9

The TV morning news warned citizens to drive cautiously. Fog had rolled in overnight and blanketed the entire city so heavily that it lay in a dim, shadowless twilight. Foghorns sounded from Mile Rocks east to Fleming Point and from Point San Pablo south to Hunters Point. Traffic accident investigation units ran fifteen calls behind. Garreth, though, welcomed the fog. He still felt the sun above it, weighting and weakening him, but for once he could enjoy opening the shades and letting such daylight as there was fill the apartment. He could sit by the window wearing his trooper glasses, feet upon the sill, phone in hand, and look out at the billowing grayness while he dialed the number of the biology department at the University of San Francisco.

"My name is Garreth Mikaelian. I need to talk to someone who can tell me where certain kinds of shark's teeth are found."

He would have thought that was a simple request, but the phone went on hold for what seemed to be an eternity before a reedy male voice said, "This is Dr. Edmund Faith. You're the gentleman who needs to know where to find certain breeds of sharks?"

"I need to know where their teeth are found. Let me explain."

"By all means, Mr.—"

"Mikaelian. I found a shark's tooth in a shop on Fisherman's Wharf the other day. It's unusual because it's black. I'd like to find another and have a pair of earrings made for my wife. However, the girl in the shop had no idea where the tooth came from and neither did anyone else I asked."

"A black shark's tooth?"

"Yes. Do you know where in the world they come from?"

"Mr. Mikaelian, if you're interested in black shark's teeth, you don't want me; you want a paleontologist. I'm not sure of all the areas they're found, but I do know that the black ones are fossils."

"Fossils?" Garreth sat upright.

"Maybe I can give you a name," Dr. Faith went on. "Let's see." Over the line came the rustle of paper. "Yes. Try Dr. Henry Ilfrod in the geology department." He gave Garreth a phone number.

Garreth jotted the number down, then jiggled the phone button and dialed the new number.

Dr. Ilfrod, a secretary informed Garreth, was in class. Garreth remembered from his college days how difficult it could be to find a particular professor when one needed him, and with a sigh, said, "I need information on locating fossil shark's teeth. I'll talk to anyone who can help me."

"I'll see if the graduate students are in their office," the secretary said.

The phone went on hold again. Garreth drummed his fingers. As much as he preferred phoning to running around in daylight, perhaps he should have driven to the campus. Listening to a phone in limbo, he found it too easy to imagine the secretary finishing a letter then going on coffee break, forgetting about him.

Before long, though, another voice came on the line, pleasantly female, inquiring if she could be of help. Garreth patiently repeated his question. "Can you tell me the areas where black shark's teeth are found?"

"Well." She drew out the word. "Fossil shark's teeth can be found in about seventy-five percent of the country. It's almost all been under water at one time or another."

Garreth sighed. Seventy-five percent? So much for the tooth as a lead to Lane's background.

"But," the young woman went on, "most of the teeth are white. The only places I know to find the black ones are on the eastern seaboard and in western Kansas."

Garreth scribbled in his notebook. "Just those two places? How easy are the teeth to find there?"

"I think you have to dig back east, but they're on the surface and accessible in Kansas."

Accessible. "Could a kid find one without much trouble?"

"I'm sure he could. I've been told it's possible to pick them up just walking across a plowed field or in the cuts along roads and streams."

Which should be how she acquired it, if the tooth in the type tray were a "treasure." He recalled the other fossils in the type tray. "Are there many kinds of fossils available in the Kansas area, say in limestone?"

"It's wonderful fossil country."

He thanked her and hung up, then sat staring at his scribbled notes. Kansas. The postmark the lab brought up on the burned envelope had a 6 and 7 in it. Harry had said that the Kansas ZIPs used those numbers. He ticked his tongue against his teeth. Did the trail smell warmer?

He went through the phone book again, this time for the number of the sociology department. "I need to talk to someone who can tell me where immigrant German and Russian groups settled in this country."

That brought him more interminable time on hold while the secretary hunted for a likely prospect. She came back suggesting he call in two hours, when a Dr. Iseko would be in his office.

Hanging up, Garreth sat looking out the window. A partial Zip code and—when he reached this Dr. Iseko—areas of German and Russian settlements would still not pinpoint Lane's home exactly. He needed a town. Three partial letters had also been visible on that postmark. What were they? An O or U preceded by A, K, R, or X and followed by any letter beginning with a vertical stroke. He hunted through the bookcase, but had nothing like an atlas, nothing with a detailed map of Kansas in it. It appeared he would have to go out, after all.

He drove down to what had become his best source of information lately, the public library. There he spent an hour, with the zip directory, fording towns with 67 as the first or second two numbers and whose name contained letters in the right combination to match the postmark. Halfway through the list of towns, a name leaped out of the book at him: Pfeifer. Pfeifer! Eagerly, he raced through the rest of the names. Ten fit. He looked up their locations in an atlas. Of the ten, two possibles lay in the immediate vicinity of Pfeifer, Dixon to the southwest and Baumen to the northeast.

Then he went looking for a telephone to call the university back. This time he found Dr. Iseko in his office.

"I'm a writer doing research for a book," Garreth told him. "I need to know if Kansas has communities of German immigrants living in close proximity to Russian immigrants, and if so, where."

"I'm afraid there are none quite like that in Kansas," the anthropologist replied.

Garreth's stomach dropped. He swore silently in disappointment. "But what about towns like Pfeifer?"

"That's the Ellis County area? Pfeifer and the communities around it like Schoenchen and Munjor don't have German and Russian immigrants; they were settled by the so-called Volga Germans, Germans who immigrated to Russia and lived along the Volga before immigrating to this country in the latter quarter of the nineteenth century."

Something electric sizzled through Garreth. He felt all his hair stand on end. "They're a kind of mixed German and Russian, then? Does their language have both German and Russian in it?"

"It most certainly does. It's a very unique language. An acquaintance of mine wrote his dissertation on it."

Claudia etc. had said: It was nothing but a hodgepodge of German and Russian.

"How large an area did these Volga Germans settle?"

"The Catholic group is mainly around Ellis County. However, there was a Protestant German-Russian group who settled in Bellamy and Barton counties, and some of them extend into Rush and Ness."

Garreth wrote it all down. After thanking the doctor and hanging up, he went back to the library and the atlas. Dixon lay in Rush County; Baumen, in Bellamy County.

Back to the telephone, calling Information in Kansas, calling Information in Dixon and Baumen. Did they have listings for Biebers? Yes. Both had Biebers.

Excitement rose in Garreth. He might be completely wrong, Lane might come from the East, but Kansas looked good. Very good. He had a feeling about it. A Grandma Doyle-quality Feeling? Or perhaps blood called to blood. After all, in a sense, he was Lane's son; she had made him.

However strongly he felt the key to her lay in those two small towns, though, he would never know for certain without further investigation. He could not do it by phone, either. If she were in touch with people there, they might warn her that she had been traced. To be effective needed subtlety.

He would have to go there.