Mesozoic Murder (22 page)

Chapter 29

Two hours later the thunderstorm had finally passed, dumping water so quickly that the ground couldn't drink it up fast enough. Ansel trekked across the last few feet in front of the fifty-inch-high hive, her shoes and pants soaked clear through. The few bees flying across the soppy field ignored her.

Ansel felt as though she was moving in slow motion inside the bee suit. It was baggy and hot. The Velcro straps pinched her ankles, and the vented, white helmet with a circular steel mesh veil was heavy and awkward. Her hands functioned like flippers inside the oversized leather gloves. Her right hand gripped a blue-handled, paint scraper-like tool with a hooked end.

Ansel licked her lips and stared at the pine board hive. The apiary resembled a square, towering insect condo with one entrance at the bottom. Her mouth had gone dry as she neared the bees. The rain-proof, galvanized metal cover had to be removed first. She carefully aligned the scraper edge into a crack between the cover and the box below it. A large, droning honeybee landed on the veil in front of her. Could bees smell fear?

Ansel froze. Her eyes crossed as she watched the insect and tried to deal emotionally with this new dilemma. She shut her eyes and held her breath. The bee's legs produced little clicking sounds as it walked across the mesh. This was worse. She opened her eyes. Resisting the urge to slap the bee into pulp, Ansel slowly raised her left hand and gently pushed it away. The insect hummed like a light aircraft engine and flew away. She exhaled her relief.

Jamming the scraper deeper into the box seam, Ansel pried up the cover edge. She pushed the scraper into a suit pocket, grabbed the two-inch-deep lid with both hands, and pulled up.

She expected a massive swarm to funnel out of the hive and chase her, but nothing happened. Beneath the cover was a solid board panel with an oval center hole. She set the cover frame on the ground, took the hive tool, and pried up the second barrier. More bees landed on her veil and upper body. They strutted along the suit a few paces, then flew away.

Under this inner board Ansel found a shallow hive box with a few bees inside. This wasn't right. Even she knew that the box should be filled with slide-in hive frames containing brood chambers. Instead she saw two small bundles tightly wrapped in black plastic and sealed with duct tape. Her pulse pounded.

Damn you, Nick. You used me.

The packages were stippled with a sticky, yellow-brown material smelling like decaying flowers. Rather than remove the messy packages, Ansel decided to take the useless hive box back to the trailer. Working the swollen wood joints apart bit by bit, she pried it off before pocketing the scraper.

As she lifted the hive box and walked away, more bees flitted through the air, landed on her suit and stayed. She was getting used to the noisy insects and went several steps before realizing she'd forgotten to replace the cover top needed to seal the apiary from the elements.

Ansel make an abrupt about-face. Her oversized helmet slid backward and only her hair pinned up inside stopped it from sliding completely off her head. As the veil slipped down her back, she heard a distant popping sound. Something struck her between the shoulder blades with a solid punch.

Ansel halted and turned. Lying by her toes, half-hidden in the tall, wet grass, was an orange object. She set the hive box on the ground, held on to her annoying, off-center helmet, and picked up the brightly colored tube with floppy-fingers.

Disbelief and horror gripped her. A plastic cylinder with a metal head and a needle dangled from her hand. Cloudy liquid dripped from the stainless steel point. A dart. If her hat and veil hadn't slipped, the syringe would have pierced her suit and her flesh. Strychnine.

Ansel dropped the dart as if it singed her gloves, then threw herself to the ground. As she lay flat on her stomach, terrifying thoughts whirled through her head. Had the dart punctured her suit anyway? She didn't feel anything except rampant fear. Who was shooting at her? They couldn't be far away. She was a prime target trapped in an open field and wearing a white bee suit.

Looking for someone with a gun, Ansel surveyed the land as best she could through the helmet veil and wet grass. She faced the trailer, some two hundred feet away. To her left at about three-hundred feet was the hangar. There was no sound except the song of a yellow warbler perched on the building's roof. From where had the dart been fired?

