Bare Bones (18 page)

“What time?”

At nine-seventeen the next morning Ryan and I entered an office on the third floor of the McEniry Building at UNCC. Though not large, the room was sunny and bright, with a colorful throw rug overlying the institutional wal -to-wal . Woven in primary colors, stylized nests formed an outer border, and a long-legged heron took flight in the center.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves fil ed the wal to the left. Those to the right held dozens of aviary prints and photos. Bril iant, dul , tropical, arctic, predatory, flightless. The variety in beaks and plumage was astonishing.

Carved and sculpted birds perched on the desk and filing cabinets, and peeked from atop and between shelved books. Tapestry bird pil ows rested on the window ledge. A parrot marionette hung from the ceiling in one corner.

The place looked as though someone had hired an ornithologist, then consulted a “Birds Us” catalog to equip the office with what were thought to be exemplary furnishings.

Actual y, Rachel had done it herself. One of the foremost ornithologists in the country, Rachel Mendelson was passionate about her science. She lived, breathed, slept, dressed, and probably dreamed birds. Her home, like her office, was resplendent with feathered subjects, both living and inanimate. On each visit I expected a shrike or a spoon-bil to swoop in, settle in the recliner, and begin hogging the remote.

A window fil ed the upper half of the wal opposite the door. The blinds were half open, al owing a partial view of Van Landingham Glen. The rhododendron forest shimmered like a mirage in the mid-morning heat.

A desk sat squarely in front of the window. Two chairs faced it, standard-issue metal with upholstered seats. One held a stuffed puffin, the other a pelican.

The desk chair looked like something designed for astronauts with orthopedic complaints. It held Dr. Rachel Mendelson.

Barely.

She looked up when we entered, but didn’t rise.

“Good morning,” Rachel said, then sneezed twice. Her head double-dipped, and her topknot bobbed.

“Sorry we’re late,” I said when Rachel had recovered. “Traffic was terrible on Harris Boulevard.”

“That’s why I’m always on the road by first light.” Even her voice was birdlike, with an odd, chirpy quality to it.

Rachel pul ed a tissue from a painted owl holder, and blew her nose loudly.

“Sorry. Al ergies.”

She wadded the tissue, tossed it into something below the desk, and lumbered to her feet.

It wasn’t much of a lumber, since Rachel stood only five feet tal . But what the woman lacked in height she made up for in breadth.

And color. Today Rachel was wearing lime green and turquoise. Lots of it.

For as long as I’d known Rachel, she had struggled with her weight. Diet after diet had enthused then failed her. Five years back she’d tried a regimen of veggies and canned shakes and dropped to 180, her al -time postpubescent best.

But try as she might, nothing lasted. By some bizarre chromosomal trick, Rachel’s set point seemed stuck at 227.

As though to compensate, her double helices granted Rachel thick, auburn hair, and the most beautiful skin I have ever seen.

And a heart big enough to accommodate a Radio City Music Hal Rockettes finale.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Ryan.”Rachel extended a chubby hand.

Ryan kissed the back of her fingers.

“Bonjour, madame. Parlez-vous français?”

“Un petit peu.My grandparents werequébecois.”

“Excel ent.”

Rachel’s eyes swung to me. Her brows rose and her lips rounded into a tiny O.

“Just say ‘down, boy,’ ” I said.

Ryan released her hand.

“Down, boy.” Rachel made a palms-down movement with both hands. “And girl.”

“Down, boy.” Rachel made a palms-down movement with both hands. “And girl.”

We al sat.

Ryan pointed to a metal sculpture atop a pile of exam books.

“Nice duck.”

“It’s a grebe,” Rachel corrected.

“You can put this visit on his bil .” Ryan.

“You know, I’ve never heard that one before.” Rachel could be as deadpan as Ryan. “Now. What’s this about a dead bird?” Keeping details to a minimum, I explained the situation.

“I’m not top-drawer with bones, but I’m crackerjack with feathers. Let’s go into my lab.” If Rachel’s office held a few dozen genera of birds, her lab was home to the entire Linnaean lineup. Kestrels. Shrikes. Moorhens. Condors.

Hummingbirds. Penguins. There was even a stuffed kiwi in a glass-fronted cabinet at the far end.

Rachel led us to a black-topped worktable and I spread the bones on it. Raising half-moon glasses from her bosom to her nose, she poked through the assemblage.

