Mortal Fall by Christine Carbo Page B

all sin, but placed them above the muddy transgressions that plagued other people.
    I became ashamed of my upbringing and was reluctant for Lara’s family members to meet any of mine. In fact, when we married, Lara and I fought over the fact that I didn’t even want my parents or brother to come. To make her happy, though, we invited them. My dad and Adam came, drank way too much, while my mom stayed home. She couldn’t make it because she was in the throes of a bad spell. Now, ironically, here Lara was in the system I initially found comfort in—not feeling safe enough to tell them the truth about our separation, which was her idea in the first place.
    “Look, look.” I was silent for a moment, then she sighed. “Just don’t worry about it, Monty, okay? I’ll deal with it.”
    “Deal with what? Have you forgotten that this was your idea?”
    “Deal with my family, I meant.”
    “We can talk about your family later. Okay? But you know what I think—that you should tell them. It’s crazy not to tell them.”
    She didn’t answer and while I stayed on the phone listening to her silence and the chickadees’ long, casual morning whistles outside, I got the call from Joe Smith and told her I needed to get going. We’d been down this road so many times, and I knew nothing was going to get accomplished by lingering on the phone.
    I finished eating and waited for Will to swing by to pay the bill. When he brought it over, I said, “Do you work here in the evenings?”
    “Sure do, this is my only day shift of the week. I work nights Monday through Thursday.”
    “You know a couple a’ locals named Paul Sedgewick—known as Wolfie—and Sam Ward?”
    “I think so—know of them, not personally.” He grabbed the bill with my credit card on top. “Is that the guy that . . . ? In Glacier?”
    I nodded.
    “I heard about that. Crazy.” He shook his head. “Just falling like that.” The waitress with the dark, bobbed hair working the floor stomped up and handed Will a ticket of drinks to make. He looked at it and wrinkled his nose. “A slippery nipple ? Now?”
    “That’s what the lady wants.” The waitress smiled.
    “She just turn twenty-one or something?”
    The waitress splayed both palms up and shrugged. “It’s Friday,” she said.
    “What’s happening to the Wild West?” Will rolled his eyes, then ran my credit card and set it and the receipt back down for me to sign.
    “Yeah, so you were working the other night when he and Sam stopped in for a beer?”
    “I was.”
    “Notice anything unusual?” I handed him the signed slip.
    “Unusual?” he looked confused. His face was flushed and a sheen of sweat shone on the back of his neck and I could tell he worked hard during these busy months.
    “Yeah, like was he angry or worried or anything?”
    Will shrugged. “Honestly, I couldn’t tell ya. I mean, they both seemed normal to me, but I was busy, so it’s not like I spend much time people watching. And I didn’t really know them. Just seen ’em in here a few times is all.” He grabbed a bottle of butterscotch schnapps to start making the slippery nipple, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Monica,” he called. “She want Irish cream or Baileys with this?”
    I thanked him and left. He had work to do, and so did I.

8
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    I WAS BACK AT headquarters. Ken had finished checking the phone records and saw nothing unusual there either. Most of the calls were to Cathy, texts to the kids, calls to Sam and Pritchard. Bowman also called and told me what I already knew—that no other biologists aware of the camera stations in the park had picked up the memory card at the Loop site.
    I called Dr. Pettiman and rechecked with him as well that there was no disk in the victim’s clothes and he said he had not sent the body to Missoula yet, but would in a few hours. Right as I hung up, Brenda, the receptionist at headquarters, knocked on the incident room door to tell me that Wolfie’s wife was