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“Montoya?”

“Sergeant Joe Montoya, with the county sheriff ’s office.”

“I’d rather wait until we have more proof. There isn’t much of a point in scaring people unless we’re convinced of the shoal’s involvement. Besides, the odds of another attack are practically nil. Unless a person goes out intentionally looking for them, at night, using bright lights . . .” Val smiled at Sturman.

“Which you apparently want to do.”

Val’s smile grew wider. “Yes. That’s something I was most definitely hoping we could do.”

Mike sighed. “Shit. My wife will never let me out at night.”

As they headed back in to shore, Val joined Sturman up in the flying bridge while Mike stood below them, alone in the stern, staring off into the distance. Sturman knew how much Mike liked to be out on a boat.

“Sorry about Mike. He’s a good guy, really. I wouldn’t have brought him today if I’d known he was gonna act like this . . . you know, flirting and all.” Sturman knew that standing down near the rumble of the engine, Mike wouldn’t be able to hear their conversation.

“Relax. He seems harmless. About what I was saying before . . . would you consider taking the next week or two off from your dive operation, to bring me out to study this shoal? Your boat meets my needs, and I don’t want to spend time looking for another vessel. But I’ll warn you . . . you’d need to be nocturnal for a while. We’d almost always have to go out at night, but all you’d really have to do is drive the boat. I’d be the one in the water . . . and I’d pay you well, of course.”

“Well, I could definitely use the money.”

“I’m not always bad company. And you won’t be bored.”

“What you got in mind, Doc?” Sturman was happy to see her flush.

“In all seriousness, Sturman, would your wife mind if you planned to spend a lot of time on your boat at night with a woman?”

He followed her gaze until he was looking down at his left hand and the thick gold band on his finger, scratched and scarred from years of wear.

“You saw my ring.”

“Well, you haven’t talked about her yet, but I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“You won’t. I’m not married anymore.”

“Oh? Well, then why do you still wear the ring?”

“I don’t like to talk about it.”

Val nodded. “Okay. Let’s just talk business then. This research is my life, and I’d love to use your boat if there won’t be any complications from your personal life.”

“You’ve got nothing to worry about, Doc.”

Val offered a price, more than Sturman had expected, and he accepted.

“Then we’ve got a deal.”

For the next several minutes, they sat in silence until Mike joined them on the flying bridge.

“What are you kids talking about?”

“She’s hoping to go swimmin’ with these suckers. Right?” Sturman smiled and looked over at Val. “She’s more nuts than I am.”

“That’s a bad idea, Doctor.” Mike’s eyes were wide.

“Don’t worry, boys. I appreciate your concern, but I’ve done this a few times.”

“I’m not worried.” Sturman tipped his hat at Val. “I’ll be driving the boat.”

“Speaking of, I’ll need to make a few temporary modifications to your boat. We’ll need to rent some outdoor stage lighting, and rig it to shine down over the sides into the water. Would that be all right?”

“As long as we don’t damage her.” Sturman rubbed the dash gently. “So is this what you do down in Baja? Swim every night with big-ass squid?”

“Pretty much. I know it sounds crazy. My current research is devoted to understanding Humboldt squid communication. Think of a shoal of Humboldt squid like a huge pack of wolves . . . or, better yet, an ant colony. The shoal needs to communicate to survive, to coordinate their efforts as they hunt, travel, or evade predators.”

“Makes sense. I guess they can’t talk.”

“Actually, they can, in a way. But they use visual cues. For one thing, they change the colors and patterns of their skin, using cells called chromatophores, just like octopi do. But what’s the problem with using different colors to communicate when you’re a thousand feet underwater?”

Mike beat Sturman to the punch. “It’s dark . . . so they can’t see each other.”

“Exactly. So Humboldt squid use bioluminescent signals to talk to each other. They have these tiny organs, called photophores, inside their skin, which can be used to emit light.... Have you ever seen pictures of deepwater fish, like lanternfish, which have glowing lures built into their bodies?”

“Yeah. They use them to catch smaller fish for dinner.”

“Well, these squid have similar capabilities. But Humboldts use their photophores in a more complicated fashion, and emit rapid pulses of light in complex patterns. I’m trying to figure out what those different patterns mean.”

