Jurassic Dark, page 13
“Not really. The Goodnight name isn’t all sunshine and roses.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I didn’t take any time to find out because I was following JoBeth’s car out of town.
“Where do you think she’s going?” I asked Boone after fifteen minutes.
“I think she’s going to my dig, but I don’t know how she found out where it is,” he said.
“Why would she go there?”
“To find her own Paleocene bones? To refute my claim? I don’t know, but whatever it is, it’s not good.”
We followed JoBeth to the edge of the Basin when we got a flat tire. I wanted to keep going, but Boone worried that we were going to destroy the wheel rim and then we would be stuck in the wilderness with no way out.
I pulled over and popped the trunk for Boone to get the spare.
“What’s this?” Boone asked, finding my box of ceramic Mayan calendars.
“Faye gave me them to give out as a marketing tool,” I explained.
He lifted one up. It was round, made to look like it was stone and like it had come from a Mayan pyramid with Mayan lettering on it. “These are strange. Where did she get them?” he asked.
“She said they were sent to Goodnight UFOs by accident and that Mayans had nothing to do with aliens.”
Boone looked closer at the one in his hands. “Cheap crap,” he complained.
Suddenly, the Mayan calendar broke in two in his hands, and white powder flew up in a cloud in Boone’s face. He stumbled backward, falling onto the ground. He swiped frantically at his face.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I can’t feel my face!” Boone cried.
“Is it chalk?”
“My nose is completely numb,” Boone said, touching his nose.
I looked closely at the box of calendars. Another one had broken, and there was a pile of white powder at the bottom of the box. I was careful not to touch it. “Do you think it’s drugs?” I asked.
“My heart’s racing. I taste pennies. Am I OD’ing?” Boone asked. He took his shirt off and wiped his face with it.
“What kind of drug is it? Heroin? Cocaine?” I asked.
“This is probably what happened to Jimi Hendrix,” Boone said.
“He got dosed by a Mayan calendar?” I asked. “You know what? I think these calendars were used to hide drugs.”
“Gee, Sherlock, that’s some kind of crazy deductive reasoning.”
I sat on the ground next to Boone. “How do you feel?”
“I feel like my heart’s running a marathon. I can see my lips. I have four eyelids.”
“That sounds intense,” I said.
“You really have to work on your bedside manner,” Boone grumbled.
“I bet I know what happened, at least partly. Remember those two were searching for something at Goodnight UFOs. What if they were searching for the calendars? Searching for their drugs?”
“My ears are buzzing,” Boone said. “It’s like I have mosquitoes in my ears.”
“The box must weigh at least thirty pounds. That’s a lot of drugs,” I continued. “It showed up at the shop by accident, according to Faye. So, of course they were looking for it. They wanted their drugs back. Drugs. Drugs! Boone, drugs.”
“I heard you the first time,” Boone said. “Drugs. I’ve been drugged by a Mayan calendar.”
“JoBeth was talking about drugs. Remember?” I said.
“I remember. She was talking about drugs in the wall.”
“It all comes down to JoBeth,” I said. “She’s the key to it all. You feel all right to change a tire, or should I do it?”
“I don’t know where my hands stop and my fingers start,” Boone said, staring at his hands, like he was trying to focus but couldn’t manage it.
“Fine. I’ll fix it.”
“Are we going after JoBeth?”
“Yes,” I said. “But we have a stop on the way. We’re going to the scene of the crime.”
“At Goodnight UFOs?”
“No. We’re going to the first scene of the crime in the Basin at a camping site by the Colorado border.”
Part IV: A Bear Gets Poked, and Matilda Saves the Day
Four Hundred Pounds of Mail Discovered at Local Mailman’s Home
by Jack Remington
Local law enforcement got a surprise today when they discovered nearly four hundred pounds of undelivered letters at Saul O’Hara’s home today. Mr. O’Hara has been Goodnight’s mailman for the past thirty years.