Had the shooter left, thinking she'd die a horrible death? Or was the person waiting for her to become paralyzed before approaching? Maybe the killer thought she'd simply been tending to her bees rather than searching for something in the hive. Well, she wasn't leaving the wrapped bundles for Nick and Evelyn's killer. Ansel grabbed the hive box and dragged it closer.

She quickly pulled the sticky packets over the rim and onto the ground, then rolled over on one hip and unzipped the coveralls. She stuffed both packages against her stomach. The elastic waistband would keep them from slipping down if she stood. Bees roamed over her suit, and she tried not to zip them inside. Adjusting the veil one more time, she re-assessed her position.

Ansel looked at the trailer and then the workshop. Which way to run? The shooter could be hiding near either. She turned back onto her stomach, facing the apiary. The dart lay in front of her. She wasn't going to leave it for the killer to destroy.

Ansel pulled off the right glove with her teeth and picked up the spent dart with her other gloved hand. She bent the needle backward toward the cylinder neck and shoved it point first into the thick leather glove so it wouldn't jab her. Then she unfastened one Velcro ankle strap and secured the glove beneath it. Now she could run without worrying about it.

She scrambled toward the hive on her stomach, then jumped to her feet and crouched behind the apiary. Her breath came in ragged gasps. The shooter knew she was alive and mobile now. She had nothing to protect herself with except the hive tool in her pocket. Not true. Inspiration struck and she grabbed the apiary cover lying on ground. The metal top would be a perfect shield for her chest. Where to go with it?

The workshop was locked, keys inside the trailer. Her truck was open, but the keys were in the trailer, too. The back porch was unlocked. Her gun was on the folding table where she'd dried it after emptying her ruined purse. She'd planned on thoroughly cleaning and oiling it later. Back porch, she decided.

Ansel looked around both corners of the hive. She saw nothing suspicious. Maybe the shooter had left. Bees moved around her in a thicker swarm. They landed on her suit, congregating on her shoulders and on the veil, buzzing louder. Their apiary top was gone, and they were agitated because their home was open to danger. She had to get out of here. Now.

Ansel didn't think. She simply bolted, making a dash for the rear porch. She held the metal top in front of her with both hands.

Suddenly her right foot stepped into a muddy gopher hole. She stumbled and fell flat on her stomach, the metal cover pinned beneath her. The bundles slammed into her abdomen. The helmet veil almost fell off. Keep going. She adjusted the mesh so she could see, jumped up again and ran, fear fueling her flight as she trundled awkwardly through the grass and beautiful meadow flowers. The porch seemed so far away.

She fell again. The damn helmet slid forward, blinding her. She wanted to toss it away, but she needed it. Cursing, she bolted madly forward on hands and knees, dragging the hive cover until she could get her feet under her and run. She concentrated on not falling a third time. She didn't think she could get up if she went down. Adrenalin pushed her, but she was tired and wet. Her right leg hurt. Only a few feet. The porch door waited for her.

Ansel yanked open the porch door with her gloveless hand. She tossed the metal cover to the ground, stumbled in, slammed the screen shut, and locked it. A quick look into the yard told her no one was behind her. She grabbed the pistol from the card table before running into the trailer and locking the second door.

In a flurry of motion, Ansel tossed the gun onto the sofa, pulled off the helmet and veil, and unzipped the bee suit. She pulled the bundles out, as well as the gloved dart in her ankle strap, throwing them beside the gun. Then she stripped off the coveralls and rushed to the bedroom's dresser mirror. She tore off her shirt and bra, frantically peering over her shoulder at the reflection of her naked back. There was no puncture mark. Not even a bruise.

Ansel pulled her shirt on, relief rolling over her in a torrent of gratitude to the higher powers that had saved her from a heinous death. Tears threatened, but she pushed back the emotional tsunami. She didn't have time. Some faceless coward had trespassed on her land and taken a potshot at her while her back was turned. Now what was she going to do? Call the police? Call her father?

