“The jury’s in. Sea levels are rising. Ocean acidity is rising. Carbon dioxide is souring the seas.”
“I don’t know about that,” Tolliver said, “but I goddamn do know that what I saw out there in my ocean three days ago isn’t right. And by the way—it was cold and foggy.”
“A cold foggy day means nothing. A cold foggy week means nothing. Those are small-scale fluctuations. The air is warming. The oceans are warming.” Now Russell lifted a hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not ignoring what you saw out there. I’m going to tell you why you saw it.”
“That’s why I came. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You won’t like what you hear.”
Tolliver once again folded his arms.
“The warmer the water, the less oxygen it absorbs. And so our OMZs expand. And now we come back to our sucky zone out there in your ocean. Wind and current patterns have changed, pushing that oxygen-starved sucker into shelf waters.”
“Caused by global warming?”
“A-plus, Detective.”
“I’ve been a long time out of school. I don’t need a grade.”
Violet Russell was drawn up short. She said, after a moment, “I apologize.”
“I don’t need an apology, either. I just need an answer.”
“And you’re getting a lecture.”
Tolliver shrugged.
There was a sudden vacuum in the large auditorium, the professor onstage at a loss and the audience out here rendered silent. Thing was, everything she was telling us was in way of an answer to Tolliver’s question. What’s going on in his ocean? Scary stuff. But there was no single perpetrator for him to collar, nothing he could accuse and arrest and bring to justice. I sympathized. I too was in the business of identifying the perp and trying to right the wrongs. This time, I too was at a loss.
“I guess it won't goddamn kill me,” Tolliver said, “to learn something new.”
She smiled. Low-wattage, this time.
“Very well,” Walter said. “We have the stage set. So what we saw out at sea—dazed fish, crabs climbing onto the rock—was a response to the hypoxic waters shoaling?”
“It's likely. Organisms that inhabit the shallow banks are, in effect, suffocated. Those that can escape, do so. Those that can’t, sicken and die.”
“Is that how you know there’s an oxygen minimum zone off the coast?”
“I’m afraid I already knew. We have instruments, measurements, reports like yours from the field. All of it pointing to a shoaling OMZ in our waters. It comes in patchy. Tongues of hypoxia here and there, depending on the topography. I hadn’t heard about Birdshit, in particular. Now I know.”
“Just to add to our field report,” I said, “there were some humongous squid going after the dazed fish.”
She tapped a couple of keys on the computer and a new slide appeared on the overhead screen.
“This fellow?” she asked.
It was a huge tube-bodied creature, an angry purplish-red against blue water, its hood spread and its tentacles grasping.
I said, “Yeah.”
“Dosidicus gigas. Humboldt squid. Also known as Diablo Rojo.”
“Red devil,” Tolliver said.
She nodded. “Not all animals suffer in the sucky zone. Dosidicus is well adapted to low-oxygen conditions. He moves in to feast on the poorly adapted.”
We knew. We’d seen.
“And he has company.” She took a moment and found another slide. “Here’s the real master of the hypoxic universe.”
It was a nearly translucent jellyfish, a white lacy bubble, its tentacles as thin as hairs.
“Aurelia aurita. The moon jellyfish. There are several moon species but aurita or labiata is our local variety.”
I’d hooked one on my kayak paddle. Almost flipped it into the boat. “Does it sting?”
“He might give you a mild rash. But that’s not his claim to fame these days.” She clicked to another slide.
There were hundreds of moon jellies. Thousands. Swarming.
I said, “Isn’t that what they do? Bloom? That the right word?”
“That's the word. That's normal jellyfish behavior. But let me use another word. Plague. Jellies are on the rise. Firstly, you've got overfishing that removes their competitors and predators. Then you've got people building more and more marinas and breakwaters and docks and oil platforms—perfect nurseries for jellies. And you've got warming seas, a dream come true for jellies—the polyps produce more little jellyfish when it's warm. And then you've got algal blooms and acidic polluted waters and hypoxia—jellies do just fine. Fish can't survive in low-oxygen waters so they swim away, leaving their larvae behind for adaptable jellies to eat. And they don't just eat the fishes' young, they eat their lunch too—the small crustaceans that forage fish rely on.”
