Hominid (22 page)

CHAPTER 70

A
few hours later, Tess eased herself away from the bed, where she had settled Missy. It was just past seven. They had slept away the afternoon. Missy was sound asleep with her arm wrapped around Shelby. Shelby lifted her head as Tess rose, but Tess held up her hand. “Stay,” she said softly.

Before falling asleep, Missy had cried her little heart out for her family. And Tess had cried right along with her at all the cruelties this one little girl had already faced. And she was terrified of what the future might hold for her.

Tess left the door slightly ajar, so she could hear if Missy woke. Although she hoped the girl would sleep right through until morning.

“She asleep?” Shawn asked from his spot on the couch.

Tess sank down onto the other end of the couch, curling her legs under her. “Yeah.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“A little.” She spied Pax in her office, on the phone. “Who’s he speaking with?”

“Work. He’s arranging to take a little more time off.”

Guilt ate at Tess. “I’m sorry for—”

Shawn cut her off. “Don’t you say you’re sorry. Because what you are is important to us, and we’re here for you.”

Tess leaned her head on his shoulder. “Thank you for everything. I don’t know what I’d do without you two. And you’ve helped Missy feel safe. I can’t thank you enough for that.”

The front door opened, and Dev stepped in. Tess started to get up, but he waved her back down.

He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek before taking a seat across from her. “I spoke with Crowley. He’s not happy about it, but he agreed to hold off speaking with Missy until tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Tess said.

“And I have some more good news—I looked into Missy’s custody situation, and her father’s parental rights were revoked when she went missing. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t get custody now. So he won’t be standing in your way if you want to file for custody.” Dev paused. “You… do want to file for custody, right?”

Tess wasn’t sure about much right now, but she knew keeping Missy with her was part of the plan. “Yes. I need to know she’s taken care of, safe.”

“She’s been through a lot, hasn’t she?” Shawn asked.

Tess nodded, feeling her weariness pull at her.

“Tess?” Dev asked.

“Hmm?”

“We’ll help you however we can, but we need to be prepared. Is there any chance someone took her and that they’ll come after her?”

Tess shook her head. “No. No one will be coming for her.”

“But she wasn’t alone out there, was she?” Shawn asked quietly.

Tess debated what to say. She knew she needed to keep the tribe’s secret, but she also knew she was probably going to need some help in order to do that.

She looked at Dev. She knew he would believe her. And he would protect Missy just as strongly as she would.

Her gaze shifted to Shawn. Her brother had chosen well: Shawn was reliable, confident, and just basically a good man. But he was also pragmatic. He respected what she did, but he had healthy doubts about what was out there, if anything. Like a lot of people, he accepted that footprints could be found, but he never really believed in a full-fledged bigfoot.

Well. He was just going to have to get past that.

Pax got off the phone and joined them. He plopped down on the one remaining chair. “Okay, Tess. I’ve arranged for anyone that needs to speak with you to go through either me or Abby first. And Abby is looking into the legal status of fostering Missy.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without all of you.”

“And you’ll never have to,” Pax replied.

Tess met Dev’s gaze. He sat watching her, waiting for her to decide whether or not to explain what was going on. She let out a breath. “There’s something I need to tell you guys.”

CHAPTER 71

T
ess recounted her whole experience with the bigfoot, beginning with finding Charlie’s tracks and finishing with Kong disappearing into the woods when he realized Shawn was near. When she was done, Dev, Pax, and Shawn just were staring at her, their eyes wide.

Dev spoke first. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this? I mean, back when you first met one of them.”

Tess shrugged. “I don’t know. It just… It almost felt like I was going to jinx everything if I told anyone what happened.”

“What do you want us to do?” Shawn asked.

“Help me keep them safe. They’re not animals. They’re—people. And if anyone finds out about them, they
will
hunt them down. You know that.”

“Maybe not,” Pax said. “Not all people are—”

Tess shook her head. “No. You don’t understand. In academic circles, the common belief is that no one will believe in bigfoot until someone provides a dead bigfoot—one that can be dissected on a lab table. Someone
will
track them down, kill them, and then reap the rewards of that discovery.”

She pictured all the shows she’d seen, hunters giddy at the prospect of taking down a beast like bigfoot.

