Bone Hunter

by Sarah Andrews

  Ray’s deep indigo eyes slowly closed, and as his lips moved closer, seeking my own, he said, “I will.”

  I kissed him with my eyes open, mapping the curves and colors of his face, fearful that this closeness would live only in my memory. Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. His hands moved across my back, through my hair, and to my face. When he felt my cheeks grow wet, he pressed his face against my neck and himself wept.

  When the moment came to let go, I took off his jacket and handed it to him. He nodded and did the same with mine. I smoothed his hair, and he kissed mine. Then he took my hand and led me on around the grove of trees and up the road to where Ava now waited outside her car, smiling a welcome as she unscrewed a thermos full of cocoa and readied our cups.

  I accepted her gift of warmth and sweetness gratefully, nodded to Ray, and, alone, took my cup to the edge of the canyon to watch the sun bless its deep interior with light and warmth. In such moments lie a magic of understanding and proportion. I loved the earth, and now felt its love for me; felt it in the pull of gravity, smelled it in the scent of pine, tasted it in the pleasure of chocolate, heard it in the sigh of the breeze, and saw it in every tint and hue of color that played across the rock. In the act of caring for it and all its passengers, my universe had widened and grown deeper. For in its beauty lay a depth and perfection of history I could not describe. And in this truth lay revelation, and hope.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to M. Lee Allison, Utah State Geologist, for exhorting me to write this book. I am indebted also to the following geologists and paleontologists for their technical assistance and insights: David D. Gillette and Janet Whitmore Gillette, Museum of Northern Arizona; Marjorie Chan, University of Utah; Michael Leschin, Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry, Bureau of Land Management; John Horner, Museum of the Rockies; John Bolt, the Field Museum; Robert Bakker; Sarah George, Utah Museum of Natural History; Donald Rasmussen, consulting geologist; Debra Mickelsen, University of Colorado; Matthew James, Sonoma State University; Christine Turner and Pete Peterson, U.S. Geological Survey; Vincent Santucci, U. S. National Park Service; Louis L. Jacobs, Southern Methodist University; and Brooks B. Britt, Museum of Western Colorado.

  I wish to thank Doris E. Andrews, Hayward State University; Maria Titze, Salt Lake City Observer; Deborah Bodner; and Carol Mapes for assisting me in better understanding the history, faith, and practice of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints.

  For their technical contributions toward the greater accuracy of this text, my thanks to Sonoma County Assistant District Attorney Greg Jacobs; Eddie Fryer, Federal Bureau of Investigation; Chris Kappler, Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department; Sarah Davis; and Priscilla Kapel, Bioenergy Balancing Center.

  I am grateful to Jon Gunnar Howe, Thea Castleman, Mary Madsen Hallock, and Kenneth Dalton (a.k.a. the Golden Machete Critique Group); and to Eileen M. Clegg, Clint Smith, Marjorie Chan, Marilyn Wessel, and David Gillette for their spirited and insightful critiques of the completed draft.

  My thanks to my editor, Kelley Ragland, for her usual excellent editing and to all the folks at St. Martin’s Press for championing this book through the publishing and marketing process.

  My thanks to my son, Duncan Brown, for reminding me that the ossified brains of grown-ups can get them stuck in intellectual ruts. And, as always, my thanks to my husband, Damon Brown, for his unstinting support and good humor while being the artist’s husband.

  ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS TITLES

  BY SARAH ANDREWS

  Only Flesh and Bones

  Mother Nature

  Bone Hunter

  An Eye for Gold

  Fault Line

  Killer Dust

  Earth Colors

  REVIEWERS RAVE OVER THE NOVELS OF SARAH ANDREWS

  BONE HUNTER

  “Andrews makes the most of her paleontological background. She clearly knows her subject and, unlike many crime writers, she does not use the surroundings merely as window dressing. The novel is, in addition to a fine mystery, a lively exploration of the high-stakes world of dinosaur research and perceptive rumination on the debate between science and creationism.”

  —Booklist

  “Geologist Em Hansen’s adventures become more and more intriguing with each new book … A most fascinating tale.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Appealing characters and fluent prose.”

  —Library Journal

  “The fifth Em Hansen novel is a fabulous blending of science and sleuthing that readers will fully relish … Sarah Andrews may be writing the best scientific mysteries this side of the medical thriller.”

  —Harriet Klausner, Painted Rock Reviews

  “Memorable … BONE HUNTER knows its stuff when it comes to weaving the geology of [this] state into a crime as plausible as today’s headlines.”

