by Lisa Gardner
He shot back to his desk, propelling his chair as easily as a small automobile, while his fingers rapidly flipped through the thick index guide. Peering over his shoulder, Kimberly saw page after page of tree leaves, all richly photographed and documented with lists of words that appeared to be in Latin. Definitely not a light summer read.
“Okay, for starters we have Betula lenta, otherwise known as black birch, sweet birch, or cherry birch. Its leaves are approximately three to four inches long. Your picture is closer to two and a half inches long, but maybe our leaf isn’t mature yet, so that’s a possibility.”
“Where are black birches found?” Mac asked.
“Oh, a little bit of everywhere. You can find them in the mountains of the western half of the state, or around parts of Chesapeake Bay close to streams. Does that work?”
“I don’t know yet,” Mac said. Now, he was also frowning. “Other options?”
“The Betula lutea, or yellow birch, which is found generally higher up in the mountains than the black birch. It’s a significantly larger tree, however, growing up to eighty feet with five-inch leaves, so I’m going to guess that it’s too big to be our suspect here. Let’s see …” Ray rapidly flipped through the book.
“Okay, consider Betula papyrifera, or paper birch. Leaves also grow three inches in length, which is closer in size. It’s also found in the mountains, generally in clear-cut or burned-out areas. Then there’s Betula nigra, or river birch, which is found in low elevations along waterways or around streams, ponds, lakes, etc. It’s also a smaller birch with leaves two to three inches long. So that’s a possibility.” He looked up at them sharply. “You don’t have any catkins?”
“Cat what?”
“The flowers that are generally found with the leaves. In birches, they resemble long, conelike structures, dangling down from amid the leaves. Flower size varies dramatically, which would help narrow the scope. Better yet, would be a twig with bark. As you can guess from the names, black versus yellow versus paper, one of the key distinguishing features of birch is the color of the tree’s bark.”
“I only have a leaf,” Mac said, then muttered under his breath, “because our guy also likes a challenge.” He turned toward Kimberly, the tension building in his shoulders.
“He wouldn’t use something common,” she said quietly. “No compass, remember? So this time, the clues must narrow down a region. Or it’s really not that much of a game.”
“Good point.” Mac turned back toward the geographer. “You said birches are commonly found in Virginia. Are there any that aren’t common? Maybe a type that is rare or endangered?”
Ray’s dark eyes brightened. He stroked his chin. “Not a bad question … Nope, this isn’t going to help.” He flipped the book shut, seemed to think for a second, then turned abruptly to his computer and swiftly hit a bunch of keys. “See, what you guys really need is a dendrologist. I’m just a lowly geographer who’s spent some time dabbling with botany. A dendrologist, on the other hand …”
“Has a bigger name?” Kimberly asked.
“No, is a botanical expert on trees. See, I’m a generalist. Come on, ask me about a flower. I’m really good with flowers. Or ferns, for that matter. A dendrologist, on the other hand, could tell you anything you ever wanted to know about trees.”
“My God, there is an ologist for everything,” Kimberly muttered.
“You have no idea,” Mac said.
“See, you guys have come to the Richmond field office. Here, we’re mostly geographers and hydrologists. Most of us have other backgrounds as well—botany, biology, geology, etc., and we’re happy to help you out, but maybe we’re not as specific as you need. Now, up in Reston at our national headquarters, we got botanists, palynologists, geologists, karst geologists, you name it. That’s where the big dawgs live.”
“Where is Reston?” Mac asked.
“Two hours north of here.”
“I don’t have two hours.”
“Suit yourself.” Ray’s fingers danced over his keyboard. “Then for the time-conscious researcher, we have the greatest marvel of the twentieth century. Ta dah! The Internet, where for every ology, there is almost always a website. Let’s face it. Geeks love technology.” He hit return, and sure enough, a website of the U.S. Department of Agriculture labeled Dendrology of Virginia appeared on the screen.
“As I live and breathe,” Kimberly said.
