Dangerous Minds

  She had a second glass of wine and decided to stay in her apartment. She’d get a good night’s sleep and get an early start in the morning.

  Shortly after two A.M. Riley was dragged out of sleep by a car alarm. She padded barefoot to the kitchen window and looked out at the dark alley. There were three cars parked there beside hers. The alarm was coming from one of the cars. She fumbled through the purse she’d left on the kitchen counter, found her keys, and pressed the panic button. The alarm stopped wailing. She squinted at the parked cars. Everything seemed okay. No extraneous cars lurking in the shadows. No one skulking around. She ate half a tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream and went back to bed.

  At seven the next morning, Riley finished the tub of ice cream and washed it down with two cups of coffee. By eight she was showered and dressed and had her coffee mug rinsed and in the dish drain. She had a small overnight bag packed with a few essentials in case she decided to spend the night at Mysterioso Manor. Wouldn’t hurt to have this in her car, she thought. She grabbed a sweatshirt, headed downstairs, and walked out the back door to the alley. She pulled up short when she reached her car. A hatchet was sticking out of the Mini Cooper, the blade embedded in the hood.

  Her first reaction was to run through her extensive vocabulary of cuss words. Her second reaction was to look around, because if the jerk who vandalized her car was still there she was going to punch him in the face. The face-punching phase was cut short when it occurred to Riley that the vandal might be a psychopathic maniac. At closer inspection she saw that there was writing on the hatchet handle. Curiosity killed the cat.

  She took a picture of the car and the hatchet with her smartphone and tried to pull the hatchet out of the hood. It wouldn’t budge, so she got into the car and headed for Mysterioso Manor. She was halfway there when Emerson called.

  “Are you on your way?” he asked. “I’ve been working all night and have something very interesting to show you.”

  “I’m on the road. I have something interesting to show you too.”

  FIVE

  Vernon and Emerson met Riley as she pulled into the circular drive. Both men stood hands on hips, looking at the hatchet. Riley got out of her car and joined them.

  “That’s not going to do you any good at trade-in time,” Vernon said.

  Emerson glanced at Riley. “I believe it’s safe to assume this isn’t your work.”

  “Someone set my car alarm off at two o’clock this morning. When I stepped out of my apartment to come here, I discovered the hatchet. The message on the hatchet handle is Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “Ominous,” Vernon said. “Being that you don’t have a cat.”

  “I like my Mini,” Riley said. “And now it has a big gash in it.”

  “Looks like they sliced a hose,” Vernon said. “You’re leaking vital fluids. You’re lucky you made it this far.”

  Riley looked at the liquid trickling out from under her car. “I’m really mad at someone,” she said.

  “If you connect the dots between the message on the handle and yesterday’s confrontation at the Park Service office, you might deduct that a hatchet serves as Tin Man’s calling card,” Emerson said.

  “Like in The Wizard of Oz,” Vernon said. “The Tin Man always had a hatchet! You know what I’d like to see? One of them flying monkeys from that movie. Boy, they were really something. I loved those monkeys. The Wicked Witch had a whole army of them.”

  “I’m going to need a raise if I have to deal with a psycho with a hatchet,” Riley said.

  “How about a million-dollar smile?”

  Riley accepted the smile and followed Emerson into the house. She thought it was an interesting idea that someone named Tin Man would be running around impaling cars with his hatchet. Sort of funny, right? Unless it was her car. Still, that didn’t mean it was true. Hard to believe she had made herself enough of a nuisance to warrant Tin Man defacing her car in the middle of the night. Surely he had better things to do.

  “How’s Wayan Bagus doing?” Riley asked.

  “He’s experiencing a period of adjustment. He exploded a bean burrito in the microwave this morning. Aunt Myra won’t be happy when she returns.”

  “I thought you had a cleaning service.”

  “They quit. Vernon left the door open two days ago, and one of the zebras strolled in and left a package in the kitchen.”