  —Salt Lake Tribune

  ONLY FLESH AND BONES

  “Her tale contains a canny, entertaining mixture of elements … . The intersections of new money and old ways of living in the West find a convincing chronicler in Andrews.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Andrews handles [the] possibilities with a sure hand as she introduces an endless supply of secondary characters whose company is a delight. Thoughtful and uncertain, Em is especially appealing as she makes the quiet point that murder involves more than flesh and bones … After a few more cases, geologist Em Hansen may be as tough as the best of her sleuthing peers, but her vulnerability offers singular pleasures to current readers.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[A] fine mystery with an edgy and vulnerable heroine … There’s action and passion, introspection and suspense. Em is smart company, and we learn her mind and heart along with her.”

  —Booklist

  “In the fourth book in the series, Andrews moves away from the rig to issues of mothers, daughters, and ranch life. But she continues to tell a good story.”

  —New Orleans Times-Picayune

  “A slick, endearing heroine … We tore through this novel.”

  —Seventeen

  “Em Hansen is one of the most interesting characters in recent mystery fiction—a strong woman with believable weaknesses and none of the smugness or coyness which bog down other, better-selling series heroines.”

  —Amazon.com’s Mystery Editor

  “One of the finest elements of an Em Hansen mystery is female characters who are strong, independent and intelligent … [a] marvelous mystery.”

  —Douglas (Wyoming) Budget

  MOTHER NATURE

  “Complex and engaging … Snappy dialogue and fully realized characters, especially the immensely appealing Em, turn the field of geology into a fascinating background for a mystery.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Mother Nature is an intriguing who-done-it. However, what turns this into an interesting tale is the deeply developed characters (especially Em) and the brilliant insight into geology. Surprisingly, the geological aspects of the story are … extremely fascinating.”

  —Midwest Book Review

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  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Anyone interested in conspiracies will enjoy the story of how this book came to be written. It began as I was attending the 1997 meeting of the Geological Society of America (held that year in Salt Lake City). Utah State Geologist M. Lee Allison buttonholed me and said, “You ought to write a book about fossil theft and set it in Utah. Just think of it—you can have a dinosaur on the cover, and the book will sell like hotcakes.”

  Lee is a smart ma
n. In an era of dwindling fiscal support for even such essential government agencies as the Utah Geological Survey, which Lee heads, he had grasped the fact that in order to do his job, he must communicate with the public he serves—that is, inform them of what he has done for them lately. The more people he can hornswoggle into doing this work for him, the better. “Here’s my E-mail address,” I told him. “Send me your ideas.”

  Lee delivered. He provided me not only with the virulent germ for the plot of this book—the Sue T. rex case—but also with most of its red herrings and the murder weapon. And Lee didn’t stop with E-mails worth framing. He introduced me to a host of key sources, first and foremost among them David D. Gillette, Utah’s State Paleontologist.

  The next event in the conspiracy occurred a month later, when Sonoma State University department chair Tom Anderson invited me to teach the “Dino” course during the 1998 spring semester. I thought, Great, I’ll get paid to research the book. But I thought I would learn about dinosaurs, not people.

  About halfway through the semester, a visiting lecturer gave an interesting talk. I must expurgate specific references so I don’t get sued, but I can diagrammatically state that the lecture was based on physical evidence that had recently been discovered by foreign researchers. When I asked this American how he’d gotten his evidence, he said, quite matter-of-factly, “I had a photograph smuggled out of [their country].” The man smiled proudly, and added, “And I scooped them. Got it on the cover of [a famous magazine] before they got their story in [another famous magazine].” The sound that immediately followed was the thud of my chin hitting the floor. This man had just blithely admitted that he had committed theft. A moment later, as I began taking notes on his speech patterns, I noticed that the string of coincidences leading toward this book was getting unusually long. And it got a whole lot longer.

  The mystery writer as mystic.

  I have long been fascinated by the systems of belief—perceptions of truth—we humans construct and live by. A mystery about people who study dinosaurs seemed a good arena in which to examine these beliefs. Being confronted by the evidence of dinosaurs’ bones, we are compelled by the machinery of our imaginations to construct theories about them. And because dinosaurs grew to fabulous sizes but left few clues other than scattered bones from which to construct our beliefs about their origins and fates, they epitomize the mysterious and unexplained.

  I had an agenda in writing this book. Scratch that—I had several. First, I wanted to vent my spleen regarding the propagandistic and often paranoid blather that has been leveled at me (and countless colleagues) by certain creationists who know nothing more about me than that I am a scientist. I say “certain creationists,” because most appear to believe I am entitled to my constitutional right to believe whatever I believe, so long as I don’t infringe on their rights to peace, freedom of religion, and reasonable things like that.

  I respect all who are conscious of what they believe. Consciousness does not come easily.

