Mesozoic Murder

by Christine Gentry

  “Hi, Ms. Phoenix,” she said. “I’m glad I found you.”

  Ansel was very surprised to see Lydia. “Hi. How are you doing?”

  “All right. Especially since I’m out of school. How about you?”

  “I’m fine. I’m just glad the funeral is over. I was really surprised to see you there.”

  “I wasn’t really comfortable going, but I’m glad I went. Tim said it would be a catharsis for me to go. You know, so I wouldn’t always think of Mr. Capos looking like we found him in that horrible grave. He was right,” Lydia said. “He’s here, too.”

  Ansel took a small taste of her salty, chocolate dessert. “Tim?”

  “Uh huh. We met in the parking lot. He’s at the bar getting us a drink.”

  “My, you two are becoming a pair, aren’t you?” Ansel teased.

  Lydia’s cheeks flared crimson. “I wouldn’t say that. We just have a few things in common, that’s all.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, we both like to cook. Tim makes a wonderful roast suckling pig. It’s fabulous. I think it’s the orange juice the meat is soaked in before cooking that makes the meat so good. He says that orange juice is a deoxidizer that tenderizes meat.”

  Ansel wondered if Tim used California Valencia oranges for his gourmet meals just as she looked up to see him walking toward them. He was wearing his usual jeans, flowered Hawaiian shirt, boots, and white hat. His 35mm camera hung around his neck. He also carried two frosty cups of brew.

  “Hi, Miss Phoenix,” he said before passing a beer to Lydia. “Hope it’s cold enough for you.”

  Lydia looked at Tim with unabashed adoration. “It’s perfect.”

  “How are you, Tim?”

  Tim turned toward her. His blue eyes darkened a bit. “Super. How about you?”

  “No complaints,” Ansel said. “How do you like the buffet so far?”

  Tim sipped his beer. “I like it a lot. I thought it would be cool to see how exotic animal foods look and taste. And Lydia talked me into it.” He gave the girl a glance, then turned back toward Ansel. “What are you eating?”

  “Something called a cow udder eclair. I could live without it.”

  “Sounds disgusting,” Lydia said.

  Tim laughed. “Last summer when I was on a blackwater lake near Iquitos, South America, the local Yanomamo Indians showed me how to cut out the lean meat from fourteen-inch-long walking stick insects, roast it in a small cauldron, and add it to a boiled soup made with native greens and herbs. Of course, I had to eat some. To be polite.”

  Lydia scowled. “What did it taste like?”

  “Not bad. The meat had a nutty flavor, but it wasn’t crunchy.”

  “I don’t mind bugs,” Lydia said, “but eating them is another thing.”

  “You eat bugs every day. You just don’t know it,” Tim replied. “For instance, take that chocolate sauce you’ve got on your dessert, Miss Phoenix. For every one hundred grams of processed chocolate there are about eighty microscopic insect fragments in it.”

  Lydia shivered. “Gross.”

  Ansel swallowed revulsion and set her fork down. She had the distinct impression that Tim was enjoying the effect his perverse conversation was having on Lydia and her. He didn’t stop.

  “A lot of processed foods with grains, fruits, and vegetables have even more bugs. The worst is mushrooms. One can has up to twenty maggots processed with it.”

  “Enough, Tim. We get the point.” Lydia stared at him.

  Ansel went for a diversion tactic. “How interesting that you visited South America. The latest fossil discoveries in that country have been fascinating. I was going to discuss those during one of our seminars.”

  “I really enjoyed my stay in the Amazon. I went on a nine day student rainforest workshop sponsored by the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Someone paid my way so it didn’t cost me a thing.”

  Lydia moved closer to him. “So, you want to go see what’s in this tent, Tim?”

  Ansel looked at Lydia. “Why don’t you go ahead. I want to ask Tim something. It will only take a second.”

  Lydia cast a woeful gaze in Tim’s direction. “All right. Come find me.”

  When she left, Tim stared at Ansel, but said nothing.

  “Tim, I’m curious about something that happened the day we found Nick Capos. When you saw him, you took some pictures. What did you do with those photos?”

