“I suppose he thought it would add a little
spice,”
I hissed.
Angry as I was, I had hoped I’d badgered him into offering a heated rejoinder, but instead, the detective said coolly, “You could go on one of those TV shows. ‘Dead Bodies and the Women Who Love Them.’ Now, about that nice long sleep you had.”
“That what?”
“You were in the nice carnivorous dinosaur man’s house, and—”
“Fine. I slept only seven hours. I don’t sleep well in strange places, so I read for a while.”
He raised his eyebrows in happy interest. “Wonderful. What ya reading?”
“The Refiner’s Fire.”
“What?”
I heard Officer Raymond shift suddenly. I rolled my head toward him and looked at him. His lips had parted. He was surprised, and looked into my eyes for the first time, looked deep inside, as if he expected to find someone he knew in there, someone who’d been missing for years. Recovering himself, he looked away and spoke to the detective.
“Refiner’s Fire.
By John L. Brooke.”
Now it was my turn to gape.
The Refiner’s Fire
was a thick scholarly tome on the roots of Mormon cosmology. I had found it on the bookshelf in my room. I had selected it expressly because it had looked dry and brainy enough to put me to sleep. What was a rank-and-file cop doing reading it?
Now the detective smiled his geek smile at Officer Raymond. “One of your church books. Ah.” He turned back to me. “So you read until midnight, woke up when the phone rang at you think five, went back to sleep until seven. Then you took a shower and ate. What did you eat, Em?”
I took another deep breath, closed my eyes. “Burritos. From the freezer. I don’t recommend them; in fact, I’d love it if someone could rustle up a decent doughnut for me. But I ate them, and there you have it. I waited for Dr. Dishey to return. He did not. I got restless. I decided to do some sight-seeing.”
“And yet you waited until ten-thirty?”
Now I colored, a nice red blush from collarbone to scalp. If Officer Raymond knew about books on Mormon cosmology, he was sure as hell going to have an opinion about my reasons for tarrying another hour before setting out to my car. “I just waited,” I said firmly.
“You
waited,”
the detective said, his voice edging on accusation. “You
waited.”
“That’s enough!” I said. “Are you charging me with a crime, or am I free to go?” I jerked my right hand into a fist,
clanging the bracelet of the handcuff as it tightened against the frame of the gurney. “You call Carlos Ortega! You do it now!”
Interestingly, it was Officer Raymond who moved to bring things to a conclusion. He stepped halfway out into the hall and signaled to a nurse. “We done here?” he called.
The detective looked at him with an expression bordering on disgust. Then he looked back at me and grinned almost maniacally. “Don’t leave town,” he said, like he thought the line funny.
THE RIDE UP TO SNOWBIRD WAS PURE MISERY. ABOUT THE last thing I would have chosen for my grand entrance to the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology was to arrive by gleaming white squad car labeled POLICE in ten-inch blue letters and be escorted in by a cop. I felt nauseated enough at the thought of walking into that conference, presuming, as I was, to speak to them about my work in forensic geology. Imagine standing up in front of seven or eight hundred of the brightest, best-trained observers on the planet and saying something that they might find laughably naive. Now imagine doing that with gauze an inch thick all around your thumb and grass and blood stains all down your slacks, accompanied by a drop-dead good-looking cop in navy blue uniform, badge, gun belt, and nifty little radio that has a habit of gargling at him intermittently. You can’t hardly suggest that the car is some rental you picked up at the airport, or that what’s-his-name is a paleontologist who’s just a wee bit eccentric in his choice of attire.
I sat miserably in the front seat of Officer Raymond’s prowl car, ruing the day I’d been born. Detective Bert had allowed as how he wasn’t ready yet to let me back into George Dishey’s house to get my car keys—his crew was still busy
there—and decided it was to his advantage to have me go on to the conference with Officer Raymond.
This is what I get for making a stink about going on about my business,
I’d told myself, but I’d been around enough police investigations to know I was getting off easy. They could have delayed me well into the next day.
I could just imagine the conversation up at Snowbird: “So, Ms. Hansen, we missed you at the conference Sunday afternoon. Might you tell us why you failed to present your talk?”
Answer: “I was in the jug.”
Little that I now felt mentally or emotionally prepared to give my forensics speech, being kept from doing so would have been the final humiliation. In that moment, I hated Detective Bert so much that I wanted
him
to come, wanted the pleasure of watching him sit stupefied in the audience as I addressed the multitude on the wisdom gleaned from four previous murder investigations.
Yes, Bert, four! Four separate cases I have solved in my short career as an accidental detective. And come to think of it, this George Dishey murder smells like another one you need my help with. You need someone who understands the profession and the professionals, an insider who can spot the flaw in the picture, pierce the veil of mystery around the murder of your dead paleontologist there.
