by Stuart Gibbs
If I hadn’t known that these were the bones of a tyrannosaur, I probably would have walked right past them. As I had noted earlier that day, the ribs were all broken and thus not particularly rib-shaped; they merely looked like shards of rock. Many of the other bones were still mostly buried, and the parts that protruded from the earth gave no indication that there might be an entire femur or pelvis underneath. It made me realize there must have been a real art to telling whether something was a bone or a rock; it was possible that thousands of dinosaur fossils hadn’t been discovered, just because people simply hadn’t recognized what they were. Maybe I had even walked right by one myself at some point.
I was also struck by how painstaking the work of removing the fossils was, and amazed that someone could not only find them all, but also figure out how to reassemble them into a skeleton. It would have been like doing a 100,000-piece jigsaw puzzle after someone had buried all the pieces in the mud—and without a picture of the finished object to guide you.
The sun had disappeared behind the trees, and the clouds to the west were starting to turn pink and red. It wouldn’t be long until the light was gone.
There was a loud pop behind me.
I turned around, startled, then realized it was only the sound of damp wood beginning to burn. Sage had gotten the campfire started. Dashiell and Ethan had brought the first loads of wood and then gone to get more. Sage had built a fire ring out of rocks, then made a teepee of sticks and filled the gap beneath it with kindling. Given the faint smell of butane in the air, I could tell he had also doused it with lighter fluid to get it started.
Steam and smoke rose from the wood, which popped again and again. That, I knew, was from tiny pockets of water inside the wood, heating up from the fire. Steam would build up inside, the same way it did inside a popcorn kernel, and then make a tiny explosion.
I looked down the river, toward the boulders Summer had been playing on that morning. The river had risen another few inches with that afternoon’s rains, so that most of the big rocks were completely submerged. Downstream, Dashiell and Ethan were hacking the limbs off a dead tree that lay along the riverbank.
I returned my attention to the dig site while there was still light remaining to see it, focusing on the large gouge in the bluff where the tyrannosaur skull had once been. No one had made any attempt to protect this area from the rain as there was nothing left to protect. The small bluff had been weakened when the skull was removed, so part of it had collapsed in the storm, filling the gouge with several new inches of dirt.
The mud in the area around the gouge had been saturated in the storm, so that even the deep footprints that Sheriff Esquivel had made that morning were barely visible anymore. They had been reduced to wide, shallow divots.
The mud had baked a bit in the afternoon heat, but it was still quite soft. My shoes sank two inches into it as I approached the gouge.
Which meant no one had been back to that site since the rains had come. They would have left footprints.
I studied the gouge carefully but couldn’t deduce anything from it. If there had been any clues there, they had probably washed away or been buried in the mud. So I turned to leave, retracing my footsteps.
Metal glinted at the bottom of one of them.
I figured the object must have been dropped a few days before, then buried in mud by the rains; when I had walked through, the mud on top of it had stuck to the bottom of my shoe, exposing it to the light once again.
I reached down into the footprint and plucked the metal object out.
It was a ballpoint pen. It was sort of fancy, like the kind J.J. McCracken used in his office, rather than the cheap plastic ones my parents bought in bulk at the office store. There was a little round symbol on it with the initials WA.
I knew I had seen that symbol before, but couldn’t remember where.
It was getting dark down by the river. I started back toward the campfire, wanting to be away from the river before it got too hard to see. The last thing I wanted to do was take a spill and end up with my pants full of mud again.
Ethan and Dashiell were coming along the riverside, each with a large bundle of wood in their arms. They were walking quickly, also trying to get back to the fire before it got too dark to see.
“Thanks for all your help,” Dashiell told me sarcastically. “If we freeze to death tonight, it’s all going to be your fault.”
“Like that’ll happen,” I replied, equally sarcastic. It was hot enough in the humid night that we were still warm in only T-shirts and shorts. I held up the pen so they could see it. “You guys recognize this?”
