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“That makes sense.”

“Also, the natural deepwater environment of Humboldt squid has always been low in oxygen, which is one reason they rise to shallower water at night to feed and recover. There’s more oxygen in shallow water, and less carbon dioxide, which is toxic to squid in the same way it’s harmful to people. But increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide appears to be leading to higher levels of the gas in shallower waters. Besides acidifying the water and destroying the shells of marine organisms, this increase of carbon dioxide in the water will probably force Humboldt squid to spend much more time closer to the surface to absorb enough oxygen to survive.”

“So your Humboldt squid are now residents of the state of California?”

“They are. And they may be here to stay.”

A
small wave rushed up the beach and licked the toddler’s toes with foam, then slid back down the sand into the sea as another wave churned over it. The girl, dressed in a red sun hat and matching one-piece swimsuit, giggled as the waves reached her feet.

Her mother watched her from a folding beach chair, close enough to grab her if a bigger wave rolled in. Susan Weld had taken a break from her romance novel to watch her daughter enjoy the sand and water. Her husband was snoring loudly under a baseball cap, having fallen asleep immediately once his wife had quit reading.

They had brought Lucy to the beach before, but every time she seemed to be as excited as the first time. Her parents, on the other hand, weren’t big fans of the beach or ocean. What was so great about getting sandy and sunburned, while letting a bunch of strangers look at your less-flattering body parts? Susan had grown restless after an hour of sitting by the surf and repeatedly burying her daughter’s legs in the wet sand. She sighed. Lucy would probably end up being a marine biologist someday, or a pro volleyball player.

“Tom . . . Tom, wake up, honey.”

“Huh? What? Is Lucy okay?” Tom Weld’s hat fell off his wide face as he jerked upright.

“Lucy’s fine. I need to run to the bathroom. Will you watch her for a few minutes?”

“Yeah, sure.” Tom put the hat back on his head and sat up. “Can you grab me a water, Suze?”

“Sure. Honey, she’s getting too close to the water. Maybe you should move her.”

“I got it under control.” Tom looked at his daughter. “Don’t I, sweetie? Tell Mommy Dad’s got it covered!”

Susan rolled her eyes and rose from her chair. She walked across the broad expanse of gray sand, angling around a group of young men playing volleyball, toward the public restrooms. She wouldn’t be gone long. Public bathrooms were disgusting, especially at the beach.

After sanitizing her hands with watermelon-scented hand gel, Susan headed to a junk-food vendor down the beach and stuffed down a waffle cone dripping vanilla ice cream. She made sure to stay hidden from her husband as she ate. Tom would give her his critical look if he knew she was having sweets, and then she’d get defensive about her weight. With the ice cream on her chin wiped off, she tossed the dirty napkin in a garbage can and picked up the two bottled waters she had purchased, scaring a seagull off the raised planter next to her.

As she headed back toward the water, Susan watched a huge banner passing by in the sky, towed by a comparatively tiny plane flying parallel to the coastline. The beach advertising, Southern California style, not surprisingly showcased another new energy drink. The sky above the plane was an unbroken blue, the air was warm, and the wind was light. Susan was enjoying the beach today despite herself. They would need to go soon, though. They’d been here three hours already, and even with SPF 45 on, Lucy might start to burn.

Weaving through a throng of sun worshippers in board shorts and low-rise bikinis splayed out on their beach towels, she began to wonder if she was headed the right way. Where were Tom and Lucy? She raised her hand to shade her eyes and scanned the beach for her daughter’s bright red outfit. There, just off to the right. She was playing with something in the surf.

In
the surf.

Looking past Lucy at the ocean, a sick feeling hit Susan’s stomach as she saw a wave, much larger than the rest, just about to break over her daughter. She dropped the bottled waters and started running.

“Tom!”

Her husband jerked upright in his chair. He looked toward his daughter and lurched awkwardly up out of his chair, falling sideways into the sand. The wave rose higher and began to break behind Lucy.

He wasn’t going to get there in time.

“Help! Somebody!” Susan ran toward her daughter. She was too far away.

As the wave crested and broke, a skinny black teenager splashed over and grabbed Lucy, lifting her above it. The wave crashed against his thighs, but the kid managed to hold Lucy safely over the water.

Susan’s husband reached the boy first. He handed the toddler back to her father, who hugged his daughter against his chest as he thanked the boy. Tom looked toward his wife as she jogged up. She glared at him momentarily, then turned to the boy.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Susan hugged the teenager impulsively, then suddenly felt embarrassed and stepped back to look over her daughter. Lucy was smiling, oblivious to what had almost happened.

“She can’t swim yet. She’s only sixteen months old. If you hadn’t come along . . .”

“No worries, lady. I got a couple kid sisters. I know how it is.” The teenager smiled and then ran off to join his friends and resume a game of catch, as though he saved kids from drowning all the time.

