by Andrew Mayne
Glenn takes the photos and studies the numbers. “These shouldn’t be here.” He shoots an annoyed glance at the camera. His shoulders slump. “So you just looked at the numbers? That’s why you put those in one pile.” He shrugs and lifts his palms in the air, frustrated. “I guess that makes sense.”
I should keep my mouth shut. I can’t. My desire for logical explanations is a compulsion—a dangerous one at that. “No. That’s not how I knew.”
The cords in Glenn’s forearms tighten. His whole posture goes stiff. His voice is calm and controlled as he asks me, “Then how did you know they’re all from the same crime scene?”
CHAPTER FIVE
INDEX
I can tell Detective Glenn has spent a lot of hours working on being calm and composed in extreme situations. I suspect nothing has been an accident so far. The “accidental” photo of the split head was because he wanted to see how I reacted.
His composure slipped when he saw me pile the photographs together. It caught him by surprise. I think that up until then he’d been only casually entertaining his suspicions. His lack of aggression was an asset. If I’d picked up on that, then I probably would have realized sooner what was going on.
There’s a reason I haven’t seen the sheriff—the woman in the parking lot—for hours. She wears everything on the surface. Glenn glides along the bottom of a deep ocean. I suspect she’s the one who ordered the SWAT team to knock down my door, while Glenn is the one with the nuanced approach who got me to willingly hop into the back seat of his car like a frightened stray.
“Why did you group those photos together?” he asks again.
I face them toward me. “It was a subconscious thing.”
His voice becomes cordial again. “Is there something you want to tell me, Theo?”
“Yeah. I suck at botany. I could never remember all the names.” I point to a small, barbed weed. “It’s not milk thistle. Related, though.” I point to the weeds in the other photos. “It’s only in the ones I piled here. Which means these were taken at the same time of year.”
He picks up a photograph and stares at it. “Weeds?”
“Yes, weeds.” I wave my hand at the other photos. “I organized the others for different reasons.” I point to the old woman photos and ones I thought were related to them. “There’s distortion in the lens. You can see that in the lower corner where the straight lines are.” I touch another stack. “These are clearly film prints transferred to digital using a scanner. Probably from the 1990s.”
“Probably,” Glenn echoes as he softly shakes his head.
There’s a knock on the door, and someone calls for Glenn to join him in the hall.
“Excuse me,” he says before stepping out.
I can hear them talking but not the words. I’m curious but try not to look too interested, because the camera is still watching me.
Detective Glenn walks back in and falls into his seat, somewhat relaxed. “Can I give you some advice, Dr. Cray?”
“I’m sure I could use it.”
“If you ever find yourself in a situation like this again, god forbid, don’t say anything until you talk to a lawyer.” He taps the stack of photos. “That’s some spooky stuff. You might even say incriminating.”
“I was just being honest.”
“I noticed. Almost to your own detriment. Speaking of which, I was curious why you lingered on the head trauma photo.”
“So, that was planned?”
“Oh, yeah.” He nods. “I wanted to see if you had a normal revulsion response or wanted to start touching yourself.”
“And I lingered . . .”
“Yep. Cops and doctors do, too.”
“I was a paramedic.”
This gets a raised eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yes. But that’s not why I lingered. I was looking at how the blood dripped across the white grout between the tiles. It had me thinking of bone.”
Glenn squints one eye. “Bone? You’re an odd one. I don’t know if you realize how odd.” He passes his hands over the photos. “Want to know what was most interesting to me?”
“Please tell.”
“Never once did you mention the bodies. You noticed everything except them.”
Even I have to admit that’s a little peculiar. “I guess people are not my area of expertise . . .”
He lets out a small laugh. “I’m realizing that.”
“So . . . am I free to go?”
“You were free at any time. Technically, we never arrested you.”
I eye the door suspiciously. “When you say I’m free,” I say, “am I free free? Or is this the kind of thing where you’re going to keep after me for . . . god knows what this is about?”
“You’re free. You’re not our guy.”
“Your guy? Can you tell me what this is about now?”
“Yes, Professor. For a hot moment you were our number-one suspect in a murder investigation. The district attorney was already trying to decide what tie to wear to your lethal injection.” He eyes the camera again, then lowers his voice. “Out here they’re a little jumpy when it comes to this kind of thing. They were eager to get to you to preserve any evidence of your guilt.”
I feel a bit numb. “Me? Why me?” The photos should have made it obvious, but sometimes I’m so detached I don’t draw straight lines.
“Are you kidding? You’re a wet dream of a suspect. Aloof genius scientist. You come in here talking about apex predators. It was too good.”
I feel a kind of burning on my skin as this washes over me. Glenn is relaxed, yet I’m afraid it’s still an act.
He notices my discomfort. “Seriously”—motioning to the door—“you can walk out right now.”
I turn my head toward the door, half expecting to see armed guards waiting to haul me away. “If this is a game, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Cray. I know this is all a bit of a head trip.”
