Murder on the Silk Road

by Stefanie Matteson

  The opportunity to question Dogie came right after dinner. The guests had been invited on an evening excursion to the Lake of the Crescent Moon. They made up two mini-busloads: a small group of Germans in one, and six Americans—Charlotte, Marsha, Bert, Dogie, Lisa, and Peter—in the other. The Lake of the Crescent Moon was Dunhuang’s other major tourist attraction, and, like the caves, it had been so for almost sixteen centuries. The long-ago worshipers at the caves had once stopped at the lake to replenish their water supplies before setting out across the waterless deserts to the west. “The skill of man made the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas,” went a local saying, “but the hand of God fashioned the Lake of the Crescent Moon.”

  The lake was situated amid the Southern Dunes, the immense sand dunes on the outskirts of town. The minibus dropped them off near a crude shelter made out of sticks and poles at the side of the road, where a herd of camels was tethered to a rail. One by one, the camel driver in charge loaded them onto the kneeling beasts, who grumbled, growled, and protested in every possible way, including showering mouthfuls of revolting cud over anyone who tried to be friendly. “And I thought a dogie was a stubborn beast,” said Dogie, as a camel driver heaped abuse on a resentful camel who kept trying to stand up while it was being saddled.

  At last they were all mounted. At a flick of the camel driver’s whip, the animals took off with loose, swinging strides across the shallow sand hills, bells jingling. Charlotte found her perch atop the camel very comfortable. Unlike the one-humped dromedary of the Arabian Desert, the Bactrian camels of the Gobi had two humps, and the space between them made a natural saddle, which was padded by a thick straw mat with a quilt thrown over it. The bridle was a rope made of twisted camel hair that was attached to a wooden peg running through the camel’s nostrils. But it was an item of tack that was hardly necessary. The camels had made this trip so many times that they could have done it in their sleep.

  The range of enormous sand dunes which was their destination stood before them like a sea of petrified waves. Despite the hour, the sun still burned in a brilliant blue sky, but its low position cast the eastward flanks of the dunes into deep purple shadow, and bathed the westward flanks in a golden glow, leaving a line along the crests as sharp and sinuous as the division between yin and yang on the ancient Chinese symbol of the cosmos. The camel’s slow, steady pace was so rhythmic, the heat radiating from the sand so comforting, and the cool breeze so intoxicating that Charlotte felt as if she could almost go to sleep, but when she found herself riding next to Dogie, she realized that here was her chance to ask him some questions.

  Dogie was not tranquilized by his surroundings, nor was his camel, which seemed to have a mind of its own. As he jerked the reins to keep it from breaking away, he let out a steady string of expletives of the four-letter variety, ending with one in Chinese. The camel blinked its long eyelashes placidly, unperturbed by Dogie’s insults.

  “What does the Chinese word mean?” asked Charlotte. “I didn’t have any problem understanding any of the others,” she added.

  “Dog fart,” he replied with a grin. “Ain’t it great? I picked it up from our guide in Beijing. It’s a Chinese favorite, along with turtle’s egg. But I prefer dog fart, especially for this pig-headed pile of shit.”

  Charlotte laughed.

  “They say there’s nothin’ a cowboy fears ’cept a decent woman and bein’ set afoot,” Dogie continued. “But I’ll tell ya—I’d rather be set afoot any day of the week than to be saddled to this hair-covered compost heap.”

  As Dogie struggled with the temperamental beast, Charlotte pondered how to delicately bring the subject around to Larry’s death, and then, deciding that there was no delicate way to go from dog fart to murder, plunged right in. “I spoke with Bouchard this evening,” she said. “Right before dinner.”

  Dogie looked over at her. “About what?”

  “Larry’s murder. I didn’t realize it when I met him, but I’m an old friend of his aunt’s. When she heard through a mutual friend that I was here, she called me and asked me to look into his death on behalf of the family.” Thank goodness she had dreamed up that excuse, she thought.

  “Oh,” said Dogie.

