He paused and there was a change in the tone of that single word that made Cage frown. When he looked to his sister, he saw that she, too, had pulled back from the phone for a bit. It took only a beat or two for the vet to continue talking.
“My son was in college. Undergrad.”
Cage didn't miss the use of the past tense.
“He was home for break and he was visiting his girlfriend, who lived two streets over from us. One night, he left her place at seven and he never made it home… It took three months before I found—”
Again there was a long pause and a change in tone that held Cage back from filling in the silence. “I found a piece of his shirt.”
They all knew what that meant: The vet’s son was one of the missing.
“Is that why you moved?” Joule asked, her words soft and comforting.
“Oh, yeah. The business was going downhill. All the cats and dogs were reported missing. Standard domestic pets were our bread and butter, and no one was bringing any in anymore. Our bulletin board couldn't hold all of the missing notices. There were no more notices of litters of kittens or found dogs needing adoption.
“When my son first went missing, well, we stayed put. You know, we wanted to be there in case he came back. But after what I found… there was no reason to stay anymore.”
“I understand,” Joule said, and then somehow she found the strength to say what Cage hadn’t been able to. “The dog that we got had broken into our home, and our mother took a machete and she fought it. She killed it, but it fatally wounded her. And we decided that, as good scientists, we needed to figure out what was going on. We needed to see if we could tell what was different about these… dogs.”
Cage could almost hear the held breath on the other end of the phone. Clearly the vet had not decided to go as far as they had. Despite probably having dissected many animals in veterinary school, Cage could tell he hadn’t dissected one of these, or he would already know what they did.
“What did you do?” the vet asked.
“An autopsy… well, a necropsy,” Joule replied.
“What did you learn?” Dr. Brett asked again, his tone curious but cautious.
“It has three canines in each position, not just one,” Cage began. He felt that he could contribute to the conversation now that it wasn’t about exactly how they had come to be in possession of a dead night hunter.
He could almost hear the smile on the vet’s voice. “Actually, those are premolars.”
“No,” Joule replied quickly and cleanly. “These don’t match the size or shape or cusp number requirements for premolars. We got a veterinary textbook that our mother had—”
“Was your mother a vet?”
“No,” Joule said, once again, seeming far more emotionally stable than Cage felt when talking about their mother. “She was a scientist. And she was very interested in the dogs. So she ordered veterinary texts.”
“Okay, so go on… you had a veterinarian text,” Dr. Brett prodded. “And you looked at the teeth.”
“Yes,” Cage replied, knowing the nod he wanted to add wasn’t sufficient over the phone. “And my sister is right. The dog has incisors like normal. And molars—just like normal. Normal places, normal numbers, but it had two fewer premolars and three canines in each position.”
“That's an unusual mutation.” Cage heard the vet’s tone changing even throughout the sentence, as though he were thinking through how a mutation like that might occur.
“Well, it's not an individual mutation,” Joule said. “Because, actually, three dogs got into our house and my mother killed two of them. The third got away, but we examined both the ones we have. And they both have the same mutation.”
“We have video of them in the yard, and I'll bet we can blow up the pictures.” Even as Cage said it, the idea was lighting up in his thoughts, coming out of his mouth as fast as his realizations hit.
They should be looking at the images they had. They'd saved all the video from the past nights—his father made sure they had the storage for it. But he jumped back into the conversation and repeated what he had learned in bio class. “Our teacher for the animal biology class—the one you visited—told us that teeth are conservative. That any change in dentition is a speciation event.”
The vet didn’t say anything suggesting they were right. Nate still hadn’t said a word or lent his scientific weight to the conversation, and Cage was willing to bet that Dr. Brett Christian—as nice as he was—wasn’t willing to just tell them they’d discovered a new species.
The vet asked cautiously, “Do you have any pictures? Anything you can send me?” Then he sucked in a breath and his tone changed rapidly. “I promise you, this will be your discovery. I won't take that away from you.”
Cage almost jumped in to say, We don't want it. We don't want our name on it at all.
But the vet kept talking. “If you can send me pictures, maybe I can verify something until we can get our hands on one.”
Cage looked to his sister, not needing words to ask his question. She seemed to think about it, but only for a moment. When she nodded back at him, he said, “We can go one better than that. We still have the bodies, if you want to see them.”
41
Joule surveyed the table. It was Thursday, and she and Cage were home from school again today.
It had taken three days for the vet to find time off of his job so that he could come back into town and see the night hunter corpses they’d saved. He was no longer popping over from several miles away; he now lived in a different town, and the drive was several hours. That told Joule how interested he was in seeing the animals they had.
The Mazurs had set to work, once again wrapping the entire tabletop in kitchen style poly film and then covering it again with a layer of black plastic. This time, they had invested in a real tarp, not split-at-the-seams black trash bags, and they’d taped the corners, wrapping them under the edges of the table to keep it from moving. Joule was aiming to impress.
