by Bill Doyle
“Condors are vultures, which means they eat carcasses.” I said. “They could be eating poisoned food—like the dead birds. That would be enough to weaken their eggs.”
“What poison?” Harvey asked.
“I don’t know. DDT probably. At high levels, it would kill the adults. At lower levels, it blocks the calcium from getting in the eggshells, making them fragile.”
“Where are the parents?” Kyle asked.
I said, “They could be off hunting…” Dr gone, I thought. I wondered if we were seeing the last remains of the California condor as it went into extinction.
The others started shuffling their feet, unsure of what to do. I walked over and knelt down next to Conrad, who was inspecting pieces of eggshell. Without looking up, he said, “These shells have been here for weeks, maybe even a month or two.”
“But Bev Prokos said she sent someone out here,” I said.
“Then that person must not have come to this spot, or maybe…” Conrad’s voice trailed off.
“She lied? Why would she do that?”
His eyes met mine. “I don’t know.” He held out two small plastic bags. It was clear what he wanted me to do.
I collected a few broken eggshells in the bags and handed them to Conrad. He tucked them into his backpack. “We have to get back to school,” he said. “We have to find out the truth of what’s happening here.”
We made the trip back to the school campus in one day. We jogged most of the way. Thoughts ran like a recording in my head…
Birds, mountain Lions, condors… all dead… The Wilderness was dying.
Conrad kept saying, “I’m going to get to the truth!”
The sun was setting when we reached the stream that separated the Wilderness from Walsington. We stepped across the stones and made our way up to the school.
A group of people was waiting for us at the top of the hill. I could see President Roust standing there with a few security guards. Had they somehow heard that the condors were in trouble? Were they already getting ready to help save them?
President Roust stayed on the concrete and waited for us to come to him.
“President Roust!” Conrad called. “It’s good you’re here—”
“That will do, Mr. Rusher,” he interrupted, holding up his hand. President Roust’s eyes burned with anger behind his wireless glasses. “Step away from the children.”
Confused, we all stopped a few feet away from him.
“What’s going on?” Conrad said, suddenly sounding wary.
“You can drop the innocent act,” President Roust snapped. “I received an anonymous tip on the telephone. The person said I should search the old bomb shelter, which I did.”
“WFL HQ?” Conrad asked.
“And I was shocked at what I found,” said President Roust. “We know exactly what you’ve been doing, Mr. Rusher. You have exposed these children to horrors!”
Moonbeam asked, “Do you mean the condors?”
President Roust shook his head. “I mean all the dead animals we found in the bomb shelter!”
“You have the wrong idea,” Conrad protested. “Those animals are being used for scientific research—”
“Those creatures should have never been brought out of the Wilderness,” President Roust said. “You turned that building into some kind of chamber of nightmares.”
“That’s not true!” I cried. President Roust shot me a look that silenced me.
“As if that wasn’t enough,” he continued, “this was discovered on your worktable!” President Roust held up a strange-looking necklace.
“What’s that?” Conrad asked.
“As you know,” President Roust said, “it is a necklace made of real bear claws. Highly illegal, of course. We found it in the bomb shelter.”
“That’s not mine!” Conrad shouted, stunned.
“And how about this?” He held up Conrad’s notebook from WFL HQ. “It has your handwriting in it and your name. Are going to tell me that’s not yours, either?”
Conrad shook his head. “That belongs to me, but—”
Flipping through the pages with a look of disgust, President Roust said, “It’s a list of all animals that you’ve taken out of the Wilderness. You’ve been stealing them and selling them for personal gain.”
He was talking about the notebook that Conrad had been using to keep track of the missing animals. Conrad had been trying to find them—not steal them.
Before I could tell him any of this, President Roust continued, “Mr. Rusher, you are fired.”
Conrad took a step back as if he’d been punched. “What?” he choked.
“You are fired,” President Roust repeated. “I thought I was hiring a war hero to be a teacher here, not a hippie criminal.” He snapped his fingers at the guards. “Escort Mr. Rusher off campus immediately. His things have been packed and are waiting outside the front gate.”
Guards went to either side of Conrad and began to move him along, away from us.
“You can’t do this!” Jackie shouted.
President Roust ignored her and instructed the guards, “Mr. Rusher is to have no further contact of any kind with the students.”
“No!” I cried. But the third security guard had stepped in front of us. He was built like a barn and spread out his arms, preventing us from following Conrad.
There was nothing I could do.
I watched helplessly as the guards led Conrad away into the night.
PROFESSOR ROUST TOOK US INTO A CLASSROOM.
October 21, 1969
2:15 PM
This morning, I awoke to the sounds of Kyle humming happily to himself. He was standing in front of the mirror, fixing his hair. He smiled at what he saw and hummed louder.
“Kyle, knock it off,” I mumbled with my face the pillow.
“Sorry, just such a great day. Ecology class is today—and no more Conrad!”
The door closed, and I knew he’d gone off to breakfast. I wasn’t hungry.
