by Erin Hart
“What’s that?” Nora pointed to a manila envelope, the last item in the box.
Frank checked the label. “‘Soil and plant material.” He used his penknife to slit open the initialed seal and shook out a heap of dirt and organic material onto a large plastic tray.
Nora began to poke at the pile with a pencil. Some of the leaves were easily recognizable: cottonwood, ash and elm, buckthorn, along with loamy soil studded with many different kinds of seeds. She didn’t look up. “Frank, do you remember the stuff Buck Callaway combed from Tríona’s hair?”
“Sure—that’s how we knew her body had been moved.”
“If we compared these leaves and seeds—”
“What could that tell us? We already know Tríona was probably killed somewhere along the river.”
Nora spoke slowly: “Yes, but if Tríona was attacked near the spot where Natalie Russo was buried, she might have carried away something very specific to that site. We never had anything to compare to the material from Tríona’s hair. I’m just thinking—the leaves and seeds from a single parent plant carry the same genetic fingerprint.”
“But DNA testing takes weeks, months, you know that. The state crime lab is always backed up—”
Nora waved a hand to stop him. “The testing wouldn’t have to be done at the state lab. Do you remember Holly Blume, my friend at the University Herbarium? The forensic botanist who identified the seeds from Tríona’s hair. Her specialty is population genetics—she runs DNA profiles on plants all the time. We could ask Holly to compare the samples from the two cases, see if we can’t come up with a match on the crime scenes that way. It may be a long shot, but it’s at least worth a try.”
5
Thirty minutes later, Nora led Frank Cordova down an air-conditioned corridor on the eighth floor of the Biological Sciences Building on the University of Minnesota’s Saint Paul campus. She knocked on an office door, and a small, dark-haired woman answered. Holly Blume’s face brightened at the sight of her two unexpected visitors, but Nora was unprepared for her friend’s fierce embrace.
“Nora Gavin! What happened to you? You dropped off the face of the earth. We were all so worried about you—”
Nora had gone away believing that she’d lost everything, but perhaps she’d been mistaken in thinking she had lost all her friends. As Holly drew back to study her, Nora had to fight to keep her emotions in check. “I’m fine, Holly. I’ve been abroad for a while.”
“But nobody knew how to get in touch. You should have told someone where you were. I got married, Nora, had a baby.” Holly’s expression softened. “I shouldn’t scold you. I know you had good reasons for going away. Just want you to know you’ve been sorely missed.” She glanced at Frank. “Why do I get the feeling this isn’t just a social call?”
“Holly, you remember Frank Cordova—”
“Yes, of course. How are you, Detective? It’s a pity we only meet under professional circumstances. I’d ask you in to sit, but it’s a bit cramped in here—let’s go across to the Herbarium.”
Despite its impressive Latin name, the Herbarium was nothing more than a climate-controlled room full of metal cabinets, each containing specimens of pressed plants from Minnesota and all around the world. No one could enter without comprehending just how antiquarian the field of plant biology remained. Color-coded maps of county biological surveys hung on the wall. The images might be computer-generated nowadays, and the ranges of various plants tracked with GPS coordinates, but the data were still collected by human beings traveling on foot, taking samples from fields and forests and ditches. Holly gestured for them to sit at the battered lab table at the center of the room, and sat forward herself, fingers laced together expectantly.
“What we’ve got are samples of plant material from two crime scenes,” Nora said.
Frank held up two evidence envelopes. “We think both samples may have originated from the same site at Hidden Falls Park, but we need to know whether it’s possible to prove that—beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Holly eyed the bulging envelopes. “I’m not going to promise anything, but I can certainly have a look.”
Nora asked, “Do you remember the seeds you identified from my sister’s hair?”
“Sure,” Holly said. “There were lots of different species, as I recall, pretty typical of seepage swamp: black ash and cottonwood, buckthorn, marsh marigold, Virginia creeper, touch-me-not, wood nettle. They’re all pretty common. But there was one unusual find as well, seeds from a plant called false mermaid. It’s only been documented a couple of places in Minnesota, and only outside the Twin Cities. I was sorry we couldn’t pinpoint where the seeds came from—it would have helped your case, I know.”