“There were complaints by locals that they weren’t getting their Publisher’s Clearinghouse letters,” Patrolman Clinger said. “There were at least twenty of the complaints, so we went over to Saul’s place and asked him about it. Wendy almost split her side, she laughed so loud when she saw all of those mailbags in Saul’s den. His cats were using them to nap inside.”
According to the postal service in Goodnight, this is the first time that a mailman has hoarded mail in their home. “It’s not my fault,” O’Hara explained. “It’s on account of that stupid Advice Annie column. The mail got out of hand. I’m perfectly happy delivering a normal amount of mail. But I can’t be expected to break my back and work all damned day.”
The postal service has requested volunteers to help deliver the surplus of mail, but most of the civic-minded citizens have been busy preparing for Richard Gere’s visit to the town.
“In the meantime, just email Advice Annie like a normal person,” Jeannie down at the post office urged.
Chapter 13
Whatever the drug was in the Mayan calendars, its effects wore off on Boone after about an hour. He washed his face and drank a bottle of water that I kept in the car. “Nancy Reagan was so right,” he said when he felt normal again. “Just say no.”
We drove for a few hours toward the camping site. Boone slept on and off, and when we were only a few miles away, he woke crazy hungry. “We should have stopped somewhere to eat,” he said. “Doesn’t a hamburger sound good? Or ribs? Oh my God, ribs. Or fried chicken. Oh my God, fried chicken. Potato salad. And ribs.”
We were close to the camping site, but I owed it to Boone to stop after all he got drugged because of me. I drove out of the wilderness and found a truck stop, which advertised ribs, fried chicken, and potato salad in red lettering on the windows. The place was doing a bang-up business. We sat at a large booth in the back, and a waitress handed us the menu.
“It’s like paradise,” Boone said, reading. “I could eat forever.”
I was so glad I hadn’t gotten doused with the drug. If I didn’t have money to buy a roast, I certainly didn’t have money for a new wardrobe when I gained weight from the munchies.
“What’re you going to eat?” Boone asked me.
“I still haven’t digested the Fish Surprise. I’m just going to get an order of fries and a Diet Coke.”
The waitress returned, and Boone ordered four dishes for himself and three desserts. “It smells great in here,” he said. “I wish I could order a bowl of grease.”
“Maybe we should take you to the doctor,” I suggested.
“Are you kidding? I feel great. And you look great, too. I’m counting this as a date, by the way. A truck stop is more or less the same as a diner.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
He took my hand and brought it to his lips. Turning my hand over, he kissed my palm, which made me squirm in my seat. If he could do that to me by kissing my hand, I could only imagine what he could do by kissing me in other places on my body.
“Oh,” I breathed.
Boone’s eyes were large and dark, his pupils dilated. I didn’t know if that was due to arousal or illicit drugs, but I would have bet money my eyes were doing exactly the same thing, and I hadn’t taken any drugs since my junior prom.
“Here we go,” the waitress said, serving us. Boone dug in, eating so fast like he didn’t need oxygen. I squirted ketchup on my fries and popped one in my mouth. They were good. Salty and crunchy.
“These are the best ribs I’ve ever tasted,” Boone said. “Ever. In the whole world. The pig must have been a magical pig. Like a Harry Potter pig.”
“It must be that. It’s wizard ribs,” I said.
I laughed, watching Boone rip through the mountain of food without taking a breath. We hadn’t had a lot of moments together like this, moments without talk of killers. Boone’s face was covered with barbecue sauce, and his mouth was full, and he was eyeing me like a man on the prowl with enough energy never to quit.
I pretended for the moment that my friend wasn’t on the run, that her husband wasn’t lying in a coma in a hospital, that I wasn’t going to be murdered by a mob of Richard Gere fans, that a serial killer wasn’t loose in town, and that girls weren’t abducted.
Watching Boone suck down his second rack of ribs as he eyed me like I was a third rack of ribs, I felt a wave of happiness I hadn’t experienced since I got married. Before I knew better.
