Fish don’t have eyelids, but their eyes can still grow wide, and bug out all red. That described the look of the several hundred fish that floated lifelessly on their sides in the Indian River Lagoon. Their mouths and gills were extended painfully in a final gasp for oxygen rich water. Some of them had shiny red burns on their scales and fins.
“Total bummer,” Aaron Hughes said as he surveyed the fish kill from the skiff motoring by. “At least the birds won’t go hungry.”
Piloting the craft with his glasses on, Professor Herbert Swartzman didn’t dignify him with a response. After he lost the sea turtle with the purple tumor, his professor had been on his case like sand between the cracks at a nudist beach. He asked half the students in the institute to join him and the Water Management District researcher on this mission, but only Aaron had the cahones for it once word of the lagoon serial killer spread.
“This is the second fish kill this month, and it’s twice as bad as the last one up in Cape Canaveral,” said Laura Heingartner, a freckle-faced blond who surveyed the water quality in the lagoon for the Water Management District. As they sailed between Melbourne and Cocoa, the air control tower of Patrick Air Force Base on the beachside was visible on the far side of Merritt Island, which sat smack in the middle of the lagoon.
“It’s weird because the fish kills are so rare in the lagoon,” said Heingartner, who came suited for action in a wetsuit. She must have been ten years younger than the 50-something Swartzman, who came in khaki shorts and a polo shirt. Aaron figured that 50 must be the cut-off point for getting muddy finger nails for scientists. “I can usually tie it to an algae breakout or a sewage leak. I haven’t found any of that yet. But the lagoon’s pH is reading out far from normal.”
With pockets of low pH making the water more acidic, she warned that shell fish, clams and seagrass could suffer damage. Since sea turtles love chomping down on seagrass and that green treat could potentially cause their illness, Swartzman decided they’d accompany Heingartner on her seagrass survey dive.
Before they could strap on their snorkels, Aaron found some peculiar scenery above water. They approached a Coast Guard vessel with its tow line hooked around a capsized skiff. Its propellers were all bent and bloody. As Swartzman steered his boat wide of it, the white-suited officers cranked the line and flipped the skiff upright. The vessel had been cleaned out. Even the metal seats, which looked like they had been bolted down, were gone.
“No way!” Aaron exclaimed. “Is that the…”
“Yes, yes. That’s the boat of the murder victim they found yesterday morning,” Swartzman said. “They would have removed it earlier, but the afternoon thunderstorm prevented them.”
“And you know that because?” he asked.
“The lead detective called me about it. He couldn’t figure out what animal had bit the man before he died. I could.” Swartzman sounded so full of himself that his head nearly floated off. “Not that I blame him. You don’t see many manatee bites.”
“A manatee? That’s a good one,” Heingartner said with a chuckle.
“Dude, manatees don’t bite,” Aaron said. “You could ride one like a surfboard and he’d be like ‘Uh, whatever, amigo.’”
“The detective didn’t believe it either, so I’m going down there tomorrow with a set of manatee jaws to show him,” Swartzman said. “I’ll take a look at that boat later and see if the victim struck a manatee.”
“Let me get this straight: the guy mows over a manatee so the riled up sea cow flipped his boat, took a bite outta him and then cut off his head?” Aaron asked. “Sounds like that manatee came from the Bronx.”
“I said a manatee bit him, I didn’t say how it happened,” Swartzman said. “Maybe after hitting the manatee, the boater dove into the water to save the animal and it bit him in a blind rage. Then the killer found him.”
Heingartner shivered in her wetsuit at the mention of the beast that had been preying on people near the lagoon. Glimpsing the panic in her light blue eyes, Aaron realized that she wouldn’t have gone on this survey mission without a couple of guys with her.
“So, what kind of shape was the manatee’s body in?” she asked.
With a grim look on his face, Swartzman shook his head. “They haven’t found the manatee. There’s no trace of it.”
Heingartner clasped her hand over her mouth. Aaron’s stomach began creeping up on him. No manatee could travel far after being mauled by a boat. If it had died, its body should float. It didn’t add up. In three days, there had been three murders, one abandoned girl, one freakish turtle tumor, a manatee attack and a massive fish kill all within this stretch of the lagoon. Had someone shifted the Bermuda Triangle a little north?
The skiff drifted to a stop. The craft gently bobbed up and down on the inviting cool waters of the lagoon. It welcomed them-practically daring them to dive in and escape the sweltering sun. It couldn’t have been more than six feet deep, but they couldn’t see even a foot into the murky salt water. Normally, Aaron dove down there without a care. Sharks were much more common in the ocean and gators preferred creeks and lakes to the lagoon. This time, it took him a couple minutes of staring the lagoon down before he strapped on his goggles and snorkel. He imagined himself diving into the lagoon and coming up a few minutes later floating stiff on his side with his eyes bugged out like all those fish. Or maybe only his body would surface-minus his head.
