The Research

The body slumped to the packed dirt floor. A small amount of blood dripped into the dirt, immediately soaking in and leaving only a dark spot where it had fallen. She lost her grip, her hands slipping out from under the armpits, and she cringed slightly at the sound of the head hitting wood with a dull thunk.

Dr. Maryanne Cuspin stepped back, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Her plastic-rimmed glasses had slid to the tip of her nose. She pushed them up, then brushed aside the wisps of hair that had escaped her ponytail and stuck to her face.

She put her hands on her hips and regarded the body for a moment.

“Well no wonder,” she said out loud. “He’s as big as I am.”

The work table before her was a rustic affair, rough wood and exposed screws, constructed for durability and function rather than appearance. Scattered on its surface were a collection of mallets, knives, and a bone saw the length of a human forearm. The surface of the table was scarred and stained dark brown where blood had fallen during past usage. The body lay awkwardly crumpled against the base of the work table where she had let it fall.

She’d carried him in here, with some effort, but getting him up on the table was another story. She wished at times like these that she had an assistant she could trust.

Maryanne frowned and stooped, knees bent, crouching low to the ground. She began trying to slide her forearms under the body, using them like a forklift.

She lifted, the body hanging awkwardly over her arms. She pushed herself into a stooped standing position, remembering to use her leg muscles rather than her lower back. “Safety first,” she muttered to herself, a drop of sweat running to the tip of her nose.

She froze when she heard a voice behind her.

“Professor Cuspin,” the voice said. “What, uh, are you doing?”

Slowly, Maryanne turned her head to look over her shoulder. She leaned forward, holding the body between her stomach and the edge of the table, struggling to maintain the progress she had made.

The figure standing in the open door to the shed was silhouetted against the sun. She could see they were poised to leave, body already turned in preparation for a quick exit, but she couldn’t make out the face.

“Who’s that? I could actually use some help here,” she said, glasses sliding slowly down her nose again. She blew a wisp of hair away from her face. “Come over here and give me a hand.”

The person in the doorway reluctantly stepped into the shed. Maryanne, still holding up the body, squinted and recognized the concerned face of Bill McGinley, her graduate assistant. Not exactly the person she wanted to see right now, but Bill was a well-built young man who could definitely hoist a body onto a table.

“Right, right,” Bill said, now walking over to her. “What do you need me to do?”

“Maybe grab the legs and help me hoist him onto the table,” Maryann said, her glasses precariously balancing on the tip of her nose.

Bill hustled over to her, then hesitated. “Why… why are you putting this on the potting table?”

“Nevermind that, Bill. I’m losing my grip here.”

Bill stooped and grabbed the body around the waist. He started to lift, pushing the rear end of the deer up the side of the table.

“Hold it there, Bill,” Maryanne said. She let go and stepped back, walking behind him, lifting the rear legs up over the lip of the table. Then she went back and grabbed the neck with both hands. “Ok, one last push.”

Together, with some effort, they managed to lift the body past the table edge and flop it onto the surface. They shoved it to the middle of the table, then stood back. Maryanne pushed her glasses back up and put her hands on her hips.

“Okay, now can you tell me what’s going on here?” Bill asked, looking at her and then back at the body laying twisted on the table.

“Well, I was trying to keep it a surprise. This is for the research I’ve been doing.” Maryanne nodded toward an open book on the side of the work table. “You’ve heard of saprophytic plants, right?”

“Right,” Bill nodded. “Plants that grow on decomposing matter and lack chlorophyll.”

“Exactly,” Maryanne said. “Well, I’m studying plants that grow on decomposing matter, but they aren’t true saprophytes. These plants have chlorophyll, but they’re attracted to areas of decomposing organic matter. Specifically, decomposing flesh.”

Bill made a face. “I guess that explains why you have a corpse in your potting shed. It doesn’t explain how you have a corpse in your potting shed. Maybe I don’t want to know.”

