I noticed a door with Cassandra’s name on it, and with the words paralyzed prey ringing in my head, I entered her office.
33
As Tessa watched the sharks, an enthusiastic aquarium-educator girl led a group of little kids around the corner. All the kids were wearing orange Tshirts that read “Third graders rock the world!!!”
Tessa tried to sneak past them before they filled the corridor but didn’t quite make it.
Great.
With a practiced flourish, the aquarium girl gestured for the children to stop.
“How many of you know how to smell?” Her voice was high and chattery and to Tessa it seemed to echo way more than the acoustics of the corridor should have allowed. All the children raised their hands. “And taste things like pizza or hot dogs… or broccoli?” At the words pizza and hot dogs the children smiled, at the word broccoli they grimaced but faithfully raised their hands.
“And touch and hear and see?” More hands.
“Well,” she continued, “those things are called our senses. Most of us have five, although some people may lack one or two. Well, sharks belong to a group of fish that have no bones in their whole bodies and are the only animals on the planet who have a scientifi-cally proven sixth sense! Sharks can hunt fish even when they can’t see or smell them! The man who discovered this unique ability was named Stephano Lorenzini. Let’s say that together: Stephano Lorenzini. Isn’t that a nice name?”
Tessa drew in a thin, aggravated breath. Aquarium Girl was doubly annoying. Not only was she way too chipper, but she didn’t even have her facts straight. Lorenzini didn’t discover the receptors; Marcello Malpighi did-fifteen years before Lorenzini ever started taking credit for it. Tessa felt like correcting her but decided against it. Years ago at school in Minnesota, she’d learned the hard way that it’s best to keep your mouth shut when you know more than the teacher does.
Aquarium Girl went on, “When sharks move their heads back and forth, they’re not looking through the water, they’re sensing where other fish are. Kind of like using a metal detector. Let’s all do it together!” The girl began wavering her head back and forth like a shark using his electrosensory organs to search for food, and the class of children imitated her.
Tessa most definitely did not.
Above and around them, the sharks circled in their three-dimensional patterns. Endlessly swimming. Endlessly moving, watching, sensing.
Grace and death.
Both eerie and beautiful.
The girl who didn’t know who Marcello Malpighi was coughed up something that had been caught in her throat, swallowed it again, and then launched into her closing speech. “Sharks, the sea’s magnificent prowlers of the deep, have roamed the earth’s oceans for millions and millions of years. And so,” she concluded, “untouched by nature and time, sharks remain one of nature’s most magnificent and enduring miracles.”
That was it. Tessa couldn’t put up with Aquarium Girl anymore.
First, she taught historical inaccuracies, and now logical inconsistencies. After all, if sharks were miracles, they couldn’t be from nature, and if they were from nature, they couldn’t be miracles. You can’t have it both ways.
Time to go.
But as Tessa was easing past the children toward the next exhibit, she saw a bull shark turn suddenly and swim directly toward the glass. It pivoted at the last moment, curled toward a shiny fish the size of a large cat, and bit it in half.
All around her, the children began shrieking and pointing. Some of the third grade boys were yelling, “Cool! That shark just ate that fish!” Some of the third grade girls were wailing about how gross it was.
Tessa heard Aquarium Girl stutter something about how sharks don’t normally attack that kind of fish and that it might have been a mistake that someone put that fish in there, and that really there was nothing to worry about since sharks are basically good creatures just like all animals because only humans are truly dangerous, but Tessa noticed that her voice didn’t sound quite as chipper as before.
The remaining portion of the fish twitched awkwardly as it sank, until a tiger shark swooped forward, gulped it down, and then circled once again, stony-eyed, through the water. And all the while, a thin trail of blood rotated slowly toward the surface of the water, like autumn mist curling up in a breeze.
Grace.
And death.
Blood seemed to be following Tessa everywhere. She hurried past the children to find a bathroom where she could throw up.
34
I scanned Cassandra Lillo’s office.
File cabinets. Overstuffed bookshelves. Scuba gear on the floor.
Lowlying desk covered with papers and research findings. Nothing seemed out of place.
A dog-eared medical journal lay on the file cabinet. I flipped through some of the highlighted pages. Cassandra seemed to be very interested in a new technology that I wasn’t familiar with called magnetoencephalography. I skimmed the article and found that magnetoencephalography, often known as MEG, is a way to measure the magnetic fields that are caused by the electric impulses of the neurons firing in your brain.
Hmm. Just like sharks.
The article contained a picture of an MEG machine. The eight-ton beast looked like an MRI or a CAT scan machine but was designed for someone sitting up. It was located inside a chamber with thick protective glass walls. Apparently, there are only a few dozen of the nine-million-dollar machines in the world. And according to the article, four of them were located here in San Diego. That might be something to look into.
I memorized the issue number, set the magazine down, and touched the spacebar on Cassandra’s keyboard to wake up her computer screen. A small window hovered in the corner: “Welcome, Cassandra Lillo. You are logged on to the Drake Foundation Network. Log-in time: 5:03 a.m.”
So, the Drake Foundation Network… that would explain why Victor Drake received such glowing praise in the aquarium’s brochure.
Unless someone else knew Cassandra’s password, she must have arrived before dawn and logged into her computer at approximately the same time I went jogging. It also confirmed my theory that she hadn’t been abducted by her car, but had most likely been attacked while inside the aquarium.
I checked the CD drive to see if she’d been transferring files.
Empty.
I started searching through her file registry to see which documents she might have accessed this morning, and that’s when I overheard Lien-hua talking with Maria just outside the office door.
“Maria, do you know anything about Cassandra’s family?”
“Her parents are divorced. Her mom died around Thanksgiving, murdered, I think. Her dad lives out East somewhere, but I think he got remarried a couple more times. Cassandra told me once she’d kept her mom’s last name. She never mentioned any brothers or sisters.”
“What about her boyfriend?”
“Which one?”
“She has more than one?”
“There’s this one guy from New England she used to see, but lately it’s this guy named Hunter-I don’t know if that’s his first name or his last name. It’s just what she called him. They met at a beach party a few months ago. Both of them are into triathlons.”
Just as I came across a folder of encrypted files, I heard Lien-hua ask, “Maria, do you know anything else about Cassandra’s work?
Anything at all? Maybe someone who was envious of her grant?
Someone at the aquarium who was angry with her?”
Maria was silent for a moment and then said, “There was one thing she said to me once, but it’s probably nothing.”
OK. That kind of comment always gets my attention.
“Anything you can tell us would be helpful,” Lien-hua said.
“I really don’t want to get into trouble.”
And that one’s even better.