Archaeopteryx

by Dan Darling

  “But what’s he interested in?” the old man asked. “What knowledge does he have to draw from to write his riddle?”

  “He’s an entomologist. He studies insects.”

  “Ahh. Do you also know something about them?”

  I gave him a half-hearted nod.

  The man leaned across the counter and pulled a sheet of paper from a plastic display sheath attached to the front of the counter. “Let’s take a look at this. It lists the names of all the inns in the area.”

  I scanned the list of a score or so names. I recognized most of them from my tour through the town. None of them did anything special for me.

  “Say the words out loud,” the little old man said. He leaned both his elbows on the counter and put his chin in his hands. He mooned up at me over the tops of his glasses.

  I ran down the list again. It was hard to concentrate. I wasn’t used to doing anything difficult with another human being watching me.

  “In-tell-i-gent Rhi-no,” the old man pronounced slowly. “You can say it in your mind, if you prefer. Intelligent Rhino.”

  The words didn’t help me. “I’ll take the list and look it over,” I said. “I’m sure the answer will come to me.”

  As I started to pick up the sheet, the old man put his palm on it. “Hold on, now. It’s always harder on your own. Two minds are better than one. Let’s take a few more minutes and see if we can’t figure this out.”

  “I don’t want to waste your time.”

  The man straightened up and put his hands on his hips. “You kiddin’ me? This is fun!”

  I was beginning to like the old man. “Alright. What’s the next step?”

  “Well, most riddles, they’re old. They’re made up long ago. But new ones, first you ask yourself what do I know about the person who wrote it. We’ve done that. Now, if it’s a personal riddle, written from me to you, you don’t just ask what you know about me. You ask what you and me have in common. A good riddle between two people draws from what they share. If he wrote this for you, and he’s your buddy, he’s drawing on something particular to your friendship. So you ask yourself, what do you share?”

  “We both know insects.”

  “We already covered that. What about your friendship? What have you shared there?”

  I could have told him that we were both embroiled in a conspiracy that involved dead birds, a biogenic experiment and immigrant detainment facility, The Minutemen, and mysterious nocturnal chimeras that sucked blood. He probably could have used a good laugh.

  “Say the words out loud while you think,” the old man said. “Intelligent Rhino.”

  The wheels in my head stuck on the last word I’d thought of. Blood. I had a vision in my mind of a particular bloodsucker, the brown dog tick. Marchette always used Latin names. The Latin for the tick was rhipicephalus sanguineus. It was a play on words: rhinoceros was close to rhipicephalus; intelligent was a synonym for sanguine, which played on sanguineus, Latin for bloody. Intelligent Rhino was a pun for the brown dog tick―Marchette would deliver important information in a pun.

  I pointed to a name on the list: The Brown Labrador Spa and Inn. “Where’s this one?”

  The old man lit up. “You figured it out! How?”

  I explained the logic to him.

  He shook his head in admiration. “What an intimate riddle! You must be close friends indeed.” He took a sheet with a map of the downtown on it from another plastic sleeve, and marked an X over the location of the inn. “It’s this one. Walking distance, if you’d like to enjoy a stroll through town.”

  “Thanks. I’ll let you get back to your dusting.”

  “Just one more thing.” He held up a finger and made a swirling motion. “What goes round the house and in the house but never touches the house?”

  I thought about it. “Mosquitoes.”

  He laughed. “Nope. The sun.”

  The Brown Dog Inn, which enjoyed a spot right on the downtown square, was an enclave of several structures gathered together by a high adobe wall. The courtyard featured a tidy gazebo of white latticework, red brick paths, and planters of wispy Greene’s beargrass that would bloom lilac in the spring, spiny-leafed amole grasses, and yucca stumps with their saber-length green fronds. Each building wore a jacket of vibrant paint—canary, lime, fuchsia, teal—probably meant to inspire the place with a cheery atmosphere.

