The Naturalist (The Naturalist Series Book 1)

by Andrew Mayne

  He searches Glenn and Tyson for an explanation to my intrusion. They shrug, so he obliges me. “We found the victim’s blood on its fur, and DNA matched the bear we were looking for.”

  “Yes. But how did you know to shoot Bart? How did you know he was the right bear before you killed him?”

  Glenn interrupts. “I’m sorry, Dr. Cray, why are you here?”

  “I’m here because the hair in Juniper’s wounds doesn’t match Bart’s DNA.”

  There’s a silent pause in the room. After a tense moment, Sheriff Tyson speaks up. Her voice is low and measured. “How did you get Juniper Parsons’s blood?”

  I give her the matter-of-fact answer. “One of your deputies gave it to me by accident. I decided to have it analyzed.”

  “You decided to have it analyzed?” she asks. “That’s called stealing evidence.”

  I don’t like the menace in her tone. “Let’s deal with that later. What’s important right now is that the bear that killed Juniper isn’t the same bear that you killed.” I turn to Richards. “No offense.”

  Red-faced from the accusation, he slams his hand onto the table. “We found her blood on the bear!”

  I don’t mean to insult the man, but facts are facts. “Yet DNA found within Juniper’s blood sample connects to a different bear. Maybe Bart stumbled across her body?” I face Glenn. “Hell, I stumbled into her blood. I got it all over me. You saw.”

  This gets him a sideways glance from Tyson.

  Glenn sighs and explains to the room. “The curious Dr. Cray decided to visit the murder scene.”

  “And who told him where it was?” Tyson asks, her voice rising.

  “I found it on my own,” I interject. “The little flags on the highway aren’t exactly inconspicuous if you’re looking for them.”

  “And why were you looking for them?”

  I give her all my reasons at once. “Because one of my students was killed. Probably because I’m a horrible teacher. I felt like shit about it. I wanted to give her mother answers. I don’t know. I just went there.”

  A redheaded woman on the other side of the table speaks up. “How did you get bear DNA from Juniper’s blood?” She’s maybe in her early thirties. Pretty face, not much makeup.

  “The sample I was given came from a wound on Juniper. There was a hair sample in it.”

  “With a follicle?” She turns toward a man to her left. I recognize him as the coroner.

  He shakes his head. “There weren’t any follicles in the samples. We checked. Just shafts.”

  The woman swivels back at me with a condescending look on her face. “It seems like your lab was looking at mitochondrial DNA. Maybe they should go back to school.”

  My face goes hot at the insult, but I respond coolly. “I know you don’t get all the news out here, but you can pull nuclear DNA from hair shafts, if you know what you’re doing.” Pretty cocky for a guy who didn’t know that this morning.

  “Is this true?” the medical examiner asks her.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask around.”

  I try to calm myself. “I have access to resources,” I say, regretting the pompous tone.

  “I hope they involve a good attorney,” says Sheriff Tyson darkly.

  “Hold up a second,” Glenn interjects. “Before we slap the bracelets on him, let’s hear him out. Dr. Cray knew the victim and is understandably agitated by what happened.”

  Tyson makes a show of checking her watch. “Make it quick.”

  No one offers me a seat, so I go over to the whiteboard and grab a marker. I draw a quick map of the area and put an X where Juniper was found.

  “This is where the sample I was given came from.” I put another X where they killed Bart. “This is where Richards found Bart. Close enough to make sense.” I draw a wide circle. “In fact, this is Bart’s range from the Ursa Major database. As you are aware, he was a known grizzly. The likely suspect.

  “But the sample from Juniper’s scene had hair that belonged to a bear from much farther away. It may have been trekking into Bart’s territory. She could have been caught between them. Did you find any DNA at her death scene from Bart?”

  The medical examiner replies, “We found hair that was consistent.”

  “Hair from a grizzly, yes? But no DNA?”

  He shakes his head.