“How do you figure out what they’re saying?”

“Well, I haven’t yet. But I think I’m getting closer. I try to observe them in their environment and film a lot of footage underwater, and then I spend time in the lab . . . a
lot
of time . . . reviewing the glow patterns and the behaviors I observe during and after the light emissions.”

“Are they really that smart, Doctor?” Mike asked. “I mean, do they say anything to each other besides ‘Who’s hungry?’ and ‘Let’s eat’?”

Val said, “They say a lot more than that, but we’re not sure how extensive their communication is.”

“How do the tags come into this?” Sturman asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, how do you use these floating tags to figure that out?”

“Oh, the tags are a secondary part of my research. Even though I’m most interested in cephalopod communication, there’s so little known about Humboldt squid that it’s beneficial to track even the most general of their habits, like where they spend their time each day. That’s what the tags are for.”

“Aren’t you ever worried about the risks? You said these things get pretty big.” Mike always did this, Sturman thought—act like an enthralled child, unable to quit asking questions.

“They do get big, but no, I’m never really worried. I was worried on my first ten or so dives, a long time ago, but after hundreds of dives with these squid, I’ve only had a few scary encounters. They’re usually just curious about what I am.”

“So tell us—what was the biggest one you’ve ever seen?” Mike asked.

“Men are so obsessed with size.” Val sighed. “Certainly over a hundred pounds, maybe seven feet long.”

“Longer than Sturman is tall, but only a hundred pounds?”

“They don’t have to carry around a lot of internal fluids, like we do, and they lack a skeleton. Seawater in the mantle adds volume and gives them shape, so underwater they look a lot heavier than they really are. The biggest one I’ve actually weighed and dissected was ninety-two pounds. Like I told Sturman, though, there are reports of these squid reaching twice that size off the coast of South America.”

“That’s what I call a big squid.”

“I’d like to head down to Peru someday and find out for myself.”

“Sturman’s right. You really are crazier than him. You wear armor or something when you dive with these things? Like the chain mail used for shark diving?”

“No, I don’t, but some dive operations down in Baja have a sort of plastic armor they wear when they dive with Humboldts. Here’s the thing . . . these squid don’t have huge mouthfuls of teeth like sharks do, so there’s no real risk of getting a limb taken off. But I always tether myself to the boat, because the real danger with these guys is getting dragged down into very deep water if they grab hold of you. That can happen fast if they get overexcited.”

Sturman said, “So is that what you’re going to do here over the next few weeks? Study how they talk to one another?”

“Not exactly. I may look at that, too, since my research is centered on that. But I’m really just interested in their basic biology here—what they’re eating, where they’re spending their time, how healthy they are. That sort of thing. Coastal California was never really their habitat until the last decade or so. Even then, usually only for brief periods, which have often ended with the shoals dying and washing up on shore.”

“I’ve read a few articles about dying squid washing up on the beach here,” Mike said. “And also up in Monterey, and even as far north as Washington state. Never seen one myself, though.”

“They’re definitely expanding their range. Up in Monterey, we’ve actually been keeping a video log of the deepwater inhabitants of Monterey Canyon for decades. Our video footage has shown that Humboldts have now become permanent residents off the coast there.”

“So how are we gonna find these guys?”

“What do you mean ‘we’? For some reason you keep using that word.” Sturman looked at Mike from under his cowboy hat.

“I could maybe come along—couldn’t I? I could help you out, buddy. I know my way around a boat.”

“Your wife will never let you. You know that.”

“She’s not my boss.”

Val said, “I’ve got to be honest with you guys. It’s going to be a little like a needle in a haystack, and we may spend weeks just looking for them. It can be pretty dull.

“There are probably a few other tags in the shoal, but like I was saying, they don’t actually transmit. So we can’t simply track them. The good news is that if we find any squid at all, it’s very likely our group. There aren’t a lot of different shoals up here, like there are down by La Paz. I thought we could start by doing what we do in Mexico. We’ll start this weekend, if that’s all right, by heading to likely locations, near the continental shelf off the coast where there’s deeper water. We’ll try to lure them to us with bright lights and glowing fishing lures.”

“And what do we do when we find them?” Sturman asked.

“Ever landed a squid before, cowboy?”

