Carnosaur Crimes

by Christine Gentry

  “I had no idea things were that bad.”

  Knowles nodded. “Well, at least your museum footprints are safe. I doubt we’ll ever retrieve the T-Rex foot. It will probably end up on the international, multi-million dollar black- market and sold to some Japanese businessman in Tokyo. With buyers like that, it’s no surprise that museums and exhibitions, even a tiny one like ours, are fair game for smugglers.”

  Ansel looked at her artwork. Nothing was sacred. She’d heard once that fossil eggs were a real hot commodity. Each egg in her drawing symbolized up to fifteen-hundred dollars in the real world of illegal fossil trading. Entire nests were pandered to foreign buyers. Years ago she’d read that a Los Angeles undercover operation had grabbed an illegal shipment of one-hundred Chinese dinosaur eggs and nests worth four-hundred thousand dollars, exactly the kind of wholesale destruction that Outerbridge was asking her to help eliminate.

  “And then, there was that other fossil theft incident in Sidney just north of us,” Knowles added.

  The Sidney theft was exactly what she wanted to know more about. She feigned ignorance. “Another robbery? Do you know where it happened?”

  The dean grimaced. “I certainly do. A fossil store called Earthly Pleasures. It’s run by Hillard Yancy.”

  “You aren’t fond of him, I gather.”

  With a shrug, Knowles replied, “I’m not fond of his business practices. It’s nothing personal. Calls himself a private commercial dealer. I’ve only dealt with Yancy through college affairs. He’s approached us several times. I hear he’s solicited every campus in the state, trying to sell his fossils as educational tools.”

  “How does he contact you?”

  “He sends me catalog lists. Anything from dinosaur dung in bulk at a dollar per pound up to a Triceratops skull for sixty-thousand. If I don’t respond, which I never do, he gives me a personal follow-up call.”

  “Is he a certified dealer?”

  “Yes. He’s got all the proper credentials. He’s even a member of the AAPS. That doesn’t make him a saint.”

  Ansel knew that the American Association of Paleontology Suppliers had a code of ethics which stated that its members would strive to place specimens of unique scientific interest into responsible hands for study, research, and preservation, but their policy wasn’t purely altruistic.

  A lot of dealer-excavated fossils from private lands were fragments which had no scientific value for institutions, museums, and repositories and were sold to customers who wanted “something beautiful” and which they could relate to. Many AAPS members firmly believed that fossils weren’t rare at all and that commercial sales by dealers ultimately reduced bone prices by finding more fossils than academics could ever hope to excavate.

  “Do you suspect Yancy’s involved with any illegal fossil hunting activities?”

  “I couldn’t say one way or the other, but he’s an original Jurassic Shark in my mind. He hunts down fossils, gobbles them up, and digests the cash to get fatter and fatter. All the while he claims he’s saving fossils before the forces of nature or poachers destroy them.”

  “Did you tell the police this?”

  “Absolutely, but they didn’t think Yancy would be involved in robbing the campus library and burglarizing himself at the same time. According to them, his supply store got ripped off for a lot more fossils than the foot bones taken from this college.”

  Knowles grunted. “Serves Yancy right though. Even if he is on the up and up, he’s doing a lot of damage to the academic and scientific community he professes to serve. He may be properly excavating a fossil, but I bet he’s not doing the research and paperwork that should go along with it. A lot of contextual knowledge about bone locations and the biology around them is being lost and it’s irreplaceable. Education isn’t displaying fossil curiosities on a wall to be ogled, Ms. Phoenix. It’s collecting scientific data and disseminating it to the public. Maybe the theft will put him out of business for good.”

  Ansel took all this in with a grain of salt. It was the same old story she’d heard before from academics in the Pangaea Society. Commercial dealers are bad. Scientists are good. Dean Knowles was a nice man, but he was a typical soapbox advocate for stricter fossil regulations. Things weren’t always so black and white.