Ansel took the box of cartridges from her night stand, returned to the living room, and reloaded the Colt pistol. Hot anger cemented her resolve. Nobody was running her off her land. She couldn't go home every time the world booted her in the rump. She'd give the packages to Dorbandt when she was damn good and ready.

“I am a force of nature to be reckoned with,” Ansel said.

She picked up the stippled packages and set them on the pass-through. From a kitchen drawer she pulled out scissors. She cut through the duct tape on the smaller package first, peeling away the black plastic wrap from a hard, unyielding object. Her hands shook with excitement. There was a yellow chamois. Her heart thudded. The soft, leathery cloth fell away and a four-by-six-inch chunk of amber weighted her palm.

There was no crust. Nick had removed the ugly exterior, filed the resin into its oval dimensions, and polished the surface to a shiny, golden gloss. The interior wasn't completely clear but peppered with minute specks, black spots made up of plant and dirt debris trapped within. She wasn't an expert, but the fossilized resin looked natural and genuine. And it had already been tested by Stouraitis' expert. He had declared the chunk to be authentic Baltic amber.

Not only forest debris had been entombed. Ansel stared at the large inclusion with awe. An inch-and-a-half oblong egg rested near the nodule's outer edge. The rough-textured egg had crumpled rather than broken into shell fragments. From one end protruded the upper chest, one wing, neck and head of a blackish creature. It resembled a bird hatchling but had a tiny wing claw, a long reptilian snout, and tiny teeth.

Ansel rotated the amber in her hands, carefully studying the inclusion from all angles. The beast was a uniform, brown-black color typical of fossilized inclusions. She estimated its weight in life had been between seventeen and twenty-one grams. The skin was covered with tiny bumps like chicken skin. The body was featherless except for a sprout of black-brown down on the top of the head. The slightly parted mouth showed nothing of the tongue. Frozen, yellow reptilian eyes with horizontal pupils looked back at her.

The lower body remained hidden, nestled within the flattened egg so that the tail and feet remained a mystery. Around the hatchling's head, a cluster of trapped air bubbles glimmered like crystal beads, possibly made during the reptile's death struggles as it suffocated in tree sap.

Ansel assessed the basic morphological traits. The head looked reptilian: long black snout, sharp ratchet teeth. The neck was goose-like. Halfway up the wing an oversized, hand-like claw displaying three digits sprawled open. The middle finger was the longest of the three. By her reckoning, the overall physiology of the Cretaceous reptile appeared similar to
Archaeopteryx
of fossil limestones.

Ansel covered the amber with Becker's chamois and laid it on the counter. She cut through the second package. When she spread the plastic apart, she saw a five-by-seven cardboard box. Inside, surrounded by foam, were three clear plastic cases.

Each case contained a large gold coin imprinted with the figure of a long-haired woman wearing a toga. She held a staff in her right hand and a leafy branch in her left. Raised lettering with “Liberty” and “1927D” was stamped on the front. On the reverse, a left profile of a bald eagle, along with the words “Twenty Dollars,” was inscribed. The coins had a cardboard insert that read “Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle.”

Ansel stared at the inch-and-a-half-diameter coins. Where had the two million dollars gone? More unanswered questions. She placed the three cases on the counter beside the amber.

She'd do some Internet research. Then she'd find a place to hide everything so it would be safe until Dorbandt returned. Nothing would make her happier than to give it all to him.

Especially the loathsome dart used to try and kill her.

Chapter 30

Dorbandt's mid-morning had been a blur of activity: filling out departmental voucher requests, rushing to get packed, making a hasty departure for Missoula. He had spent the rest of the afternoon changing modes of transportation and clock watching. Time doesn't fly, Dorbandt decided as he navigated a rented Bronco along I-90 near Deer Lodge, Montana. Time lurches with more fits and stops than a three-legged horse.

