Carnosaur Crimes (10 page)

“Just don't be fooled by what you see,” Knowles replied with a wise smile. “I may be a college dean, but I'm also an old cowboy at heart. If there's one thing I know, it's when to pull on my galoshes while mucking through a barn. Wear your boots, Ms. Phoenix. Absolutely.”

Chapter 13

“A good man does not take what belongs to someone else.”

Pueblo

On her way out of town, Ansel passed road signs pointing south toward the eight-thousand acre Makoshika State Park where the stolen foot bones had been excavated. She wished she could stop. Makoshika's water-eroded terrain had exposed the Hell Creek Formation and a rich record of fossil life including Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus.

Two years ago Pangaea members had hiked the Cap Rock Nature Trail that dropped one-hundred sixty feet along the canyon walls. They had spent the day viewing a short natural bridge, pedestal rocks, a gumbo sinkhole, and the fossil beds. The group had also enjoyed the many wildlife areas that contained a notable summer population of Badlands turkey vultures.

Ansel veered northeast along State Road 16 toward Sidney. To her right, the scenic white waters of the Lower Yellowstone River paralleled her journey. Once in town, she made a quick stop at the Eagle Café to get Chinese take-out and directions. Half an hour later she arrived.

The outside of Earthly Pleasures was a small up-scale antiquities business rather than a fossil warehouse. The two-story building had a decorative column portico, white stucco walls, and huge picture windows. Through the spotless glass frontage, Ansel saw dinosaur skulls and bones sitting on custom, laminated stands. Also visible were numerous sets of brass and glass display shelving units showcasing a variety of tastefully arranged smaller fossils.

An old-fashioned brass bell tinkled. The spacious interior was mostly oak wood: flooring, wall shelves, and storage cabinetry. All were situated to call direct attention to the ancient, museum-quality artifacts for sale around her. The store was empty except for a man standing beside a long glass counter twenty feet away.

“Good day. Welcome to Earthly Pleasures. I'm Hillard Yancy,” he said in a soft, squeaky voice before stepping toward her, hand extended.

Despite Dean Knowles opinion, the middle-aged Yancy looked more like a trustworthy insurance salesman than a fossil broker with shady connections to the black-market. He was short, stocky, and had a ringlet of short brown curls across his head. A set of thick glasses were perched on a flat nose. She shook his immensely strong and very calloused hand. All that digging, she surmised.

“Hello. I'm Ansel Phoenix. Phoenix Studios,” she added, passing him a business card.

Yancy released her hand and took the card. He glanced at it quickly. “The paleoartist? Well, this is a pleasure. Glad to meet you, Miss Phoenix. Your work is quite extraordinary. Have you come to sell me some of your paintings? I could use a couple in the shop.”

“You're very kind, Mr. Yancy, but I've come for more altruistic reasons.”

“Well, I can't help but notice that very unusual pendant you're wearing. That five-fold, radial symmetry on top tells me it's a sea urchin. Looks like
Rhycholampus gouldii
if my memory serves me right.”

Ansel touched the Iniskim. “That's right.”

“And that marvelous blue color,” Yancy said, cocking his head sideways to stare at the echinoid fossil. “Is that copper-based Chrondorite?”

“No. You're close. Azurite.”

“Ah, of course. Goes to show I'm strictly a bone man. You might be interested in my custom jewelry. They're made by local artisans.” He swept his arm toward another nearby counter. The shelves contained beautiful gold, silver, and copper necklaces or bracelets with a variety of polished fossil pendants and dangles.

Ansel saw mostly the ancient waterborne invertebrates such as trilobites, blastoids, crinoids, ammonites, cephalopods, starfish, mollusks, and snails. However, there was also some interesting oddities like strands of carved amber beads, fossil coral, or mammoth tusk. Fossil bone and insect inclusions rounded off the assortment of glittering accessories quite nicely.

“They're beautiful,” Ansel said, eyeing a hadrosaur bone ring.

