Fatalis

Chapter Seventy-Seven

After Grand left the pit with Hannah and the Wall, Lieutenant Mindar sought them out. The officer wanted to thank the scientist for everything he did. Grand didn't say anything about that. All he said was that he was sorry he couldn't save Sheriff Gearhart.

"Don't be sorry." Mindar said. "The sheriff died the way a man like that hopes to die. With his boots on."

"And with his work unfinished," Grand said.

"Yeah. Well, you make your choices."

The sheriff's body was taken away with those of the other victims of the saber-tooth attack. Lieutenant Mindar said he would see to it that Gearhart was brought back to Santa Barbara for burial. Before leaving, Hannah asked if she could use what Mindar had said about Gearhart as her editorial eulogy. A simple quote under a photograph of the sheriff.

Mindar said sure. Hannah felt the sheriff would have appreciated that.

As Grand, Hannah, and the Wall headed back to the car they saw scientists from the Page Museum who had come to claim the cats, while city, county, and state health officials were also at the scene with mobile laboratories to take samples of human and saber-tooth blood, to ascertain whether those who were bitten might be at risk from unknown organisms.

The Wall drove them back.

Grand and Hannah sat in the backseat. Grand didn't speak. He just looked out the open window at the night sky that was rich with stars. Along certain stretches of the freeway, with the lights in homes and office buildings turned off, the sky barely moving as the car sped home, Hannah almost felt as though time had been rolled back. The sky was clear and the sea air smelled as it probably did millennia ago-the poor cats. They had to have been so confused. If she found herself suddenly transported to their time, Hannah wondered whether she would have wanted to stay alive. Whether she could have stayed alive.

Hannah looked at Grand. Yes, she decided. She would go if he were there. She took his hand. He squeezed it but he didn't take his eyes from the window, from the distant hills. Nearly an hour had passed, but he didn't move. She wondered where he was.

And then, suddenly, Grand looked at her.

"Do you have the geologic charts?"

"They're in the back. Why?"

"We have to go to Monte Arido."

"Now?"

"Yes," Grand said urgently.

"The National Guardsmen will still be there-"

"I know. That's why we need the charts."

"Why? What's there?"

"Something else the Chumash may have missed," he said.