Deadly Waters (10 page)

“Wait a minute, Frankie.” Olivia held up her hand. “What if we actually find him? He carries a gun. I can't risk my children's safety.”

Frankie paused for a moment, then said, “You're right. I'll radio the marine patrol and the park law enforcement rangers. But even if they start out right now, it'll still take them an hour to reach here. Gordon could be long gone by the time the rangers arrive.” Agitated, Frankie tapped her chin with her knuckles, considering what to do. “Here's what I think. If we call the marine patrol and the park rangers, and then we go searching for him ourselves, that triples the chance of finding him.”

“You know, I want to keep the three kids safe, too,” Steven said, “but we could check out the monitors closest to us, and if we do see Gordon, we'll stay far away from him—too far for him to shoot. We'll just let the marine patrol and park law enforcement know exactly where he is. We won't take any chances.”

When Olivia hesitated, Jack cried, “Come on, Mom!”

“OK,” Olivia agreed. “If that Gordon's the one hurting these manatees, I'd just love to nail him.”

“So let's do it,” Frankie said. “I haven't been to a good keelhauling in years.”

F
rankie's hair whipped off her face in white spikes as she pushed the
Pescadillo
along the calm water. For a while, two dolphins joined them, playfully jumping in the amber-tinted bow waves, but this time the Landons were too distracted to enjoy the sight. Olivia's brow furrowed deeply as she talked of the possibility of toxins in the Everglades waters.

“But why would Gordon dump toxic chemicals around here and then try to cover it up?” Steven asked.

Olivia pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose, where they'd slid down from perspiration. “There're a lot of things I want to find out from that man. What's really bothering me is that if we don't catch him, we may never know the answers. The source of the toxins could be anywhere. It could take years to find it, and meanwhile, more manatees could die—if that's what's causing their sickness.”

“It's the Indian curse,” Ashley said softly. “Gordon hurts the earth, and it starts to bleed, just like the Indian said.”

“It's no curse, it's just foolish humans who don't give a hang about anything but themselves,” Frankie declared, her voice tart. As the boat picked up speed, the fresh, salt-tinged air cooled Jack's skin. All but Ashley had crowded forward in the
Pescadillo
, talking and anxiously searching every bend in the Wilderness Waterway, looking for the white boat. Ashley sat in the back, her eyes on the waters behind them. Canoes and a few small fishing boats dotted the passages, along with a couple of boats that had canopies to keep out the sun, but there was no sleek white powerboat to be seen.

“Some of these water-monitoring stations are off the beaten path,” Frankie explained as she turned her craft down a narrow passage. “These side routes are a bit tricky, but I think we can navigate this one.” Pointing to a fork in the mangroves, she said briskly, “The first device, if I remember right, is beyond that bend. If he's there, we'll pull back behind the trees and radio park law enforcement again to tell them our location.” When she cut power, the
Pescadillo
's speed dropped as they nosed around a clump of trees.

At first, all Jack saw was the sunlight gleaming off the glassy water, so bright it made his eyes ache, and then, suddenly, the sun was hidden by a thick canopy of mangrove branches, and he could see again. At the island's edge, another boxlike water station stood silent and still. There was no person, no boat, no motion, no anything, just leaves from the mangroves hanging limp in the hot, sticky air.

“Nothing here. I didn't really expect any such luck. We'll try the next station,” Frankie announced, turning the boat. The channel was so narrow that she barely had room for the maneuver.

After searching out the fifth water station, they stopped to eat lunch on the
Pescadillo
. Frankie had thrown together some sandwiches, filling the cooler with soda pop and fruit. As Jack picked droopy lettuce out of his tuna sandwich, he couldn't help thinking how impossible this plan really was. If Gordon were even just one station ahead of them, the Landons would never be able to see his boat because of all the twists and turns in the Wilderness Waterway; if he were one station behind, he'd be just as much out of sight. There was an even greater chance that the man they were hunting wasn't out in his boat at all, right then. Only Frankie seemed as determined as she had been when they'd first begun.