  I draw a wide circle around Juniper’s X. “So we have no proof Bart was even there. We do have proof of the other bear.”

  “So you say,” replies the woman. “But you’re the only one who has the magical ability to pull DNA from hair shafts. I’d love to have that power.”

  I suddenly figure out who she is. “You’re Dr. Kendall?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll help you independently verify it.” I’m sure Julian would give them access to his lab. “The important part right now is that having a press conference and saying you caught the bear would be irresponsible and inaccurate. There’s still a killer grizzly out there. Worse, we don’t even know why he killed Juniper.”

  Sheriff Tyson directs her intense focus on Richards. “Is this possible?”

  He takes a deep breath. “We found her blood on the bear.”

  “Yes,” she says, “but bears are known to sniff around others’ kills.”

  “True. It’s common.” Richards tilts his head in defeat. “It’s possible. Very possible. Damn. I hoped we caught the bastard. This is bad. And worse, I may have killed an innocent bear.”

  “Cancel the press conference?” asks Glenn.

  Tyson shakes her head. “No. We’ve established how she was killed. We can announce that part of the investigation is closed. We’ll tell people to use caution.” She glares at me. “You better be right about this.”

  Her intensity makes me step backward, bumping into the whiteboard. “I’ve been very thorough.”

  “Looks like he was all over my database,” replies Kendall as she looks at something on her phone, probably data logs. “Did you find a match?”

  “Yes . . . it’s UA.221.999.” I wait a beat before telling them his nickname. “Also known as Ripper.”

  “Christ,” Glenn mutters. “That’s all we need. A grizzly named Ripper on the loose.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you matched?” Kendall asks.

  “Completely,” I say confidently. “I checked several times.”

  She shakes her head. “Then it appears you’ve made a mistake.”

  “A mistake?”

  Kendall lets out a sigh of relief. “Dr. Cray, UA.221.999, also known as Ripper, died last year.”

  “Died?” I try to process the word.

  “Yes. I inspected his corpse myself when we retrieved the GPS collar. Ripper is very dead.” She points to the whiteboard. “What we have there is probably contamination. Maybe Juniper brushed up against old hair that was on a log. Maybe Bart still had some of Ripper’s in his fur. I don’t know. What I do know is that she wasn’t killed by a ghost bear.”

  I can feel the eyes of everyone else in the room on me as they come to realize they’ve been entertaining a fool.

  Kendall gives her head a small shake.

  “Thank god,” Richards mutters.

  My limbs grow cold. The marker falls from my fingers and rolls across the floor.

  “Dr. Cray, would you step outside?” commands Sheriff Tyson. “I’m going to talk to Detective Glenn after the conference and decide if you should be arrested or sent to a psychiatrist.”

  Her words don’t faze me as the new reality sets in.

  Kendall’s revelation isn’t what she thinks.

  “Don’t you see it?” I ask quietly.

  They ignore me and return to their discussion about the conference.

  My stomach begins to churn.

  They don’t get it.

  It’s so obvious.

  It’s why they arrested me in the first place.

  It’s why Juniper ran the wrong way.

  The pattern is clear. />
  “Don’t you see it!” I shout.

  All eyes turn back to me.

  “Deputy,” Tyson shouts to the open door. “Would you escort this man out of here?”

  I ignore her and slam my hand against the spot on the map where Juniper was found. “Are you that dense? She wasn’t killed by a bear! She was murdered by someone who wanted to make it look like that!”

  The room is silent.

  I get how I sound. But I know if I bring a sample back to my lab and find out it’s contaminated and I’m certain it didn’t happen in the lab, that means it had to have happened in the field. The only way hair from a dead bear ended up on Juniper’s body was because someone put it there.

  I can’t even fathom how or why, but this is where reason has led me. Unfortunately, no one else is seeing it as clearly as I am.

