Bone Hunter

by Sarah Andrews

  “Okay, so in this desert, we had sand dunes.” Vance flipped to another poster board, which was pasted up with sexy photographs of modern sand dunes on the left and Utah’s fabulous ancient wind-deposited sandstones on the right. “The Wingate Sandstone, the Navajo, the Page, and the Entrada Sandstones. Five million years of blowing sand punctuated by the river sands and overbank muds of the Kayenta Formation and a brief marine incursion represented by the Carmel Formation. In this area, these form a sequence over a thousand feet thick. A half dozen miles east of us, the San Rafael River, that lazy little stream we crossed on the way in here, which may do a flash flood if those thunderheads have their way”—he stared out to the west, keeping a weather eye out—“cuts down into these sandstones, forming a landscape just as pretty as your Grand Canyon, but at half the scale.” He turned to the crowd. “I for one think this area ought to be the next national park, quick, before some asshole carves his name on the rest of the petroglyphs and litters the campsites with any more Vienna sausage cans.”

  Appreciative laughter and applause broke out. Someone cupped hands around mouth and shouted, “You’re preaching to the choir!”

  Vance went back to his lecture. “Okay. So up above all the sand dunes we get one more shallow marine incursion—the Curtis and Summerville Formations—and then we’re in solid continental conditions again. The good old Morrison, the land of the dino and the home of the brave.” He handed Dan one more poster board, this one pasted up with an artist’s reconstruction of the Jurassic landscape. Volcanoes chuffed in the background as dinosaurs gamboled about a shallow river, grazing here, mating there, running from carnivorous cousins over there. “Christine Turner and Pete Peterson are just finishing their big synthesis of the Morrison, the culmination of decades of work. And what do they have to tell us, folks? More desert. We got broad, arid landscapes with a few shallow lakes that can dry up and streams that seasonally wither into shallow little dribbles during the long, parching droughts.”

  Magritte breathed in my ear. “Vance waxeth poetical.”

  I smiled. The Age of Reptiles could use an ode or two.

  Vance said, “Imagine big-time environmental stress. You got quite a biological traffic jam here as big herds of dinosaurs vie for lunch along the thin vegetative corridors at water’s edge. We got the big herbivores—sauropods, ornithopods, and stegosaurs—munching on thin stands of lakeside ferns, cycads, horsetails, ginkgoes, and conifers, occasionally wandering too far into the mud and getting mired. Then there are the meat eaters—herds of Allosaurus—coming in after them, risking getting stuck themselves. Imagine volcanoes erupting to the west and northwest, repeatedly showering the area with ash. Ash, sand, and mud. Freshwater crocodiles and turtles. And the exact spot where we’re going, algae and ostracodes are in that mud, giving us an interpretation of freshwater lake bed. Mud bank above the lake, that’s where we’re going. Dan?”

  Dan Sherbrooke summarily dropped the poster boards back into Vance’s arms and continued the glorious speech. “What we are going to see living in this desert landscape, by this ancient lake shore, is the state-of-the-art predator of the late Jurassic period. Who am I talking about? Allosaurus fragilis … a fierce creature, thirty-five feet long or longer in adulthood. This animal lived gregariously, and hunted in packs.” He stared into the crowd, locking eyes with one colleague after another. “Allosaurus was fast, efficient, and as strictly predatory as a cheetah.”

  Sherbrooke rolled back his head and closed his eyes, savoring the moment, soaking up the rays of the sun like a devotee none-too-humbly receiving a benediction for his good works. He opened his eyes and again scanned the crowd. “Allosaurus was the quintessential hunter. She had flattened teeth, with serrations on leading and trailing edges, and each tooth curved backward to hold the morsel and slice through it at the same time.” Sherbrooke gestured ferociously with his hands, holding his curled fingers up near his mouth. “Her jaws were slender and designed for cutting. She was an attractive predator, sleek, quick, and clean.” He nodded, agreeing with his own statement, then delicately raised one side of his upper lip in an insouciant sneer. “T. rex, the vile scavenger, by contrast reeked with the stench of soupy black flesh. Perhaps that explains why T. rex was solitary and Allosaurus gregarious. Allosaurus was the hawk, T. rex the vulture.”