I step outside myself for a moment and see how I must appear. As an EMT, I saw shocked people all the time. That’s what I’m feeling right now.
My eyes fall to the topmost photo. A woman’s hand, soft, almost elegant in its pose, dangles in the frame, splatters of red dripping from the fingertips. Her palms are caked in dirt and her own blood.
I spread the other photos out on the table and look at each one again.
Detective Glenn had mentioned I noticed everything except the people in them.
I’m noticing now.
There’s no picture of her face.
It all makes sense now. I know the reason why I’m here.
A different kind of weight sinks onto my shoulders. After a long pause, my eyes drift up to Glenn. He’s watching me intently.
I find the strength to say what I don’t want to. “I know her . . .”
CHAPTER SIX
FIELDWORK
Detective Glenn watches me for a reaction as he says the name. “Juniper Parsons.”
I don’t have one, which, I suspect, is a reaction in and of itself. My first fear was that he was going to say the name of someone close to me—of which there aren’t that many. The hand in the photo could have belonged to a half dozen women I’ve worked with or the daughter of an acquaintance.
The only woman I’ve been involved with recently—and that’s stretching it—is Allison. I think I’d recognize her hand immediately. I’d spent long nights caressing her wrists and intertwining our fingers as we talked about everything from old Bob Hope road comedies to the smell of the desert air in the Gobi.
If it had been her in the photos, my body would have reacted first with some kind of primitive physiological response—dilated blood vessels, skin hackling, a knot in my stomach.
Right now I feel a fleeting sense of relief that I don’t recognize the name. Fleeting, because a higher emotion—the kind our social brains tell us to feel based upon internal, not external, experiences—tells me I should fee
l guilty. Guilty like a chastised dog sitting in the corner, not because he knows taking food from the table is bad, but because he’s done something inappropriate he doesn’t understand.
My nonreaction is observed by Detective Glenn. While it may support my innocence, it probably reinforces his perception that I’m more detached from the people around me than usual. I’m a caricature of the aloof scientist.
I’m bad with names. I roll Juniper’s through my head over and over. Did he mean June?
June isn’t a vivid memory. She was a student of mine when I started teaching full-time six years ago. I was close enough in age to most of my class that it made it difficult to manage the need to be professional with the desire to be accepted by what would appear to be my peer group.
She was a zoology major, considering a jump to ethology, the study of animals in their environments. I’d been teaching my holistic approach to understanding systems. Forget the names and conventions we’re accustomed to: invent your own. Not every animal with an identical name behaves the same when it’s in a different ecosystem. An Inuit who survives by hunting whales weighing more than the mass of everyone he’s ever met lives a vastly different lifestyle than a San Francisco vegan who never eats anything that doesn’t spend its life cycle buried in dirt.
We had a handful of conversations after class. I think I went out for pizza a few times with her and some other students after a lecture. She never worked in my lab, and as far as I know, we never exchanged texts or talked on the phone.
I glance back to Glenn, after what has been a very long moment. “What happened to her?”
“Do you remember her?”
“I believe so. She called herself June. Maybe she felt Juniper was a bit much.”
“Three days ago, we got a call from her mother. Juniper was out here doing some research and hadn’t checked in. We sent someone to her motel room. She hadn’t been there in at least as long. Everything was intact. The only thing missing was her car. Which we found at a repair shop getting a new transmission.
“This morning two hikers found her body. It went from a missing-persons case to a potential murder investigation. The first thing we do in a situation like this is identify anyone who might know the victim.
“Your name came up.” Glenn doesn’t elaborate, keeping his cop secrets to himself as he waits for me to say something.
Is this where I protest or stay quiet?
After waiting a beat, he continues, “Two scientists who knew each other in the same area doing research . . .”
I guess it’s my turn to respond. “I had no idea she was here. Juniper and I haven’t spoken in years.”
Glenn gives me a noncommittal shrug. “She had your book on her iPad. Some of your research, too. That led us back to you again. A little too much Law & Order, first act, I know. But real life sometimes plays out like that.”
“But now you know I didn’t do it?” I try to make it a statement, but it comes across as a question, a desperate one at that.
“I think we can reasonably rule you out. If it makes you feel better, we also pulled in the mechanic at the car shop and had local police question her ex-boyfriend. You weren’t our only suspect . . . just the most interesting one.”
“What’s changed in the last hour?” I’m afraid to ask too many questions. Just as quickly as the accusing finger points away, it can point back.
“Our medical examiner was able to make a more thorough examination. I would say we can conclusively rule you out as a suspect.”
My eyes dart to the photo of her elegant hand dangling in despair. “Okay, but who did this to her?”
“Not who, Dr. Cray. What.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
ISLANDS
“As you’ve no doubt gathered, the injuries were quite severe,” Detective Glenn begins. “At first it appeared to be a knife attack of some kind. One arm was almost detached and the head nearly severed. We found bloody footprints and handprints stretching for almost a hundred yards. She was attacked and chased down. Possibly repeatedly. She was then dragged under a log. It took place less than a half mile from the interstate. Not exactly deep woods. But these kinds of things can happen anywhere. As you’re now aware, our policy is to get as much evidence as possible before it goes cold.”
