The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)(61)

I get frustrated at the backwoods-genealogy quiz. “Chief, this girl ain’t goddamn ever a-comin’ home.”

He spins the light around and shines it in my face. “You watch your mouth, son. You show up here in the middle of the night with a half-naked dead girl in your trunk. That is suspicious.” He turns to his deputy. “Didn’t some fella show up with a body in Hudson Creek?”

“The second bear attack,” replies the deputy.

“Jesus Christ,” I groan. “First, it wasn’t a bear attack. Second, I was the guy that found that body.”

Chief Shaw’s squinty eyes stare at me for a moment; then he comes to life, using the flashlight to gesture at Summer. “You’re telling me you found another girl just like this one?”

“More or less, yes.”

He turns to his deputy, “Is he for real?”

“That’s why I called you down, Chief.”

“That’s one hell of a coincidence, you finding two bodies. Don’t you think?”

I realize the closest this guy has ever been to a murder case more complicated than a domestic dispute is what he’s seen on television.

“I’m a scientist. I’m working on a new detection procedure. I was looking into Summer Osbourne’s case because it was similar to Chelsea Buchorn’s and Juniper Parsons’s.”

“A detection procedure?”

“Just ask the people at Hudson Creek. They know all about it.” Right . . .

“And you just brought the body here? Don’t you know that’s tampering with evidence?”

“When I uncovered it, wolves showed up.”

“Wolves never bother anybody. They’re cowards.”

“I wasn’t worried about me. I was worried about her. They’re scavengers. They knew where I dug her up.”

“If you were worried about wolves eating her, then why did you dig her up?”

Is this a serious question? I take a deep breath. “I wasn’t sure if she was buried there until I started digging.”

“If you had a notion where her body was, why didn’t you just come tell us?”

Seriously? “I didn’t want to waste your time in case I was wrong.”

“Well, now I got tampered-with evidence. What am I supposed to do about that?”

“An hour ago you didn’t even think this girl was missing. You have a heck of a lot more to go on now.”

“Carl, go take a statement from him. I’m going to get the doc over here to take the body. Call Warren over at Fish and Wildlife.” He pauses for a moment. “And call in Jefferson with the fingerprint and forensic kit. I want to make sure this girl didn’t die in the back of this SUV.”

Carl stares at Summer’s body, then turns back to the chief. “From the looks of that girl, I don’t even think this had rolled off the assembly line by the time she was killed.”

“Just do it, Carl.”

“Yes, sir.”

I spend the next two hours making a statement and answering questions about my whereabouts. Chief Shaw then has me fingerprinted and photographed and runs them through their computer to make sure I’m not a mass murderer.

I then take a trip with Chief Shaw, Warren the Fish and Game guy, and another deputy to show them where I found the body.

The wolves are long gone, of course, but the shallow grave where I found her is just as I left it.

It’s midnight before they finally release me. As I leave, I overhear Warren explaining how bears will sometimes bury their victims to come back to later.

Great, guys. Believe whatever you want.

I just hope nobody forgets to contact Summer’s mother and tell her that her baby is never coming home.

Too exhausted to drive back to Gus’s motel, I get a room in the next town over.

I fall asleep making Xs on a map MAAT generated for me. They go clear across the state, following the purple band of the killer’s hunting pattern.

Each one is another potential Summer or Chelsea.

I prepare myself for more awkward encounters with local law enforcement as I keep digging up bodies.

At some point their default answer can’t be “A bear did it.”

I hope.





CHAPTER FORTY-NINE


BODY COUNT

Lily Ames was from a town near Seattle. Her parents last saw her nearly two years ago when she decided to hike across the country. There was some mention of seeing Yellowstone and Montana.

Two days after Summer, I find her under three feet of dirt two hundred miles from the nearest park entrance.

Her throat has been slashed to the point that her spine is visible at the back of her neck. Lily’s eyes are filled with terror. There’s a yellow bruise on the side of her face, implying she suffered some kind of injury long enough before her heart stopped beating.

Using my trowel, then my hands, I unearth the rest of the area around her legs and inspect the soles of her feet. They’re a bloody mess.

She ran before he killed her.

He was toying with her.

I place a plastic sheet over her body, then fill in the hole.

I put an orange flag as a temporary burial marker so the police will know where to find her when I call in my anonymous tip.



Michelle Truyols was from Alberta and worked her way down to Montana by waitressing at first, then turning to prostitution at some point before reaching the border. According to a newspaper account, a friend said she met some guy who was a long-distance trucker with a drug problem. Michelle may have picked up that problem.