  She felt sure that when she talked to Hillard Yancy, he’d be a rabid advocate for government de-regulation of fossil excavation laws. The dealer probably believed that he was exerting his god-given right as a businessman to search for bones on private lands where he had owner permission, contractual or otherwise, to excavate and sell his inventory for profit. The problem was that neither side of the sell-not-sell coin bought positive results when it came to stopping illegal poaching on public or state lands.

  “Thank you, Dean Knowles. You’ve been very kind,” Ansel said, rising.

  “Don’t mention it. You’re going to visit Yancy?”

  “Of course. You’ve raised my curiosity and shopping for fossils is my passion.”

  “Just don’t be fooled by what you see,” Knowles replied with a wise smile. “I may be a college dean, but I’m also an old cowboy at heart. If there’s one thing I know, it’s when to pull on my galoshes while mucking through a barn. Wear your boots, Ms. Phoenix. Absolutely.”

  Chapter 13

  “A good man does not take what belongs to someone else.”

  Pueblo

  On her way out of town, Ansel passed road signs pointing south toward the eight-thousand acre Makoshika State Park where the stolen foot bones had been excavated. She wished she could stop. Makoshika’s water-eroded terrain had exposed the Hell Creek Formation and a rich record of fossil life including Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus.

  Two years ago Pangaea members had hiked the Cap Rock Nature Trail that dropped one-hundred sixty feet along the canyon walls. They had spent the day viewing a short natural bridge, pedestal rocks, a gumbo sinkhole, and the fossil beds. The group had also enjoyed the many wildlife areas that contained a notable summer population of Badlands turkey vultures.

  Ansel veered northeast along State Road 16 toward Sidney. To her right, the scenic white waters of the Lower Yellowstone River paralleled her journey. Once in town, she made a quick stop at the Eagle Café to get Chinese take-out and directions. Half an hour later she arrived.

  The outside of Earthly Pleasures was a small up-scale antiquities business rather than a fossil warehouse. The two-story building had a decorative column portico, white stucco walls, and huge picture windows. Through the spotless glass frontage, Ansel saw dinosaur skulls and bones sitting on custom, laminated stands. Also visible were numerous sets of brass and glass display shelving units showcasing a variety of tastefully arranged smaller fossils.

  An old-fashioned brass bell tinkled. The spacious interior was mostly oak wood: flooring, wall shelves, and storage cabinetry. All were situated to call direct attention to the ancient, museum-quality artifacts for sale around her. The store was empty except for a man standing beside a long glass counter twenty feet away.

  “Good day. Welcome to Earthly Pleasures. I’m Hillard Yancy,” he said in a soft, squeaky voice before stepping toward her, hand extended.

  Despite Dean Knowles opinion, the middle-aged Yancy looked more like a trustworthy insurance salesman than a fossil broker with shady connections to the black-market. He was short, stocky, and had a ringlet of short brown curls across his head. A set of thick glasses were perched on a flat nose. She shook his immensely strong and very calloused hand. All that digging, she surmised.

  “Hello. I’m Ansel Phoenix. Phoenix Studios,” she added, passing him a business card.

  Yancy released her hand and took the card. He glanced at it quickly. “The paleoartist? Well, this is a pleasure. Glad to meet you, Miss Phoenix. Your work is quite extraordinary. Have you come to sell me some of your paintings? I could use a couple in the shop.”

  “You’re very kind, Mr. Yancy, but I’ve come for more altruistic reasons.”

  “Well, I
can’t help but notice that very unusual pendant you’re wearing. That five-fold, radial symmetry on top tells me it’s a sea urchin. Looks like Rhycholampus gouldii if my memory serves me right.”

  Ansel touched the Iniskim. “That’s right.”

  “And that marvelous blue color,” Yancy said, cocking his head sideways to stare at the echinoid fossil. “Is that copper-based Chrondorite?”

  “No. You’re close. Azurite.”

  “Ah, of course. Goes to show I’m strictly a bone man. You might be interested in my custom jewelry. They’re made by local artisans.” He swept his arm toward another nearby counter. The shelves contained beautiful gold, silver, and copper necklaces or bracelets with a variety of polished fossil pendants and dangles.

