The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)(31)

I saw this myself while visiting Oxford for a conference. The ball vibrates almost imperceptibly between the bells, but you can see it with the naked eye.

It’s been doing that since 1840. Even the battery, a dry cell, is the same one installed almost two hundred years ago.

Science can require patience. But I can’t wait six years for Juniper’s killer to fake another bear attack.

I can’t even wait six days. The semester is starting, and I’m already going to be late for faculty meetings.

I could go to Parvel, the town near where Rhea was found, but the trail is probably cold. I don’t even know what a warm trail would look like.

And all I can imagine finding out is that her death looked a lot like Juniper’s.

What I need is some way to confirm at least part of my suspicions.

The suspicions—or rather, my assumptions—are that Juniper’s killer has done this multiple times and his attacks resemble an animal’s. I make a note to figure out what that means, precisely. All I know is that Detective Glenn initially thought a man might have been the suspect.

Knives?

I also believe that in most cases the body is never found.

So . . . all I need is an unreported animal attack and a body that was never found.

Yeah, easy . . .

I turn back to the missing-person dots projected on the wall. A couple of them are in the thick purple band of the killer’s circuit.

That doesn’t mean he’s responsible for any of them, but if you knew of two different seal-mating areas and there was a spot in between where seals were known to go missing, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect there’s a shark that travels through there.

The most recent one was seventeen months ago in the town of Hudson Creek. A woman named Chelsea Buchorn was reported missing. A friend of hers, Amber Harrison, reported to the police that she thought her friend was abducted.

Harrison said they were walking through the woods and she lost track of Chelsea.

It’s a rather odd account. I can only find two news stories about what happened. The first one describes Amber as being agitated and telling conflicting stories. Police had no evidence of foul play and released her.

If I was going to try to read between the lines, it sounds like they went off into the woods to get really high. Amber wouldn’t be the most credible of witnesses if she was on something.

However, she and Chelsea would also make ideal victims.

Hudson Creek is a four-hour drive. I throw all my stuff into my Explorer and leave the room key with the clerk.

God knows why she imagines I needed a room for just four hours.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


HUDSON CREEK

Hudson Creek is a decaying strip of buildings on either side of the highway, clinging to the road like barnacles on a rotting pier. If this were an ecosystem, I’d say it was on the verge of collapse.

FOR SALE signs litter stretches of property with dilapidated buildings that look like they haven’t had two-legged occupants in years.

Occasionally I spot signs of life. Aluminum-sided trailers covered in faded paint with clothes dangling nearby on lines. Someone lives there, if this is what you can call living.

I’ve seen plenty of poverty in my travels. Not all of it radiates despair. I’ve been to slums where the electricity falters at night, but the live music keeps going. I’ve visited shantytowns where a new pair of shoes is as rare as a Tesla, yet people wear homespun clothes as vibrant as any I’ve seen.

Hudson Creek has none of that. There’s no new construction. No signs that the town is fighting for life.

The only things not falling apart are the shiny new cars I occasionally spot in weed-infested driveways.

These people have mixed-up priorities.

Or do they?

Would you invest in landscaping if you knew your property values were going to keep declining? Maybe it’s better to spend your money on an escape pod with leather seats and a Bluetooth system.

How people get the money for the fancy four-by-fours and Corvettes is beyond me.

I guess there’s always some kind of commerce. Once upon a time, Hudson Creek may have been a mining town or played some crucial role for the railroad.

Now? It’s a place between here and there.

Yet according to the purple trail MAAT had displayed, there’s a high probability the killer has been through here. Several times. He’s driven down this same highway and stared out his window at the run-down houses I’m looking at.

Did he see it as a decaying carcass to be preyed upon?

The town where Juniper was staying was a smaller-scale Hudson Creek. Her motel had a burned-out neon sign and bare plywood on one side. Bryson’s Auto Repair was a junkyard that only functioned as a business because one person knew how to change tires and oil.

A tractor-trailer truck barrels around my car, frustrated at my gawking. I step on the accelerator and head toward what the GPS says is the city center of Hudson Creek.

Along the way I pass the only new construction I’ve seen for miles. It’s a huge service station catering to truckers. Next to it is a diner with a parking lot full of cars.

City hall may be a mile down the road, but this is clearly the center of what’s alive in this town.

When I seek answers as a biologist, it’s not too hard to know where to start. I can either call the local Fish and Wildlife office or the Farm Bureau.