Unnatural Selection

by Aaron Elkins

  “Mary Walker Borba,” she repeated sleepily. Then her eyes popped open and she pushed herself onto her elbows. “Walker! Was she related to Rudy?”

  “She—”

  “Oh, my God!” Julie sat all the way up, her black eyes intent. “When you were asking him about his daughter… you said ‘Mary.” Was she… was she…“

  “Yes.”

  “But are you sure? Mary Walker’s not exactly an unusual name. There must be—”

  “No.” He sat up beside her, shaking his head. “First of all, the original article mentioned that her father was an ecologist, and then some of the later ones identified him by name, and by the school he was teaching at in Canada. No, that was her, the sweet little five-year-old I remembered from Wisconsin.”

  “How terrible.”

  “Obviously, it completely changed the way he thought about the world. Six months later was when that piece in the Atlantic came out, where he pretty much said the hell with the animals, the important thing is to make wilderness safe for human beings. And as for Villarreal, remember, he was the one who’d pushed them into bringing the grizzlies back in the first place. Rudy would have seen him as responsible for her death.”

  “Well, he was, really. In a way.” She reached absently toward the Malteser bag, but changed her mind and brought her hand back. With her arms wrapped around her knees she stared out across St. Mary’s Sound, toward Tresco and Bryher, which were quickly turning golden as the evening came on. The windows of unseen houses, caught by the lowering sun, winked at them. “And then Edgar was so callous about the killings, even back then. What was it he said?”

  “He said they were ‘unfortunate.” “

  “ ‘Unfortunate,” “ Julie echoed, shaking her head.

  “And then, later, at the talk at Methodist Hall, according to what Liz and Joey told us, he said it was their own fault, that the Borbas were stupid people. He said—”

  “He said the only thing he regretted was the killing of the bear. Oh, God, can you imagine the way Rudy felt? Gideon, do you think he came here planning to kill him?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t think he would have made a public show of how much he disliked him if he was planning to do him in. No, I’m guessing that he’d been simmering for years, and those last remarks of Villarreal’s just sent him over the edge. It’s hard to blame him. For going over the edge, I mean.”

  “But why would he have come back this year? Don’t you think he would have stayed as far away from St. Mary’s as he could?”

  “Well, first of all, he thought he was completely safe. Even the police believed Villarreal had been eaten by a bear, months later. Second, there’s that $50,000.”

  “Mm.” The glitter from the windows had died out now. The islands were wrapped in evening haze. The sun had sunk below the horizon, and the bright blue water now had dull streaks of mauve spreading across it. “And you think Joey actually knew about it? Why wouldn’t he have said something before?”

  “I have no idea. But whatever he knew, it got him killed, too. By Rudy.”

  She nodded. “The Theory of Interconnected Monkey Business does not lie.”

  “That’s pretty much it,” he said, smiling. “Not exactly courtroom-ready, but maybe Mike knows more about that end of it. At this point, I have no idea what he knows or doesn’t know. I don’t even have a clue as to what made him decide it was Rudy.”

  “Well, you can ask him in half an hour. Madeleine called just before you showed up. Mike expects to have things wrapped up for the day by nine, and we’re invited up to his apartment for a late supper.”

  “Let’s head back then. I’d like to clean up first.”

  Julie peeked into the Malteser bag. “One… two… there are five left. How do we split ‘em?”

  He smiled. “I’m sure we’ll work it out on the way.”

  “I get to hold the bag,” she said.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “AS a matter of fact,” an animated Clapper said, gesturing with his fork as he talked around a mouthful of fried eggs, “what finally did the trick was something you said the other day.”

  They were at the dining table in Clapper’s dowdy, comfortable, furnished apartment above the police station, enjoying bacon and eggs on thick, chipped, white china that had no doubt come with the furnishings. Earlier, Madeleine, showing a hitherto unsuspected domestic side, had bustled cheerfully about the minuscule kitchen humming Cherubino’s arias from The Marriage of Figaro in a surprisingly sweet little voice, and had produced four perfect little mushroom-and-cheese omelets, each with a halved grilled tomato and two strips of bacon alongside it. And toast and tea for good measure. All in under ten minutes.

