The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)(14)

It wasn’t a hard rule, but it had some useful explanatory power. It remains to be seen if it’s just a theory that fits the available data.

Julian called me after reading the article and encouraged me to do more research along those lines.

I’d hesitate to call us friends. He lives his life in five-minute chunks, and you’re keenly aware that as soon as this conversation ends, he’s going to go to the next name on a very long list of people he talks to.

I answer the phone with a slightly froggy voice. “Hey, Julian.”

His voice is somber. “Theo. I heard. How are you holding up?”

I hesitate to ask what he heard. About my arrest—well, it wasn’t an actual arrest—or about Juniper. With Julian, there’s no point in wondering how he found out so quickly.

I decide to say the thing a slightly less self-interested person would say. “Poor girl.”

“Did you know her well?”

“Not really. I hadn’t talked to her in years. I didn’t even know she was working near here.” Did I just try to state my innocence a little too forcefully?

“I gave her a grant a while back.”

“You did?” To be honest, other than an occasional conference I go to that Julian throws, I have no idea who he’s funding.

“Not much. But when I heard she’d been one of your students, it was an automatic yes. She’s actually cited you a few times.”

Damn, she would have been better off never knowing me. “I had no idea. I only knew her as an undergrad.”

“I’m looking through her Facebook page right now. A lot of outpouring for her. She must have been something special.”

I wish I knew. I put Julian on speakerphone so I can try to find her on my laptop. The first link is her Twitter profile. I click on it, and a photo pops up.

It’s her. She’s smiling.

I haven’t seen that face or that smile in years. It comes back vividly.

She was a pretty girl. Not in any conventional way. I think I remember now—her father was Irish and her mother was from Haiti. She could pass as Brazilian or any other beautiful mélange. She was one of a kind.

I steal a guilty glance at the vial of her blood next to me. At least we still have her DNA . . .

It’s a perverse thought. Even for a biologist.

“I’ve heard they caught the bear.”

“Yeah. I saw it last night.”

“I guess that’s good.”

“You guess?”

“They took me in for questioning,” I say, half confessing.

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Maybe not. But for a little while they thought I’d killed her.”

“That’s fucking scary.”

“No kidding.”

“Thank god they got to the bottom of that one quickly enough.”

“Yeah . . . ,” I reply slowly.

“Yeah? You’re not instilling confidence in me.”

“What? I didn’t kill her.”

“I never doubted you,” he says sharply.

“It’s just . . . you know the thing about first impressions? Often they’re an element that’s spot on.”

“Theo, you’re losing me here. What are you saying?”

“I don’t know. It’s just, well, the one detective I spent time with. He was smart. Street smart. I don’t think he’s the type to go off on wild tangents.”

“But they realized it was a bear and found it.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” I pick up the vial and rotate it around in the beam of sunlight streaming through the gap in the door. Something reflects back.

“You talk to the parents yet?” asks Julian.

I squint and see a fleck of hair. It’s a short, straight bristle, not anything you’d see on a human—at least a healthy one.

“Theo?”

“Hey, Julian, do you know any bear experts?”

“We funded an ursine diversity project. Want to talk to them?”

I don’t know what I’d ask. “No. Um . . . I got a sample of her blood and maybe a hair from the bear.”

“You collected this?”

“No. Not exactly. Never mind.” I set the vial back on the stand.

“Want to have someone look at it?”

“Nah, Fish and Wildlife is on it. I’m just being morbid, I guess.”

“You’re being a scientist. We can wait and see what they say if you want . . . although I’m not sure they’ll do much beyond confirming the bear. I’d be curious to know if he had anything wrong with him or if there was something about Juniper that caused the attack. That whole PMS thing attracting bears is a myth, right?”

“To be honest, I don’t know if there’s enough data points. Anyway, getting into this probably crosses a line.”

“Maybe,” Julian says. “But let me ask you a question. If it was Juniper that had a vial of your blood and some bear hair, would you want her to have someone look at it?”

“Yeah. But I don’t know her well enough to know if she’d want that . . .”

“Trust me, I’m sure she would. Send it.”

“All right.” Anything to get rid of it.