Aaron jumped at the touch of a hand on his shoulder. It was only Swartzman.
“Take some precautions down there this time,” his professor said with what sounded like actual concern for a human being he didn’t want beheaded. That’s a start. “If you encounter any animals behaving aggressively or if the water feels uncomfortable, I won’t think any less of you for coming back.”
But he wouldn’t think any more of him either. Aaron knew that if he stuck his neck out and found a link between all the craziness, no one, not Swartzman and not Aaron’s father, would question whether he belonged at the institute.
Heingartner handed Aaron an underwater camera and a global positioning system tracker with the coordinates of the seagrass bed programmed in. She’d compare the new photos with the ones taken six months earlier. She also gave Aaron several containers for taking samples.
While Aaron studied his new gear, Heingartner stammered around frantically looking for something. “Shit!” she spat as she rummaged through a chest and slammed the lid. As Swartzman flinched at the burst of foul language, Heingartner finally found what she wanted. Her goggles had been atop her head the whole time.
“I’m sorry,” she said as Swartzman gave her a long look. “I’m not usually this way. It’s just with the fish kill; the conditions down there may not be so good.”
“It’s cool. I get it,” Aaron chimed in before his professor could respond. “Don’t sweat it, alrighty? I’ll be in there with you. If all else fails, you can always flag the heroic Captain Swartzman on our great battleship.”
The professor didn’t join in with Heingartner’s giggles.
Aaron dove in first and she followed a few seconds later. Splashing along with their flippers, they spread out toward where the two beds of seagrass should be. When the GPS told him he had the right spot, Aaron bit down on the snorkel and took a peek below. He saw the tips of seagrass blades poking up at him through the hazy water. They gently swayed in the wishy-washy current like an underwater forest, which they pretty much were. Fish, crabs, lobsters and all kinds of critters normally called the seagrass home.
It really sucked that Aaron could barely see it. Not only did the soupy water give him trouble photographing the size of the seagrass bed, it choked off the plants from the sunlight they needed to thrive.
Holding his breath, Aaron submerged for a closer look. He brushed his arms over the stringy blades of shoal grass, one of the most commons types in the Indian River Lagoon. He saw a hermit crab shell. Not only was it empty, it looked partially dissolved. The seagrass from about two feet around it suffered from withering and flakiness. When Aaron touched the blades, they tore off as easily as wet tissues. That shouldn’t happen, he thought. Aaron plucked the shell up and stored it in his sample container along with some blades of damaged seagrass.
Aaron surfaced for a quick gulp of air. He heard a woman’s scream. Swiveling his head around, he saw a flustered Heingartner swimming toward the skiff. Her blond hair whipped through the water with each frantic stroke. She grabbed the boat as if it were a cliff’s edge and pulled herself aboard before Swartzman could help her.
“What’s going on with you?” the professor asked incredulously. He probably hadn’t seen many of his esteemed research colleagues completely whacked out of their skulls.
“I saw something,” Heingartner said through chattering teeth. Her chest heaved like a balloon getting filled with so much air it might burst. “It was big. Dark. Scaly, I think.”
With his heart pounding furiously, Aaron started paddling toward the skiff. “Did it come after you? Did it chase you?” he asked as he peered over his shoulder. Aaron didn’t see anything-on the surface, at least.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “It was hiding in the seagrass. It didn’t move. I hope to God it didn’t see me.”
The professor handed her a bottle of water, which she immediately started chugging down. He shook his head. “It was probably a tire or an old, moldy boat. People dump a lot of garbage here nowadays. They have no shame.”
She tossed the bottle down. “I’ve checked this seagrass bed every six months for the past twelve years. I’ve seen every type of junk you could imagine.” Her freckled cheeks turned red, and not from the sun. “That thing was alive.”
Swartzman had been married so long that he had forgotten how to treat the ladies nicely, Aaron thought as he neared the boat. At least he showed her more respect than he offered his diving monkey auditioning to be a student.
“People are adding to the trash pile down there all the time,” Swartzman said. “We won’t let it stop our mission, will we?”
He beamed Aaron with a stern gaze. So much for, “ I won’t think any less of you for coming back.” The professor had a police detective he aimed on impressing. If Aaron helped him out, they could both bask in the glory of catching a killer.
“No prob, Swartzman. I can mop this up,” Aaron said. “And you’ll let me tag along on your visit to the police station, right? I’ll help you present the evidence. I’m an expert in crazy ninja manatees.”
“Alright, alright,” Swartzman grumbled. “Finish the photos and grab some more samples. But at the first hint of danger, you wave me over.”
