Blood Hunt

7

The TV morning news warned citizens to drive cautiously. Fog had rolled in overnight and blanketed the entire city so heavily that it lay in a dim, shadowless twilight. Foghorns sounded from Mile Rocks east to Fleming Point and from Point San Pablo south to Hunters Point. Garreth reveled in it. Daylight remained above it, weighting and weakening him, but not as heavily. He felt almost comfortable on the sofa, feet on the coffee table, dialing the number of the biology department at the University of San Francisco.

“My name is Garreth Mikaelian. I need to talk to someone who can tell me where certain kinds of shark teeth are found.”

He would have thought that was a simple request, but the phone went on hold for what seemed an eternity before a reedy male voice said, “This is Dr. Edmund Faith. You’re the gentleman who needs to know where to find certain breeds of sharks?”

“No, I need to know where their teeth are found. The other day I cane across a black shark tooth in a shop on Fisherman’s Wharf and I’d to find another and have a pair of earrings made for my wife’s birthday. However, the girl in the shop had no idea where the tooth came from and neither did anyone else I asked.”

“A black shark’s tooth?”

“Yes. What part of the world do they come from?”

“A black one would be a fossil. You need to talk to a paleontologist.”

Par for the course. How many investigative lines had he followed that went just like this. “Can you suggest someone, please?”

“Try Dr. Henry Ilford.” He gave Garreth a phone number.

Garreth jotted the number down, and dialed the new number.

Dr. Ilford, a secretary informed Garreth, was out. Please leave a number.

Garreth remembered from his brief college days how difficult it could be finding a particular professor when one needed him. “Might I talk to a grad student, then.”

“I’ll see if any are in their office.”

The phone went on hold again. Garreth drummed his fingers. As much as he preferred phoning to running around in daylight, perhaps he should have driven to the campus. On hold he found it too easy to imagine the secretary finishing a letter then going on coffee break, forgetting about him.

Before long, though, another voice came on the line, pleasantly female.

Garreth repeated his question. “Can you tell me areas of the US where black fossil shark teeth are found?”

“Well.” She drew out the word. “Fossil shark teeth can be found in about seventy-five percent of the country. It’s almost all been under water at one time or another.”

Garreth sighed. Seventy-five percent? So much for the tooth as a lead to Lane’s background.

“But,” the young woman went on, “the only places I know to find the black ones are on the eastern seaboard and in western Kansas.”

Garreth scribbled in his notebook. “Just there? How easy are those teeth to find?”

“I think you have to dig back east, but they’re close to the surface in Kansas.”

Close to the surface. “Then a kid might find one without much trouble?”

“I’m sure he could. I’m told it’s possible to pick them up just walking across a plowed field or in the cuts along roads and streams.”

Which could be how Lane acquired hers. He recalled the other fossils in the type tray. “Are there many kinds of fossils available in the Kansas area?”

“The limestone is full of small things like shells, yes.”

He thanked her and lung up, then sat staring at his scribbled notes. Kansas. The postmark the lab brought up on the burned envelope had a 67 in it. Harry said that Zips starting with 67 were all in Kansas. He ticked his tongue against his teeth. Did the trail smell warmer?

Garreth went back to the phone book, this time for the number of the anthropology department. “I need to talk to someone who can tell me where immigrant German and Russian groups settled in this country.”

That brought him more interminable time on hold while the secretary hunted up a likely prospect. She came back suggesting he call in two hours, when a Dr. Iseko would be in his office. He had no grad student or teaching assistant handy.

Hanging up, Garreth sat considering Zip codes. If the one on the envelope did start 67, maybe he could find a western Kansas town with the letters visible on the postmark. What had they decided? The first letter had to be B or D, with the slanted visible feet making the next letter most likely an A, followed by something with a curved lower line: C, O, or U. Or G or Q. He brought his road atlas in from the car and went through the Kansas section of the index for possible matches to the town name on the postmark. Eight started with BA or DA followed by C, U, or G. Possibly wasted effort if Dr. Iseko said Swedes and Scots settled Kansas. With a town named Dauphin, Frenchmen may have. Bachman and Baumen sounded German, though.

He read on down the list for other German or Russian sounding names. Goessel fit that, and Liebenthal. Then one name leaped at him: Pfeifer! Garreth turned hurriedly to the Kansas map and located Pfeifer. Liebenthal and another German-sounding town, Schoenchen, lay just miles from it. After locating Bachman on farther south, he clenched a fist in triumph. Yes! None of the town names sounded Russian but so many Germanic ones had to be more than coincidence. He might not need the anthropologist’s input…except facts should always be verified. In case your theory turned out wrong.

He tried Dr. Iseko again and this time reached him. “I’m a researcher working for the author James Michener. We’re interested in finding a community of German immigrants in Kansas living in close proximity to Russian immigrants.”

“I’m afraid there are none like that in Kansas,” the anthropologist replied.

Garreth’s stomach dropped. He swore silently in disappointment. “What’s the ethnicity of…” He pretended to be consulting notes. “…the town of Pfeifer, then?”

“Where exactly is that in Kansas?”

Garreth checked the road atlas. “Near Hays.”

“Ah.” At the other end real papers rustled. “Ellis County. That area was settled by a group called the Usere Lueute, or Volga Germans — or Rooshans, as they’re called locally — Germans who immigrated to southern Russia 1763 at the invitation of Catherine the Great, who promised them land, religious freedom, and freedom from military conscription. When that seemed about to be revoked a century later, they immigrated to this country.”

Something electric sizzled through Garreth, standing his hair on end. “Rooshans? They’re a kind of mixed German and Russian, then? Does their language reflect that?” Claudia said Lane spoke a hodgepodge of German and Russian.

“Yes, indeed. It’s a very unique language. An acquaintance of mine wrote his dissertation on it.”

Garreth’ pulse jumped. He forced his tone to remain politely inquiring. “How large an area did they settle?”

“The Catholic group is mainly around Ellis County. However, there are Lutherans and Mennonites, too, spread out farther…into Bellamy and Barton counties, and some into Rush and Ness.”

Garreth wrote it all down. After thanking the doctor and hanging up, he scrambled back to his atlas. Bachman lay in southern Ellis County, about ten miles west of Pfeifer, and he located Baumen northeast in Bellamy County. Another call, this one to the reference librarian at the central library, who, when he again trotted out the magic name of James Michener, consulted the library’s collection of phone books and informed him yes, there were listings for Biebers in both Bachman and Baumen, Kansas.

He hung up with excitement almost negating the misery of daylight. It fit. It all fit. Lane had to come from that area, either Bachman or Baumen. Though he could not be certain without further investigation. Investigation not possible by phone.

He had to go there in person.