Mortal Fall

Praise for Christine Carbo’s
The Wild Inside

“Carbo paints a moving picture of complex, flawed people fighting to make their way in a wilderness where little is black or white, except the smoky chiaroscuro of the sweeping Montana sky . . . an evocative debut.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Sharp, introspective Systead is a strong series lead, and Carbo rolls out solid procedural details, pitting him against Department of the Interior bureaucrats. The grittiness of the poverty-wracked area surrounding Glacier plays against the park’s dangerous beauty in this dark foray into the wilderness subgenre. Put this one in the hands of those who enjoy Paul Doiron’s Mike Bowditch novels and Julia Keller’s Bell Elkins series.”

—
Booklist

“Stays in your mind long after you’ve put the book down. I’m still thinking about it. Prepare to run the gamut of emotions with this fine treat of a story. Then, in the years ahead, be on the lookout for more from this fresh new voice in the thriller genre.”

—Steve Berry,
New York Times
bestselling author of the Cotton Malone series

“Fans of Nevada Barr will love this tense, atmospheric thriller with its majestic Glacier National Park setting.
The Wild Inside
is a stunning debut!”

—Deborah Crombie,
New York Times
bestselling author of
To Dwell in Darkness

“An intense and thoroughly enjoyable thrill ride. Christine Carbo’s literary voice echoes with her love of nature, her knowledge of its brutality, and the wild and beautiful locale of Montana.
The Wild Inside
is a tour de force of suspense that will leave you breathlessly turning the pages late into the night.”

—Linda Castillo,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Dead Will Tell

“Grizzly bears, murder, mauling, and mayhem mix in Carbo’s debut novel. Ted Systead’s past and present intersect in an unexpected—and chilling—manner against the incongruously gorgeous backdrop of Glacier National Park.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“The brutality and fragility of Glacier National Park’s wilderness provides the perfect backdrop for this well-crafted, absorbing novel about the barbarities and kindnesses of the humans living on its edge. Christine Carbo is a writer to watch.”

—Tawni O’Dell,
New York Times
bestselling author of
One of Us

“If the key to a mystery’s success is keeping the reader guessing,
The Wild Inside
is a fine example of the genre.”

—
The Billings Gazette

“As haunting and vivid as the scenery it depicts,
The Wild Inside
is a masterful portrait of the savagery of nature—both the great untamed outdoors and the human soul. Highly recommended.”

—Kira Peikoff, author of
Die Again Tomorrow

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For my husband, Jamie

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s . . .

—WILLIAM BLAKE,
JERUSALEM

Prologue

I
SLOWLY SLID ACROSS
the torn seat to the open car door where my brother’s friend, Todd, stood braced against the wind. My best friend, Nathan, sat next to me looking equal parts resigned and irritated. The wind nipped my face the second I stepped out. I wrapped my arms around my chest as we walked off the road, into the dried, grassy field toward the tree. We followed my brother, Adam, and Todd, and another friend of theirs, Perry.

All three were in high school. Nathan and I were four years younger—in seventh grade and still gullible at twelve years old. We’d been talked into going with them. Nathan had warned me that it was just another trick played by Adam and his buddies, but this time, I thought it was different. I had begun to believe—or maybe just
wanted
to believe—Adam was telling me the truth for a change.

Plus it was Halloween night, and I was up for something different, something other than staying home watching Dad drink too many beers while trying to convince my mom that the trick-or-treaters knocking on the door weren’t coming to kill us.

The moon slid out from behind moody clouds, casting a shimmering dust of light. Adam and his friends strode toward the stately tree guarding the old cemetery like a faithful sentry. Confident and sure of themselves, their frames loomed tall in the pale moonlight while their shoes scuffed the tangled grass and weeds. The tombstones squatted to our left, dark bumps scattered haphazardly and surrounded by the overgrown meadow. I tried not to pay attention to them crouched off to the side, tried not to think of them as menacing animals watching
us and getting ready to pounce. In fact, I pretended we weren’t in a cemetery at all, when Todd halted about thirty feet before the tree and just stared at it, his head tilted to the side.

“Which branch do you think they hanged her from?” he asked in a loud whisper.

“That one.” Adam pointed to a thick, longer arm that reached out to the side as if to point toward the headstones. Perry had told us that he learned from his history teacher that there had been a woman hanged years ago in the cemetery for being a witch.

“Probably,” Perry said. “Let’s go closer. Check it out. They say you can hear the tree whispering if you stand under the spot it happened, can hear it saying her name:
Lucinda, Lucinda, Lucinda.
” Perry turned and looked at us, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide.

“You two, you go first,” Adam said.

“No way,” I protested. “You go.” But before I knew it, Adam had my arm, and Todd and Perry had Nathan’s. “Hey, stop,” I screamed. My brother’s fingers dug into me like steel clamps as he pulled me in front of them toward the tree. With one hard shove, I went plummeting forward, and I saw Nathan tumbling to the ground next to me. Nathan yelled too, but before we could stand, my brother and his crew darted back to the car.