I said, “They’re carnivorous?” I had pictured diaphanous jellyfish grazing delicately on passing... something or the other. Tiny finger sea sandwiches.
“Yes they are,” Russell said, “but they're not picky eaters. If nothing else is available they'll eat bits and pieces of organic matter. Survival rations.”
Walter said, “You mentioned algal blooms.”
“Oh yes, you get something like an algal bloom that feeds a lot of zooplankton—jellies just chow down.”
“This morning,” Walter said, “we witnessed the rescue of a sick sea lion, evidently poisoned by a harmful bloom.”
She nodded. “On the one hand you've got adaptable creatures like jellies and Humboldt squid and on the other you've got losers like sea lions. You could say they're the marine version of canaries in the coal mine.”
Tolliver said, “So now what?”
“Now what, what?”
“Now how do you fix it?”
“It’s not that simple. There are approaches to be taken, ways to mitigate certain aspects.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, we’re having this conversation a little late.”
“Meaning?”
She paused, then said, “What the hell—I'm going to get poetic on you.”
Walter sat up straight.
“You asked about algal blooms. There is a diatom that has caused some nasty blooms here and there. It's adaptable to warming seas. It's called Skeletonema costatum. Under the microscope it looks, well, skeletal.” She shrugged. “After I've had a strong whiskey or two I've been known to employ S. costatum in a metaphorical sense. We're in danger of reducing our oceanic ecosystem to a skeleton of its former self. Oceanus skeletonema.”
After a moment Tolliver said, “Skeleton sea.”
“You got it.”
“I don't want it.” He added, “But I'll take a rain-check on the whiskey.”
***
We moved on to the skeletal coral.
Dr. Russell led us from the auditorium across the campus to her office. The office was compact and neat. So neat that a neatnik like Doug Tolliver said, “Nice place.”
Necessarily neat, since the office was crowded with a wall of bookshelves, a large roll-top desk and desk chair, a worktable, and a three-tiered bamboo basket filled with seashells.
Russell offered to bring in chairs for us and we offered to stand.
She laid out a bathymetric map on the worktable and put Walter’s coral on the stage of a stereoscopic microscope. She switched on the attached monitor, which showed the coral in magnification.
Deep purple, lacy, and altogether looking like a coral to me.
“Stylaster californicus,” she said. “Otherwise known as purple hydrocoral. Technically, it’s not a true coral—in true corals the living tissue is what has the color and that's why when they die, their skeletons are white. Now, Stylaster's color is contained in its skeleton, so even after it dies the color remains. More skeleton talk for you...” She shot a glance at Tolliver, parked against the wall beside the basket stand. “I’ll spare you the lecture.”
He shot her a grin. “Nah, I’m fine now. We’re talki
ng evidence. I can talk evidence all day long.”
Walter, who could talk evidence all day and all night, said, “And the coral’s range?”
She moved to her desk and consulted the site she’d pulled up on her computer. “San Francisco south to Baja California. Still, it’s not all that common. As to habitat...” She read. “Let’s see, looks like Stylaster prefers the steep sides of offshore banks and ridges, where the currents are strong and turbidity is low.”
Walter rubbed his chin. “We’ve narrowed our area of interest to a number of sites on Cochrane Bank.”
She tapped her keyboard. “Give me a minute.” She took five. She moved back to the map. “All right, those are your best bets.” She pointed out a pinnacle and a stretch of reef.
“There, and not elsewhere?”
“There, and not elsewhere...probably. I’m going by a database of marine species that’s still a work-in-progress. It compiles reports from scientists, divers, what have you. I’ve pulled up references to Stylaster on Cochrane Bank. It’s been reported there, and not elsewhere.” She added, “I realize this is somewhat inexact for your purposes.”
