He shakes his head. “There weren’t any follicles in the samples. We checked. Just shafts.”
The woman swivels back at me with a condescending look on her face. “It seems like your lab was looking at mitochondrial DNA. Maybe they should go back to school.”
My face goes hot at the insult, but I respond coolly. “I know you don’t get all the news out here, but you can pull nuclear DNA from hair shafts, if you know what you’re doing.” Pretty cocky for a guy who didn’t know that this morning.
“Is this true?” the medical examiner asks her.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask around.”
I try to calm myself. “I have access to resources,” I say, regretting the pompous tone.
“I hope they involve a good attorney,” says Sheriff Tyson darkly.
“Hold up a second,” Glenn interjects. “Before we slap the bracelets on him, let’s hear him out. Dr. Cray knew the victim and is understandably agitated by what happened.”
Tyson makes a show of checking her watch. “Make it quick.”
No one offers me a seat, so I go over to the whiteboard and grab a marker. I draw a quick map of the area and put an X where Juniper was found.
“This is where the sample I was given came from.” I put another X where they killed Bart. “This is where Richards found Bart. Close enough to make sense.” I draw a wide circle. “In fact, this is Bart’s range from the Ursa Major database. As you are aware, he was a known grizzly. The likely suspect.
“But the sample from Juniper’s scene had hair that belonged to a bear from much farther away. It may have been trekking into Bart’s territory. She could have been caught between them. Did you find any DNA at her death scene from Bart?”
The medical examiner replies, “We found hair that was consistent.”
“Hair from a grizzly, yes? But no DNA?”
He shakes his head.
I draw a wide circle around Juniper’s X. “So we have no proof Bart was even there. We do have proof of the other bear.”
“So you say,” replies the woman. “But you’re the only one who has the magical ability to pull DNA from hair shafts. I’d love to have that power.”
I suddenly figure out who she is. “You’re Dr. Kendall?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll help you independently verify it.” I’m sure Julian would give them access to his lab. “The important part right now is that having a press conference and saying you caught the bear would be irresponsible and inaccurate. There’s still a killer grizzly out there. Worse, we don’t even know why he killed Juniper.”
Sheriff Tyson directs her intense focus on Richards. “Is this possible?”
He takes a deep breath. “We found her blood on the bear.”
“Yes,” she says, “but bears are known to sniff around others’ kills.”
“True. It’s common.” Richards tilts his head in defeat. “It’s possible. Very possible. Damn. I hoped we caught the bastard. This is bad. And worse, I may have killed an innocent bear.”
“Cancel the press conference?” asks Glenn.
Tyson shakes her head. “No. We’ve established how she was killed. We can announce that part of the investigation is closed. We’ll tell people to use caution.” She glares at me. “You better be right about this.”
Her intensity makes me step backward, bumping into the whiteboard. “I’ve been very thorough.”
“Looks like he was all over my database,” replies Kendall as she looks at something on her phone, probably data logs. “Did you find a match?”
“Yes . . . it’s UA.221.999.” I wait a beat before telling them his nickname. “Also known as Ripper.”
“Christ,” Glenn mutters. “That’s all we need. A grizzly named Ripper on the loose.”
“Are you sure that’s what you matched?” Kendall asks.
“Completely,” I say confidently. “I checked several times.”
She shakes her head. “Then it appears you’ve made a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
Kendall lets out a sigh of relief. “Dr. Cray, UA.221.999, also known as Ripper, died last year.”
“Died?” I try to process the word.
“Yes. I inspected his corpse myself when we retrieved the GPS collar. Ripper is very dead.” She points to the whiteboard. “What we have there is probably contamination. Maybe Juniper brushed up against old hair that was on a log. Maybe Bart still had some of Ripper’s in his fur. I don’t know. What I do know is that she wasn’t killed by a ghost bear.”
I can feel the eyes of everyone else in the room on me as they come to realize they’ve been entertaining a fool.
Kendall gives her head a small shake.
“Thank god,” Richards mutters.
My limbs grow cold. The marker falls from my fingers and rolls across the floor.
“Dr. Cray, would you step outside?” commands Sheriff Tyson. “I’m going to talk to Detective Glenn after the conference and decide if you should be arrested or sent to a psychiatrist.”
Her words don’t faze me as the new reality sets in.
Kendall’s revelation isn’t what she thinks.
“Don’t you see it?” I ask quietly.
They ignore me and return to their discussion about the conference.
My stomach begins to churn.
They don’t get it.
It’s so obvious.
It’s why they arrested me in the first place.
It’s why Juniper ran the wrong way.
The pattern is clear.
“Don’t you see it!” I shout.
All eyes turn back to me.
“Deputy,” Tyson shouts to the open door. “Would you escort this man out of here?”
I ignore her and slam my hand against the spot on the map where Juniper was found. “Are you that dense? She wasn’t killed by a bear! She was murdered by someone who wanted to make it look like that!”
The room is silent.
I get how I sound. But I know if I bring a sample back to my lab and find out it’s contaminated and I’m certain it didn’t happen in the lab, that means it had to have happened in the field. The only way hair from a dead bear ended up on Juniper’s body was because someone put it there.
I can’t even fathom how or why, but this is where reason has led me. Unfortunately, no one else is seeing it as clearly as I am.
Two thick-necked deputies rush inside, reacting to my outburst. I’m slammed against the wall, handcuffed, and dragged away before I can explain.
CHAPTER TWENTY
FRAMED
I’m shoved inside a small room with a metal door and a narrow reinforced-glass window. There’s a bench along the back wall. It’s a holding cell of some kind but without a toilet. It’s not meant for a long stay, I hope.
The ceiling is solid and the walls concrete.
Holy shit, I realize. I’ve been locked up.
Jesus Christ.
I collapse on the bench. Part of me wants to pound on the door and insist there’s been some kind of mistake. But I know they’ll just see this as more crazy-man behavior.
The looks on their faces as Sheriff Tyson’s goons hauled me away . . .
They thought I was raving mad.
I was mad. I still am. Mad at them for ignoring what’s in front of them.
They pulled me in with a SWAT team welcoming party because something about Juniper’s murder looked like a man could have done it.
I never saw the autopsy photos, but it seems clear to me that a bear attack and human attack should look pretty different.
For some reason, this one didn’t, at first.
They were looking for a man and found me. When they found bear hair in Juniper’s wounds and had a chance to examine her more closely, they let me go.
Her blood on Bart cinched the case.
Open, shut.
They chose not to see the rest. Maybe because it’s too fantastical. But it fits the evidence.
Juniper was attacked near the road, yet ran away from it. Why?
The simplest explanation is that she may have been brought to the clearing blindfolded and had no idea where she was. She simply ran.
Ripper’s hair showed up in her wounds. The hair was well preserved enough that we could get nuDNA out of it—a near impossibility under ideal conditions. Unthinkable for hair that has been out in the open for a year.