“These kinds of things?” I try not to focus on the graphic images.
“A bear attack. We weren’t sure at first.” His voice trails off for a moment. “We get several encounters a year and on average one fatality.” He points to me. “Scientists account for almost half of them. A close second are self-professed grizzly experts. Juniper appears to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
“We found a partial paw print and what appears to be bear fur in some of the wounds. An expert from Fish and Wildlife confirmed the wounds are consistent with a bear mauling.”
“A bear.” I let it sink in. Doing research in Montana and Wyoming, you’re constantly on the watch for them. I keep a can of bear spray in my pack whenever I set foot in their territory. I’ve seen hundreds of them. Even grizzlies. I give them a wide berth, and they’ve always reciprocated.
I’d never done any field research with Juniper, so I have no idea how well trained she was. But she never struck me as a stupid girl.
Even still, bear attacks are so exceedingly rare. Which is surprising when you realize how closely we come in contact with them when we’re out in the woods.
Put a wildlife camera in your campsite overnight and you’ll be surprised and possibly frightened by the amount of nature that comes strolling and slithering through.
You can find a hungry bear within earshot of a highway where electric Teslas whiz by under automated control and kids sit in back of RVs obliviously watching Star Wars on a big-screen TV as microwave popcorn pops.
Nature is there, even if you don’t recognize it.
“Two days ago a hiker called in to report that he’d heard the sound of a woman screaming not too far from where we eventually found Juniper. He said he and his friends went to investigate but couldn’t see anything.”
Glenn lets out a small sigh. “Easy to understand out there. I once stood on the bumper of a Cadillac that had been covered by mud and brush, looking for that self-same car. I got hell for that one.”
I’m not one to talk. I tell myself it’s because of my intense focus. “Do you have any idea why she was out here? Not doing bear research, I hope.”
He flips through his notepad. “Insular biogeographical analogs?”
“Islands,” I reply. “She was looking for islands.”
“Islands? Up here?”
“That’s what I call them. Generally speaking, they’re ecosystems that are isolated from the outside. In the case of islands, it’s the ocean that separates them. In a desert you might find an oasis. Or even in a dense jungle, you might find caves with isolated life.
“Remember how I mentioned animals filling different parts of an ecosystem? Even tadpoles becoming apex predators? It sounds like Juniper was looking for pocket ecosystems that are more self-contained than they appear from the outside.
“You can find them in unusual places. Caves, like I said, or on the side of cliffs. You can even find them in man-made environments like a cruise ship or the top of a building. Their degree of isolation varies. But the more remote they are, the more likely a few species are to adapt to fit all the roles you see in a larger system.” I realize I’m droning on again.
“Keep going.”
“Well, from a bioinformatics point of view, it gets really interesting when you don’t limit yourself to traditional taxonomies. Sociologists see emergent structures in everything from prisons to computers playing poker.”
I see a connection between Juniper’s research and what I taught and feel a twinge of guilt. “I used to tell my students that computer models are informative, but they can only tell us so much about external systems. We have to compare and contrast. You have to go outside. You have to explore the unexplored .
. .”
Detective Glenn notices my hands. I tend to flex them and squeeze them when I’m stressed. Right now my fingers are going white from the lack of blood.
“Are you okay, Dr. Cray?”
I shake my head. “No. I just remembered a conversation I had with June . . . Juniper. She asked me for advice.” It becomes more vivid. We were at the pizza place near campus with a group of other students. She’d slid into the bench next to me. She had bright brown eyes.
She flicked her hair back and gave me a small grin. “So, Professor Theo, what advice would you give an aspiring scientist?” She’d propped her elbow on the top of the bench. I’d slid back to give her a little more room. This got me another smirk from her.
I recall being very afraid of coming across as one of the lecherous professors who corner young coeds like desperate wolves, then act surprised when they’re told that their field has a long way to go toward being more hospitable to women.
Her body language was lost on me. It might have been flirty in the way that some girls learn is likely to get them a response from males who might otherwise dismiss them. I don’t know. All I saw was the question.
I gave her a heartfelt response. She pulled back from my space only to prop her head on her hand, elbow on the table, and listen intently.
I thought she was humoring me as I went on. I know now that she wasn’t. She took every word very seriously.
Those words, my words, got her killed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FRONTIERS
From Pliny the Elder, who died rushing ashore to Pompeii after Mount Vesuvius erupted, to modern times, being a scientist can be dangerous. Expert pathogen seekers have lost their lives trying to combat diseases. We’ve lost astronauts in reentry and ocean explorers to the depths of the sea.
Even the laboratory can be a dangerous frontier. Madame Curie was killed by the elements she was helping us understand. Virus hunters in level-five containment facilities, where every molecule of air is scrubbed, have lost their lives when a tiny pinprick ruptured the tip of a glove.