  Ansel saw mostly the ancient waterborne invertebrates such as trilobites, blastoids, crinoids, ammonites, cephalopods, starfish, mollusks, and snails. However, there was also some interesting oddities like strands of carved amber beads, fossil coral, or mammoth tusk. Fossil bone and insect inclusions rounded off the assortment of glittering accessories quite nicely.

  “They’re beautiful,” Ansel said, eyeing a hadrosaur bone ring.

  “Thank you. Is there anything in particular you’d like to see, Miss Phoenix?”

  “I’m just looking.”

  “Then you should take one of these,” he said, reaching onto the counter and taking a thick glossy pamphlet. “This is my sale catalog. Let me know if anything interests you.”

  “ All right. I also came to talk to you, Mr. Yancy.”

  “What about?”

  “Your business. I’m the former president of the Pangaea Society. Have you heard of it?”

  A wariness flitted across his jovial features. He smiled thinly and crossed his arms. “Yes.”

  “Well, I understand that your shop was robbed last week. There was a similar attempt to steal fossil dinosaur tracks from a museum in Big Toe the same night. Fortunately, it failed.”

  “I heard about it and the robbery in Glendive. What’s this got to do with me?”

  “Two things. I’d like these poachers caught and punished just like you. Second, I’d like to save the fossil tracks that the robber didn’t get from our museum property. The museum is on leased BLM land. It’s being threatened with closure because of this incident, and the footprints may be removed to another institution. My town can’t afford to loose the Bureau contract that allows the museum to operate as a public attraction, and the society is greatly concerned about this new development. Generally, we support the preservation of Montana fossil sites in their natural state, not hauling them off to distant federal archives.”

  “I agree with you so far, but I don’t see how I can help.”

  “I need some information about what was stolen from you and what you know about any illegal poaching going on around here. Perhaps through word of mouth or your field experiences.”

  “What makes you think I’d know anything about the black-market?”

  Ansel was surprised at the hostile edge in his voice. “I’m not casting any aspersions, Mr. Yancy. Your line of work is far different from the scholarly members I usually work with. You have a different perspective on things, and I’d like to hear it.”

  “Then pardon me for being blunt, Miss Phoenix, but I’m the last person your scientific society would invite to join because I’m strictly a commercial dealer. In their minds, I’m probably considered a thief despite the fact that I carefully excavate fossils from private land with owner permission. I have detailed documentation for every piece I take – who was involved, where it came from, and who I sold it to. I don’t know a damned thing about the black-market, except that I’ve been victimized by it.”

  “I’m not representing the society. I’m trying to get leads on the poacher who vandalized the museum so I can give that information to my local sheriff’s department.”

  Yancy rubbed his chin. “Then I’ll tell you what I told the Sidney cops. Start with the Internet if you want to tap into the black-market. You can get any fossil you want online through fossil chat rooms or auctions. They don’t have any verifiable pedigree, but rabid collectors don’t care. Or you can go high-brow and buy your fossils directly from Christies of London, Butterfield’s, or Bonhams at Knightsbridge. Get a complete fossil turtle for nineteen-thousand or even a whole Allosaurus dinosaur for a seven-hundred-thousand dollar bid. Who knows for sure if it’s legally excavated or the provenance is real.”

  Yancy’s eyes flashed hot. “Those are the real big money crimes and you don’t see the feds or scientists hassling these people, do you? Yet I’m often accused of using legal loopholes to steal fossils. It’s crap, and I’m really tired of it.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” Ansel consoled. “I’m trying to enlist your help.”

  Yancy’s tight, angry face slackened. “I’ve already been through this with the FBI, the police, and the insurance company. They ran me through a grinder.”

  “Could at least tell me what was stolen?”

  Yancy sighed, then nodded. “All right. Come back here, and I’ll show you.”

  He moved away and Ansel followed as he went to the rear of the store and through an oak door. The storefront was deceiving. Once beyond the grandly decorated showroom that customers saw, the building dimensions went straight back for another hundred feet. She took in everything she could as quickly as possible. Yancy wasn’t going to put up with her snooping for long.