  “I didn’t do anything with them,” he said after taking a long sip of his beer. “The police confiscated the roll. I was lucky they didn’t take my camera, too.” He cocked his head sideways as if studying her critically.

  Ansel shrugged. “I should have realized that. I was hoping that if you still had them, I could see them. I wanted to take another look at the area around Nick’s body. Oh, before I forget, you got my email about the fossil seminar at my workshop tomorrow, right?”

  “Sure. I also got your recommendation letter. Thanks for that. It should really help with my admission application.”

  “You’re welcome. O.K. I’ll see you tomorrow. Enjoy the party.” She turned and started to walk away.

  “Hey, Miss Phoenix,” Tim called.

  Ansel turned.

  “Say bones.” Tim raised his camera and snapped a picture. “Great shot. I’ll bring you a copy tomorrow.” In a second he disappeared into the tent.

  Ansel stood paralyzed, watching as Tim Shanks went through the canopied opening. Goosebumps skittered up her arms, and the summer heat did nothing to warm her. She couldn’t believe the revelation spinning through her head, but it all made such perfect sense.

  Deinonychus, she remembered. An attractive-looking social animal, quick, strong, and very good with its hands. That’s how she’d classified Tim’s social behaviors to dinosaurian characteristics. He was all those things, from his blond good looks to the way he deftly manipulated his camera.

  Just like he’d used the camera to take her picture in the Rockheads aisle. The clicking sound she’d heard had been his camera shutter, and she’d seen the flash of his bright red Hawaiian shirt as he’d scampered out of view. He’d followed her. Had he tried to dart her? Was he a killer?

  Tim attended Bowie College. Had Nick been speaking to him on the pay phone? Nick could have met him there, but what did Tim have to do with the amber inclusion or the coins worth two million dollars?

  Get Dorbandt, her conscience screamed as fear coursed through her. Go straight to the sheriff’s office right now and tell Detective Fiskar everything. Ask him if Tim’s film was confiscated or not. Tim’s photographing of Nick’s decomposed body had seemed grotesque at the time. Obscene.

  But what good would it do talking to Fiskar? Dorbandt was out of town. No one would rush to question Tim unless she had proof of his involvement with Nick and Evelyn. She had to find evidence here and now while he was occupied with Lydia.

  But how to prove Tim Shanks could be the killer, Ansel pondered frantically? She didn’t know much about him: where he hung out, where he lived. And then she thought of one desperate way she might get proof.

  Ansel hurried toward a metal barrel. She dumped her eclair into the trash and moved into a thick crowd of party-goers near the band stand, twining in and out of knotted groupings to make sure Tim couldn’t follow her again.

  She’d know his battered brown station wagon anywhere. Maybe he hadn’t locked the vehicle, and she could get into it. Maybe there would be something linking him to Nick or Evelyn. Maybe a dart gun or a tranquilizer dart.

  Maybe even some strychnine.

  Chapter 32

  “Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

  Tecumseh, Shawnee

  The parking area was deserted. The cowboy attendant had left, and all the guests had made their way to the buffet. Except for a few scattered pines, hiding places were minimal, so Ansel ducked behind cars as she searched the well-ordered rows. She found Shanks’ car very quickly.

  Up close the long, brown Chevy Impala f
ive-door looked ancient. The paint had faded, the roof racks had rusted, and the dents and scratches from hood to rear door resembled battle wounds that had never healed.

  Ansel crouched past the wagon bed. The driver’s door was unlocked. She opened it, slid behind the steering wheel, and closed the door. She scrunched down further in the seat and placed her sunglasses on her lap.

  The stifling car smelled like old hamburger meat, dust, and mildew. The balding cloth seats were well-abused, and the sun-faded dash looked cracked and brittle under the loose papers, napkins, maps, and gas receipts stuffed onto it.

  Even the passenger seat was covered with spiral notebooks, plastic binders, a mountain of returned homework papers, and movie soundtrack CDs. A similar mound of material filled the dirt-encrusted floorboard beneath the passenger seat. Ansel quickly fingered through the dash debris and seat piles, making sure she didn’t miss any incriminating evidence linking Tim to Nick or Evelyn. Nothing.