“Bill, corpse is such an unpleasant word.”

“I’m sorry, it seemed appropriate for the dead body you have on your potting table.”

“You know I can’t stand blood, this whole process is disgusting to me. But somebody hit this guy with their car out on Highway 25. I saw him on the side of the road on the way in to work yesterday. The city gave us permission to take him – for research.”

Maryanne looked at the buck, two short prongs of horn protruding from the top of its head.

“Roadkill? I need to wash my hands,” Bill said, holding his palms up, looking in dismay at his roadkill-tainted fingers.

“It’ll be worth it, I promise. This is really exciting research.”

“Far be it from me to question your research, Professor,” Bill said. “I just came by to discuss grading midterm papers with you, but we can talk later. I can tell you’re busy with… this.”

“Why don’t you have a cup of tea with me? We can talk about grading, and we can talk more about why I have a dead deer in my potting shed. I think we have a pretty big discovery on our hands.”

Bill put his hands on his hips. “I guess I am kind of curious why a botanist is messing around with roadkill.”

“Great, I’ll put a kettle on.”

The two of them stood looking at each other for a moment. Maryanne gathered her bag and the books she had laid out on the table. “Anyway, let’s go. This guy isn’t going anywhere.”

The two walked out of the shed toward Maryanne’s office in the Sciences building.  

 

* * *

 

The Mini Cooper jumped forward, reacting with enthusiasm when she pushed her foot down on the gas pedal. The lush summer foliage flowed by on either side of Highway 25, the road winding gently through the hills surrounding the campus of Insidia College.

Maryanne had the window down. The sweet smells of cut grass and pine boughs wafted on the warm breeze.

As she drove, her eyes were drawn to the gravel-littered shoulder of the highway, the roadside plants encroaching on the pavement. Here and there, she saw scattered bursts of pink blossoms among the switchgrass.

To the casual passerby, these pink flowers were just a pleasant wildflower adding some color to the roadside. To a botanist like Dr. Maryanne Cuspin, they were something more. Though their placement was seemingly random, Maryanne had noticed that they tended to cluster together in certain areas. She also noted that these flowers seemed to prefer the roadside, especially busy highways like 25.

Since Maryanne took Highway 25 from her home to campus, she saw the same stretch of road twice every day. She saw the wildlife that wandered into the road and wasn’t lucky enough to avoid the cars speeding by in both directions.

Roadkill often ended up shunted off the asphalt and into the grass. Maryanne saw the animals on the side of the road, slowly decomposing, the flesh falling away, bones exposed and bleached, sinking into the dirt. Sometimes, the city picked up the roadkill, but often the corpses were just left to rot.

Then Maryanne noticed the pink flowers that sprouted in clumps where a dead raccoon or deer had been. The larger the animal, the bigger the cluster. The little pink flowers grew in ones or twos everywhere else, but where there had been a dead animal, they numbered in the hundreds. The flowers looked quite similar to the plentiful evening primrose, but whereas the evening primrose was indiscriminate in how it spread, her own pink flowers were picky. She began referring to the little pink flower as the Insidia rose, an appropriate name considering how plentiful it was in the area.

She was intrigued by the behavior of the flower, which she found was mostly ignored by her fellow botanists. She wasn’t aware of any research into the effect decaying animals had on wildflowers. She knew of saprophytic plants, nearly fungal in appearance, that relied on decaying material instead of sunlight. But these were different.

Maryanne began collecting small animals from the side of Highway 25. She took the bodies back to campus with her and buried them under soil in a controlled area of the greenhouse. She conducted soil tests to determine the nutrients imparted by the decaying matter. She placed various plants in the soil with the animals, focusing on the Insidia rose and how it reacted to being planted in the boxes with the animals.

As the flowers grew and spread, she watched the Insidia rose as it enveloped the areas where the animals had been buried. She could practically see the shape of the buried body from how the flowers scattered and sprouted. It was gratifying work.