  “When your father created his own personal zoo I don’t imagine he envisioned a zebra in the kitchen.”

  “My father had a large staff of professionals. I’m working with a skeleton crew of mostly geriatric leftovers.”

  “From what I see of your finances I think you could well afford to keep the large staff of professionals.”

  “They were annoying. Leaf blowers, power washers, prima donna animal groomers and landscape artists. People underfoot in the house and on the grounds all day long. I prefer to let the animals roam and the weeds take over, and be at one with nature.”

  “What about the package in the kitchen?”

  “I gave it to the gardener. I believe he needed it for the tomato plants.”

  Riley made a mental note not to eat the tomatoes. “You said you found something interesting.”

  Emerson led Riley into the library. He pulled an extra chair up to the table he was using as a desk, and they both sat down. The massive book on the table was titled Plumes: A Journey to the Center of the Earth. A bunch of newspaper articles had been stacked up alongside the book.

  Emerson opened the book to a world map showing red, green, and yellow dots of differing sizes at various geological locations. Samoa had a big red dot, and there was a circle drawn around it with black marker.

  “I suppose this means something?” Riley said, tapping the circle.

  “It does, but I want you to see for yourself. Read through the first stack of newspaper articles.”

  There were fifty-two different stories, spanning the last couple years. Riley read through some of the headlines. USA Today: “Hikers Disappear Without a Trace in Yellowstone.” Hawaii Tribune-Herald: “Murder in Volcanoes National Park.” The Oregonian: “Brothers Drown in Crater Lake.” The New York Times: “Australian Tourist Boat Vanishes in Galapagos—20 Presumed Dead.”

  “Last month there was a news story about a couple hikers who fell into one of the hot springs at Yellowstone and were boiled alive,” Emerson said. “The acidic water completely dissolved them within a day.”

  “Horrible.”

  “I agree. And it might be the perfect crime. Turns out there are stories every year about visitors dying or going missing in our national parks.”

  “Another conspiracy theory for Vernon’s blog?”

  Vernon’s main claim to fame was a blog called Mysterioso, where he published Emerson’s many theories, crackpot or otherwise.

  Emerson smiled. “You studied statistics at Harvard as part of your MBA, right?” He opened his laptop and downloaded a list of deaths at every national park, by year, since the early 1900s. “What do you make of this?”

  —

  It was almost one o’clock by the time Riley finished charting the national parks deaths. “Do you know anything about regression analysis?” she asked Emerson.

  “It tries to see if data gathered from something fits into a mathematical model.”

  “Right.” Riley held up the paper with her calculations. “In this case I used the data you gave me on deaths at national parks and tried to fit it into an actuarial model used by insurance companies to predict accidental deaths. If you look at the total number of deaths in national parks over the past ten or so years, there’s nothing statistically significant.”

  “And when you look at individual parks?” Emerson said.

  “At a handful of them, there are statistical anomalies. Too many accidents resulting in fatalities when compared to other parks. Statistically speaking, there’s less than a three percent chance it’s mere coincidence. Of course, there could be other variables, o
nes I don’t know about, affecting the results.”

  “Exactly,” Emerson said. “There could be other variables. I’m interested in those other variables.”

  “Don’t you want to know which parks?”

  “I already know which parks.”

  Emerson returned to Plumes: A Journey, still open to the world map, and he used the marker to circle the rest of the red and yellow dots in the United States. “Yellowstone, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Oregon Crater Lake, and, of course, the National Park of American Samoa.”

  “That’s right! How did you know?”

  “Wayan Bagus’s stolen island. It has beaches and rain forests. But most important, it has a volcano. I found it odd that certain national parks were death magnets and thought there might be a connection.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is the site of Mauna Loa and Kilauea, two active volcanoes. Crater Lake National Park in Oregon is the deepest lake in the United States and the ninth deepest in the world. It’s the caldera of an ancient vast volcano that forms Three Sisters Wilderness. And Yellowstone is one of the most geothermally active areas in the world and the site of an inactive super-volcano.”

