The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)

“You fell?” He makes a note on a piece of paper. “That’s the kind of thing wives tell me when their drunk husbands abuse them.”

I’m trying to find a way to change the topic, but Gunther thankfully drops the matter and moves on.

“What makes you sure you’ve found a body?”

“Oh . . . I forgot.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and pull up the photo I took. “Here . . .”

Gunther takes it from me and stares at the image of the pale white hand. “You took this?”

“Less than an hour ago. Right where I said.”

“Hold on.” He gets up and leaves the room with my phone.

I’m normally nervous enough when it’s out of my sight. Having it in the hands of some suspicious cops in a corrupt police department while I’ve found myself pulled into not one but two murder investigations makes me extremely anxious.

What happens if Amber and Devon text back while they have my phone? Can the police look through anything they want, since I basically just handed it to them?

Even if they can’t legally, that doesn’t mean they won’t.

Although Detective Glenn and company seized my phone and laptop, they never asked me for a password.

There’s nothing incriminating on there. Maybe some personally embarrassing e-mails and a web-browsing history you’d expect from a lonely guy on the road. Nothing weird. Nothing worth passing around.

I’m tempted to get up and go find my phone. I relax when I feel something in my pocket. My personal phone.

I’d taken the photo with the burner I bought at the 88. There’s not much on there . . .

That’s not quite true. The only thing on there is my conversations with Amber. But I’ve already told them about her and Devon.

Maybe the burner is suspicious, but it can’t be any more incriminating than anything I’m ready to say.

Gunther walks back in the room and hands me my phone back. It’s still on the photo of the corpse.

Not that it would be difficult to look through everything else, then go back to that image.

He slides a business card to me. “E-mail the photo and anything else you have to this address.”

He waits until I finish sending the image. “That certainly looks like a body.”

“You get many people making that kind of thing up?”

“You’d be surprised,” he says flatly. There’s something about the way he’s watching me, almost defensively. “So how did you find the body?”

“Like I said, I was looking for Chelsea.”

He makes a note. “Did you know Chelsea?”

“No. Never met her.”

“Did you just read something online? Do you work for some kind of missing-persons agency?”

“No. I teach bioinformatics. I use computers in biology.”

“I didn’t realize that was special. I thought everyone uses computers.”

I can’t tell if he’s just being an ass or not. “Well, we use special simulations and processes to understand certain things. This is how I found Chelsea, or rather the body I believe to be hers.”

“A computer told you?”

I’m not prepared to go into how MAAT works. “Sort of.”

“A computer told you where she was buried?” He can’t hide his skepticism.

“No. No. Not quite.” I’m starting to get agitated. “The computer, I mean the program, told me that Hudson Creek would be a highly probable place for the murder of a young woman.”

Gunther says nothing. He just waits for me to fill in the rest.

“I entered into my computer all of the missing-persons reports and looked for ones that may have been potential murders. This one, Chelsea’s, was the closest.”

“Closest to where you live?”

“No. I’m from Austin. I was in Filmount.”

“Filmount? Where the girl got killed by a bear?”

“Yes. She was a student of mine. And I don’t think it was a bear. That’s why I came here.”

“Because you think a man killed these girls? One of them you know personally?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Give me a second. Let me see if Whitmyer is here.” He leaves the room again.

I check my phone for anything from Amber and Devon. Still no response. I text them again.

It’s going to look bad if my two witnesses are high as a kite when they show up.

I start to get more anxious. What if they’re avoiding me?

My biggest fear at the moment is that Chelsea’s body won’t be there. It’s nerve-racking to leave your most important piece of evidence out in the open like that.

I can’t imagine why Devon or Amber would want to hide her corpse. Although I did hide the location because I didn’t trust them.

Gunther comes back in with two cups of coffee. “Whitmyer—he’s the acting chief—he just left to go look for your body.” He notices the phone in my hand. “Any word from Devon and Amber?”

“I’m trying.”

“Those two aren’t the most reliable. We’ll send someone by their house.”

I pray they’re not wasted.

“So a computer program told you where to find the body? Man, is that an app or something? I’d love to have that.”

He thinks I’m batshit crazy.

I don’t blame him. I stop and think about what I’ve been saying. I’m surprised I’m not in handcuffs already.

I have to clarify some things before that happens. “Amber showed me where she last saw Chelsea. We did a search around the area for signs of a burial.”

“Like a marker?”

“No, though that would have been helpful. What we looked for was different plants growing together. It’s a sign that the soil has been recently disturbed. Plants create their own herbicides to fight for resources. Eventually one takes over a small plot of land.”

“I don’t think they taught me that in academy.”

“Well, if one of your instructors was a botany professor who was a Nobel Prize winner teaching postdocs at MIT, then it might have come up.” And I think I just won the contest between us of who can be the smuggest dick.

“Nope. They just taught us how to pepper spray suspects and choke them with our nightsticks without leaving any bruises.”

There’s no humor in his voice, just ice.

I remind myself that two of his fellow officers are in jail, his chief is a suspect in a meth ring, and people around here think they might be “disappearing” people.

I force a laugh, desperate to diffuse the tension. “Then let me stay on your good side. I’m just here because I’m trying to do the right thing.”

Gunther doesn’t flinch. He just stares at me.

Shit.

There’s a knock at the door that makes me jump.

Palmer pokes her head inside. “Lawson just went by Amber and Devon’s place. Neither of them are there.”

“What about Charlie?” I ask. “Anybody call him?”

“McKenna did. Charlie says he hasn’t heard from them all day.” She studies me for a moment, then leaves.

Damn. Amber and Devon are the only two who can corroborate how we found the body. Now they’ve taken off.

Undoubtedly, they’re nervous about all the attention this is going to bring to them.

“Tell me how you got your black eye.” Gunther doesn’t ask, he demands.





CHAPTER FORTY


PROBABILITY

Turns out Officer Gunther is a bully. I’ve met his type before. My policy has always been to avoid conflict and give them what they want.

Telling him how I got the black eye could make things bad for Devon and Amber. I’m bitter about what happened and still feel the pain, but I pity them.

There’s also the complicating factor of explaining why I went to meet a known prostitute in the shadiest situation you can imagine. If I heard the story secondhand, I wouldn’t believe my story. Sure, the single professor just wanted to meet the young girl in the abandoned building to talk . . .

I have to draw the line with Gunther. My knee is shaking at a frantic tempo. It takes all my effort to keep it from spreading.

“How did you get the bruise?” he asks again.

“I’m not here to talk about that,” I say feebly.

“You’re here to talk about whatever I ask you.”

I look up at the camera facing down on me. “I think I want to speak to an attorney now.”

“You haven’t been accused of anything.”

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