The Fossil

A murder and a new beginning.

This case technically began 70 million years ago, when a small bipedal dinosaur was crushed to death under a falling rock, but who has the time for a story that long? Besides, the dinosaur doesn’t really matter, does it? Nobody cares about its thoughts and feelings, what it wanted out of life, or whether it had any family. No, the only thing anyone needs to know about this poor little dinosaur is that it died, leaving behind the broken half of its lower jawbone that now sits in a museum in the small South-East Asian metropolis of Sanctuary City, Surasthana, where it can be gawked at by bored schoolchildren.

As fossils go, it’s a beautiful specimen—a long, curved bone with a line of sharp, curved teeth. And on those teeth are specks of… wait, is that blood or ketchup? Let me just get a teensy little lick and… yeah, it’s blood, alright. That wasn’t there 70 million years ago.

The dinosaur (and yes, this is the last time we’ll talk about it) is officially called the Wexleraptor, named after the palaeontologist who discovered it: Dr Roy Wexler, PhD. The discovery put Dr Wexler on the map. There was talk of major prizes, speaking engagements at prestigious conferences, and even his wife—who also happened to be the curator of the museum where he worked—was being uncharacteristically loving towards him. He should have been on top of the world.

There were three main reasons behind Dr Wexler’s anomalous gloom. The first was that he didn’t actually make the discovery for which he was being credited. The celebrated jawbone was, in fact, found and identified by his research assistant, Kemi Odegbami, who was recently discovered murdered in the museum’s preparation lab. The second was that, for several months prior, he and Kemi had been having an affair, which, if exposed, would have cost them both their jobs and him his marriage. The third and final reason was that he was the one who killed Kemi.

To his advantage, the police in Sanctuary City were famously terrible at their job. It was almost a certainty that his secrets would never come to light. But, unfortunately for Dr Roy Wexler, a certain dark-haired young man happened to visit the museum and lay eyes on the jawbone, a man by the name of Thorfinn Grimm.

​Shinobu Graves was a fighter, a survivor, and an occasional knitter, but above all else, she was a professional. Her office reflected this fact in its spotless furniture, orderly stacks of books, and polished, organised desk. The scents of lemongrass and verbena wafted from a diffuser, filling the rooms with a bright, refreshing energy, which made the sharp, unbearable stench that unexpectedly assaulted her nostrils all the more jarring.

She looked up from her desk and caught sight of the dirtiest human being she had ever seen. A thick layer of grime hid most of his face, fishbones and banana peels adorned his hair, and a long piece of dental floss trailed from his left foot to the open door. Shinobu pressed the button for the intercom and spoke.

“Nora, why is there a homeless man in my office?” she asked.

“Boss, it’s me,” said the presumed vagrant, wiping some of the dirt off his face. “It’s Finn.”

“Nevermind, Nora, go back to whatever you were doing.”

Shinobu closed her eyes and took a deep breath to calm herself. She took off her round glasses, polished the lenses with an immaculate handkerchief, then returned them to the bridge of her nose.

“I’m so sorry, Thorfinn,” she said. “Do you remember what I told you when I hired you two months ago?”

“Of course,” Finn nodded, counting her instructions on his fingers. “No personal calls during work hours. Paying jobs only. Label everything in the fridge. Never let Nora cook.”

“That’s right. Unfortunately, to my great regret, I failed to mention that you can’t walk in here smelling like the bastard child of a sewer rat and a zombie. For that, I am truly sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” said Thorfinn with a grin.

Cue internal screaming. Shinobu reminded herself that she couldn’t just punch her partner, that Finn was a great asset, that he would most certainly die if she so much as blew on him. Shinobu was a tall woman, towering over Finn by at least a foot, and he found it hard not to feel a little intimidated when she stood up and leaned across the desk towards him.

“I’m sorry about the smell,” he said hastily. “It’s just that… did you hear about the murder at the museum a few days ago?”

“No,” she replied curtly, walking over to a window.

“Really? It was in all the papers.”

“I know about the case, Finn,” she snapped. “But seeing as we haven’t been hired to look into it, I don’t see why you would bring it up.”

“Well,” he hesitated. “I noticed something at the museum, and I had a hunch, so I checked their garbage.”

“All this is from the museum’s garbage?”

“Oh no, I didn’t find anything there, so I checked all the garbage cans and dumpsters in a two-mile radius.” He held up a crushed sheet of paper. “And I found this. It’s a printout of a research paper about the new dinosaur bone they found.”

“Is that blood?” Shinobu asked, taking the paper from him and examining the big red splotches that stained it.

“It’s not ketchup, alright,” Finn chuckled.

“Interesting.” Shinobu handed the paper back to him. “Again—and I hate to repeat myself—but we haven’t been hired to take this job. Why would we waste time and resources, not to mention shampoo, to look into this?”

“Oh, we don’t have to do that,” Finn said. “I already solved the case. Do you want to know what happened?”

Shinobu pinched the bridge of her nose and fought back a building migraine.

“Fine. But only if you take a shower first.”

​They found him in a small roadside cafe with big glass windows. It was a tiny establishment, so it was hard not to notice Dr Wexler, with his white, shoulder-length hair and nut-brown skin, tanned under the harsh light of a dozen skies.

