The Naturalist (The Naturalist Series Book 1)

by Andrew Mayne

  This should be enough. At some point I’ll need to get some samples from the burial site. It’s probably swarming with police right now.

  That can wait a few days.

  A few days . . .

  I have to be back in Austin.

  Maybe if I drive out here after class and return Sunday night?

  This isn’t the time or place to go over my academic calendar.

  I shove the containers into my pocket, then carefully zip up the bag.

  Just like that, she’s back inside her pouch. I doubt that even if the ME knew someone else had taken samples, he could tell you where.

  My gloves are covered in dirt and dried blood, so I peel them off inside out and pocket them.

  When I put my ear to the door to listen for anyone, it’s silent.

  I have a moment of panic when I can’t find the latch to open the door. What if this van can’t open from the inside?

  My fingers grasp a handle, and I feel a wave of relief. The thought of being stuck back here with this stench all the way to Helena is frightful.

  Slowly, I lift the handle and ease the door open just wide enough for my body to slip through.

  I set one foot on the pavement and sense something is wrong.

  Over the odor of Chelsea’s rotting flesh, I smell smoke.

  When I turn around, I see Officer Gunther toss aside a cigarette and glare at me. “What. The. Fuck.” His hand goes to his gun. “On the ground, now!” he screams.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  FALL GUY

  Human psychology is a concept I can grasp in the abstract, usually after a given moment has passed, but there’s something about the anger in Gunther’s eyes and the primal way his nostrils are flaring that tells me that he’s furious with me—and not just because he caught me trespassing. There’s some kind of connection between him and Chelsea beyond being cousins. I violated that.

  I also realize that in a few moments I’m going to be on the ground, handcuffed and facing felony charges for tampering with evidence, as well as whatever this state’s laws are concerning stealing material from a corpse.

  My little inquiry, finding out what happened to Juniper, my life—all of that is going to take a detour if I don’t find a way out of this situation.

  I remain standing and try my first option. “I just wanted to take a look at the wounds.”

  “On the fucking ground.” His words come out like white-hot metal spittle.

  He draws his pistol and aims it right at my face. I’m one centimeter away from a trigger being pulled and a bullet shooting through my forehead, puncturing my skull and leaving a two-inch exit circle in the back of my head, spraying my brains behind me.

  “I can find out who did this . . .”

  I notice that my hands are already up. Psychologically, this means that I’ve already committed to his authority. He caught me doing something wrong, and I physically admitted to it by taking on a subservient posture.

  If I could have taken this back a few seconds, I would have smiled and not acted surprised when I saw him—instead of gaping at him in surprise, a startled, scared man giving off all the body language of guilt.

  In a moment, if I don’t fully submit, he’s going to take a step forward and place the gun against my head as he uses his handcuffs to arrest me. He’s trained not to shoot someone standing still—but someone resisting an arrest in any way that threatens his safety is fair game.

  Usually when cops kill unarmed people, it’s because they perceive some threat as they make physical contact, or they get scared and squeeze the trigger, not realizing how much pressure they’re already placing on it.

  Some cops carry guns with heavy triggers, like five or six pounds, in order to make it more difficult to accidentally fire. Gunther strikes me as a two-pound trigger. He’s more than confident he’ll know how to handle himself in a critical situation. The next few seconds may determine that.

  I remain still as he walks around me, but I keep talking. “There’s something unusual about the wounds. I think there’s more here . . .”

  He reaches up and grabs my right wrist and pulls it behind me. I don’t resist, knowing I’ll get the muzzle of his gun pushed into my kidney.

  I try a different tactic, using his name and a shared goal.

  “Gunther, we can solve this thing.”

  The handcuff squeezes tight around my wrist.

  Damn it. He’s not going to be talked into letting me go free out here. Gunther is fully committed. His fury is being channeled into what he was trained to do.

  He grabs my left wrist and pulls it behind me. As he does this, he holsters his weapon, confident that he can draw it before I could theoretically take the upper hand physically.

  Now is my time to act. What happens in the next few seconds is going to determine my fate.

  The cuffs are tightened again until they dig into the flesh of my wrists. He places one hand on my shoulder and another on the chain and presses me flat against the back wall.

  I have to go out on a limb here. I noticed something about Chelsea when I examined her and something about Gunther. They both have the same wide forehead and hair color. Faint, but present. The kind of trait you might see a lot at a family picnic.

  Gunther’s reaction is more than a genetic protection reaction.

  It was an overreaction. It was shame.

  My only way out is by going down.

  “I know what you did.”

  He pauses for a half second as he pats me down.

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  He stands up and hovers near the back of my head. I can feel his breath on my neck.

  “What the fuck do you think you know?”

  I don’t have any reason to think he had anything to do with killing Chelsea—although I have a strong suspicion he knows he had something to do with why she became so vulnerable.

  This is what I have to attack.

  “I know she’s your cousin.”

  He slaps a palm into my back, slamming me into the wall. “Keep your mouth shut.”