“It’s a pen,” Dashiell teased. “You write with it. Jeez, Teddy. I thought you were supposed to be smart.”
“I mean this,” I said, pointing to the WA logo.
“Dude,” Ethan said, like I really was dumb. “Everyone knows that. It’s the logo for Weems Aerospace.”
13 THE CAMPOUT
“There was a tyrannosaurus skull right down there and you’d never noticed it?” Ethan asked Sage, incredulous. “Even though it was the size of a boulder?”
Night had fallen and we were gathered around the campfire to cook dinner. We had all found thick logs to sit on and then arrayed them in a circle around the flames. Sage had set a grill rack on top of some stones by the fire and was tending to four steaks. I had dumped a few cans of baked beans into a cast-iron pot and was heating them up.
Except for a few clouds by the western horizon, the sky was clear. We were far from the light pollution of civilization, so a million stars shimmered above us. The moon was a mere sliver, looking like a heavy-lidded eye, and Venus glowed brightly to the east.
While prepping to cook, Sage and I had brought Ethan and Dashiell up to speed on the Minerva investigation.
“First of all, it wasn’t like the skull was just sitting out in the open,” Sage said, sounding a bit offended. “It was barely poking out of the bluff. And it probably hadn’t been like that very long. There was some loose dirt piled nearby, so Dr. Chen figured there had been a little landslide only a couple days before to reveal it.”
“What’d your parents think when you told them about it?” Dash asked.
“They thought I was playing a joke,” Sage replied. “Even after I showed it to them, they still couldn’t believe it.”
“They thought you buried a fake dinosaur skull way out here?” Ethan asked skeptically.
“Actually, that would be a pretty great practical joke,” Dash said. “Like, you bury some old steak bones and shark’s teeth out in a field and then try to convince someone it’s a dinosaur? I’ll bet the Barksdales would fall for it in a second.”
Ethan said, “If you buried a LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon in a field and told the Barksdales it was a UFO crash, they’d probably believe it.”
“We should do that,” Dash said.
I stirred the beans a bit more and asked Sage, “Did you guys call the university right away?”
“Pretty much.” Sage shifted the steaks on the grill. “My folks didn’t know what to do, so they just googled ‘Texas paleontology,’ and the university came up. I think they talked to an assistant or they left a message, and Dr. Chen called back that night, super excited. She came out to see Minerva the next morning, and then arranged everything else. The crew and all the logistics and everything.”
“Why’s the dinosaur even called Minerva?” Ethan asked.
“Dad named her after Mom’s mother,” Sage said.
“To honor her?” I asked.
“That’s what he told Mom,” Sage replied. “But he says it’s really because Grandma is even meaner than a T. rex. And they have the same overbite.”
I debated posing the next question for a moment, not sure if it was a good idea to ask it or not. “Did you ever hear about J.J. McCracken wanting to buy Minerva?”
“Of course.” Sage wasn’t upset by the question at all. Instead, he seemed excited. “That was my idea.”
&nb
sp; “It was?” I asked, surprised.
“Sure. One night, my parents were talking about how much Minerva would be worth and wondering who could afford to buy it, and I suggested J.J. Because he already had the whole dinosaur display at World of Reptiles. So they reached out to him.”
“How?” I asked.
“The ranching community out here is pretty small,” Sage said. “We sold J.J. most of the original cattle stock for his ranch when he started it up. It’s not like my folks are best friends with him, but we’ve got his number. And I was right. He was really interested.”
Dash and Ethan were staring across the fire at Sage, extremely intrigued now. Ethan asked, “Exactly how much is a T. rex skeleton worth?”
Sage said, “There was one named Sue that was found up in Montana. It sold to a museum for over eight million dollars.”
Dash gagged on a sip of water, spraying it into the campfire, where it instantly burst into a cloud of steam. “Did you say eight million dollars?”
“That’s right,” Sage agreed. “And Dr. Chen said Minerva might have been even more valuable than Sue.” His features suddenly clouded. “Although, I guess we’ll never know now.”
