Wild Thing: A Novel (22 page)

Clipped inside the back cover of Benjy’s chart is a manila envelope sent to McQuillen from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Bemidji. Still sealed.

I try to think of some way of opening it that won’t be obvious later, but end up just tearing it across the top.

When I get back to the front room, Violet’s in the doorway, leaning in to see without crossing the threshold. “Is he here?” she says.

“No.”

“But you went in?”

I pull the door shut behind me and start down the stairs. I don’t want to be here anymore. McQuillen coming back because he forgot something is the least of it.

“Door was unlocked,” I say. “I was worried about him.”

True-but-false: it’s not just a game. It’s an attitude.

“Isn’t that still breaking and entering?”

“Not if you don’t break anything.”

“Are you sure he’s not there?”

“I looked around. Maybe I got the time wrong.”

As I unlock the car, she notices the manila envelope in my hand. “And you
took
something?”

“Just this. Which he won’t miss. He never opened it.”

“What is it?”

“Tell you on the way.”

“You can’t tell me now? You’re freaking me out.”

I look over at her. Wonder how much of my lying to her she’s actually bought, and how much she’s just been too polite to call me on.

Either way, I’m about to distract her.

“They’re the autopsy photos of Autumn Semmel and Benjy Schneke.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

She blanches. “What do they look like?”

“Like if McQuillen had bothered to open the envelope, he’d be a lot less sure April and Benjy were killed by a boat propeller.”

Camp Fawn See, Ford Lake, Minnesota

Still Saturday, 15 September

“Is there any chance they’re shark bites?”

“No,” Violet says. She’s seated on the floor with her head in her hands and her back to my bed. Behind her, on the mattress, the black-and-white glossies are spread in two hideous rows.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“A bunch of reasons.”

I don’t know what’s more embarrassing: the fear or the relief.

“For one thing,” she says, “they’re bell shaped, like from
something bottle-nosed, which as far as I know no shark is. And I’ve never heard of a shark that could be metabolically active enough in fresh water to attack someone. I don’t know any saltwater fish that could do that.”

“Salmon don’t seem to have a problem with it.”

“Salmon molt from fresh water to salt water, once, one way. Which is relatively easy, because they just have to fill their cells with enough junk to stay osmotically attractive to water. When they go back, the fresh water poisons them. It’s the final evolutionary stressor before they spawn and die. Anyway, sharks also only have cutting teeth. Like piranhas, or Komodo dragons. Whatever this was had cutting teeth in the molar position but puncturing teeth up front. That’s why the front of each bite’s all stringy.”

“Jesus, that’s good to hear.”

Violet looks at me. She’s taking it pretty well for a first timer, but she looks teary eyed and ill. “How do you figure?”

“I don’t like sharks.”

“Lionel, whatever this is, it’s worse.”

“I doubt it. It probably
was
a propeller.”

“You said in the car that propeller injuries were short, parallel incisions the same distance apart as the front-to-back depth of the screw. And that parts attached to clothes or hair get shredded.”

“Yeah, in
textbooks
.”

The bodies in the photos aren’t wearing clothes. Bodies in autopsy photos seldom are, but the accompanying report says they were mostly naked when they were recovered. The girl’s bottoms were still on. Whether she had long hair isn’t clear, since her head is missing.

“You don’t understand,” Violet says. “I
recognize
this bite pattern.”

It stops me. “What do you mean?”

“This bite pattern—it’s impossible to miss. I mean, I’m not a zoological paleontologist. I’m not a zoological anything—”

“You seem to be doing okay.”

“No offense, but that’s because you know even less than I do about this stuff. I’m an amateur. I don’t even know where my gaps are.”

“Okay.”

“But this bite I
know
. Every paleontologist knows it, because it’s so unique that it gets used to mark the end of the Cretaceous.”

“Which is when?”

“That’s the fucking problem. Sixty-five million years ago.”

I remind myself that I’ve essentially just shown this woman stills from a snuff film. I’d put a hand on her shoulder, but I don’t have that kind of hands.

“Violet—”

She winces. “I know. I’m a paleontologist. Most of the animals I’m familiar with died out in the K-T extinction.”

“Exactly.”

“But not all of them.”

As gently as possible, I say “I really doubt this is a dinosaur.”

“Until 1938, people thought the coelacanth had been extinct since the Cretaceous. Then they started turning up.”

“But we don’t share a habitat with coelacanths. The only reason we found out they were still around is that we started drag-netting their spawning grounds. Even then, most people who saw one probably thought it was just another fish and forgot about it. You and I are talking about something that supposedly looks like a dinosaur, and hangs out in a national park. And eats people. Where’s it been all this time? Frozen?”

She doesn’t respond.

“What?” I say.

“That’s not completely impossible.”

“Of course it is.”

“It isn’t. I may not be a zoologist, but I know there are frogs that can freeze solid.”