“I guess I should ask you date questions,” Boone said with his mouth full. “What’s your favorite color? Are you an on-top or on-bottom girl?”
“Blue. Bottom. And top.”
He dropped the ribs onto his plate, and he licked his lips, eyeing me the whole time. “I bet there’s a motel around here somewhere,” he suggested.
“That sounds good,” I said.
Boone put his hand up. “Check, please!” he yelled.
I pulled his hand down. “But we’ve got other things to do. We need to go to the scene of the crime, and then there’s JoBeth.”
Boone sat back and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I bet that woman is going to ruin my life’s work. That’s probably the real reason she came, not for some stupid press conference with life-sized dinosaurs. I made the biggest discovery ever in my field, and she’s going to sabotage it.”
The fact that JoBeth was driving out in the direction of the dig supported Boone’s claim. Also, there was her weird behavior. As I understood it, a scientist would have to prove his discovery before it was broadcast to the world. It was unprofessional and out of character for JoBeth to drop everything and fly to Goodnight and bring an International Geography Magazine photographer with her.
“I don’t know anything about dinosaurs. Is it really a big discovery? Aren’t dinosaur bones discovered all the time?” I asked Boone.
“This discovery upends everything we thought we knew about the extinction of dinosaurs. After this, I could get tenure anywhere I wanted. I could get my pick of the lecture circuit. PBS would hound me.”
“So, JoBeth wants to steal that from you. I can see that. She’s a mean girl. And she’s not very attractive, right?”
Boone pointed at himself. “I never thought she was attractive. She’s totally not my type.”
“Really? What’s your type?” I asked in my best Marilyn Monroe voice.
“Beautiful. Long, straight brown hair, brown eyes I can get lost in, nosy, whip-smart, kind, and can talk to dead people.”
I took a drink of my cold soda to cool myself down. “That’s quite a type,” I croaked. “Sounds like she would be hard to find.”
“Easy to find, it turns out. But very hard to seal the deal.”
There was the rub. I worried that his deal was different than mine, so I was holding off on the sealing part.
Despite the sexual tension and the probable close proximity to a motel with clean sheets, we got back in the car and drove to the camping site. This time Boone was in the driver’s seat.
When we arrived, I was surprised that the camping site was well lit and modern.
“This is all new,” Boone said. “They probably infused the place with cash, updating it in the wake of Faye’s first husband’s murder. Looks more like a strip mall in Albuquerque than a place in the wilderness.”
My heart sank. If that was true, there would be little left of the original crime scene. Not that I was looking for actual physical clues. I was looking for inspiration, for something to spark a comparison to the scene of the crime at Goodnight UFOs.
Even though I suspected a half a dozen people, I believed that the key to solving the mystery lay in the original murder. It was too great of a coincidence for the two crimes--which were practically identical--to have been committed by two different, unrelated people.
“Faye was up the mountain there,” I said, showing Boone the map in my reporter’s notebook. We took flashlights out of the trunk for the walk up the mountain.
“A hike under the stars. If I had brought a picnic, we could have written off another thing on our wooing agreement,” Boone said, waggling his eyebrows.
“You’re working hard, Boone. I like it.”
“I’m a hard worker in general.”
“In this case, it might be over-compensating or guilt over JoBeth,” I suggested.
“Or I’m serious about us.”
Us. The word had a nice ring to it.
I stopped talking because we were at a higher altitude and climbing, and I was out of breath. I wondered when my body would acclimate completely to living so high up. I thought I had finally adapted, but trying to climb up the mountain proved that I wasn’t there yet.
Boone, meanwhile, wasn’t even breathing hard. I stopped in my tracks, put my hands on my hips, bent over, and tried to catch my breath. It was like my lungs refused to take in oxygen.
“Maybe we’ve gone far enough,” Boone said.
“It’s just a little further,” I gasped.
“Okay, but you’re getting on my back. I’m going to carry you.”
