Fatalis (17 page)

The missing body thing annoyed her most of all. Not just the mystery but because Hannah couldn't even
say
the body was missing. Never mind a lawsuit from the driver's family for pain and suffering if she was wrong. She didn't like
being
wrong, especially not in print.

Shortly before filing the story she decided to give Grand's office one more try. To her surprise, he picked up.

"Professor!" she said.

"Yes?"

"This is Hannah Hughes."

"Ms. Hughes, hello," Grand said. "I was just listening to your third message-"

"Yes, I'm sorry about all those," she said, "but I really need to talk to you. Actually, I needed to talk to you about an hour ago, but now will do if you have a minute."

"All right," he said. "Unfortunately, I only
have
about one minute."

"I'll talk fast," she said. "Here's the thing, Professor. Did you hear about the truck crash this morning outside of Montecito?"

"No. I've been in a cave all morning. What happened?"

"A fish truck went off the road and I think the driver's missing. No one's being allowed near the truck, so I can't say for sure. But if it's true, and if it's connected to the disappearance of the engineers, it could be a big story. What I need to know is this. Is it possible that the caves, tunnels, and sinkholes connect the Painted Cave region with the foothills near the beach in Montecito?"

"Sure, it's possible," Grand said. "In one way or another all the underground systems are connected, from Baja California to Alaska, both over the land and under the sea."

"Great. I just want to make sure-we're not talking metaphysics, here?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You know, like in the East. That all things are connected throughout the universe."

"No, we're not," Grand said. "Though I don't repudiate those beliefs."

"Of course not Do you know of any direct routes from the place where we were to the beach?"

"Not offhand," Grand replied. "I'd have to look up some of the geologic charts-"

"Could you?" Hannah said.

"You mean now?"

"Please."

"Ms. Hughes, I've got work to finish up and then a class to teach."

"Hannah. And I'll call you Jim. Look, I know this is an imposition, but it's very important."

"It also may prove irrelevant," Grand said.

"Why?"

"Because of the rainfall," Grand told her.

"I don't understand."

"Some of the old, charted tunnels may have collapsed and some new ones may have opened up," Grand told her, "like the one I was exploring this morning, which lead to a series of tunnels and the subterranean cavern where I found the engineer's flashlight-"

"
You
found that?"

"Yes."

"Gearhart, you lying SOB," she said. "He said he found it."

"He can have it," Grand said. "The point is, the only way to be sure of any connections would be to find a cave, sinkhole, or fissure near the beach and work your way backward, to the northeast."

"Couldn't you go the other way?"

"Not if you don't want Gearhart to know."

"Oh, right," she said. "Good point."

Shit
, Hannah thought. A hive of "he's," a journalist's nightmare. The maybes, could he's, might he's. Though Hannah was taking notes, she knew she wasn't going to get much of this in today's already-late paper. She wouldn't be able to prove most of it in time.

Okay
, she told herself, she was semi-resigned to that. But if there were anything to her theory she was going to get it into tomorrow's edition. And to do that, she was going to need help.

"Professor," Hannah said, "would you possibly, please, consider working for us?"

"What?"

"As a paid, independent consultant," she said. "Accompany me to the foothills and look around. Help me see if there's an opening that could connect to the Painted Cave sinkhole, and if so whether it looks like someone or something has been using it."

"And if the answer is yes?"

"Then we'll call in Sheriff Gearhart," she said. "Not to show him up, I swear," she added quickly. "I just want to be in there getting dirty. He can't blow me off if I have some kind of evidence."

Grand thought for a second. "Ms. Hughes, ordinarily I'd be happy to. But I've got some important research to do right now."

"Professor-Jim, I understand but I'm begging you. This is breaking news and you're the only one who can help me get it right."

"I'm not the only one-"

"You're the only one I trust," she said. "And I don't want to go nosing around up there alone or with the Wall."

More silence.

Hannah had to fight to resist playing the don't-you-hate-Gearhart-too? card. She was afraid that bringing Grand's late wife into this, even obliquely, might shut him down rather than fire him up. Grand's hesitation was killing her, but Hannah pressed her lips together. She didn't know if even a gentle
please
at this point might push him the wrong way.

What the hell
, she decided. "Please?" she said softly. "I need this."

Grand was silent for a second longer. "You're obviously not going to make today's edition," he said.

"Correct."

"Then I'll tell you what," Grand said. "I've got to run some tests. I should be done with those in two or three hours. Can we meet somewhere around four o'clock?"

"Four would be terrific," Hannah said. "How about I swing by the school and pick you up."

"All right," Grand said. "I'll be at my office in the Humanities and Social Sciences Building. If you miss me there I'll be in the physical sciences lab. That's off Mesa Road, parking lot eleven-"

"I'll find it," Hannah said. "Got an interesting project working?"

"I found something in one of the caves," Grand told her. "I want to run the basic DNA tests, try to figure out what they're from and how they got there."

"Anything newsworthy?"

"Not for the
Freeway
," Grand said. "Just some hairs, probably from an animal-"

Hannah felt as though she'd raced over a speed bump. "You found what, where?"

"Excuse me?"

"You found animal hair in one of the caves?"

"I think that's what they are, yes."

She was still feeling the jolt. It could be nothing. She didn't want to get too excited. She also didn't want to scare Grand off. She forced herself to calm down. "Professor, you said your classes are over at four?"

"Right."

"That'll give me enough time to finish up. I'll see you then."

"I don't understand-"

"I'll explain when I see you," Hannah promised.

The young woman hung up. It took her a few moments for what she'd heard to settle in.