“We might have another chance,” Nora said. “I remember that name, false mermaid. Something to do with mythology?”
“I’m astonished that you remember,” Holly said. She pointed to a poster on the wall, photographs of a wispy-looking green plant. A corner inset showed a close-up of three wrinkled seeds. “There it is—the Latin name is Floerkea proserpinacoides: The genus, Floerkea, after the famous German botanist Gustav Heinrich Flörke, and the epithet, proserpinacoides, which means ‘like Proserpinaca.’ Proserpinaca is a semiaquatic plant, also called ‘mermaid weed.’ The fellow who named false mermaid thought its leaves bore a strong resemblance to Proserpinaca. As it turns out, they aren’t genetically related, but the name stuck anyway.”
“But that’s the mythological connection,” Nora said.
Holly smiled. “Wow—no flies on you! Proserpina was the daughter of Ceres—”
“Goddess of agriculture.”
“That’s right. When Proserpina was carried off by Pluto, god of the underworld, her mother spent ages searching for her. When she was found, Ceres interceded with Jupiter, who said Proserpina could return to earth, as long as she’d taken no food or drink during her stay in the underworld.”
Nora felt her memory trickling back. “But Pluto had offered her a piece of fruit when she arrived, and she had eaten the pulp of a single pomegranate seed.”
Holly threw a wry look at Frank. “And here’s me, imagining myself the lone mythology geek in the room. Jupiter suggested a compromise; Proserpina got to spend half the year above ground with her mother, and half the year in the underworld with her husband-slash-captor. Now, here’s the connection to the plant world: Proserpinaca, as I mentioned, is semiaquatic. That means the lower part grows underwater, the upper part grows in the air. That’s how it ended up with the name mermaid weed. Floerkea, on the other hand, grows in seeps and marshes and other wet places, but it isn’t even semiaquatic, so that’s where the ‘false’ part comes in—sorry, I’m sure all this is way more than you needed to know. Back to the samples. What exactly are you looking for?”
Frank said: “We’re trying to establish a connection between two crime scenes, and what we need are a few hard facts.”
Nora jumped in: “I know you’re involved in population genetics, and I wondered if there’s any way to tell whether any of the leaves or seeds from these two samples came from the same parent plant. I know it’s a lot to ask—”
Holly considered for a moment. “In order to have any statistical credibility, you need enough material to establish allele frequencies, to say definitively that the plants in your two samples are related. I’d have to go down to the site myself to collect more samples—thirty is usually the magic number.”
Frank said: “The crime scene crews are finished up down there, but I’ll talk to the supervisor, let them know what you’ll need. They can give you a hand, if they know what to look for.”
“Even after I get the samples, you realize DNA results are going to take a few days.”
Frank said: “Unfortunately, time is the one thing we haven’t got. Our suspect is leaving the country Saturday. If we could find something before then—”
Holly stood and held up a hand. “Say no more—the sooner you two are on your way, the sooner I ca
n get cracking.”
They were halfway down the hall when Holly stuck her head out the lab door and called after them. “I nearly forgot to say—you’ll also want to double check any clothing you might have in evidence for seeds and pollen grains. Plants are clever stowaways. They’re all about survival.”
6
After dropping Nora back at her apartment, Frank Cordova sat at the corner, waiting to turn east onto Summit Avenue. He happened to glance into the rearview mirror, and instead of seeing Nora, he saw a small, dark-eyed child standing in the car’s backseat. Suddenly he was that child, feeling hot vinyl upholstery burning the backs of his arms and legs, the soles of his feet as he stood looking into a pair of dark eyes that glared at him from the rearview mirror. There was no story, no context for the image, just terrible, crushing dread. And then the vision was gone; another random fragment of the past that floated briefly to the surface only to become submerged again. Frank put it out of his head. He had interviews to conduct, evidence to compare; there was no time for chasing phantoms.
