Extinct (9 page)

Again without waiting for a response, Vandiver said, “Deepest spot in the world. You take Mount Everest, the highest point on earth at 29,028 feet tall, and drop it into the Marianas Trench, and the water would be over its top by a mile. The only areas on earth that basically haven’t changed since time began are those deepest spots. Down there, the temperature is slightly above freezing, kept from freezing by the salinity and the pressure. During the glacial ages, like the one I mentioned, these depths remained slightly above freezing. During the temperate and tropical climates, they stayed slightly above freezing—they’ve always been slightly above freezing. The oxygen content that deep is basically the same as it’s always been, too, somewhat less than in the shallower waters. And it’s always been pitch dark down there, a black hard to imagine. The dinosaurs died out because of global temperature change, maybe gradually, or maybe rapidly from a meteor hitting the earth creating a great cloud of dust that not only caused the world’s temperature to drop but killed the foliage the dinosaurs depended on for subsistence. In either case, there would have been a great environmental change from one decade to the next, or maybe from one year to the next. But the environmental conditions in the oceans’ greatest depths have always remained basically the same, changing only insignificantly over time.”

Vandiver leaned forward. His eyes stared directly into his nephew’s. “So why, Douglas, I ask you, if any creature was originally present down there—why would he still not be there?”

Douglas didn’t answer.

Vandiver, smiling, shook his head in amusement. “No, I’m not really ready to be boarded out. I’m not suggesting they are there, Douglas. With the sensing equipment we have on submarines today, with scientific vessels constantly mapping the trenches through sonar technology … hell, with all the people this world has flitting around now in submersibles and with robot probes, it’s hard to fathom that a creature of the megalodon’s size could still be alive and not have blundered into something that would have recorded its presence. What I
am
saying is that I have a theory, a hypothesis, and it’s that megalodons survived a lot longer than we’ve previously thought.”

Vandiver paused a moment and then said, “You come back from down there and see if you can help me out on that.”

“Couldn’t you have the tooth dated, sir?”

“I’m going to see what I can do about that. Meanwhile I don’t want a storm coming in down there and undoing something that maybe an earlier storm has done, or some kind of upheaval changing the area. That’s why I want you down there as soon as you can get there. And, oh yes, I want to know how close this particular spot is to the mouth of any river running out from the Everglades.”

And Vandiver left it at that, speaking no more about the tooth, but only about his sister, Douglas’ mother, as he walked Douglas toward the door.

*   *   *

Alan reached over his head from where he was lying on his couch watching television and caught the telephone on the second ring.

“Uh-huh?”

“Alan.”

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” his aunt said. “How’s my favorite nephew?”

“Your only one.”

“I’d sort of like to keep it that way.”

“So what are you saying, that you have a sister somewhere I’ve never heard of, about to give birth?”

“I’m glad the fish you’re around are in tanks.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not going diving this weekend are you?”

“Did you raise an idiot?”

“I don’t know. You tried sky diving once.”

“Once.”

“It only takes once.”

“Okay, but that was a long time ago. And, by the way, sharks don’t get a taste for human blood, Rayanne. It would be safe in open water. But, in any case, I have no plans to go diving or anything else—at least for a while.”

“Will you promise to tell me before you do? If you don’t, then I’ll be worrying every night you’re going the next day. I never will get any sleep.”

“Give you twenty-four hours’ advance notice.”

“Alan, you’re the only child I have.”

“I’m serious, Aunt Rayanne. And, if the real reason you called is to find out if I’ve bought your birthday present yet, I haven’t—but I’m probably going to.”

“You know what you’re going to get me?”

“Wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

“I like candy, perfume, and pajamas—cotton ones.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“And you’re serious about the notice?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

As Alan replaced the receiver, he laid his head back on the cushion propped against the arm of the couch and stared at the ceiling rather than the TV.

As terrible as it had been losing his parents, he could not have been any luckier afterwards than to have had Rayanne. She had come up into his room after the funeral and taken him in her arms and rocked him while he cried, and he had known somebody did love him.