By the time they reached the ninth station, the sun had moved high in the sky, baking away the morning's fog and leaving a blanket of hot, thick air. Jack was tired. He hadn't slept much the night before. Drowsiness pulled on his eyelids, and the engine's constant drone filled his head until it felt as heavy as an anchor. Stretching, he moved forward and stood next to his parents and Frankie, who was busy poring over a navigational chart of the waterway. “I think I remember one more up there…” she murmured, more to herself than to anyone else.

“Finding him's going to be a long shot, isn't it?” Jack asked.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Frankie replied cheerfully. “We can't find him if we don't look.” Her eyes snapped as she added, “If this man's been dumping poison into these waters, then what he's done is nothing short of murder, in my book.”

“I understand how you feel, Frankie,” Olivia said gently, moving closer to Jack. “I feel the same way, but…”

“…maybe there's no way we can actually find him,” Steven finished. “Ten Thousand Islands! The area's just too big.”

Frankie stiffened. “A minute ago, I radioed park law enforcement and the marine patrol once again to find out how they're doing. They haven't seen hide nor hair of him.” She rubbed the back of her neck, then squinted at Steven, sending a spray of wrinkles down her cheeks. “The thought of him getting away just sits in my craw, but I suppose we're on a wild goose chase.”

“How about we look at one more monitoring station,” Steven suggested, “and then we'll call it a day. How far to the next one?”

Frankie ran her finger along her chart, the veins on her hand matching the markings on the paper. “We're here, and the next closest station's about three miles down. One more, then.” She gave a quick nod and turned the
Pescadillo
west, saying, “This estuary's called Lostmans River. Appropriate, yes?”

Endless mangrove trees huddled at the water's edge, like an army of soldiers stopped in their tracks. Olivia slumped on the bench, fanning herself with Bridger's cowboy hat, and Ashley had her head on her mother's lap. Steven stood next to Frankie, trying to follow their route on the map. Jack's eyes had finally drooped shut, but he heard Bridger, even though Bridger didn't speak all that loudly, when he said, “There he is.”

“What?” All of them straightened up fast. Jack was suddenly wide awake.

“Over there. Up ahead.”

“Got 'im,” Frankie said, slowing the
Pescadillo
. Immediately she radioed park law enforcement, clutching the microphone so tightly her knuckles turned white. “This is the
Pescadillo
,” she barked. “We have the suspect in our sight, fellows. We're on Lostmans River, about halfway between Second Bay and First Bay. How soon can you get here? Over.”

The radio crackled its answer. “Captain, we're at Alligator Bay. We'll get to you as fast as we can.

Maybe a quarter of an hour. How close are you to the suspect? Over.”

“Beyond gunshot range, I can promise you that,” she answered into the microphone. “And we won't be getting any closer. Over.”

“Captain, we're on our way. Hold your position. Over.”

Frankie maneuvered the
Pescadillo
into a little notch in the mangrove shoreline. “Jack,” she said, “go down into the galley and look on the shelf on the starboard side. There's a pair of binoculars there. Bring 'em up.”

Jack hurried down the narrow steps and came back holding the binoculars. “Go ahead, take a look,” Frankie told him. “See what he's doing.”

He needed a minute to figure out how to focus the binoculars. They looked old and a little worn, but they must have been expensive, because they had wonderful, clear optics.

“Oh my gosh,” he exclaimed.

“What?”

“Gordon. He's looking at
us
through binoculars,” Jack cried in disbelief. “Now he's putting them down. He's going to the console—now he's starting up his boat. There he goes!”

“Looks like he's heading for the Gulf of Mexico!” Steven yelled, then quickly studied the navigational chart. “If he gets out there we'll never catch him.”

“We'll never catch him anyway,” Frankie muttered, exasperated. “The
Pescadillo
's about seven times heavier than his open speedboat. He can outrace us something pathetic. I'm radioing park law enforcement again.” In her agitation, she had to try several times to rouse someone on the radio. “This is the
Pescadillo
. You guys out there?” she shouted, at the same time steering toward the center of Lostmans River.

“It's not going to work,” Bridger exclaimed. “He's pulling way ahead of us. Wow, he's moving fast.”

“Stay on him,” Steven spoke behind her.

“Wait—where'd he go?” Ashley asked. “I don't see his boat!”