  My goal and agenda in writing this book, beyond constructing a few hours of entertainment for the reader, was the more personal pursuit of examining the similarities and disparities between scientific and religious beliefs and practices. Approaching this task with the habits of a scientist, I gathered evidence, stated a theory (the two are more similar than dissimilar), and set out to test it. I was immediately at odds with myself, and therefore knew I was on to something. I must state that this method of testing my hypothesis was entirely unscientific, guided not by any empirical testing but, instead, by that within me which I shall identify as the artist’s gut sense of accuracy. To explain that any better would fill a book on its own, so forgive me if I just move along with what I learned from this exercise.

  Outwardly, I discovered that laypeople know little of the mechanics of the scientific method. By extension, I fear that likewise they know little of the mechanics of their own religious belief system, even if their central belief happens to be the null hypothesis, which simply stated is, God does not exist. To illustrate what I mean by that, let’s consider how many people who believe that: “If God existed, God would not allow the terrible things that happen in this world to happen.” The logic behind this statement is self-serving. The subject first sets a definition of God (all-powerful), then delegates all responsibility to God and has the temerity to erase God’s existence basd on performance of this impossible job. Anyone who’s ever worked in management knows that when accepting responsibility, one must also demand commensurate authority to define the job; even then, one must put up with endless criticism from underlings who, due to lack of experience, cannot perceive the true nature of the job. To believe that God does not exist, the subject of the belief has first defined for himself what God must be like.

  As I learned about dinosaurs by teaching about them, the students in my dinosaur class became research subjects for my deeper agenda. I announced to them that I was teaching a certain system of beliefs, and that if they did not agree, I would respect them for that, but I wanted them to understand something about the research techniques, intuitive practices, and deductive logic that go into constructing the theories and proofs that embody the scientific method. I said, “I don’t care if ten minutes after you walk out of my final exam you forget every polysyllabic dinosaur name I teach you. What I care about is that the next time you watch a program about dinosaurs or any other scientific matter on TV, you have a clue whether the people interviewed are presenting carefully researched deductions, or simply bullshitting you.”

  This agenda struck most of the students in the room as somewhat unusual. Some of them smiled, some played hooky, some snoozed, and some whispered who knows what to the kid in the next seat. To my horror, most who spoke up wanted to know what isolated facts they must memorize in order to pass the next test. But one came to me about halfway through the term and asked to interview me for a paper he had to write for his English class. It quickly emerged during our conversation that he had been raised in a fundamentalist system of beliefs and was trying to come to some sort of accommodation between this foundation and what he wanted to build on it. He wanted to depart from his parents’ conservative idea of training as a dentist and instead take the more uncertain, more artistic path of becoming an architect. He wanted to know how I juggled the rationalist thinking of scientific training with the extrarational experience of the spirit which I encountered in writing.

  It was clear to me that this young man was entering a crisis of faith. I was impressed that he’d found his way there so young, and I told him that, in my experience, creative work requires that one be willing to embrace such ambiguities as he was noticing and follow them through to the truths hidden within them. I told him also that because he was asking the questions he was asking, I had no doubt he would be successful. God only knows what that success may hold.

  Ambiguity is a seed from which great understanding can grow. The ambiguity between scientific and religious beliefs is young. A mere century and a half ago, most scientists were, in fact, clergymen. Consider Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, a humble monk. It is only since the time of Darwin, a heretic who suggested that change occurs through time within living populations, that an argument has arisen between those who believe in this change (evolution) and those who believe that the stories of the Bible are literally true (special creation). What is true? And are we deterred from uncovering truth by what we believe?

  Carol Mapes, one of my advisers on matters Mormon, listened with great interest to what I was struggling to understand through constructing the plot of this book. I led her through the story, then said, “I’m surprised to find that it’s a book about a liar. Also, I’m having trouble understanding where the Mormon church stands on certain beliefs, such as the origin of the earth.” I went on to describe the trials and travails of Nina, whom I felt had a lot to tell me. I thought that the pressures of emerging into the “real” world might push Nina to a crisis of faith. Carol said no, that Nina would
be “a good girl” and go right back home. I stared at Carol rather blankly, because my own mind is wired more for defiance than compliance.

  Carol said, “Sarah, you don’t understand what blasphemy is, do you?”

  I thought I did, and said so, but Carol said, “No, it’s clear to me that you don’t. Let me explain. Suppose you adhere to the beliefs of a religion. You have given up something—made a personal sacrifice—to do this. Say sex, or certain other pleasures or comforts. Then someone comes to you and tells you that it’s all a sham. You react emotionally. You feel that your beliefs have been blasphemed. You get it? It’s like a betrayal.”