Mortal Fear

by Robin Cook

  “Do you people have a reservation?” asked the man behind the desk.

  Jason wondered if the man was joking. The place was immense, it was in the middle of nowhere, it was early November, and it wasn’t a weekend. He couldn’t imagine the demand would be very high.

  “No reservations,” Carol said. “Is that a problem?”

  “Let me see,” said the man, bending over his book.

  “How many rooms are there in the hotel?” Jason asked, still bemused.

  “Forty-two and six suites,” the receptionist said without looking up.

  “Is there a shoe convention in town?”

  The man laughed. “It’s always full this time of year. The salmon are running.”

  Jason had heard of the Pacific salmon and how they’d mysteriously return to the particular freshwater breeding grounds that had spawned them. But he’d thought the phenomenon occurred in the spring.

  “You’re in luck,” the receptionist said. “We have a room, but you might have to move tomorrow night. How many nights are you planning to stay?”

  Carol looked at Jason. Jason felt a rush of anxiety-only one room! He didn’t know what to say. He started to stammer.

  “Three nights,” Carol said.

  “Fine. And how will you settle your bill?”

  There was a pause.

  “Credit card,” Jason said, fumbling for his wallet. He couldn’t believe what was happening.

  As they followed the bellboy down the second-floor hallway, Jason wondered how he’d gotten himself into this. He hoped there would at least be twin beds. Much as he admired Carol’s looks, he wasn’t prepared for an affair with an exotic dancer who did God knows what else on the side.

  “You people have a wonderful view,” the bellboy said.

  Jason went in, but his eyes shifted immediately to the sleeping arrangements, not the windows. He was relieved to see separate beds.

  When the boy left, Jason finally went over to admire the dramatic vista. The Cedar River, which at that point widened to what appeared to be a small lake, was bordered by tall evergreens that glowed a dark purple in the fading light. Immediately below was a lawn that sloped down to the water’s edge. Extending out into the river was a maze of docks used to moor twenty to thirty rowboats. On racks, out of the water, were canoes. Four large rubber boats with outboard motors were tied to the end of a dock. Jason could tell there was a significant current in the river despite its placid appearance, since all four of the rubber boats had their stems pointed downriver, their bowlines taut.

  “Well, what do you think?” Carol said, clapping her hands. “Isn’t it cozy?”

  The room was papered with a flower print. The floor was broad-planked pine with scattered rag rugs. The beds were covered with comforters printed to appear like quilts.

  “It’s wonderful,” Jason said. He glanced into the bathroom, hoping for robes. “You seem to be the tour director. What now?”

  “I vote for dinner immediately. I’m starved, And I think the dining room only serves until seven. People turn in early here.”

  The restaurant had a curved, windowed wall facing the river. In the center of the wall were double doors leading to a wide porch. Jason guessed that in the summer the porch was used for dining. There were steps from the porch down to the lawn, and at the docks the lights had come on, illuminating the water.

  About half of the two dozen tables in the room were filled. Most of the people were already on their coffee. It seemed to Jason that everyone stopped talking the moment he and Carol appeared.

  “Why do I feel we’re on display?” Jason whispered.

  “Because you’re anxious about sleeping in the same room with a young woman whom you barely know,” Carol whispered. “I think you feel defensive and a little guilty and unsure of what’s expected of you.”

  Jason’s lower jaw slowly sank. He tried to look into Carol’s warmly liquid eyes to comprehend what was in there. He knew he was blushing. How on earth could a girl who danced half nude be so perceptive? Jason had always prided himself on his ability to evaluate people: after all, it was his job. As a physician, he had to have a sense of his patients’ inner dynamics. Yet why did he feel there was something about Carol that didn’t fit?

  Glancing at Jason’s red face, Carol laughed. “Why don’t you just relax and enjoy yourself. Let down your hair, doctor — I’m certainly not going to bite.”

  “Okay,” Jason said. “I’ll do just that.”