But another memory surfaced: that girl’s body laid out on the table this morning, and he felt an almost electrical surge, then another. The vague fear that usually lived deep in his gut began to rise, and with it came the smell of dust, and the air of a closed-up space. He felt the unwelcome heat of someone close beside him, heard the rough breathing, the loud whisper that kept asking, Paco, what’s the matter? Why is Papi yelling? Stopping the questions took two hands. It also left his own ears open, but he had no choice. No one was supposed to know where they were. He cradled the back of his brother’s head with his left hand and clamped the other tight over Chago’s slobbery mouth, still mumbling beneath his fingers. He began to rock back and forth, hunching his shoulders, as if that might block his ears. He tried to drown out the noises in the next room by filling his head with a constant torrent of words: Please o h please oh please oh please—Díos te salve, María, llena eres de gracia, el Señor es contigo, bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres, y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús. Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amén. Please oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please— hoping somehow his hundreds of unvoiced prayers would help speed the merciful silence that always followed.
The noise of squealing tires suddenly roused him, as if from a trance. He swerved instinctively to avoid the car that came careening toward him, and jammed on the brakes. The other driver pulled up just short of a collision, his shocked face visible through the windshield. Cordova felt his heart pumping; he suddenly felt woozy and light-headed. The other car had come to a full stop just inches from his driver’s side door in the middle of the intersection. The cathedral was directly in front of him, and all at once he knew what had happened—he’d run the red light. The other driver pulled alongside and lowered his passenger window to let go a string of curses. Frank could see the man’s lips moving, but the words didn’t register. It occurred to him, in some faraway part of his brain, that he must be in shock. The other driver eventually gave up and sped off, raising his middle finger in the rearview mirror as a parting salute. Cordova stared down at his own hands, still gripping the steering wheel. He remembered dropping Nora, and the next thing he recalled was the sound of squealing tires. The time in between was blank. His hands were clammy and his mouth felt dry. He finally shifted his foot from the brake and pulled away from the intersection. Behind him, the normal flow of traffic resumed.
He drove the rest of the way to the station on hyperalert, conscious of every turn and traffic signal. It wasn’t the first time he’d suddenly awakened from a reverie in the middle of traffic, sometimes miles from where he’d last been paying attention.
The usual culprits joined the lineup in his head: overwork, lack of sleep, lousy food, too much to drink last night. He hadn’t been to the gym in months; there was never any time. The way things were going, he wouldn’t pass his next fitness test. He’d seen it happen often enough to recognize the signs. This was the way it came, the beginning of the end.
Pulling into his parking space, he lifted his hands from the steering wheel to find they were still shaking. He reached up to the rearview mirror and, tilting it downward, found himself staring into an unfamiliar pair of dark eyes. Suddenly disconcerted, he flipped the mirror back, but could still feel that baleful gaze upon him, burned into memory like something from a bad dream.
7
Thirty minutes after Frank Cordova dropped her at the curb, Nora was in her rental car and on her way to Hidden Falls Park. Holly Blume’s parting words had only added to the creeping horror that had settled on her in the morgue this morning. Natalie Russo’s death had something to do with Tríona, she was sure of it. But dead certainty was not the same as proof.
After Tríona’s body was discovered in her car trunk, forensic details had come out only gradually. Buck Callaway estimated that death had occurred in the early hours of Saturday morning, probably sometime between midnight and 4 A.M. The seeds and leaves Holly Blume had identified from Tríona’s hair pointed to a seepage swamp—a place just like the boggy spot where Natalie Russo’s body had been buried.
On the map, the Mississippi meandered gracefully through the city of Saint Paul, from the leafy gorge on its western edge, to the railheads and stockyards of the east. Hidden Falls was just over four miles directly southwest of Crocus Hill, and it was a span Nora could have driven blindfolded. She headed west on Saint Clair, and turned south onto the river road. Just past the sprawling Ford plant, she made a soft right into the entrance of Hidden Falls Park. The parklands traced the southern edge of the only natural gorge along the Mississippi. The road plunged down a steep ravine, coming to an end at parking lots for the picnic grounds and boat landing along the river bottom. Nora knew the place well. The river was one of the few wild spots within city limits, and she had spent a lot of time here at Hidden Falls as an adolescent, collecting specimens, drawing interesting plants and insects, amazed at all the life-and-death drama in miniature going on below most human radar.