Susan looked at her husband, who met her eyes for a moment before looking down at his feet. “I’m sorry, Suze. I was watching her the whole time, I just closed my eyes for a second—”

“Save it, Tom. I’m tired of your excuses. You can stay up all night creating complicated software programs, but you can’t stay awake for five minutes to prevent your only daughter from drowning. And this isn’t the first time. We’ve been through this before, and . . . Tom? Tom, are you listening to me?”

He was staring down at his daughter, his face turning pale. Susan followed his gaze and saw that he was looking at the dark object still in Lucy’s hands. It must have been what she was playing with in the water. Whatever it was, she was now putting it into her mouth. It was V-shaped, and looked sort of like . . .

Tom swatted the object out of his daughter’s hands just as she was putting it between her lips, and it fell into the sand. Small white nubs of bone gleamed through an opening in the black neoprene. Lucy started crying.

“Tom, what the hell is that?”

“I think it’s part of someone’s hand.”

 

 

The diver’s body was in a severe state of rigor mortis.

Curled into a semi-fetal position, the corpse’s arms were frozen in front of it, outstretched defensively, and one of its stiffened legs was suspended well off the sand.

Sergeant Joe Montoya and a deputy stood looking at the body from a short distance away, not wanting to approach it until they were sure there were no tracks or other obvious evidence in the sand. A wave washed up and splashed over the mutilated body, causing it to sink slightly into the beach. If anyone had approached the corpse, their tracks had been washed away. Joe looked up and down the coast. Besides a small group now drawn to the police presence, there was nobody else nearby.

“Thank God it isn’t the weekend yet, or someone would have definitely come across this by now,” Joe said. The body was a good distance from where a family had found the remains of a human hand—maybe half a mile away, where some low bluffs backed the beach at a less-popular stretch of sand.

“Both the hands are intact on this one, sir.” Deputy Dave Smithfield’s voice wavered.

Joe was reasonably sure this was the first mangled corpse the rookie had seen on the job. “Good eye, kid. But the hand was from an African American kid. This corpse appears to be Caucasian. It looks like we’ve got more than one corpse to ID.”

“The sharks really got into this one.”

“Remember to breathe, son. Through your mouth.” Joe swept the scene with his eyes a final time. “I think we’re safe to approach now. Let’s go get a better look, but be careful where you step. And remember, Smithfield, keep your eyes open for evidence.”

“Yes, sir.”

Joe stepped closer to the body, which was turned away from him, toward the water. There was something overly familiar about the matted grey hair of the corpse, which was encased in a black wet suit and bore a single fin on one foot. Joe had a bad feeling. He knew that Steve Black and a group diving with him had all been reported missing a few days ago, their boat found anchored many miles from the coast. He didn’t care for Steve, but the guy was Sturman’s friend.

On the left wrist was a dive watch, and strapped to one leg a titanium dive knife. The wet suit was torn in multiple places, exposing torn flesh.

“He must have died recently, sir. Probably this morning. He’s still in rigor mortis.”

“I know what you may have learned about rigor mortis, Smithfield, but they obviously didn’t teach you about it in drowning victims. When a body remains immersed in colder water, rigor can remain advanced for much longer. This guy might have died two or three days ago.”

“Most of the flesh on his upper arm’s gone. Looks like it’s been eaten.”

The humerus bone of one of the corpse’s arms was completely exposed, the muscles and skin gone. In fact, Joe thought it looked like something had tried to eat parts of the body. Without warning, Deputy Smithfield grabbed the stiffened corpse by the shoulder and rolled it onto its back.

“Dammit, kid! You know we’re not supposed to disturb the scene until we get pictures and a CSI on scene.”

“I’m sorry. I just thought that with the waves around him, moving the sand, it didn’t matter. . . .”

Montoya exhaled loudly. “Just step back.”

“Yes, sir.”

The corpse, which appeared to be an older man, stretched its limbs desperately toward the sky. A mess of long, wet grey hair covered the pale face of the corpse. Joe had to know if this was Steve. Besides, the rookie had a point—the surf had moved this body around a lot before they found it. Joe put on latex gloves and carefully swept the hair away from the corpse’s face to reveal small, pale crabs, which scuttled out of empty eye sockets through the tangled strands of hair.

“Christ.”

“What’s the matter, sir?”

“I think I might know this guy.”

It would take dental records or prints to ID the body, but Joe was fairly sure he was looking at what was left of Steve Black. His nose and eyes were missing, replaced by dark recesses. Probably the work of hungry crabs. Some of the flesh on his face had been torn away as well, torn lips revealing a ghastly grin of yellowed teeth. One of the front teeth was capped in gold.

Deputy Smithfield turned away and took a few steps, then stood looking off toward the sea, breathing deeply.

“Hey kid, you all right?”

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “Just not used to this, I guess.”