He looked beyond the campfire, toward the expanse of his property. In the almost moonless night, we couldn’t see much. Even the river, despite being close enough to throw a rock into, was lost in the darkness. But still, the great mass of shadow, unbroken by any lights, attested to the enormous size of the ranch. Sage sighed heavily. “Without that dinosaur, I guess we’re going to have to start selling this place off.”
“What?” Dash asked, startled. “Why?”
“The ranch isn’t making that much money anymore,” Sage told him. “We’re pretty deep in debt. Minerva could have saved us. But without her, the only way we can get by is to sell off part of our land.”
“You mean, to developers?” Dash frowned, upset. “So they can tear all this down and build more subdivisions and Pizza Huts?”
“I guess,” Sage admitted sadly.
Ethan poked at the fire with a stick, unhappy to hear this as well. “Every time you turn around, another developer has destroyed a piece of land out here. They just tore up this whole stretch along Decker Road so they can put in another stupid outlet mall.”
“And the Turners sold their whole ranch,” Dash added. “It’s gonna be one giant subdivision. Some of the best turtle-catching ponds in the whole state, gone.”
I said, “It’s a good thing Summer talked her father into making the rest of the property around FunJungle a wildlife refuge. Or else that would have all been golf courses and resorts.”
“Yeah,” Ethan said, “but the McCrackens have done plenty of damage out here already. I mean, FunJungle might have a big environmental message and all, but they still took out plenty of forest to build it.”
“The parking lot alone is, like, forty acres,” Dash observed. “And they’re still expanding to build all those theme park rides. That’s got to be another ten acres right there.” He paused thoughtfully, then said, “Although I am kind of excited about the rides.”
“Especially the roller coaster,” Ethan agreed. “That thing’s going to be awesome.”
Which was the whole problem with humans in a nutshell. None of us liked when our wilderness was destroyed, but then we all wanted the places it was being destroyed to build. Some of us wanted theme parks; others wanted outlet malls. And we all needed schools and roads and places to live.
Sage flipped the steaks over on the grill. “It’s not like my parents want to sell off our land. It’s actually the last thing they want to do. But without Minerva, we don’t have a lot of options left.” He looked at me pointedly. “You don’t think J.J. would have stolen her, do you?”
“No way,” I said, and I truly meant it. “J.J. wouldn’t destroy your family’s livelihood for a T. rex. If he really wanted Minerva, he could afford eight million dollars.”
“Besides, Harper Weems is obviously the one who stole Minerva,” Dash suggested. “I’ll bet she sent a whole team of people out here to get the skull last night, and one of them dropped that pen.”
“Oh please,” Ethan said dismissively. “That pen was way too obvious a piece of evidence. If anything, it was left at the crime scene to frame Harper Weems.”
Dash shook his head. “You and your conspiracy theories. No one leaves evidence behind to frame someone else. The simplest explanation is always the best. If there’s a pen from Weems Aerospace, it means Harper’s involved.”
“Unless someone simply happened to drop the pen out here by accident,” I said. “One of the guys on the dig was Harper’s cousin.”
The others looked at me, surprised. “Who?” Sage asked.
“The guy with the ponytail,” I said.
“I knew that guy looked suspicious!” Sage exclaimed. “And he was really weird, too. He never hung out with the others. He was always off by himself, making notes in this little book he carried.”
Dash beamed proudly at Ethan. “There you go. Harper sends her cousin in to check on the dinosaur and figure out the lay of the land. Then they swipe the skull, but accidentally drop the pen in the process.”
“Who brings a pen with the logo of their own aerospace company to a theft?” Ethan argued. “And how did they get Minerva out, anyhow?”
“I don’t know,” Dash said. “But if anyone could figure out how to pull off this crime, it’s Harper Weems. She revolutionized the aerospace industry. So she can certainly steal a dinosaur skull.”