“And how,” Mac seconded.
“And we have a final suspect for your consideration,” Ray announced. “Lady and gentleman, may I introduce Betula populifolia, otherwise known as gray birch. This smaller member of the birch family grows only thirty feet high, with leaves of approximately three inches in length. The bark may appear brown in color, but is in fact gray-white. It is also smooth, and not peeling, unlike the yellow birch and paper birch members of the family which, frankly, always look like they’re sporting a bad case of bed head. The wood is light and soft, used mostly for pulpwood spools and fuel. Better yet, it is located in only one area of the state. Huh, well, here’s the kicker. It doesn’t say where that is.”
Ray stopped, scrunching up his nose and wiggling it from side to side as he continued to study the screen. Mac hunkered down behind the geographer, his face taking on the intent expression Kimberly was coming to know so well.
“Are you saying this birch could be the one in our picture?”
“Could be.”
“And it’s found in only one spot in the entire state of Virginia?”
“That’s what the dendrologists say.”
“I need to know that spot.” Mac paused a heartbeat. “Now.”
“Mmm hmmm, mmm hmmm, mmm hmmm. Well, here’s a thought.” Ray tapped the computer screen with his pencil. “Look at the other ranges of distribution. The gray birch is common in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. All states north of us. Which means, this tree probably prefers cooler temperatures. So if it’s growing somewhere in Virginia …”
“The mountains,” Kimberly filled in.
He nodded. “Yeah. Now the question is, which range? Are we talking the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Shenandoah Mountains, the Appalachians? Hang on, I have an idea.” His chair shot across the room again. He found a directory on top of his bookcase, flipped through several pages, grabbed a phone and made a call. “Kathy Levine, please. She’s out? When do you expect her back? I’ll leave a message.” And in another moment, “Kath, hey, it’s Ray Lee Chee from USGS. Got a question about gray birch. Where is it in the state? It’s actually important, very Sherlock Holmes. When you get in, give me a buzz. We’ll be waiting. Bye.”
He hung up the phone, then met their expectant gazes. “Kathy’s the botanist with Shenandoah National Park. She’s more familiar with the trees in that area and if anyone knows about the gray birch, it’s her. Unfortunately, she’s out in the field right now.”
“For how long?” Mac demanded to know.
“Four days.”
“We don’t have four days!”
Ray held up a hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of got that. Give her until around noon. Come lunch, she’ll check messages, give me a call, and then I can give you a call. Noon’s only four hours away.”
“Four hours can be a long time,” Mac said grimly.
“What can I say? It’s not easy when you only have a picture of a leaf.”
“I have a question,” Kimberly spoke up. “From all of your various studies … Is there any connection between Virginia and Hawaii?”
“Virginia and Hawaii?”
“Yes.”
“Huh. Hell if I know. From a plant perspective, I can’t think of a thing. Hawaii’s kind of tropical, you know. And Virginia isn’t. Well, except for this week, of course. We’re always prepared to make an exception.”
“No other way they might be related?” Kimberly prodded.
Ray did the nose wiggle again. “You might ask a geologist. We have mountains, they have mountains. We have Chesapeake Bay with its multit
ude of barrier islands, which might be similar to their barrier islands. But from a flora and fauna perspective, I don’t see a relationship.”
“And where in this building might we find a geologist?”
“We don’t have geologists, you’d have to go to Reston. Wait!” He read her expression and immediately held up a hand. “I know, I know, you don’t have time for Reston. Okay … Jennifer York. She’s one of our core samplers, and I believe she has a background in geology.”
“Where’s her office?”
“Other side of the building, third office on the left.”
“Okay.” She turned toward Mac, who was looking at her with a puzzled expression. “You heard the man,” she said crisply, “let’s go find a geologist.”
CHAPTER 19
Richmond, Virginia
8:31 A.M.
Temperature: 87 degrees
“Why are we asking about Hawaii?” Mac asked thirty seconds later when they were back in the halls of the USGS building.