Fiskar's assignment to find the closest facility that could identify the feather had been a challenge. A Charles Russell Refuge ranger told Odie to call the National Wildlife Forensics Lab in Oregon. The staff there told him to contact the University of Montana in Missoula, which ran a top-notch DNA lab in the Montana Molecular Biology Department. From there, Fiskar had been directed to the Harrier Institute in western Montana.

As a result, Dorbandt had driven north toward Wolf Point to catch a twelve-ten departure flight on Big Sky Airlines. Then he'd sat for over seven hours in a plane. From the Missoula airport he'd rented a Bronco and had gone to the state lab to pick up the feather from a forensic tech staying late just to hand it to him. Now he had almost completed the one-hour drive south of Missoula to Deer Lodge, where a genetics specialist would complete the feather analysis.

In spite of the exhausting day, Dorbandt's adrenalin pumped hard as he entered the town of Deer Lodge. He felt in his gut that this feather was the case breaker he needed. The only thing bothering him was his acid reflux. A day on the go without proper meals played havoc with his stomach.

Dorbandt reached for a tablet inside a foil packet sliding along the dash as he drove past the Grants-Kohrs Ranch. The fifteen-hundred-acre National Historic Site commemorating the western cattle industry of the 1850s had been established by Canadian fur trader John Grant. Later it was expanded by cattle baron Conrad Kohrs. The Harrier Institute was next to the ranch.

Dorbandt swallowed the medicine dry while making the final turn up a winding asphalt driveway surrounded by a copse of ponderosa pine. A long, single-story concrete block building came into view. Dorbandt looked at the dash clock. Precisely eleven o'clock. The lateness of the hour didn't matter. He was expected, and the building glowed with light. He parked, picked up the small, sealed box sitting on the seat, and exited the Bronco.

The air smelled of aromatic pine resin mixed with an intermittent odor of cow dung. A gravid, white moon hung high in the sky above the tree line and shone down on the distant, saw-toothed peaks of the Continental Divide. Dorbandt pushed an intercom button next to the door.

“Yes?” said a distorted speaker voice.

“Lieutenant Dorbandt. Lacrosse County Sheriff's Department.”

“Just a moment.”

A deadbolt clicked, and the large portal opened. Dorbandt stared at a short, large-bellied man wearing a lab smock. “Please come in. I'm Doctor Paul Fletcher. Pleasure to meet you.”

Dorbandt stepped into a small waiting room, not unlike that of a doctor's office or a hospital. “I need to get this evidence identified tonight.”

Fletcher smiled. “I'll be doing the tests. Is that the sample?”

“Yes.” Dorbandt relinquished the box to the specialist. “What exactly do you do here?”

“This institute is an avian genome resource bank.”

They moved past industrial-grade, cushioned chairs and sofa-lined walls. There were also the obligatory coffee tables and framed, scenic prints. The only thing missing were the entertainment magazines. Fletcher motioned Dorbandt to follow him through a rear door of the waiting room.

“You've lost me already, Dr. Fletcher. Pare that down so I can understand.”

Fletcher chuckled. “We take blood and tissue samples from birds and study them for genetic information. The research not only maps their genetic makeup, but tells us how bird species are interrelated to one another. I'll be able to tell you exactly what species of bird we're dealing with here.”

“Can you tell me the sex of it, too?”

“Definitely. Humans are sexed by their two X and Y chromosomes, but birds have a W and Z. Unlike humans, the male bird has the two copies of the same chromosome, ZZ, whereas female birds have Z and Y. I like to think of it as nature's way of adhering to the rules of fair play among the sexes.”

“Women's Libbers would love it,” Dorbandt agreed as he entered a humongous laboratory.

It resembled the one he'd seen at the Montana Cooperative, except that it was filled with birds rather than soil samples and plants.

Stuffed specimens roosted along the counters and shelving units. Intact feathered bird skins with cotton stuffed in the eye sockets were laid in rows upon huge trays. Bird limbs and internal organs floated in huge, sealed jars set along other flat surfaces. Dorbandt took in the bizarre tableau, then watched Fletcher open the box and remove the forensic bag with the brown and white feather. He held it up to the light.

