McKean S01 A Dangerous Breed (3 page)

“I work in the animal facility where the kennels are,” he explained in heavily accented English. “The day after I got the orders from Zoe, I injected all the dogs with overdoses of pentobarbital. Very painless. They don’ feel nothing. They just go to sleep.”

“A standard laboratory procedure,” McKean acknowledged. “And you’re sure you killed them all?”

Jaime looked away momentarily, his discomfort now greatly amplified. A visible sweat broke out on his forehead.

“What is it, Jaime?” Zoe asked with a note of surprise. “I signed euthanasia orders on every one.”

With eyes downcast, Jaime began, “One was missing. I didn’t want to tell you. I thought maybe I lose my job.”

“No, Jaime,” Zoe protested. “I would never do that!”

McKean grew impatient of their reassurances. “Do you know who took it?”

Jaime kept guiltily silent.

McKean, a head taller than Jaime, loomed over him threateningly. “Listen,” he hissed. “I’m betting that there will be murder or manslaughter charges filed in this case. If you know anything and don’t tell us, you could be considered an accessory. You’d better tell all, and do so right now.”

“It was Derek Curman!” Jaime blurted. “I don’ know it for sure, because I don’ see him take the dog. But he was always playing around with it. It was his favorite.”

“Selkirk mentioned Curman,” McKean responded. “I’d like to speak with him.”

“Wouldn’t we all?” Zoe remarked. “But he’s disappeared without a trace. He was a very moody and temperamental guy. Didn’t get along with people very well. But he was really excited about the project. When Selkirk decided to cancel the program, he was heartbroken. When the group discussed euthanasia, he threatened to resign. He argued with me when I signed the papers. Then he just didn’t show up at all the next day. He left his notebooks, his personal stuff in his desk, everything. Just disappeared. Nobody ever saw him again.”

“The next morning,” Jaime added, “dog 106, she was missing.”

“Curman must have taken her in the night,” McKean suggested.

“That sounds about right,” Jaime agreed.

Minutes later, McKean and I were back in Selkirk’s office. Selkirk interrupted a conference call to speak with us. When told the news of dog 106’s disappearance he grew red-faced and tugged at his necktie knot to loosen it.

“Derek Curman,” Selkirk said, slowly shaking his head. “He did some impressive work. Really quite brilliant. Very organized. But emotionally volatile. Still, I never would have guessed he’d taken an animal.”

“Where’s Curman now?” McKean asked.

“We haven’t seen him for four years,” Selkirk replied. “He just vanished. I tried to find him on Google and Facebook recently but no luck. Just old stuff. No one knows where he went.”

“We’ll have trouble tracking him down, no doubt,” McKean muttered. And then his expression brightened. “Do you have some of dog 106’s DNA?”

“We should have a sample frozen under liquid nitrogen.”

“Excellent!” McKean exclaimed. “At least we can get a definitive answer as to whether dog 106 was the source of the coydog DNA.”

“You think Curman turned her loose and she bred with coyotes?” I asked, my mind reeling at the thought. “Why would he ever do such a thing?”

“The DNA will answer your first question beyond a shadow of a doubt, Fin,” McKean replied. “As to your second question, we may never know.”

Selkirk made a lab bench available where McKean carried out a series of DNA experiments before noon. Using samples of Border collie 106’s blood and a sample from the desert bloodstain he’d brought for comparison, he quickly demonstrated exact matches to the bloodstain’s genetic markers.

“The bloodstain’s DNA includes every bit of the human DNA dog 106 carried, and nothing else of human origins. So I think we can safely conclude that dog 106 was adopted into a coyote pack and produced at least one litter.”

“Safely conclude?” I remarked. “That conclusion doesn’t make me feel safe at all.”

“Nevertheless,” McKean replied, “the tests leave no doubt in my mind that the bloodstain came from an animal that was a cross between a coyote and dog 106, an F1 hybrid.”

“F1?” I puzzled.

“The genetic term for the first filial generation obtained by breeding two dissimilar organisms, an exact half-and-half hybrid of its two parents’ chromosomes. As near as I can determine on short notice, the genes in the bloodstain appear to be exactly half Border collie and half coyote - with a measure of human DNA thrown in on the Border collie side.”

Multiplying Threats

McKean’s cell phone rang. “Sheriff Tanner, hello!” he began, and then his dark eyebrows knit. “Another murder? Where?”