“Thank you. Is there anything in particular you'd like to see, Miss Phoenix?”

“I'm just looking.”

“Then you should take one of these,” he said, reaching onto the counter and taking a thick glossy pamphlet. “This is my sale catalog. Let me know if anything interests you.”

“ All right. I also came to talk to you, Mr. Yancy.”

“What about?”

“Your business. I'm the former president of the Pangaea Society. Have you heard of it?”

A wariness flitted across his jovial features. He smiled thinly and crossed his arms. “Yes.”

“Well, I understand that your shop was robbed last week. There was a similar attempt to steal fossil dinosaur tracks from a museum in Big Toe the same night. Fortunately, it failed.”

“I heard about it and the robbery in Glendive. What's this got to do with me?”

“Two things. I'd like these poachers caught and punished just like you. Second, I'd like to save the fossil tracks that the robber didn't get from our museum property. The museum is on leased BLM land. It's being threatened with closure because of this incident, and the footprints may be removed to another institution. My town can't afford to loose the Bureau contract that allows the museum to operate as a public attraction, and the society is greatly concerned about this new development. Generally, we support the preservation of Montana fossil sites in their natural state, not hauling them off to distant federal archives.”

“I agree with you so far, but I don't see how I can help.”

“I need some information about what was stolen from you and what you know about any illegal poaching going on around here. Perhaps through word of mouth or your field experiences.”

“What makes you think I'd know anything about the black-market?”

Ansel was surprised at the hostile edge in his voice. “I'm not casting any aspersions, Mr. Yancy. Your line of work is far different from the scholarly members I usually work with. You have a different perspective on things, and I'd like to hear it.”

“Then pardon me for being blunt, Miss Phoenix, but I'm the last person your scientific society would invite to join because I'm strictly a commercial dealer. In their minds, I'm probably considered a thief despite the fact that I carefully excavate fossils from private land with owner permission. I have detailed documentation for every piece I take – who was involved, where it came from, and who I sold it to. I don't know a damned thing about the black-market, except that I've been victimized by it.”

“I'm not representing the society. I'm trying to get leads on the poacher who vandalized the museum so I can give that information to my local sheriff's department.”

Yancy rubbed his chin. “Then I'll tell you what I told the Sidney cops. Start with the Internet if you want to tap into the black-market. You can get any fossil you want online through fossil chat rooms or auctions. They don't have any verifiable pedigree, but rabid collectors don't care. Or you can go high-brow and buy your fossils directly from Christies of London, Butterfield's, or Bonhams at Knightsbridge. Get a complete fossil turtle for nineteen-thousand or even a whole Allosaurus dinosaur for a seven-hundred-thousand dollar bid. Who knows for sure if it's legally excavated or the provenance is real.”

Yancy's eyes flashed hot. “Those are the real big money crimes and you don't see the feds or scientists hassling these people, do you? Yet I'm often accused of using legal loopholes to steal fossils. It's crap, and I'm really tired of it.”

“I didn't mean to upset you,” Ansel consoled. “I'm trying to enlist your help.”

Yancy's tight, angry face slackened. “I've already been through this with the FBI, the police, and the insurance company. They ran me through a grinder.”

“Could at least tell me what was stolen?”

Yancy sighed, then nodded. “All right. Come back here, and I'll show you.”

He moved away and Ansel followed as he went to the rear of the store and through an oak door. The storefront was deceiving. Once beyond the grandly decorated showroom that customers saw, the building dimensions went straight back for another hundred feet. She took in everything she could as quickly as possible. Yancy wasn't going to put up with her snooping for long.

The room had a concrete floor and unpainted drywall panels. Large heavy wood tables crisscrossed the area, all of them covered with fossils in varying stages of cleaning, preparation, and mold casting. Assorted crates and boxes were crammed everywhere. The place smelled of plaster, dirt, and solvents. Yancy stopped next to a table holding some huge fossil vertebrae.