“Because the ME’s assistant said the victim had a travel brochure for Hawaii in her purse.”
He grabbed her arm and they both came to a sudden halt. Mac looked cool. She was already breathing hard and gazing with lethal intent at his fingers on her wrist.
“I don’t recall you mentionin’ that yesterday,” he said ominously.
“I didn’t think of it. The brochure was something the ME’s assistant brought up in passing and I took it in kind. But then last night, I remembered what you said. That for some of the victims, the man put things in their purses—a business card, a cocktail napkin with a name. And that got me wondering.”
Mac slowly released her. “Anything else you remembered last night?”
“Yes. I remembered to strap on my knife.”
He grinned. “Where is it this time? Ankle? Inside of a thigh? I swear it’s the first thing I thought when I saw you this morning. So few clothes and yet somewhere on that lean little body, I know there rests a three-inch blade. I swear, honey, I never met a woman who could make a man think of knives quite the way you do.”
Mac leaned a little closer. He smelled of soap again. Clean, strong. Kimberly instantly took a small step back. Funny how it felt as if all the air had just been sucked from her lungs.
“If I’m a good boy,” Mac murmured softly, “do I get to search you later? Or would you prefer it if I were bad?”
“Hey. Hey, hey, hey.” Kimberly finally found her bearings, getting her hands up and placing them firmly between them. “I am not flirting with you!”
“Of course not.”
“Now, what is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re not the type for a casual social gesture, Kimberly. I know that. Nah, with you, I imagine it would be very serious.” He nodded at her, his blue eyes suddenly somber and affecting her far more strongly than any of his teasing ever had. Then he was straightening up and turning back toward the hall. “So where’s that geologist?”
He strode forward, and Kimberly had to scramble to follow suit.
Five minutes later Mac rapped on a closed door bearing the nameplate Jennifer York. The door almost immediately opened up.
“Yes?” a young woman asked. Like Ray Lee Chee, she was dressed casually—khaki shorts, white scooped-collar shirt, and heavy-duty hiking boots.
Mac flashed a smile, and went to work. “Jennifer York, I presume? Special Agent Mac McCormack, ma’am. And this here is … Special Investigator Quincy. We were just asking your associate Ray Lee Chee some questions relevant to a case, and he highly recommended you as an expert in the field of geology.”
The woman blinked her eyes a few times. Her gaze had started on Mac’s face, but now had drifted to the broad expanse of his chest. “Special Agent? As in police?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re working on a special situation, a kidnapping, if you will. We have a few items from the scene—tree leaves, rocks, etc.—that we need to identify to help find the victim. Could we take a moment of your time? It sure would be a big help.”
Mac gave the woman one last charming smile, and she practically tripped over herself getting the door all the way open and inviting Mac inside. Briefly, she seemed to notice Kimberly was in tow, but then her gaze was all Mac all the time. Not that the man didn’t have a way with women.
Inside the office, Jennifer York’s workspace appeared very similar to Ray Lee Chee’s—a modest arrangement of overstuffed bookshelves, crammed filing cabinets, and a utilitarian desk. Now she stood with one hand lightly touching her desk and the other supporting her lower back, which she had arched in a not-so-subtle attempt to emphasize her breasts.
“So,” Kimberly spoke up curtly, finally earning York’s attention. “We were wondering if there is any connection between Hawaii and Virginia.”
“You mean the two states?”
“I believe they are states, yes. So are they related or what?”
The brunette stared at Kimberly a moment longer, then abruptly abandoned her feline pose, and took a seat in her desk chair. Now that they were on the subject of work, her expression had grown serious.
“Actually, from a geologist’s perspective there is quite a connection. We often compare the Blue Ridge Mountains in Shenandoah National Park with the Hawaiian Islands—both were partially formed by flows of basaltic lava. Essentially, one billion years ago, what we now call the Blue Ridge Mountains were actually the Grenville Mountains, which we believe may have stretched from Newfoundland to Texas and may have reached as high as the present-day Himalayas. This mountain range eroded over time, however, until by six hundred million years ago it was little more than a series of rolling hills. Then, however, we had the Catoctin volcanics.”
