The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 3

by Roy MacGregor

  Most of the Owls were awake by now and knew they were headed for something in the water. Sarah and Sam were trying to stand in order to see better, but with the rolling waves and slippery floor of the Zodiac, it wasn’t easy. They plunked down and waited like everyone else.

  Travis could feel the tension rise around him. The white thing he had first seen in the distance was drawing closer, visible now with each swell rather than just every so often. From time to time the guide lifted her binoculars to check. Her concern seemed to be growing.

  She pulled the Zodiac around to starboard, then hard left again to port. The Zodiac rose up and over a wave, and then slipped down into the same trough of sea that held the mystery object.

  Travis and Nish both moved to the side of the boat, staring hard.

  It was a white shirt, drifting slowly in the water.

  And from inside the shirt came a familiar dark stain, fading to pink, just as it had around the dolphin.

  The object rolled easily in the waves, tumbling to reveal a gaping black hole in the white cloth almost exactly the same as the wound on the dolphin.

  Only this was a man!

  Travis turned in shock to Nish.

  Nish had gone green. He looked like he was about to be sick all over again. But he was pointing, his finger shaking.

  “What?” Travis asked impatiently.

  “W-we…know…him!”

  Two days earlier the Screech Owls had been in a plane over the Rocky Mountains. The snow-covered peaks of the higher summits, poking up through a soft mattress of cloud, were the only reminder of the winter they had left behind.

  In Vancouver, their destination, it was more like early summer. On the long ride in from the airport, they were thrilled to see pink cherry trees, red and yellow tulips, gardens like living rainbows with everything in full bloom.

  Rarely had the Screech Owls looked forward to a trip so much. It was not just that this was beautiful British Columbia, with everything from the mountains to the ocean; they’d also be playing in a totally new kind of hockey tournament. Vancouver was hosting the first-ever “3-on-3” International Peewee Competition. Several of the matches were to be played in nearby Bellingham, Washington, just across the Canada–U.S. border, which would give the tournament a genuine international flavour. Teams from all over North America had been invited–from Quebec City to Anaheim, from Winnipeg to New York City–but they were not going to compete as teams. Instead, each team would be split into groups of three skaters–usually two forwards and a defence–which would compete in different divisions for separate championship trophies.

  It was an idea that Wayne Gretzky and other hockey leaders came up with when they met to talk about what was right and what was wrong in minor hockey. A great many of the top National Hockey League stars these days came from Europe, even though far more people played hockey in Canada and the United States. So what was their secret?

  Wayne Gretzky and the others came up with a number of suggestions. First–and much to the disgust of Nish–Canadian and American minor hockey teams needed to practise more and play fewer games and tournaments. “Gimme a break!” Nish had howled. “That’s like choosing school over summer vacation!”

  But another idea sounded more attractive. What about bringing shinny back into the organized game? Gretzky said he’d learned his skills in his backyard, not through organized practices where he couldn’t work on the tricks that would make him the greatest player of all time.

  Perhaps “3-on-3” hockey should become part of the organized game. In Europe, where they play on a larger ice surface, they had been playing 3-on-3 for decades, using the width of the ice rather than the length. They could, by dividing the rink at the bluelines, run three games of 3-on-3 at the same time.

  In Canada, a group of former NHLers was now building smaller 3-on-3 rinks around the country, and the game was catching on with everyone from little kids to old men. The first rinks had been built around Vancouver, and so this was where the idea for the first international 3-on-3 shinny tournament had taken root.

  To the Screech Owls’ great surprise, Muck Munro had been enthusiastic about the tournament. He believed in tradition, and didn’t much care for newfangled ideas. But for Muck, shinny was not a new idea. And when the Owls remembered the joy in Muck’s face when Tamarack froze over and he’d come out to play on the frozen fields, they understood why he was all for this “new” idea of bringing fun and creativity back into the game.

  Each group would, of course, also have a goaltender, but Jeremy Weathers and Jenny Staples would split those duties. The hard part was figuring out who would play with whom, and some of Muck’s combinations were surprising.

  One Monday evening after practice, he pinned a notice to the bulletin board in the Owls’ dressing room:

  Screech Owls 3-on-3 Teams

  Elite Division

  Team 1: Sarah Cuthbertson–Travis Lindsay–Wayne Nishikawa

  Team 2: Dmitri Yakushev–Andy Higgins–Lars Johansson

  Canucks Division

  Team 3: Fahd Noorizadeh–Gordie Griffth–Samantha Bennett

  Rockies Division

  Team 4: Liz Moscovitz–Derek Dillinger–Willie Granger

  Pacific Division

  Team 5: Simon Milliken–Jesse Highboy–Wilson Kelly

  “Not Sarah!” Nish shouted as he leaned over Travis’s shoulder, reading Muck’s list. “Why is she on my team? Why me? Why me?”

