Glass Eels, Shattered Sea

by Charlene D'Avanzo

  As usual, Harvey’s beauty-parlor-perfect champagne hair just kissed the collar of her immaculate white lab coat, but I didn’t say so. Instead I asked, “How about a walk outside? It’s sunny, and we can stroll down to the pier.”

  “Good lord, is that an excellent idea,” she exclaimed.

  We took the back stairs, stepped out into a gloriously sunny spring day, and walked across the parking lot to our favorite spot—the edge of MOI’s pier. Dangling our feet over the side, we could enjoy the slap-slap of seawater against the pilings and watch long blades of brown kelp undulate in the swells below the surface.

  Settling onto my butt, I asked, “Besides dealing with a cranky machine, how are you?”

  “I’m good. Are things settling down with Ted?”

  It seemed silly to complain about boredom. Instead I said, “Yup. We’re dealing with the epifauna numbers now. It’s a huge data set. You know how that is.”

  “Boy, do I,” she said.

  “Um, Ted said you’re thinking seriously about going for department head. Anything I can do to help?”

  “Not yet. I’m just talking with a couple of folks, people like Nick Fisher, to see if they’d support me.”

  “That’s tricky,” I said. “If Seymour suspects you are after his job, who knows what he’ll do?”

  42

  Squinting to see across the water, Harvey said, “That’s right. Seymour is unpredictable and vindictive. I’ve got a couple of grant proposals coming up that need his approval. It wouldn’t be beyond him to ‘lose’”—she air-quoted the word—“my proposal so it doesn’t get submitted on time.”

  “I can just imagine it,” I said. “He’d look down his ski-jump nose, fix those dull gray eyes on you, and say, ‘What proposal?’ All in all, Seymour is a terrible department head.”

  She turned toward me and put her hand on my arm. “There’s so much he could be doing. The grad students should be giving talks on a regular basis to prepare for professional meetings. There’s money for undergrads he doesn’t bother to go for.”

  “For sure,” I agreed. “Never mind the mistrust he enjoys sowing. People are never quite sure where he stands on issues, like promotion and new hires.”

  Shading her eyes from the sun, Harvey watched a sailboat take off from its mooring. Then she said, “Of course, a big issue for me is my research. Being a good department head takes a lot of time. Something will have to go.”

  “What about getting a postdoc to help you out?” I asked. “The Oceanography Society has money for marine postdoctoral fellows.”

  Still fixed on the boat, she agreed. “You’re right, Mara. I need to set aside some time to look into that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Big change of subject. Imagine you’re going to talk to the public about your research. What’s the best way to explain how chemists distinguish between old and new CO2 in the air?”

  She swiveled toward me. “Why? Are you speaking to some group?”

  “I’m not, but Ted’s been making noises about doing that.”

  “Huh. Well, how chemists differentiate new carbon dioxide—CO2 from fossil fuels we are burning right now—from background already there is one of the most difficult parts of climate change research to get across to the public.”

  “Because?”

  “Partly because people need to understand what isotopes are and also that some carbon isotopes are radioactive and some aren’t. It gets confusing fast.”

  “Well, give it a go.”

  “With you, right now?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s see. First, I’d make sure folks knew the basics. Things like the fact that chemists call carbon dioxide CO2.”

  “Good point,” I said. “I’ve got to remember that.”

  “Then I’d say that since the beginning of Europe’s industrialization in the 1800s, CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere has increased about forty percent. And since then, Earth has simultaneously warmed. Let’s see, I’m not sure what would come next.”

  “Something like concurrence doesn’t necessarily mean causality,” I said. “So chemists want to know whether or not there really is a direct link between the observed warming and increase in CO2 from industrial activity.”

  She nodded. “Good. I like that. Ah, because we know that humans have burned over 400 billion metric tons of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, fuels such as oil and gas are the obvious source of the ‘new’ carbon dioxide.”

  “And we also know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that warms Earth like glass in a greenhouse does,” I added.