  Laughter rose from the crowd. “My kinda girl!” called one wag over the heads of his brethren. “What’s her phone number?”

  Sherbrooke smiled and paused for dramatic effect, milking the moment, drawing the crowd even further in with his grasp.

  “What do you think he’s got?” Magritte whispered. “It has to be fabulous, to take a risk like this. You want to see carnivores going for the kill, just wait until this gang warms to the debate.”

  When Sherbrooke spoke again, his tone had moderated, shifting to a more conversational tone. “We all know the theories regarding the carnivorous dinosaurs. Were they cold, torpid reptiles, or were they warm-blooded, resourceful, more like the birds that have descended from them? One leg of any argument must stand on the inferred behavior of these animals. We search for evidence of their behavior. Did they, like tortoises, lay their eggs in the sand and then depart, leaving their young to fend for themselves? Or were their young like birds—requiring care and feeding from their parents—altricial rather than precocial?” He paused again, letting his brethren resonate on this essential question that plagued students of dinosaur evolution.

  Now Sherbrooke’s tone waxed evangelical. “We hunger for good evidence, for any clue that confirms or denies our theories. What you are about to see,” he continued, raising one index finger triumphantly, “is not just a fine specimen of Allosaurus. That in itself would be worth the drive, yes … but what we have here is much, much more. What we have here is a very nearly complete skeleton, fully articulated!”

  A buzz of conversations broke out through the crowd.

  “Nice, but …” Magritte whispered into my ear.

  “You might say, ‘Articulation itself is a surprise, a treat, but we have seen that in museums,’” Sherbrooke said arguing against his own point. “Yes, we are always so happy when we find a skeleton that has not been torn asunder and scattered by predators, rivers, or the ravages of time … but this specimen, esteemed colleagues, goes even further. This specimen is posed in life position, caught by the terror of a sudden volcanic eruption. As the choking cloud of a glowing red-hot volcanic ash rose over this animal’s head and rained down around her, this valiant animal crouched over her helpless young! What we have here is an adult Allosaurus in brooding position on her nest!”

  From that moment, Dan Sherbrooke could not have said more to the crowd if he’d wanted to. This was a jury of his peers, a group of individual thinkers, and conversations ripped instantly throughout the crowd. Dan had to roar to be heard over the hubbub. “Come!” he bellowed then turned and marched off through the thin desert scrub.

  The group flowed quickly in behind him as he headed up over a low hill capped by buffy gray sandstone and disappeared down the other side, his spine heroically straight, his shoulders square. This was his day, his moment; he was experiencing his pinnacle of professional glory.

  Like Earthworm Magritte, I wondered why Dan Sherbrooke was willing to risk bringing this gathering of the best and brightest minds in paleontology to the very spot where his data lay exposed, fresh, unanalyzed, his interpretation preliminary and unchallenged. This was confidence. This was bravado. What if he took this specimen back to the lab and, through whatever continued reduction of encasing sediments that must be left in place for transport, he discovered that the juvenile bones belonged, in fact, to some other species? What if they proved even to be of differing ages? Anything was possible.

  And what if he was right? That would be something. That would make this field-trip stunt no less spectacular than Moses showing a videotape of the Red Sea actually parting.

  Magritte fell into step beside me, jamming a faded red ball cap onto his
head as he walked. “This is going to have to be better than sex to justify that P. T. Barnum act,” he cackled.

  We tramped through a desert thinly studded with yellow-flowered rabbitbrush, knee-high brushes of Mormon tea, and a few thin grasses growing out of soft adobe soil, the kind that fluffs up when the occasional rains make the clays within it swell. Such soil compacts with every footfall. I could make out the intricate treads on the shoes of those in front of us, but up ahead, beyond Dan Sherbrooke, the galumphing Lew, and the glowering Vance, the ground appeared unblemished. Dan and his crew had approached their site through another access, leaving no tracks leading off main roads that would invite the attention of the more unscrupulous kinds of collectors. This was federal land; collecting should happen here only with a permit. But it was also open, unprotected, empty land, vulnerable to unnoticed transit by any number of unscrupulous scavengers.