Parking in the lot next to the picnic shelter, she cast a glance in the direction of the river. Still high for this time of year. In midsummer, depending on the rains, the river sometimes had no visible current, but the water moved along under the surface all the same—she used to imagine the endless flow stirring the whiskers of huge carp that lurked along the muddy riverbed.
Because of the gorge, this stretch of river had long been a no-man’s-land, a strip of wildness and disorder cutting through the heart of civilization. Sometimes the park seemed perfectly harmless, with families picnicking, people walking their dogs; at other times it seemed forbidden and even dangerous, the sort of place where female joggers would be discouraged from running alone. It was common knowledge that high school kids ran keg parties on the sandbar below the veterans’ home; a mile or two in either direction were a couple of notorious gay cruising spots. For years, rumors of drinking and drugs and anonymous sex at the river’s edge had floated above into the real world. People came here to be someone else, to indulge appetites and fantasies they wouldn’t dream of admitting. Most understood that they were courting danger; no doubt for some of them, it was part of the attraction. Nora began to feel a vague unease, knowing what lay ahead among the chest-high undergrowth and layers of dead leaves underfoot. The fallen leaves and tangled branches of the forest floor suddenly seemed sinister, part of a teeming underworld of decay and corruption.
A few yards away, a man sat alone in a green pickup. Nora felt his eyes upon her as she walked past, but when she glanced up, he was staring at the river. She knew Frank wouldn’t approve of her coming down here alone, but it was broad daylight, and she couldn’t expect him to be her minder. He had enough to do. And she had to see it for herself, the place where Natalie Russo had been found. Slinging her backpack onto one shoulder, she locked the car and started on foot in the direction of the falls, glancing behind to make sure no one was foll
owing.
She’d always been drawn to Hidden Falls, as much for the mysterious name as for its wild, otherworldly aspect. A faint sound of falling water came from the ravine to her right. She stopped to listen. At the turn of the previous century, tourists had come from all over the city to see the falls, where water seeped through the rock face at the top of the bluff, spreading like a thin veil across a limestone ledge before spilling into the catch pool below. A hundred years later, the area was a little shabby, making it a perfect hangout for kids seeking adventure and danger.
She turned away from the falls and plunged almost immediately into one of the park’s more primitive portions, where narrow footpaths wound over and around the corpses of fallen trees. Marshy areas filled the low spots, and the limestone bluff rose up sixty feet or more to her right, its lower surfaces marked with spray paint and scarred with crudely carved initials. The river wasn’t even visible in this part of the woods, yet it was almost impossible not to feel the water’s ominous presence. Earthen ridges, some eight and ten feet high, marked the river’s variable path, and in the many low spots, drowned grass and broken branches aligned in one direction, combed out by floodwaters that had receded weeks ago. Nora felt a chill, and rubbed her bare arms as she walked along. She couldn’t help thinking of all the evidence that must have been swept away and carried along in the river’s current, swirled for miles in dirty water until it all piled up in that thick gumbo of silt and crawfish and chemicals that formed the delta more than a thousand miles downstream. This river had once been an artery, a channel that carried the lifeblood of a whole continent; in less than a hundred and fifty years, civilization reduced it to hardly more than a sewer and dumping ground.
She spied a few scraps of crime scene tape still wound around trees in a low-lying area a few yards ahead, and knew that she had arrived at the spot where Natalie Russo’s body had lain. No one was about. The slope beside the path was steep, and Nora held on to a sapling to keep from sliding on the thick bed of leaves underfoot. Inching sideways, down to the area of disturbed earth, she thought of the other damp burials she had helped uncover in the past year, remembering all that a grave could reveal. Like the others she had seen, this was no careful inhumation, but the hurried concealment of a crime. There was a deep gash in the earth, and the ground was covered in clods of earth and peat, trampled by the boots of those who had removed the remains, searchers who had combed the scene for evidence. She crouched down and peered into the depression, amazed to find that Natalie Russo’s burial place still bore the recognizable impression of a pair of shoes, soles outlined in a random maze of tiny whitened roots. Reaching out to trace the outline of the void, she was struck by the fact that even while she was viewing the body in the morgue, her thoughts about Natalie Russo had focused on whatever she might tell them about Tríona. The empty space before her now conjured a distinct human being. A person whose absence was no doubt still mourned by someone.
