The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)

“Excuse me,” he says before stepping out.

I can hear them talking but not the words. I’m curious but try not to look too interested, because the camera is still watching me.

Detective Glenn walks back in and falls into his seat, somewhat relaxed. “Can I give you some advice, Dr. Cray?”

“I’m sure I could use it.”

“If you ever find yourself in a situation like this again, god forbid, don’t say anything until you talk to a lawyer.” He taps the stack of photos. “That’s some spooky stuff. You might even say incriminating.”

“I was just being honest.”

“I noticed. Almost to your own detriment. Speaking of which, I was curious why you lingered on the head trauma photo.”

“So, that was planned?”

“Oh, yeah.” He nods. “I wanted to see if you had a normal revulsion response or wanted to start touching yourself.”

“And I lingered . . .”

“Yep. Cops and doctors do, too.”

“I was a paramedic.”

This gets a raised eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes. But that’s not why I lingered. I was looking at how the blood dripped across the white grout between the tiles. It had me thinking of bone.”

Glenn squints one eye. “Bone? You’re an odd one. I don’t know if you realize how odd.” He passes his hands over the photos. “Want to know what was most interesting to me?”

“Please tell.”

“Never once did you mention the bodies. You noticed everything except them.”

Even I have to admit that’s a little peculiar. “I guess people are not my area of expertise . . .”

He lets out a small laugh. “I’m realizing that.”

“So . . . am I free to go?”

“You were free at any time. Technically, we never arrested you.”

I eye the door suspiciously. “When you say I’m free,” I say, “am I free free? Or is this the kind of thing where you’re going to keep after me for . . . god knows what this is about?”

“You’re free. You’re not our guy.”

“Your guy? Can you tell me what this is about now?”

“Yes, Professor. For a hot moment you were our number-one suspect in a murder investigation. The district attorney was already trying to decide what tie to wear to your lethal injection.” He eyes the camera again, then lowers his voice. “Out here they’re a little jumpy when it comes to this kind of thing. They were eager to get to you to preserve any evidence of your guilt.”

I feel a bit numb. “Me? Why me?” The photos should have made it obvious, but sometimes I’m so detached I don’t draw straight lines.

“Are you kidding? You’re a wet dream of a suspect. Aloof genius scientist. You come in here talking about apex predators. It was too good.”

I feel a kind of burning on my skin as this washes over me. Glenn is relaxed, yet I’m afraid it’s still an act.

He notices my discomfort. “Seriously”—motioning to the door—“you can walk out right now.”

I turn my head toward the door, half expecting to see armed guards waiting to haul me away. “If this is a game, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Cray. I know this is all a bit of a head trip.”

I step outside myself for a moment and see how I must appear. As an EMT, I saw shocked people all the time. That’s what I’m feeling right now.

My eyes fall to the topmost photo. A woman’s hand, soft, almost elegant in its pose, dangles in the frame, splatters of red dripping from the fingertips. Her palms are caked in dirt and her own blood.

I spread the other photos out on the table and look at each one again.

Detective Glenn had mentioned I noticed everything except the people in them.

I’m noticing now.

There’s no picture of her face.

It all makes sense now. I know the reason why I’m here.

A different kind of weight sinks onto my shoulders. After a long pause, my eyes drift up to Glenn. He’s watching me intently.

I find the strength to say what I don’t want to. “I know her . . .”





CHAPTER SIX


FIELDWORK

Detective Glenn watches me for a reaction as he says the name. “Juniper Parsons.”

I don’t have one, which, I suspect, is a reaction in and of itself. My first fear was that he was going to say the name of someone close to me—of which there aren’t that many. The hand in the photo could have belonged to a half dozen women I’ve worked with or the daughter of an acquaintance.

The only woman I’ve been involved with recently—and that’s stretching it—is Allison. I think I’d recognize her hand immediately. I’d spent long nights caressing her wrists and intertwining our fingers as we talked about everything from old Bob Hope road comedies to the smell of the desert air in the Gobi.

If it had been her in the photos, my body would have reacted first with some kind of primitive physiological response—dilated blood vessels, skin hackling, a knot in my stomach.

Right now I feel a fleeting sense of relief that I don’t recognize the name. Fleeting, because a higher emotion—the kind our social brains tell us to feel based upon internal, not external, experiences—tells me I should feel guilty. Guilty like a chastised dog sitting in the corner, not because he knows taking food from the table is bad, but because he’s done something inappropriate he doesn’t understand.

My nonreaction is observed by Detective Glenn. While it may support my innocence, it probably reinforces his perception that I’m more detached from the people around me than usual. I’m a caricature of the aloof scientist.

I’m bad with names. I roll Juniper’s through my head over and over. Did he mean June?

June isn’t a vivid memory. She was a student of mine when I started teaching full-time six years ago. I was close enough in age to most of my class that it made it difficult to manage the need to be professional with the desire to be accepted by what would appear to be my peer group.

She was a zoology major, considering a jump to ethology, the study of animals in their environments. I’d been teaching my holistic approach to understanding systems. Forget the names and conventions we’re accustomed to: invent your own. Not every animal with an identical name behaves the same when it’s in a different ecosystem. An Inuit who survives by hunting whales weighing more than the mass of everyone he’s ever met lives a vastly different lifestyle than a San Francisco vegan who never eats anything that doesn’t spend its life cycle buried in dirt.

We had a handful of conversations after class. I think I went out for pizza a few times with her and some other students after a lecture. She never worked in my lab, and as far as I know, we never exchanged texts or talked on the phone.

I glance back to Glenn, after what has been a very long moment. “What happened to her?”

“Do you remember her?”

“I believe so. She called herself June. Maybe she felt Juniper was a bit much.”

“Three days ago, we got a call from her mother. Juniper was out here doing some research and hadn’t checked in. We sent someone to her motel room. She hadn’t been there in at least as long. Everything was intact. The only thing missing was her car. Which we found at a repair shop getting a new transmission.

“This morning two hikers found her body. It went from a missing-persons case to a potential murder investigation. The first thing we do in a situation like this is identify anyone who might know the victim.

“Your name came up.” Glenn doesn’t elaborate, keeping his cop secrets to himself as he waits for me to say something.

Is this where I protest or stay quiet?

After waiting a beat, he continues, “Two scientists who knew each other in the same area doing research . . .”

I guess it’s my turn to respond. “I had no idea she was here. Juniper and I haven’t spoken in years.”

Glenn gives me a noncommittal shrug. “She had your book on her iPad. Some of your research, too. That led us back to you again. A little too much Law & Order, first act, I know. But real life sometimes plays out like that.”

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