Teeth

It had been a conversation with her old supervisor over coffee that had gotten Detective Petra Langley back in the field. It wasn’t a desire to visit Drumheller, Alberta, of all places. The tackiness made her nauseous as she drove past the ‘World’s Largest Dinosaur’ to her motel. Everybody around her was also visiting from out of town, so fitting in wasn’t going to be a challenge, loath as she was to do so. She doesn’t sleep her first night there, the conversation from that morning rattling around in her head. 

“This might be your guy,” Ellis, her old supervisor, told her. “You don’t wanna go to your grave still wondering.” 

The next morning Langley pulls on a pair of hiking boots she hadn’t touched in years and sets off to join the Fossil Safari hiking tour. A few drops of sweat roll down her cheek as the group reaches the top of yet another hill. They can see out over Dinosaur Provincial Park, at the canyons and hoodoos, the ground filled with the bones of ancient monsters. 

Leading the group is Andy Reid, who looks exactly as you would expect somebody who spends their days hiking under the hot sun to look. He’s sun-kissed and brown, with a curly mop of sun-bleached hair. Dreamy. Langley had already noticed several of the moms in the hiking group eyeing up Andy. The fathers were too hot and sweaty to care. Langley marvels at the way Reid's blue eyes seem to sparkle with passion despite the over-rehearsed nature of the speech leaving his mouth. 

“Most of the time, our dig teams aren’t digging up complete Triceratops skeletons. In fact, finding more than a few bones in a single spot is rare, even here. More often than not, you’re going to be digging up teeth.”

Andy takes a swig from his Hydroflask then. Langley thinks this is the first sip of water he’s taken since the tour bus left from the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Between the hiking and the talking, he should be exhausted, but Andy’s face isn’t even red. Langley wonders if he trains for this, like an ultra-marathoner trying to push their body all the way to its natural limits. Andy could probably outlast the entire tour group alone in the badlands. 

“Just like humans, who lose baby teeth when we're kids and grow another set, dinosaurs also had multiple sets of teeth over the course of their lives. So for every dinosaur, there could be dozens of teeth to be found.”

Behind Langley, kids are starting to get tired. Men hoist their children onto their shoulders so they don’t have to walk anymore, but then the kids just complain about the hot sun on their necks. She presses forwards to the front of the group, a bead of sweat trickling down her cheek. It’s been too long since she’s worked a case with quite this much walking. 

She’s barely able to keep pace with Reid, and she sounds breathless when she starts talking. “I read back at the museum that because teeth are so much harder than bone, they fossilize more easily?”

Andy turns to look at her, flashes her a smile that would’ve made her weak in the knees if she was still in university. “Exactly. The circumstances had to be really specific for a dinosaur carcass to fossilize and not just decompose, but the high level of minerals that already exists in teeth helps with the permineralization process.”

“You know your stuff,” Langley comments, hiding her breathlessness with a swig from her water bottle. “Where did you go to school?”

“University of Alberta.”

“Oilers fan?”

“You know it.”

“Do you play hockey? You seem like the sporty type.”

Reid raises his eyebrows, and for a moment Langley thinks she might have hit on something. 

“Not since I was a kid.”

Reid picks up the pace, and he does so easily. Langley has to put in significantly more effort to keep up with him.

“Did you hike much when you were in Edmonton? I hear the River Valley is great for that kind of thing,” She says, forcing the conversation further, years of training telling her to poke the bear. 

She walked the hiking trails through the Edmonton River Valley hundreds of times during her investigation of the area. The hiking trails were extensive, with minimal paved paths for more casual walkers, then the dirt trails for the cross-country cyclists and the more outdoorsy types. Off of those main paved paths, the river valley is a very quiet place, not unlike the badlands. 

“Sure, I hiked there,” Andy finally says, no surprise to Langley. 

“How long have you been working out here?” Langley asks. 

“Probably four years now, why?”

Four years ago would have been the last time Langley was in the Edmonton River Valley, underneath the steel girders making up the High Level Bridge. On the rocky shoreline of the Saskatchewan River turned up the body of twenty-year-old Bridget Levesque. She was an undergrad student from the university studying in the palaeontology department. Her body turned up bruised and bloated from her stint in the water. She was found only three days after she was reported missing, and that’s the only reason her body was in good enough condition to be identified. The killer had tried to avoid that; she was missing her hands and feet, and her teeth had been knocked out. 

“Just seems a pretty secluded place to live,” Langley answers. “Hard to meet people.”

“That’s the perk of the job, I get to meet new people all the time,” Reid answers, all white teeth and smiles. 

“But it’s more of a revolving door of folks, right?” Langley says. “Or do you find it easy to make friends out here?”

“Sure, easy enough.”

“And girlfriends?”

Reid laughs at that question and the hairs on Langley’s arms stand on end, in spite of the blazing heat of the sun. 

