Chapter 28
28
After a quick stop at a convenience store for some road snacks, they hit the road headed for Fairbanks. Maura watched the starlit landscape slide past the passenger-side window and tried to keep her heart from jumping out of her chest. In all her dealings with SS, she’d only occasionally felt physically in danger. Imprisoned, trapped, gaslit, manipulated, all of the above. SS used his size and physical ability as a means of intimidation, not to do actual harm. She’d come to Firelight Ridge so she could get away from him, not because she was in fear for her life.
Now? She was afraid. Her initial joy at the news that SS might finally pay for his actions had dissipated. How far would the Perkins family go to keep her from testifying?
“Maybe they just want to buy me off,” she murmured. “Make me sign an NDA or something. Maybe I’m being too paranoid.”
“It’s possible.” Lachlan didn’t sound very hopeful about that theory. “But wouldn’t it be enough for them that you had disappeared? Why go to the trouble of tracking you down?”
“Maybe they were afraid the other side would find me first. And maybe they did. We should see if Gil or Nick can find out more about who hired that investigator.”
“I’ll try to contact them when we get to Fairbanks. I wonder how the investigator knew to come to Firelight Ridge?”
“Good question.” Her mood lifted. “My parents could have suggested trying here. If they did, that means the investigator is working for that woman’s lawyer.”
“Did they mention that in the email?”
“No.” Despair sank through her like a stone. She’d been so free…for a brief time. Now it was all crashing down around her. “The Hopper PD probably figured it out. They have all the resources and connections. I was an idiot for thinking I could just disappear.”
He reached for her hand, which was resting on her thigh, and enclosed it in his gloved one. “Hey, I’m glad you tried. There’s probably no other reason you would have come to Firelight Ridge.”
Surprisingly, she felt her lips curve in a smile. “That’s one way to look at it.”
They chose a hotel that Lachlan had stayed at before, the Freshwater Lodge, which catered to Denali visitors in the summer and truckers in the winter. He paid cash and signed in with his name alone, while Maura waited in the car near a side entrance. If luck was on their side, no one would even know she was there. In case there were security cameras, she buried her face in her scarf and tugged her hat all the way down to her eyes.
Good luck ID-ing that , she thought, wishing she could flip a middle finger at whatever camera might be recording.
Once they were inside the room, with the drapes drawn and the deadbolt in place, she nearly collapsed with relief onto the king-size bed. “Look at that giant TV. And that hot shower in there. Mini-fridge. Multiple outlets for charging my phone. An actual cell signal. Wi-Fi.” She let out a long breath, then sat up straight. “Wait. This is weird. I’m actually missing Pinky’s. I want to stoke a fire, like, now. I want to see if there’s a poopsicle in the outhouse. I want to make smoke rings with my breath in the living room.”
Lachlan laughed as he flung himself onto the bed next to her. “Firelight Ridge got to you, didn’t it?”
“I think it might have.”
“It has a way of doing that. Why do you think I keep coming back? jokulhlaups happen around the world, not just here. But there’s something about that place…” A moment later, she heard a soft snore from his side of the bed. She couldn’t blame him, after driving five hours in the dark. But she couldn’t help feeling wistful. There were so many other, better things they could be doing in this bed right now besides sleeping.
Then he rolled over onto his side and set a hand on her hip, and they spent the next hour or so doing a few of those very things.
Although Lachlan wanted her to stay in the hotel while he brought the wolf saliva samples to the lab, Maura knew she’d go crazy if she was stuck inside alone with her thoughts.
“No one knows we’re here. Besides, I feel safer with you than alone. Let’s not forget the saber-toothed tigers,” she told him.
So they went together to the University of Alaska. Spread across a hilltop, the campus was a loose collection of beige concrete buildings punctuated by the gleaming white curves of a structure that made Maura think of a swan nestling in a field of geese.
“That’s the Museum of the North,” Lachlan told her. “It’s worth a visit, someday when we’re not in a crisis.”
She briefly tried to imagine what that would feel like—to amble through a museum with no fear of who might be following her—and felt a longing so intense it left her breathless. Never again would she take for granted the simple pleasures of existence, like…well, simply existing.
In the halls of the Department of Biology and Wildlife, they kept getting stopped by people who wanted to talk to Lachlan. She hung back, trying not to draw attention, which was easy because all anyone wanted to talk about was someone called Victor Canseco and the recent discovery of an ancient virus.
