The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)

He slaps a palm into my back, slamming me into the wall. “Keep your mouth shut.”

This isn’t a denial. His reaction is an admission that he’s ashamed of his connection. If saying that caused this reaction, what I’m about to say is going to really get a response.

I brace myself, then say it . . .

“I know you fucked her.”

BAM! He kicks the toe of his boot into the back of my knee, and I stumble. A fraction of a second later, he grabs my neck and trips me over his leg.

I hit the concrete on the side, and it hurts like hell. But this isn’t enough. It’s not nearly enough.

“You fucked your cousin and turned her into a whore.”

“Shut the fuck up!” BAM! He lands a kick into the middle of my back.

I writhe in pain and see his bright-red face. There’s a bulging vein on his forehead—the same forehead he shares with Chelsea.

I do some quick math.

“How old was your cousin when you fucked her? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

“You think you’re funny?” He reaches down and slaps me in the face. The impact is so hard I can feel it in my jaw.

But it’s still not enough.

I fake a smile and grin up at him, giving him a target for his fury.

“I mean, was it mainly the charge of fucking a family member, or do you just like fucking little girls?”

The first punch to my head makes me see purple and red.

The second makes my neck give way, and I crack my skull on the pavement.

My last beating was from amateurs. This one is from a trained sadist.

The next blow is so hard I don’t even feel it when I pass out.





CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR


INPATIENT

I know I’m in a hospital. When, where, and why are a mystery to me. A female doctor with chestnut-colored hair, pink glasses, and faint wrinkles on a tan face is shining a light in my eyes.

She’s got a pretty face, but she elicits a feeling of vulnerability from me that’s stronger than any sense of attraction. I want her to mother me, which I suspect she’s been doing.

“Theo? Are you awake?”

She says something else to me, but my face erupts into an explosion of pain as I try to speak.

“Don’t say anything. We have your jaw wired shut.”

I glance down at my wrists to see if either of them is chained to the bed.

They’re not.

This doesn’t mean that I’m not under arrest, but their presence would have been absolute confirmation that I was.

I look around the room, trying to see where I am.

“This is Blue Lake Hospital,” the doctor says. “You’ve been here two days. You’re lucky Officer Gunther found you. He’ll be coming by later to get a statement about the men who attacked you.”

So that’s the story, and Gunther will be coming by to make sure that I stick to it.

I have no memory of what happened after that last punch, but I can imagine.

Gunther probably uncuffed me and put me in his squad car and drove me to this hospital. I’d be willing to bet it’s not the closest one to the police station.

This is the situation I was trying to create. Had he arrested me, I would have been seriously screwed and facing jail time. However, I wasn’t expecting the beating to be so savage.

The one I got at the hands of Devon and company was just meant to scare an out-of-towner. Officer Gunther’s beatdown on me was pure fury. It was primal.

For a brief second I got a glimpse of what Juniper and Chelsea saw in their last moments—except I suspect theirs was far more terrifying. Mine was just brutal.

“Just nod if you feel alert enough for me to tell you what’s going on.”

I give her a nod. She moves a chair close to the bed and has a seat. Her name tag says Dr. Talbot.

“You had a dislocated jaw. It popped back in pretty easily. Nothing is fractured. But I want to keep it stabilized for another day. It’ll be swollen for a few more, and I don’t recommend you eat any monster-size hoagies for a month. Understand?”

I nod again.

“You’ve got a costal cartilage fracture. That will hurt for a while but should take care of itself. Your face is pretty banged up, but your looks should come back. If you had any to begin with. If not, now is a good time to think about that nose job.” She gives me a smile. “So, the prognosis is nothing permanent. But you’re going to be sore for a while. I’ll give you some pain meds for the short term. We’ll see how you do in a few days. I recommend ibuprofen or beer after that.”

I hold my hand in front of my face and tap the palm.

“You want a mirror? Think you can handle it?”

I nod. She pulls a small hand mirror from the drawer in my bedside table and holds it up to my face.

My cheeks are fleshy lumps of purple and yellow. There’s a long blue line along my jaw surrounded by burst blood vessels.

As a paramedic I saw the results of a lot of beatings. You could almost deduce the incident by the kind of trauma inflicted. Bar fights had lots of eye injuries around the orbits and cracked ribs when the assailant had their victim on the ground and just took shots kicking at them—basically what happened to me when Amber’s friends let loose.

In domestic violence calls, I’d often notice a lot of burst vessels around the face, as the attacker would slap their victim over and over. Slapping was some kind of punitive response, not defensive. It’s meant to inflict pain, whereas a punch is intended to incapacitate.

After Gunther punched me, he started slapping me. I struck a deep personal chord within him. This wasn’t just because I humiliated him over his sexual involvement with Chelsea; I touched on something else—impotent rage. He couldn’t be there to protect her, a girl he helped make vulnerable. So instead, he diverted all that energy toward me. As I lay on the ground unconscious, and Gunther opened his fist to slap me, I don’t think he saw my face. It could have been his own, or more perversely, Chelsea’s.

Talbot pats me on the knee. “I’m going to let you get some more rest. If the swelling comes down, I might take the bandage off your head later on today. You’re a pretty fast healer. Try to keep that up.”

After she leaves, I stare at the curtains. Daylight trickles through swaying branches, creating a hypnotic pattern as the wind rocks them. Through a tiny slit I can see the snowcapped peak of a mountain in the distance.

I’m in a serene mental place because of all the painkillers. If I don’t move my mouth, I can almost forget the trauma my body went through. Better enjoy it while I can. In the next few days, it’s going to be excruciating.

And after that, then what?





CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE


DEPARTURES

I’m making notes on a yellow pad Talbot was kind enough to provide for me after she noticed I hadn’t touched the remote for the television.

I’ve been thinking of a kind of equation, a simplistic version of MAAT. I found Chelsea’s body fairly quickly once I understood how to narrow down the search area to find soil that had been recently disturbed. While I don’t know how well the local flora would cooperate in other areas, this worked pretty well for this part of Montana.

The equation is more of a program, a kind of if/then decision tree. It starts with calculating the likelihood of there being a missing person who fits the vulnerable profile and comparing it to geographical information and population density. In theory, I could change some of the variables and apply it elsewhere. Instead of looking for vegetation variations, I might use topological data to calculate where a killer might decide is the most remote yet accessible location to hide a body. Forensics specialists will use methane probes to look for decomposing bodies. Another means might be to use sonar to look for soil density and thermal imaging at certain times of day. A body buried underground would lose heat differently than surrounding earth.

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