“Hurry,” I yelled to Nathan as we pushed ourselves up. We ran, trying to catch them, but we were too small and they were much faster. I saw them reach the Pontiac and dive in, hooting and yipping like coyotes. The chassis rocked with their shifting weight, the doors slammed, the engine sprang to life, and the headlights fanned out on the gravel road.

Nathan and I stopped and stood gasping for air when we reached the spot the car had just left. The dust from the tires still lingered, and our panting plumed urgently before us. We watched as they sped off, the exhaust streaming behind them.

Something inside me wilted. I looked at Nathan, at the sheer anger in his eyes. After all, he had warned me. I wanted to say I was sorry,
but I was breathing too hard to speak, and I wasn’t sure what to say anyway. To this day, I don’t know what I could have said, if anything could have made a difference. But that was the last time I trusted my brother, though a part of me never quit wanting to.

• • •

Memory is a tricky devil. Twenty-two years later, I recall the headlights sweeping across the pale dry grass stooping sideways in the wind, the cluster of birch trees with golden leaves clinging to their branches, the dusty red Pontiac with torn black vinyl seats, the yellowed stuffing pushing out like infected, swollen tissue. I remember the smell of sweat and dirty tennis shoes. I also have an image of steam rising from ripples under pale moonlight. But the condensation isn’t something I’m sure I actually saw. How could I? I wasn’t near water. But I’ve always known that with that night crept something much darker—something more threatening that sneaks through my dreams and slouches just under my awareness, nudging memories forward like a black wave pushing debris ahead of itself. I’ve always promised myself that I would find a way to stay ahead of it, to avoid its pull and not get swept away in the undercurrent.

1

I
LIKE DETAILS, EVIDENCE,
and organized notes. When I possess facts, I can clear the detritus around me, think straight, and proceed cautiously. Some might argue that this response is an overreaction to a complicated upbringing, or an overzealous affection for order; and in fact, that might be true. So when my intuition niggled at me that something wasn’t quite right with this particular accident, I tried to ignore it. The facts are that every summer in Glacier Park, there is at least one if not several hikers or climbers who stumble on unstable rock or lose their balance on wet, slippery boulders, sliding wildly out of control and catapulting to their demise on the jagged terrain below or into a raging stream, whisking them away.

All of us Glacier Park Police officers and rangers know that the most dire situations are frequently born from small, seemingly insignificant errors of judgment where a hiker is impatient, for example, and thinks the shortcut across an early-season snowfield is a stellar idea. So this tragedy was no different other than the fact that the Loop—the hairpin curve on the west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road—was an odd place for a hiker to go down. Although incredibly steep in places close to the pass, it was, after all, near the main road and a small buildup of natural stone formed a roadside barrier at the curving, sheer edge.

I stood with Ken Greeley, another Park Police officer, Charlie Olson, one of our seasoned rangers, and Joe Smith, chief of Park Police, on the short rock divider with Heavens Peak to our left. Nearly nine thousand feet of mass pushed to the sky and dominated the view west from the
Going-to-the-Sun Road. Scraps of clouds reached northward from the permanently snow-coated peak like silk pennons.

“Looks like a bad fall.” Ken chewed a piece of gum vigorously as he peered down at the foot and leg twisted at an unnatural angle. “Any chance he hiked in from a different route and is still alive?”

“Unlikely,” Joe said. “He hasn’t moved since Charlie reported it. But I’ve got S&R on standby.”

We had gotten word an hour before from Charlie. A tourist had spotted something white poking out from a dark shadow in the steep ravine, found Charlie talking to some folks near the outdoor bathroom facility, and asked him to take a look. Although difficult to make out details with the tricks shadows like to play on rocks, Charlie did agree—with the help of some binoculars—that it appeared to be a shoe, a light-colored sock, and an ankle illuminated by a bright strip of sunshine piercing the crevasse.

“Think maybe it was a suicide?” Ken asked.

Joe shrugged. He’d been particularly quiet for the past eight months since the well-known case dubbed Bear Bait, in which we’d found a man bound to a tree near McGhee Meadow in Glacier Park. The victim, Victor Lance, was killed and fed on by a grizzly, and one of Joe’s family members had been involved. I’d assisted a lead investigator from the Department of the Interior on the case.

“Possibly,” I offered on Joe’s behalf. “Can’t tell for sure, but from the looks of where he is, I don’t think he actually fell from this roadside after all. There’s some slippery rock.” I pointed my chin to a spring seep that coated part of the slope across from us. The June sun spread across my back like the hot palm of a hand. Summer often arrives late to these parts, the fresh tang of spring sometimes hanging on until past solstice, but today seemed to mark the season’s first solid lunge forward. It was going on eleven a.m., and Glacier Park vibrated with new life and promise. Here today, gone tomorrow, I thought morosely. “He might have gone off trail to take a picture or a piss and misjudged how slippery those rocks are when they’re wet.”