  She opened the glove compartment. It bulged with accumulated debris from years of road travel. Among the mess the only things she saw of interest were two ratty paperback novels entitled On Death and Dying and Death Be Not Proud. Classroom assignments or a chilling glimpse into Shanks’ psyche?

  The rear seat seemed to be Tim’s dumping ground for old take-out food containers and bagged lunches, which littered the seats and overflowed onto the floor. Sighing, Ansel got back out of the car, sunglasses in hand, and opened the backseat door. She pawed through the food trash. This proved useless. Next she peered over the backseat into the wagon bed. Only a grungy, khaki backpack rested on a stretch of dirty, moth-eaten carpet.

  Ansel reached over the rear seat and grabbed the backpack. It was heavy. She undid the metal straps and dumped everything onto the trash-covered seat. Textbooks. More papers. And a hail of loose objects that had accumulated at the bottom of the sack.

  When a clear, round object rolled to a stop by her right leg, Ansel’s limbs froze. Nick’s glass paperweight with two hearts. Evelyn had the collectible last, she realized. Tim must have gotten it the night Evelyn died. When he poisoned her.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, her heart beating a frenzied rhythm against her rib cage. Get out of here.

  Ansel padded her hand with some notebook papers and picked up the small globe, wrapping the ends around the incriminating evidence. She dug into the trash on the floorboards and found a used plastic bag, then stuffed the paper bundle into it and sealed the top. She hurriedly pushed the bulky bag into a large front pocket of her carpenter jeans.

  Ansel left the ransacked backpack, grabbed her sunglasses, and exited the Impala. She pulled out her truck keys from another pocket. As she shut the door, a pressure against her lower right abdomen made her glance down. A hand holding a black box was pressed against her blue twill blouse. In an instant, a buzzing crackle erupted against her kidneys, and her world turned into a fiery universe of pain and confusion.

  Her body twitched out of control. She fell backward against the car, emitting a startled grunt as her legs, arms, head, and torso jerked in different directions. Her hat flew off, and she dropped her sunglasses and keys to the ground as an agony of vibrating, burning pain seized her. Her eyes rolled back in her head before something grabbed her under the left armpit. She felt no fear. Her short-circuited brain couldn’t handle such a complicated emotion. Blurred images flicked by her open eyes, but she couldn’t recognize any of them.

  “I hit you with a stun gun. You shouldn’t have nosed around my car.”

  Ansel gurgled a response. Her tongue didn’t work. As her head lolled on a neck made of rubber, she was vaguely aware of the grass, and her boots dragging across ground. Other boots.

  “We’re going to your truck. Don’t fight or scream. I’ll zap you again. Gotta love these guns. Thirty bucks for a hundred thousand volts of power, and it only needs a nine-volt battery.”

  Suddenly they stopped, and Ansel’s back sagged against hot metal. Her legs and arms had started tingling, but at least the pain had dissipated. She just couldn’t move. Her body didn’t seem connected to her brain. Then the person moved her again. Upward. Hot again. A loud, metallic bang focused her wandering gaze. A car door? Her drooping head was snapped around. A hand steadied her chin.

  “Listen to me. Pay attention. Where is the two million dollars?”

  “What?” Ansel managed to whisper, her eyes staring at an angry male face. It looked familiar. Tim? A bolt of instinctual fear struck her, something so primitive that even her discombobulated brain circuits couldn’t jumble the message up. This was bad. The taste of blood filled her mouth. She’d bitten her lip or tongue but didn’t remember doing it.

  “I haven’t got all day. Tell me, or I’ll kill you right here.”

  They were in her truck. She vaguely recognized the shiny, cleaned vinyl of the dash. “Don’t know,” Ansel said, louder.

  “Lying whore.” A second hand around her throat tightened. “The money is mine. I worked for it. I want it.”

  The feeling in Ansel’s body returned in waves. She could move her hands a bit, but not her arms. She could also move her toes though her legs were numb. She didn’t budge, afraid of letting Tim know that her limbs felt something. Cool air struck her face. The car idled and the air conditioning blasted full force. Why were they in her truck?

  “Am-ber?” she muttered more coherently.

  Tim’s eyes widened. “Yeah, I’m talking about the amber. Where’s the cash?”