“This is a pennaceous feather from an adult bird. Let me take a closer look at the morphology,” Fletcher said, pulling on sterile gloves and removing the evidence with forceps. “Hopefully this feather was collected while still growing on the bird.”

“Why?”

“A growing feather is fed by blood in the epidermis which remains if the rachis or shaft is suddenly removed. A molted feather is detached from the epidermis naturally and may not have any blood.”

He held up the feather and stared at it. “Hmm. It's not a primary, what is often called a flight feather. That's the best to work with, but it is a contour feather with a planar vane. That's better than a downy sample. Now for the shaft understructure.”

Fletcher placed the feather on a large glass plate and used a scalpel to cut the feather into two halves. He dropped the thicker, lower half into a tiny vial, then capped and placed the tube in a vial stand. The other piece of shaft he split lengthwise and used forceps to place onto a glass slide, which he carefully positioned beneath a compound microscope.

“I'll see if I can determine what order this is.”

Dorbandt held his breath while his esophagus burned. Could he know this quickly if he was on the right track with Alexander King?

“The rachis groove looks U-shaped, but it's questionable.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I need the blood work to make sure. However, I think we may be dealing with a member of the order Galliform. This is a medium-sized group comprising birds of three families, with pheasants, grouses, turkeys, partridges, guinea fowls, and quails.”

Dorbandt was disappointed. Game birds. Not the type of birds sold as pets in retail stores. The only bell that rang was the name Theodore Melba. He'd lost his ranch to a flock of sage grouse. Where did that leave his theory about King and strychnine?

“What happens next?”

“I have to extract the blood from the feather shaft, amplify it through a polymerase chain reaction that synthetically generates DNA from the original sample, cut the strand at particular points with enzymes, and view the DNA chromosomes through electrophoresis. The whole procedure takes about six hours.”

“Then what?”

Fletcher smiled. “I just compare the chromosome points with the institute's genome database to find the exact bird species it matches and the gender.”

“How can you be sure this bird will match one of your samples?”

“That might be a problem with a U.S. Wildlife lab that has limited bird specimens against which to compare, but not here. There are over thirteen thousand species of birds in the world, and we have collected DNA from almost five thousand of them. We're the Library of Congress when it comes to bird genomics.”

“I'll wait out front.” He headed toward the waiting room.

“Detective, there's a room for lab personnel through this other door.” Fletcher pointed to the right. “It has a small kitchen and a couple of sofas to sack out on. The fridge is always stocked. Have something to eat. I'll check in with you from time to time.”

“Thanks, Doctor.”

He left the geneticist to his research and entered a room with a small kitchen. The fridge had everything from lunch meats to frozen dinners, as well as liquid refreshments. Tons of snack food filled in the rest of the dietary gaps. Needing something for his stomach, Dorbandt was soon sitting at a polished walnut table eating a ham and cheese sandwich and drinking milk.

When he finished the midnight meal, he carefully cleaned the dishware in a double stainless steel sink, dried them, and put each piece away in the cabinets. Too keyed up to sleep, Dorbandt sat on a plush, brown corduroy sofa and pulled out his cell phone. There were three messages on his voice mail.

“Dorbandt. McKenzie. Check in with me.”

“Reid, this is Odie. I just got a call from Miss Ansel Phoenix. Says she has info on Dr. Anthanasios Stouraitis pertinent to the Capos case. Call her back. That's it.”

“Dorbandt. McKenzie again. Where the hell are you? Call me.”

Dorbandt left the cell phone on and slipped it into his coat pocket. The messages must have come through while he was in the air over Montana. He hadn't even thought about checking in since then. He shook his head in amazement. McKenzie didn't quit.

And Phoenix didn't either. For a second he wondered what Ansel had seen in Capos. Capos had been a first-class jerk, and Ansel seemed too savvy to fall for such a con artist. He couldn't imagine them together, even for one night.