Maryanne took the exit ramp that led to her neighborhood. Her Mini Cooper crunched over the gravel at the end of her driveway. She rolled to a stop in the driveway by the front walk. She grabbed her bag and stepped out onto the crushed stone.

Skipping up the short set of stairs in front of the house, pulling back the creaking screen door, Maryanne turned the key in the lock and let herself inside. She busied herself with making tea.

She looked out across her backyard, a lush expanse of green, 50 yards of grass dissipating as it reached the edge of the woods that surrounded Fern Street. Trees and shrubs lined the yard, separating it from the neighbors, making it her own private place.

She looked at the mounds of recently disturbed soil scattered throughout the yard. Evidence of some of her most recent plantings. Soon there would be some color, some variation, breaking up the smooth field of green.

The ringing telephone disturbed her from her thoughts. Maryanne blinked and set her cup down on her little table, then moved to pick up the phone.

“Dr. Maryanne Cuspin speaking,” she said. A muffled voice emitted from the earpiece.

“Good afternoon, ma’am. Sorry to interrupt your afternoon. This is Detective Chris Brooks, Insidia Police Department.”

Maryanne looked toward the nook table where her tea cup sat cooling. “How can I help you, Detective?” she asked, bringing the green rotary phone back to the nook where her tea was waiting. The cord to the wall was long enough. She smiled, settling back down and picking up her tea cup. Still warm. She removed the teabag and set it aside.

“Well, ma’am, I’m not sure that you can, but it’s my job to ask,” the detective said. “We’re investigating some strange disappearances around the Insidia College campus.”

“Disappearances? That sounds terrible,” Maryanne said, sipping her tea and gazing out the bay window again. Green shoots were emerging from the areas of dirt. “What can I do?”

“The missing people all seem to be related to the college in some way,” the detective continued. “We heard you’re the head of the botany department at the college. A graduate student just went missing, by the name of Bill McGinley. You know him?”

“Of course, Bill’s my teaching assistant this semester. This is terrible news. Bill’s a wonderful young man.”

“He’s been missing for 48 hours at this point. His roommate called it in. Normally we wouldn’t pay too much attention to a college student who’s out of touch for a couple days, but we were already investigating a few other suspicious disappearances in the same area.”

“I see. Well, please keep me updated,” Maryanne said. “I haven’t seen Bill since earlier this week, when he was helping me with a project. This is very concerning.”

“You haven’t heard from him?” the detective asked. “We hoped maybe he had let you know if he was going to be missing class.”

“We haven’t had class since the last time I saw him,” she replied. “Our next class is tomorrow, so I’ll be sure to let you know if he’s there.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll leave my direct phone number with you. Please call if you hear anything. We’re still hoping this is just a fluke, not related to the other ones.”

“Yes, let’s hope.” As she hung up the phone, her mind was already back on the Insidia rose. She sipped her tea.

 

* * *

 

“Professor, how do you pick up all those dead animals without throwing up?” Jennifer Marion asked, lowering her hand. “The smell must be awful.”

Maryanne smiled. “I can tell you, nothing grosses me out more than dead things.”

“So why do you do it?”

“I would say because it’s worth it. I can tolerate the smell knowing that my work is important.”

The young faces in the lecture hall looked skeptical. “I know some of you are having trouble imagining how this research could have a practical application.”

Some nods in the audience. She turned toward the projector screen, which showed a photo of flowing green grass in the median of Highway 25. “There are some very important advances that can be made if we better understand how plants react to decaying animal matter.”

“Like what?” said someone in the back of the lecture hall.

“Can anyone think of how this research might be useful in the future, once we understand these plants better?”

She surveyed the faces arrayed before her, many of them blank, struggling to imagine how useful the Insidia rose could be. A few hands went up. She pointed to an auburn-haired girl in the second row. “Alyssa, what do you think?”

“Decorations in cemeteries? Like, flowers that grow on gravesites without needing to do anything special?”