  Clapper had spent what must have been an exhausting five hours booking Rudy—a more thorough and extensive process than it was in the States—wading through the related paperwork, and communicating back and forth with headquarters. Now, with the day’s reports filed and the log filled out, and with Rudy locked up in one of the two holding cells downstairs (Robb and one of the volunteers were spending the night there), he was as fresh and talkative as Gideon had yet seen him, the words tumbling out of him like quarters out of a slot machine.

  Gideon looked up from sawing through a strip of thick English bacon. “Something I said? And what was that?”

  “Do you remember when we were on the beach at Halangy Point, and you were going on about the finer points of dismemberment? About how much blood you get cutting off the arms and legs, and carrying them about, and so on, and how it was usually done in a bathtub?”

  “I remember.”

  “Charming, the mealtime conversations one has in the company of this sort of person,” Madeleine Goodfellow said flutily.

  “Better get used to it,” Julie said. “That’s my advice.”

  “And you were saying how difficult it is to get rid of every trace of blood?” Clapper went on.

  “Yes, sure, even ten years later, even if the surfaces are washed down. Luminol will pick up blood at one part per fifteen million.”

  “Fascinating,” Madeleine said. “Do tell us more.” They had finished their meals and she was refilling their teacups.

  Gideon thought for a moment. “With spectrophotometric analysis of the ammoniac residue, you can even tell how old a bloodstain is, how about that?”

  “Fascinating,” Madeleine said.

  “The trick is not to ask them questions,” Julie told her.

  “The thing of it is,” said Clapper, “once we established that the remains were Villarreal’s, and then when Dillard’s subsequent death made it clear that everything was linked to the goings-on at the castle, I rang up headquarters and asked for a crime-scene examiner with bloodstain expertise. He arrived this afternoon.”

  “And that’s what the room search was all about?” Julie asked. “He was checking our bathrooms, looking for blood? And he found it in Rudy’s—that is, in the room Rudy was staying in last time, the John Biddle Room?”

  “Yes, in the grout above the tub, and between the tiles behind the wash basin, and in the crevices at the base of the walls. And not only in the bathroom, but in the bedroom as well, between the floorboards. I can’t say I was surprised. I had my suspicions, as we coppers are wont to say.”

  “Really?” Gideon asked. “You suspected Rudy all along?”

  “There wouldn’t be another couple of eggs lurking in the pantry somewhere, would there?” asked Clapper plaintively, knife and fork clasped upright in his hands, their bases resting on the table. Oliver Twist again. “And a rasher or two of bacon?”

  “Of course there are, my dear,” said Madeleine, jumping up, bangles jangling. “Would anyone else care for more?”

  Gideon and Julie declined, and Clapper continued. “Not all along, no. But since yesterday I’ve been virtually certain of it, only I had no evidence. Now, with the bloodstains, I do.”

  “But what made you think it was him yesterday?” Julie asked.

  “Superior police work, my
girl,” said Clapper jovially. “Learning that the fax to Mr. Kozlov—ostensibly from Mr. Villarreal—originated in Anchorage on the eighth of June, and knowing that the previous consortium had ended one day earlier, I had Kyle run a search for the name of any consortium fellow that might have arrived at Anchorage International Airport on either of those two days. And what do you know, up popped the name of one Rudolph Walker, who had flown from Toronto on the morning of the eighth, having flown to Toronto from London the day before. He stayed five hours, long enough, I should say, to send the fax and to pick up Mr. Villarreal’s car and dispose of it somewhere, then catch a 3:00 p.m. flight back to Toronto. That made it close enough to a virtual certainty to satisfy me. And the bloodstains in the room cinched it. So we nicked him.”

  “Well-done, Mike,” Gideon said.

  “Hear, hear,” Madeleine said in the kitchen.

  “The blood will go off to a laboratory for DNA analysis, and along with all that you’ve come up with, Gideon, I should say we’ll have a pretty strong case, whether Mr. Walker decides to cooperate or not.”