She was surprised to find she was nervous. This was a real veterinarian coming to survey her work. She would be showing a trained professional how they had the hunters’ organs in plastic baggies labeled with black marker and stuffed back inside the cavity of its body. She was about to hand over the lab notebooks they had kept where they'd weighed everything, measured the creatures, and ultimately decided that they had a new species.
What if the vet said they were wrong?
Her hands wrung absentmindedly while Dr. Brett stood at the table doing a cursory visual check of the animals, labeled bags, and her notebook. Cage reached out and touched her arm, making her realize what she was doing so she could stop it.
“This looks good at first glance. Can I put on some gloves and check things myself?” The vet’s voice was kind. He was treating them as though these were their specimens and their science.
They’d opened the door when he arrived and readily let the man into their home. But then again, Cage and Joule had met him several times at class. He wasn’t a stranger.
And now, he was standing at their table, awkward as he hunched over at the height that was not appropriate for lab work. He didn’t comment and continued checking out the animals that they had taken out of the freezer on Monday to start thawing. Both were now a little wet, plenty pliable, and more than a bit smelly. If Joule were squeamish, she’d be making faces right now, but none of them did.
Dr. Brett’s finger ran down the page of lab notes Joule had recorded as he picked up each labeled organ in its bag.
Though she tried to fight the surge of adrenaline fueled by fear, she couldn’t keep it fully at bay. She was afraid of being a bad student. What if she’d labeled something wrong? Mixed up the organs? What if that wasn’t a kidney but a… she didn’t even know, but she was afraid she’d screwed up.
Dr. Brett he looked up at Nate and said, “You guys did a really good job with this.”
But Nate didn’t answer. He was standing back, still
with his arms crossed. He only pointed to the kids.
It suddenly occurred to Joule that her father had been in almost that same position for three straight days. While she and her brother had discussed buying a tracking device and what that might entail, Nate had barely spoken but finally agreed. The whole time, he’d stood several feet away with his arms crossed.
He’d done the same while they cooked dinner each night and while they set out the mechanical bait. Sometimes, he’d reached in and helped, but Joule realized now that he was staying out of most everything and just watching.
It must be some new stage of grief. She wondered again when he would come out the other side of it. If he would come out the other side of it.
A friend of hers, who’d lost her boyfriend to suicide the year before, had once quietly said, “Grief changes people.” Joule could hear that in her head now as she tried not to watch her father too closely. Then she wondered how her own grief had changed her.
Sometimes Nate had changed his position… sometimes. Each night, they’d set up their little wind-blowing bait machine and watched their videos. The first two nights, they’d quietly, but excitedly, whispered in the hallway as the hunters came by and tore it to shreds.
Her father sat down for meals, at least, and he sat down in the hallway with them at night. But Joule found she was struggling to remember any other times when her father wasn't in his current position.
She glanced up at her brother, hoping to nudge him to ask. Cage caught on, finding a voice she couldn't, and asking the vet. “Do you think it is a new species?”
Dr. Brett snapped his gloves off efficiently, clearly someone who did this multiple times every day. “I think you're right and it is.”
“So what do we do now?” Joule asked. Finally, letting herself breathe and join the conversation. “Do we name it? Or what?”
“Well…” The vet looked back and forth between the two kids, having seemed to have figured out that Nate Mazur wasn't a real part of this conversation. “I think you need to find someone higher up the food chain than me. Someone at a university, someone who maybe studies canines specifically. I would look for a researcher who has a PhD in this and works in biodiversity. They can help with the naming and getting the species declared in all the documentation.”
Though the vet smiled at his announcement, Joule was more than a little disappointed now. She nodded politely, thinking that didn't sound like anything she and Cage were in for.
“It'll look good on your college applications.” The vet smiled. “Finding a new species—that’s pretty big.”
Joule had nodded absently again. Their college applications didn't need anything. They had decided on Stanford now. The only question was whether they could get their dad to come along to California with them.
“Can we show you the video of the old man in the wheelchair?” she asked, just as Dr. Brett looked like he was starting to pack up.
He agreed and Joule set up a tablet quickly so they could watch together. She tried to hang back and not crowd the screen. She tried to watch the vet as he watched the old man wheel himself down the street and the dogs rejected him.
“I don't know what caused that.” Dr. Brett leaned back with a frown. “For all they can smell, dogs often like people with diseases—diabetics are hypothesized to be a little sweet. People with Cystic Fibrosis are salty. But I don't know of anything that would make them turn away like that.”
“Actually,” Joule began tentatively, and watched as Cage looked toward her—probably thinking the same thing she was—“We don't think these night hunters have a very good sense of smell.”
“Is that what you're calling them?” the vet asked for the first time, though it wasn't the first time she’d used the term “night hunters” in front of him.
“We decided we didn't want our name on it. And we wanted a term that most people would understand or at least recognize what we were talking about if we didn’t fully explain.”