Roy Wexler always said he wasn’t a violent man, but his salad would have disagreed. He stabbed the bowl with frantic jerks, the sounds of his fork scraping against the melamine attracting the attention of all around him. But Wexler didn’t notice or care about the side-eyed glances he was getting. He didn’t even notice Finn and Shinobu until they were right in front of him.

“Dr Wexler,” Shinobu said, dropping into the chair opposite him. “A word, please.”

The palaeontologist looked as if he had been woken from a dream, taking in her red-streaked hair, sharp facial features, and the cold black eyes that seemed to pierce through her glasses and into his very soul. Her sleeveless top showed off her toned biceps, criss-crossed with old scars and intricate sak yant tattoos.

“Are you police?” Dr Wexler asked, dropping his fork into the bowl.

“No, we’re private investigators,” said Shinobu. “My partner here has a question for you.”

Finn pulled up a chair beside her, finally looking presentable in a clean white shirt, though the odour of rotten eggs still hung around him. He pulled out a notebook from the pocket of his jeans and opened it.

“Dr Wexler,” he said, scanning his notes. “Why did you do it?”

“Excuse me?” Wexler licked his dry lips and sipped some water from a glass. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right.” Finn took the wrinkled paper out of the notebook and flattened it out on the table. “We know you killed Kemi Odegbami. She printed this out on your office printer, just before she met you in the preparation lab. Did you know that printers leave small tracking dots on everything they print? It’s like a fingerprint, unique to each machine, and once you have the machine, it’s really easy to check who used it and when.”

Wexler gulped, but he didn’t say anything. Finn continued.

“Tell me if I’m wrong, but here’s what I think happened: you promised Kemi you would share credit for discovering that fossil, but you didn’t. She saw the draft of the research paper on your computer and realised what you’d done, so she confronted you about it. It probably wouldn’t have mattered; you’re the researcher, after all, and she was just your assistant. Too bad she was also your mistress.”

“How do you know that?” Wexler gasped. “We didn’t tell anyone.”

“You just told us,” Shinobu pointed out.

Panic filled Wexler’s eyes, and he gripped the arms of his chair with chalk-white knuckles.

“Okay,” he whispered hoarsely. “Yes, you’re right, we were having an affair, and… well, it all went exactly how you said. She threatened to tell my wife, tell the other researchers. It would have ruined me… wait, what is she doing?”

Shinobu had gotten to her feet and started stretching beside the table. More people were looking over now, and Wexler was suddenly, uncomfortably aware of all the eyes on him.

“Don’t mind her,” said Finn. “You were saying?”

“Uh, I don’t…”

“She was going to ruin you.”

“Yes, exactly.” Wexler nodded vigorously. “I begged her not to. I told her I would give her the credit, all of it, if that’s what she wanted. But she was too far gone. She said we were done, that she would destroy me, even if it was the last thing she did. I… I didn’t know what to do. I panicked.”

“So you grabbed the jawbone you were working on and hit her across the head with it,” Finn completed the story for him. “Yeah, we already figured that out. What I want to know is this: you panicked, and you hit her, sure. You didn’t mean to hurt her. That much is obvious. But then, there she was, bleeding out on the floor, with a priceless fossil stuck in her brain. You could have called for help. Hell, you’ve got some medical knowledge; you could have at least tried to stop the bleeding. Instead, you pulled the jawbone out, pried the broken teeth from her head, cleaned up the pieces, and carefully glued the specimen back together. Why did you do that, Roy? Was that lousy piece of bone worth more to you than Kemi’s life?”

“I…” Dr Wexler opened and closed his mouth, but the words wouldn’t come out. Tears burst from the corners of his eyes, slowly making their way down his cheeks.

Thorfinn sighed. “That’s what I thought. Shinobu?”

Wexler’s eyes shot towards the other investigator, just in time to see Shinobu’s boot hurtling toward his head in a merciless arc. An instant later, his limp body exploded out of the cafe and crumpled onto the street outside.

​Dr Wexler was still unconscious when the police came by to collect him, but he was breathing, and after Shinobu left some bills to pay for the broken window, nobody said anything about pressing charges.

“I’m sorry,” Finn said as they walked back to the office. “I know you only want us to do paying jobs, but I couldn’t not solve that case. It’s just… who I am.”

“It’s fine,” Shinobu said with a shrug. “Kicking that asshole in the face was payment enough for this time, but try not to make a habit of it.”

Finn nodded. The sun was going down, and the street was lined with vendors setting up stalls for a night market. His mouth watered at the smells of freshly-fried dough sticks and grilled fish, even as his eyes picked out the young street urchins darting in and out of the crowd, their fingers brushing every pocket and purse. Surasthana was not a place for tourists or people seeking a safe place to raise their kids. But in the two months he’d spent here, Thorfinn had come to discover that even this corrupt, crime-ridden island—internationally renowned as the Cesspool of the Andaman Sea—was not without its charms.

“By the way,” Shinobu said after a while. “You wouldn’t happen to know the two gentlemen following us, would you?”

“The ones with the knives hidden up their sleeves? No, I thought they were here for you.”

“Huh,” she said, turning into a dark alley with a spark in her eyes. “Guess we’d better say hi.”

​