Dorbandt stretched out on the sofa, thinking about the test going on outside the door. His thoughts bounced back and forth between knowing he was on the right track with Alexander King and not being sure about his hunch at all.

The next thing Dorbandt knew, something shook him. He jumped up, his left hand reaching instinctively toward the shoulder holster. He relaxed when he recognized the smocked scientist.

“What's wrong?” Dorbandt demanded, half asleep and sure that some disaster had occurred because he'd let his guard down.

“Nothing,” Fletcher grinned. “The test is done.”

Dorbandt rubbed a hand across his gritty eyes. “What time is it?”

“Almost six in the morning. I'll show you what I've found. It's quite interesting.”

Fletcher led him to a lab counter where he picked up an oversized photo negative. “This is a DNA amplification of the blood taken from the shaft. Those lighted bars on the numbered scale indicate the multiple chromosome markers that identify the bird species. I found a match, and I was right about it being a game bird. Your feather came from a female hoatzin.”

“What's a hoatzin?”

Fletcher pulled a large book toward him and pointed to an open page with a color picture. “A monotypic bird species currently assigned to the order Galliformes, family Opisthocomidae, genus Opisthocomus, and species Opisthocomus Hoatzin. A hoatzin is a very odd, fourteen-inch-long bird with a large golden crest. Hoatzins live in backwater swamps of the Amazon and Orinoco basins of South America.”

“South America?”

Fletcher nodded. “The hoatzin is a colorful, vegetarian bird with a foregut rather than a crop like other birds. The foregut ferments vegetable matter like a cow, sheep or deer. Most remarkable about the bird is that hatchling chicks have functional claws on the first and second digits of the forelimbs.”

Dorbandt blinked. “Tell me about these claws.”

“The claws are on the tips of each wing. After hatching, hoatzin chicks begin to wander around the branches near their nest. The hatchlings are weak, but the claws help to support them on the branches over the water. If they fall into the water, they swim to shore, climb the tree, and get back into their nest. As the wing feathers develop, these claws degenerate. They're fascinating birds with an antediluvian morphology sometimes compared to the proto-bird
Archaeopteryx
.”

Suddenly Ansel Phoenix's obsession with ambers and feathered dinosaurs with clawed wings didn't sound so ridiculous. “Can you buy one of these hoatzins at a pet shop?”

Fletcher laughed. “You don't buy hoatzins, Detective Dorbandt. Though they are not a globally threatened species or considered endangered in their indigenous habitats, they don't survive in captivity. Attempts to start a breeding colony in the 1960s and the late 1980s by two zoological societies failed miserably.”

“Could you get one if you had to?”

“If you were in South America, yes. Tribal people still collect the eggs for consumption. They'll also take adults for the feathers, medicinal purposes or just to use as fish bait.” Fletcher shrugged. “Even if you got a live specimen in South America, you'd have a hell of a time getting it into this country unless it's smuggled in. And for what purpose? They eat special diets consisting mostly of Moko-moko plants, have a foul odor, and die in captivity. Not much there in the way of pet attraction, is there?”

Dorbandt didn't know the answer to that question. “Are you are saying that this feather had to come from a bird in South America?”

Fletcher nodded. “Absolutely. Whoever you got this feather from, had either a hoatzin, part of a hoatzin, or some feathers from a South American specimen, and this person either went to get it or had it brought into the United States.”

Maybe both, Dorbandt considered. Could King smuggle a hoatzin in through his bird business? Would he have to go to South America or might someone have brought the bird to him? But why? Perhaps as part of his research on
Archaeopteryx
?

“Exactly where in South America do these hoatzins live?”

“Let me check on that.” Fletcher went to a PC keyboard and began punching keys.

In a moment he said, “The species lives east of the Andes from Colombia to Venezuela and the Guianas, south to Ecuador and Peru, and in north and central Brazil and Bolivia.”