I’m looking at another pattern.
One that’s very familiar to me.
It’s a predator’s circuit.
I furiously type away, searching for the pattern imprinted on my memory.
I find it. It’s not the same shape, but it has similar symmetry. I could write a formula for a fractal that would generate patterns just like these.
But it’s not just a pattern, it’s a behavior.
The behavior generating the pattern on my wall, the one where Juniper’s killer is hiding, matches this other behavior quite clearly.
The creator of this other pattern is an efficient killer that has remained unchanged for millions of years. It’s developed a sophisticated system for hunting predicated upon always staying on the move, allowing it to return to the same points again and again without its prey being any wiser.
I flip back and forth between the patterns. I have to sit down.
It’s the same pattern as a great white shark’s.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE PITCH EXPERIMENT
Analogies and maps can be dangerous things when you take them too literally. A map is just a representation of something. Even a photographic map can’t tell you if the terrain is now covered by snow, or if a morning rain has made a path too muddy to traverse.
Juniper’s killer’s circuit is like the hunting pattern of a great white shark, but only because the two of them have acquired similar behaviors.
Great whites don’t try to hide their kills, mainly because tuna don’t form police forces and seek revenge. But they’re careful to avoid overpredation in certain areas, lest the fish remember this is a bad spot. Killing too much sends a signal to the system to change its patterns—kind of like leaving bodies around would tell the cops that something is up.
Besides being careful not to overkill and create a disruption, sharks use camouflage, like our killer. The great white has countershading that helps it blend into the sea floor when looked at from above and appear invisible when looked at from below.
The killer—I don’t know what else to call him—almost certainly also has his own camouflage. He probably doesn’t attract too much attention to himself. By hiding the bodies or making the ones he can’t hide look like animal attacks, he cloaks his presence from prey who, just like a pod of seals, may not realize they have a killer in their midst until it’s too late.
Sharks also have a specialized organ called the ampulla of Lorenzini that enables them to sense the electrical activity of hiding prey and see through the blood in the water during a feeding frenzy.
Likewise, the killer probably has his own set of skills for spotting victims. He’s not just looking for a physical type—he’s seeking out a particular kind of vulnerability.
The Montana and Wyoming missing-persons reports only tell me about locals and people who were known to come through the area and vanished. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit during the summer to vacation and work at seasonal jobs.
Some of my students make money during semester breaks serving tables and staffing summer resorts like the ones here.
How many young people drift through this area on their own, without their parents knowing or caring where they are?
Based on this, the killer could have many, many more victims.
But right now it’s just conjecture.
The only way to see if a model has value is to use it to make a prediction you can test.
All I can guess with MAAT at this point is the approximate number of people who will go missing and the probability that within six years we’ll get another bear attack resembling Juniper’s and Rhea’s.
Six years is a long time. Some scientists wait their entire lives for the eruption of a volcano, the return of a comet, or some other infrequent event.
The most insane I’ve heard of is the pitch-drop experiment started at the University of Queensland in 1927. It’s a funnel of pitch designed to measure the material’s viscosity. Since the experiment started, only nine drops have fallen from the funnel, making the viscosity of pitch 230 billion times that of water. The two times a drop fell while a webcam was aimed at the experiment, technical problems prevented researchers from observing the rare event.
The longest-running experiment ever is a metal ball hanging on a thread between two metal bells. Each time it touches a bell, a battery gives it a charge and knocks it into the other bell, where it discharges the current.
I saw this myself while visiting Oxford for a conference. The ball vibrates almost imperceptibly between the bells, but you can see it with the naked eye.
It’s been doing that since 1840. Even the battery, a dry cell, is the same one installed almost two hundred years ago.
Science can require patience. But I can’t wait six years for Juniper’s killer to fake another bear attack.
I can’t even wait six days. The semester is starting, and I’m already going to be late for faculty meetings.
I could go to Parvel, the town near where Rhea was found, but the trail is probably cold. I don’t even know what a warm trail would look like.
And all I can imagine finding out is that her death looked a lot like Juniper’s.
What I need is some way to confirm at least part of my suspicions.
The suspicions—or rather, my assumptions—are that Juniper’s killer has done this multiple times and his attacks resemble an animal’s. I make a note to figure out what that means, precisely. All I know is that Detective Glenn initially thought a man might have been the suspect.
Knives?
I also believe that in most cases the body is never found.
So . . . all I need is an unreported animal attack and a body that was never found.
Yeah, easy . . .
I turn back to the missing-person dots projected on the wall. A couple of them are in the thick purple band of the killer’s circuit.
That doesn’t mean he’s responsible for any of them, but if you knew of two different seal-mating areas and there was a spot in between where seals were known to go missing, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect there’s a shark that travels through there.
The most recent one was seventeen months ago in the town of Hudson Creek. A woman named Chelsea Buchorn was reported missing. A friend of hers, Amber Harrison, reported to the police that she thought her friend was abducted.
Harrison said they were walking through the woods and she lost track of Chelsea.
It’s a rather odd account. I can only find two news stories about what happened. The first one describes Amber as being agitated and telling conflicting stories. Police had no evidence of foul play and released her.
If I was going to try to read between the lines, it sounds like they went off into the woods to get really high. Amber wouldn’t be the most credible of witnesses if she was on something.
However, she and Chelsea would also make ideal victims.
Hudson Creek is a four-hour drive. I throw all my stuff into my Explorer and leave the room key with the clerk.
God knows why she imagines I needed a room for just four hours.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
HUDSON CREEK
Hudson Creek is a decaying strip of buildings on either side of the highway, clinging to the road like barnacles on a rotting pier. If this were an ecosystem, I’d say it was on the verge of collapse.
FOR SALE signs litter stretches of property with dilapidated buildings that look like they haven’t had two-legged occupants in years.
Occasionally I spot signs of life. Aluminum-sided trailers covered in faded paint with clothes dangling nearby on lines. Someone lives there, if this is what you can call living.
I’ve seen plenty of poverty in my travels. Not all of it radiates despair. I’ve been to slums where the electricity falters at night, but the live music keeps going. I’ve visited shantytowns where a new pair of shoes is as rare as a Tesla, yet people wear homespun clothes as vibrant as any I’ve seen.