“Behind that bend. Come on…come on…” Frankie urged the
Pescadillo
. When they rounded a crescent-shaped grove of mangroves, Gordon's boat suddenly flashed into view.

“There he is!” Olivia cried. “I see him!”

“Marine patrol, park rangers, come in, somebody! This is the
Pescadillo
. Do you read me? Suspect is heading for the Gulf of Mexico. We are in pursuit. Can you intercept the suspect? Over.”

A voice cackled over the line, “Frankie, our craft is not close enough. We'll get there as fast as we can and then try to intercept. Over.”

“That Gordon better watch where he's going,” Frankie told Steven, squinting at her chart. “At that speed, he can't be minding the depths too well. There are submerged trees around here that got blown down by that hurricane a while back. If he hits one of them—”

She hadn't even finished the sentence before the white speedboat's hull smacked high out of the water, throwing Gordon loose to arc through blue sky like a rock from a slingshot. Time seemed to hold its breath as his body spun in the air, arms flailing a jangled pattern until he splashed down hard enough to send a fountain of water high against the sky.

The boat landed on its side, righted itself, and kept racing for a tenth of a mile before it turned in a circle. Grabbing the binoculars, Olivia called out, “He's OK.

I see one of his arms moving.”

“He's got a bigger problem,” Frankie called out. “Look at his boat!” The white speedboat, roaring through the water without a pilot, now headed back toward Gordon at full speed, the blades of its motor churning the water into white foam.

“If it hits him, he's dead,” Jack yelled.

But the boat turned in a circle, 200 yards away from Gordon. He wasn't splashing or swimming, just hanging in the water, turning himself around to keep watch on his out-of-control boat.

“We can't wait for the park rangers or the marine patrol to get here, so cross your fingers that this'll work,” Frankie said, and she shouted, “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY!” into her radio. “This is the motor vessel
Pescadillo
calling the U.S. Coast Guard. Over.”

The radio crackled, then Frankie heard, “This is the United States Coast Guard. Captain, what is the nature of your emergency? Over.”

“Thank heaven,” Frankie breathed, then said, “Coast Guard, we have a boating accident near our location on Lostmans River. We're about three-quarters of a mile upriver from the Gulf. There is one powerboat involved, and it's not mine. And we have a victim in the water and a boat on the loose. Over.”

“
Pescadillo
, is the victim wearing a life jacket? Over.”

Frankie turned to Olivia. “Can you see if he is, through the binoculars?”

“He's not wearing a life jacket, but he's hanging onto something. It looks like—I think it's a white seat cushion from his boat. It must have flown out of the boat when he hit the tree.”

“Coast Guard,” Frankie spoke, “the victim is alive and appears to be staying afloat with a safety flotation cushion from his vessel. Over.”

For what seemed a long time there was no communication, nothing at all coming over the radio. Olivia kept watching Gordon through the binoculars, and the rest of them focused their rapt attention on the circling speedboat. Then the radio came alive again. “
Pescadillo
, this is the United States Coast Guard. Luckily, we are very close to your location. Hold your position, Captain. We are on our way. Over.”

Bridger and Jack cheered, and smacked a high five.

In just a few more minutes, the dull roar of the Coast Guard vessel rose above all other sound. Churning around a knot of mangrove trees, it appeared, tall and gleaming, like an armored knight. “
Pescadillo
, we have the craft and the victim in view,” the radio announced. “All is under control. Over.” Over. Jack heaved a big sigh of relief. It really was over. At last.

“T
here's our mama manatee and her baby,” Ashley announced, pointing to a drawing on the wall.

“Looks like it,” Bridger agreed.

They were in the Everglades National Park Gulf Stream Visitor Center, waiting for Olivia to come out of her meeting, and waiting for Frankieto come and say good-bye.

“Poor Olivia must be exhausted,” Steven said. “That meeting's been going on all night.”

Jack had been talking to a young woman park ranger named Kelly, who had a warm smile and bangs that reached her eyebrows. He was telling her all about the man they'd called Gordon. “It turned out his real name is Wallace Lablanc. Want to know how they found out?”

“How?” Kelly asked.

“When the Coast Guard towed his boat out of the water—well, they fished him out first, before the boat—they had to trace the manufacturer's serial number, and then the place that sold it, because the boat had never been registered. The numbers on the side were fake.”