Maryanne smiled slightly. “Actually, that’s close, but not what I was thinking. Anyone else?”

A broad-shouldered boy in the middle of the room raised his hand. Maryanne knew he was a criminology major. “Patrick, yes?”

“Missing persons searches,” he said. “Like, finding bodies, solving murders, that kind of thing.”

“Exactly,” Maryann said. She switched over to the next slide. It was a picture of a watercolor illustration she had done in her notebook, brown dirt spotted with pink flowers in the middle of a forest clearing. She was hardly an artist, but she had always enjoyed painting flowers, capturing the delicate hues in translucent pigment.

“In areas where this rose grows wild, it will likely sprout where a body is decomposing. These cute little flowers could lead police right to a buried body.”

She noted some frowns, some looks of disgust scattered through the classroom. These were students interested, mostly, in biology and botany, not in criminal justice.

“It’s a bit unpleasant to think about, but it could be a very important tool for detectives trying to solve crimes. Of course, there’s a lot more we need to learn about the habits of these flowers before we start trying to get the police on board.”

“More experiments with dead bodies, right?” said Patrick.

“That’s right. I’ll be testing all sorts of soil types, climates, and any other variable that might be relevant to determine how this information can best be used. But maybe someday, the Insidia rose will be cracking cold cases.”

“Sounds like a good podcast episode,” said a girl in the back row.

“I know you’re joking, Kristin, but you’re not wrong,” Maryanne said. “Now, everyone, for Monday, the assigned reading is a short excerpt from Robert McFarlane’s Underland. I’m sure you’ll all find it fascinating, as I do. Have a great weekend.”

She looked up at the clock as the students began clapping textbooks closed and pushing notebooks into backpacks. She looked at the small desk off to the side of the open space in the front of the lecture hall, where Bill would usually be sitting. There had been no sign of him today. She reached into her pocket, touching the Post-It note where she had written the detective’s phone number.

As the class filtered out the door in the back of the hall, an intrusive thought wandered through her mind. It was Bill McGinley, standing in the doorway of her potting shed.  She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. Everything will work out, the police will finish their investigation, things will go back to normal, and I’ll have a teaching assistant again. 

She turned to gather her things, collecting her empty tea cup from the desk.

 

* * *

 

Back in her office, Maryanne flipped on the little flatscreen television perched on the bookshelf across from her desk. She settled into her chair to read the newest book she’d received from the college’s interlibrary loan program.

“New at 5. Police are searching Insidia College campus and surrounding areas for missing graduate student Bill McGinley.”

Maryanne looked at the TV, where Bill’s most recent headshot, taken for the faculty website, was displayed.

“Kind of scary, right?”

Maryanne startled, turning to look in the direction of the new voice.  

“Ah, Chuck! Which one’s scary, you sneaking up on me, or this news?”

Professor Charles Simmons gave an exaggerated shrug. “Maybe both?” He moved into her office, still looking at the television. “Something strange is going on, though. When did you last see Bill? I saw him walking down the hall by my office on Monday.” Chuck taught English but his office was on the same floor as Maryanne’s.

“I think it was Monday for me, too. Can I pour you a cup of tea? It’s rose and valerian herbal tea. Very relaxing,” she said.

“I could use a little relaxation,” Chuck said. “I think it must be this stuff on the news that has me on edge. Police all over campus.”

“It just so happens I was already heating water for myself,” she said. She reached for the little kettle sitting on the hot plate on her desk. “Where are the police? I hadn’t noticed them today.”

She dropped an herbal tea bag into a cup she had on her desk, then poured the steaming water over it, filling the cup. She handed the cup to Chuck.

“I saw them searching the woods over by the greenhouses today,” Chuck said, blowing on the steeping tea. “Trying to figure out where Bill went, I guess.”

“It’s very unlike him to leave without letting me know,” Maryanne said. “Usually he keeps me updated if he’s going to be gone for even an afternoon.”