Finally, they found themselves in a spacious research lab, where Lachlan pulled up a chair next to an elaborate-looking microscope. He extracted the baggies with his samples from the small cooler he’d brought along, while she hovered next to him. “Can I help?”
“Not yet. Hang on.” He was fully focused on what he was doing now, prepping the sample on a piece of glass that he then slid under the powerful light of the microscope. He peered into the eyepiece and adjusted the controls. “No sign of any virus or other organism that I can see. Want to take a look?” He pulled his face away and beckoned to Maura.
“Sure, but I wouldn’t know how to spot a virus.”
“You wouldn’t be able to see a virus, they’re too small for this type of microscope. But you’d be able to see damage from a virus. It’s called the cytopathic effect. All of these cells look normal. See for yourself, if you want.”
He cleared the way for her, so she set her eye to the machine and caught her breath at the sight of the weird shapes swimming against the light under the glass. “Those are cells?”
“Yes, and you can see that they are all intact and have similar shapes. They don’t appear to be swollen with excess fluid, or have any vacuoles—clear spaces. The nuclei appear to be intact, with no displacement or fragmentation. Whatever was going on with that wolf, I doubt it was a microbe. I’ll run an antibody test for rabies to make sure.”
She stared at the sample for another long moment, fascinated by the ability to look inside another being’s blood. It was a whole different universe in there. Surely it could tell them something, in its own strange language.
When she let go of the microscope, she saw that Lachlan was dialing someone on his phone. “Hey, it’s me, I’m here at the lab. One theory has now been disproved. There’s no sign of microbial damage in the blood sample we took. I’ll still run the antibody test, of course. But I think we need some new theories.”
He must be calling his buddy, the wolf expert.
Lachlan caught her looking, and put the phone on speaker so she could listen. “Did the wolf you saw have a glazed stare?”
Maura and Lachlan shared a glance. “Not really.”
“Heavy salivation?”
Lachlan shook his head. “I wouldn’t say heavy.”
“Did it try to bite non-food items?”
“Does a plate glass window count?” asked Maura.
“It could. Let me know when you get the results of the antibody test. It certainly could be rabies.”
“I had another thought I wanted to run past you,” said Lachlan.
Maura glanced at him, surprised. He hadn’t mentioned any alternative theory. Maybe he’d been deferring to his expert buddy.
“Let’s hear it. You’re the one who saw this wolf up close. Did you take any photos or videos, by the way?”
He snorted, catching Maura’s eye so they could share in the amusement. “There was no time for that, believe me. It was such a primal experience that I forgot phones existed.”
“I understand. Humans and wolves go way back, and there’s a lot of residual fear there. So, your theory?”
“Yes.” Lachlan cleared his throat to explain. “It’s not fleshed out. It’s just a thought. What if it was neurological? What if something is interfering with the normal functioning of the wolves’ brains, in other words?”
Maura shivered as she pictured the wolf scrabbling its paws against the glass. It hadn’t looked in its right mind, but then again, she had no idea what a normal wolf would look like. She’d never seen one in real life before, only in movies.
The phone call switched to FaceTime, which Lachlan accepted. Roger Jones turned out to be a Black man in his forties, with horn-rimmed glasses and a sprinkling of gray in his close-cropped hair. “That’s a fascinating question. Are you imagining some kind of trauma?”
“Is that possible?” Lachlan lifted his eyebrows; clearly he hadn’t been thinking exactly along those lines.
“Sure. We know that animals of all types can suffer the aftereffects of trauma. It’s been documented in animals in captivity. You could even say they have psychiatric issues.”
Maura scooted closer to the phone. “Like what? Hi, I’m Maura, I’m a friend of Lachlan’s.”
Roger was so caught up in the scientific storytelling that he barely paused to return her “hello.” “A good example is birds, who tend to get obsessive when they’re traumatized. Horses get compulsive to a pathological degree. Some species will self-harm, such as whales and dolphins, especially in captivity. These are all emotional trauma responses. Sometimes animals will become especially aggressive when they’re under stress. But many of these studies involve animals like elephants or bears, species with a long history of being captured and abused by humans. Wolves are much more elusive. That’s one of the reasons I find them so fascinating. It’s extremely unusual for a wolf to come so close to humans. The snowmobile attack was strange enough, and now you’ve had a second encounter. What was the wolf’s eye focus?”