  “Volcanoes are dangerous,” Riley said. “Boiling hot springs are dangerous. Couldn’t that explain it?”

  “It might. Except that these aren’t just any volcanoes. Plumes: A Journey identifies all the sites as suspected mantle plumes.”

  “What’s a mantle plume?”

  “The vast majority of volcanoes are formed from shifting tectonic plates, and the magma comes from fairly close to the surface of the earth. Rarely, they’re fueled by magma directly from the earth’s core. Volcanoes fueled directly from the earth’s core are called mantle plumes.”

  “So we have statistically unlikely accidents occurring at national parks that just happen to have been created on the sites of mantle plumes.”

  Emerson smiled. “Seems rather unlikely that they’re accidents, don’t you think?”

  “Then what?”

  “Murder. Somebody is murdering people at these national parks, but the really interesting question is why.”

  He was connecting the dots again, Riley thought. And he was doing it with at least half the dots missing, so what were the chances he was reaching the right conclusions? She thought the chances weren’t good. It was a big stretch to connect a bunch of murders to mantle plumes. Not that this surprised her. Emerson was a conclusion jumper. It was the way his mind worked. It was a game for him. And sometimes he actually jumped to a significant conclusion. Other times, the idea would run its course and get discarded.

  “This is really, really good,” Emerson said, beaming out happiness. Radiating excitement. “We now have a missing island and a murder mystery!”

  Riley didn’t want to ruin his fun, but she thought this was right up there with Tom Hanks delivering a sculpture to Emerson’s house.

  SIX

  Emerson had his knapsack hung from his shoulder and his hand wrapped around Riley’s wrist. He was tugging her forward, out of the library, out of the house, and toward the garage, making sure she kept up with his long strides.

  “I had a Tesla delivered an hour ago,” Emerson said. “It’s fuel-efficient, and only the steering wheel is made of leather. The seats are genuine cloth. This car is almost entirely karma-friendly.”

  She was all in favor of friendly karma, Riley thought, catching sight of the shiny new Tesla. Maybe some of the good stuff would drift over onto her Mini Cooper. God knows the Mini needed some help. It was parked next to the Tesla, and Vernon was standing on the hood, trying to remove the hatchet and not having any luck. Wayan Bagus was watching.

  “I can’t get this dang thing out,” Vernon said. “It got wedged between something in there. Offhand I’d say Tin Man got a mean streak.”

  “We aren’t sure Tin Man did this,” Riley said. “It could have just been a random maniac.”

  Emerson handed the Tesla key fob to Riley, and an iPad to Wayan.

  “What is this?” Wayan asked.

  “It’s an iPad,” Emerson said. “I loaded Angry Birds onto it for you.” He motioned to the car. “Everyone in. The game is afoot.”

  Riley looked over at Emerson. “You said that two nights ago.”

  “I like saying it,” Emerson said. “It’s one of my favorite things to say. The game is afoot. The game is afoot.”

  Wayan Bagus and Vernon got into the back seat, and Vernon leaned forward.

  “Where are we going?”

  “George Mason University,” Emerson said. “I have some questions to ask the vulcanologist.”

  Vernon grinned. “Well, shoot, Emerson, it’s about time. Course, them scientists living in their ivory towers don’t know anything but theories. I’ve got what you call practical experience.”

  Riley put the car into gear and drove down the driveway. “Vernon, do you know what a vulcanologist studies?”

  “I sure do.” He ear-muffed Wayan Bagus. “It’s all about lady parts.”

  “A vulcanologist studies volcanoes,” Emerson said. “You’re thinking of a vulva-ologist. And also, there’s no such thing.”

  “Well, shoot. That’s disappointing.” Vernon removed his hands from Wayan Bagus’s ears and turned to his cellphone. “Emmie, I got another one of them emails threatening to sue us for defamatory comments in the blog.”

  “Who’s threatening to sue us this time?”