Within minutes I was driving us eastbound through farmlands surrounding the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge, on a straight gravel road that rose and fell over low hills of golden wheat and grape-laden vineyards. We stopped at an old yellow two-story farmhouse ringed by tall cottonwoods and surrounded by wide, furrowed, brown-dirt fields of newly sewn winter wheat. Half a dozen vehicles were pulled up in front of the house, including the sheriff’s car and a square white medical examiner’s van. Tanner met us on the front porch and showed us inside.

“Arnie Ingersol and his wife Velma,” Tanner explained. “Old farm people. Knew ‘em well.’

He led us through a living room with flowered wallpaper, an old piano and neat furniture, and then into a big bright yellow kitchen where a shocking sight stopped me in my tracks. Everywhere, human bones lay scattered on the patterned linoleum floor. Blood was everywhere too, dried and blackened after having been tracked around by -

“Coyotes,” Tanner muttered. “Caught Velma at the sink washing breakfast dishes. Water was still running according to her son, who stopped by and found her. He’s upstairs with one of our counselors and an FBI agent.”

McKean moved around the kitchen quickly sizing up the lay of the bones. “Is this scatter reminiscent of the bones of Nate and Tad Swanson?” he asked Tanner.

“Yes, I suppose so. That’s what we figure, if you’re thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’. Same critters here as was at the scene with the Swanson killings. No doubt any more that it’s coyoties gone bad. We’ve decided to get the Feds into this. Something real freaky’s going on.” He led us through the house’s big pantry and along a hall and into an office with a desk, bookshelves, and more bones strewn on its Persian carpet. We had to squeeze in because the medical examiner’s team was still at work, one young woman photographing bones before a man wearing a white coat and blue rubber gloves picked them up and put them into numbered clear plastic evidence bags while a second, older woman in white clothing moved around collecting hair and fibers and flecks of the blood that had pooled and hardened on the carpet, putting them into screw-capped test tubes of the sort McKean had used.

Tanner said, quietly, so as not to disturb the ongoing work, “There’s a pistol in the top desk drawer. Drawer’s open like Arnie went for it but they got him before he could take it out.”

The room stank of blood and animal smells. My stomach began to churn violently, the way it used to do in Iraq. I was glad to follow my companions when they moved out onto the house’s wide front porch.

“Front door was ajar,” Tanner continued. “Not all that unusual for farm folks - ”

“But some of the smarter breeds of dogs,” McKean interjected, “can turn doorknobs.”

“Yeah,” Tanner agreed thoughtfully, as if McKean had added a new dimension to his thinking.

“Peyton McKean!” a friendly voice called from inside the living room.

“Vince Nagumo!” McKean replied as the FBI agent came out and shook our hands. “What brings you here, as if I didn’t know?”

Nagumo, a slight Amerasian fellow with an intelligent face and surprising green eyes, gestured inside the house and said, “This, and your call last night about the human coyote, and something you probably don’t know. There’ve been two other murders just over the Adams County line: one at a farmhouse, one at an all-night convenience store. Same MO. Bones everywhere. The attacks seem to be centered on the wildlife refuge. Governor’s calling in a National Guard containment effort on whomever, or whatever, is doing this.”

Tanner slipped his hands into his back pockets, spat off the porch and nodded toward the plowed fields. “Nice thing about land like this, you can see a lotta footprints. Guess what kinda footprints are out there.”

“Coyote?” McKean responded.

Tanner nodded.

“You know what else?” the sheriff asked.

“What else?”

“Nuttin” else. Tracks go up over the swale to the north, heading back to the wildlife refuge. About twenty, twenty-five animals. That’s a huge pack. Now, seein” as this scene’s still pretty fresh, I got a notion to drive up that way and try heading “em off before they get back into rough country.”

“Absolutely!” McKean exclaimed. “And we’ll follow, won’t we, Fin?”

I swallowed hard. “One of these days, Peyton, you’re gonna get us into some real trouble.”

