Sometimes all a breathing attack takes is reassurance. What Pete thought. And a shot of prednisone. And two huffs of the red inhaler, then the white one. And a big burly doctor who looked a little like Ernest Hemingway to place his hand on an arm and keep repeating, “Just a reaction to the altitude, maybe the mist tonight and woodsmoke combined. You’ll be fine, fine. There now.” And a Latvian in a bathrobe—Oh God! Pete noticed now that she had bare feet! She had not even stopped to put on shoes—a barefoot Latvian to intone, “So beautiful, you really look like an angel,” and a one-armed hero who reeks of cigarettes and pot to keep saying happily, “Fuckin’ A, look, look at that, breathing fine now, fuckin’ A.”
The doctor took Pete out onto the little rotting porch and told him that the next morning he should get her down to lower altitude and right to an ER if she continued to struggle. He refused to take any kind of payment. Celine slept soundly with her oxygen and woke unsteady and ragged, but strangely refreshed. The morning was windy and clear and had swept away the clouds and the smoke, and she insisted that they stay. They did not need to hurry down to lower altitude. She felt she’d be fine. Pete didn’t argue; he yielded to a predisposition to let people exercise their right to self-determination, even with those he loved most, and even when he didn’t quite understand their decisions. Especially then.
They ate breakfast early at Poli’s and Celine gave Nastasia her favorite silk scarf, the one with little gold triangles that represent pine trees or mountains on a cobalt field, and the girl was so touched she had to hurry into the kitchen. They used the restaurant phone to call the sheriff in Livingston. Then they spent the morning relaxing in their room and looking over their notes and speculating and napping. There had been a lot of travel and emotion in the last few days and they needed the break.
In the afternoon they roused themselves and called the main number for the park administration and asked for Timothy Farney in Law Enforcement. “By the way,” Celine said to the receptionist, “what is his official title now?”
“Oh, he’s Chief Ranger,” the operator said cheerfully. Good, still around. A career man.
“Of what, exactly?” asked Celine.
“Of what?” the operator repeated, puzzled.
“I mean what district or whatever?”
“Oh! Why, of Yellowstone! Of the park!” The woman was so enthusiastic. Well, Chief Farney had made it to the top! After slugging it out in the districts! Clearly the woman had been living in Mammoth Hot Springs too long. Celine had seen the pictures: Elk lay all over the lawns like sunbathers at a beach. It could drive anyone batty.
“Right. Thank you. Please put me through.”
“Of course!”
Jesus. The next voice was much less excitable. “Operations,” it said. Jaded, almost put-upon. “Timothy Far—” Before she could get out the full name the line clicked and she was transferred. Now there seemed to be a secretary. The secretary must have had an office with a view: maybe a herd of antelope on a hill. Celine imagined a jar full of crumbly toffee on her desk, on a doily. She was much more relaxed. “Who’s calling?” she asked, ready to be surprised.
“Celine Watkins. I’m a private investigator from New York.” She had no reason to be cagey.
“Oh, how interesting. And what matter can I say are you calling about?”
“The disappearance in or near the park of a man named Paul Lamont.”
“Just a minute, please.” She almost sang it.
When the woman came back on the phone she sounded like a different person.
“I’m sorry,” she said with hostility. Wow. “Chief Farney is on vacation.”
“I see. And when might he be back?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t divulge that information.”
“You can’t tell me when the Chief of Enforcement will be back in the office?”
“Security reasons.”
“I see,” Celine said dryly. “Nor where he has gone, I suppose.” Silence. “The Caribbean is very nice this time of year, but of course, it’s hurricane season.” Silence. Then the phone clucked. The mercurial secretary had hung up.
EIGHTEEN
Sheriff Cam Travers met them the next morning at the bridge over Soda Butte Creek, just outside the park boundary. He got out of the truck and unkinked his back and reached into the front seat for a stained fawn cowboy hat. He wore a Sheriff’s Department parka and Wranglers. He winced as he stretched and leaned back into the truck for a travel coffee cup that said #1 GRANDPA.
“Okay, ready for work now,” he said and shook each of their hands. When he saw their own travel mugs—MAMA GRIZZLY and PAPA GRIZZLY—he smiled. “Just a sec.” He got a thermos out of the truck and topped them all off. He was courteous and curious, and Celine liked the way he studied their clothes, their speech, sizing them up and withholding judgment. He had just driven the two and half hours from the county seat in Livingston. When he had heard that morning that they were near the northeast entrance and interested in the case of Paul Lamont, he said he needed to come down to Cooke City anyway to deal with Curly, which is what the residents were calling the local grizzly. He’d meet them at the bridge in the morning, and then schedule a bear recon with Parks and Wildlife after lunch. On the phone, he had asked for Celine’s New York State PI license number. Due diligence.
They all drank from their cups. Travers turned up the collar of his jacket. The wind was raw and felt like coming snow. “You live right across the river,” he said. “Right in view of the Twin Towers. I looked it up.”
Celine winced, not from the cold.
“Sorry,” he said. “Helluva thing. The world changed last year. Still changing. I can feel it like I can feel a coming snowstorm. It makes me sad, deep down.” He shook himself off, sipped from his coffee mug. “We didn’t meet in the woods of Montana to talk about that.” He waited.
“Sheriff, do you remember Gabriela Lamont?” Celine asked.
“Of course I do. A smart and extremely tenacious young lady. Very pretty, too.”
“That’s her. She said you were very helpful.”
“Kind of her.” He sipped and looked them over carefully, glanced at the truck camper. The two didn’t jibe.
“She came back up here a number of times over a span of two years?”
“She wasn’t satisfied with the determination of the Park Service,” Travers said. “Neither was I, to tell you the truth.”
“How do you mean?”
Travers looked at the bridge, the creek. “Well. In law enforcement we are all a little turfy, that’s a fact. The park is federal, of course, and they assumed jurisdiction. They had legitimate grounds. Lamont’s truck was parked”—he turned and pointed at the opposite side of the road, a turnout of gravel just east of the bridge—“there. The bridge is the park boundary. The entrance gate is a mile and a half south but the actual border is here. Chicksaw, the tracker, determined that Lamont had been dragged—or run—into the park. So.”