“Really?” Kelly seemed so interested that Jack kept on talking.

“They found out he owns property north of here. Turns out he operates an illegal toxic waste dump.”

Kelly had been standing behind the counter at the visitor center, where her job was to answer people's questions about the Everglades—about boat tours, canoe trips, hiking trails, and the birds and mammals whose pictures lined the walls of the center. Making his way slowly, Bridger came over to rest his arms on the counter. Since he was tall, when he leaned forward he was still eye to eye with Kelly.

“Hi,” he said. “I'm Bridger. You've got a big map here—maybe you could show me where this guy's toxic waste dump is located. I still can't figure how the chemicals made it down to the Ten Thousand Islands, if he buried the bad stuff farther up north.”

“That's a great question,” Kelly answered, smiling at him. “It all has to do with the direction the water flows.”

Feeling suddenly cut out, Jack frowned as Kelly's attention shifted to Bridger. Anyway, Bridger already knew the answer to that question, so why was he asking it again? Steven had explained that the water table was so high in the Everglades, the toxins leached out, flowed south, and got into the Wilderness Waterway.

“Jack, come here,” Ashley called.

Startled, he noticed his sister crouching low on the floor. “Why are you all scrunched down like that?” he asked.

“I want you to take a picture of me with the manatee.” A life-size, full-color manatee had been painted on the floor of the visitor center, to let people see the actual length of the animals. “Come on, Jack, please? So I can show all my friends how big a manatee is, compared with me.” She wiggled into position in the center of the painting.

“OK. I have to put on the flash attachment first.” He'd gladly have taken a dozen pictures of anyone who asked him, because it felt so good to have his camera in his hands again. Once Gordon had been captured, Sheriff Carlos had returned Jack's camera with a smile, a pat on the back, and an apology for questioning the kids' story.

After he photographed Ashley on the floor, Jack went all around the visitor center taking pictures of a manatee skull inside a display case, of the egrets, storks, and eagles whose pictures hung on the walls, of the clay Calusa Indian mask under glass….

“Here you all are,” Frankie cried, bursting through the doorway. “I need hugs from everyone. I'm going to miss all of you so much.”

“We'll miss you too, Frankie,” Steven answered, hugging her, “but we've got to get these kids back to school. They've already lost four days.”

“Where's Olivia?”

“Still in the meeting.”

“That's Frankie,” Bridger announced to the ranger named Kelly, shifting even closer to her. “She's the skipper of the
Pescadillo
.”

Kelly answered, “Frankie and I have already met, the other day when she brought in the pelican. I'm really sorry about that, Frankie.”

All three kids turned toward Frankie. “Sorry about what?” they asked.

She bit her lip and looked down. “I didn't want to tell you. The only thing they could do was cut the fish line off the pelican, take out the fishhook, and release it.”

Puzzled, Jack said, “I thought you said it would die without antibiotics.”

“Well, it's possible the pelican could survive,” Kelly broke in. “If it's lucky. The problem is that the Park Service doesn't have the resources to take care of wounded creatures—unless they're endangered species. We just don't get enough funding or have enough staff. People bring injured wildlife to us all the time, but we can't care for them, so we have to let them go. We feel bad about it, believe me.”

“Manatees are endangered,” Ashley said.

“That's why we sent out rangers to check on the one you reported. And it's going to be fine,” Kelly assured them. “We do what we can. But you know,” she added, “if people would just be more careful, and not drop things like fishing lines and plastic bags and rings from six-packs into the water, we wouldn't have so many injured animals.”

Just then a door opened and Olivia came out of the back room, followed by three people in Park Service uniforms. Her eyes looked bleary. “Hi, guys,” she said. “Karl, Skip, Maureen—this is my gang. My husband, Steven, and my children, Ashley, Jack, and Bridger.”

Bridger straightened to stare at Olivia, not sure how to react to her calling him one of her children.

“And there's our dear friend Frankie Gardell,” Olivia concluded.

“So what's the verdict?” Steven asked. “Or is there one?”

“Look, I'm beat,” Olivia answered. “Let's all go somewhere and get me a cup of coffee, and I'll tell you what we think is happening.”