Bert had seemed to think it riotously amusing to assign Officer Raymond to drive me up to Snowbird. “So you want to make detective,” Bert had sneered at him. “Yeah, I saw your application there in the stack. Big aspirations for the homeboy. Big break for you—you found the corpse, and then, momma bar the door, you race right over to the home of the deceased to see what else you can find. You ever hear of procedures, cowboy? Once the case is handed over to us,
we
do the house and family stuff.
You
go back to checking Dumpsters for lost dogs. Well, hotshot, here’s your big chance. You take little Emily up there to her rock-jockey conference
at the cushy ski resort and make sure she plays nicely with the other boys and girls.”
As he drove me up through the spectacular glacier-cut valley of Little Cottonwood Canyon toward Snowbird, Officer Raymond kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t appear to find any more humor in baby-sitting me than I did, but I could see where big Bert’s mind was going. By sending me to the meeting with a police escort, he could call attention to the matter of George Dishey’s death in a suitably imposing manner; unless I missed my guess, a few of Bert’s colleagues would be there ahead of us, working the crowd, blending in with the gathered paleontological faithful, digging for motives among George Dishey’s brethren.
When we reached Snowbird, Officer Raymond turned off the highway and parked that squad car right in front of the conference center—the soaring eleven-story glass face of the Cliff Lodge—nudging it in next to the short-term loading and unloading position at the curb by the main entrance.
I stumped inside, rode the escalator up one level to the registration desk, and identified myself. “Em Hansen,” I said. “I’m a speaker. This is Officer Raymond of the Salt Lake City Police Department. He wishes to speak with the general chair of the conference.”
The cushiony middle-aged lady who was passing out registration packages took one look at Officer Raymond and gaped. I don’t think it was his looks that got her. I think she just didn’t know what to say. I supposed her job orientation had lacked instruction regarding the handling of miscellaneous visiting police officers.
Finally, she pulled herself together and got to digging for my registration card. When she found it, she frowned. “I have an Emily Hansen, but there’s no speaker’s ribbon with it,” she said apologetically.
“Let me see the schedule,” I said. “I’m supposed to speak in a symposium this afternoon.”
She dealt me a program. I dug through the Sunday list. Nothing. No Em Hansen speaking on forensic geology at the forensic paleontology symposium. In fact, no symposium on forensic paleontology altogether. I checked Monday. I checked Tuesday. I checked the luncheon-speaker slots, the dinner speakers. Nothing. The carpet and floorboards under my feet seemed increasingly insubstantial, as if they were about to give way and send me plummeting into the bowels of the earth.
Officer Raymond peered over my shoulder. “No talk?” he asked bluntly.
“Must be some sort of misprint,” I mumbled, but I could feel his eyes burning into me, knew he was thinking that I’d made the whole thing up.
I reopened the registration package, scanned it for the names of the prime movers of the conference. “It says here that Daniel J. Sherbrooke is the conference ‘Host Committee Chair.’ That’s who you want to see.” To the lady, I said, “Where can we find him?”
She got up from the registration table and led us across a dizzying series of Persian carpets toward a flight of stairs that led down to a sumptuous reception area in front of the ballrooms. I glanced quickly around the sea of conferees, searching for anyone who looked familiar, but saw only strangers. They ranged from starving graduate students in their mid-twenties to established, if well-worn, academics to crumpling white-haired geezers who intended to go out with their professional boots on. They were geoscientists, to be sure; save for a few who were camouflaged in suits, they all had that hearty, weathered, abstracted look of the intellectual who prefers to be outdoors. Most were what you’d have to call casually dressed. Some were neatly but pragmatically groomed and decked out
in slacks and sweaters, and a few had affected swanky, if somewhat eccentric, styles reminiscent of riverboat gamblers. A large faction wore T-shirts with pictures of dinosaurs on them, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. These seemed blissfully at ease with hair that had grown out and out and out without benefit of barbering; men with beards and ponytails, women with dull hair that drooped. They all sucked abstractedly at cups of coffee, some talking with colleagues, others staring unself-consciously into inner space. I began to feel less conspicuous.
The registration lady took us halfway down the stairs and pointed to a group of men and women who were chatting boisterously. “Dan Sherbrooke’s over there. The large man in the brown pants.”
“Thanks,” I said. As I descended the rest of the thickly carpeted staircase past a stunningly large Chinese folding screen, I made a show of clipping my name badge in place on my left breast pocket, as much as to tell Officer Raymond,
I am legitimate. I am a geologist, damn it, I am registered at this conference, and I did not kill George Dishey.
The first line of the name badge read EMILY HANSEN. The second line read, in big letters, EM, and the third line, in small type, had the name of my employer and port of call:
Cathcart Oil & Gas, Denver, Colorado.