I was too depressed. Conrad was gone, dragged off in the night, with the condor eggshell samples still in his backpack. And no one would tell us anything more.
After about ten minutes, I lumbered out of bed and changed my clothes. Slowly, I made my way to the end of the sidewalk in front of Dulson Hall.
As always, the kids in Ecology were gathered here, waiting for class to start. Like other days, I stood with Moonbeam, Jackie, and Harvey. But unlike other days, Conrad would not be bounding toward us, shouting, “Into the wild, you gorillas!”
Instead President Roust arrived. “This way, children,” he instructed. We followed him to a classroom inside Dulson Hall. He handed each of us a thick brown textbook with the words ECOLOGY 101 printed on the front.
“Take a seat at a desk wait quietly for your new teacher,” he told us, and he walked out.
Harvey turned around in his desk to look at me, “Who…?”
The door was thrown open so hard, it banged against the wall. And our new teacher stalked into the room.
It was Bev Prokos. She was dressed in her wilderness uniform, complete with safari hat. She paced in front of the class for a moment and didn’t say a word. Her eyes went to each of us in turn, as if sizing up her quarry.
Finally, Kyle cleared his throat and stood up. “On behalf of the class, I would just like to say what a relief it is to have a QUALIFIED teacher. Welcome, Bev, to our—”
She stopped pacing and stared at Kyle. “WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?” she hissed.
“I’m sorry…?” Kyle was flustered. “I said… Bev?”
“Other teachers may be into flower power and all that first name garbage. But my name is PROFESSOR Prokos.” Her eyes burned into his. “Kindly write my name on the board, if you please.”
His face bright red, Kyle walked to the front of the room. He picked up a piece of chalk, which squeaked as he wrote “Professor Prokos” on the chalkboard.
“Good,” she told him. “Now you only have to write it 999 more times.”
Professor Prokos turned to the rest of us. “I’ve agreed to teach this class for only one reason: I love nature. Your previous teacher is a confused criminal. In fact, if he ever sets foot near my wilderness again, I will have him arrested. This class will be taught in this room from this point forward.”
I shot a quick glance at Jackie, who looked as horrified as I was.
“That’s right. The san Rafael wilderness is no longer your personal playground,” Professor Prokos said, and sat down at her desk. “Now open your books and read quietly for the hour.”
And so, as Kyle continued to write her name over and over, we read. The Ecology textbook was unbelievably dull. After being outside and experiencing everything firsthand, reading about it was like viewing the world through a thick wall of cotton. My seat felt like a straitjacket.
Finally, thankfully, the bell rang, ending class. Kyle darted from the room, his face still red. On the way out, Jackie and I stopped at Professor Prokos’s desk.
“Professor Prokos, can we talk to you?” I asked her.
She answered with a question. “Is this about the Condor sanctuary? I’m sorry to hear you children had a horrible experience out there. I’m investigating what Conrad Rusher might have done to those poor birds.”
“What?” I was too shocked to say anything else. It didn’t matter, because Professor Prokos wasn’t going to listen. She was rushing out the door, calling over her shoulder on the way out, “Leave it to the professionals. We’ll take care of everything.”
And, with that, she was gone.
After class with professor Prokos, Moonbeam, Harvey, Jackie, and I decided we needed to do something. We skipped lunch and met outside WFL HQ. Our plan was to get inside.
But the thick steel door had been padlocked.
“That’s Conrad’s,” I said, pulling on the combination lock.
“Security must have come by and just closed it up. Did Conrad ever tell you the combination?”
The others shook their heads. I grabbed the doorknob and yanked over and over. The lock ratted but gave on signs of any weakness.
“Why do you want to get in there so bad anyway, Mal?” Harvey asked after I’d given up.
“Someone is harming the wilderness, and I think Conrad was getting too close to the truth. He was framed. I know it. If we could get inside WFL HQ, we could look at his notes. We might be able to figure out who did it.”
Harvey said, “Harvey thinks you’re overreacting.”
“Well, you can tell Harvey he’s wrong,” I told him. “The birds, the mountain lion, the condors… what more proof do you need?” frustrated, I slid to the dusty ground next to the brambles that grew near the front of WFL HQ. There was a small piece of cloth snagged on one of the branches. But before I could even comment on it, something else caught my eye. I reached beneath the thorny branches and plucked it out.
“What’s that?” Jackie asked.
I held up the curved object to examine it. One end was pointed. The other end was flat, and a small hole had been drilled through it, as if it were meat to hand on a chain. The top of the hole had broken. “This must be a bear claw form the necklace President Roust found inside,” I told the others. “It must have slipped off the chain.”
Jackie was instantly excited. “This could be the break we’ve been waiting for. If we can prove it’s a fake, then Conrad won’t be in trouble.”
But I already knew the claw was genuine.
“No, it’s the real thing,” I told them, feeling more depressed than ever.
Harvey and Moonbeam shaved a look. Jackie said, “I guess we have two choices. Either someone planted that necklace on Conrad, or…”
… Dr it was his!
But none of us could finish that sentence. It was just too unthinkable.