Aaron nodded. Heingartner stood up. She looked like she’d rather jump out of an airplane than dip her toes in the lagoon again.
“You should really come back on the boat,” she told him. “The seagrass down there is ailing. Something in that water isn’t right. It might have been a sharp dip in pH, like an acid discharge.”
That would explain the withered seagrass and the corroded shell. But it didn’t explain how the acid got there. Unless someone dumped ten-thousand car batteries into the lagoon, no other viable source popped into Aaron’s head.
He wished he had brought a hood and mask for his wetsuit. An acid shampoo and face wash combo would be most heinous.
“No worries,” he assured her with a cocksure smile. “I got this.”
Once again, Aaron paddled out over the seagrass bed. This time, he kept his goggles below water most of the way in case something tried sneaking up on him from below. The lady had become paranoid after hearing about the murders, he thought. Maybe Swartzman had it right. She must have mistaken a tire for a bloodthirsty, head-eating monster. That didn’t stop Aaron from keeping his head on a swivel as he took photos that lit up the water directly underneath him, but not out ahead of him. With only a few feet of visibility ahead, a mean old brute in his path could bite his face off before he could blink. Both gators and sharks have a magnetic field sense of their prey that works much better than eyesight in murky water.
First he felt the displacement of the water. Then he saw it. Something broad and flat barreled through the water in front of him. It disappeared into a sand cloud along the bottom. Aaron nearly swallowed a gallon of water through his snorkel. He blew it out before it reached his lips and poked it above the surface so he could suck some wind into his scorching lungs. It was as if the air on the other end of his snorkel was a giant soda and he felt like slurping it all down. Aaron would have stuck his head above water and called for help, but turning his gaze away would leave him easy pickings for whatever lurked down there. It was probably gazing up at him that very moment.
Aaron held the camera before his face, as he didn’t have anything better for a shield, and snapped a bunch of photos. As the flash illuminated the water for a second at a time, he saw that long broad shape again. It was a loose piece of wood-or nearly loose. It hadn’t come completely free from the busted lobster trap.
The trap should have resembled an airplane hangar made of a wooden cage and rope mesh, which had a hole that lobsters and crabs could crawl into, but not exit from. This one rolled with the current along the sandy bottom like a tumble weed of wood and rope. It had been stripped of its metal nails. Aaron didn’t see a single one left. A wide swath of its net mesh had been broken, not by tearing or cutting, but by something that had burned right through it. Since fire didn’t work so well underwater, Aaron figured acid had once again done the trick.
The lobsters staged a prison break. That is freaking awesome. I better alert the seafood restaurants to put bars on their lobster tanks.
Despite its near annihilation, the trap had succeeded in catching one of the spiny sea bugs-part of one, anyway. Aaron found a lobster’s hind leg tangled in the netting. It must have broken off when the crustacean dude made a break for it, he thought. He snatched it from the busted trap and surfaced for a better look.
Sliding his goggles over his forehead, Aaron examined the thing. He gasped and dropped it. The lobster leg had revolting purple lumps on it. If someone had served that up for him in a restaurant, he would puke right on the plate.
Nasty purple shit. Just like the sea turtle tumor!
“What’s going on?” Swartzman hollered at him from the skiff as it motored closer.
“Uh, wait a minute,” Aaron said.
He secured his goggles and dove again. This time, he swept his arms through the water and patted down the sand as if he were looking for a lost wedding ring. He felt something slimy with spiny hairs and he knew he had it. Aaron surfaced with it above his head in triumph.
“Yeah! I got it!”
The two scientists on the skiff exchanged perplexed glances. Swartzman rolled his eyes.
“You’ve got what-one-tenth of a lobster leg platter?” Heingartner asked.
“No way,” Aaron said. He tossed his prized lobster leg on the skiff. Swartzman knelt down and pushed it aside dismissively. Then he did a double-take. “Not unless you like the rare delicacy of purple lobster. But I wouldn’t suck the meat outta that leg. I think it’s got the same bug our sick sea turtle has.”
Aaron started climbing into the boat. Consumed by the purple leg, his professor didn’t offer him a hand. Heingartner helped him aboard.
“The chances of a disease spreading from a reptile to a crustacean are pretty remote, but not impossible,” Swartzman said. “That and all the acidity in the lagoon merits further study.” The professor faced Aaron with a hint of a grin, which would have been a beaming smile on most people. “You weren’t half bad today. I think you’ve earned a trip to the sheriff’s office with me. But first, we’re pulling an all-nighter in the lab until we understand what we’ve got here.”
The last time Aaron pulled an all-nighter, he had been working on an intense study of beer pong physics. By the time he would figure out what that purple really meant, he couldn’t find beer that carried enough kick to help the startling reality sink home.