all for me, not Lara, and I could tell Lara had at least let her in on our dilemma.

I just smiled again at the little ones, ignoring her question. “I hope we don’t get rained on.” I lifted my chin in the direction of the cumulonimbus heaping higher in the west.