S
turman got the call that night.

It was a warm Friday evening, and he’d just finished washing dishes after eating a relaxed dinner of runny fried eggs and crisp bacon on his boat when he realized his cell phone had been off. He pulled up the voice mail and listened to the message from Joe, and knew even before he’d called him back what he was going to hear. Until then, he’d even been going very light on the beer, and had been thinking about the feisty biologist he’d spent the day with. But now only one thought went through his mind.

Steve Black was dead.

After calling Joe back and hearing more of the details, Sturman had gone to the coroner to help Joe identify the body. Apparently Steve had washed up on the beach yesterday, mutilated almost beyond recognition. A diving accident—that was what the sheriff ’s department was calling this now. They were also looking into a possible shark attack or potential foul play. An entire family that Steve had taken on a dive excursion had gone missing with him.

Sturman knew it was Steve because of the tattoos. Despite Joe’s recommendation, he had looked at the face of the corpse, but that hadn’t been Steve’s face. Just a wrecked crater of flesh that fish and crabs had hollowed out. After that, Sturman had needed a drink. That was last night.

“Hey, hon, how about another smoke?”

Jill stopped wiping down the bar and headed over to Sturman. He had been drinking beer at The Lighthouse since its doors opened at 10:30. In reality, he’d been drinking since about ten o’clock the night before, but had passed out somewhere—he couldn’t remember where—in the wee hours before resuming his binge in the morning.

She walked over to him and pulled a pack of lights out from under the bar, handing it to him along with an ashtray. Sturman lit a cigarette and took a deep pull.

“Are you gonna be all right, Will? You’ve had a lot of beer, and it’s only lunchtime.” When he didn’t respond, Jill continued. “Look, I know you’re upset about Steve. I am too. But you should be with friends and family right now.”

“Steve was my family, Jill.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I’m just saying—”

“Thanks for the cigarette, but save the advice. Gimme another.”

Jill shook her head and walked down the bar to refill Sturman’s glass. “All right, but this is the last one.” She set the beer down in front of him. “Let me know if you want to talk. Okay?”

Sturman took the beer and got up, staggering a little as he rose. He walked slowly toward the bar’s quiet pool tables. Nobody was playing right now. The few other regulars were sitting at a booth at the far side of the bar, laughing over a game of cards. Sturman put his hand on one of the pool tables, feeling the faded red velvet surface.

He and Steve had spent a lot of time at these tables.

Sturman heard Jill talking to someone, and turned to see Joe Montoya entering the bar. Joe had never liked Steve, but Sturman couldn’t blame him. Steve had certainly had his faults. One of the biggest was that he could be a racist old bastard. That obviously had never sat well with his other friend, whose family was from Mexico.

Joe looked up as he finished talking to Jill and saw Sturman at the pool tables. He clenched his jaw and headed toward his friend.

“Hey, pal. After I didn’t see you at your boat, I figured you’d be down here.”

“Hey, Montoya.”

“Buy you a beer?”

“You may have to. Jill cut me off.”

“Shit. You’re pretty drunk, aren’t you? How you holdin’ up?”

“I’m all right.” Sturman smiled weakly. “Steve spent a lot of time here. Even more than I did, amigo.”

“Yeah. He liked his drink.”

“Let me get you a beer.”

“I can’t, pal. I’m on duty. I just thought I’d stop in to see how you’re doing.”

Sturman looked away. “I can’t even remember what he really looked like, Joe. All I see is his dead face.”

“Give it time. You’ll remember again.”

Joe put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed—a rare gesture of affection from the all-business cop. Sturman felt his throat knot and swallowed it back. He tilted back his glass and gulped down the full glass of beer. He turned and hurled the glass against the wall. When it hit the bricks, it exploded with a loud crack, sending broken glass back at them. Sturman took off his cowboy hat, bits of glass now on the brim, and rubbed his head.

Joe stood motionless, but Sturman couldn’t blame him. What was he supposed to say? The men hadn’t spoken for a few minutes when Jill walked over and cleaned up the mess without saying a word. Finally, Sturman spoke.

“Find out what happened, Joe. Just find out what happened.”

When he staggered out of the bar, he didn’t care if they knew he was only headed to another.