My Mustang’s air filter ate a ton of dust chasing Tanner’s patrol car over a dozen washboarded farm roads following the coyote tracks. The sparkling metalflake midnight blue finish on my hood and its airscoop turned a dreary slate gray under a coating of fine pulver and I turned on the windshield wipers occasionally to push the accumulating grit out of my view. Eventually we crested a hill of dry wheat and drove down into the channeled scablands of the wildlife refuge, where the road turned into two dusty ruts winding between mesas and ponds. I began to get a claustrophobic feeling as the cliffs hemmed us in on either side. Several miles in, Tanner pulled over beside a small saltpan and I stopped behind him. Before McKean or I could get out, Tanner leaped from his patrol car, drew his pistol and fired two quick shots at something hidden in sagebrush on the far side of the saltpan. We got out as he crossed the saltpan and hauled out of the brush the carcass of a large coyote, freshly bloodied with a bullet hole through its chest.

“Caught him off guard,” Tanner crowed. “There’s more but they ran off.”

McKean knelt and inspected the carcass. “Looks like pure coyote except for its large size. That size may be due to hybrid vigor.” Its paws twitched as if the impulse to run still glimmered in its nervous system.

“Hybrid vigor?” I asked. “What’s that?”

“A common finding when distantly related animals interbreed,” McKean expounded. “The offspring possess positive traits of both parental lines and the result is often a vigor greater than either parent had, based on the combination of both parent’s positive traits. Larger size is one of the most frequently encountered of such new traits.”

I queasily scanned the surrounding sagebrush for signs of trouble. “You’re saying there’s a bunch of extra-large coyotes running around here?”

“Quite possibly so,” remarked McKean, “based on this example.”

Tanner said, “I’m gonna bag him and take him back in my trunk.”

“Good plan,” McKean agreed. “Its DNA will probably be a genetic mix, despite its coyote coloring.”

“Looks like a regular coyote to me,” I said, still unable to quite accept what I was hearing.

“And perhaps that will turn out to be the case,” McKean agreed. “But any sort of coloration is possible in the F2 generation.”

“F2?” I questioned. “Explain what that means, Peyton.”

“The second filial generation. This appears to be a young animal so it may be a grandson of dog 106. ‘Grandsons’ or ‘granddaughters’ are the very meanings of the term F2. In a mixed population like we’re dealing with, traits like fur coloration can re-assort, combining and re-combining with other genetic traits. This animal may represent back-breeding into a form that looks like its original coyote ancestor.”

“So, if it’s pure coyote again, it’s no threat.”

“On the contrary,” McKean said with an intellectual glint in his eyes. “This animal may be pure coyote on the surface only, while other genetic traits have mixed and matched as the chromosomes sorted and rearranged in the sperm and egg that created him. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, although he looks like his coyote ancestor, he nevertheless possesses a number of Border collie genes.”

“Including the human genes?” I felt palpitations stirring in my chest.

“He could very well have those too,” McKean said, his eyes cast skyward, his mind in an intellectual ferment as great as the emotional shock building in me.

“All of the human genes?”

“Answer: yes.”

“So you’re telling me human Cog27 DNA may have made it all the way into something that looks like a coyote?”

“That’s right.”

I felt dizzy. “That’s beyond creepy, Peyton. ‘The horror of this story keeps getting worse by the minute.’

“I suppose so,” he said as if the idea that this was a potential catastrophe had somehow gotten lost in his intellectual curiosity about the genetic aspects of the case. Now his expression clouded as his superactive mind turned to that issue and found its ramifications less than pleasing.

Tanner went to his car to get a body bag and McKean and I got into the Mustang to escape the late afternoon heat.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “That’s one out of twenty-five animals that broke into a house and killed two people this morning. There are still twenty-four of them loose out here.”

“Maybe more,” McKean mumbled, his mind preoccupied with a mental calculation. “I’ve done a little web searching since this all began. Well-fed coyote packs can raise eight pups per female per year, and dog 106 has been missing for four years. Assuming half the pups were female in each generation, then that’s four-times-four-times-four-times-four, or 256 transgenic pups under optimal conditions.”

“The opposite of optimal, if you ask me,” I said with my stomach churning faster.

Suddenly McKean gripped my arm. “Look, Fin! There’s another!”

A coydog with Border collie markings stood by a sagebrush thicket watching the sheriff return to the center of the saltpan with a black body bag. I rolled my window down and called to Tanner, “Watch out! There’s another one.”

Tanner quickly drew his pistol, bent into a firing stance and squeezed the trigger. The dog was already in motion as the shot rang out, leaping sideways into the cover of the sagebrush. Tanner fired several more shots but there was no yelp to indicate the bullets had found their mark. A moment later however, staccato yapping calls emanated from brush in the area where the animal had disappeared. “Yip! Yap-yap yip!”