It could be a coincidence: fur in the truck on the beach and fur in a cave in the mountains. One could have come from a dog, another from a bobcat or bear. But if it weren't a coincidence, it could be the biggest local story ever. Her mind raced from rabid animals to a mad killer in a fur coat. It was possible. That was the wonderful thing about journalism. Though nothing could be reported until it was proved, nothing could be discounted until it was disproved.

Hannah added some of the information Grand had given her. She wrote that the sinkhole the two engineers had been investigating could lead anywhere, even to the shoreline, and that-to hell with caution and to hell with Gearhart-a lead was being investigated that could link the men's disappearance to the crash of the fish truck.

Hannah read the new material. She frowned. She didn't say or imply that the driver was missing. And what she wrote was true:
She
was investigating the link. Reluctantly, Hannah added a line to that effect. She didn't want to imply that the sheriff's office was following the lead. She reread the addition and was satisfied that she hadn't written anything inaccurate or misleading. If it turned out there was a connection between the two incidents, the
Freeway
would be the first news source to have reported it.

Hypercharged, Hannah spell-checked the stories, E-mailed the crash feature and the search-and-rescue update to the printer, then went to work on the rest of the newspaper, meeting with Karen, talking to her writers and art director, and reviewing manuscripts.

But her mind wasn't on the work. It was on caves and fur.

There was a trick one of her investigative methodology professors had taught her, to play word association when you had no other clues or leads. First impressions were a good guide.

Butcher knife wound and dead husband?
The guy was a philanderer
.

Single woman strangled from behind?
She got in a last word for which her boyfriend had no other comeback
.

Caves and fur
? she thought.

Fred and Wilma Flintstone
, she answered.

Hannah frowned. She hadn't done well in the course, either. She wasn't good at making blind jumps. She needed to examine things closely, follow them from point to point to point. That was one reason this was so frustrating. Gearhart was holding information that prevented her from doing that.

But Hannah was dogged in that pursuit and, unlike Gearhart, she had only one goal. Not self-aggrandizement, not a bigger audience, not wealth or fame. She had the only goal you could reach by going straight ahead.

The truth.

The University of California, Santa Barbara, in Isla Vista was founded in 1891 as a trade school. Brought into the University of California system in 1944, the school moved to its present site in 1954. Set on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean and wrapped around its own moody lagoon, the sprawling, spectacular 815-acre campus is the home of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning professors in engineering and mathematics, humanities and fine arts, and physical and social sciences. The centerpiece of the campus is the 175-foot-tall Storke Tower, which sounds its sixty-one-bell carillon twice every hour.

Grand pulled on his windbreaker and headed over to the physical sciences lab. He was intrigued by Hannah's insistence on coming over and wondered why mentioning the fur samples had gotten such a strong reaction. He had a feeling he'd be finding out. Hannah Hughes did not seem like the kind of woman who held back whatever was on her mind.

Grand walked into the large, bright lab. He didn't come here often but he had fond, very strong memories of the place. He and Tumamait had some of their most impassioned debates here, starting with the day the twenty-four-year-old Grand tested the penetrating power of his first re-created bow and arrow.
Could
a yew shaft launched from twenty feet away with a granite tip have broken through the skull of a woolly mammoth, and is the skull of a cow really an acceptable substitute? The answers were unequivocally yes to the first and maybe to the second. Years later computer simulations supported Grand's view. But win or lose the debates, Grand had always appreciated Tumamait's questions, which were relentless, unforgiving, and brilliant.

He missed that.

Grand unzipped his jacket but he left it on. Away from the sun at this hour and situated so close to the ocean, the lab vacillated between a stiff late-morning chill and suffocating afternoon heat. With all our science we were still effectively living in solar-heated caves.

Grand wanted to get the hair sample into the DNA soup before class so he'd have the results when he finished up. With luck, DNA fingerprinting would tell him most of what he needed to know. The other morphology tests he wanted to run-carbon-14 dating and gas chromatography to determine the age of the hairs and the ratios of certain key elements of both the hairs and the mineral samples-had to be done elsewhere on campus and would take several hours longer.

Fortunately, the graduate student in charge of the DNA lab during the weekday morning shift was Tami Colgan, a former student of Grand's. A wait of days or even weeks for test results was not uncommon as students, professors, and local attorneys-"the paying customers," as Tami called them-came to the lab for workups. She took his hair sample right away, putting some of it in the soup and having an assistant bring several samples to the Engineering II building around the corner. One of the engineering students had built her own radiocarbon dating unit, so the age of the hair could be determined relatively quickly. Tami also sent the mineral scrapings over to the geology lab for gas chromatography analysis. With Dr. Thorpe off campus, a number of students had declared an unofficial holiday. As a result, the lab was free.

The DNA test facility was located in a windowless, closet-size room off the white-walled main lab. The first part of the analysis consisted of placing a small hair sample into a liquid enzyme that dissolved the DNA from other matter. Once the separation was complete, Colgan would place the DNA on a thin nylon membrane and bombard it with X rays. Since different parts of DNA react differently when exposed to radiation, they form distinctive autoradiographs on the nylon. This pattern resembles a distinctive bar code, the so-called DNA fingerprint The fingerprint can then be scanned into the computer and compared to other patterns on file. Using the high-speed, state-of-the-art equipment, the process of creating a fingerprint would take slightly over three hours. Because radiation was involved, the walls were lead-lined and Tami would only be in there to get things under way.

The young woman promised to get the other tests he requested started, then thanked him for bringing the hairs over. She said she was glad to have had the opportunity to help with real research for a change.

Grand thanked her, then went to teach his once-a-week class on the cave art of the Americas.

Five minutes. That was all blond, lithe, twenty-year-old Patrick Vlaskovitz decided to give The Stratum Lady, their old but still sexy guide through the unwanted subtleties of the earth's crust.