“I’m flattered, but I’m actually seeing someone at the moment,” he says. 

Langley stops herself before she laughs at the precision of the statement; 'At the moment.' She watches his face after the sentence leaves his mouth, waits for the grimace and the stare into the distance that grieving people do. Instead, Reid smiles at her like they’re flirting over coffee. 

The silence grows long as they trek over the uneven terrain. Langley pretends to look out over at a ravine they’re passing, even throws in a ‘Wow’ under her breath for Andy to hear. She falls behind him, glances at him every so often, but all she spots of interest is the way he rubs his palms against his cargo shorts. 

Eventually, Andy leads them to an area of excavated land, a few square metres wide. It’s only a few feet deep, and at the bottom are partially uncovered bones, and she can’t help but feel like she’s been here before. Memories of past crime scenes blown up for her on a massive scale, in a hellish taunt. 

Reid begins another speech for the tour group, this time detailing the contents of a palaeontologist’s toolkit. He produces a number of chisels and probes in varying sizes, some as small as a dentist’s pick. 

“And this,” Reid pulls out a large hammer with yellow tape around the handle, the back of which has a massive spike. “Is my rock hammer. Everyone has their own favourite rock hammer. They serve you well out on a dig.”

When the pathologist did the autopsy on Bridget Levesque, he determined that the cause of death had been blunt force trauma to the head. Something about that had always bothered Petra. Bridget had been beaten to death, but the killer could’ve used a knife - he had to have used a blade to cut off her hands and feet. It was mostly a waste of time trying to understand the psychology of a killer, but if Petra never stopped thinking about it. She thinks some part of him probably finds it fun. 

Reid finishes his speech and the group disperses around the perimeter of the fossil site. Kids grow bored quickly though, and start asking their parents questions they couldn’t possibly know the answers to. Langley approaches Reid where he’s crouched on the hard ground, tucking his tools back into his kit. 

“Do you hike out in the badlands alone very often, Andy?” She asks him, crouching down next to him. 

“No way. I wouldn’t suggest anybody do that,” he says, looking quizzical. 

“Funny,” Langley says. “Somebody said they saw you walking back to your car by yourself about a week ago. Said it was pretty late at night, too.”

Reid suddenly looks away, out and around at the group of tourists surrounding them. He lowers his voice. “If this is about Amy, I already talked to the police.”

Langley sighs and pulls her badge out of her pocket. “You haven’t spoken to me.”

Fear flashes over his face, and where he wasn’t red from the physical exertion earlier, the anger turns him red now. “Fine,” he spits, “We went out on a hike together earlier in the day like we always would. We came home, had a fight, and I went out for a walk to clear my head. When I went back to apologize to her, she wasn't home.” 

“Mm-hm. And what about Bridget Levesque?”

“Why —“

“That was real tragic, Andy.” Langley stands, and Reid struggles to his feet next to her, eyes boring into hers. “Your brand new girlfriend disappears out of nowhere, and the last time anyone saw her, it was her telling you that she was going to go for a walk down in the River Valley. Then she turns up dead.”

“I don’t know what you think I did —“

“I think four years ago you went on a hike with your girlfriend Bridget and killed her down in the River Valley. And I think one week ago you went on a hike with your new girlfriend Amy and did the exact same thing to her, this time hiding the body better.” Langley takes a breath. “And I think you’ve probably done this more than just twice.”

“This is bullshit,” Reid spits, his fidgeting a growing concern.

“An unidentified body was discovered this morning, Andy,” Langley explains, struggling to keep her voice even. “The hands and feet and teeth of the victim were missing. But the body was burned, the cause of death couldn’t be determined, and the body is probably going to stay unidentified. Gotta be hell for Amy’s family.”

“Well, there’s nothing I can do about that,” Reid says, and starts to push past Langley, but she stands her ground and grabs his arm, keeping him in place. She wonders if he can feel her shaking where she grabbed him. 

“If you show compassion here, we might be able to work something out for you,” Langley whispers. Then she sees the white knuckle grip Reid has on his toolkit, and the red flush that’s now spreading all the way down his chest. 

“Hey, Mister!”

Langley and Reid turn to see a kid, probably eight or nine, approaching them, holding something in his hand. His mother starts rushing after him with half-hearted pleas of ‘Don’t bother the guide, Sweetie,’ flashing Reid a charming smile. Still, the kid approaches them. 

“Is this a dinosaur tooth?” The kid asks. 

He outstretches his hand and opens his fist right under Reid’s face. At first, Langley mistakes the object in his palm for a small pebble, it being roughly the same colour as the sandstone surrounding them. Then Langley notes the dark red stain at one end. Langley looks back at Reid, at the sudden darkness in his once bright blue eyes, and finally knows for certain that in this graveyard of monsters, one still lives.