Torrent(26)

“Would have?” Simon asked. “Technically, you did work there, didn’t you? For a day?”
“It was three days, thank you.”
Though after the first day of cataloguing rocks at the cultural resource management center in Flagstaff, I’d been certain the job wouldn’t work for me. My professors had all warned me that real archaeology wasn’t anything like they showed in the movies, and I’d been prepared for days upon days of sifting through dirt without finding anything significant, but tedious and repetitive office work in a room without windows? With no field excursions on the calendar for the rest of the year? I couldn’t handle that. But I hadn’t been able to find any other openings in the field—I’d been lucky to get that one as a kid fresh out of college—and none of the archaeologists I’d talked to had been leading the lives I’d imagined anyway. I’d called Simon and asked if he thought I’d be nuts to quit, but he’d always had that entrepreneurial streak, and he’d come up with Rust   Relics right away. I wasn’t making any more than I would have at that entry-level job—and some months it was less—but we had spent a fun summer exploring the state and scampering all over the mountainsides, hunting for old treasures. Despite the sneers of my peers, it suited me. Or at least it had until the bodies started showing up.
“What can she do with the arrow?” Simon asked.
“Autumn specializes in the chemical identification of organic residues that’ve been absorbed into historic materials.”
“Uh huh, so what can she do with the arrow?”
“She has access to a good lab; if there’s anything interesting on the tip, she should be able to tell us what it is.”
“Ah.”
An interior door opened, and a lieutenant clutching a coffee mug walked out. He didn’t appear much more alert than the fellow at the desk. I gathered this wasn’t the usual nightshift crew. Monster attacks probably justified summoning on-call people.
The lieutenant thumped the other man’s desk on the way by. “Brew up another pot of your sludge, Thomas. We’re going to be a lot busier here soon.”
“Yes, sir.”
The lieutenant approached us and sat in one of the chairs. “I’m Detective Gutierrez. We’ll have coffee ready in a minute, and there’s water if you want it.”
“I’m fine,” Simon said.
Gutierrez had an accent, and I thought about trying my mediocre Spanish on him. He might think I was trying to butter him up. Enh, it couldn’t hurt. “Gracias. Cafés, por favor.”
He smiled at me—that was promising. “You heard the lady, Thomas.”
“Yeah, yeah, the sludge patrol is on it.”
“Get that metal detector out of the evidence locker too, will you?” Gutierrez pointed at Simon. “You were the one talking to Webster over at the Sheriff’s Office this afternoon, right?”
Simon perked up. “Yes. Did you find my Dirt Viper?”
“Fanciest metal detector I’ve ever seen. I can see why you’d want it back. Looks like it wasn’t stolen. You misplaced it. Some of their guys were called up there. They found it leaning against a tree.”
So, our pretty-eyed friends had been telling the truth. Though they’d still broken into our van and taken it. And why had they needed it anyway? According to Eleriss, they were tracking that creature. It wouldn’t have anything metal in it, would it?
“I left it in my van,” Simon said, “with the doors locked.”
“Hm,” Gutierrez murmured into his mug. He didn’t believe us, I could tell. Simon could, too, for his scowl was petulant. He had the sense not to argue though.
“Did you question the two guys on the Harleys?” I asked. “We thought they were the ones who took the tool.” I decided not to mention that we’d since chatted with them and they were the ones who’d taken it. “And we thought they might have something to do with... the body.”
“Our people didn’t see anyone up there when they arrived.”#p#分页标题#e#
“What?” Simon lurched forward to the edge of his seat. “But they couldn’t have gotten off the mountain so quickly. Not after we— I mean, they seemed like they’d be indisposed for a while. At least until someone got there.”
Maybe Simon wasn’t as adept at slashing tires as he thought. Or maybe those two had found a quick way to patch them. You could make glue out of pine pitch, after all.
The gurgling of a coffee pot had started up, the aroma filling the air. I wasn’t a huge fan of black coffee, but I could make an exception if I was using it as an all-night study aid. Or, in this case, a remain-alert-so-as-not-to-incriminate-oneself-to-the-police aid.