  Ansel shook her leaden head. “Don’t know.”

  Tim hit her with his fist. Hard. She groaned as her head rocked against the seat, and pain enveloped her left cheek. She could do nothing. Her entire body tingled with returning feeling but wasn’t under her control. He grabbed her arms and yanked her back up, shaking her like a mad dog with a helpless animal in its jaws.

  “I don’t give a damn about the fake amber. Do you hear me, you stupid half-breed?”

  When Tim quit shaking her, Ansel slumped in his hands and pretended to be more incapacitated than she was. The throttling brought sensation flooding back into her body. He was stimulating her nervous system more than hurting her.

  “Not fake,” she insisted. “Real dinosaur.”

  Tim laughed. “Fooled you too, huh? It’s just bird and reptile parts with rubber and resin molds. Your lover boy supervised my work, and then got it into the amber. Don’t know how he did it, but he fooled that old Greek fag.” His face became a twisted mask. “Nick stiffed me. I was supposed to get a million for helping. We’ll just go somewhere else to discuss my money.”

  He let her go, put the truck into reverse, and backed out of the parking space. Ansel knew she couldn’t let him leave with her. Her arms tingled, but felt weak. She couldn’t get the zipper of her fanny pack open and retrieve the pistol. The gun was useless. She couldn’t even open her door and get out. Her legs, however, had feeling.

  Ansel tried lifting her left leg a bit so Tim wouldn’t notice and found that she had some control over it. She had to make her move after Tim shifted the automatic transmission from Reverse into Drive. It was her only chance of drawing notice from party goers.

  The truck reversed and faced a corridor between two rows of parked vehicles. The cattle fence exit onto the main ranch road was at the end of the row. Tim shifted the transmission into drive, and Ansel waited until he gave the truck gas. The Ford rolled forward.

  Ansel lifted her left leg, guided it over the floor hump and on top of Tim’s boot. She also dropped her body across the front seat toward him. Her surprise tactic caught him totally off guard, and his head whipped toward her.

  “No,” he screamed, but she stomped on his boot as hard as she could.

  The truck accelerated like a bull out of a chute, gas feeding its V-6 engine in a rush of power. Tim tried to push her away with one hand while the other steered the suddenly speeding vehicle. Ansel used her weakened arms against him and managed to get one hand on the camera strap hanging around his neck, holding on
to it so Tim couldn’t shift her weight off the pedal.

  The truck gunned down the parking row. Trying not to hit vehicles on either side, Tim opted to keep the truck going forward while pushing Ansel away from him. The end of the row loomed directly ahead. They had to turn or risk hitting the heavy pole fencing bordering the ranch road.

  “Get off, bitch!” Tim’s face contorted with killing rage. His right fist hit Ansel’s head with repeated blows.

  She screamed, pain exploding inside her skull. Her grip on the camera strap evaporated. Her foot came off the pedal. Ansel slumped on the seat, too dazed to move. Her great idea had failed.

  The truck decelerated as Tim neared the turn toward the exit gate. A white sedan appeared at the end of the row, its turn signal indicating it was coming toward them. He was forced to go left or hit the car.

  Tim took the turn like a racetrack driver on two churning wheels, sending grass clumps spinning into the air. He barely missed clipping the sedan’s front end as the pickup sped onward, toward the barbed-wire fence separating the parking lot from the horse pasture.

  Ansel pushed herself up into a sitting position just in time to see a wire fence rushing at them. Neither Tim nor she wore seatbelts. She used her weakened arms to brace herself as best she could against the dash. Anything to stop from being thrown into the windshield. Tim screamed as the Ford slammed into the barrier doing thirty miles an hour.

  Headlights exploded. A tremendous screech of metal eclipsed all sound as anchored, three-inch diameter fence-posts jack-knifed over the grill and flew toward the windshield like missiles. Luckily, none of poles cracked the glass. A drag line of barbed wire scraped across the hood, then snapped, whip-tailing over the roof like a biting snake. Ansel closed her eyes just before her head slammed into the roof top when the truck bounced over a grass knoll. It landed in the horse pasture with a bone-jarring thud.