She had brought him from Jackson to the coast to live. He couldn’t remember if at nine years old he had been planning to be a fireman or a policeman, but he remembered vividly that first July he lived here when she took him to the docks to watch the boats bring in their entries for the annual fishing rodeo. He hadn’t known then that he was going to become a marine biologist, but he had known he was going to do something having to do with the water.

Rayanne
had
cautioned him a few years before about leaving his job with the Gulf Coast Research Lab. But when she saw that he really wanted to try building an aquaculture company while the industry was still in its infancy and the major food companies didn’t already control it, she not only gave him her blessing but withdrew ten thousand dollars from her savings account to help him get started. He kept it safe in the bank until he saw the company was going to make it, then gave her twice as much stock as her money would have bought on the local market. But he could never repay her. For a child and then later a man without a mother or father, Rayanne came as close as possible to being a replacement.

The telephone rang.

He smiled and reached back over his head again.

“I’m not going to tell you what I’m getting you,” he said.

“Alan, this is Carolyn.”

He sat up and swung his feet to the floor.

“Alan, this is embarrassing but … Paul saw me putting steaks on the grill and he realized it was after seven o’clock and.…

“Alan, is there any way that you could come over here and eat with us?”

CHAPTER 10

Paul insisted on cutting his steak into bite-size pieces himself. Carolyn then told him to cut each piece into two further small pieces. He frowned, but did as she said. She pointed to the broccoli on his plate, then came across the patio toward Alan sitting at a wicker table.

“Big boys don’t have to cut their steak into tiny pieces,” she said in a low voice as she settled into her chair, “that’s what he’s thinking. And you know what, he’s right. I know I’m overprotective. I tell myself I’m going to back off, and then the next moment he’s climbing a tree and I’m running outside telling him he’s going to fall and break his neck. I think in some ways children are better off with parents who don’t care what happens.…” She rolled her eyes. “… If the kid survives.”

Alan watched Paul feed Duchess a stalk of broccoli. Duchess swallowed it whole and looked across the patio toward the table, as if she was checking to see if Carolyn was watching.

Alan smiled, then turned his eyes toward the eighteen-foot outboard sitting at a small wooden dock at the rear of the yard. “I believe you’re the first woman charter-boat captain I’ve met.”

Carolyn stopped a bite of salad on its way to her mouth and smiled a little. “You mean, what’s a nice girl like me doing in a business like this? Actually, Carl left me the
Intuitive,
too. Carl—that was his name. You notice I use
was
in the sense of ‘thank God he’s gone.’ But then I don’t guess I should be so hard on him—the
Intuitive
turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me as far as Paul is concerned. I was going to sell it and come out with what equity I could. Then I decided that if I sold it the money would come in just once—if I charter it, it would keep coming in. So you’re looking at a formerly depressed woman working in a stuffy accountant’s office suddenly sailing the bounding main with her child by her side. And you’d be surprised at how much he helps out. Would you like a glass of wine?”

“That sounds fine.”

After Carolyn stepped inside the house, Paul’s hand started toward Duchess’s mouth, until he saw Alan was looking. Alan theatrically raised his gaze to the sky. Paul smiled and lowered his entire plate to Duchess. A few seconds later he lifted it, licked clean, back onto the TV tray.

*   *   *

When Carolyn came outside with the wine, Paul and Duchess were playing with a Frisbee in a grassy area off to the side of the house. She looked at Paul’s clean plate and came on across the patio.

Alan rose from his chair, took the glass she held out to him and, waiting for her to take her seat before he sat back down, he looked toward the river again, this time down the channel. He thought of how, after the partial hand had been found, the men had been unable to find any more body parts. They could have missed something but he doubted it.

“Alan,” Carolyn said, looking up at him.

He settled into his chair, still thinking. The attack had been complete, and quick, with neither Skip nor Dustin surfacing once they had gone under the water. Bull sharks attacking in a pack?

“What are you thinking about?” Carolyn asked.

He dismissed the nagging uncertainty that played at his mind and looked toward Paul. “Does he know what really happened?”