  This isn’t a denial. His reaction is an admission that he’s ashamed of his connection. If saying that caused this reaction, what I’m about to say is going to really get a response.

  I brace myself, then say it . . .

  “I know you fucked her.”

  BAM! He kicks the toe of his boot into the back of my knee, and I stumble. A fraction of a second later, he grabs my neck and trips me over his leg.

  I hit the concrete on the side, and it hurts like hell. But this isn’t enough. It’s not nearly enough.

  “You fucked your cousin and turned her into a whore.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” BAM! He lands a kick into the middle of my back.

  I writhe in pain and see his bright-red face. There’s a bulging vein on his forehead—the same forehead he shares with Chelsea.

  I do some quick math.

  “How old was your cousin when you fucked her? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

  “You think you’re funny?” He reaches down and slaps me in the face. The impact is so hard I can feel it in my jaw.

  But it’s still not enough.

  I fake a smile and grin up at him, giving him a target for his fury.

  “I mean, was it mainly the charge of fucking a family member, or do you just like fucking little girls?”

  The first punch to my head makes me see purple and red.

  The second makes my neck give way, and I crack my skull on the pavement.

  My last beating was from amateurs. This one is from a trained sadist.

  The next blow is so hard I don’t even feel it when I pass out.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  INPATIENT

  I know I’m in a hospital. When, where, and why are a mystery to me. A female doctor with chestnut-colored hair, pink glasses, and faint wrinkles on a tan face is shining a light in my eyes.

  She’s got a pretty face, but she elicits
a feeling of vulnerability from me that’s stronger than any sense of attraction. I want her to mother me, which I suspect she’s been doing.

  “Theo? Are you awake?”

  She says something else to me, but my face erupts into an explosion of pain as I try to speak.

  “Don’t say anything. We have your jaw wired shut.”

  I glance down at my wrists to see if either of them is chained to the bed.

  They’re not.

  This doesn’t mean that I’m not under arrest, but their presence would have been absolute confirmation that I was.

  I look around the room, trying to see where I am.

  “This is Blue Lake Hospital,” the doctor says. “You’ve been here two days. You’re lucky Officer Gunther found you. He’ll be coming by later to get a statement about the men who attacked you.”

  So that’s the story, and Gunther will be coming by to make sure that I stick to it.

  I have no memory of what happened after that last punch, but I can imagine.

  Gunther probably uncuffed me and put me in his squad car and drove me to this hospital. I’d be willing to bet it’s not the closest one to the police station.

  This is the situation I was trying to create. Had he arrested me, I would have been seriously screwed and facing jail time. However, I wasn’t expecting the beating to be so savage.

  The one I got at the hands of Devon and company was just meant to scare an out-of-towner. Officer Gunther’s beatdown on me was pure fury. It was primal.

  For a brief second I got a glimpse of what Juniper and Chelsea saw in their last moments—except I suspect theirs was far more terrifying. Mine was just brutal.

  “Just nod if you feel alert enough for me to tell you what’s going on.”

  I give her a nod. She moves a chair close to the bed and has a seat. Her name tag says Dr. Talbot.

  “You had a dislocated jaw. It popped back in pretty easily. Nothing is fractured. But I want to keep it stabilized for another day. It’ll be swollen for a few more, and I don’t recommend you eat any monster-size hoagies for a month. Understand?”

  I nod again.

  “You’ve got a costal cartilage fracture. That will hurt for a while but should take care of itself. Your face is pretty banged up, but your looks should come back. If you had any to begin with. If not, now is a good time to think about that nose job.” She gives me a smile. “So, the prognosis is nothing permanent. But you’re going to be sore for a while. I’ll give you some pain meds for the short term. We’ll see how you do in a few days. I recommend ibuprofen or beer after that.”

  I hold my hand in front of my face and tap the palm.

  “You want a mirror? Think you can handle it?”

  I nod. She pulls a small hand mirror from the drawer in my bedside table and holds it up to my face.

  My cheeks are fleshy lumps of purple and yellow. There’s a long blue line along my jaw surrounded by burst blood vessels.

  As a paramedic I saw the results of a lot of beatings. You could almost deduce the incident by the kind of trauma inflicted. Bar fights had lots of eye injuries around the orbits and cracked ribs when the assailant had their victim on the ground and just took shots kicking at them—basically what happened to me when Amber’s friends let loose.

  In domestic violence calls, I’d often notice a lot of burst vessels around the face, as the attacker would slap their victim over and over. Slapping was some kind of punitive response, not defensive. It’s meant to inflict pain, whereas a punch is intended to incapacitate.

  After Gunther punched me, he started slapping me. I struck a deep personal chord within him. This wasn’t just because I humiliated him over his sexual involvement with Chelsea; I touched on something else—impotent rage. He couldn’t be there to protect her, a girl he helped make vulnerable. So instead, he diverted all that energy toward me. As I lay on the ground unconscious, and Gunther opened his fist to slap me, I don’t think he saw my face. It could have been his own, or more perversely, Chelsea’s.