  Harvey nodded. “Right, I forgot to say that. Um, but there was already a good deal of CO2 in the air before humans came along, so how do scientists distinguish between old and new CO2?”

  “Now comes the hard part,” I said.

  But Harvey was on a roll. “Fossil fuels, such as oil and gas, are the remains of ancient plants—hence the term ‘fossil’—and their distinctive carbon signature leaves its mark in today’s atmosphere. For example, one form of carbon, carbon-14 or C-14, is radioactive and dies away to undetectable levels after about 50,000 years. Fossil fuels, being millions of years old, contain no C-14. Therefore, adding that ancient carbon should have lowered the proportion of C-14 in the atmosphere—and it has. For the last fifty years, as the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has increased, its C-14 ratio has fallen steadily.”

  “Which means?” I asked.

  “Which means that a substantial quantity of the new CO2 has come from our burning of fossil fuels such as gas, oil, and coal. And we can use the decline in C-14 to assess how much.” She turned back and looked at me. “How was that?”

  “Damn good,” I said. “When you’re chair—note the when—you should offer a course on public speaking to grad students. They’ll love it.”

  “I’ll do it if you teach it with me,” she said. “Be much more fun that way.”

  Laughing, we shook hands on it.

  “You know,” I said, “you should talk to Ted about the symposium he’s working on. It’s something to do with explaining climate change to the public. You’re a natural, Harvey.”

  “Thanks. You’re biased, but I’ll take the compliment anyway.”

  “That motto posted over the mass spec door. Remind me what it means?”

  She recited it. “If you want to catch beasts you don’t see every day, you have to go places quite out of the way. You have to get cold and you have to get wet, too.”

  “Dr. Seuss, right?”

  “It is,” she said. “I understand him to mean that if you want to accomplish something challenging, you have to work hard at it.”

  “I like the ‘you have to get cold, and you have to get wet’ part,” I said. “As oceanographers, it seems like we’re always wet and cold.”

  “Mara, you’re the one always saying we should do research in the Caribbean or someplace warm like that.”

  “Yup,” I said. “And on the east coast of the states, Maine is as far from the Caribbean as you can get.”

  43

  On our way back to the science building, Harvey said she would talk to Connor about free evenings when Ted and I could come over for dinner. Finding the rear door locked, we circled around to the front entrance and main stairway. When we reached her floor, Harvey said, “See ya later,” and disappeared through the chemistry door as I continued up the stairs. Unfortunately, our department chair, Seymour Hull, was on his way down. There was no way to avoid him.

  Tall and skinny, with an overlong nose, nasal voice, and fidgety ways, Seymour was both self-important and insecure. It was a bad combination, especially for someone in a position of power, which he displayed on a regular basis.

  Touching my arm with two bony fingers, he stopped my upward progress. “Mara, I’d like to speak with you.”

  Glancing up the stairwell, I asked, “Here?”

  “Unless you’d rather come to my office.”

  Sharing Seymour’s private space was decidedl
y icky. Instead, I said, “Okay. What do you want?”

  “You’ve met my new secretary, Gloria, I assume.”

  Gloria was impossible to miss. With hair dyed blazing-red, overdone mascara, fake eyelashes, and cherry lipstick, she was a walking curiosity in a building full of unkempt field scientists.

  “Yes, Seymour. I’ve met Gloria.”

  Leaning much closer than was comfortable, Seymour went for a buddy-buddy tone. “Gloria thinks someone wants to replace me as chair. That couldn’t be you, could it?”

  “Me? You must be joking, Seymour. I’d be a terrible chair.”

  Straightening up, he said, “Well, yes, you would. Good to know,” and continued on his way down the stairs.

  Ted was still counting the tiny epifauna on Sargassum when I walked back into the lab. In fact, it looked like he hadn’t moved the whole time I was gone. That, of course, made me feel guilty as hell.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s gorgeous outside. You should take a break and walk around or something.”

  Looking up, he said, “These samples aren’t going to count themselves.”