“You will be. Keep an eye on the body, and make sure nobody approaches. I need to call Will Sturman.”

“Who’s that?” The rookie was still looking away.

“Friend of mine. A local divemaster. He knows all the divers around here, including the one who went missing this week. I hope to hell this unfortunate bastard isn’t who I think he is.”

“T
his where you found the tag?”

“Give or take a few hundred feet.”

Standing at the helm of his boat, Sturman had shifted into idle. As he and Mike Phan gave Val a minute to think, he realized he was staring at the marine biologist’s trim figure while she faced away from him. He suddenly felt guilty and looked away. Mike continued to stare.

“Little pervert,” Sturman whispered.

“What? She’s hot.”

Just as Sturman had expected, Mike had made no effort to hide the fact that he was checking Val out when they first met this morning. Sturman couldn’t really blame the guy, even if he was married.

Val turned to face them. “Did you say something, Mike?”

“Nothing important.” He grinned at Sturman.

“So you guys didn’t see anything else unusual when you found it? Nothing else floating, maybe dead fish or something?”

Sturman sat down in the captain’s chair. “Just the tag, Doc.”

“Please, call me Val. I’m not a college professor.” She looked a little irritated. She’d already asked him to call her by her first same several times, but he found it amusing how she reacted when he didn’t.

“Sure thing, Doc. And I’ll pretend you aren’t still calling me Will.”

The biologist put her hands on her hips. “But that’s your name.”

Sturman squinted at her. “There’s nothing wrong with my last name.”

“Look, call me whatever you want . . . Sturman. How deep is it here?”

Sturman glanced at his depth finder. “Ninety-seven feet.”

“That’s awfully shallow for Humboldts. But I’m sure the tag drifted some distance after popping off.”

When Val turned around a moment later, Sturman noticed her catch Mike staring at her deeply tanned legs. She ignored the leer and reached down to scratch Bud’s ears. Sturman’s big mutt had followed her around the boat ever since she’d boarded that morning.

Sturman grunted. “He likes you.”

“I can see that.” Val smiled as the dog groaned with pleasure. “I love dogs. I’ve never been able to have my own, though, as much as I have to move around.” Val stepped over the dog and sat down in the shade of the cabin near the two men. She was wearing short shorts and a tight tank top, making it hard for Sturman to concentrate. He realized he hadn’t slept with a woman in several months.

“It bothers me how close these squid are to shore, especially in an area that’s got so much human activity,” Val said. “I’m still finding this hard to believe, but we’ve got to consider the possibility that the shoal may have been involved with the disappearance of those fishermen.”

“And she’s smart, too.” Mike winked at Val. “So what are you thinking, Dr. Martell? The squid killed them, right? I mean, what are the odds these squid just happened to be in the same place at the same time as those fishermen—a million to one?”

Sturman regretted allowing Mike to join them on the boat today. Mike had asked to join them when he heard Sturman was following up on the tag they’d found. It never hurt to have another capable set of hands on deck, but Sturman hadn’t counted on the little bastard hitting on the biologist.

“I hear what you’re saying, Mike, but as a scientist I try not to jump to conclusions. Remember, we’re talking about an animal that has never been known to attack people.”

“Maybe your textbooks don’t say anything about it, but I’ll bet I could find you some Mexican fishermen who would disagree.”

“Really? I’d like to talk to them.”

Mike blushed. “Come on, though. I’ve watched shows about Humboldt squid. Mexican fishermen have a lot of stories about being killed by them when they fall in the water.
Los diablos rojos,
they call them. It means ‘red devils.’ ”

“I know what it means.”

Sturman tilted his hat back and shook his head at Mike. Mike met his gaze for a moment, then looked away.

“Mike’s got a point,” Sturman said. “This seems an unlikely coincidence, based on the data from our tag.”

Mike glanced at Sturman and stuck his chest out. Sturman laughed and looked away as Val continued, seemingly oblivious to their antics.

“But what you’re seeing on TV
are
just stories, Mike. Those shows don’t produce a whole lot of facts.”

“Go on, Phan. Tell us what else you know.” Sturman grinned at Mike from underneath his hat.

“Shut up, Sturman.”

“Be nice, boys. So here’s the deal. That tag definitely dropped off of one of my squid from Baja. And when I downloaded it while on our way out here, I found some pretty surprising information. Here, let me show you guys.” Val picked up her laptop and navigated to a file, then turned the screen toward the men. Sturman leaned forward to look at the display, some sort of text-only file with a set of the numbers highlighted to call their attention to them:

“The left hand column represents the ordinal date . . . the sequential day of the year. I’ve scrolled down to the end of the dataset, right before the tag popped off on day two hundred and five. We’re lucky it popped off when it did—right after the people went missing. We’re interested in day two hundred and four since July twenty-second is the two hundred and fourth day of the calendar year . . . the day those people went missing.”