All of which made me wonder what had happened to Jebediah Weems and where he had run off to again.
“Steaks are done,” Sage announced.
“Great!” Ethan said. “I’m starving.”
“Beans are ready too,” I said, pulling the pot from the fire.
We each had a tin plate, silverware, and a cup, courtesy of Sage’s family. We all set about loading our plates with food.
“Whoa there,” Dash warned Ethan, watching him ladle beans onto his plate. “Not so many of those. Or this place is gonna be Toot City tonight.”
“I’ll be fine,” Ethan replied.
“Yeah, right,” Dash teased. “Last time you ate beans, it sounded like the D-Day invasion. And the smell! Every canary for twenty miles dropped dead.”
I moved around the fire to get a steak off the grill—and as I did, I noticed something inside the fire itself. Among all the dead branches was a plank of wood. The sides were planed smooth, indicating it had come from a lumberyard. It had been in the fire for a while, so much of it had burned, but I could still make out the general shape. It was about eighteen inches long, six inches wide, and two inches thick. I might not have thought anything of it, but there were two holes bored through its width. Each was about a quarter inch across, and they were definitely man-made, far too big and straight for an animal to have done.
I grabbed a stick and poked at the plank, toppling it out of the fire. It fell to the ground with a shower of sparks.
“Watch it, Teddy!” Sage warned. “Or you’ll set this whole place on fire!”
“Sorry.” I leaned closer to the plank to inspect it. It was charred black most of the way around, but I saw some faint thin strands of something that had burned around the holes. “Who found this piece of wood?” I asked.
“Me,” Ethan said, his mouth full of beans. He had already dug into his dinner.
“Was there anything going through this hole when you found it?” I asked.
“Yeah. A thick piece of rope. But it was all wet from the rain, so I chucked it.”
“Where’d you find it?”
Ethan pointed in the direction of the river. “Downstream from here a ways. Why? It’s just some wood. Probably part of an old plank bridge over the river.”
“We’ve never had a plank bridge over this river,” Sage informed him.
“You think it’s a clue?” Dash asked me.
“Maybe.” I stared off toward the river, listening to it, eve
n though I couldn’t see it. It was still running hard enough to be quite loud. “If I had wanted to get rid of some evidence, the easiest thing to do would be to throw it in the river and let it sink or get washed far downstream. Maybe this piece just didn’t float as far as the thief had hoped.”
“We got plenty of other wood,” Dash said, pointing to the pile he and Ethan had collected. They had gathered enough to keep the fire going for hours.
I examined all of it more closely. There wasn’t anything as obvious as another plank of wood with holes bored through it, but another log caught my eye. It was from the trunk of a young tree, about three inches in diameter and a foot long. While one end of it had been chopped through with an axe, the other was neatly cut, as though someone had used a chain saw on it.
I pulled it out of the pile and found that someone had also removed the small branches from the log. They were sheared extremely close to the trunk, probably with a chain saw as well.
Meaning someone had taken time and effort to sculpt the log exactly the way they wanted. And then someone else had come along and chopped it in half.
“Did one of you gather this?” I asked Ethan and Dash, presenting it to them.
“Oh yeah,” Ethan said. “That was me too.”
“Where did you find it?” I asked.
“Down by the river. Close to where I found that plank.”
“And you chopped it up?”
“Yeah. It was way too big to carry otherwise.”
“How big?”
“Like three feet long. Maybe four.”
I pointed to the cleanly shaved end. “Was the other end like this too?”
“I think so.”
“Dude!” Dash exclaimed. “You didn’t think there was anything weird about that?”
“It’s not weird,” Ethan said defensively. “I figured a beaver might have done it.”
“A beaver?” Sage asked. “What kind of beaver would cut a log that cleanly?”
“A very neat one,” Ethan replied.
“Beavers don’t have obsessive-compulsive disorder,” Sage informed him. “A human did that.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s suspicious,” Ethan said defensively. “Like, maybe it was part of the dig somehow.”