  “The family’s not satisfied with the police’s explanation of his murder. She asked me if I had any other ideas, and I told her I did. I told her that I thought Larry might have been killed by someone who wanted to claim his discovery of the T. rex for himself.”

  Lisa had told Bert and Dogie about the T. rex skeleton as soon as she got back. They had skipped dinner to go out and take a look, and the conversation on the minibus ride out had been of little else.

  Dogie looked over at her questioningly. “Like Bouchard?”

  “Someone removed the page for Thursday from Larry’s field diary. I don’t know why anyone would do that unless they didn’t want the discovery attributed to him. Bouchard is the likely choice: he was camped nearby, and, from what you’ve said, he has a reputation for horning in on other people’s discoveries.”

  “Claim poacher extraordinaire.”

  “The only trouble is, I can’t figure out how he would have found out about Larry’s discovery of the T. rex. He said they didn’t speak to one another, which from what you say about their relationship is probably the truth. But he must have known that Larry had made a discovery of some kind.…”

  “That’s easy,” Dogie interjected. “Spies.”

  “Spies!”

  “Bouchard pays off the help at his competitors’ camps to bring him tips. He was camped somewhere else for almost a week, right? The day after Larry discovers fossils, Bouchard pitches a new camp within a hundred yards. I don’t think it was a little birdie who told him, do you?”

  “A spy!” said Charlotte, thinking aloud. “Of course. The spy tells Bouchard about Larry’s find, and Bouchard either kills Larry to claim his find, or takes advantage of Larry’s death—again, it’s the spy who tells him that Larry’s dead—to go through his field diary and remove the critical page.”

  “Makes perfect sense to me,” said Dogie.

  In the latter case, the spy scenario also explained the problem of opportunity. In spite of what she had thought earlier, Charlotte doubted the police would have left the camp unguarded. But if a spy had told Bouchard about the murder, he would have had hours to search the tent before anyone got there.

  She looked over at Dogie, who was still jerking his camel’s reins. “I asked Bouchard if he saw anyone in the vicinity of the camp that morning.”

  “And …?”

  “He said he saw you.”

  The face under the Stetson broke out into a smile as wide as the brim of the hat. “He did, did he? I always said that guy was a sonofabitch.”

  “Were you there?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I was,” Dogie confessed, hanging his head in mock humility. “Not at the camp, but out in the desert.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Ridin’ the mornin’ circle, as we used to say. I was itchin’ to see what it looked like out there. If what Larry said was true, it was a fossil hunter’s wonderland. I woke up at six, and couldn’t get back to sleep. Besides, the early mornin’ is the best time for fossil-huntin’ in the desert.”

  “How long were you gone?” she asked. If she could pinpoint the time of Larry’s death—she would have to talk to the Chinese counterpart of the medical examiner—the time that Dogie was in the desert could be important.

  “About an hour and a half, I’d say.”

  For a moment, they rode in silence. There was only the swishing sound of the camels’ hooves as they struck the sand, and the sound of Dogie humming an old country-and-western tune.

  As he hummed, Charlotte remembered the chorus, which went, “Hang me, hang me, you oughtta take a rope and hang me …” She smiled to herself. Dogie certainly didn’t seem to be taking her questions as seriously as Bouchard had.

  “What was that sonofabitch doin’ up and about anyway?” asked Dogi
e as he jerked the reins again to show the camel who was boss.

  “To quote him exactly, taking a piss.”

  “Just my luck that that frog woulda been takin’ a piss.”

  “Did you find any fossils?”

  “Only that Protoceratops andrewsi skull. I didn’t go that far. Never really got up into the foothills.”

  “The same one you found when we were with you?”

  Dogie nodded.

  Charlotte was baffled. “Why did you pretend that you’d just found it when you’d already found it earlier that morning?”

  “I didn’t want Bert to know that I’d been out already. It woulda been like—I don’t know—ownin’ up to sneakin’ a look at your Christmas presents, or somethin’.” He began humming the “Hang Me” tune again.

