by Jeff Carson
“Thanks, Chase,” Rachette said. “We’ll let you get back to work.”
“It’s no problem. We’ve got it contained so the work’s pretty much over. Anyway, glad I could assist, but sorry I couldn’t help with what you’re looking for.”
Patterson scratched her chin with her engagement ring finger, just in case Chase got any bold ideas, and glared at the line of cars moving like ants in the distance. She spotted the gas station, and then another car cut left across the expansive valley in front of them a half-mile away. “What’s that road?”
“I don’t know,” Chase said. “Why?”
“How far could an ember travel on the wind?”
“A couple hundred yards, I suppose. But the embers are all down at the other end. That’s why we’re here, to make sure they’re all out.”
Patterson shook her head. “No. An ember from a moving truck.”
Chase folded his arms and gazed the same direction as Patterson. “You think your UrMover truck was burned on that far road and a burning ember blew all that way here? Not this nearest road?”
“What is it to that farther road, four hundred yards?” Patterson asked.
“No.” Rachette said. “Like five hundred. A short par five.”
Patterson and Chase turned to him.
“What? I play golf, and that’s about five hundred yards to that road. I can tell.”
“That’s too far.” Chase shook his head. “No way.”
Patterson pointed at a grove of oak trees between the two roads. “That’s less distance. Did you check near those trees?”
Patterson’s arm sizzled and looked like a burnt hot dog as it rested out the open window.
Rachette’s window was up and he had the air conditioning blasting on him.
“Why don’t you roll down your window? What if we can smell something?”
Rachette looked at her.
“We passed your grove of trees. There was nothing in there. We’re done.”
She gritted her teeth and shook her head. She knew what she saw on that tape. It fit.
Danny Chase was no longer behind them. He’d been just as dejected as Patterson when the oak trees lining the creek held no burned secrets and he’d returned to his prior task of burying embers on the burn line.
Now Patterson and Rachette crept along, another few hundred yards reaping nothing but more anger from Rachette.
The road dropped down and veered left ninety degrees toward the line of oaks that hugged a creek, and they were travelling perpendicular toward the first county road they’d been on earlier.
A short distance later there was a ninety-degree turn to the right.
Rachette took the bend and stopped. “Look at that.”
There was a mound in the road up ahead with a sign that said Hedge Creek.
Rachette rolled down his window and stuck his head out. Letting off the gas he said, “Look for tracks going off the road.”
A second later Patterson saw exactly that. “Stop!”
Rachette scraped to a halt and then jammed it in park.
It was immediately clear they had found their quarry. She stepped outside and punched a fist into the wind she was so excited.
She pointed down. “Dual rear tires.”
“Stay off em’,” he said.
They stepped over them and followed the barbed wire fence down to the creek, which was a trickle of water in a twenty-foot wide swath of dirt.
Smashing through crispy grasses and kicking up grasshoppers, Rachette led the way down to the shore. The barbed wire fence gave a wide berth to the right, leaving plenty of room for a truck to pull down into the gently sloped ravine, and so the tracks led, leaving bent weeds and stalks of grass where it had driven.
“Thar she blows,” Rachette said.
The underpass for the creek was actually a big box-culvert, a concrete rectangle tunnel that ran under the mounded road.
Inside were the tangled black remains of the UrMover truck.
“Whoa.” Rachette’s voice echoed in the culvert. “I’m no fire expert, but it looks like it burned hot.”
Patterson nodded, entranced by the twisted skeleton of the vehicle.
The wind whipped at their back and sucked past them into the culvert.
“It’s like a wind tunnel,” she said. “So you’re right. It probably burned hot with a constant fan hitting it. Strange. Look how there’s barely any burned brush past it.”
Through the space between the burned truck and the blackened concrete walls they could see untouched brush land and then the grove of oaks.
The fire trucks were invisible behind the trees, and therefore this culvert had been unseen from their earlier vantage point.
She stepped closer to the truck. It was twisted and mangled, with so much reduced to ashes it was hard to even imagine it as the truck.
“Check out the footprints in the dirt next to the tire.”
Patterson nodded. It was the same diamond pattern.
Patterson tilted her head and stepped nearer the charred remains. “These are bones.”
“What kind of bones?”
She touched a gray piece of material and it disintegrated to dust, revealing a human skull behind it.
Rachette stepped back. “Professor Green?”
She snapped on some rubber gloves and poked her finger at some wire next to the blackened skull. “Looks like eyeglasses. I think it’s him. I recognize the front teeth. One of them is set in front of the other. Remember his smile? I remember thinking he looked like a chipmunk with these teeth. Lorber can make the call, but I’d bet your salary it’s him.”
“Confidence. I like that in a woman.” Rachette walked past her to the side of the truck. Leaning his head in, he pointed at a lump. “What’s this crap? There’s a ton of it.”
She stepped over and pressed on it.
Rachette leaned back a few inches.
She knocked on it with a knuckle. It was solid. Bending down, she picked up a rock and smacked it on the lump.
“What are you doing?”