  “He hasn’t confessed, then?” Julie asked.

  “No, and I haven’t asked him to. It’s early days yet. He’s entitled to a legal adviser, you see, and he’s demanded one. The problem is that there aren’t any solicitors on the island, not a one. I offered him the opportunity to have telephone advice from Penzance, or London, or any place he liked, but he said that wasn’t good enough and refused.”

  “You can’t really blame him,” said Gideon. “It wouldn’t be the same as having a lawyer at your side.”

  “I don’t blame him. In his place, I would have done the same. In any event, he’s gotten hold of an experienced solicitor from Truro, but the gentleman isn’t available until tomorrow afternoon, so I’ve put the meat of the interrogation off until then. I want to be very sure I have all my procedural ducks in a row.”

  Madeleine returned with Clapper’s bacon and eggs and put them before him.

  “Ah, thank you, love,” he said, immediately setting to.

  “And what about Joey’s murder?” Gideon asked. “Do you have anything to go on that connects Rudy to that? Anything solid?”

  “Not yet,” Clapper said placidly. “Nothing more than conjecture, but then we’ve only just begun, you know. Don’t even have the autopsy report yet. I’m anxious to see that.”

  Madeleine seized on the lull in conversation to change the subject. “What happens to you two now?” she asked Gideon and Julie from the kitchen. “I assume the rest of the consortium has been called off.”

  “That’s because you don’t know Vasily,” Julie said. “No, we have one more morning to go tomorrow, and he’s already informed us that he expects us—”

  “Those of you still left,” said Gideon.

  “—to be there. Vasily Kozlov’s not the man to have his schedule upset by a murder or two.” She accepted another cup of tea from Madeleine. “Thank you. And then we catch the 1:00 p.m. ferry for Penzance, and the train to London. We fly from Heathrow on Monday morning.”

  “Perhaps we can have dinner tomorrow night?” Madeleine suggested. “Something heartier than eggs and bacon?”

  “Absolutely,” said Gideon. “Our treat.”

  “And then we’ll see you in October for our”—charmingly, she blushed—“wedding?” Although she was fifty, Gideon knew, this would be her first marriage, so blushes were in order.

  “I suspect we’ll see them, or Gideon, at any rate, before then,” Clapper said. “We’ll need him to give evidence at trial.”

  Having by now put away the last of his second helping, Clapper finally set down his knife and fork. “That was splendid, love,” he said to Madeleine, who beamed back at him, then went so far as to dab at a bit of egg beside his mouth with the corner of her own napkin.

  “Oh, don’t fuss so, woman,” he griped, but it was obvious that he was loving it; that they both were loving it. Madeleine kept on digging until the egg came away, while Clapper’s happy eyes, raised helplessly to the ceiling, said: What can I do? The woman is mad about me!

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Olympic National Park Headquarters, Port Angeles, Washington Five Weeks Later: July 27, 2005

  “I love a woman in a uniform,” Gideon said, watching Julie come down the steps in her tan shirt and snug olive trousers.

  “Lucky break for me,” she said, leaning over for a quick kiss, then sitting across from him on the bench at the other side of the picnic table. “I’m starving. What did you get?”

  Once or twice a week, depending on schedules and weather, they met for an alfresco lunch on the back lawn of the Olympic National Park’s administrative headquarters just outside of Port Angeles, where a picnic table for the staff had been set up in a sunny clearing in a grove of fir trees. Gideon usually brought the food, and today it was fish and chips with Diet Pepsis, from the Landings restaurant down at the ferry dock.

  “Great!” Julie said, unwrapping her portion. “This should get me through the afternoon. Is this haddock?”

  “Cod. Guess what. Rudy’s admitted murdering both of them.”

  “Yeah, I bet. Are you going to be using your tartar sauce?”

  He handed her his packet. “No, really. I got a call from Mike Clapper this morning. Rudy’s changing his plea to guilty. On the advice of his barrister.”

  “You’re serious. What brought this about?”