  I could feel my cheeks turning red and was deciding on a comeback when I changed my mind. Irritated as I was, Ted was literally right. I slid into my seat on the other side of the table, flipped up the computer screen, and reacquainted myself with the spreadsheet I had been working on earlier.

  After a few minutes of silence, Ted said, “Nick Fisher was in here earlier.”

  I looked up from my screen. “Why? Is something going on?”

  “He’d like to have something for the public within the month—a symposium, he called it. We’d talk about our research and findings from the Sargasso Sea cruise. Nick thinks there’d be a lot of interest and the publicity would be good for MOI.”

  I nodded. “He’s right—people would be interested. An oceanographic research trip, the Sargasso Sea’s history with the Bermuda Triangle and all that, the amazing ecology.”

  “Nick wants scientists on the cruise, including students, to give practice talks next week.”

  “Great idea. Getting feedback about their talk would be terrific for the students.”

  Ted pushed back his chair and rolled his shoulders. “I’ve been sitting too long. Oh, I told Nick that you had a coach who helped you learn how to give scientific talks to the public.”

  Just thinking about the woman who helped me communicate with the press made me smile. “Kristi at the University of Maine. Smart and hip in her black blazer, leather pants, and high heels, she was a terrific teacher.”

  “Give me an example of the type of thing you learned from her.”

  “Well,” I said, “she began by writing the word ‘uncertainty’ on the blackboard. Then she asked me to define it.”

  “And you answered that it’s a statistical term dealing with probability and confidence in a number. Something like that.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Then she asked me how a non-scientist would define uncertainty.”

  Looking to the side for a moment, Ted said, “Um, something about not knowing?”

  “I think that’s what I said. Kristi added the words ‘haphazard,’ ‘random,’ and ‘arbitrary.’”

  “Wow,” Ted said. “If we were talking about our research to non-scientists and used the word uncertainty, they could completely misunderstand what we were trying to explain.”

  Nodding, I said, “That’s right.”

  “So what else did Kristi warn you about?”

  “Using jargon. So instead of stating that ‘pH is decreasing,’ saying ‘the ocean is becoming more acidic’ would be better.”

  Ted whistled. “So basically, if you plan to speak to the public, you’d have to practice the whole talk ahead of time to get rid of unclear jargon and the rest.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed.

  “Remember that symposium I mentioned?” he asked. “Considering everything you just said, I should rethink the whole idea. But back to the Sargasso Sea symposium, maybe you could put something together for the students to help them avoid jargon and all that.”

  “Sure, I’ll give it a go,” I said. “Changing the subject, Seymour just stopped me on the stairs. Gloria warned him that someone might challenge him for the chair position, and he wanted to know if that someone was me.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “That I’d be a terrible chair. He agreed, of course. But Seymour knows something is up, and he might suspect Harvey by the process of elimination.”

  Harvey stepped into the room. “Did I hear my name?”

  Twisting around in my chair, I faced her. “Yup. Seymour’s paranoid about being chair because Gloria told him something was up.”

  Walking closer, Harvey said, “Seymour marched into my lab for the very first time today. Now I know why.”

  “Anything happen?” Ted asked.

  “I was in the isolation room and spotted him before he saw me. I ducked down behind the mass spec so he’d think the lab was empty.”

  “Any change of plans now that you know Seymour’s on alert?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nope. I obviously need the MOI director’s support, so I made an appointment with Dr. Dixon for tomorrow. Assuming he’s behind me, he and I can figure out how to move forward with this.”

  “MOI department chair, Dr. Harvina Allison. It’s got a nice ring,” I said.

  “Enough already,” she said. “I came up here to see if I could borrow your car, Mara. One of Connor’s old buddies is in a nursing home near Bangor. I promised to meet him at home so we could ride up there together, but my truck won’t start.”

  “My Subaru is in the back lot,” I said. “Go ahead and use it. Ted’s staying at the house, so we can ride together.”

