“There’s really only one explanation,” Emerson said. “Someone stole the body and left this one in its place.”
“That would be very difficult,” Milton said. “The entire building is monitored by security cameras and guards. The body storage room is always locked. No one could have done that without being seen.”
“Then the body was switched between when he was picked up at Air and Space and when he arrived here. Do you know who delivered the body?”
Milton pulled the report out of the envelope and read down.
“The Park Police performed that service.”
“Is that normal procedure?” Emerson asked.
“There are several ways a body can be transported,” Milton said. “Most commonly it is by the coroner, but at times it will be delivered by the Park Police or a city ambulance.” He handed the report back to Emerson. “This is a very serious matter. Why would someone do this?”
“To conceal the attacker’s identity,” Emerson said.
Emerson thanked Milton, they did a complicated man-to-man handshake, and Milton walked away toward the bank of elevators.
“Will he get into trouble for this?” Riley asked.
“Unlikely. I simply circumvented procedure. The photos and the report are made available upon request.”
“I assume Milton works here.”
“He’s a forensic photographer.”
Emerson and Riley left the building and walked in silence to the Tesla. Riley got behind the wheel, and Emerson took the passenger seat next to her. Riley looked over at Emerson.
“Honestly? Really?” she said.
“What?” Emerson said.
“You’re gloating.”
“Not at all. Gloating implies a smug satisfaction in one’s success.”
“And you’re telling me you’re not feeling just a little smug.”
“I’d only be smug if I had an exaggerated self-opinion.”
“Heaven forbid.”
“Do you still doubt the existence of a secret society of Rough Riders?” Emerson asked her.
“I might have a little less doubt, but I’m not convinced. And at any rate I’m not ready to pin it on Teddy Roosevelt.”
“I like Teddy,” Vernon said. “He carried a big stick, if you know what I mean.”
Wayan Bagus smacked Vernon on the back of the head.
“Everybody knows that,” Vernon said. “Common knowledge.”
“The idea that there might be a society of Rough Riders is unsettling,” Riley said. “One psycho axe murderer is bad enough, but a whole army of them is truly disturbing.”
“It is written that the army, which the world with all its false gods cannot overcome, can be smashed with discernment.”
“Okay, then, Little Buddy. Let’s go to Yellowstone and discern the hell out of them,” Vernon said.
One of the many “attachments” that Emerson inherited from his late father was a Gulfstream G550 jet. It was configured to carry as many as fourteen passengers, two pilots, and a flight attendant up to 6,750 miles nonstop.
Riley appreciated it for the two Rolls-Royce engines and its engineering. Vernon appreciated it because it was stocked with a bottomless supply of Oreos, M&M’s and little bottles of rum. Wayan Bagus, for his part, looked like he was still deciding whether he appreciated it or not. It was, after all, a $50 million attachment, but the seats were extremely comfortable, and each had its own personal television. Not to mention the restroom had soft two-ply toilet tissue and tiny bottles of minty mouthwash.
Four hours into the flight, Vernon and Wayan Bagus were asleep. Riley and Emerson were wide awake.
“What’s your plan?” Riley asked Emerson.
“I reserved rooms for us at the Old Faithful Inn. It’s right in the center of the park and where the newlyweds were last seen. So I think it’s a good base of operations for us.”
Riley ate a strawberry off the catered fruit platter. “Search parties looked for them for two weeks, but the park is a thirty-five-hundred-square-mile wilderness. Nobody found anything.”
“They didn’t know where to look.”
“And you do?”
Emerson nodded. “If our theory is correct and the disappearances have something to do with the locations of mantle plumes, then our search area is limited to the blob of lava bubbling underneath Yellowstone.”
“That blob is enormous,” Riley said.
“Fifteen hundred square miles.”
“Criminy, Emerson, that’s the size of Rhode Island. It would take a hundred years. Maybe five hundred years.”
“As I could only reserve the hotel rooms for five days, I’ll just have to be extra discerning,” Emerson said. “Between my ability to discern, Vernon’s unagi, and Wayan Bagus’s special talents, it should be a piece of cake.”
Riley didn’t think it was going to be a piece of cake. She thought the investigation was going to be difficult and dangerous. Even if the homicidal lunatics didn’t show up at Yellowstone, there were the bears. She wasn’t a fan of bears. She could grab a snake with her bare hand and squash a spider with her shoe, but she didn’t like bears.
“What’s my role?” she asked Emerson.
“You’re the glue that holds our disparate personalities and talents together. You’re our Professor X.”
“The bald guy in Marvel comics? The founder of the X-Men?”
“Exactly! Only instead of being a bald dude, you have a lot of pretty red hair and you’re a girl.”
Riley stared at Emerson, trying to decide whether he was complimenting her, coming on to her, or just being, for lack of a better word, Emerson. She settled on just being Emerson.
“Thank you for thinking my hair is pretty,” Riley said.
“No problem,” Emerson said.
“So, what are Wayan Bagus’s special talents? Can he really disappear?” she asked.
Emerson gave a noncommittal shrug. “Some Taoists believe that it’s possible to develop certain supernatural powers, or siddhi.”
“Like being able to disappear.”
“Something like that,” Emerson said. “One of the siddhi is supposed to be the ability to move the body wherever thought goes.”
“Are there any others?”
“There are five primary siddhi. They include clairvoyance, being able to tolerate extremes of heat and cold, and being able to read minds. There’s also a bunch of secondary ones. Things like being undisturbed by hunger or thirst, being able to hear or see things far away, being able to assume any form desired, and being able to make yourself very big or very small.”
“Your Aunt Myra calls it all a lot of hogwash and magic tricks,” Riley said.
“It’s difficult to dispute Aunt Myra. On the other hand, there are things that defy explanation.”
The plane landed and taxied down the Jackson Hole Airport runway. Emerson gathered his papers up and dumped them into his knapsack.
“If you had told somebody in the year 1800 that there were invisible things called germs and that they were responsible for the common cold, he would have thought that you were crazy and believed in magic,” Emerson said. “Today, everybody simply accepts it as fact, despite that they’ve never seen or knowingly touched a germ.”
“Assuming it’s possible, how would you go about learning to read minds or make yourself small?”
Emerson went to wake Vernon and Wayan Bagus. “Concentration.”
“Doesn’t sound too hard.”
“There’s a catch. You have to learn to concentrate for a sustained period of time. It’s much harder than it sounds. Try to focus your mind on one thing.”
“Like what?”
“Something simple to start.” He picked up one of the strawberries from the platter. “Like this piece of fruit.” He held it up in front of Riley. “Try to think about only this strawberry and nothing else.”
Riley concentrated on the strawberry. “Have I disappeared yet?”
Emerson smiled. “Most people can’t concentrate for more than a couple seconds before their mind starts to wander to all sorts of things. The other fruit on the platter. The person standing in front of you. What you ate for lunch. If you were able to focus on that strawberry and only on that strawberry for even just one full minute, Wayan Bagus would tell you that you might be able to learn one of the siddhi.”