  “The marvels of modern science. The DNA results came in on Friday, and when Rudy’s barrister saw them, he did an about-face on the innocent plea they had going.”

  There were two sets of findings, he explained. First, DNA extracted from the blood in Rudy’s room matched not only the bones from the beach, but also made a convincing match with a sample from Villarreal’s sister, thus establishing beyond any conceivable doubt that a) the bones were Villarreal’s, and b) the dried blood in Walker’s bathroom came from Villarreal as well.

  But that had been expected; they’d been preparing for that. What had really turned things around was a second analysis that had been done on traces of blood and tissue found lodged in the links of Rudy’s metal watchband.

  “They found blood in his watchband?” Julie said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Neither did I. Neither did Mike, who’s pretty much out of the loop at this point.”

  “That’s incredible—that it would still be there after two years.”

  “No, this wasn’t Villarreal’s; this was fresh.”

  A ketchup-dabbed French fry on the way to her lips slowed. “Joey’s?”

  “Yup. Blood and scalp tissue, both identified as Joey’s, based on comparisons with tissue from his mother.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow is right. That did it, as far as the barrister was concerned. Can you imagine trying to convince a jury that these were not bits of Joey’s head that got dislodged while Walker was bashing it in with a rock?” He grimaced and peered doubtfully at the piece of fish he’d just broken off. “I think I got a little too graphic for my own good there.”

  “Much,” Julie agreed. “So, did he say what made him kill Joey?”

  “Yes, it’s all down on paper now, signed and sealed.”

  “Had he known about Edgar’s murder, was that it?”

  “Yes,” Gideon said, “and no.”

  He returned to his lunch and continued. Joey had been staying, Julie would remember, in the Marianus Napper Room, which was next to Rudy’s room, the John Biddle Room, which was at the end of the hall. Late on the last night of the first consortium, after the squabble with Pete Williams at Methodist Hall and the nightly poker game, according to Rudy, a still-seething Villarreal had banged on Rudy’s door, sick of being needled by him all week, and determined to get down to the source of it. Or perhaps he had just needed to vent some more after the Methodist Hall incident, or to argue some more. Whichever it was, their voices were soon raised and Joey, trying to sleep in the next room, had thumped on the wall and told them to keep it
down.

  They had, but it had done nothing to stem their feelings. Villarreal, of course, couldn’t have had any idea of the real reason for Rudy’s hatred, or of its passionate depth, or of the danger in which he had placed himself. After it had gone on for twenty minutes or so, and Villarreal had talked one time too many about how people attacked by animals in the wild had nothing but their own stupidity to blame, Rudy had had more than he could stand. He—

  “In other words, he’s saying that he didn’t plan to kill him? It just sort of came on him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I do. At that point he excused himself, went down to the kitchen for a knife—”

  “ ‘Excused himself? Strolled downstairs for a knife? How believable is that?”

  “Oh, I can imagine Rudy doing it. He’s pretty good at not showing his feelings when he doesn’t want to. Besides, it doesn’t make sense for him to make up something like that. His barrister never would have let him say it if it wasn’t true, because it shows premeditation. He may not have planned to kill him in the first place, but if you walk down two flights with the intention of getting a weapon and then walk back up and use it, you can hardly claim you hadn’t thought about what you were doing.”

  “True.” She finished her first piece of fish and went on to the second. “Go on.”

  “Well, he came back upstairs with the biggest kitchen knife he could find, slit Villarreal’s throat after first telling him who he was and why he was doing it, and then couldn’t stop stabbing him, he says.”

  Julie looked at her last half dozen fries and decided against them. “I don’t know why, but I don’t quite have the appetite I thought I did.”

  “Same here. What do you say we take a walk? The sun’s getting hot anyway.”

  Between the back lawn and the Park Service maintenance yard a few hundred yards away was a shade-dappled path that curved through a bit of Pacific Northwest primeval landscape: fragrant wild blackberries and huckleberries in profusion, ferns, salal, vine maple, Oregon grape, and high above everything the cool, green canopy of the firs.