  She had just finished saying, “That’d be great,” when a clap of thunder shook the windows and the sky opened up.

  “It’s really coming down,” Harvey said. “I don’t even have a raincoat.”

  I handed her my keys and nodded at the door. “Take mine. That bright red one on the hook over there. This storm will’ve stopped by the time Ted and I are finished here.”

  44

  Ted and I were about to leave the lab and drive home when Connor burst through the door.

  “Have either of you seen Harvey? I’ve got no idea where she is!”

  I shook my head. “She was here a while ago and said she was going to meet you at home. Her truck wouldn’t start, so I gave her the keys to my car.”

  “When was that?”

  I shrugged. “Um, when we had that thunderstorm.”

  “Good god,” Connor exclaimed. “That was a couple of hours ago. Harvey is never late for anything. Not five minutes. I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”

  “You’re right,” Ted said. “Harvey’s the most on-time person I’ve ever known. But what can we do? It’s much too early to contact the police.”

  “They’d say I was overreacting, she’d show up soon, stuff like that,” Connor said. “Same thing cops like me always recite. Now I know how people felt when I told them that.”

  I reached for my purse. “Let me check my cell. Maybe she left a message.”

  Harvey hadn’t left a message, but Lieutenant Dunn did. I turned away from Connor, faced the window, and listened to horrendous news.

  “Mara, this is Lieutenant Dunn. I’d rather talk to you than leave a message, but this is urgent. A well-known eel trafficker named Tommy Shu just contacted us. He said he was holding someone from your lab hostage. A woman. He wants us to arrange a swap with Marine Patrol for someone they arrested on Little Moose Island. Please call me back right away.”

  Turning back, I held up the phone. “Connor, there’s a message from Operation Broken Glass. Lieutenant Dunn—he’s the guy who interviewed me in the airport—says they got a call about a woman held hostage. Sounds like it’s Harvey.”

  Rapid-fire, Connor said, “Call Dunn back right now. Turn your speaker on, and put the phone wher
e we can hear it.”

  I hit redial, asked for Dunn, selected speakerphone, and placed the cell on the lab table. Impatient for Dunn’s voice, Ted and I stared at the phone, while Connor paced the lab.

  Finally, Dunn said, “Mara, you there?”

  Leaning toward the phone, I said, “Lieutenant Dunn, yes, I’m here with Ted McKnight from MOI. You met him briefly at the airport. Connor Doyle’s also here. He’s Harvey Allison’s partner and a former police officer. We suspect Harvey is the female hostage.”

  “A woman named Harvey?” Dunn asked.

  Connor spoke to the phone. “This is Connor Doyle, Lieutenant. I was on the police force in Augusta, Maine for over thirty years. Harvey’s full name is Harvina.”

  “I see,” Dunn said. “And why would eel traffickers be interested in her?”

  “That’s the thing,” I said. “They aren’t interested in Harvey. I assume they wanted to kidnap me and grabbed her by mistake.”

  “So you look alike?” Dunn said.

  “Not really,” I answered. “We’re about the same height and all that, but Harvey has short blond hair and mine’s long and darker.”

  Dunn sounded impatient. “Then why would they mistake her for you?”

  Picturing what Harvey would do after she left the lab, I said, “Lieutenant, Harvey probably left the building through the back door and climbed into my Subaru. The parking lot’s right there. She borrowed my car because her truck was broken. Anyone keeping tabs on me in Spruce Harbor would know what kind of vehicle I drive. Besides that, she was wearing my red raincoat. I wore that coat on Little Moose Island.”

  Connor jumped into the conversation. “Lieutenant, these crooks don’t give a damn who they’ve kidnapped so long as they can do the swap. We’re wasting precious time. Let’s figure out how we find Harvey now.”

  “Of course,” Dunn said. “Excuse me. Be right back.”

  With that, the lieutenant was gone.

  Turning to Connor, I asked, “What the heck just happened?”

  “He must’ve gotten an important call. Let’s just hope it’s good news.”