Dr. Brett’s smile suggested that he understood. “You're right, though, the night hunters aren't dogs, and they might not have a dog’s senses.” His eyes glazed a bit as he seemed to recall other information. “Now, wolves have an excellent sense of smell. Coyotes are maybe just less so than wolves. Dogs tend to be more variable.”
“What do you mean?” Cage asked.
“Well, some dog breeds were chosen and designed to have a great sense of smell, others are worse. Short-nosed dogs—” he pointed his finger at the hunters on the table, “—tended to fare the worst in the studies I’ve seen.”
“Would you call these short-nosed?” Joule was leaning over now, looking at the faces she was getting very familiar with.
“Compared to the width of their head… yes. And maybe that's why they turned their nose up at the old man.” He paused again, then looked to the kids, a question on his face. “Why is it that you think they have a poor sense of smell?”
Joule and Cage talked over each other then, explaining how the hunters seemed to recognize their prey by sight, rather than honing in on it.
“I've never seen them put their noses to the ground and sniff along like they're following anything,” Joule commented. “And wouldn’t they know we were in the house? A dog would know you were in the house.”
“They don't come to the house, unless you make noise. And then they come through the doors and windows because they’re so aggressive,” her brother added. “Once they know you’re there, they don’t quit. But they don’t seem to realize anyone or anything is inside until there’s noise or light.”
The vet’s whole stance changed as though he was remembering something horrid. The nod he gave was tight and sharp as he agreed with them. “Assuming they don't have a good sense of smell…” he started, then jolted up. “Wait.”
Reaching into the box of gloves Joule had set out, he snapped on another set and motioned for Joule and Cage to do the same.
“We have more to do. If this is a new species—and I’m confident that you're right—then we need to figure out everything we can from this physiology.”
He pointed to the night hunter on the table. And then, with renewed purpose he began a more thorough examination, pointing to the kids, having them take specific measurements and look things up. “Let’s see what we can learn from the features.”
42
Cage had been happy to play assistant as the vet had run his preliminary inspection.
Dr. Brett found no anomalies in the internal organs, but had commented, “Most canines have virtually indistinguishable internal organs. If you just handed me the organs, even still inside the animal, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a wolf or coyote or dog.”
He then set the organs aside and started by examining the night hunters’ feet. Pointing to certain features, he seemed glad that the twins were taking copious notes, though he didn’t ask for a copy. “Their paws are wider than normal. And they're relatively flat. Look at the nails.”
The vet held up the foot for them to see. “There's something about these nails ... I've seen this shape before. They're certainly strong.”
He'd grabbed the tip of one nail and used it to move the toe back and forth. “The shape resembles… something else. I'll have to look it up and email or call when I figure it out.”
He’d checked out the foot even more thoroughly. “The pad of the foot isn’t as rough as a dog’s. I’d say it’s still tough, but it may be softer.”
“Is that to help keep them quiet as they stalk prey?” Joule asked. Cage appreciated that she’d just said “prey” and not “us.”
“Possibly.” Dr. Brett smiled, but went on to point out discrepancies in the size and shape of the face. Placing his gloved hands on either side of the head, he felt around the orbitals of the eyes and then moved his fingers along the back of the jaw.
He pointed out things that Cage and Joule had never noticed. Then he directed them to take photographs. “Take pictures of everything. You can smell th
em already. You did an excellent job of preserving them, but they won’t last forever. Not if we keep thawing them.”
Cage appreciated the use of the word “we.” It felt good to have a professional by their side.
Dr. Brett ran his hand slowly along the dog's body. “The fur seems a little different. It’s on both specimens, so I’d say it’s likely not an anomaly. Both of them have what I would call a kind of wiry, but softer, fur.”
“What do you mean?” Joule had asked, ever curious, while Cage took his turn at the notebook and jotted down what the doctor had said.
“The fur itself—the hair shaft—feels thicker than regular dog fur. At least to me. It’s hard to tell with the gloves on, but I'm not really anxious to touch a dead animal with my bare hand. Still, it feels almost as though it's softer on the outside of the hair shaft. May I take some of it with me, so I can go home and look at it under my microscope?”
Cage enjoyed the man’s surprised reaction when he offered, “We have a microscope and slides here. I think it’s probably a high enough quality piece—it’s the same as the ones at the school.”
Dr. Brett raised his eyebrows and then looked impressed when Cage brought the setup down to the table. “Not many people have a high-end microscope in their home.”
“We’re nerds.” Joule shrugged it off. She offered to take the notebook from Cage for a turn.
The vet had set up the slide and looked at several samples of hair from both hunters before saying, “Yeah, this is a bit different from normal dog fur.”
He’d lined up the optics and let them each have a look as he guided them through what they were seeing. “I don’t have regular dog fur to compare to. But I can at the office, if I take this with me. It would be another piece of evidence that this is a new species.”
Cage was nodding as he caught sight of the clock on the wall. Feeling himself go tense, he told the doctor, “You need to leave. You have a couple hours of driving, right? You’ll need to go now if you’re going to make it home before dark.”
The Hunted Page 17
