“From what I see of your finances I think you could well afford to keep the large staff of professionals.”
“They were annoying. Leaf blowers, power washers, prima donna animal groomers and landscape artists. People underfoot in the house and on the grounds all day long. I prefer to let the animals roam and the weeds take over, and be at one with nature.”
“What about the package in the kitchen?”
“I gave it to the gardener. I believe he needed it for the tomato plants.”
Riley made a mental note not to eat the tomatoes. “You said you found something interesting.”
Emerson led Riley into the library. He pulled an extra chair up to the table he was using as a desk, and they both sat down. The massive book on the table was titled Plumes: A Journey to the Center of the Earth. A bunch of newspaper articles had been stacked up alongside the book.
Emerson opened the book to a world map showing red, green, and yellow dots of differing sizes at various geological locations. Samoa had a big red dot, and there was a circle drawn around it with black marker.
“I suppose this means something?” Riley said, tapping the circle.
“It does, but I want you to see for yourself. Read through the first stack of newspaper articles.”
There were fifty-two different stories, spanning the last couple years. Riley read through some of the headlines. USA Today: “Hikers Disappear Without a Trace in Yellowstone.” Hawaii Tribune-Herald: “Murder in Volcanoes National Park.” The Oregonian: “Brothers Drown in Crater Lake.” The New York Times: “Australian Tourist Boat Vanishes in Galapagos—20 Presumed Dead.”
“Last month there was a news story about a couple hikers who fell into one of the hot springs at Yellowstone and were boiled alive,” Emerson said. “The acidic water completely dissolved them within a day.”
“Horrible.”
“I agree. And it might be the perfect crime. Turns out there are stories every year about visitors dying or going missing in our national parks.”
“Another conspiracy theory for Vernon’s blog?”
Vernon’s main claim to fame was a blog called Mysterioso, where he published Emerson’s many theories, crackpot or otherwise.
Emerson smiled. “You studied statistics at Harvard as part of your MBA, right?” He opened his laptop and downloaded a list of deaths at every national park, by year, since the early 1900s. “What do you make of this?”
It was almost one o’clock by the time Riley finished charting the national parks deaths. “Do you know anything about regression analysis?” she asked Emerson.
“It tries to see if data gathered from something fits into a mathematical model.”
“Right.” Riley held up the paper with her calculations. “In this case I used the data you gave me on deaths at national parks and tried to fit it into an actuarial model used by insurance companies to predict accidental deaths. If you look at the total number of deaths in national parks over the past ten or so years, there’s nothing statistically significant.”
“And when you look at individual parks?” Emerson said.
“At a handful of them, there are statistical anomalies. Too many accidents resulting in fatalities when compared to other parks. Statistically speaking, there’s less than a three percent chance it’s mere coincidence. Of course, there could be other variables, ones I don’t know about, affecting the results.”
“Exactly,” Emerson said. “There could be other variables. I’m interested in those other variables.”
“Don’t you want to know which parks?”
“I already know which parks.”
Emerson returned to Plumes: A Journey, still open to the world map, and he used the marker to circle the rest of the red and yellow dots in the United States. “Yellowstone, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Oregon Crater Lake, and, of course, the National Park of American Samoa.”
“That’s right! How did you know?”
“Wayan Bagus’s stolen island. It has beaches and rain forests. But most important, it has a volcano. I found it odd that certain national parks were death magnets and thought there might be a connection.”
“What’s the connection?”
“Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is the site of Mauna Loa and Kilauea, two active volcanoes. Crater Lake National Park in Oregon is the deepest lake in the United States and the ninth deepest in the world. It’s the caldera of an ancient vast volcano that forms Three Sisters Wilderness. And Yellowstone is one of the most geothermally active areas in the world and the site of an inactive super-volcano.”
“Volcanoes are dangerous,” Riley said. “Boiling hot springs are dangerous. Couldn’t that explain it?”
“It might. Except that these aren’t just any volcanoes. Plumes: A Journey identifies all the sites as suspected mantle plumes.”
“What’s a mantle plume?”
“The vast majority of volcanoes are formed from shifting tectonic plates, and the magma comes from fairly close to the surface of the earth. Rarely, they’re fueled by magma directly from the earth’s core. Volcanoes fueled directly from the earth’s core are called mantle plumes.”
“So we have statistically unlikely accidents occurring at national parks that just happen to have been created on the sites of mantle plumes.”
Emerson smiled. “Seems rather unlikely that they’re accidents, don’t you think?”
“Then what?”
“Murder. Somebody is murdering people at these national parks, but the really interesting question is why.”
He was connecting the dots again, Riley thought. And he was doing it with at least half the dots missing, so what were the chances he was reaching the right conclusions? She thought the chances weren’t good. It was a big stretch to connect a bunch of murders to mantle plumes. Not that this surprised her. Emerson was a conclusion jumper. It was the way his mind worked. It was a game for him. And sometimes he actually jumped to a significant conclusion. Other times, the idea would run its course and get discarded.
“This is really, really good,” Emerson said, beaming out happiness. Radiating excitement. “We now have a missing island and a murder mystery!”
Riley didn’t want to ruin his fun, but she thought this was right up there with Tom Hanks delivering a sculpture to Emerson’s house.
SIX
EMERSON HAD HIS KNAPSACK HUNG FROM HIS shoulder and his hand wrapped around Riley’s wrist. He was tugging her forward, out of the library, out of the house, and toward the garage, making sure she kept up with his long strides.
“I had a Tesla delivered an hour ago,” Emerson said. “It’s fuel-efficient, and only the steering wheel is made of leather. The seats are genuine cloth. This car is almost entirely karma-friendly.”
She was all in favor of friendly karma, Riley thought, catching sight of the shiny new Tesla. Maybe some of the good stuff would drift over onto her Mini Cooper. God knows the Mini needed some help. It was parked next to the Tesla, and Vernon was standing on the hood, trying to remove the hatchet and not having any luck. Wayan Bagus was watching.
“I can’t get this dang thing out,” Vernon said. “It got wedged between something in there. Offhand I’d say Tin Man got a mean streak.”
“We aren’t sure Tin Man did this,” Riley said. “It could have just been a random maniac.”
Emerson handed the Tesla key fob to Riley, and an iPad to Wayan.
“What is this?” Wayan asked.
“It’s an iPad,” Emerson said. “I loaded Angry Birds onto it for you.” He motioned to the car. “Everyone in. The game is afoot.”
Riley looked over at Emerson. “You said that two nights ago.”
“I like saying it,” Emerson said. “It’s one of my favorite things to say. The game is afoot. The game is afoot.”
Wayan Bagus and Vernon got into the back seat, and Vernon leaned forward.
“Where are we going?”
“George Mason University,” Emerson said. “I have some questions to ask the vulcanologist.”