“This is my workshop. Some of these pieces I excavated myself and hauled back here to clean. Others I order piecemeal or wholesale uncleaned, finish preparing, and sell through mail order. If I don't move the fossils via that business, they go into the showroom. Usually things don't last long out there.”

“What did the robbers take?”

“Nothing from out front. From back here they stole some unprepared artifacts easy for a couple people to carry out. I lost a complete, eighteen-inch long Albertosaurus foot, a fifty-one inch long T-Rex humerus and a thirty-eight inch T-Rex footprint. Other items, they broke and left behind for spite. It makes me sick just thinking about it.”

Ansel looked around. The only other entrance into the room beside the showroom was a large steel garage door and a staircase on the right. “How did they get in?”

“I live upstairs. I wasn't home last Friday night. They broke in through a second floor window after cutting the alarm wires. Once they got down into the workshop through those stairs, they opened the rear garage doors and loaded what they wanted.”

She moved around the room, weaving between the work tables before stopping by a bench holding a complete dinosaur arm and plenty of cleaning tools, glue bottles, and non-abrasive solvents. A piece of paper on the table identified the piece as a Maiasaura limb being prepared for Montana State University. The once called “duckbill” dinosaur was a vegetarian that nested in huge nurseries which were first made famous in Montana by Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies.

“You do nice work, Mr. Yancy. Do you do a lot of fossil cleaning for outside facilities?”

Yancy shrugged. “It seems that way sometimes. It's a nice income when the shop sales are slow. Helps to pay the bills.”

“Before the break-in, did you see anyone suspicious?”

“The police asked the same question. Didn't see anybody or anything suspicious and, believe me, I watch for such things.”

“Have you ever noticed a young Indian man with a limp in your store before the robbery?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“He's the man who died while trying to steal the museum tracks. He was badly burned when his concrete saw exploded. Unfortunately, the Lacrosse authorities can't identify him.”

His snort was derisive. “The local police are no match for poachers, Miss Phoenix. They're high tech now. Helicopters, ATVs, night vision goggles, surveillance cameras, electronic bugs, computers, and Uzis. Fossils are the new stolen art of the Twenty-first Century. It takes a SWAT team to take them out.”

A vision of Outerbridge and his agents wearing body armor and toting their heavy-duty law enforcement gear through the Badlands jumped into Ansel's head. An eye for an eye.

“You make them sound invincible,” she replied. “I don't believe that.”

“Not invincible. Industrious,” Yancy corrected. “They never give up. They'll watch your dig sites, your shop, your home, and you. They'll find out your vulnerabilities and capitalize on them. The average fossil hunter, dealer, or curator can't fight back and personal confrontations with these thugs turn deadly.”

“You're right, Mr. Yancy. Fossil collecting is a very dangerous business these days. So why are you in it?”

“I guess I just like to play in the dirt,” he replied, smiling for the first time in a while.

The loud tinkle of the shop bell interrupted Ansel's next question. Yancy looked toward the open showroom door. “I've got to get that.” He disappeared, leaving Ansel alone.

She busied herself for about a minute, scouting the roll-top desk near the door and looking at the paperwork visible across the tiny wooden top. There was nothing interesting. Invoices. Computer print-outs. Sales lists. Topographical maps of northern Montana.

“Don't touch anything.”

Panic gripped Ansel as the voice resonated beside her. In an instant, her stomach withered into a tiny ball. Reid Dorbandt, an Earthly Pleasures catalog clutched in one hand and his wallet with gold badge gleaming in the other, radiated his aura of all-powerful jurisprudence directly toward her.

And he looked absolutely, positively pissed.

Chapter 14

“One ‘Take this' is better than two ‘I gives.'”

Unknown Southwest Tribe

“Tell me everything you've done,” Reid demanded. “No lies, no half-truths.”