  “So, Em Hansen,” Magritte was saying. “state your name, rank, and serial number.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not much for smooth conversation openers. That’s the best hit line I’ve got.”

  “I see,” I mumbled lamely. “I’m not much for smooth conversation continuers.”

  “I disagree. I’ve been watching you.”

  “I’ve noticed.” Had he been staring at me just to size me up for a convention conquest?

  “You look too smart to run afoul of George.”

  “I try to be,” I said equitably, trying to accept Magritte’s words as some kind of left-handed compliment. “But I’m afraid I bought his lie hook, line, and sinker,” I said firmly. “And don’t try to put a positive spin on that, or you’ll be loading me with the same brand of flattery George used to convince me to give a talk at his blessed nonexistent symposium. And as long as we’re being blunt, exactly why do you think it was about time Sherbrooke killed him?”

  Magritte pondered for a moment, pushed his glasses up his nose as he stumbled slightly over the uneven ground. “I’m sorry I said that. It was over the top even for me. I don’t really think Sherbrooke killed him.”

  I wasn’t going to let him off that easily, especially after the elaborate homily he had presented on the bus. Had that been a cover? “But you must have thought George was worth killing even to say that. Were you mad at him?”

  “Me? I wouldn’t say that. I thought he was provocative. I ought to know. I specialize in being provocative.”

  I broke a sweat as we scrambled down through a dry gulch and climbed up over a lip of crumbling sandstone on the other side. I had spent too much time sitting lately, too much time pushing papers across a desk, and had gotten out of shape. No matter, I thought grimly, if I can’t get this case settled by tomorrow and get back to Denver, I’ll be getting plenty of exercise pounding the sidewalks, looking for another job.

  The landscape called to me. It reminded me of the land around my parents’ ranch, except drier. I felt an urge to leave the crowd and walk out into it alone, or perhaps just with Ray, to show that city boy a part of my own heritage.

  I tried to pull ahead of Magritte, but my legs were shorter and his stronger. The exertion of trying to outstrip him both physically and mentally gave me a swimmy feeling, a sensation of being lost in a fun house full of warped mirrors. I gave up and stopped for a moment to get my breath, hands on knees, head bowed, thinking, Ray’s right: I shouldn’t be here. I’m too tired to keep up with the Earthworm Magrittes of the world today, let alone get ahead of them, and who knows what in hell’s name is waiting over the next rise?

  When I straightened and looked up, Magritte was staring at me through his thick glasses, drinking me in with such candor and vulnerability that my heart lurched. I saw myself reflected in his lenses, two little Emilys standing gape-mouthed and sweaty in the middle of the desert. “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  Magritte said simply, “I have no social skills, but I’m a nice guy.”

  In that moment, I saw myself reflected more deeply, on the mirror of his soul. I’d have known myself anywhere. Good old Emily Hansen, awkward as hell, trying to find herself a place in the world, but picking fights at the dinner table instead.

  Flies were beginning to swarm around my face. A gnat found one of my earlobes and bit. The sting pushed me back into gear, and I started to walk again. Back on track, Em. You’re here to investigate a murder … .

  Magritte said, “You don’t have to be obsessive to get a doctorate and beat your way up the ranks in a competitive field like vertebrate paleontology, but it helps. We are sane people, mostly, and smart. And we’re shy, you know? You’re a geologist, what?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you know what I mean. We like to be all alone out in the middle of some desert somewhere. Like here, just picking at the data, digging at a fossil, minding our own business. There’s a few like Dan here who like the big limelight thing. Or like Dishey, but even he sneaked back into a crack to hide every chance he got.”

  “Right.” But what was George hiding, aside from a teenaged wife or two?

  I was busy formulating a question, which was going to be about George, when Magritte yanked the conversation out from under me again, asking, “So who’s the Eagle Scout?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your shadow. The pretty boy who was walking around behind you at Snowbird.”