  Talbot pats me on the knee. “I’m going to let you get some more rest. If the swelling comes down, I might take the bandage off your head later on today. You’re a pretty fast healer. Try to keep that up.”

  After she leaves, I stare at the curtains. Daylight trickles through swaying branches, creating a hypnotic pattern as the wind rocks them. Through a tiny slit I can see the snowcapped peak of a mountain in the distance.

  I’m in a serene mental place because of all the painkillers. If I don’t move my mouth, I can almost forget the trauma my body went through. Better enjoy it while I can. In the next few days, it’s going to be excruciating.

  And after that, then what?

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  DEPARTURES

  I’m making notes on a yellow pad Talbot was kind enough to provide for me after she noticed I hadn’t touched the remote for the television.

  I’ve been thinking of a kind of equation, a simplistic version of MAAT. I found Chelsea’s body fairly quickly once I understood how to narrow down the search area to find soil that had been recently disturbed. While I don’t know how well the local flora would cooperate in other areas, this worked pretty well for this part of Montana.

  The equation is more of a program, a kind of if/then decision tree. It starts with calculating the likelihood of there being a missing person who fits the vulnerable profile and comparing it to geographical information and population density. In theory, I could change some of the variables and apply it elsewhere. Instead of looking for vegetation variations, I might use topological data to calculate where a killer might decide is the most remote yet accessible location to hide a body. Forensics specialists will use methane probes to look for decomposing bodies. Another means might be to use sonar to look for soil density and thermal imaging at certain times of day. A body buried underground would lose heat differently than surrounding earth.

  Another thought is to use lidar—lasers that map the 3-D landscape. Had I the opportunity, I would love to see if there was some kind of subtle indentation or outdent roughly the same size as a body. This could be statistically significant and provide another way to scan a large amount of area in a short time.

  There’s a knock on the door, and Dr. Talbot pokes her head in. “Good, you’re up. Let’s check on that mug of yours.”

  She sits on the edge of my bed and gently probes the contours of my face. I’m fascinated by her eyes. She’s clearly making a clinical assessment, but there’s obvious compassion there—not necessarily for me as a person, but for my body, for me as a patient.

  “Let’s see here. Blink if it hurts.”

  She traces her fingers down my jawline. There’s a subtle pain, but nothing like yesterday. I don’t blink.

  “Good. I’m going to take these off.”

  She unwraps the bandage that has been holding my jaw clenched and sets it aside.

  “Okay, slowly, open your mouth. Stop when you feel pain.”

  I get my teeth apart a fair distance before I feel something sharp in the back of my mouth. I stop there.

  She measures the distance between my teeth with a small ruler. “Not the most scientific tool, but my dad was a vet and it worked for him. The good news is you can move from straw food to anything that fits on a spoon. I’ll send you up some soup. Sound good?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I reply in a scratchy voice.

  “Let’s get some liquids in you. In the meantime, we have a special visitor.”

  I look toward the door, hoping to see Jillian walk through. Instead Office Gunther enters.

  My whole body trembles for a moment. I don’t know if it’s a high-level response or something from muscle memory. Either way, I feel my stomach knot up, and I grow cold.

  “Look who it is, Theo. The man who rescued you.” Talbot gives me a warm smile and a squeeze on my shoulder. “I bet you’re glad to see him.”

  I glance up at Gunther and nod. “You have no idea.”

  “I’ll leave
you two to get to the bottom of this.” She stands up and walks over to Gunther. “It’s nice of you to check in on him.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replies uneasily.

  To be honest, I’m relieved to see that he didn’t slip the lie on like a new pair of shoes. That would make me suspect that he’s a sociopath. Instead, he just awkwardly accepts the praise, trying not to look at my bruised face.

  He shuts the door behind her and takes a seat in the corner. Eyes toward the floor, slack posture. He doesn’t want to stare at me and see the damage he’s done to my face.

  “You shouldn’t have been in that van,” he says after an uncomfortable silence.

  Right now he’s wrestling with what he did, trying to decide if he made the wrong choice in not arresting me.

  “They’re not going to find Chelsea’s killer,” I reply.

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw what happened with my friend Juniper. They’ll do the same thing all over again.”

  Relieved that this conversation isn’t going to be about what he did to me, he finally makes eye contact. “You don’t know anything about me and Chelsea.”

  “I think you cared about her a great deal.” I leave out that he’s also very ashamed of what she became.

  “I was like a brother to her. Her parents weren’t around much, and I had to look out for her.” He pauses. “When she got older . . .”

  It’s a small town. The number of available women is very limited. It’s why first-cousin marriage is the norm in so many parts of the world—that, and it makes it easier to retain property in zero-sum societies.

  “When I saw you coming out of the back of that van. What the fuck, man? And then when you opened your mouth and just wouldn’t shut up. What the hell were you doing back there?”

  “Looking for bacteria and hair samples.”

  “They do all that science shit in the state lab.”

  “Not like I can. They’re twenty years behind the tools I have access to.”

  “Oh, yeah? How good are those tools of yours in court?”

  “I don’t give a damn about court right now. I want to find a killer.”