“How? Their cells would burst.”

“They flood their cells with ultrahigh levels of glucose, then supercool. No active metabolism. Until they wake up, they’re just proteins in a block of ice.”

“And they can stay that way?” I say. “For sixty-five million years?”

“No. Not for sixty-five million years. Random nucleating events would blow out the cells in that kind of time, and there’d be molecular decay. But this thing doesn’t have to have been frozen for sixty-five million years. What if it’s only sat out the last couple of centuries? That would explain why there’s a painting of it. And there’s been a hell of a lot of habitat change in the last two hundred years. In 1780 New York Harbor froze. This summer Minneapolis reached a hundred and twenty-three degrees.”

“But just because a handful of amphibians can freeze doesn’t mean there are reptiles that can.”

“There might be, though. Turtles can pull all kinds of crafty shit to survive at the bottom of lakes that freeze over. They can alter their enzymes. They can stop their hearts and lungs and just breathe through their skins.”

“Which means they’re still building up lactic acid.”

“Unless they’re buffering it. There’s even a
squirrel
that can supercool.”
^*

“So…”

She avoids my eyes. “So maybe it’s like that thing Sherlock Holmes says, where when you eliminate all other options, the one that’s left has to be the truth, even if it seems like it can’t be.”

“Violet, I’m sorry, but that’s the dumbest thing Sherlock Holmes ever said. How can you ever know you’ve eliminated all other options?”

She looks miserable. “Name one.”

“I will. This was done by a person.”

She looks at me, both hopeful and dubious.

“How could you know that?”

“Because it’s
possible
it was done by a person. Which nine times out of ten means that it was. Humans will do any sick shit you can imagine. And if this
was
done by a human, then it could easily have been done by one smart enough to figure out what a dinosaur bite should look like and replicate it. You could probably modify a bear trap to do that.”

“But Autumn and Benjy had other people with them when they died.”

“Two other teenagers, who weren’t even on the same lake. Everybody involved was probably fucking at the time. Maybe the friends heard noises, or thought the water looked disturbed when they got there. But nobody’s told us those kids
saw
anything—including the bodies. No one’s told us
anyone
saw the bodies before the police picked them out of the water, which was at least three days later. That’s plenty of time to fake a bunch of dinosaur bites.”

She stares at me. “Do you think
Reggie’s
capable of that?”

“I don’t know. But there are plenty of people who are. Don’t forget, there were two other murders right here the same week. And no one’s suggesting
those
were animal attacks.”

“But if the person who shot Chris Jr. and Father Podominick had a gun, and knew how to shoot it, why wouldn’t they… I mean, how could they do this? To two children?”

“I don’t know. Maybe one person killed the kids, and a different person, thinking Chris Jr. and Father Podominick were responsible, killed
them
.”

“You mean someone thought Chris Jr. murdered his own daughter?”

“Who knows? Maybe the shooter wasn’t even trying for Chris Jr.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nobody even seems to know what Chris Jr. and Father Podominick were doing here that night. So how many people could have known where to find them? And according to Reggie, who granted is not the most reliable source in the world, Father Podominick was shot in the head and Chris Jr. was shot in the chest. So someone with a scope took as much time as necessary to line up the most lethal possible shot on Father Podominick, then had to set up the second shot as quickly as possible, because the second target would have known it was coming. That’s why the killer went for the chest shot: it’s faster and easier. Maybe the killer never even saw Chris Jr.’s face.”

Or clothes.

The whole idea starts to sound dumb to me: who assassinates two people with a scope and doesn’t bother to identify both targets?

“Who
are
you?” Violet says.

“What do you mean?” I say.

I know what she means, though. She looks horrified.

A total fucking idiot is who I am.

“Why do you know about shooting people in the head with a scope? Or mutilating people’s bodies with—what did you say? A
bear trap?
”

“Violet—”

“Why aren’t you afraid when people shoot
guns
at you?” Violet says.

“I was afraid.”

“You were
smiling
. And afterward you refused to call the police. Why did you rob McQuillen’s office?”

“Oh, come on—”

“Are you even really a doctor?”

Christ. It used to be only my patients asked me that question. Now everybody does.

“Yes. I am.”

“Are you also some kind of policeman?”

“No.”

“Are you some kind of criminal?”

“No.” Not at present.

“Have you ever been in prison?”

“No.” Nine months in jail awaiting and standing trial for double homicide, maybe, but prison? Never.

True-but-false: it’s not just an attitude. It’s a lifestyle.

“Are you who Rec Bill thinks you are?” Violet says.

What a smart fucking question
, I almost say to her.

“Yes. I think so.”

“What does that mean?”

“Rec Bill asked Baboo Marmoset—do you know who that is?”

“Yes.”

“Rec Bill asked him to recommend someone who had a science background but also might be able to protect you if something went wrong.”

“To protect
me?
”

“I know: I haven’t exactly been doing that job.”