The Loch (34 page)

"Your brother has a big mouth."

"An'
you
should've said somethin'. Ye think ye're the only one stricken by a phobia?" She parted her robe, showing me an exquisitely tanned leg, the inner thigh blemished by a series of zigzagging white scars. "When depression hit, I turned tae hurtin' mysel'. Sort o' gives all new meanin' to the term, shavin' yer legs."

"But you got over it?"

"I control it, that's all. Pills take the edge away, but the fear's always there. It sort o' lurks on the periphery, waitin' for me tae let my guard down."

I nodded. "I think I'm more angry now than scared. Guess that's an improvement."

"No' necessarily. Anger's a double-edged sword. While it gives ye the strength tae hunt one monster, it can turn ye intae another."

"Meaning?"

"Now's no' the time."

"No, go on. Finish."

"Okay then. The Zachary Wallace I knew never resorted tae usin' his fists tae make a point. Angus Wallace, on the other hand …"

"David's way out of line."

"That's Angus's ego talkin'."

"Brandy, I'm not about to let David destroy my life."

"Seems yer life was sufferin' long before David Caldwell ever came along."

"And you put it in my face. Why him, Brandy? Of all people, why get involved with him?"

"Look at me, Zachary. My boat's fallin' apart, I'm barely survivin', an' I've no money nor savings nor rich parents to borrow from. Bad enough I'm alone, but tae face the coming winter wi' no means tae live? David's job, it pays more in one day than I can earn in a good week."

"And in exchange, you're sleeping with him."

Her eyes angered. Stepping closer, she struck me hard in the chest with the heel of her palms. "First off, mister, I am no' a whore. Second, I'll sleep wi' who I please, when I please, an' it's none o' yer damn business!"

Glancing over my shoulder, she spotted David, Owen Hollifeld, and the engineer from NIST approaching along the pier.

"Ye need tae leave."

"Look, I'm sorry—"

"Did ye no' hear me? Get off my boat. Go on!" She pushed me toward the rail.

I climbed down just as David reached the berth. "What's all this?"

"He was lookin' for ye," Brandy lied. "Had tae threaten tae arrest him for trespassin' before he'd leave."

The NIST engineer hurried on board to check his equipment. The provost got in my face. "We're no' gonnae have any trouble from ye, are we Dr. Wallace?"

"I was just leaving."

"Good," David chirped. "I hear there's a nice vacant cell next to your father's."

I raised my hands, slowly backing away. "I was just making conversation with the lady. Do whatever you have to do to catch your monster, but you'd better think twice before you hurt Brandy, that's all I've got to say."

I walked away, the veins in my neck throbbing, my inflated ego shunting off any remaining whispers coming from the left side of my brain—

"Hey,
Angus
!"

—my psyche deflating once more as Brandy buried her open mouth against David's.

Inverness Castle

"Well, whit did ye expect?" said Angus, finishing his Scotch broth soup and chips. "Ne'er mess wi' a Scots livelihood, especially a woman's. Brandy kens whit she's doin', believe you me."

"I love her."

"Love? Ah, that's jist yer knob talkin'. B'sides, there's plenty o' fish in the sea. Last thing ye need is tae be hitchin' up wi' a MacDonald."

I shook my head, wondering how I'd sunk so low as to be asking advice about women from my father.

"So, lad, tell me again about this latest attack."

"I told you all I know. According to the papers, the American photographer's still in a coma."

"But he lost the camera?"

"Yes."

"Bollocks. My trial restarts next week. While every Nessie encounter pushes me that much closer tae freedom, Maxie says it's still no' enough. I need yer help here, son."

"Son? Not Alice or Deirdre? Why am I your son when you need something?"

"Point taken. Now when will ye go after this thing?"

"Not until I know more about it."

"Ugh… ye're wastin' valuable time. Whit else is there tae ken aboot it?"

"For starters, why did a benign fish-eating creature suddenly add red meat to its diet?"

"An' how dae ye expect tae learn that oot?"

"I don't know, seeing as how the Sheriff's lab conveniently managed to lose all the specimens I collected. Guess I'll just have to get more." I stood, heading down the corridor. "We'll talk in a few days. I wanna check out the salmon-spawning grounds."