Sturman and Mike exchanged a glance.

“The second column is the time. These tags record depth and water temp every two hours, which are shown in the last two columns.” Val sat quietly for a minute as she allowed the men to look over the data.

“Just looks like a bunch of numbers to me,” Sturman said.

“Let me explain.” Val pointed to a number on the monitor. “Take a look at twenty-hundred hours on day two hundred and four. That’s eight p.m., right around twilight, on the day of interest.”

“The tag was only twelve feet deep right then,” Mike said.

“Twelve
meters
, actually. And the water temp is in Celsius.... Scientists never use Fahrenheit. But twelve meters is less than forty feet from the surface, which is shallower than these squid normally venture. And almost all of the recorded tag depths that evening are well within the range of a fishing line. Besides, this probably wasn’t the shallowest squid in the shoal.”

“So you think those fishermen came across a school of these squid, and maybe snagged a few on their lines?” Mike smiled. “Then what? Overwhelmed by guilt from eating so much calamari, they decided to jump in and sacrifice themselves?”

Val laughed. “That’s a stretch. But these data clearly indicate that this individual squid was awfully shallow that evening, and there’s something else. This shoal has been trending toward shallower average depths each day. Take a look at this.” Val turned the laptop back toward herself and pulled up a new screen, which she showed to the men. “You can see that this shoal is moving into increasingly shallow water, probably because they’re staying so close to shore. I’ve never seen this before.”

“It looks like they’re going deeper,” Sturman said.

“Sorry. I should have reoriented the graph with the surface at the top. If you look at the Y-axis, you’ll see that the average depth is actually decreasing. The squid are getting shallower.”

Sturman tried to think of something intelligent to say. Before he could, Mike spoke. “Your graph shows that they’re still staying over a hundred meters down every day, though. Right? Isn’t that too deep for people to worry about?”

“True, but this graph only depicts
average
daily depth. When you consider that at midday these animals are down very deep, normally over a thousand feet, that means they must be in very shallow water at night to generate these averages. I’ve looked over most of the data, and some recordings indicate that sometimes this shoal is right at the surface.”

“I’m no scientist, but it seems to me your squid are the reason those fishermen are missing,” Mike said. “I think the real question here is what we do about these squid.”

Sturman laughed. “We? Who’s
we
, Mike? You and your superhero office buddies?”

Mike opened his mouth, but Val intervened. “I know it seems easy to draw conclusions here, guys, but we simply don’t have enough evidence to point the finger yet.”

“How much proof do we need?” Mike’s expression grew somber. “Hey, Doctor, I’ve got three kids, and we spend a lot of time at the beach. Do I need to worry about a school of enormous squid tearing my kids to pieces when they go swimming?”

“I wouldn’t worry about your family,” Val said. “Even on the off chance that this shoal did actually kill those people, it would be the first confirmed case— ever—of Humboldts killing anyone. This would be considered a very isolated incident. Honestly, whatever you might have heard, these animals are not a threat.”

Sturman said, “How can you be sure these things haven’t killed other people?”

“Why would I have any reason to believe they have? Surely we’d have heard about it by now if this shoal had attacked other people. These types of bizarre stories always make the news. Why? Have either of you heard about any other strange disappearances lately? Any possible shark attacks, maybe?”

“I haven’t,” Mike said. “What about you, cowboy?”

Sturman thought about Steve Black for a moment. He’d been missing for days. Nobody at The Lighthouse had seen or heard from him. “No. Nothing.”

“Well, then—”

“Wait a minute,” Sturman said. “Montoya did say some immigrant left out in the ocean got all torn up a few weeks ago by a shark or something. Said that a bunch of other illegals might have gone missing that night.”

“Really? Well, that kind of makes me wonder. But, gentlemen, for now let’s simply assume that this shoal may still be in the area, and may have been involved with the disappearance of two people . . . and
possibly
more. This is an incredible case study though, whether or not the shoal has killed anyone. The fact that they’re in such shallow water, and so far north of their original range,
and
still apparently surviving, is reason enough to try and track them down. The individual squid I tagged here wasn’t the only one in the shoal that was marked. If this male is still with the same shoal he was with when I tagged him last year in Baja, then two more squid in this group have tags on them that may drop off soon. I really need to locate those tags.”

“Can’t we track them using the tags?”

“Good question, Sturman.” She frowned slightly when saying his last name. “Unfortunately, these tags aren’t designed to transmit in any way. They’re a less-expensive version we use to tag a lot of squid at once. These tags simply gather data every two hours, then float to the surface when they eventually work free. In fact, the only way to retrieve one is to have someone else find the tag and call us. The way you did.”

It was silent on the boat for a moment as everyone was lost in thought.

Sturman said, “Well, if you think there’s any possibility your squid killed these people, we need to talk to Montoya.”