“A volcano?” Mac asked with surprise. “In Virginia?”
“More or less. A large rift opened up in the valley and basaltic magma from the earth’s mantle seeped to the surface, flooding the valley and forming the Catoctin Formation, which you can view in the northern section of the park.”
“The Catoctin Formation still exists?” Mac asked. “And its geology is similar to Hawaii’s?”
“Yes, the Catoctin Formation still exists,” Jennifer said, flashing him a warm smile. “The geology, however, isn’t exact. The basalts in Hawaii are black, while the rocks in the Shenandoah National Park are dark green. Basically, a process called metamorphism caused the basalts in Shenandoah to recrystallize with new minerals, such as chlorite, epidote, and albite, which help give the rocks their greenish hue. In fact, we no longer call the rocks in Shenandoah basalts, but metabasalts, due to this alteration.”
Mac turned toward Kimberly. She could read the question in his eyes. The victim had been found holding a rock. Had it been greenish in color? She couldn’t remember. They hadn’t gotten a good look at it and it had been one of the first things NCIS investigators had taken away.
“Are metabasalts rare in the park?” Mac asked York.
“Not at all. You can view them as road outcroppings as you drive from the northern entrance of the park all the way to Thornton Gap, then there’s another good twenty-mile stretch from Stony Man to Swift Run Gap, then there’s more all the way to the southern point of the park.”
“Are there any kinds of rocks that are rare in the park?” Kimberly spoke up.
York had to think about it. “Well, the Shenandoah National Park actually involves three major types of bedrock. The metabasalts are found in the north and south, which we’ve discussed. But there are also siliciclasts, which are found in the southern section of the park or around Thornton Gap. Then we have the granites, which are in the central part of the park. The siliciclasts, which are sedimentary rocks containing abundant amounts of silica, probably have the smallest area of distribution. The granites probably have the most definable area, however, being bunched in the middle to north section of the park. Now, within each bedrock type, there are variances. For example, certain kinds of granites will have more of one mineral or another, depending on where they are
found in the park. Same with the metabasalts and same with the siliciclasts.”
“Not all rocks are created equal?” Mac asked.
“Exactly.” She gave him another warm smile, a teacher bestowing praise on her favorite student. “Geologists analyze rocks all the time. Basically, you take a cross section of the rock sample and view it under a polarizing microscope. By breaking the rock down to its mineral components, you could pinpoint more precisely from where in the park it probably came. In some cases, in fact, the distribution range might be very small. Of course, we don’t have that kind of equipment here, but if you had a rock, I’d be happy to make a few phone calls …”
“We don’t exactly have a rock …”
She arched a brow. “No rock?”
“No.” He added helpfully, “But we do have a travel brochure for Hawaii.”
York blinked her eyes, obviously trying to follow that thought, then finally gave up. “Well, without an actual rock sample, I’m not sure what to tell you. Yes, there are lots of rocks in the Shenandoah National Park. And yes, some of them are similar to those found in Hawaii. But I don’t know how to break things down for you any more than that. The wilderness area of the Shenandoah National Park encompasses nearly eighty thousand acres, you know. That’s a lot of rock types and areas of geologic interest.”
“Do you have a book or a rock guide we could take with us?” Kimberly asked. “You know, that way once we did have a sample, we could look up more information.”
“It wouldn’t be specific enough. With your naked eye, the best you would be able to determine was if the stone in question were basalt versus granite versus siliciclast. That would only cut your search area in half, leaving you with forty thousand acres. No, to truly analyze a rock, you need to be able to look at its mineral components through a microscope.”
“Do you have a microscope we could borrow?” Kimberly attempted weakly.
“They cost a couple pennies. I think the U.S. government might notice.”
“Darn government.”