  “He’s a cop,” I said. “A nice sane cop.”

  Magritte’s eyebrows shot up in interest. “Never met one of those,” he said. “You involved?”

  “Excuse me?” Candor was beginning to grate on my nerves.

  “Then you are. Or you’re thinking about it. But maybe there’s still hope for me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah, you. Sure, you’re as awkward as I am, but like I say, you’re smart. So what is he, a Mormon or something?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your Eagle Scout. Real clean-cut. We’re in Utah, so that means Mormon. You know, they aren’t exactly original thinkers. Crises of faith are discouraged. You’d get bored with him.”

  I stopped walking again. Magritte stopped also and, as before, turned to face me. Several people had to swerve to get around us. “Listen,” I said, “I’m going to just … take my chances. Okay? I mean, Jesus Christ, how’d I get into this conversation?”

  Magritte looked into my eyes, waiting.

  “What’s your real name?” I asked.

  Magritte did not answer.

  “Fine,” I said. “Listen, Magritte, there are a number of ways of being dishonest in this world, and some of them are quite subtle. Pretending a word like earthworm is your given name is a kind of lie, for instance, when you think about it. Pretending you have a right to speak to me this intimately is another. Now, if you don’t mind …” I moved past him and hurried down into the next arroyo.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Dan Sherbrooke halted the march at the mouth of a small canyon that fed out into a wide basin floored with gray soil. “We are almost there,” he said. “I have sent Vance ahead to begin removing the cover we constructed over the site to protect it from the elements and from … vandalism. The information recorded in this site is, needless to say, unique. I know I need not even mention to those of you in my profession that this site is fragile and that it is best to stay out of the actual diggings and touch nothing, but for the benefit of those members of the press who are new here, I ask that you act as if these fossils—this fabulous, priceless site—were made of spun glass. Very heavy spun glass, which might, in fact, fall on you if you were to lean on the wrong parts of it. Preparatory to removing them to the lab, we have underexcavated the bones as far as possible, leaving only a few pillars to support them, and they cannot be considered stable. Thank you.”

  Sherbrooke turned away and then back, his face suddenly heavy with feeling. “I have one more thing to say. As you all know, our friend and colleague George Dishey died just two days ago. It is a … tragic loss to our profession. There were times when many of us … I …
disagreed with George about many things.”

  The crowd shifted restlessly, once again a loosely drawn collection of individuals having their separate thoughts and feelings.

  Sherbrooke said, “George and I engaged in something of a … rivalry. I may have accused him of unsound science, of hurrying his work into the popular press instead of taking the years-long arduous route into scientific publication the rest of us must labor through to ensure that our literature stays as clear as possible of unfounded ideas stated as fact. I am sure that at times I may have criticized George, perhaps more than was quite fair.”

  “May have?” whispered Magritte, closer to my ear than I was braced for. I jumped. I had been deep in thought, wondering if the man standing here warming up to a eulogy of his nemesis could have inflicted the wounds I’d had the misery of viewing. Was Dan Sherbrooke the naive monument to vanity that he appeared, or in fact a murderer who had cut down his enemy in a fit of rage? And if in rage, then what event could have ripped the lid off of his capacity to contain his jealousy and frustration?

  Sherbrooke placed his right hand over his heart and bowed his head for a moment. I noticed that he had not removed his hat. “But all that is ended now, and I say, let the dead rest.” He looked up, his dark eyes magnified to a childlike softness by his inelegant glasses. “In that spirit, I would like to dedicate today’s viewing to the memory of George Dishey.” He dropped his hand from his heart. It swung listlessly by his side, and his eyes took on a distant stare. “Besides,” he said at a lower volume, almost to himself, “Even when George was wrong—when he published those … ideas of his in the popular press—it stirred controversy, and controversy can force a man to work harder, to really reach for that elusive thing, a scientific fact, an incontrovertible truth.” He shrugged his shoulders. He was talking to himself now, a man caught out in public with his innermost thoughts. “It’s not a bad thing to work hard, to reach.”