“Looks like Psittacidae.”

“I thought so, too,” said Ryan.

Rachel did not look up.

“Parrot family. Cockatoos, macaws, loris, lovebirds, parakeets.”

“I had a pip of a parakeet when I was a kid,” said Ryan.

“Did you?” said Rachel.

“Named him Pip.”

Rachel glanced at me, and the chains on her half-moons swung in unison.

I pointed to my temple and shook my head.

Returning her attention to the table, Rachel selected the breastbone and gave it an appraising look.

“Probably a macaw of some sort. Too bad we don’t have the skul .”

A flashback. Larabee speaking of the headless passenger.

“Too smal for a hyacinth’s. Too big for a red-shouldered.”

Rachel turned the sternum over and over in her hands, than laid it on the table.

“Let’s see the feathers.”

I unzipped the baggie and shook out the contents. Rachel’s eyes dropped back to the table.

If a woman can lock up, Rachel did it. For several seconds not a molecule of her being moved. Then, reverently, she reached out and picked up one feather.

“Oh, my.”

“What?”

Rachel gaped at me like I’d just pul ed a nickel from her ear.

“Where did you get these?”

I repeated my explanation about the farmhouse basement.

“How long were they down there?”

“I don’t know.”

Rachel carried the feather to a work counter, pul ed two strands from it, placed them on a glass slide, dropped liquid onto them, poked and repositioned them with the tip of a needle, blotted, and added a cover slip. Then she settled her ample buttocks on a round, backless stool, fiddled and adjusted, and peered through a microscope.

Seconds passed. A minute. Two.

“Oh, my.”

Rachel rose, waddled to a bank of long, wooden drawers, and withdrew a flat, rectangular box. Returning to the scope she removed the slide she had just prepared, selected one from the box, and viewed the latter.

Puzzled, Ryan and I exchanged glances.

Rachel fol owed the first reference slide with another from the box, then went back to the slide made from Rinaldi’s feather.

“I wish I had a comparison scope,” she said, exchanging Rinaldi’s feather for a third reference slide. “But I don’t.” When Rachel final y looked up her face was flushed and her eyes were wide with excitement.

“CYANOPSITTA SPIXI .” HUSHED,LIKE A ZEALOT SPEAKING THEname of her god.

“That’s some kind of parrot?” Ryan asked.

“Not just any parrot.” Rachel pressed both palms to her chest. “The world’s rarest parrot. Probably the world’s rarest bird.” The crossed hands rose and fel with the lime-turquoise bosom.

“Oh, my.”

“Would you like water?” I asked.

Rachel fluttered agitated fingers.

“It’s a macaw, actual y.” Slipping off her half-moons, she let them drop to the end of their chain.

“A macaw is a type of parrot?”

“Yes.” She lifted the feather from beside the scope and stroked it lovingly. “This is from the tail of a Spix’s macaw.”

“Do you have a stuffed specimen?” Ryan asked.

“Certainly not.” She slid from her stool. “Thanks to habitat destruction and the cage-bird trade, there aren’t any more. I’m lucky to have the reference slides for the feathers.”

“What is it you look at?” I asked.

“Oh, my. Wel , let me see.” She thought a moment, going through her own KISS abridgment. “Feathers have shafts out of which grow barbs. The barbs have mini-barbs, cal ed barbules, connected by structures cal ed nodes. In addition to the overal morphology and color of the feather, I look at the shape, size, pigmentation, density, and distribution of those nodes.”

Rachel went to one of the shelves above the drawers and returned with a large brown volume. After checking the index, she opened and laid the book flat.

“That”—she tapped a photo with a pudgy finger—“is a Spix’s.”

The bird had a cobalt blue body and pale head. The legs were dark, the eye gray, the beak black and less hooked than I’d expected.

“How big were they?”

“Fifty-five, sixty centimeters. Not the largest, not the smal est of the macaws.”

“Where did they hang out?” Ryan.

“The arid interior of east-central Brazil. Northern Bahia province, mostly.”

“The species is no more? They are an ex-species?”

I caught Ryan’s Monty Python reference. Rachel did not.

“The last surviving wild Spix’s disappeared in October of 2000,” she said.

“That’s a known fact?” I asked.

She nodded. “That bird’s story is very poignant. Would you like to hear it?”