  They dined on salmon, which was offered in bewilderingly tempting varieties. After great deliberation, they both had it baked in a pastry shell. For authenticity, they sampled a Washington State chardonnay which Jason found surprisingly good. At one point he heard himself laughing aloud. It had been a long time since he’d felt so free. It was at that point they both realized they were alone in the dining room.

  Later that night when Jason was in bed, looking up at the dark ceiling, he again felt confused. It had been a comedy of sorts getting to bed, juggling towels as coverups, flipping a coin to see who used the bathroom first, and having to get out of bed to turn out the light. Jason had never remembered feeling quite so body conscious. Jason rolled over. In the darkness, he could just make out the outline of Carol’s form. She was on her side. He could hear the faint sound of her rhythmical breathing against the background sound of the distant waterfall. She was obviously asleep. Jason envied her honest acceptance of herself and her untroubled slumber. But what confused Jason was not the inconsistencies of Carol’s personality, but rather the fact that he was enjoying himself. And it was Carol who was making it happen.

  CHAPTER 14

  Weatherwise, their luck held. When they opened the drapes in the morning, the river sparkled with the brilliance of a million gemstones. The minute they finished breakfast, Carol announced they were going on a hike.

  With box lunches from the hotel, they walked up the Cedar River on a well-marked trail alive with birds and small animals. About a quarter of a mile from the lodge they came upon the waterfall Carol had mentioned. It was a series of rocky ledges, each about five feet high. They joined several other tourists on a wooden viewing platform and watched in awed silence as the wild water cascaded downward. Just below them, a magnificent rainbow-colored fish, three to four feet long, broke the turbulent surface of the water, and in defiance of gravity leaped up the face of the first ledge. Within seconds it had leaped again, clearing the second ledge by a wide margin.

  “My God,” Jason exclaimed. He’d remembered reading that salmon were capable of running through rapids against the current, but he had no idea that they could navigate such high falls. Jason and Carol stayed mesmerized as several other salmon leaped. He could only marvel at the physical stamina the fish were displaying. The genetically determined urge to procreate was a powerful force.

  “It’s unbelievable,” he said as a particularly large fish began to swim the watery gauntlet.

  “Alvin was fascinated too,” Carol said.

  Jason could well imagine, especially with Hayes’s interest in developmental and growth hormones.

  “Come on,” Carol said, taking Jason’s hand. “There’s more.”

  They continued up the trail, which left the river’s edge for a quarter of a mile, taking them deep into a forest. When the trail returned to the river, the Cedar had widened into another small lake like the one in front of the Salmon Inn. It was about a quarter of a mile across and a mile long, and its surface was dotted with fishermen.

  A cabin much like a miniature Salmon Inn lay nestled in a stand of large pines. In front of it at the water’s edge was a short dock with half a dozen rowboats. Carol took Jason up the flagstone walk and through the front door.

  The cabin was a fishing concession run by the Salmon Inn. There was a long, glass-fronted counter to the right, presided over by a bearded man in a red-checkered wool shirt, red suspenders, faded trousers, and caulked boots. Jason guessed he was in his late sixties, and that he would have made a perfe
ct department store Santa Claus. Arranged along the wall behind him was an enormous selection of fishing poles. Carol introduced Jason to the older man, whose name was Stooky Griffiths, saying that Alvin had enjoyed visiting with Stooky while she fished.

  “Hey,” Carol said suddenly. “How about trying your hand at some salmon fishing?”

  “Not for me,” Jason said Hunting and fishing had never interested him.

  “I think I’ll try. Come on — be a sport.”

  “You go ahead,” Jason urged. “I can entertain myself.”.

  “Okay.” She turned to Stooky and made arrangements for a pole and some bait, then tried once more to talk Jason into joining her, but he shook his head.

  “Is this where you and Alvin fished?” he asked, looking out the window at the river.

  “Nope,” Carol said, collecting her gear. “Alvin was like you. He wouldn’t join me. But I caught a big one. Right off the dock.”

  “Alvin didn’t fish at all?” Jason asked, surprised.