  The room had a concrete floor and unpainted drywall panels. Large heavy wood tables crisscrossed the area, all of them covered with fossils in varying stages of cleaning, preparation, and mold casting. Assorted crates and boxes were crammed everywhere. The place smelled of plaster, dirt, and solvents. Yancy stopped next to a table holding some huge fossil vertebrae.

  “This is my workshop. Some of these pieces I excavated myself and hauled back here to clean. Others I order piecemeal or wholesale uncleaned, finish preparing, and sell through mail order. If I don’t move the fossils via that business, they go into the showroom. Usually things don’t last long out there.”

  “What did the robbers take?”

  “Nothing from out front. From back here they stole some unprepared artifacts easy for a couple people to carry out. I lost a complete, eighteen-inch long Albertosaurus foot, a fifty-one inch long T-Rex humerus and a thirty-eight inch T-Rex footprint. Other items, they broke and left behind for spite. It makes me sick just thinking about it.”

  Ansel looked around. The only other entrance into the room beside the showroom was a large steel garage door and a staircase on the right. “How did they get in?”

  “I live upstairs. I wasn’t home last Friday night. They broke in through a second floor window after cutting the alarm wires. Once they got down into the workshop through those stairs, they opened the rear garage doors and loaded what they wanted.”

  She moved around the room, weaving between the work tables before stopping by a bench holding a complete dinosaur arm and plenty of cleaning tools, glue bottles, and non-abrasive solvents. A piece of paper on the table identified the piece as a Maiasaura limb being prepared for Montana State University. The once called “duckbill” dinosaur was a vegetarian that nested in huge nurseries which were first made famous in Montana by Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies.

  “You do nice work, Mr. Yancy. Do you do a lot of fossil cleaning for outside facilities?”

  Yancy shrugged. “It seems that way sometimes. It’s a nice income when the shop sales are slow. Helps to pay the bills.”

  “Before the break-in, did you see anyone suspicious?”

  “The police asked the same question. Didn’t see anybody or anything suspicious and, believe me, I watch for such things.”

  “Have you ever noticed a young Indian man with a limp in your store before the robbery?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “He’s the man who died while trying to steal the museum tracks. He was badly burned when his concrete sa
w exploded. Unfortunately, the Lacrosse authorities can’t identify him.”

  His snort was derisive. “The local police are no match for poachers, Miss Phoenix. They’re high tech now. Helicopters, ATVs, night vision goggles, surveillance cameras, electronic bugs, computers, and Uzis. Fossils are the new stolen art of the Twenty-first Century. It takes a SWAT team to take them out.”

  A vision of Outerbridge and his agents wearing body armor and toting their heavy-duty law enforcement gear through the Badlands jumped into Ansel’s head. An eye for an eye.

  “You make them sound invincible,” she replied. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Not invincible. Industrious,” Yancy corrected. “They never give up. They’ll watch your dig sites, your shop, your home, and you. They’ll find out your vulnerabilities and capitalize on them. The average fossil hunter, dealer, or curator can’t fight back and personal confrontations with these thugs turn deadly.”

  “You’re right, Mr. Yancy. Fossil collecting is a very dangerous business these days. So why are you in it?”

  “I guess I just like to play in the dirt,” he replied, smiling for the first time in a while.

  The loud tinkle of the shop bell interrupted Ansel’s next question. Yancy looked toward the open showroom door. “I’ve got to get that.” He disappeared, leaving Ansel alone.

  She busied herself for about a minute, scouting the roll-top desk near the door and looking at the paperwork visible across the tiny wooden top. There was nothing interesting. Invoices. Computer print-outs. Sales lists. Topographical maps of northern Montana.

  “Don’t touch anything.”

  Panic gripped Ansel as the voice resonated beside her. In an instant, her stomach withered into a tiny ball. Reid Dorbandt, an Earthly Pleasures catalog clutched in one hand and his wallet with gold badge gleaming in the other, radiated his aura of all-powerful jurisprudence directly toward her.