  Two thick-necked deputies rush inside, reacting to my outburst. I’m slammed against the wall, handcuffed, and dragged away before I can explain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  FRAMED

  I’m shoved inside a small room with a metal door and a narrow reinforced-glass window. There’s a bench along the back wall. It’s a holding cell of some kind but without a toilet. It’s not meant for a long stay, I hope.

  The ceiling is solid and the walls concrete.

  Holy shit, I realize. I’ve been locked up.

  Jesus Christ.

  I collapse on the bench. Part of me wants to pound on the door and insist there’s been some kind of mistake. But I know they’ll just see this as more crazy-man behavior.

  The looks on their faces as Sheriff Tyson’s goons hauled me away . . .

  They thought I was raving mad.

  I was mad. I still am. Mad at them for ignoring what’s in front of them.

  They pulled me in with a SWAT team welcoming party because something about Juniper’s murder looked like a man could have done it.

  I never saw the autopsy photos, but it seems clear to me that a bear attack and human attack should look pretty different.

  For some reason, this one didn’t, at first.

  They were looking for a man and found me. When they found bear hair in Juniper’s wounds and had a chance to examine her more closely, they let me go.

  Her blood on Bart cinched the case.

  Open, shut.

  They chose not to see the rest. Maybe because it’s too fantastical. But it fits the evidence.

  Juniper was attacked near the road, yet ran away from it. Why?

  The simplest explanation is that she may have been brought to the clearing blindfolded and had no idea where she was. She simply ran.

  Ripper’s hair showed up in her wounds. The hair was well preserved enough that we could get nuDNA out of it—a near impossibility under ideal conditions. Unthinkable for hair that has been out in the open for a year.

  The odds of Ripper’s hair showing up in the wound are astronomical if you’re assuming a purely natural explanation. Charles Manson’s hair would be a more likely find.

  Nothing from Bart was found at the murder scene. If he wallowed in her blood like I did, then there should have been some trace.

  Yet, miraculously, Juniper’s blood showed up on the bear miles away.

  If the bears were people, you’d call it a frame-up.

  A frame implies a framer.

  Someone had access to Juniper’s body and Ripper’s hair. Later on they lured Bart to her blood.

  This leads me to a paranoid revelation: everyone in the conference could be a suspect.

  Richards is the most suspicious, but he hadn’t behaved as I’d expect a guilty man to behave. His responses were natural: he wanted to get the bear that killed Juniper. He was frustrated that he might have killed the wrong animal.

  If he was Juniper’s killer, the smart thing would have been to go with the vibe of the room and point a finger at me. But he didn’t.

  As for the others: Sheriff Tyson is as cold as ice and Detective Glenn is a mystery to me, but I’d think the both of them would find better ways to cover up a murder.

  It doesn’t make any sense. And I’m no judge of character.

  It’s probably not any of them. That’d be too Agatha Christie.

  Hell, maybe I’m deluded and it’s exactly as they say.

  Yet my gut says no. There’s a pattern here.

  Hopefully they’re in the conference room right now weighing what I said.

  Kendall seemed bright. She has to be bothered by the fact that her dead bear’s DNA showed up a year later and miles away. It’s just not rational.

  Rational or not, I’m the one locked up.

  I rap my knuckles against the metal bench, wishing this was a dream. Unfortunately, it’s very real.

  I’m such an idiot.

  I’m in here and the killer is outside somewhere, long gone.

  He has everyone fooled. Down the hall is a room full of cops and wildlife experts that don’t even believe he exists.

  Jesus. It’s a scary thought.

  It’s one thing to kill someone and not leave evidence or hide the body so it’s never found, but to be able to murder someone and have everyone think it was an accident of nature?

  That’s some kind of genius.

  A shiver rolls down my spine when I think of the implication. This was either planned for a long time or done by someone who is very good at killing. Maybe both.

  The presence of Ripper’s hair implies they planned on it looking like a bear attack. They just didn’t expect that someone would be able to get viable DNA and discover that their generic grizzly wasn’t so generic.