Ansel swallowed the lump in her throat. She sat in his passenger seat looking through the front windshield at a Sidney convenience store where a field littered with bottles and trash, an overflowing dumpster, and scavenging grackles provided the view. That was better than a side window shot of the cedar-shingled QUIK-PIK studded with neon beer signs and loitering Indians who crossed the North Dakota line ten miles away looking for work or booze.

Ansel fingered her Iniskim and watched an Indian man wearing holey jeans and shirt gulp down a beer and stagger toward the dumpster. She winced inside. She'd had her own minor battles with liquor. Booze had always clouded her judgement where men were concerned and sent her into a downward spiral of self-pity.

After cornering her inside Earthly Pleasures, Reid had ordered her to wait in her truck until he finished questioning Yancy. Then he'd stomped to her driver's window and gruffly commanded her to follow him. He'd picked this wretched, depressing place to scold her.

Ansel tried to focus on the bright side. Reid was angry but going to listen to what she had to say for a change and he smelled good, a bittersweet combination of musky cologne and male sweat. It was also kind of cozy being together even if the police radio crackled out garbled code alerts while tepid air conditioning blasted their faces like a desert zephyr.

“Of course,” she said, fixing him with a serious stare. “I thought you were gone.”

“Hokay. Lie number one. Not a good start,” Reid huffed. “Three strikes, you're out.”

“Not everything's my fault. ”

Reid's eyes went squinty. “Lie number two.”

Ansel flopped against the seat. “All right. It's a long story. First there was Agent Outerbridge,” she began, then explained in detail about being flown into the Badlands and shown the destroyed fossil T-Rex. Except for grinding his teeth like an ornery stallion, Reid was quiet until she told him Outerbridge wanted her to join his sting operation.

“What?”

“I haven't agreed to anything. Outerbridge will contact me again and give his sales pitch.”

“When?”

“I have no idea. He needs me because I look Indian and know dinosaurs.”

“He's got LaPierre for chasing down fossils,” Reid said thoughtfully. “Why the tribal link?”

“Dixie mentioned that I'd be working with Agent Standback, and he's Indian, too.”

“So was our poacher. I'll get back to the subject of Outerbridge. What's the next adventure you had after the FBI meeting?”

“I had a run in with Agent Broderick this morning.”

“Go on.”

Ansel relayed how she'd gone to the museum to look at the riverbed and her Allosaurus model. Reid stared and let her ramble. Probably thought she'd spill more info that way than by interrogating her, Ansel decided.

“When I was looking at the Allosaurus, Broderick showed up. He was pretty nasty, Reid. He threatened to arrest me but issued me a citation for driving off-road on BLM land instead.”

“You were lucky he didn't lock you up and toss the key.”

“Thanks a lot. Broderick will do that if he catches me again, but what he really wanted to do was question me. He also became a physical threat.”

Reid's face finally registered another emotion besides calm disgust. Concern knitted his brow. “In what way?”

“Muscled his smirking mug right into my face, that's what. Said he knew that I'd been talking to Outerbridge and demanded to know what was going on. When I refused to tell him, he almost lost it. He's crazy because he thinks the sheriff's department and the FBI are trying to steal the thunder from his big poaching case. He said he'd be watching me.”

Ansel peered into his eyes. “It was pretty hairy for a few moments. I told him to get out of my way or I'd raise hell about it to everyone who would listen. He backed down, and I got out of there fast.”

Reid was looking into her eyes as well. His face softened dramatically before he placed his right hand on hers, which rested on her lap. “I'll take care of Broderick,” he said in his authoritative detective voice. “He won't be bothering you anymore.”

Reid's hand was very warm, and an electric heat surged up Ansel's arm. This was the first time that Reid had ever touched her in a truly personal way. Sure, he herded her around by the elbow or shoulder all the time while getting her out of his hair, but this was different. More friend and protector than dutiful cop. His voice may have been all business, but his expression and his body language said something else. And she didn't mind at all.