  Or, Charlotte thought, he didn’t want to own up to being out in the desert because he didn’t want anyone to know that he was the one who had murdered Larry. “Then Bert wasn’t with you,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “Aren’t you roommates?”

  Dogie nodded. “Yep, we’re bunkies all right.”

  “Which means that Bert was in your room. Which means that he could confirm how long you were gone.”

  “Negative to Bert’s bein’ in the room. Negative to Bert’s bein’ able to confirm how long I was gone.”

  “If he wasn’t in your room, where was he?”

  “In someone else’s room,” Dogie replied, looking over at her with a twinkle in his eye. “Someone you know very well. A relation, in fact.”

  Charlotte raised a dark, winged eyebrow.

  It took another five minutes to reach the lake, which was clear blue and shaped like a crescent. It was completely encircled by enormous sand dunes that looked as if they were going to swallow it up at any moment. But they never did, which was said to be a curious circumstance of the wind patterns. It had stood in the same place for centuries without its outline ever changing.

  The camels carried them to a grassy area enclosed by the curve of the shore, where they dismounted. Leaving the surly beasts to graze on the camel thorn and drink from the waters of the lake, they followed their guide to a cluster of carpets that had been spread out at the water’s edge. After they were all sitting down, their guide produced a sackful of large ripe peaches, which he passed around. As they ate the juicy peaches, he filled them in on the history of the lake. The area where they were sitting had once been the site of a cluster of ancient temples and pavilions whose steps and terraces had led down to the water’s edge. These temples and pavilions, which had been a tourist attraction since the fourth century, had been burned down by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.

  “There were bad elements in the Red Guards who wanted to turn the campaign against the feudal counterrevolutionary customs of the old society into a campaign for the destruction of cultural relics,” he explained. “But now the Party has launched a campaign to care for our cultural relics, which it extols as valuable treasures created by the laboring peoples of the past. The revolutionary committee of Dunhuang has plans to rebuild the temples and pavilions exactly as they were.”

  After the guide had delivered his spiel, he left with the Germans to climb the enormous dune which loomed over the opposite shore, and which was famous even in Marco Polo’s day for making a sound like thunder rumbling when sand slid down its flanks. The ancient traders had made offerings to the singing sands, believing they had supernatural powers. Tired from their busy day, their group elected to stay behind to enjoy the scenic beauty of the spot. Charlotte sat in silence, gazing at the patterns made by the shadows on the rippled surfaces of the dunes and by the cool, crisp wind on the limpid surface of the lake. Lulled by the tinkling of camels’ bells and the lapping of wavelets against the sandy shore, she felt like the monk in the hut at the edge of the silver lake in Larry’s landscape painting. She was glad they were going to rebuild the temples: it was a magical, almost surreal, spot. Here, more than any other place she had yet been, she had a sense of old China.

  She could tell that it was the same for Marsha. She sat looking out, encircled in Bert’s protective arms, just as the lake was encircled by the dunes. It was at places like this that the Tang Dynasty poets whom Marsha so loved—drunk on wine and life—had penned their exquisite nature poems.

  “Look at the moon,” said Marsha.

  A crescent moon had risen in the azure sky, echoing the shape of the lake. It was reflected in the surface of the water.

  “It reminds me of Li Po,” said Peter who had been uncharacteristically quiet. When no one asked who Li Po was, he went on: “He was a High Tang poet who drowned himself one night while he was trying to catch the moon’s reflection in the water.”

  For one who was usually so stylish, he was looking very ordinary—if not downright proletarian—in brown wool slacks and a cheap navy-blue sweatshirt that looked as if he had bought it at the local market.

  “He was drunk,” he added. “A weakness for wine being his chief vice.” As he went on about the poet, he was interrupted by Dogie.

  “You know,” Dogie said as he deftly picked some peach skin out of his teeth with a toothpick, “where I come from we have a sayin’ that’s appropriate to situations like this one.”