  “No,” said Carol. “He just watched the fish.”

  “I thought Alvin told Sebastion Frahn he wanted to go fishing.”

  “What can I say? Once we got here, Alvin was content to wander around and observe. You know, the scientist.”

  Jason shook his head in confusion.

  “I’ll be on the dock,” Carol said brightly. “If you change your mind, come on down. It’s fun!”

  Jason watched her run down the flagstone walk, wondering why Alvin would have made such elaborate inquiries about fishing and then never cast a line. It was weird.

  Two men came into the cabin and made arrangements with Stooky for gear, bait, and a boat. Jason stepped outside onto the porch. There were several rocking chairs. Stooky had hung a bird feeder from the eaves and dozens of birds circled it. Jason watched for a while, then wandered down to join Carol. The water was crystal clear and he could see rocks and leaves on the bottom. Suddenly, a huge salmon flashed out of the dark emerald green of the deeper water and shot under the dock, heading for a shallow, shady area fifty feet away.

  Looking after it, Jason noticed a disturbance on the surface of the water. Curious, he walked over along the shore. When he got close, he saw another large salmon lying on its side in a few feet of water, its tail flapping weakly. Jason tried pushing it with a stick into deeper water, but it didn’t help. The fish was obviously ill. A few feet away he spotted another salmon lying immobile in just a few inches of water, and, still closer to shore, a dead fish being eaten by a large bird.

  Jason walked back up the flagstone path. Stooky had come out of the cabin and was sitting in one of the rockers with a pipe stuck between his teeth. Leaning on the rail, Jason asked him about the sick fish, wondering if there was some problem with pollution upriver,

  “Nope,” Stooky said. He took several puffs on his well-chewed pipe. “No pollution here. Them fish just spawned and now it’s time for ’em to die.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jason said, suddenly remembering what he’d read about the salmon’s life cycle. The fish pushed themselves to their limits to return to their spawning grounds, but once they laid their eggs and fertilized them, they died. No one knew exactly why. There had been theories about the physiological problems of going from saltwater to freshwater, but no one knew for certain. It was one of nature’s mysteries.

  Jason looked down at Carol. She was busy trying to cast her line out from the dock. Turning back to Stooky, he asked, “Do you by any chance remember talking with a doctor by the name of Alvin Hayes?”

  “Nope.”

  “He was about my height,” Jason continued. “Had long hair. Pale skin.”

  “I see a lot of people.”

  “I bet you do,” Jason said. “But the man I’m talking about was with that girl.” He pointed toward Carol. Jason guessed Stooky didn’t see too many girls who looked like Carol Donner.

  “The one on the dock?”

  “That’s right. She’s a looker.”

  Smoke came out of Stooky’s mouth in short puffs. His eyes narrowed. “Could the fella you’re talking about come from Boston?”

  Jason nodded.

  “I remember him,” Stooky said. “But he didn’t look like no doctor.”

  “He did research.”

  “Maybe that explains it. He was real strange. Paid me a hundred bucks to get him twenty-five salmon heads.”

  “Just the heads?”

  “Yup. Gave me his telephone number back in Boston. Told me to call collect when I had ’em.”

  “Then he came back here to get them?” Jason asked, remembering Hayes and Carol had made two trips.

  “Yup. Told me to clean ‘em good and pack ’em in ice.”

  “Why did it take so long?” Jason asked. With all the fish available, it seemed twenty,five heads could have been collected in a single afternoon.

  “He only wanted certain salmon,” Stooky said.

  “They had to have just spawned — and spawning salmon don’t take bait. You have to net ’em. Them people fishing out there are catching trout.”

  “A particular species of salmon?”

  “Nope. They’d just had to have spawned.”

  “Did.he say why he wanted those heads?”

  “He didn’t and I didn’t ask,” Stooky said. “He was payin’ and I figured it was his business.”

  “And just fishheads — nothing else.”

  “Just fishheads.”