“It’s most helpful,” Walter said. “We work with inexact often enough.”
I said, “Much preferable to no freaking idea whatsoever.”
She laughed, a rich bell-like laugh.
Tolliver said, “What about something to give you geologists a better look at the coral? That scope you needed before, the electron scope?”
Russell said, “We have one here at the university. I could try to get you time on it.”
I said, “Thanks. If we need one, there’s a guy in Morro Bay with a lab and....”
“Oscar Flynn.”
“Oh, you know him?”
“Just in passing. He once consulted me about, actually, the subject we were discussing—algal blooms. He volunteers for an organization that monitors their effects. He wanted to educate himself further on the topic.”
Tolliver and Walter and I exchanged a glance. Small world.
“I wouldn’t rely on him, though. He’s something of a rogue wave.”
“How so?”
She took a moment. “Well, rogue wave is a bit theatrical. My take is he can't stand not being the expert in the room. He's something of a know-it-all.” She gave a brief laugh. “As am I, I'm afraid.”
“Nah,” Tolliver said, “you just really know your stuff.”
CHAPTER 23
“Whassup, Sis?”
Sandy Keasling nearly jumped out of her skin. What she did, instead, was spin around and shoot a killer look at her brother.
Jake sauntered into the game room. “Scare you?”
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer. She did wonder how he’d managed to open the door without her hearing. The hinges squeaked. The game room was a separate building, connected to the main house by a covered walkway, and maintenance was lower priority here than maintenance on the house.
Hell, the whole hacienda was squeaking and flaking and rotting and sinking.
She glared at Jake.
He grinned. “Just wanted to see what you found in the closet before you get the chance to cover it up.”
“None of your business,” she snapped.
It was all she could do not to slam the closet door shut.
Not that she’d found anything worth covering up.
The closet was jammed with games. You could not see the floor, what with the croquet set, Frisbees, horseshoes, every manner of ball from soccer to softball. Bats. Tangled badminton net. Two shelves were stacked with board games. Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, Sorry—Sorrreeee—relics from the past. Checkers, no chess, the Keaslings weren’t a brainy family. Monopoly, now there was a Keasling game. Battleship, even better, stepping it up a notch in their teens. That’s when she’d had to really help Lanny. Jake had accused them both of cheating. Jake cheated, himself. God, they were a gaming family. On the top shelf in the place of honor was Clue, an enduring favorite. Nobody cheated. No need. Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick.
What better place for Lanny to hide a clue?
Although damned if she could figure what the red float was a clue to.
The float wasn’t in the closet, that’s all she knew.
Jake was looking around as if he couldn't believe how shabby the Keasling game room had become.
Sandy couldn’t argue with that. The felt on the billiard table was scabby. The corduroy couch sagged in the middle. The wet bar had a broken faucet and broken tiles. The windows were so dirty you couldn’t see if it was cloudy or sunny outside.
The only time Sandy came here anymore was when Lanny begged her to play a game of darts.
And now, she came when she’d had the brainstorm to look for the float in the closet. Sandy stepped away from the closet, leaving the door open.
Let him look.
He didn’t. “I assume you’re hunting for a certain object that Lanny is purported to have taken? About yea long.” Jake spread his hands, shoulder span. “I’m not a hundred percent sure about the size. Hard to tell from that cell phone photo that hot geologist flashed us. Let’s just call it a marine float.”
So big whoop, Jake knew what she was looking for.
She moved to the wet bar mini-fridge, which still worked. She took out a Coke. She didn’t offer one to her brother. No beer in the fridge, that's all Jake cared about. Sandy didn’t drink alcohol. Sandy didn’t want Lanny to get any ideas.
“No hidden float?” Jake’s eyes narrowed. “Then what’s our next move?”
“Ours?”
“Last I checked I’m still a Keasling.”