  A willowy woman with a long brown face, long gray hair, and long patchwork skirts emerged from the central structure. Her face drooped with worry lines, some old, some new as the day. “Can I help you sir?”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Are you with the police?”

  “He’s small, skinny, pale, and bald. He wears big glasses. Whatever name he gave you probably sounds fake.”

  Her eyes sharpened and her mouth tightened up. She definitely knew who I was talking about. “I can’t reveal any information about our guests unless you have a warrant.”

  “Lady, I’m not the police. I’m a friend. The guy I’m looking for has been trying to get through to me for a week. He’ll be happy I’m here.”

  “No man like that comes to mind, but if you wait I’ll just make the rounds and let the guests know that a stranger is here. What name shall I give them?”

  “Just tell him Stick’s here.”

  A lifetime of worrying about other people’s problems had carved deep lines in her face. I could almost see them deepening as I watched her. “Please stay in the courtyard.” Her voice was as hard and brittle as shale.

  I wandered around under the bare limbs of the trees while she was gone. I guessed that an Arizona oak and weeping willow might be among them but it was hard to tell without leaves. The winter stripped trees of their identity. I had a brief vision of people walking around all winter without their skins and was glad when the woman interrupted it by emerging from the blue-walled office.

  She’d restructured her lines into an etching of a smile. “He didn’t tell me about you.”

  “Shame on him,” I said. “Where is he?”

  “I’ve hidden him in the orange wing. It’s behind the other buildings, out of the way of prying eyes.” She motioned for me to follow her and walked back into the door she’d come through. The office was a study of idiosyncrasy. It had an old-fashioned cash register next to a credit card swiper, a rack of pamphlets promoting local attractions, a placard with a Wi-Fi password, a topographical map of the outlying area, and a whole wall of Polaroids depicting smiling guests. Each snapshot was signed. Many of the guests wore outdated wedding garb; there were also a few newer photos with same-sex couples, also in wedding garb. It looked like a jolly scene for newlyweds.

  We entered a side door of the office and walked down a hall punctuated regularly by doors. Each door opened onto a large stone tub with a heavy spigot above it. The walls had hooks for robes and benches with stacks of towels on them. The gray-haired woman saw me looking.

  “That’s where guests can take the cure,” she said.

  “The cure?” I said.

  Her smile got that twirl at the edges people get who think they know something you don’t. “Healing waters.”

  A lot of hot springs people talked like that. They swore that sitting in a tub and letting geothermally enhanced water turn your skin red was the magic touch for everything from cancer to depression to the common cold. They might have been right. Personally, I imagined that it probably just relaxed a person, which could cure all sorts of things.

  She led me out a back door, which let into a parking lot. We crossed it, penetrated a gap in a wooden fence, and found ourselves in a small dirt lot with a few skeletal-looking scrub oaks and globular juniper bushes. The orange wing and apparently the magenta wing lay across the vacant lot. The one-story buildings were side by side and looked like they might have once been cheap apartments. Each one had several doors labeled with room numbers and flanked by lawn chairs. Curtains dressed the windows in the color of their corresponding wing. The i
nn was one of those shabby-chic affairs, where rustic charm went a long way.

  “It’s room 56,” the gray-haired woman said. “Knock two fast, two long, and three very fast.”

  “A code knock. Very cloak and dagger.”

  “There’s a back door he can use if someone gives the wrong knock.”

  “So, you know about the trouble he’s in?”

  She touched her nose. “I’m a Good Friend.”

  I touched my nose. “I guess I’m his friend too.”

  She shook her head back and forth in a grave display of negation. One of her long gray strands came loose from the bundle behind her head and snaked in the wind. “Good Friends. We’re a movement. I shouldn’t say anything else. I’ve known Simon a long time. He’s very dear.” Her big gray eyes hovered sadly in her face. The bottom of each socket hung low, revealing the red flesh within. She was one of those women on the verge of old age, who’d endured tough times and come out a little crazy but a little wise, too.

  “He’s alright. I’ve worked with him for years, but I’m really just getting to know him.”