When she smiled at him, Reid drew his hand away and straightened up in the driver's seat, suddenly realizing that he'd been leaning toward her in a very unprofessional way. He swiped a hand through his brown, slightly spiky hair.

“So, how did you end up at Earthly Pleasures, Ansel?”

“I found out where the other fossil robberies occurred.”

“And how did you do that?”

“Ranger Eastover told me.”

He glared at her. “And when were you going to tell me?”

“When you told me that you knew the Indian poacher had eaten at Humpy's before trying to steal the tracks,” she countered. “All that crap about wanting a buffalo tongue sandwich was a lie so don't give me a speech about honesty and sharing information for mutual benefit.”

Ansel glared back at him and was pleased to see him squirm in his seat. He cocked his head sideways and cleared his throat. “You've made your point, but that wasn't a definite lead. That was a hunch I still haven't verified through the lab. So you went where with Eastover's information and did what exactly?”

“I went to the Glendive Community College and spoke with Dean Knowles first. He told me about the theft of a T-Rex foot on display in the library, but didn't see any Indian's hanging around before or after. He also told me about Hillard Yancy's break-in at the Sidney shop. That's why I went there.”

“And what did Yancy tell you?” he prodded.

“He denied selling fossils that he couldn't back up with paperwork or knowing anything about a local black-market. Still there's a lot of money tied up in the pomp and glitz of his store. The fossil inventory alone is staggering. I'm wondering where all that financial backing is coming from,” Ansel admitted. “Plus Knowles thinks Yancy is nothing but a fossil plunderer chipping down the walls of scientific knowledge because of greed.”

“I'll rake through both their backgrounds with a curry comb. You can count on that.”

Ansel's gaze gravitated toward the Indians outside. During the last year, she'd been cutting back on her drinking. Alcoholism ran in her mother's family genes like a poison, especially through relatives living on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning. She loved her heritage, but had to admit that most of her driven behavior came from trying to outrun the inherent social pressures of being a Native American. Still her personal decisions were her own.

Ansel swivelled toward Reid. “Listen, I'm going to hear Outerbridge out on his sting operation, and there's nothing you can do to stop me.”

“I don't plan to. I want you to help Outerbridge.”

“You're not going to argue?”

“No. I also want you to tell me what the FBI is up to. I expect a full report when you get back from the meeting as well as any other activities you engage in with the Feebees.”

Ansel stared a few seconds before responding. “You want me to be a spy?”

Reid shrugged his broad shoulders and grinned. “I'm a realist. Outerbridge has shut my department out. You keep me informed about the sting, and I'll tell you what I learn about the Indian from my out-of-town source. We'll collaborate, and you'll have the added bonus of me watching your back in case you get in too deep.

“Sounds like coercion rather than mutual trust. It stinks.”

Reid shook his head. “You just don't give up, do you? What are you always trying to prove with this Miss Independent routine?”

“Nothing. I want to know who that poacher was. The future of the museum depends on a positive resolution from the legal fallout of that attempted robbery. The FBI holds all the cards, and Broderick's an idiot. Your department hasn't identified the thief either. Time is wasting. Don't be mad because I'm willing to follow up any clue, no matter how farfetched it seems, in order to save the museum.”

“When are you going to get it through your head that this is dangerous?” Reid exploded at her. “You want to end up with a Teflon bullet through your chest or captured by a group of international criminals who'd use you up and throw you away like a disposable cup? How about some intelligent and rational thought here? For once, let somebody help you, Ansel. I'll get you the answers you want, and you'll live to do something with them. After what's happened to Chief Flynn, I'd think you would get the message.”

That brought her up short. “What did you say?”

His expression was dubious. “Don't tell me Big Toe's master sleuth doesn't know that Flynn has been missing since last night? It's been all over the radio and TV stations.”

“No, I didn't. I was on a desert bluff yesterday evening and left Lacrosse County this morning. Broderick didn't say a word to me about it,” Ansel fumed. “What's happened?”