“You’re sure they’re not violent?” Shawn asked.

Tess pictured the juveniles playing in the valley, Mary and her family mourning Charlie’s death, and the incredible gentleness they had shown to Missy. “No,” she said softly, “they’re not violent. In all the bigfoot encounters on record, no one’s ever been killed. The worst that’s happened is that a human has hurt themselves running away.”

“And if they’re as big as you say they are, they’d certainly be able to catch anyone they wanted, and hurt anyone they intended to. So clearly they don’t intend to,” Pax said.

He was on her side, just like always. “I think we make them nervous,” she said. “They know what we’re capable of. They go out of their way to stay away from us. I’ve heard people say that we need to find them so we can protect them. But they seem to be doing a fine job of that on their own.”

“There was really one with you right before I found you?” Shawn asked.

Tess smiled at the incredulous look on Shawn’s face. “I call him Kong. He’s about ten feet tall and close to a thousand pounds. He carried Missy and only handed her to me when he realized you were nearby.”

Shawn shook his head. “It seems impossible.”

“I know. But they took care of Missy all this time. And…” She paused. “And I think the reason they came to me in the first place was so that I would bring Missy back. They realized she wouldn’t survive with them.”

Pax sat back. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. They loved her. And it killed them to let her go. But they did it so she would be safe. And now I need to make sure she
is
safe—and that they are as well.”

Pax gave a laugh that held no mirth. “Well, at least you haven’t set yourself up for too difficult a task. But what are you going to do about Hayes?”

Tess started. She had completely forgotten about her grant responsibilities. She shook her head. “Before I went to their valley, I had decided to break the contract. I’ll pay back all the money I’ve received. I can’t let them get any evidence that bigfoot exist.”

“Do you have the money to do that?” Dev asked.

“I haven’t actually spent all that much. I should be able to cover it with the money from Mom’s estate.”

“You haven’t mentioned anything in your updates to him?” Shawn asked.

Tess shook her head. “No, nothing. I had some hair samples that I was planning on sending out to them, but I held off. Now I’m glad I did.”

Pax frowned. “A hair sample? Like the one you sent me?”

“Yeah. Did you run it, by the way?” Tess asked.

Pax nodded. “I thought I was going to surprise you with the results, but now they seem a little anticlimactic.”

“What did they say?” Dev asked.

“The DNA in the hair sample wasn’t a match for either human or ape DNA. But it did match a hominid.”

“
Homo denisova
,” Tess said.

Pax leaned back with a sigh. “See? Anticlimactic.”

“So they’re not apes?” Shawn asked.

Tess thought about Kong. “No. Although I think there are actually two groups of hominids. One of them might actually be
Gigantopithecus
, or at least a close cousin. But no, they’re not apes.”

“So what are they?” Shawn asked.

“They’re humans.”

“They can’t be humans,” Pax said.

“I don’t mean to say they’re identical to us, of course,” Tess explained. “The term ‘human’ is really broad. Some people define it as
Homo sapiens
. Others define it as any living being that’s not an animal. In fact, hominid is a synonym for human. That means in one sense, all hominids are humans.”

“So they’re more like us than they are like animals?”

Tess shrugged. “So it seems. In fact, most people think denisovans are closer to us than Neanderthals are. Each year, we seem to find more evidence of new hominids that have existed on this planet—more than twenty at last count. And now we know that many of them even coexisted.”

Shawn’s eyebrows shot up. “Coexisted?”

“For the longest time,” Tess said, “academics thought each group was isolated, with no overlap. But fossils keep popping up demonstrating that we’ve shared this planet, at multiple points in our history, with other humans.”

“This is all a little out there,” Shawn said.

This time it was Tess who shook her head. “No, it’s really not. It’s just that we humans have always considered ourselves unique, the top of animal kingdom. The idea that we aren’t, even if it’s backed by science, is tough to accept. But it doesn’t make it any less true.”

“How’s that possible? I mean, twenty hominids,” Shawn said. “We all must have at one point had the same ancestor. So how did we evolve differently?”

“Probably DUF1220,” Pax said.

Everyone stopped and stared.

“What?” Pax said. “I’m in PR now, but I do have multiple degrees in the biological sciences. And I keep up with the field, thank you very much.”

