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You are reading from:
THE WEST COAST MURDERS
(BOOK 12)
by Roy MacGregor
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It was Sarah who spotted the first body.
She was standing high on the bridge of the Zodiac, staring out over the rolling
sea off the San Juan Islands.
Travis had seen her get to her feet and point, but with the wind roaring in his
ears he couldn't hear what she had shouted to the guide on the tour boat.
Whatever it was, it caused the guide to stand, draw her binoculars up, and stare
in the direction Sarah was pointing for some time before suddenly turning the
Zodiac and revving the engines.
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The big open tour boat headed towards the area where Sarah was still pointing.
The swells were high along the Strait of Juan de Fuca this early in the year, and
at times the islands dropped out of sight for a moment before the Zodiac roared
up the next wide, rolling wave.
Travis didn't mind the rolling. The same, unfortunately, could not be said for
Nish, who lay flat on the floor of the Whale Watch tour boat and had turned the
oddest color of green Travis had ever seen in a human face.
This was not the Nish they had started out with from Victoria Harbor. Before the
Zodiac had rounded the breakwater and headed out into open sea, Nish had bounced
about the big rubber-sided boat like a tropical storm - "Hurricane Nish," Sarah
had tagged him - and soon had everyone on the tour, Muck and Mr. Dillinger, all
the Screech Owls, even the guide, howling with laughter as he kept interrupting
the guide's talk about where they'd be going and what they'd be seeing.
They would be watching for dolphins and porpoises, the guide told them, and with
luck they might even see a massive gray whale. She explained how to tell the
porpoises from the dolphins. She told them there were more than thirty different
kinds of dolphins in the world, and how it was important to protect them.
"Not long ago we were losing twenty thousand of them a year in gill nets," the
guide said. "Tuna fishermen were letting them get tangled in the nets they were
using to catch tuna, and the dolphins were drowning. Like us, they need to
breathe air. We've saved a lot of them, but it still happens. That's why all the
dolphins we find off the coast of British Columbia are protected by law; we don't
want anybody, or anything, hurting them.
"Everyone knows they're mammals, of course, not fish. They're as intelligent as
chimpanzees and have memories like elephants. They're better with numbers and
better at following complicated instructions than most of us are - so treat them
with respect. They may be smarter than us."
"Certainly smarter than some of us," Sarah added, with a withering look at Nish.
Nish crossed his eyes and rolled his tongue before sticking it out at Sarah and
violently shaking his head.
The guide said any dolphins they saw today would likely be Pacific white-sided
dolphins, which were common along this coast. Killer whales, she added, were also
dolphins and could be found off the coast of British Columbia as well, though
they are rarely seen. They might get lucky, but more likely they'd see a big
gray, which was just as good, in her opinion.
"Grays are beautiful animals," she said. "Some of them are longer than a city
bus, and once they get here they spend most of their time eating tiny little sea
creatures they find in these waters. An adult gray will eat about twelve hundred
kilograms of food a day - that's the equivalent of ten thousand Big Macs."
"That's what I usually order!" Nish had shouted.
The dolphins, the guide said, prefer salmon, but also love a good feed of
anchovies.
"They order pizza out here, with anchovies?" Nish had screeched. "I think I'm
gonna hurl!"
And less than ten minutes later, with the sea rolling and sliding and slipping
under him, he had indeed "hurled," a small figure in a rain suit and life jacket
hanging over the back of the Zodiac and barfing into the open sea as seagulls
screeched overhead and the rest of the Owls mercilessly applauded and cheered his
every retch.
Now Nish was flat out, green and groaning - but at least he was quiet. This was
no time for wisecracks. Whatever Sarah had sighted, it seemed to have the guide
deeply concerned.
Twice they turned and circled back, the guide continually rising from her pilot's
chair to lift the binoculars and scan the rolling sea for whatever it was that
Sarah had seen.
"There!" Sarah called, pointing. This time Travis heard her.
The guide turned the Zodiac sharply, easing it up one long, rolling swell and
down the other side, where, almost magically, the boat drew up alongside the
object of their search mission.
Travis, sitting on an outside seat beside Sam, Nish's new partner on defense,
leaned over the round rubbery wall of the Zodiac and stared hard.
It was a dolphin - rolling lifelessly in the sea, shreds of pale, white flesh
stringing out in the water from its underside.
And something else - fading to pink in the water, but dark red closer to the
rolling, unreal looking dolphin.
Blood.
"I think I'm gonna hurl," said Sam in her deepest voice.
"What happened?" Travis asked.
"Maybe it got struck by a ship?" suggested Data, who was strapped into a seat
just the other side of Sam.
The guide was out of her pilot's seat and down close to the side of the Zodiac.
She had out a long pole with a hook on the end and reached with it into the
water. But the boat was rolling too much. Muck, the Screech Owls' coach, stood to
help. "You take the controls," he said to her. "I'll pull it in."
The guide nodded, and a moment later she had put the outboard engines into
reverse and pulled the boat around so that it and the dolphin were at least
drifting in the same direction.
Muck, his lips tight and jaw set, reached for the dolphin with the pole and
caught it along a front flipper, the hook pulling the creature so it rolled over
completely as it came towards the Zodiac.
There was a black, gaping hole on the dolphin's other side, fresh blood still
streaming from the wound.
The guide came down from her seat for a closer look. "What the -?" she said.
"A swordfish?" Data suggested. "Ran it right through?"
Muck was shaking his head. "I don't think so," he said. "It's been shot."
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