With a glancing blow, she hit it again, and a piece of material flaked off, revealing lighter material inside. As she hit it again, a chunk came off and it was stark white inside. She poked her finger on it.
“Casting material.” She widened her eyes and realized what she was looking at, and suddenly the jumbled mass of rubble made much more sense.
“Casting material?”
“Looks like they’ll be unscathed. There’s a bunch of them, look.”
Rachette made an “O” with his lips. “Bones.”
“Yep. But these are a lot older.”
Chapter 21
“What kind of dinosaur is this?” Wolf knew the answer but could think of no other questions as he gaped down at the hole.
“Allosaurus Fragilis,” Steven said. “It’s a good specimen. Female, more than 75% complete by our estimates. One of the best finds in history.”
Wolf had never seen anything like the full skeleton sitting in the ground, precisely in the spot where it had died millions of years ago. He stared at it, trying to imagine the beast alive. The head was fully cleared of dirt, and looked to be ready to remove. Mouth stretched open, it was a skull that Wolf could fit half his body inside.
He marveled at how much earth these people had moved to get down to this skeleton. And only with shovels and brushes.
Steven watched him. “Classic death pose.”
“What?” Wolf asked.
“That’s what they call that position the skeleton is in. Head thrown back, jaws wide open. Whether it’s strong ligaments in the animals neck tightening after death, or just how water deposits them, it’s all up for debate.”
Shumway stood with thumbs hitched on his duty belt looking down. “Why have you guys been keeping this a secret from everyone up at Dig One?”
Steven shrugged, “It’s just a rare find. We wanted to keep it a secret until the bones were all uncovered. Superstition I guess. We did
n’t want to jinx it. You know … say we’re finding a great specimen, one of the most complete ever, and then we all of a sudden can’t find any more bones.”
The two women went red in the face and avoided eye contact. Steven was doing a good job of lying, but these two were showing signs of dishonesty with everything they said, every movement they made. He needed to get them away from Steven, and he would.
“What were you three doing on Saturday?” Wolf asked.
Steven made a show of thinking about it, and then he shrugged. “I don’t remember. Not much. We don’t usually work on the weekends much. Try to keep a normal schedule to avoid burnout. What did—”
“We went into town,” Felicia said.
Steven shut up and froze.
Wolf nodded. “Yeah, the team up there said three of you left and went into town in the afternoon, and Molly stayed here. What were you doing?”
“We dropped Professor Green in Windfield,” Felicia said. “He was renting a moving truck.”
Steven held his poker face.
Felicia’s gaze was steady.
“You dropped him off?” Wolf asked.
She nodded.
“And where did you go?”
“Back here,” she said.
“Where did Professor Green go?” Shumway asked.
Felicia shrugged. “Said he was going up to the University. Wouldn’t tell us why.”
“Mo,” Wolf said.
Mo jerked to attention.
“Is that true? They dropped off Professor Green and then came back here?”
Mo took her time and then nodded.
Four hours later.
“And where’s Professor Green’s truck?” Wolf asked. “His pickup?”
Felicia’s eyes darted up and then she shrugged.
Another lie coming, Wolf knew before she spoke.
“He left it in town. Near the moving place. Steven and I came back together in Steven’s truck because Professor Green needed his truck when he came back.”
“But he didn’t tell you when he was coming back.” Wolf nodded. “Okay. Let’s take that walk to your camp, Steven.”
Steven began walking, and Felicia and Mo followed silently.
Wolf looked at Shumway and held back a few steps.
“What the hell is going on?” Shumway whispered to Wolf. “I saw those photos of the dinosaur bones Green was selling. They were out of the ground. There was date proof with our local newspaper in one of the pictures. That gives time and location of those bones being dug up somewhere around here.”
Wolf nodded but said nothing.
“So, where did those bones come from?” Shumway’s voice was barely audible over the squish of their footsteps on the sand and pebbles.
“I don’t know,” Wolf said.
They walked in silence for another beat and Shumway leaned close again. “I’m thinking, we really have nothing. I mean, nothing. Not unless we find that revolver and that pair of shoes up here.”
“We have something. They’re lying about the four hours they killed on Saturday afternoon. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t see any vehicles parked near the Windfield Moving Company. We have mountains of probable cause for arrest. Steven and Felicia look like they might lawyer up and not talk, but Molly’s conflicted. We just have to separate them.”
Shumway nodded. “Yeah. You can take Molly in your car. I’ll take the other two. We keep them separated all the way back to the station. We have two interrogation rooms and two holding cells. This is strange. Why camp all the way out here?”
Wolf was thinking the same thing.
Molly, Felicia, and Steven marched in silence. Their heads were down, their shoulders slumped, like they approached execution.
Steven looked over his shoulder. “Just up here. Next bend.”
As they followed the swerve of the wash a pickup truck gleamed on the hill to the right. A blue tent was erected near it. It was the same blue tent Wolf had seen from on top of the plateau at Levi Joseph’s camp.
He did a double take as he looked up the mountain. Megan Shumway was atop it staring down at them.
Steven stopped. “Here it is.”
Felicia and Molly stood a few feet away and folded their arms.
