The gods appeared to be smiling on the fisherman this morning because the dolphins abruptly stopped swimming forward and began circling. This was unusual behavior. Normally, dolphins slow gradually as they tire. The men didn’t suspect there might be a reason for this. They’d seen relatively few dolphins recently, so now that they’d actually found a small pack, they weren’t asking questions.
The fishermen let out a massive weighted seine net. It drifted down to the tuna below, caught them, then began to tighten and ascend. In compliance with the Marine Mammals Protection Act of 1972, the men watched carefully as one by one, all seven of the dolphins leaped over the net and swam away. In less than a minute, the mammals were gone—apparently. The three had to be certain. The Marine Act had a second procedural requirement stipulating that someone had to paddle out in a rowboat and physically check that every dolphin had escaped. Many fishermen regularly ignored this rule, but not Gilroy, Hicks, and Balson.
Balson had gone last time, so Gilroy and Hicks flipped a quarter to see who would go now. Kurt Hicks lost. Paddling out in a tiny rowboat in his overalls, he noticed a single strand of kelp, oddly shredded, but didn’t give it much thought. He reached the middle of the net, then rolled into the sea with a mask. Holding it against his face, he scanned for any stray dolphins.
Back on the boat, on a peeling wood plank that doubled as a bench, Balson and Gilroy made small talk.
“So what do you got going this weekend, Gilroy?”
“Ah, nothing much. Watch the baseball game, get drunk with Darlene.”
Balson chuckled and glanced toward Hicks. “What’s Kurt doing out there anyway?” It normally took all of ten seconds to confirm the dolphins were gone, but it had already been longer than that.
“Ah, who knows, probably playing with himself.” Gilroy stood. “Hey! What are you doing out there, Hicks?!”
Kurt Hicks raised his sopping head from the water. “There’s something down here! I’m gonna go see what it is!” He put the mask on completely and disappeared.
Gilroy sat. “So, what do you got going this weekend, Balson?”
“Ah, I’ll probably watch the ball game myself. Maybe the Giants can win one, huh?”
They continued to chat casually for another minute when Gilroy realized that Kurt Hicks still hadn’t come back up. He eyed the empty rowboat nervously. “Think he found a dolphin tangled in the net or something?”
Balson hesitated. “I only counted seven and I thought I saw every one of them swim off.”
“Maybe there was an eighth we didn’t see.” Gilroy checked his watch. “Let’s give him another thirty seconds.”
Exactly twenty-five seconds later, Kurt Hicks still hadn’t come up.
Gilroy stood. “Son of a bitch. Maybe he did get tangled up down there. All right, I’m gonna go get him….” He ripped off his shoes, grabbed a life preserver, stood up on the gunwale, and… Kurt Hicks popped up, gasping for air.
Gilroy shook his head. “What the hell were you doing down there, Hicks?!”
Kurt Hicks didn’t answer. He frantically swam toward the rowboat.
“Hey, are you all right?!”
Again, Hicks didn’t respond. He just swam to the little boat.
Gilroy put binoculars to his face and saw that something was behind Hicks, swimming after him.
Hicks swam as fast as he could—but not fast enough. The thing was getting closer.
He reached the boat and climbed in.
Then Gilroy realized that whatever was behind him wasn’t actually swimming. It wasn’t even moving. It just seemed to turn over when a wave struck it. But what was it? “What’d you find down there, Kurt?”
Hicks paddled forward as fast as he could, still not answering.
That’s when Gilroy realized. It was a dead dolphin.
Gasping for air, Hicks climbed onto the boat and collapsed on the peeling wooden deck.
“We didn’t kill that thing, did we?”
“No.” Breathing heavily, Kurt Hicks looked up at Gilroy. “But something else sure as hell did. We gotta tell somebody about this.” He blew out a deep breath. “Call the Coast Guard.”
CHAPTER 23
“A new species—you’re sure that’s what it is?”
Jason nodded to his cell phone as he and Craig followed a uniformed coast-guard officer down an ugly, brown-tiled hallway. “Absolutely sure, Harry. The analysis of the teeth confirmed it. It’s a new species.”
Ackerman’s voice remained calm and matter-of-fact. “That’s fantastic. As we agreed, you and your team will have another year on your contracts. Do you think you’re close to finding it?”
“We’re certainly trying to.”
“Well… do it, then.”
Jason paused. “I said we’re trying, Harry.”
An exhale. “Sorry, Jason. I’m dealing with… some financial issues with some of my companies. It’s been stressful.”
“No problem.” Jason could picture the man rubbing his forehead in the office of his gigantic mansion. “OK, Harry, so I’ll talk to you—”
“I have some other questions, if you don’t mind.”
Jason followed Craig and the officer into another hallway. “Shoot.”
“You said the teeth didn’t come from barracudas, anglers, gars, and—what other fish again?”
A pause. “I honestly don’t remember.” Jason didn’t realize he’d mentioned the fish that the teeth hadn’t come from. “You’d have to ask Lisa for further details on that.” He looked up as the officer reached a door. “Harry, I’m sorry, but we’re kind of in the middle of something here. Can I get back to you?”
“Oh. Not necessary. But anything you need on this, just let me know.”
The line cut out, and Jason hung up. “Sorry about that, Officer Bell.”
In a crisp navy uniform that made Jason feel underdressed, Officer Gavin Bell nodded. “No problem.” The guy had a crew cut and was the size of an NFL linebacker. “Anyway, here it is.”
They entered a windowless white chamber that looked like an examining room in a doctor’s office. But the room wasn’t a doctor’s. It belonged to the Monterey Coast Guard. And the specimen on the silver operating table wasn’t a person. It was a dead dolphin the guard had picked up from three fishermen earlier in the day.
It wasn’t standard practice for the coast guard to alert ichthyologists of such finds. The day before, Jason and his team had bumped into a coast-guard trawler on the ocean, and the two boats had gotten to talking. Monique explained to the “Coasties,” as the officers were known, that they were tracking a new species and Darryl and Craig had invited the men aboard for drinks. As employees of the federal government, the Coasties politely declined this offer, but clearly appreciated the gesture. As it happened, they had a chance to repay it. Earlier in the day, a freshly killed dolphin had turned up in the exact area that Jason and company had tracked their new species to.
“You guys all set in here?”
Jason turned. “We are. Thank you very much, Officer Bell. We owe you one here.”
“You don’t owe us squat.” Bell smiled at Summers, who was wearing khakis four sizes too big for him. “Nobody ever offers us beers.”
As the officer left, Jason started thinking about Lisa and didn’t know why. It wasn’t like him to think about her at all, much less during business. Was their relationship changing? She’d once despised him, but he suddenly couldn’t help but wonder if something more amicable might be brewing.
He turned back to the examining table. He was glad she didn’t have to see this. “Jesus.” What was lying there was truly gruesome: the corpse of a bottlenose dolphin. Jason guessed it had weighed 650 pounds. This was a guess because only the body’s top half was there. The lower half had been bitten off. Bitten off clean. No shark had done it. No shark alive possessed a mouth big enough or jaws strong enough to sever a dolphin in half.