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S
turman drank heavily all weekend. He never took his boat out at all, and didn’t return any of the biologist’s persistent phone calls.

When he had gone to The Lighthouse on Saturday morning, still mostly drunk from the night before, he hadn’t planned to spend the entire day boozing, but under the circumstances he had lost all self-control and had again gotten blind drunk. Somebody had helped him home Saturday night after he had nearly gotten into a fight with a husky biker in a black leather jacket. He’d vomited at some point, and only remembered being in some sort of alley, near some Dumpsters. That, and some black-and-white posters peeling off the brick outer walls that advertised a band called “Aphota.”

He awoke still reeling on Sunday morning. He thought of making himself a screwdriver to quickly fall back into the numbness of the night before. Instead, he poured himself a tall glass of orange juice. Then he called Val to explain what was going on. Her equipment hadn’t arrived as scheduled from La Paz, so there was nothing they could have done over the weekend. Lucky for him—Steve dead or not, he needed the money.

With his binge winding down, he thought about going fishing, but fishing without Steve wouldn’t feel right. The thought made him feel even hollower. Tonight he needed to head out with Dr. Martell and try to find the shoal, though, and knew he had to clean himself up. He lit a cigarette and resolved not to drink any more today. He didn’t want her to see him this way. He was hosing off his boat when Joe Montoya walked up.

“Hey, Sturman.”

“Montoya.” He lowered the hose.

“How are you doing?”

“Seen better days, but I’m holding up. Thanks for stopping by yesterday.”

“No worries. Let me know if Elena and I can do anything, okay?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“I just left the coroner’s office. They finished their preliminary report this morning.”

Sturman took a drag off his cigarette, nodded, and set the hose down. He stepped into his boat and grabbed a towel, which he used to dry the sweat and water off his face and the gray-tinged stubble on his head. “Come on in, Montoya.”

Joe boarded the boat and sat down across from him in the stern. Joe looked at him for a minute without saying anything, and Sturman put his stained hat on, pulling the brim down low over his eyes. Joe reached out and Sturman handed him the cigarette. Joe took a deep, long pull and handed it back. Somewhere nearby reggae music drifted toward them from another boat.

“Just spit it out, Montoya. What did they find out?”

“You sure you want to hear this, Will?”

Sturman gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“They don’t think it’s a shark attack anymore. It looks like Steve drowned.”

“Drowned? What about his injuries?”

“I had assumed it was all just from sharks, crabs—you know as well as I do what happens to a body left in the ocean for more than a few hours.”

Sturman nodded and stood up. He walked over to the side of the boat and looked out at the harbor. A white sailboat was heading out to sea. It was a calm, sunny day. In his mind’s eye, he saw Steve’s face again.

“The coroner wasn’t certain about the cause of the damage, and some of it was inflicted postmortem. . . .” Joe sighed loudly. “But most of the wounds on his body were inflicted while he was still alive.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The damage to his face, his arms . . . some of it wasn’t from marine scavengers. It happened before he died. The coroner wasn’t able to attribute the cause yet, but she suspects some sort of animal.”

Sturman felt his blood chill. He turned and stood before Joe before he spoke again.

“What kind of animal?”

“Kathy—the coroner—doesn’t know yet. But she said she’s never seen anything like it before. The body had a lot of symmetrical, round tears in the skin, and so did the wet suit, and something sharp and serrated was responsible for the damage to the flesh. But she’s positive it wasn’t a knife, and definitely not a propeller. She said the cuts aren’t clean enough.”

“What are you saying? Did something try to
eat
him?”

Joe shifted in his seat, adjusting his gun belt. “She thinks so. I wish I could tell you he didn’t suffer, Sturman, but—”

“That’s enough.”

“Sturman, the coroner doesn’t specialize in these types of injuries, so it may be some time before they can tell us anything else. They don’t want to rush to conclusions.”

“What about those other divers? You find them yet?”

“Nothing yet. Just that kid’s hand . . .”

“Right.” Sturman sat down again and rubbed the side of his boat with a calloused hand. “You have a marine biologist looking into this? Someone who knows sharks and such?”

“They’re looking to contact someone now. A doctor at the university who specializes in shark attacks.”

“I might know somebody else who can help.”

S
ix all-weather stage lights with broad aluminum domes, clamped to the railings surrounding
Maria,
illuminated the dark water around the vessel as it drifted on the nighttime ocean. Small bugs darting in and out of the harsh cones of white light stood out against the black background, like miniscule starfighters battling for the freedom to incinerate themselves on the hot bulbs. Dr. Valerie Martell’s universe had shrunk to the small, overlapping patches of light, because it was impossible to see beyond the glaring brightness near the boat.