The badge was about three by five inches, was encased in heavy plastic, and the clip was metal. The combined weight thereof made the whole left side of my blouse sag as if I’d slept in it. So much for looking sharp; I was now grass-stained, trussed in gauze, and listing to port. I marched quickly over toward the gathering of bone men, leaving Officer Raymond to scramble along in my wake. “Dr. Sherbrooke,” I said, presenting my right hand to be shaken, as if I shambled into conferences looking like hell every day of the week. “I’m Em Hansen. Dr. Dishey invited me to speak at the symposium on forensic paleontology.”
Sherbrooke reflexively scanned my name badge, which meant he was staring at my breast, something that always leaves me feeling a little crawly. He was tall and globular, with long, plump arms that tapered down to smooth fingers. An easy smile. Curling hair in need of a trim, with long leftover strands hovering in disarray over a shining scalp. Breath that smelled like a late breakfast rich in coffee and bacon. Metal-framed glasses repaired with monofilament fishing line passed round and round through one hinge and sloppily knotted. A real brown pants kind of guy. He looked uncomfortable, even visibly annoyed. “Ah, yes … you’re with George Dishey, you say?”
“Yes. He invited me to speak.”
Sherbrooke examined my face as if evaluating the bones that lay a quarter inch beneath its surface. “Hansen, you say?”
We were interrupted by the appearance, at Sherbrooke’s left elbow, of a weaselly young man with drooping yellow mustaches, a long, messy ponytail, and the kind of beet-red skin that looks perennially sunburned. By weaselly, I mean he was short and slender and cave-chested, the kind of rat man with wire-rimmed glasses who shows up to paint your house as someone’s assistant and leaves cigarette butts in your sink. He looked so emotionally high-mileage that it took me a moment to realize that he was only somewhere in his twenties. “Dan,” he said through his narrow, nicotine-stained teeth.
Sherbrooke rotated around to peer down on him. “What, ah, Verne?”
“Vance!” hissed the weasel.
“Um, Vance,” Sherbrooke said with elaborate patience. “What is it … Vance?”
“The jackasses who run this place left the ends off the events tent last night, and a bunch of the posters blew over.” He sniffed indignantly, a sour little self-appointed god judging the mishaps of contemptible mortals.
I found him annoying on sight, a self-pitying little pocket of poison who sickens the air around him. He made my skin itch. That description may sound just as judgmental as I’ve just accused him of being, but what goes around comes around. Besides, I was by that time in the mood to get petty. I’d been having the granddaddy of all hard days, by all appearances, the shit hadn’t stopped raining in on me yet, and I had no need of duking it out with some banty rooster attitude case. I cocked a shoulder toward him so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact and tapped one foot in impatience.
Sherbrooke tilted his nose a few degrees higher, as if avoiding an unpleasant smell. “Tell them to put the ends on the tent.”
“I did.”
“Then go back there now and make sure it happens. Really, isn’t this something you can handle on your own?”
Vance slunk away.
I reasserted my place at Sherbrooke’s elbow and repeated, “My name is Em Hansen, and George Dishey invited me to—”
“Oh, yes. Hmm. I’m sorry, but I don’t recall seeing your abstract submittal. Which symposium did you say are you in?”
“My abstract …”
“Yes, your abstract. The summary of your proposed talk. Even the invited speakers submit abstracts.” He placed a hand paternally on my shoulder, as if to say, You’re being foolish in public, darling, but there, there.
The floor had now completely dissolved, I was indeed falling, and the earth was eating me for lunch. I had asked George if I needed to send an abstract, but he’d said no, he’d take care of everything, just show up. Well, he’d taken care of things, all right. “Did George even have a symposium scheduled?” I asked, the words clotting in my mouth. My ears began to ring
with the small panic of humiliation, and the odor I was smelling was rat, a great big one.
“George? No.” He laughed derisively. “When has George ever opened himself to the direct scrutiny of his colleagues?” Sherbrooke lifted his hand off my shoulder to wave at a colleague, gliding over my obvious upset with an attitude that suggested, We’ll just ignore your discomfort and perhaps it will go away. I saw his lips moving, but his words flowed past me like clouds, pale and empty. I blinked, strained to listen, focused in just in time to hear him say, “And just where is our dear George today, ah”—he looked at my badge again—“Em?”
I snapped free of my shock. “Officer Raymond can tell you better than I,” I said, and stepped aside.
Sherbrooke shifted his interest to my uniformed escort, who motioned for him to step away from the throng for a moment. It was done subtly, yet with authority. For all his comparative youth, Officer Raymond had the better moves of the two as he fetched the older man to the edge of the room. They communicated in low voices. Raymond watched intently for signs of guilt. Sherbrooke turned gray. His smile went slack and his arms dropped to his sides, giving him the aspect of a life-size doll, gape-mouthed and limp, a jelly man who’d been propped up with a stainless-steel rod up his butt to keep him stiff. As he asked questions, only his lips moved.