The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)(30)

I still like to stand next to things when I look at them.

All my orange dots pop up. I use a shader control to color counties by population. This helps me see whether the orange dots are correlated to population density.

There’s no way for me to know what’s good data and what’s bad, let alone what’s missing. But to paraphrase the Supreme Court’s statement about obscenity, when it comes to patterns, I know them when I see them.

I plug all the variables into MAAT, comparing missing-persons reports with population data. I also find some statistics on the percentage of reports proven to be runaways who are safely returned. This filters things a bit.

MAAT draws a wispy, dark-purple loop around my map. It goes off the frame and then returns to curve around.

It’s a graph showing a connection between missing persons that lie outside what you’d expect from a given population size. It also follows certain interstate highways, but not others.

In biology you become accustomed to different ways data can represent itself. Salmon returning upstream and herd animals have very linear patterns. Birds follow loops.

I’m looking at another pattern.

One that’s very familiar to me.

It’s a predator’s circuit.

I furiously type away, searching for the pattern imprinted on my memory.

I find it. It’s not the same shape, but it has similar symmetry. I could write a formula for a fractal that would generate patterns just like these.

But it’s not just a pattern, it’s a behavior.

The behavior generating the pattern on my wall, the one where Juniper’s killer is hiding, matches this other behavior quite clearly.

The creator of this other pattern is an efficient killer that has remained unchanged for millions of years. It’s developed a sophisticated system for hunting predicated upon always staying on the move, allowing it to return to the same points again and again without its prey being any wiser.

I flip back and forth between the patterns. I have to sit down.

It’s the same pattern as a great white shark’s.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


THE PITCH EXPERIMENT

Analogies and maps can be dangerous things when you take them too literally. A map is just a representation of something. Even a photographic map can’t tell you if the terrain is now covered by snow, or if a morning rain has made a path too muddy to traverse.

Juniper’s killer’s circuit is like the hunting pattern of a great white shark, but only because the two of them have acquired similar behaviors.

Great whites don’t try to hide their kills, mainly because tuna don’t form police forces and seek revenge. But they’re careful to avoid overpredation in certain areas, lest the fish remember this is a bad spot. Killing too much sends a signal to the system to change its patterns—kind of like leaving bodies around would tell the cops that something is up.

Besides being careful not to overkill and create a disruption, sharks use camouflage, like our killer. The great white has countershading that helps it blend into the sea floor when looked at from above and appear invisible when looked at from below.

The killer—I don’t know what else to call him—almost certainly also has his own camouflage. He probably doesn’t attract too much attention to himself. By hiding the bodies or making the ones he can’t hide look like animal attacks, he cloaks his presence from prey who, just like a pod of seals, may not realize they have a killer in their midst until it’s too late.

Sharks also have a specialized organ called the ampulla of Lorenzini that enables them to sense the electrical activity of hiding prey and see through the blood in the water during a feeding frenzy.

Likewise, the killer probably has his own set of skills for spotting victims. He’s not just looking for a physical type—he’s seeking out a particular kind of vulnerability.

The Montana and Wyoming missing-persons reports only tell me about locals and people who were known to come through the area and vanished. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit during the summer to vacation and work at seasonal jobs.

Some of my students make money during semester breaks serving tables and staffing summer resorts like the ones here.

How many young people drift through this area on their own, without their parents knowing or caring where they are?

Based on this, the killer could have many, many more victims.

But right now it’s just conjecture.

The only way to see if a model has value is to use it to make a prediction you can test.

All I can guess with MAAT at this point is the approximate number of people who will go missing and the probability that within six years we’ll get another bear attack resembling Juniper’s and Rhea’s.

Six years is a long time. Some scientists wait their entire lives for the eruption of a volcano, the return of a comet, or some other infrequent event.

The most insane I’ve heard of is the pitch-drop experiment started at the University of Queensland in 1927. It’s a funnel of pitch designed to measure the material’s viscosity. Since the experiment started, only nine drops have fallen from the funnel, making the viscosity of pitch 230 billion times that of water. The two times a drop fell while a webcam was aimed at the experiment, technical problems prevented researchers from observing the rare event.

The longest-running experiment ever is a metal ball hanging on a thread between two metal bells. Each time it touches a bell, a battery gives it a charge and knocks it into the other bell, where it discharges the current.