  “Go on.” She lifted one of her loose-sleeved arms. “He’s waiting for you.”

  I walked across the field toward the orange wing. A whiptail lizard scuttled among the brambles. A few big desert grasshoppers buzzed at me before taking flight. A crow ripping apart a white fast food bag grudgingly flapped up to a low-hanging power line and waited for me to pass. Unit 56 had a heavy oak door, ornately carved, one of those old things crafted when people used to care.

  I gave the secret knock. The door flew open on Simon Marchette. He wore white tennis shoes, a khaki wind jacket, and red trousers. He looked paler and moister than usual. His glasses were dirty. His stoop was a little more pronounced. But he grinned so broadly I thought his head might break in half.

  He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me through the doorway. I had the presence of mind to duck. He slammed the door all while pumping away at my arm.

  “Hail Zookeeper Stick!” he trumpeted. “You have arrived, if not in a timely manner, then at least not too late―or so may we hope!”

  “Marchette.” I pumped his arm a little, too. It felt good. I fought the impulse to pick him up under the armpits and toss him in the air. I hadn’t realized how much I liked having him around until he’d vanished.

  We let each other go. He swept his arm across the small spare outer room. “Please sit. I regret that I have little hospitality to share, but that which I do enjoy, I gladly offer you.”

  The room was decorated with an orange corduroy couch, a pair of rust-colored recliners, and a wooden coffee table spread with an orange runner and a vase of plastic tiger lilies. An alcove with a small sink, mini fridge, and microwave punctuated the wall. A door led into a bedroom with a predictably gaudy orange bedspread and framed paintings of orange houses. I sat on the couch and tried to pretend I was comfortable.

  Simon perched himself on the front edge of a recliner. His cornflower blue eyes danced in their sockets. “You received my messages and deciphered my code. I knew you would.”

  “Yeah. Sorry it took me so long. I had to find a translator.”

  He tilted his head like a puzzled cockatiel. “I presume you mean a Spanish translator? I assumed you spoke the language, given that your father is Hispanic.”

  “Never learned. My father is very stubborn about denying that part of his identity.”

  “Well,” Marchette said, “I’m embarrassed. I used Spanish because I conjectured it might slow our enemies.”

  “Hold on.” Something occurred to me. I never talked about myself. I never saw Marchette outside of work. We didn’t have any friends in common. “How did you know about my father?”

  Simon’s smile vanished, and he let out a deep breath. His face hung limp, and he slumped back in his chair. “The answer to that question is mired in other questions.”

  “No riddles. You said the white man who killed the birds was after you. You meant John White, the head of Typhon Industries. Why is he after you?”

  “He is after me because I have mutinied. I have fled the reservation, so to speak, and he cannot abide insubordination.”

  “It’s a free county. He can’t make you work for him if you don’t want to.”

  “Work. How casually you put it. When one works for John White, it’s closer to a pledge of fealty. He’s arranged the entire compound in a hierarchy of security clearances. As one moves up through that hierarchy, one sees things―secrets that John White wishes to keep hidden as long as possible.”

  “What kinds of secrets?”

  “His identity, for one. No one knows who John White is. There are no records of him attending school or being born. There are no pictures, tax documents, or voting records. I’m surprised you’ve even heard his name.”

  “A guy in a cheap suit told me. A gumshoe.”

  “You’re speaking of Tony Chavez. Tony’s a Good Friend.”

  “These Good Friends,” I said. “They need a new name.”

  “Why, I rather like the name. They’re a movement of people who believe in goodness, kindness, and generosity.”

  “Are they communists?” I said.

  Marchette’s ears turned red.

  “You have to admit, doc, those aren’t exactly American values.”

  “They are the most noble values of humanity.”

  “How can you expect us to suddenly be good friends with everybody after all we’ve been through? Our blood is too bitter. It’s full of bile. Hell, after only half a lifetime in this world, I’m ready to write off every other human being except for a handful.”