She popped the lid on the Coke and pulled a long drink.
“Me, you, and Lanny.”
Sandy sank to the couch and kicked off her flip-flops.
“Sea Urchins forever,” her brother added.
“Cut the crap, Jake. Like you care?”
“Blood ties. If I had my pocket knife handy we could slice our pinkies and mingle blood and swear undying loyalty.” He patted his T-shirt—no pockets. He rested his hand over his heart. “From the bottom of my most important organ, I care.” He added a grin. “Second most important organ.”
She shook her head.
“Come on, Sandy.”
“Come on, Jake.”
They stared at one another.
Sandy drained her Coke.
Jake sauntered to the dart board on the wall beside the couch and removed the four darts. He backed up. Positioned himself facing the board. Facing the couch. He transferred one dart to his right hand. Paused. “You might want to get off the couch. I’ve got a lousy aim.”
“I know,” she said. Unmoving.
“Your funeral.”
“Go ahead.”
He squinted, cocked his arm, and let the dart fly. It hit the wall above the board, bounced, and dropped to the floor.
Jake retrieved it and resumed his position. “Do over?”
She sighed. “What do you want?”
“Practice.”
“I’m not talking darts.”
He said, “I’m not talking darts, either. I’m talking about you and me practicing being family. Team Keasling. So we can figure out what to do next.”
“About what?”
He lifted the dart. “About some scary shit going down?” He aimed. “About your guest getting poisoned yesterday.”
She tensed.
“Your guest being the mysterious diver who Lanny mysteriously supposedly stole a float from.”
She’d been waiting for Jake to bring this up. He’d taken almost a full day to get to it. She assumed he’d been trying figure how he could play it to his advantage. She assumed he had the angle now. She waited for him to name a price.
She said, “What do you want, Jake?”
“Be nice to stop looking over my shoulder. How about you, Sis? You look in the fridge and wonder if the leftover pizza is poisoned?”
“I throw
out leftover pizza.”
“Not even a little freaked?”
“Freaked, no. Cautious, yes.”
He threw the dart. It hit the arm of the couch, impaling itself. “Good idea about being cautious.”
She said, “Leave it alone.”
“How am I supposed to get better?”
“I’m not talking darts, Jake.”
“Oh darn. I was, this time.”
“There’s nothing to gain. You might think you can trick me into telling you something. Not gonna happen. Give it up. I don’t know what happened to the diver.”
“Sure you do,” Jake said. “Anchovies! You’re a Keasling. Keaslings do anchovies!”
“Not anymore,” she said.
“It's in the blood!”
“Not poisoned anchovies.” She pushed herself up off the saggy couch, suddenly weary, wondering if she could keep up the effort. Her limbs felt like they were weighted with wet sand. She moved heavily to Jake. She grabbed his left hand and plucked two darts from his grasp. She turned to face the board and threw a dart.
It speared the triple ring, twenty-point section.
“Wow,” Jake said. “You’re in practice.”
She eyed him. “I live here. You don’t, anymore.”
He faced her. His coppery eyes gleamed, and narrowed. “Way to cut to the bone, Sis.”
“You want to move back in? Plenty of room. Rent’s three hundred a week.”
“That what you charge Lanny?”
“I give Lanny a discount.”
“That’s fair.”
“Yes it is. He shouldn’t be living on his own. You know that. He’s been saving up his wages. He wants to buy a boat.”
Jake hooted. “Captain Lanny Keasling.”
“It won’t happen. Doesn’t hurt to let him dream.”
“There’s the bottom line. Let’s all protect Lanny and his dreams. Let’s be sure he gets the biggest slice of the pie, while we’re at it.”
“You got your share.”
“I live in a shitty condo. I pay my own mortgage. I pay all my own bills. Lanny kick in for utilities here? Lanny buy the groceries?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Why Sis, I’m just a little fucking tired of Lanny always sucking up the sun.” Jake spun and threw a dart. It hit the board, the double ring.
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