Shawn cocked an eyebrow. “So what’s the deal with DU-whatever-it-is?”

“It’s a protein, and researchers believe it may be responsible for increases in human brain capacity. It’s what in essence allowed us to evolve. In fact, it’s even suggested to be a cause of autism,” Dev said.

“I hadn’t heard about a link to autism,” Tess said. “How so?”

“In autistic individuals, the brain develops extremely rapidly during the first few years of life. Autistic individuals with a higher number of copies of DUF1220 have more severe symptoms of the disorder—repetitive behaviors, communications difficulties, and social deficits. In short, having more copies of DUF1220 results in an increase in brain development. It’s a whole new direction for autism research.”

“So you’re suggesting that maybe different hominids have different numbers of these particular genes, resulting in different hominids?” Shawn asked.

Pax shrugged. “It’s just an idea.”

“Well, we do know that around six million years ago humans started producing an increased amount of DUF1220, which is what separated us from chimps,” Tess said. “Remember, humans and chimps share 99.8 percent of our DNA. So maybe Pax is right—maybe we started developing different levels of DUF1220, creating different hominids.”

“And your bigfoot is one of these hominids?” Shawn asked.

“According to the lab results, that seems to be the case,” Tess said.

“But if bigfoot
is
a
Homo denisova
, basically a cousin of
Homo sapiens
, why don’t they still interact with us?” Pax asked. “You said they did in the past.”

Tess looked at Dev, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. He turned to Shawn and Pax. “There’s this old tale among the Hoopa about the creation of man by the animals, including bigfoot.” He recounted the same legend he’d told Tess—the one about animals creating humans, the humans being afraid of the bigfoot, and the bigfoot hiding themselves away so as not to frighten the humans further.

When he was done, Tess said, “I think the story may be true—at least in part.
Homo sapiens
probably really were terrified of bigfoot—or
Homo denisova
. At first, anyway. But then we developed tools, and they didn’t. They don’t have an opposable thumb, so they don’t have the level of dexterity necessary to make use of tools. As a result, we began to outpace them technologically—and I’m guessing we weren’t exactly kind about that.”

“We probably started killing them off at a fast clip,” Shawn said.

“That’s my theory,” Tess said. “They shifted their behaviors. They became nocturnal. They shunned people. And that’s how they’ve managed to survive.”

“It sounds impossible,” Pax said.

“It
does
sound impossible,” Tess agreed. “Except for the small fact that they exist. And now that we know they exist, we need to make sure that no else does.”

“Okay. So how?” Dev asked.

“Well, first, no one can know where Missy has really been this whole time. She was alone in the forest for this last year, okay?”

The men nodded back at her.

Tess turned to Pax. “And I need those results destroyed. No one can know what we found.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Pax said.

Tess let out a breath, feeling relieved. “Good. I have another hair sample in my collection case, which I’ll also toss, and then—”

“What hair sample?” Shawn interrupted.

“Part of the sample from Charlie. I only sent Pax some of it. The rest is in my office in my bookcase.”

Pax exchanged a look with Shawn. “You mean with your casts?”

Tess narrowed her eyes. “Yes. Why?”

Pax spoke slowly. “I’ve been using your office since we arrived. I must have looked at those casts dozens of times. I don’t remember seeing a hair sample.”

Tess stood up, concerned. “It’s there. You must have overlooked it.” She hurried into the office. Dev, Shawn, and Pax followed her.

Tess made her way to the case, and her eyes went immediately to the right-hand side of the bottom shelf—the place where she’d placed the hair sample.

That spot was now empty.

Tess unlocked the cabinet and started searching every shelf methodically, pushing casts aside. Dev helped. Tess’s panic increased as she continued to look and continued to find nothing. “Where is it?”

When she reached the last shelf, she turned around, stunned. “It was here. I swear it was here.”

Pax moved to the desk. “You’re sure there’s not somewhere else you might have placed it? In your desk maybe?”

Tess shook her head. “No. I put it in the case. But where is it now?”

Dev shook his head. “You’re asking the wrong question.”

Tess looked up at him, confused.

Dev’s voice was grim. “You should be asking who took it.”