Monique looked at him. “Don’t forget the teeth Darryl found.”
Jason hesitated. The teeth. Was there any way the fat, stumpy S-shapes had actually come from the rays? Jason had previously written that off as unrealistic but now… “When’s Lisa’s meeting with that tooth expert?”
Monique checked her watch. “I think it’s starting right now.”
CHAPTER 18
THE LOBBY of UC Berkeley’s new biosciences and bioengineering facility was jam-packed. With a three-day conference just getting under way, more than six hundred well-dressed men and women in their thirties to sixties were smiling, shaking hands, making small talk, and sipping water from Styrofoam cups.
How am I going to find Mike Cohen in this mess? Lisa Barton thought, standing on her tippy toes to see over the morass of people. She glanced down at her own tailored suit, an elegant charcoal-gray number over a sheer white blouse, and smiled. Lisa hadn’t dressed up for anything in more than a year and appreciated the opportunity to wear something nice. She pushed into the crowd. Catching the occasional elbow and throwing a few herself, she methodically walked the entire room until she saw him, engaged in a low-key conversation. Mike Cohen was forty-five with a full head of curly brown hair, a laser-sharp intellect, and an ensemble that would make any fashion designer vomit: a navy suit made of 100 percent Dacron with a cheap red tie loose at the neck. When his conversation ended, he spotted Lisa and smiled wide.
“Lisa, how are you?”
“Hi, Mike. Nice to see you.” They hugged.
“How you been?”
She shrugged. “Honestly, things were slow for some time, but we might be onto something now.”
Cohen smiled anew. “You were always a straight shooter, Lisa. If I asked anybody else here that question, they’d say everything’s been gangbusters since birth.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry, but I have a presentation in fifteen minutes, so maybe we should get to the reason you’re here.”
“Is there a place we can talk?”
Seconds later, they entered Cohen’s office, nondescript and white-walled. He sat behind a metal desk with a faux-wood top. “So what do you got?”
Lisa placed a few of the fat S-shapes on the desk. “These.”
Cohen didn’t move. He just stared at the teeth, his brown eyes narrowing. Then, without actually touching the teeth, he ducked down to study them from another angle. Then he stood and moved his head all around, assessing them from more angles still, ignoring his dangling tie.
“Where did you get these?”
“The Pacific.”
“Where exactly?”
“About twenty miles off Monterey.”
“What depth?”
“A little more than a hundred feet.”
“Do you know the coordinates?”
“Longitude and latitude? Two of my colleagues might.”
“You said on the phone your team’s tracking some kind of new species?”
“We think so.”
Cohen picked up the phone. “Janet? I have to cancel my presentation. Please apologize and check timetables so we can reschedule.”
Lisa was staring at him now. He raised one of the teeth carefully and tapped it with a fingernail. “These didn’t come from a shark.”
He studied the tooth further, again from multiple angles. “They didn’t come from a barracuda, angler, gar, wallfish, parrot fish, or pike. They didn’t come from anything I’m familiar with.” He stared at them anew. “I’ve never seen teeth like this in my life.”
Lisa was stunned. Had they come from the rays?
“Would you like me to do an analysis on them?”
Lisa could barely contain herself. “Very much so.”
Cohen stood, eyeing the glass door that led to his lab. “Back soon. I’ll let you know what I find.”
CHAPTER 19
MIKE COHEN began speaking before he was even through the door. “I’ll start by telling you where else these teeth didn’t come from. They’re certainly not from anything land-based.” Teeth from land-based animals vary considerably in shape and size, and included incisors, canines, bicuspids, molars, fangs, and tusks. Teeth from water-based animals, on the other hand, tend to come in just two basic shapes, sharp cutting incisors and crushing molars. “These teeth obviously came from something that lives in the water, but that’s the only thing I can say with certainty.” He sat behind his desk. “There are a few things I think are highly likely.”
Lisa leaned forward. “OK.”
“Three comments. One, these are what we call specialized teeth; they’re designed for a specific purpose, and in this case, that isn’t playful nibbling. These teeth are designed to pierce very thick skin and internal organs. I don’t want to scare you, Lisa, but they belong to a predator, and an extremely dangerous one at that. Their curved shape is a fascinating adaptation I’ve never seen before. It would make it very difficult for any prey to wriggle away, especially if the animal has powerful jaws.
“Two, it’s highly likely there’s a second type of tooth in the mouth these came from. You found canines, which are located in the front and sides of the upper and lower jaws, very possibly in multiple rows. But I’m positive there are molars, too, because when this thing finishes killing whatever it’s caught, it’s going to need something to chew the meat. I modeled what the mouth might look like. It’s speculative, so I’m not sure, but it could even have extra-long incisors, what you’d effectively call fangs. Sort of like a tiger’s fangs, except these would be considerably sharper. I expect the total number of teeth in the mouth could easily number in the hundreds.”
“Jesus.” Lisa leaned back on her chair. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Cohen knew his stuff, inside out, and yet what he was saying wasn’t possible…. “Are you sure about all this, Mike?”
Cohen looked at her blankly. “Yeah, I’m positive.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to second-guess you.”
“No problem. Last, what you have here are baby teeth.”
“Baby teeth?”
“I don’t know how big the adult teeth that replace them will grow. It depends on how big the mouth itself grows. But these teeth will grow larger, perhaps considerably so.” He shrugged. “Anyway, that’s all I got.”
Lisa’s right leg had gone to sleep, but she didn’t notice. She just sat there, stunned. Baby teeth. This made sense with what they’d found, of course—it fit perfectly with the notion of the newborns teething on kelp while they replaced their baby canines—but there was something very fundamental she didn’t understand: How could the rays possibly have canines? Mantas possessed just one type of tooth, huge molars, which they used exclusively for crushing shells. So how could another similar species have canines? And if Cohen was right, if the teeth grew proportionally to the size of the mouth, a manta’s mouth… My God, Lisa thought, trying to picture it…. But it wasn’t possible. It would mean the rays they’d been tracking were predators. And that simply couldn’t be.
The phone rang, and Cohen picked up. “Half an hour? Thanks.”
“Sorry I’ve kept you, Mike.”
“Trust me, I’m glad you did.” Cohen looked annoyed, though, at something she’d said earlier.
“Mike, I didn’t mean to doubt you before. Believe me, I know you know what you’re talking about. But the implications of what you’re saying… I just don’t understand them.”