Bestiary

“I need you to bring up the list of catchwords.”

“We just did that.”

“No, not just the ones we’ve already deciphered and catalogued; I want the ones that are still remaining. All of them in the exact same order that they show up in the quires.”

“Aren’t we kind of getting ahead of ourselves? Didn’t you say that the way to do this—”

“Forget what I said, okay? This is more important.”

Suddenly Elvis looked stoked. “Hey, you look like you’re on to something.”

Beth didn’t reply; she was riffling through the pile of photocopies on her desk, removing all the sheets that had, as a result of completing a quire, been embellished with two or three catchwords in the lower right corner.

“Aye, aye, Captain Kirk.” Elvis crammed the rest of the cookie into his mouth and began to correlate the printouts Beth handed him with the same images on the computer screen. Then he highlighted the catchwords and moved them onto the master list. “You know that you’re only going to have the Latin for these, right? We haven’t completed the lexicon or the graphemical database yet, so we can’t do the simultaneous translation.”

“That’s okay,” Beth said, still not looking up from her work. “I’ll muddle through somehow.”

Elvis went back to his keyboard. “That is so cool,” he said under his breath. “You’re a total babe and you can read ancient Latin.”

Even in the midst of this potentially huge discovery, the words “total babe” were not entirely lost on Beth.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Carter didn’t know who needed it more — Del or himself — but a few solid hours of hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains felt like just the right ticket.

Although they’d both always enjoyed going out on digs in remote places all over the world, Del was the one who couldn’t abide city living. When he wasn’t cooped up in a lecture hall or delivering a paper to a symposium somewhere, Del was out in the woods, hunting, fishing, bird-watching. He had a separate meat freezer up in Tacoma, just to store the meat and game he shot — sometimes with a bow and arrow — on his various expeditions.

Today, the hiking conditions were quite different — eighty-five degrees or so, with an overcast sky and only the faintest breeze.

“You’re sure you want to hike in this weather?” Carter had asked, and Del had said, “You bet!” without a moment’s pause. “If I don’t get out of this city and into a little wilderness soon, I’m going to pop my gourd.”

Carter wasn’t sure if the hiking trails up into Temescal Canyon would really qualify, but it was the closest thing he could offer. He picked up Del at the fancy Wilshire Boulevard high-rise where he was staying with his sister — she’d married a movie studio executive — and as they drove off, Del visibly shuddered. “You know they’ve got a guy there who parks your car for you? And another one who brings up your groceries? And a concierge — a concierge! — to take your deliveries and your dry cleaning?”

“I bet the place is even air-conditioned,” Carter said with a smile.

“Damn straight it is,” Del replied, “but I slept out on the balcony last night.”

Carter wondered what on earth Del’s brother-in-law must make of him.

As they pulled into the canyon parking area, Carter was glad to see just a few other vehicles — a Pontiac, a couple of SUVs, a private patrol car — parked there. Del wouldn’t go for lots of people blocking the trails, and, frankly, neither would he. He wasn’t crazy about getting stuck, as he had recently, behind a bunch of teenagers, bopping along to their iPods and swigging from cans of Red Bull. He paid five bucks for the parking pass, and as he stuck it on his dashboard, Del shook his head sadly.

“You have to pay just to leave your car here?” he said. “Up in Washington, we pull it off the road and go.” He slung his nylon backpack onto his shoulder. “How do you stand it, Bones?”

“It’s called civilization,” Carter said, “and I made my peace with it long ago.”

Carter grabbed his own pack, which held nothing more than some Gatorade, some sunscreen, his wallet, and his keys, and they headed off across the picnic area, then up onto the trail. Carter went first, and he could hear Del taking deep breaths behind him, savoring the fresh air and the tang of the dry sage scrub. They crossed a narrow wooden footbridge over a trickling stream, and Del said, “Hardly needs a bridge, does it?”

“This is L.A.,” Carter said. “Be glad there’s no toll.”

But with every step that they climbed up into the hills, L.A. fell farther and farther away. For once, you heard no car horns, you saw no gas stations or 7-Elevens or Burger Kings. You weren’t looking over your shoulder, or into your rearview mirror, for what was coming up fast behind you. The Santa Monica Mountains, which pretty much bifurcated the sprawling city of Los Angeles, formed the largest urban wilderness in the country, and even Carter found it a necessary tonic. Ever since he’d moved west, he’d been poking around, every chance he got, into the various recreation areas and mountain trails. La Jolla Canyon. Escondido. Santa Ynez. The Circle X Ranch Grotto. Bronson Canyon. Zuma. Saddle Peak. There were dozens of places, some just minutes away, where you could get off the urban grid and, with a pair of sneakers and a bottle of water, get back into nature and leave your city troubles behind you. Right now, Carter had plenty of city troubles to leave behind.

He seldom went more than an hour or two without remembering Geronimo’s tar-covered corpse or his strangely comprehending dead stare.

“Say,” Del asked, as they paused to let a gray quail and her chicks skitter across the trail, “did they ever get a name for that guy who fell into the pit?”

“Yes, they did. It was William Blackhawk Smith.”

“They say what tribe he was from?”

“Chumash.”

“Not many of them left.”

And now, Carter thought, there’s one less.

They continued up the trail, Carter mulling over, despite himself, the events of the past couple days. After the body had been recovered, the medical examiner had immediately claimed it. But in order to avoid the protestors still holding their vigil out front, it had been zipped up into a body bag, loaded onto a canvas stretcher, and spirited out the back gate of the museum grounds at dusk.

As for the bones of the La Brea Man, Carter had managed to keep a lid on the latest discovery there — only he and Del knew that the man had been clutching something, something precious or important to him, in the moments before his death. While everyone in Pit 91 was focused on the dangling corpse of William Blackhawk Smith, Del had quickly removed what tar he could from the mysterious object, and then slathered the whole thing with the same plaster of paris that was now covering the rest of the bones. Carter was very grateful that he had. If word of this development had gotten out, Gunderson, who never learned his lesson, would have probably issued another press release.

“The trail marker said there was a waterfall a couple of miles up,” Del said.

“Sometimes it’s running,” Carter replied, “but these days it might be dry.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Del said. “Anything beats being down in the pit on a day like this.”

Way up ahead, Carter saw a young couple — a Hispanic guy and a blonde girl in shorts that said JUICY across the backside — sauntering up the path. The trail was wider than usual here, and the boy was holding her hand. Carter remembered hiking in Scotland once with Beth, and taking her hand as they stood on a rocky crag. She’d called him Heathcliff and he’d called her Cathy, “my wild, sweet Cathy,” for the rest of the trip.

This lower portion of the trail occasionally veered close to a service road, so you couldn’t help but see the occasional ranger truck, or even an outbuilding or two, through the trees and brush. Carter wanted to get higher up, and further in, and he suspected that Del felt the same way. Even when they looked up into the hills, you could still see the back of a house, poking out here and there, on the side of a neighboring slope. Putting his head down, he started to climb higher and more deliberately, quickly passing the hand-holders and, at the first fork, taking the steeper and more roundabout path that led to the falls. Behind him, he could hear Del marching along, and every so