She nodded. “He cried when I told him, but it wasn’t as bad for him as I thought it would be. Nothing like yesterday when he first realized they were dead. I don’t know if it’s some kind of shock, or if how they died didn’t make them any deader to him. I know that sounds terrible, but … I don’t know, how do you know what anyone thinks after something like this, especially a six-year-old?”

He looked at her for a moment. “Did you ask him if he had any questions?”

“I tried to explain as best I could, but how do you explain something like that?”

He started to tell her what he meant. Then Paul stepped onto the patio. “Mr. Freeman.”

“You should call him Dr. Freeman,” Carolyn said.

“Alan,” Alan said.

Paul smiled. “Mr. Alan, do you have a boat?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Like the
Intuitive
?”

Alan smiled a little. “No, not that big. It’s a Boston Whaler. Do you know what that is?”

“Is it a center console?”

Alan smiled again. “As a matter of fact it is. A center console Outrage.”

“That’s the best kind,” Paul said. He looked toward the outboard and frowned. “I told Mother that.”

Carolyn glanced at her watch. “It’s bedtime.”

Paul nodded and turned back to the house, opening the screen door and stepping inside. “Good night, Mr. Alan,” he said before letting the screen close behind him.

Carolyn stared after him. “I’m in shock,” she said. “Maybe you should come over more often.” She got to her feet. “Let me get him ready for bed—it’ll only take me a minute.”

*   *   *

In Paul’s room Carolyn helped him pull his pajama top down over his thick hair. “Why are you being so nice?” she asked. “Because Dr. Freeman is here?”

Paul looked up at her. “Grandpa Fred said I could go camping with the team in the morning … if you don’t mind.”

She was caught off guard. It took her a moment. “Oh, that’s nice of Grandpa Fred, Paul, but those are bigger boys than you.”

“They like me.”

He was staring up at her.

“I know they do, Paul, but … maybe when you’re a little older. Maybe next summer.”

“He said you would have to pack my stuff tonight,” Paul said, “’cause we’ll be leaving early in the morning.”

“No, baby, I don’t think so.”

He caught his lip in his teeth and turned toward his bed.

*   *   *

In Pascagoula, an older, heavyset woman with her graying hair up on the back of her head in a bun, walked inside the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department. She fidgeted nervously with the front of her loose print dress as she came across the dimly lit floor. The deputy she approached looked up from his desk and gave her a friendly smile.

She tried to speak in a calm voice. “My husband, Eddie. I, uh … I visited up at my sister’s at McComb last night. Eddie, he went fishing with a friend of his named Luke. I came in and he’s not back—Eddie’s not. And nobody don’t answer at Luke’s.”

*   *   *

Carolyn frowned into the receiver. “Daddy, I can’t believe you told Paul you were going to let him go with you.”

“So what’s wrong with that?”

“Daddy, he’s barely six.”

“So, I’m not responsible enough to watch over him?”

“Daddy.”

“Well?”

“You’re going to have your hands full with the rest of the boys.”

“I have them trained like a troop of cavalry. They could take care of me.”

“I wouldn’t let him stay overnight in the marshes if they really were a troop of cavalry. Especially now.”

“We’re not going swimming, Carolyn, we’re going camping. And it’s almost like we’ll be at your back door. You know how the boys like him, they’ll be picking at him. It’ll be the best thing in the world for him—help him to get his mind off what’s happened, at least not have that the only thing on his mind. Martha said you were worrying about that. And if you let him go, I promise you I won’t let him put his little toe in the water.”

Carolyn puffed her cheeks and blew the air out in exasperation. Paul’s expression after he had climbed into bed and lay looking at the ceiling had nearly killed her. But she
couldn’t
let him. She would be a nervous wreck the entire time.

“Well?” her father said.

“Daddy, really, no.”

“It would be the best thing for both of you. You keep sitting home thinking about those boys, it’ll drive you crazy. And, Carolyn, you know I’ll be watching him every minute. I’d let something happen to me before I would him.”