Dr. Bukinberg was tempted to say, “At ease, soldier,” but didn’t. The maintenance man might think his superior was making fun of him. Instead Dr. Bukinberg said, “I think those mammals stood thirty-five to fifty feet high. Quite large.”

“Quite,” agreed Linus.

“Major, is it?” asked Dr. Bukinberg, his eyes darting down to Linus’s right shirt pocket, then back up again.

“Yes, sir. Linus Major.”

“Well, Linus, you and I appear to appreciate the early-morning quiet.”

“I always like to arrive before my shift starts, Dr. Bukinberg. I come early to familiarize myself with our museum’s various exhibits. They never cease to amaze me.” Linus particularly enjoyed saying “our” museum. “And always get rid of my coffee way before the museum—”

“It’s hard to realize,” remarked Dr. Bukinberg, “that nothing in our museum is a figment of one’s imagination.”

“True,” said Linus Major, thinking to himself, that is true.

Dr. Gregory Bukinberg would continue to keep his eye on his protégé, Linus Major. Eventually Dr. Bukinberg would singlehandedly prod the museum’s board of directors into promoting Linus to a job worthy of his interest, diligence, and intelligence.

“I am grooming you for paleontological greatness,” Dr. Bukinberg told Linus on the day of his promotion to the Bone Department.

Linus, grinning from ear to ear, said, “I appreciate your confidence in me, Dr. Bukinberg. I won’t let you down.”

Linus Major was finally going to make a name for himself in something other than the Guinness Book of World Records. He was going to become someone his disgraced family would be proud of. He just knew it.

And Linus was right.

At the beginning of 2012, when Linus Major became the Museum of Natural History’s director of bones, the position—silly as it sounded—was an extremely important one.

Arthur Durch was a thirty-seven-year-old practicing sex therapist.

He wasn’t always a sex therapist. Before becoming a sex therapist, Arthur Durch was a junkie. Durch started ingesting drugs when he dropped out of high school. That was back in 1992, when Arthur turned eighteen. He joined the army that year, was sent to the Middle East but missed any fighting in the first Gulf War by about six months. Three years later and a dishonorable discharge to his credit for molesting a Lebanese woman, Durch left the army and continued his determined effort to kill himself with drugs.

Not long after his discharge he served time in the Petersburg Correctional Complex (medium security) in Petersburg, Virginia, for breaking and entering. Durch was caught inside an abortion clinic. He just wanted something to make him high, though he wasn’t sure exactly what that might be. The clinic was in Richmond. When being fingerprinted there, Durch jokingly said, “I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too.”