Val figured the bugs had probably been stowaways when they headed out, since flying insects rarely ventured this far from the coast. She sat next to Sturman as he steered the boat on a slow course, parallel to the shore as they headed up the continental shelf. It was just the two of them, since his friend Mike Phan couldn’t make it. Every few minutes, Sturman scanned the depth finder for signs of the shoal. They rarely talked.

She studied his profile in the shadow cast by the Western hat, dark under the glow of the stage lights rigged to the boat. It was hard to read this man. When she had spent time with him last week, she had thought he was an awfully quiet person. And he always wore the same hard expression. He was a potential asshole. Although his demeanor was the same tonight, he must be hurting after just losing his friend. She decided to try striking up a conversation again, to get his mind off things.

After he wouldn’t divulge much about his own past, she told him about her upbringing in Florida, how she had gotten her undergrad there and then gone on to earn her PhD at UC Berkeley.

She asked, “Where did you go to school?”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh.” She looked away for a few moments. “We really don’t have a whole lot in common, do we?”

“Nope. Doc, I need to talk to you about something important.” Sturman wasn’t looking at her, instead gazing off into the darkness over the sea.

She sat forward. “Oh? What’s on your mind?” The breeze brushed a lock of her hair loose and she blew it out of her eyes.

“What would it look like if a Humboldt squid attacked a man? What kind of injuries do they inflict?”

“Is this about your friend?”

Sturman looked at her. “The coroner identified drowning as the cause of death, but she hasn’t figured out what happened to Steve before he died. Something really laid into him while he was still alive.”

Val thought for a moment. “What kind of injuries were on the body?”

Sturman briefly described the damage to Steve Black’s body, the circular tears and serrated cuts the coroner had seen. He also told her about the damage he had seen himself, to his friend’s face.

“Are you sure you’re okay talking about this?”

Sturman looked away, as if checking their heading. There was a hollow, sunken look on his face exaggerated by the deep shadows under his hat. He nodded.

“Well, I’ve never seen Humboldt squid attack anything larger than a tuna, so it’s hard to say. But the wounds you’re describing could possibly be from a Humboldt squid.
Dosidicus
have thousands of suckers lined with small teeth, so they can grip prey. And their beaks are serrated, like miniature saw blades. When they bite into larger fish, they can remove large chunks of . . . I’m sorry. I’m so used to getting carried away with this subject. It’s just that Humboldt squid have been the focus of my life for so long.”

“I just want to figure out what happened to Steve.” Sturman rose and stepped over to the side of the boat, leaning on it with both arms as he looked down into the black water. “I’m kind of wondering if your shoal killed him.”

“As much as I don’t want to admit it, you’ve got me starting to worry, too. This doesn’t sound good for the shoal either. If these animals were involved, you can’t take it personally—”

The depth finder emitted a loud series of beeps. Sturman spun to the helm and leaned down over the display.

“We’ve got something directly under the boat.”

Val’s heart jumped as she sprang from her seat, even though she knew the device wasn’t actually picking up Humboldt squid.

“What does it look like?”

“A large school . . . probably made up of smaller fish. So the squid aren’t detectable on sonar?

“Right. Their soft bodies don’t reflect sound waves effectively. But they pursue sardines, anchovies, and other small fish that are detectable. Sturman, can you cut the engine?”

He put the boat into idle and turned off the key. It was suddenly very quiet in the darkness around the boat, with just the sound of small waves lapping against the hull. After a moment, the backup generator used to power the lights kicked on in the stern. The depth finder beeped again as the heavy boat continued to drift slowly forward in the artificial light.

“They’re about a hundred feet down. This school extends pretty far, and it looks like whatever’s in it is probably pretty tiny. A few larger readings occasionally, though.”

“Sounds like a school of baitfish. Those bigger readings are probably swordfish or tuna. Let’s see if we can catch anything.”

Quickly, Sturman and Val lowered fishing lines into the water. Val counted off fourteen seconds as the line spooled out, knowing from practice that this would be roughly a hundred feet of line. Each line was rigged with a massive glowing jig surrounded by treble hooks, with a steel leader and eighty-pound test line. They placed the first two poles in rod holders, then dropped two more lines into the water and began to jig them vigorously.

“Think the squid might be here, too?” Sturman asked.

“I don’t know. Hopefully we’ll find out soon.”

“You got that GPS transmitter ready?”

Val picked up the object next to her, which looked like a karaoke microphone with an orange bulb on top, from which protruded a short antenna. Inside was a GPS transmitter designed to allow satellite tracking of both cartographic location and depth. The plan was to tag a member of the shoal, then track the shoal’s movements based on the signal from the transmitter, to determine if it might be posing a threat. She set the device back down to focus on her fishing pole.