“Flynn worked his usual shift on Sunday and left the police station around eight o'clock in the evening. He never got home. Nobody knew about it until Mrs. Flynn called the station looking for him at eleven p.m. Flynn's just dropped off the earth. No sign of him or his green SUV. We do know that he spent the day before his disappearance chasing down leads about the poacher. Sheriff Combs is about to call in the state police to help with the search.”

“You think he found the poachers and got in trouble?” Ansel queried.

“That's what we think. Flynn wouldn't disappear like this. He's an excellent officer. Experienced and reliable.”

She couldn't believe it. She'd known Cullen and his family since she was a little girl when they'd attended many parties at her parents' ranch. Those were the days when her mother had been alive. Cullen, had been there the Thanksgiving day she'd almost drowned to death.

In fact, she'd been underwater for forty minutes before the EMTs arrived, then rushed to the hospital where she was miraculously revived. The extremely cold temperatures of the pond water had shocked her body into a state of hibernation-like coma and ultimately saved her life.

The irony was, she'd almost died from complications; bacteria-laced water caused an infection in her lungs that took weeks to abate. The residual side-affects had been more insidious. Her entire life was spent battling chronic anxiety attacks triggered by the most innocuous sights, sounds, scents or touch of water.

Just thinking about the incident whirl pooled her memories to the surface. She saw a vision of the large snow-covered stock pond. Her breathing quickened, then her heartbeat. She remembered the feel of frigid wetness squeezing her skin. The slippery, unyielding hardness of ice beneath her tiny hands.

“You're right,” she managed to say. “Flynn would never put his family through that.” She dug into her purse. “Take this. I found it at the dinosaur dig site. None of the ERT saw me pick it up. Don't know what it is, but it's unusual.” She fished out the foil tab from her wallet and passed it to him.

Reid took it in the flat of his palm, careful not to touch the item with his fingers. “Looks like some sort of memory chip.”

“No kidding? I didn't think of that. What from? A computer?”

“Can't say. Maybe we can read it. I'll have it analyzed by the lab. You did the smart thing by turning this over to me. Thanks.” He took a napkin from the dash and carefully wrapped the tab up, then placed it in a suit pocket.

Reid started the ignition, and the engine turned over. “I've got to get going,” he said before flicking on the wind-shield wipers. He followed the motion by another that automatically sprayed water over the dusty glass. Rivulets snaked down the incline like speeding water bullets. “We'll do things my way. Agreed?”

Ansel shot a wide-eyed glance at Reid. He was totally unaware of the effect the squeaking wipers smearing dirt across the glittering silver bands of fluid would have on her. God, not now, she screamed silently. She had to get out of this claustrophobic space. Now.

Speechless, she turned and clawed for the door handle. She wasn't familiar with this car. She couldn't remember. The white noise on the radio became the low whooshing sound of water filling her ears. A mucky, mud smell wafted up her nose, and a visceral panic spread through every organ and muscle.

“Ansel, what are you doing?” Reid demanded.

She couldn't see his face, didn't want to. She flailed at the door, at the window glass. A thick blackness edged her vision, telescoping inwards across her eyes. A flashback. She knew the symptoms so well.

“No, no, no,” she whimpered.
Don't let him see me like this
. Tears rained down her cheeks. Suddenly it wasn't glass at all. It was a sheet of ice covered with hoarfrost. She couldn't see through it. Impossible. She knew that, but it didn't squelch her growing hysteria.

“What's wrong?” Reid's voice echoed from far away, receding speedily.

In an instant, she was underwater, her vison filled with murky green fluid swirling with brown algae, dead plants, and decaying matter. Dim light from the ice hole above speared into an infinity of darkness below. No sounds except the splash of liquid and the gurgle of air bubbles coming from her screaming mouth and running like mercury beads along the underside of the ice. And the cold. Bone deep. Mind numbing. Can't breath, Ansel realized, her fists bleeding from striking the ice. Momma. Daddy.