JUDGE WAS WAITING FOR ME.
October 24, 1969
4:35 pm
I had just left Music, my last class of the day. My head was jammed with worries about the wildness and Conrad and how we would ever get into WFL HQ. So it was a great surprise to find none other than Judge Pinkerton in the lobby of my dorm!
Decked out in a purple business suit, she gave me a huge smile. We hugged and Judge said, “I talked to your mom this morning. She wanted me to give you her love and this …”
Grabbing the scruff of my shirt like when I was a little kid, she planted a kiss on top of my head with a huge SMACK!
“Yuck!” I cried and jumped back. We both laughed.
“What are you doing here?” I asked judge.
Her face grew more serious, and she said, “Walk with me across campus to the guest quarters.”
Once we were outside, I watched Judge taking in the surroundings as we strolled along the sidewalk. Kids were tossing around a football on the lawn. A few others were swaying to some far-out tunes from a transistor radio.
“There’s an important board meeting tonight,” Judeg finally said. “President Roust thinks there are too many hippies at this school and wants to return to traditional values, whatever that means. So there’s going to be a vote.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Whether or not they kick me off the board.” She held up a hand before I could say anything. “Don’t worry. I’m a big girl. I can take care of things.”
“Is that why you’re here so early? To talk to the other board members?”
“No. I came for another meeting,” she said, sounding mysterious. Then she added, “And to see you. Your call got me thinking.”
I had phoned Judge two days before about what was happening in the wilderness and how I thought Conrad had been framed. I had asked her to try to track down Conrad, to see if she could help him.
“Listen to me,” she said now. “I know this is hard for a Moorie to do. But I need you to stay out of this. At least until after tonight.”
“Because of the board meeting?” I asked. “Are you worried if I cause trouble, you’ll get voted out?”
“We’ll talk more about it later,” she said firmly. “Please just stay on school grounds, okay?”
I nodded. We had reached the stone steps leading up to the guest quarters. Judge seemed unwilling to leave things on such a strange note.
“I like your T-shirt,” She said, giving my hair a tousle.
I forgot what I had thrown on that day. I looked down at my shirt. It said “Leave No Trace.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It means people should leave nature as they found it and not leave a mark.”
She nodded. “That’s not 100 percent possible in the world of criminology. Do you remember?”
“Sure,” I said. “You’re talking about Locard’s Theory.”
Judge nodded. “So then you also know if someone is harming the wilderness, they will be caught eventually—” She broke off as if she’d just remembered something. “A letter came for you.”
She handed me an envelope. It had been opened.
“I didn’t read it, Mal, but President Roust is opening your mail,” she said, shaking her head in disgust. “Probably to make sure that Conrad doesn’t contact you.”
“Where’d you find it, Judge?”
“In his office,” she said, a wicked glint in her eye.
I looked at her in surprise. “Were you snooping in his office?”
“Even a Judge needs her secrets,” she said with a smile, and wouldn’t tell me any more.
We hugged goodbye. Before she went up the steps, she said, “Remember. Keep out of trouble. At least until tomorrow.”
5:15 pm
Walking back to my dorm, I plopped down on the lawn in front of the library and slid the letter out of the envelope.
It said:
I read it again, and then once more. It must be from Conrad, I thought. But it made no sense.
Conrad was a smart guy. In this letter, though, CONDORS and VERY were both misspelled. And in his postscript, h
e talked about the three of us. But there were four kids in my circle of friends, not three.
I put the letter back in the envelope. Could it be true that Conrad really was a criminal? Maybe he was deranged and was sending out nutty messages to people? What could this letter possibly mean?
The answer was a mystery to me.
A MYSTERY …
I could almost hear Conrad’s voice saying, “And today’s challenge is The Mystery of the Nonsense letter!”
Conrad had been told not to contact us. Had he written this note in code to try and tell us something?
Taking it out again, I ran my eyes, over the strange message. I decided to deal with the first line separately.
BUDS, THE CONDAR FLIERS ARE VARY SWELL.
Sitting around the table at holidays, I’d heard plenty of my relatives talk about the cases they’d solved. More than a few had mentioned how cracking an anagram code had helped them in their investigations.
Was that this was? An anagram?
Only one way to find out. I got to work and started rearranging the letters of the first line. So intent on what I was doing, I forgot about dinner and continued to shift letters around even as it began to get dark.
After an hour, here’s what I had:
SAVE THE BIRDS. USE WFL. CONRAD R. REALLY.
This must be it! I thought. He wants us to use the equipment and data inside WFL HQ to save the birds. But how could we get in? It had been locked …
And then I looked at the note again.
I let out a whoop of laughter.
They key to the combination lock was right in front of me.
P.S. You three are as good as thirty-four kids, really NUMBER one!
I jumped to my feet. I had to get the others!
The four of us stood outside the locked door of WLF HQ again. But this time I wasn’t feeling hopeless. Just excited.
I had shown then the message from Conrad and explained about the anagram and how he wanted us to use the wildlife Forensics lab.
