Headlights(53)

“Here you go, hon,” the waitress says, putting the check and the box down in front of me. The shadow is now nearly wrapped around her.





16



Daphne isn’t at Mama Tried, and she’s not picking up her phone. I call the forensics lab, and they tell me she doesn’t come in on Mondays. Then I remember, she volunteers weekly at the museum, down in the entomology lab.

I drive over to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Make some calls on the way to send a caretaker to Pete’s grandmother’s house. Call Frazier to ask the status of everything else. Text Tillman again to ask for the recording of his talk with Mona Brown.

I ask at the museum desk if I can go back to the lab, and they tell me visiting hours are limited there, but her shift ends soon, and they’ll let her know I’m here. I get a museum ticket.

Too much spinning, circling, not connecting. Dancing and dancing through my fucking brain. I’ve always thought there might be something to the tooth, the canine, our early findings. To those bite marks. Why? Why can’t I let it go?

I head through the main lobby, beneath dinosaur skeletons and whales, and take the first entrance to the first room. I used to come and visit as a kid. Noel and I would watch the IMAX movies on animals and weather and foreign landscapes. Get books after in the gift shop.

Gray carpet, dark ceilings with that particular spare but intentional museum lighting and built-in seats in the center for viewing all sides of the exhibit. And the large middle interactive map: EXPLORE COLORADO FROM PLAINS TO PEAKS. Beneath the sign, black and gold inlay in local granite, a 3D topographic map of the state. Buttons that can light up all eight Colorado ecosystems and show their distribution: RIPARIAN, ALPINE TUNDRA, MONTANE FOREST, SUBALPINE FOREST, MONTANE SHRUBLAND, SEMI-DESERT SHRUBLAND, GRASSLAND, PI?ON-JUNIPER WOODLAND. Others illuminate the Continental Divide and the highest and lowest elevation points in the state.

Surrounding the gray low-lit room on all sides are nearly daylight-illuminated dioramas of Colorado’s ecosystems. The golden eagles in the grassland, the tarantula and tarantula hawk wasp locked in their eternal battle in the pi?on-juniper woodland, marmots, kings of the alpine tundra, the tree line of the subalpine forest rich with willow, daisies, bistort, chipmunks, firs.

A father and son push the buttons that illuminate the different ecosystems on the center map, and I walk around the edges of the room, taking in each diorama, each ecosystem flourishing with flowers, weeds, trees, reptiles, mammals, birds, competition, symbiosis, life.

My chest hurts, my head. Colorado, here, displayed so reverently.

“If you’ve really been all around the world,” I asked Noel once, “why’d you pick here?”

“Because,” Noel said, “we’ve just always known this was home.”

“But why?” I asked.

He said, “I think home is just a place that pulls on you harder than the rest.”

Noel’s hands on the buttons, illuminating the land.

“I’m more of a montane shrubland girl myself, but I see the appeal of pi?on-juniper,” Daphne says, nearly making me jump out of my skin.

I swear at the same time that she says, “Sorry. Forgot you startle easy.”

Daphne is here. I calm down after a second. She waits. We stand together in front of the diorama, and I have no idea what to say.

I take her in. Glasses, a green button-down with a big pin on it that says FEAR NO WEEVIL, a backpack slung over her shoulder. She says, “Is there … something with the case?”

“Do you want to get dinner?” I ask.

She hesitates, watches me for a moment, glances over to a taxidermied pine marten in the flowers. Then she says, “Okay. But you’re buying.”



* * *



Linger Eatuary is Daphne’s favorite restaurant. When we don’t go to Mama Tried, we’re always here. Formerly Olinger’s Mortuary, which once held Buffalo Bill’s remains, the warehouse-style brick building with the giant white neon cursive sign on top is an often-packed staple of Denver’s restaurant scene, leaning in to their colorful history by serving some of their drinks in formaldehyde bottles. We carpool over in my car from the museum and park in the lot across the street. Inside, we’re met with steel, iron, leather booths, and provocative large photographs. But Daphne and I walk straight to the elevator and take it up to the rooftop where we pass the enormous Olinger Mortuary–turned–Linger Eatuary sign and the old VW bus-turned-bar to the upper outdoor seating area looking over the city. The heat lamps are on in full force as we sit down at a table in front of the giant sign. It’s cold, even with the heat lamps. She orders a drink I haven’t heard of, and I get a whiskey.

“I looked for you at Mama Tried,” I say.

“Oh. Yeah. Haven’t been there in a while, actually.”

“Really?” She used to go all the time, with Josie and me, with groups of us after work. Just her and me on a weekend to play darts and talk about life. We met on a case, and it was one of those instant friendships that just suddenly clicks into place like you’d always been meant for each other’s lives. Sometimes we’d hang, the four of us, Josie, Daphne, Tess, and me.

She shrugs again.

I’m anxious, need to talk about the bite marks, but I need to be a decent friend for once too, something I maybe, hopefully, still know how to do.