They went to a little restaurant close to the concrete pier beside the visitor center. After all of them were seated, Olivia told them, “Now remember, none of this is definite. It'll take months, maybe even years, before the analysis is complete. But here's what it looks like.” She paused while they all ordered a second breakfast—it had been about two hours since their first one. Waffles for everyone except Bridger, who asked for steak and eggs.

“This Lablanc guy,” Olivia began, “has made millions storing toxic wastes from computer companies.”

“Computer companies!” Jack exclaimed.

“Yes. By-products from printed circuit boards include all kinds of hazardous compounds. The law states that they have to be disposed of properly, but Lablanc wasn't doing that, although he swore to the computer companies that he was. He just dumped the stuff on his property, not caring that it leached into the Everglades. And then he went around to all the water-monitoring stations and changed the chemical readings on the probes, so no one would suspect.”

“The jerk,” Jack growled. “But Mom, why did it only hurt the manatees, and only some of them? Why didn't it hurt the rest of the wildlife?”

Olivia sipped her coffee and said, “That's why we were up all night, going through dozens of published papers in the Park Service files and on the Internet.

As I said, it'll take a lot more study, but we think we have a lead.” She paused, then announced, “Copper.”

“You mean like pennies?” Ashley asked.

“Right. Copper's an important component in printed circuit boards for computers. And if too much copper gets into the water…” Olivia went on to tell them about a scientific paper published in 1991 that showed a link between copper in river sediments and sickness in manatees. It seemed that in a place called Crystal River, not too far from the Everglades, copper from herbicides had been absorbed by aquatic plants. And manatees ate those plants.

“You know, manatees are big eaters—60 to 100 pounds of vegetation a day, for an adult. So they've probably been absorbing a lot of copper here, too, from the toxic wastes our friend Lablanc—”

“Enemy,” Bridger interrupted.

“—dumped on his property. But here's the answer to the real question: Why were only some of the manatees getting sick?”

They waited, all of them focusing on Olivia until Ashley said, “Well, what?”

“Get this—the affected manatees probably spent their winters at Crystal River! Other manatees wintered in other places.”

“So?” Jack asked.

“The ones who wintered at Crystal River got a double dose of copper—first from the sedimentary copper that came from herbicides there. And then, when they came back here where Gordon, I mean, Lablanc, was dumping waste from circuit boards, they got even more—the copper that had attached to the plants in the Everglades. That double dose was enough to really hurt them.”

“Bravo!” Frankie exclaimed. “You figured it out, Olivia.”

“Not all the way. It still has to be proved, and that'll take a long time—we'll compare copper levels in the livers of healthy animals with those in the die-off population. But it's a start, and if it hadn't been for all of you, we wouldn't have a clue.”

After they finished eating, they went back to the concrete pier beside the Gulf Stream Visitor Center. At the far end, a big tour boat named
Manatee II
stood moored.

“Let's get some more pictures,” Jack said. “Line up, everybody, and look at the camera.”

They did—Ashley and Bridger, Frankie, Steven, and Olivia. Then Steven told them, “I have to phone the airline to make sure our flight's on time. I'll be right back.”

“OK,” Bridger said to Jack, “take a picture of me and the ladies. I want to show it to my dad when I get back to Montana.” As Jack peered through the viewfinder, he chuckled a little inside himself at how different Bridger looked. He was wearing Steven's spare sandals on bare feet, a pair of Jack's shorts that were a little too big for Jack, and a T-shirt Steven had bought him with a big manatee printed on the front. But he still had on his cowboy hat.

“Get closer together,” Jack instructed, and Bridger, standing between Ashley and Olivia, put his long arms around them both, then stretched to include Frankie in his reach.

“Know what?” Bridger said. “When I came here, I figured if I was lucky I'd get my picture taken with a big trophy fish. But this is better. I'm gonna call this picture ‘Bridger Conley with the three smartest, bravest women in the U.S.A.'”

“Why, Bridger,” Frankie said with a smile. “That's downright poetic.”

“Everybody say cheese,” Jack told them. “No! Say mana-TEES!”

“Mana-TEES,” they shouted as Jack clicked the shutter.

“Got it!” he said.