  “What’s that?” asked Peter.

  “The bigger the mouth, the better it looks shut.”

  At Dogie’s words, Peter’s face flushed red right up to his balding temples. Then he not only closed his mouth, he clamped his lips angrily together. After a few minutes, he wandered off to join the Germans.

  The mood among those remaining was quietly celebratory. They were still talking about Larry’s discovery, which had justified their advance expedition and relieved any fears about a larger expedition not coming off. As Bert put it, they weren’t going to crash. He had lit a pipe, and the light, sweet fragrance of the tobacco perfumed the evening air.

  “The life of a paleontologist is like that of a gold prospector,” he said as he drew on the ebony pipestem. “It’s a gamble: you live on the hope that you’ll hit pay dirt with the next pan. It’s that hope—and the occasional little nugget—that keep you going through the heat, the bugs”—he swatted at a mosquito—“the monotony, the claim jumpers, the backbreaking labor, the lack of grant money.” He paused, and stared out over the surface of the lake.

  His conversation was prone to these lapses. It was as if the big skies and wide open spaces of the plains had insinuated their way into his speech.

  “And, like a gambler, you get hooked. When you do hit pay dirt—enough to keep you going, anyway—you raise the stakes. You’re not satisfied just to work your claim. You want to find that hundred-pound nugget of solid gold lying in the sand like a giant hen’s egg. And some of us are lucky enough to find it. We found the Ultrasaurus—the biggest dinosaur ever to walk the earth, longer than a football field—”

  “Now that was a giant hen’s egg,” interjected Dogie. “If it craned its neck, it could have peered into a sixth-story window.” He shook his head at the memory. “I’ll never forget comin’ across that femur stickin’ outta the rock. It was so big it looked like the trunk of a petrified tree.”

  “It’s a thrill that you never forget as long as you live,” Bert continued. “The moment is engraved in your memory. It’s impossible to describe: you’ve been working and working and working, and suddenly …”

  As she waited for the gap to close, Charlotte realized what the attraction was between Bert and Marsha: he was a fossil hunter with the soul of a poet.

  After half a minute, he went on. “At least Larry died having found it—that giant hen’s egg lying in the sand.”

  Charlotte had already told Marsha about Bouchard’s seeing Dogie in the desert early that morning, or claiming he had. Now she told her what Dogie had said, namely that Bert had spent the night with her. “He intimated it—he didn’t come right out and say it. But he might as well have.”

  They were sitting on t
he beds in Marsha’s room drinking tea from lidded cups. Identical to those in Charlotte’s room, the beds were covered with old-fashioned rose-pink chenille bedspreads. The combination of the bedspreads and sitting face to face reminded Charlotte of the heart-to-hearts she used to have with her sister when they were girls.

  Marsha slumped back on the bed, propped up on her elbows. She shook her head in self-disgust. “I vowed I wouldn’t get myself into this situation again, and here I am, in it right up to my knees.”

  “Is he married?”

  “No, it’s not that. He’s separated, soon to be divorced. He says his wife left him because he loved duckbills—that’s his specialty, duckbilled dinosaurs—more than he loved her.” She rolled her eyes. “Just what I need, a man who loves dinosaurs more than he loves women. He’s also younger than me.”

  “So what. Your father is younger than me.”

  “Really?”

  “Only by a few years.” Actually, it was seven, but she didn’t remind Marsha of that. Nor did she tell her that she’d had affairs with men who were a lot younger still. To Charlotte, age didn’t matter. “I gather you like him.”

  “A lot. We have a lot in common. We both like old things.” She smiled. “It’s just that Bert’s are older, by about sixty-four million years. He wants me to come out to Bozeman to visit. It’s a no-win situation. If it works out, guess what? I get to commute to Bozeman, Montana. Just the place for a scholar of Tang Dynasty poetry.”

  “I’ve been there,” said Charlotte. “We filmed Big Sky in Bozeman. It’s beautiful country. Besides, maybe he’ll commute to New York.”