  “Government lawyers. They didn’t like the entry I posted last night.” He grinned. “It was awesome. I called it ‘Death Parks: Fact or Fiction?’ They say I’m causing irreparable damage to the reputation of the national parks and inciting panic.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t heard from Tin Man,” Riley said. “Shocking that he didn’t sneak into your RV and whack your laptop with his hatchet.”

  Emerson looked over at her. “I suspect you made your statement in jest, and while it was a humorous thing to say, there is an underlying element of perhaps.”

  “Perhaps what?” Riley asked.

  “Vernon’s blog goes out at midnight. Two hours later someone inserted a hatchet into the hood of your car. Perhaps it was Tin Man. Think about it.”

  “Okay, I might consider the possibility of a connection, but why me?” Riley said. “I didn’t write the stupid blog.”

  “Perhaps he decided you were a good target,” Emerson said. “You separated yourself from the pack.”

  “Yeah, and it would have been a bitch to stick a hatchet in the Maybach,” Vernon said. “That thing’s built like a tank.”

  “I need to report the hatcheting to the police,” Riley said. “My insurance company is going to want a police report.”

  “Waste of time,” Emerson said. “I’ll trade this car for your Mini. I can use the Mini for a lawn ornament. I like the addition of the hatchet.”

  “I have destroyed the greedy pigs’ defenses,” Wayan Bagus said. “I have secured the survival of the angry birds.”

  “That’s good, Little Buddy,” Vernon said. “Let’s see what you do when I bump you up a level.”

  “Child’s play,” Wayan Bagus said. “I am the master of this game.”

  Thirty minutes later Riley pulled into the Exploratory Hall parking lot at George Mason. A large, modern-looking brick building with a wetlands area behind it and a greenhouse on the roof, Exploratory Hall housed the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences.

  Wayan set his iPad aside and unbuckled his seatbelt. “Am I to be the Dalai Lama today?” he asked.

  “It’s not in my game plan,” Emerson said, leading everyone across the parking lot and into the building.

  Vernon looked around. “I always knew some day I’d get to college…and here I am.”

  “It’s vastly overrated,” Emerson said, stopping at the elevator, tapping the UP button. “It’s far better to be born rich.”

  “Contentment is the greatest wealth,” Wayan Bag
us said. “It is better to be born contented.”

  “Do we know where we’re going?” Riley asked.

  “I want to talk to Professor Marion White,” Emerson said. “She’s on the third floor, and she’s currently having office hours.”

  —

  Marion White was at her desk when Emerson knocked on her open door. She was in her midthirties with dark brown hair pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck. A sliver of red tank top peeked out from under the deep V-neck of her white lab coat. The tank top showed a couple inches of cleavage.

  “Do you have a moment to talk?” Emerson asked. “I have some questions about mantle plumes.”

  “I’ll be happy to answer your questions,” Marion said, and she gestured toward some chairs surrounding her desk.

  Her office was small and filled with books, papers, and various lava rocks. Scaled-down models of volcanoes covered a folding table set against one of the walls. Charts and maps and whiteboards covered most of the wall space.

  Riley, Wayan Bagus, Vernon, and Emerson carefully walked around the stacks of books and took a seat.

  “There are only seventeen known mantle plumes in the whole world,” Marion said. “It’s really one of the more interesting fields of study in geophysics.”

  Emerson pulled Plumes: A Journey out of his knapsack. “I’ve read through this book. But it doesn’t completely explain the differences between volcanoes formed from mantle plumes and volcanoes formed by plate tectonics.”

  “For one thing, volcanoes formed from mantle plumes are generally much larger. As you probably know, mantle plumes originate at the center of the earth. They begin as a relatively narrow pipe at the core and expand into a giant mushroom head by the time they approach the earth’s surface. Most of them are massive, up to two thousand kilometers in diameter. One of the biggest and most famous mantle plumes is responsible for creating the entire Hawaiian Islands chain.”