“Excuse me?”
“Was he looking you directly in the eye, or avoiding eye contact?”
Maura and Lachlan exchanged a glance, then he shrugged. “It’s really hard to say. I’m not sure he even saw us inside the house. Why does it matter?”
“A wolf will challenge another wolf with a fixed stare into its eyes. If he’s signaling submission, he’ll open his eyes wide and look away. Eye posture is one of the ways wolves communicate, along with an array of growls and whimpers, and of course scent.”
“Well, I don’t speak wolf well enough to say,” said Lachlan dryly.
Something occurred to Maura then. “Is it possible he saw his reflection in the window and was attacking that? Do wolves attack each other, generally?”
“Most wolf conflicts happen at the edges of territories, between packs. Within a pack, wolves manage conflicts with ritualized displays more than actual violence. Wolves are actually quite social. They like to play and they take care of injured pack members. But when one pack fights another over territory, it’s often deadly. The most aggressive wolves will often end up dead. Such fights will take place mostly in the lean seasons, fall and winter, when more territory means a greater chance of survival.”
“Well, that’s us right now,” said Maura. “I’m sure things are very skimpy out there in wolf territory. Maybe this wolf thought we were another pack.”
“Wolves know enough about humans to avoid them,” said Jones, as he pushed his glasses back up his nose. “They’re scared of us, which some might find hard to believe. But it’s true, and they have good reason, having been hunted to extinction in some parts of the world.”
“But in Alaska, wolves aren’t endangered, especially in our area.” Lachlan angled the phone back toward him. “In the Wrangells, wolves have plenty of space and territory. There’s no development at all past Firelight Ridge, just vast untouched mountains and ice fields. That’s why it’s so strange to even see a wolf. They have no need to expand their territory, nothing’s disrupting their habitat.”
“That you know about,” said Jones.
“It’s protected. It’s all part of the National Park. Other than some mining claims and grandfathered homesteads, I can’t think of anything else that could be bothering them. And those would all be small-scale.”
“The thing about the wilderness is, you really have no idea what’s going on out there, do you? It’s so vast.” He gave that comment a spooky, horror-movie vibe that made Maura shiver.
It didn’t seem to bother Lachlan, who stayed laser-focused on topic. “Do you think something might be disrupting their habitat and the wolves are reacting with atypical behavior?”
“It’s one theory.”
“Would an earthquake do it? We had a 5.6 a couple of months ago.”
Roger Jones shook his head. “Doubtful. Wolves are used to earthquakes.”
“What if it’s something physiological that’s influencing their cognitive function?”
“There would be only one way to determine that. You’d have to capture a wolf and bring it in for a brain scan.” Roger Jones laughed a little at that. “If you decide to go that way, I insist on being part of it. It must happen humanely.”
“I thought you were going to say safely.”
“That too. But wolves, you know, they’re my passion. You’re simply a colleague.”
Maura raised her eyebrows at Lachlan, who smiled and mouthed, “He’s teasing.”
“What if the wolf was dead? The way things were going, I wouldn’t be surprised if he beaned himself on a boulder and that would be that. Would you be able to tell anything from an autopsy of his brain?”
“Possibly. Remember Mad Cow disease, the misshapen proteins that eat away at the brains of cattle? Wolves are resistant to those prions, but some geneticists think that could change. Let’s hope it’s nothing like that, but sure, if you stumble across a wolf carcass, notify me immediately and keep it frozen.”
“No problem there,” said Lachlan dryly.
They ended the call shortly after that. Lachlan and Maura both slumped back in their chairs. It was a lot to take in. Lachlan propped one ankle over the other knee and bounced his leg in a nervous habit she’d grown to recognize.
“If there is some kind of habitat disruption, it might explain why we’ve seen other odd behavior in the wildlife.”
“Would it, though? Aren’t animals used to humans coming in and building and changing things? They just adapt. They move somewhere else, or they learn how to steal our food.” Maura snapped her fingers. “I read somewhere that mice have evolved to be better problem solvers because we humans hide our food from them.”
“Co-evolution,” Lachlan said thoughtfully. “But that happens over generations. In mice, that’s a quicker process because their lifespans are so short. Wolves live much longer. They can live up to thirteen years, as opposed to about a year and a half for a mouse. These changes that we’re seeing are more abrupt.”
“Something drastic is happening, then.”
“So it seems.”