  Marchette leaned forward and stabbed a yellow finger at me. “Then you are part of the problem.” But he held up his palm when I started to retort. “And so am I. We’re both bitter men, contaminated and twisted by a bad world.”

  “This coming from the guy who whistles while he brushes the tarantulas’ belly hair and polishes the centipede chitin. You smile all day, Doc.”

  “That smile, like so much else, is window dressing on a very bleak house. I’m a parasite. I spent years burrowing into the neck of a monster, sucking life from it, and only realized later what tainted blood I was drinking.”

  “You’re going to have to be less metaphorical.”

  Marchette’s eyes were small and hard in sockets ringed with red. His mouth hung in a slack slash across the bottom half of his face. He was a man mangled by guilt and misuse. “It’s never easy to admit one’s crimes.”

  “I’m not asking to hear them. I came down here for my snake. And my friend’s egg. And Jones the spider.”

  “I released that dear arachnid in the desert east of the San Andreas Mountains. He will bear out the remainder of his life with at least a sporting chance at survival.”

  “And the egg?”

  “That infernal spawn?” He smacked a fist into his palm. “I crushed it beneath my heel, doused it with gasoline siphoned from my vehicle, and burned it.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a little over the top?”

  “No act of defiance is too strong, Zookeeper Stick.” Marchette whacked his fist into his palm again. “These monstrosities must be destroyed wherever they flourish. I’m sorry. I know you found it, but that egg and the beast inside would only have brought you ill fortune should you have hatched it.”

  “It was just a bug egg. What’s gotten into you?”

  “Wrong,” he said. “It was a chupacabra.”

  I stared at him. “You mean the Mexican monster that sucks blood?”

  “That is the nomenclature Typhon Industries has given the beast within that egg. I destroyed it because these chupacabras in all their forms are evil. I’m sorry I robbed Dr. Hernandez. Though I’ve never met her in person, I can only imagine she was quite upset. And I’m ever so penitent toward you, as well.” He bowed his head. “I hope you can forgive me.”

  “You can make it up to me. You left a message for me that said John White killed those birds. Tell
me how.”

  Marchette’s mouth softened and his eyes lost their glint. “I don’t know.”

  “Then what the hell am I doing here, doc?” I regretted saying it. I wanted him to know that I was as worried about him as I was anxious to solve the mystery of the dead birds. But I wasn’t equipped to spill my warm gooey center out in public.

  Gravity dragged his shoulders a hair closer to the center of the Earth and his face aged a year or two. “My deep apologies. I know I have betrayed your trust, and dragged you scores of miles downriver. And―” He hesitated, lingering over words that didn’t want to form.

  I jumped in. “No apologies. I enjoyed the scenery. I’ve just been running low on sleep lately. It’s given me the temperament of a zebra.”

  “Ah-ha!” Marchette’s face remained a dangling mess of lips and eye sockets.

  “Listen. Tell me what you know. If you don’t know how this mystery man killed all those birds, can you at least give me a motive?”

  “It may not have been intentional.” Marchette straightened his spine, adjusted his cap, and tugged his shirt into place. “I shall tell you what I know. Then I have one more truth to tell you. Something that must be said.”

  “One step at a time.”

  He nodded. “I’ve always admired your bearing. You never rush, you never skip ahead, you always take care. These are the qualities of a hero.”

  “Enough,” I said.

  “Right! No more compliments! Let us to business.”

  He crossed his skinny legs and braided his fingers together. The packet was nearly as big as his head. When he spoke, his voice was crisp and precise. “Every year on exactly the same day, the roof opens up over Mount Olympus and the sun shines inside. It remains like that for approximately one hour until the sun passes over the crest of the Sandía Mountains and shade falls over the compound. Then the roof closes.”

  “What the hell is Mount Olympus?”

  “Why, it is the home of the Greek gods! But in this instance, I refer to the heart of the Typhon Industries compound, a modestly sized, but intricately crafted structure that sits at the northernmost position of the campus. John White named it Olympus.”