“You three stay here,” Wolf said.
They failed to respond, because they were all looking up now too.
Megan and Boydell must have stopped at Levi’s camp. Boydell’s truck sat behind her, and she walked around the back of it and climbed inside.
Shumway’s daughter seemed like she was on a single-minded mission to shake up her father, and Wolf was an integral prop in her act. He felt his face warm up.
“You,” Shumway said. “It was you.”
Wolf frowned and turned.
The sheriff launched past Wolf and barreled head first into Steven’s chest.
Steven was too slow to react and took the collision standing still, and then he was flying through the air and landed on his back with a grunt.
Shumway landed square on top of him, got to his knees and his fists started flying.
The first slap of fist on face spurred Wolf into action, and he caught the third right hand punch in its backswing.
“Sheriff!” Wolf pulled back on his clenched fist.
Shumway ignored him and wrenched his arm free, then started another flurry of punches, this time with alternating rights and lefts.
Wolf pointed at the two women. “Stay back!”
They shuffled away.
Wolf straddled Shumway’s back and pulled him off and into the air. He dropped him on his feet and then grabbed his arm and secured it in a wrap wrist lock.
“Dah! What are you doing?” Shumway sucked in air through his teeth. “Stop, stop.”
Wolf held firm as he walked them up the wash.
“Calm down,” Wolf said.
“You’re gonna break my wrist!”
Wolf let go and Shumway spun on him.
The Sheriff’s chest was heaving, eyes wide. He pushed his chest into Wolf’s and then backed away, pointing at Steven. “You son of a bitch. It was you.”
Steven was slow getting to his feet, checking the blood seeping out of his lip with the back of his hand.
“It was you,” Shumway said. He bent over and put both hands on his knees to catch his breath.
They all stopped and turned at the sound traveling up the draw—four paws pattering at full sprint. Jet came skidding around the corner and barked with snapping jaws.
“Jet! Heel!”
Jet immediately slowed to a stop.
“Sit.”
He sat.
“Keep that thing away,” Steven said backing up.
Wolf stood, taking it all in. Felicia and Mo kept their distance from Steven just as much as from Jet. Steven rubbed his chin, dejected and humiliated. Shumway clenched his fists and glared at Steven.
“You three stay right here. You move and Jet runs you down.” Wolf had no intention of using the attack command. In fact, Jet’s Vail handler had made Wolf swear to never use it, but the threat had the desired effect.
Wolf jerked his head at Shumway and walked up the wash.
Shumway walked over with more than a little reluctance.
“What the hell was that?” Wolf asked walking behind a juniper tree.
“I don’t want to talk about it. But that guy deserves a hell of a lot more than what he got!”
“We need to keep the situation at hand under control.”
Shumway put his hands on his hips and nodded.
Wolf backed up a few steps and peeked around the tree.
Jet was staring at the three graduate students, who were staring back and frozen in place.
“I’m going to search that tent,” Wolf said. “And I want you to come with me.”
Shumway rolled his eyes. “Yeah. All right.”
Wolf gave him the “after you” hand.
Steven’s tent was a three-man design, much like the other three had been
. He had a fire pit dug out and ringed with rocks, and it was blackened and well used. A lone camping chair sat next to it, and a gas stove and fold out table stood under an overhanging juniper tree.
There was a black plastic trash can next to a bush. Wolf opened it up and looked inside. It was filled with dozens of empty cans and food packets. Shutting the lid he followed Shumway to the tent.
Lined up along the exterior tent wall was a pair of running shoes and hiking shoes.
“Got your gloves?” Wolf asked.
Shumway pulled them out of his pocket and put them on.
Peeling back the zipper, the sheriff knelt down and rummaged around in the tent, then came out with his hands splayed. “No gun.”
“These are sized fifteen and a half,” Shumway said picking up one of the running shoes. “And these are sixteen. Phew, I can see why he keeps these things outside.”
As he ducked inside the tent to take a look, Wolf caught the scent of untreated athlete’s foot coming off the shoes.
Keeping his ears open in case Shumway made any sudden movements outside, he started sifting through what looked like an explosion of dirty clothing. The tent held a superheated pocket of air saturated with body and foot odor. Steven’s cloth sleeping bag was askew, and there was a duffle bag with clothes billowing out of it.
There was no other pair of shoes. No Converse All-Stars.
Wolf rifled the bag and found no gun, and no shoes there either.
After a thorough search of every nook and cranny, Wolf backed out of the tent, grateful for the fresh air.
Shumway was staring toward the wash. His fists were clenching and releasing. “They’re talking.”
Wolf nodded. “I’m sure they are.”
“They’re going to lawyer up.”
Wolf searched the rest of the camp. He opened a cooler and looked inside. Lifted a conspicuous looking rock with his toe.
Walking to the Ford pickup truck, he bent down and checked the tires: Goodyear P265/70R17.
“A match?” Shumway asked.
Wolf nodded.
“You know, I have those tires too,” Shumway said.
Wolf nodded. “So I saw.”
“I’m pretty sure any government vehicle up here’s going to have them. You’ve got the same ones but sixteens.”