“I couldn’t let you do that,” I breathed. “It would be too hard for you…are you sure you want to?”
“Get on board,” he ordered.
Boone carried me on his back with my legs wrapped around his waist the rest of the way up. He dropped me down gently next to a large fire pit. “I think it was here, according to the map she drew,” Boone said.
He shined his flashlight on the area. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I’m sure there was a lot of blood, but that was five years ago. No sign of it now.”
Ding. Ding. Ding. A revelation hit me like a ton of bricks, and I sat down on the ground. A working theory was rooted in my mind, but I had no way of proving it, yet.
“Let’s go,” I told Boone, standing up.
“You didn’t look around. You feel all right? Are you still having breathing problems?”
“I’ve never felt better. Let’s get back to town.”
He shined a light on my face. “You’ve got that Jessica Fletcher look again,” he said. “Did something happen? Did you see a dead person?”
“No, it was like a Sherlock moment. Deductive reasoning. It came together. Click. Click. Click. But I’m not ready to talk about it. It’s not fully formed yet. What’s that over there?”
From our vantage point, we could see a bright light in the distance, but it wasn’t the lights of a city or town.
“Something’s going on there. I don’t know what. Something big,” Boone said. He put his arms around me and pulled me in close. “You know something? It’s kind of romantic out here under the stars.”
“Yes,” I agreed, wrapping my arms around him, too. “Just you and me next to the crime scene where a man was stabbed to death.”
“You’re a hard woman, Matilda. You know what else is hard?”
“Is it the Venutian Divining Rod sticking into my belly?” I asked.
“Honey, that ain’t no Venutian Divining Rod,” he said and captured my mouth, kissing me like I was his. And I let him.
We kissed for a long time, finally breaking apart, and I rested my head on his chest. “That was amazing,” I breathed. “I’m even hearing music.”
“Me, too,” Boone said. “Weird music. House music.”
We separated, both looking in the direction of the lights. There was a heavy bass beat coming from there. “I think I know what it is,” I said. “It’s the bear party.”
“You mean beer party?” Boone asked.
“No. A bear party.”
“What does that mean?”
“Some hedonistic party with drugs and bears and Drake. I was sort of invited,” I said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I’m almost a hundred percent sure that we’re not thinking the same thing,” Boone said, looking me up and down.
After we climbed down, we went to the party. It was easy to find. We just followed the floodlights and the blaring techno music to get there. We parked a little ways away, which was a good idea because the party itself was mayhem.
It turned out that there were only about thirty people attending, but there was so much alcohol and drugs that those thirty people were obnoxious on a level of Burning Man. Boone said hello to a few people when we arrived, who I didn’t know.
He refused a joint and a bottle of tequila from one of the partygoers, and so did I.
“I don’t think Drake is showing up,” I said.
“I think that’s a safe bet,” Boone said. “Kind of like tomorrow’s visit by Richard Gere.”
Uh-oh. That was tomorrow, and I wasn’t any closer to getting Richard Gere to Goodnight. I was going to be a dead duck when he didn’t show up. “Maybe I’ll stay here for a few days,” I said. I scanned the crowd and spotted a kid in the distance. “Look over there. Somebody brought a kid to this bacchanal. Who would do something like that?”
Boone turned red, and his hands clenched into fists. “That’s my nephew,” he growled. “Jack Remington, your ass is grass!” he yelled and ran after him. Jack took off like a jackrabbit, but Boone was fast, too. I quickly lost sight of them.
But as I scanned the area some more, I spotted someone else I knew. JoBeth was there with her assistant Jon. She was smiling and chatting with someone who looked like he was in charge because he was wearing clean clothes, and he appeared sober. The three of them were standing next to a large cage which sat on top of a trailer. In the cage was a huge, despondent bear.
The bear made a few pathetic noises and then slouched, as if in defeat. I didn’t blame it. It would suck to be in a cage at a rave.