  I remember Glenn mentioning some hikers hearing screams and investigating. Was the killer caught off guard? Had he been planning to take her body somewhere else but had to flee?

  It’d be so easy to bury it out there where nobody could find it. That’s what I would do . . .

  Maybe that was the plan but he got interrupted?

  He left behind Ripper’s hair and took some of her blood with him to leave for Bart.

  Getting it on Bart wouldn’t have been too difficult. Bears are curious. All it would take is a bucket of fresh meat to draw him in.

  Maybe. I don’t know.

  I shake my head. All this conjecture is giving me a migraine.

  I look up at the sound of a key in the lock. Detective Glenn steps inside.

  “Please, hear me out,” I insist.

  He jabs the edge of a file folder toward me. “No, Dr. Cray, you’re going to sit down and shut up.” He nods to Sheriff Tyson standing in the hallway, watching. “If you can’t do that, I’m going to take her advice and have you sent for a psychiatric evaluation. Got it?”

  I nod my head and slink down.

  He leans against the door frame and flips open the folder. “I did a little more digging.” I think he’s going to talk about the case, but my hopes are dashed when he looks up from the folder. “I’ve looked into your background. It seems like you have a reputation for causing problems.”

  Fuck. Here it comes.

  Time to shoot the messenger.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  TROUBLEMAKER

  As Detective Glenn reads selections from the folder, Sheriff Tyson watches me closely. Her face is inscrutable. She’s intimidating as all hell.

  “You have a sealed juvenile file in Texas,” Glenn says. “But I find a mention of you being arrested for building bombs as a teenager and a child getting hurt. Care to explain?”

  I stare at the floor. “No. Not really.”

  When I was thirteen and still dealing with the loss of my father, I took up chemistry. I learned how to make bombs from household chemicals, and I’d go into the woods and blow things up.

  That would have been fine if a friend—more of an acquaintance—hadn’t taken my bomb-making parts and tried to explode a car sitting in a shopping center parking lot.

  The car was barely damaged. But his younger brother got acid burns on his arm. His parents went apeshit.

>   The first thing he did was tell the police I put him up to it.

  Protesting my innocence was hard when they found my lab under my bed.

  Thanks to a very understanding judge, I only got community service for it.

  My mother was obviously thrilled.

  This was shortly before she married Davis.

  I never would have pulled that kind of thing with him in the house. For one, he would have insisted I never let my friends near my lab equipment and that I keep it safely locked up.

  Detective Glenn notes out loud that I was fired from my first faculty position.

  Again, my stubbornness.

  From his point of view, without the details, I probably look like a know-it-all prick.

  I could try to explain to him the details, but he’s not in a mood to listen. He’s reading me the riot act in front of Sheriff Tyson.

  Maybe this is for show.

  I don’t know.

  The best course of action is to shut up. Tyson is primed to punish me. I’d probably be able to get away with swiping the blood sample. But getting away would still mean a trial, a lawyer, and I can bet for damn sure she’s going to make certain I spend a few nights in a cell before I see a judge about bail.

  “We had the press conference,” says Glenn. “We explained the possibility of another bear.”

  I refrain from pointing out that makes no sense if Ripper is pushing up daisies.

  He continues. “We’ll have another look in the lab for possible contamination. Other than that, we’re considering the matter closed.” He snaps the file shut and tosses it on the bench beside me. “Understand your situation?”

  I nod sullenly. Glenn steps aside.

  Sheriff Tyson stands in my way. “You have two hours to clear out of my county. If you start running your mouth, you’re going to be back in a cell for tampering with evidence. Furthermore, if you insist that this is a murder investigation, take one guess at who gets arrested first.”

  Glenn escorts me out of the building and to my car. Neither of us says anything.

  There’s nothing to be said.

  Clearly, he doesn’t believe me. The only reason I’m not back in the cell is because he took pity on me and told Tyson I was going through some kind of grieving process.

  Hell, maybe I am looking at things all wrong.