Chuck took a tentative sip of the tea.

“Have the police contacted you?”

“They called me yesterday. The detective left me his number. I told him I’d do what I could to help, but I’m not sure there’s much I can offer to them.”

They both watched the TV. The news anchor was listing off previous suspicious disappearances that had occurred around Insidia College.

“This is the first one on campus,” Chuck said, drinking from his cup. Maryanne took a sip.

“The first what?” she asked.

“Oh, the first disappearance on campus. Apparently police have been tracking a few different missing people around the area, but never anyone associated with the college. Before now.”

“Very strange. Well, hopefully it’s just a coincidence.”

Chuck yawned. “Wow, I’m more tired than I thought. I think I better get going or else I’m going to fall asleep at my desk.” He set his empty tea cup down on her desk. “Thanks for the tea.”

“Have a good night, Chuck,” she said, watching him as he stifled another yawn.

“G’night, Maryanne. See you tomorrow.”

She looked back to the television as he went out of the office.

 

* * *

 

Maryanne took her well-worn copy of Underland to her reading nook in the bay window. A relaxing Saturday morning felt like the perfect time to read a little from the book.

She had barely settled in among the cushions when she heard a knock on the front door. She set the book aside. “Who could that be?”

Maryanne crossed the room, going to the front hall. She opened the door to find two men standing outside, in slacks and polo shirts. They both had police badges on their belts.

“Good morning, ma’am. Sorry to disturb you. Are you Maryanne Cuspin?”

“Yes, that’s me.” She saw the other man looking past her, into the house. “How can I help you?”

“I’m Detective Chris Brooks. We spoke on the phone earlier this week. This is my partner, Detective Freese.”

“Come in, come in. Can I make you both some tea?”

They followed her inside. “We’re fine, thank you,” Brooks said. “We just have a few more questions for you, since there’s still no sign of Bill McGinley.”

She led them to the kitchen table. Brooks asked her questions, while Freese wrote in a little notebook.

“So when, exactly, did you last see Mr. McGinley?” Brooks cut to the chase.

Maryanne wrapped her hands around her still-warm cup of tea. “Are you sure I can’t interest you in some tea?”

“No thank you, ma’am. We have other places to be. This shouldn’t take long.”

“Well, I saw Bill at the potting shed on Tuesday,” Maryanne said. “He helped me with something, then he left to work on grading papers, I believe.”

“What did he help you with?” Freese stopped writing and looked at her, pen poised over the notebook.

“I needed some help putting some heavy pots up on the table,” Maryanne said. “Bill’s a strong young man, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to task him with some physical labor.”

“Understandable,” Brooks said. “And then he left, about what time?”

“Maybe 3 p.m.? Honestly, I wasn’t looking at the clock.”

Brooks continued asking her questions, and she told him everything she knew about Bill’s habits. “Truthfully, I don’t know much about him beyond his involvement in my classes,” she said. “But hopefully I’ve been of some help.”

Freese flipped his notebook closed and the two detectives stood up from the table, the wooden chairs scraping across the linoleum in unison. Maryanne followed them back to the front door.

“Thanks for stopping by, detectives,” Maryanne said as they went out into the warm morning sunlight.

“Thank you for all your help, ma’am,” Brooks said. “We’ll be in touch.”

She gave them a wave as they returned to their police cruiser. Closing the door and locking the deadbolt, she turned and went back to her reading nook. She picked up her book, then stopped to gaze out the window, still holding her lukewarm tea in her other hand.

The patches of freshly turned dirt were no longer visible. Instead, scattered throughout the green grass, she saw several areas of new growth that had taken on a pink hue. Looking closer at one of these areas, Maryanne saw a multitude of delicate pink flowers, blooming in a narrow cluster that was about six feet long, perhaps two feet wide. A distinctive outline, if one knew what it meant.

Maryanne smiled. Her own garden of Insidia roses. Then she set down her tea cup, opened her book, and began to read.

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