"The spawnin' grounds? Zachary, wait! Forget the spawnin' grounds, laddie, ye're jist wastin' whit little time I've got left. Zack, are ye listenin' tae me? We need proof, real proof that this thing is oot there an' that it's killed folk. Call Theresa, she'll—"

"For the last time, I'm not interested in speaking with Johnny C.'s widow, or for that matter, any other woman you've shared bodily fluids with."

Pushing past the guards, I left the holding area and trudged up the dungeon's winding stone stairwell, the echoes of my father's rants following me until I reached the castle's ground floor.

Aboard the
Nessie III
:

An exhausted Michael Newman limped out of the
Nessie III
's cramped pilothouse, desperate to stretch his aching back. For the last six hours he had sat behind the makeshift wooden desk bolted to the pilothouse decking, attempting to patch together a working sonar grid. Each of the thirty-four sonar buoys floating in Loch Ness had to be recalibrated so that data transmissions could be received and analyzed, and in many cases, Newman had to order a less-than-pleased boat captain back out to reposition his vessel's buoys. Just when it finally seemed the NIST engineer had his grid up and working, the
Nessie III
's new generator had conked out, shutting down his GPS receiver, sending his blood pressure soaring.

It had taken him the rest of the afternoon to fix the problem, and now Newman's lower vertebrae felt as if someone had been twisting them with a monkey wrench. "Caldwell! Wake up and get in here."

David, asleep on a chaise lounge chair, opened his eyes. "We up and running?"

"We're up. Come in and I'll show you how it works, then I'm done. My back can't handle another minute of this."

David followed him inside.

"Now pay attention… and don't drip suntan oil on my equipment! See this monitor on the left? Hit Control-M and it displays your grid."

Newman typed in the command, displaying a GPS satellite view of Loch Ness, divided by grid lines. "The Loch's so long that I had to divide the screen into three sonar zones." Newman clicked on an area with his mouse. "There's your north display, central… and south. Use the mouse to zoom in and out."

"The grid's active?"

"All sonar buoys are active and pinging as of ten minutes ago. I set the target strength to report and record any objects larger than a sea turtle. If something large crosses the array's acoustical beam, an alarm will sound, and the targeted info will appear on this second screen."

"Good, great… so where's the monster? If the array's active—"

"It's active, but that doesn't mean there aren't dead zones. We're dealing with a cold-water trowel that's over eight-hundred feet deep. Even pinging the hell out of it, you'll still have geological anomalies and pockets around the shoreline that'll remain cloaked."

"Okay. So how much isn't cloaked?"

"Best guess? Between 85 and 90 percent, and that's about as good as it gets without one signal interfering with another. It took me all day and evening to get the array set, so you tell those boat captains of yours they'd better not move or add another buoy to the field, or I'll personally feed them to the monster. And another thing, warn your girlfriend I'd better not find that new generator being used for anything but the sonar control station. If she so much as plugs a hair dryer into that machine, I'm leaving and taking my equipment with me."

"Know what, dude, you need to lighten up."

"What I need is a chiropractor and bed. So good hunting and good night. If you need me, don't call until morning."

Newman exited the pilothouse, then limped off toward the Clansman Hotel.

Invermoriston

It was late in the day by the time I arrived along the banks of the River Moriston.

The rivers of the Great Glen that feed Loch Ness also serve as autumn spawning grounds for the Atlantic salmon. As the waters warm toward the end of April, the salmon begin their seasonal run from the Moray Firth south through the River Ness into Loch Ness, eventually making their way up the rivers and streams to lay their eggs.

The River Moriston had a well-earned reputation as a popular salmon area. Each spring and summer, visitors watched from lookout posts as the big females leaped out of the water, struggling to make their way up the Falls of Invermoristion, leading into the calmer breeding pools.

Salmon lay eggs by the tens of thousands, producing young fish, known as parr. Once hatched, the parr consume their egg sacs, beginning what will be an annual eight-inch growth spurt. It takes about two years for the fish to become smolts, a time when bodily changes prepare them for their eventual return to the sea. Salmon grow even more rapidly in salt water, and by the time they reenter Loch Ness as adults, they may weigh as much as forty pounds.