  Jason left the porch frustrated and mystified. The idea that Hayes had come three thousand miles for fishheads and marijuana seemed preposterous.

  Carol spotted him at the edge of the dock and waved at him to join her.

  “You have to try this, Jason,” she said. “I almost caught a salmon.”

  “The salmon don’t bite here,” Jason said. “It must have been a trout.”

  Carol looked disappointed.

  Jason studied her lovely, high-cheekboned face. If his original premise was correct, the salmon heads had to have been associated with Hayes’s attempts to create a monoclonal antibody. But how could that help Carol’s beauty as Hayes had told her? It didn’t make any sense.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter whether it’s trout or salmon,” Carol said, turning her attention back to her fishing. “I’m having fun.”

  A circling. hawk plunged down into the shallow water and tried to grasp one of the dying salmon with its talons, but the fish was too big and the bird let go and soared back into the sky. As Jason watched, the salmon stopped struggling in the water and died.

  “I got one!” Carol cried as her pole arched over.

  The excitement of the catch cleared Jason’s mind. He helped Carol land a good-sized trout — a beautiful fish with steely black eyes. Jason felt sorry for it. After he’d gotten the hook out of its lower lip, he talked Carol into throwing it back into the water. It was gone in a flash.

  For lunch they walked along the banks of the widened river to a rocky promontory. As they ate, they could not only see the entire expanse of the river, but the snow-capped peaks of the Cascade Mountains. It was breathtaking.

  It was late afternoon when they started back to the Salmon Inn. As they passed the cabin they saw another large fish in its death throes. It was on its side, its glistening white belly visible.

  “How sad,” Carol said, gripping Jason’s arm. “Why do they have to die?”

  Jason didn’t have any answers. The old cliché, “It’s nature’s way,” occurred to him, but he didn’t say it. For a few moments they watched the once magnificent salmon as several smaller fish darted over to feed on its living flesh.

  “Ugh!” Carol said, giving Jason’s arm a tug. They continued walking. To change the subject, Carol started talking about another diversion the hotel had to offer. It was white-water rafting. But Jason didn’t hear. The horrid image of the tiny predators feeding from the dying larger fish had started the germ of an idea in Jason’s mind. Suddenly, like a revelation, he had a sense of what Hayes had discovered. It
wasn’t ironic — it was terrifying.

  The color drained from Jason’s face and he stopped walking.

  “What’s the matter?” Carol asked.

  Jason swallowed. His eyes stared, unblinking.

  “Jason, what is it?”

  “We have to get back to Boston,” he said with urgency in his voice. He set off again at a fast pace, almost dragging Carol with him.

  “What are you talking about?” she protested.

  He didn’t respond.

  “Jason! What’s going on?” She jerked him to a stop.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, as if waking from a trance. “I suddenly have an idea of what Alvin may have stumbled onto. We have to get back.”

  “What do you mean — tonight?”

  “Right away.”

  “Now wait just a minute. There won’t be any flights to Boston tonight. It’s three hours later there. We can stay over and leave early in the morning if you insist.”

  Jason didn’t reply.

  “At least we can have dinner,” Carol added irritably.

  Jason allowed her to calm him down. After all, who knows? 1 could be wrong, he thought. Carol wanted to discuss it, but Jason told her she wouldn’t understand.

  “That’s pretty patronizing.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll tell you all about it when I know for sure.”

  By the time he had showered and dressed, Jason realized Carol was right. If they’d driven to Seattle, they’d have gotten to the airport around midnight Boston time. There wouldn’t have been any flights until morning.

  Descending to the dining room, they were escorted to a table directly in front of the doors leading to the veranda. Jason sat Carol facing the doors, saying she deserved the view. After they’d been given their menu, he apologized for acting so upset and gave her full credit for being right about not leaving immediately.

  “I’m impressed you’re willing to admit it,” Carol said.

  For variety, they ordered trout instead of salmon, and in place of the Washington state wine, they had a Napa Valley chardonnay. Outside, the evening slowly darkened into night and the lights went on at the docks.