Ryan was getting that look.

My eyes crimped in warning.

Ryan’s lips pressed together.

“Very much,” I said.

“Recognizing the Spix’s macaw’s perilous status, in 1985 Birdlife International decided to census the species in its only known habitat.”

“In Brazil.”

“Yes. Depressingly, the total count came to five.”

“That’s not good,” I said.

“No. And the situation went downhil from there. By the end of the decade the number of sightings had fal en to zero. In 1990, Tony Juniper, one of the world’s top parrot experts, went to Brazil to determine whether the Spix’s truly was extinct in the wild. After six weeks of scouring Bahia by four-wheel drive, questioning every farmer, schoolboy, padre, and poacher he met, Juniper located a single male living in a cactus on a riverbank near the town of Curaça.”

“Where’s that?” Ryan asked, flipping through the macaws.

“About thirteen hundred miles north of Rio.” With a tight smile, Rachel retrieved and closed her book.

I did some quick math. “The Spix’s lived on by itself for ten years after the initial sighting?”

“That bird became an international cause célèbre. For a decade, teams of scientists and an entire Brazilian vil age recorded its every move.”

“Poor guy.” Ryan.

“And they didn’t just watch,” Rachel said. “The situation turned into an ornithological soap opera. Believing the Spix’s genes were too precious to waste, conservationists decided the male needed a mate. But macaws bond for life and this little guy already had a spouse, a bright green Il iger’s macaw.”

“Birdie miscegenation.” Ryan.

“Sort of.” Rachel answered Ryan, then gave me a puzzled look. “Though the couple never cohabitated. The Spix’s lived on a facheiro cactus, the Il iger’s in a hol ow tree trunk. They’d fly together during the day, then at sundown the male Spix’s would drop the female Il iger’s off at her tree and return to his cactus.”

“Sometimes a man needs a place of his own.” Ryan.

Two vertical lines puckered Rachel’s brow, but she continued.

“In 1995 researchers released a female Spix’s into the male’s territory, hoping the two would bond and reproduce.”

“Uh-oh. The proverbial other woman.”

Rachel ignored that.

“The female Spix’s courted the male, and he responded.”

“Divorce court?”

“The three birds flew together for a month.”

“Ménage à trois.”

“Is he always like this?” Rachel asked me.

“Yes. Then what happened?”

“The Spix’s female disappeared, and the odd couple returned to its previous domestic arrangement.” Rachel glanced at Ryan to see if he’d appreciated her witticism.

“Was hubby the sloppy one or neat one?” he asked.

Rachel made an odd, giggling sound through her nose.Sni. Sni. Sni.

“What happened to the Spix’s female?” I asked.

“She had a run-in with power lines.”

“Ouch.” Ryan winced.

“Next, researchers tried al kinds of manipulations with the Il iger’s eggs, final y swapping live Il iger hatchlings for the dead hybrid embryos the female was incubating.”

“What happened?”

“The Brady Bunch.”Sni. Sni. Sni.

“The pair turned out to be good parents,” I guessed.

Rachel nodded.

“And here’s the surprising part. Although the chicks were completely Il iger’s genetical y, the young developed voices identical to Dad’s.”

“That’s amazing,” I said.

“Researchers were planning to slip captive-bred Spix’s hatchlings into the nest when the big guy disappeared.”

“The lovebirds were stil a couple?” Ryan.

“We’re talking about macaws. Lovebirds areAgapornis.” A little Rachel bird humor.

“So there are stil some Spix’s alive in captivity?” I asked.

Rachel sniffed to show her disdain.

“Approximately sixty exist in private col ections.”

“Where?”

“On a commercial bird farm in the Philippines, on the estate of a Qatari sheikh, and in a private aviary in northern Switzerland. I think there’s one at the São Paulo zoo, and several at a parrot park in the Canary Islands.”

“The owners are qualified ornithologists?”

“There’s not a biology degree among them.”

“Is that legal?”

“Unfortunately, yes. The birds are considered private property, so the owners can do what they like with them. But the Spix’s macaw has been an Appendix One species under CITES since 1975.”

Random particles of an idea began to form in my head.

“CITES?”

“The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Appendix One species are considered endangered, and commercial trade in wild specimens is permitted only in exceptional circumstances.”

The particles started to coalesce.