After a steady hour of hiking parallel to the river, I came to a rocky area where the Moriston climbed steeply. Setting down my backpack, I situated myself atop a nice-sized boulder and took in the beauty of the falls, my mind wandering.

Angus had testified that John Cialino had been swarmed by a school of salmon just before he'd been attacked by the monster. While it was not unusual to see salmon along the surface, I still remained skeptical, especially when it came to the creature's diet. For one thing, salmon were epilimnion, meaning they preferred to inhabit the upper regions of Loch Ness. If the creature fed solely on salmon, there'd have been far more surface sightings over the years.

Then again, it had been a school of salmon that surrounded yours truly when I'd been bitten seventeen years ago.

Still, I reasoned the predator I was after preferred charr or pike or even Anguilla eels. Charr were migratory fish, smaller than salmon but far more numerous, and they inhabited the deeper regions of the Loch. Pike were also deep-water fish and grew as large as three feet in length, but did not exist in vast numbers in Loch Ness. Anguilla, on the other hand, not only grew in excess of eight feet and several hundred pounds, but were known to prefer the depths, suspending themselves vertically off the bottom of the Loch. Anguilla had poor eyesight and hunted by smell, but only frequented Loch Ness during the spring and summer months when the water warmed.

And yet Calum Forrest had specifically directed me to the salmon-spawning grounds.

I checked my watch. An hour had passed, and yet I still hadn't seen a single salmon leap the falls.

My cell phone rang. It was True.

"Zack? I stopped by Inverness Castle, but ye'd a'ready left. Angus… he says ye're headin' for the salmon burns?"

"I'm already here."

'An' where's here?"

"The forest, just west of Glenmoriston."

"Okay, I'll come and fetch ye."

"Don't bother. It's kind of nice here, peaceful. Besides, I still want to do some exploring, maybe take a few specimens. I'll probably just camp here for the night."

"Zack, have ye lost yer mind? The monster killed no' far frae there only last week."

"I'm much farther inland, in high ground. I'll be fine."

"Zack—"

"We'll meet tomorrow morning back at the lodge. See you then."

I powered off the cell phone, then left the boulder and headed farther upstream, looking for a suitable place to make camp.

Inverness

As chief prosecutor in the Angus Wallace murder trial, Mitchell Obrecht had been feeling pressure from his superiors ever since the defendant had dropped his "Nessie bomb" in court. Experience alone told Obrecht that Angus was lying, but with each subsequent attack, the chances of winning a conviction—and salvaging his career— appeared to be a diminishing prospect.

It was Obrecht who had persuaded the judge to take a two-week continuance, knowing he needed more time to prove Angus Wallace had planned his entire over-the-top defense. The good news was that Wallace's defense opened the door for the prosecution to prove John Cialiano's murder had been premeditated. The bad news, the sudden difficulty in separating the monster's unprecedented rampage with Johnny C.'s murder.

Obrecht looked up as his assistant, Jennifer Shaw, entered the office, carrying a thick brief.

"I hope that's your PI's report."

The blonde smiled. "It is, and he found all sorts of new goodies on Johnny C. and his merry widow. For instance, did you know Cialino suspected his wife was having an affair with Angus?"

"I'm listening."

"He hired his own private investigator two months after he bought Wallace's land. Apparently, Theresa and Angus were doing a little rendezvousing in a bed and breakfast in Dores."

"Is that so?" Obrecht sat up, intrigued. 'And what do you have to back this up?"

She opened the brief and removed a manila folder. Inside were separate photos of Angus and Theresa Cialino, both entering the same bed and breakfast.

"What good is this? There's not a single photo of them together."

"I'm working on it. Meanwhile, the Cialinos' resort opens in three weeks and they're booked solid. Even the flats sold out, and they were asking twice the appraised value. This whole Nessie thing's made Theresa Cialino a very wealthy widow."

"She was wealthy before. You're grasping at straws, Jennifer. All you have are rumors wrapped around innuendo, nothing solid I can use to charge Theresa as an accomplice, or even to confront her with on the witness stand. No, forget money and forget the affair. The real key is to prove this monster, or whatever it is, had nothing to do with Johnny C.'s death. If we can do that, then everything else falls into place."