“I turned it on earlier, and the seal looks good. We just need somewhere to put it now.”

If they ever landed a squid, they would affix the transmitter to the squid’s fin and then get the animal back into the water as fast as they could to maximize its chances of survival.

They both stood holding the fishing rods, waiting. In the quiet night, Val could feel excitement and anticipation building inside her, although she knew their chances were slim. After a few minutes, Sturman broke the silence.

“So why are these things attracted to light, anyway? Aren’t they more comfortable in the dark?”

“Their eyes are actually very sensitive to light, but when the water is lit up at night it’s their powerful eyes that allow us to attract them. The lights shine off of small fish, plankton, and other smaller sea life, which draws the shoal up to the surface. Humboldts can detect this light from—”

Val’s pole bent downward in a violent arc. She jerked back on the line and began to reel. “I’ve got something! Whatever’s on here, it’s big.”

“You got it? Can you handle it?”

“Just reel in the other lines. I don’t want to get everything tangled.”

Val began to regret her decision not to accept his help as she fought the adversary on the other end of the line, but she stubbornly reeled as her arms and shoulders ached and then began to burn.

 

 

After fifteen minutes, before Val’s lure became visible near the surface, Sturman stepped over to help her after he had secured the other poles. He stood over her, gaff in hand. Val noticed as she leaned back to pull on the line that the expression under the hat had changed. Sturman’s narrow eyes and flared nostrils said one thing: aggression. He probably wanted to kill one of these squid, or all of them, and she couldn’t really blame him. She knew that nothing these animals ever did was personal, they were just trying to survive. But she knew how it felt to lose someone you cared for.

When the thrashing silver animal reached the surface, she was almost relieved it wasn’t actually a member of the shoal.

“Tuna,” Sturman said as she fought the fish to the side of the boat. He sounded as disappointed as she felt.

“Yeah.” Val grunted as the big fish tugged on the line. “Albacore.”

“Good thing I’ve got a license.” Sturman leaned toward the surface of the water with the gaff.

“Sturman, these tuna stocks are suffering. Do you really need it?”

He looked at the tuna as it rested beside the boat, protesting with an occasional thrash of its weakening tail. After a moment, Sturman withdrew the gaff and pushed it up under the gunwale. With a long fillet knife, he severed the line in one quick motion. The tuna disappeared into the dark water in a final flash of silvery scales.

Sturman sat down and looked at Val.

“I guess you’re right, Doc. I probably shouldn’t be keeping those big fish. It’s almost more surprising to catch one of these tuna than to catch one of your squid, and they don’t even belong here. I don’t see many sizeable fish around the coast anymore.”

“Which is why people shouldn’t be fishing for them right now. The governments of the world have always been too lenient with their catch limits, especially for commercial fisheries. So it’s not just happening here. Stocks of big fish have plummeted all over the world in the past several decades, mostly due to overfishing. In fact, that may be one reason this shoal is managing to survive here—these squid don’t have much competition, and there are few predators around to hunt them.”

Sturman glanced at his watch. “Well, what do you think?”

“It’s probably past three o’clock in the morning, right?”

“Three-thirty.”

“We might as well call it a night. I just wish we had a better way to find these guys.”

“This works for you in Baja?”

“Yeah, but down there, there are millions more squid. The odds are a lot better there. This was only our first attempt.”

“You sure there’s no way to track these bastards using the tags already on the squid?”

“I’m not even sure there are other tags in this shoal, but even if there are, there isn’t any way to track them. Unless . . .”

“What?”

“Well, it’s a long shot. While we can’t actually track these tags, I might be able to
predict
where the shoal is headed.”

“You’ve got my attention.”

“If I can acquire recent surface water temperature maps of the ocean off Southern California, and maybe some accurate bathymetry charts, I might be able to somehow map out where the squid have been by correlating the chart data to the data from the tag we already have . . . and maybe figure out where they might be now.”

“How long will that take?”

“Depends on how long it takes to get maps. But I might be able to put something together tomorrow before we head out again.”

“I meant to talk to you about that. Steve’s funeral is Wednesday morning. I won’t be able to make it out tomorrow night.”

Val remembered again what Sturman was going through and felt a sudden urge to hug him despite hardly knowing him, but resisted the temptation. His demeanor made it clear he didn’t want sympathy. This man had clearly spent some time building walls around himself, long before he’d lost his friend.

“Don’t worry about this job, Sturman. It can wait for a few days.” She smiled. “In this job, I’ve always got something to do.”

“I appreciate it, Doc. About my friend Steve . . . do you think maybe you can talk to the coroner? Maybe you can help.”

“Absolutely. Just get me the phone number.”