  Travis just shook his head. He knew Muck’s decision was a good one. Nish and Sarah actually played wonderfully together, even if sometimes it seemed they were more interested in taking shots at each other than at the opposing goaltender. Travis was delighted to be included on the first team with them.

  Muck had done a splendid job. He’d entered two 3-on-3 groups in the toughest division, and had spread the Owls’ talent evenly through the other divisions. Travis could sense how disappointed Sam was not to be included on one of the top two lines, but with only one defender in each group, what else could Muck do? Nish was, well, Nish, and he always came through. And Lars had grown up playing 3-on-3 in Sweden and was probably the best shinny player of them all.

  From Christmas on, the excitement built. The Owls still played in their league, but sometimes they could think of little but the upcoming tournament. They practised hard, spending the last twenty minutes of every session on 3-on-3 shinny, just getting used to each other and trying tricks they wouldn’t dare attempt in a real league game.

  The tournament was scheduled for the Easter long weekend, and an extra day was being added at each end, giving them nearly a week in Vancouver for the tournament and plenty of time for sightseeing.

  “Wreck Beach!” Nish announced. “That’s the only thing I want to see.”

  “What’s Wreck Beach?” Fahd asked.

  Nish looked at Fahd as if he had just crawled out of an old hockey bag and had never before seen the real world.

  “Are you serious?” Nish asked. “It’s the nude beach. I’m going as soon as we get there.”

  “You’ll freeze,” said Sarah.

  “Come and see for yourself,” Nish challenged.

  “We will,” said Sarah.

  “And we’ll be bringing cameras,” laughed Sam. “With telephoto lenses!”

  “Very funny,” Nish sneered. “Very, very funny.”

  So far, however, they hadn’t come within a mile of Wreck Beach, wherever that was (How does Nish find out about these things? wondered Travis), but they had all walked across the famous Capilano rope bridge, which hangs, and swings, high above a gorge. All, that is, but Nish, who stayed in the van claiming he had food poisoning when, in fact, he was just terrified of heights. They saw the steam-powered clock in Gastown, the harbour, they walked around Stanley Park, and had a wonderful time at the Vancouver Aquarium.

  Sarah and Sam were particularly keen on the Aquarium. They had wanted to see the killer whales–a baby had just been born–and all the Owls were fascinated by the specia
l tour the staff put on for them.

  They were allowed to feed the sea lions. Sarah and Sam were kissed by a killer whale. They saw the penguins, and when Fahd said how much one chubby, preening penguin in the corner looked like Nish even the staff laughed at the red-faced exhibitionist. They heard a lecture on dolphins and porpoises and grey whales, and one of the attendants, Brad, even took them into the research area and showed them how the dolphins could talk to each other and how, in a matter of a few minutes, he could teach them a new trick.

  It had been, until now, the most riveting moment of the trip.

  “W-we…know…him!”

  The urgency in Nish’s voice was real. He wasn’t kidding. He was dead serious, and terrified.

  Travis turned back from his friend and stared into the water just in time to see the head roll around again, eyes open and blank and very, very dead, the mouth twisted in pain that could no longer be felt.

  “IT’S BRAD!”

  The scream came from Sam, pushing hard against Travis’s shoulder.

  “OH MY GOD!”

  That was Sarah. She was already bursting into sobs.

  Travis forced himself to look again when the body rolled over once more. It was Brad, the marine biologist from the Vancouver Aquarium.

  Brad, who had taken them to see the dolphins.

  Brad, who had so charmed Sarah and Sam.

  Brad, with a gaping black wound in his chest that matched the wound on the dolphin now strapped to the side of the Zodiac.

  Travis was grateful that Muck and Mr. Dillinger had come out whale watching with the team. The two men had taken care of the dolphin, and now they quickly took charge again. Muck ordered the Screech Owls to look in the other direction, which they did; not even intense curiosity could cause Travis to turn around. Nor did Nish turn, proof that the one thing more frightening than anything he could imagine was at that moment being lifted up out of the sea by Muck and Mr. Dillinger and hauled into the Zodiac.

  When Travis finally did look, the body had been covered by a plastic tarpaulin and Mr. Dillinger was tying down the ends, making sure the wind blew nothing free. Muck went back to hold tight to the strapped dolphin, and the guide turned the boat, once again, towards shore.

  No one said a word the whole way in to Victoria Harbour. The guide had obviously radioed ahead, because there were police cars with lights flashing and an ambulance and first-aid workers waiting for their arrival. They must have known it was a dead body coming in–two, if they counted the dolphin–so Travis figured the first-aid people could be there for only one reason: the Screech Owls.

  But the Owls all seemed to handle it well. There were some sobs, of course. And Travis could see Fahd shaking and pretending it was because of the cold. But Mr. Dillinger and Muck’s quick thinking meant the shock was not as bad as it might have been. The first-aid workers talked to them all and checked them over, and Nish was given a Gravol for his still-churning stomach. Everyone else was fine–at least physically.

  A windowless van from the Aquarium took away the carcass of the dolphin, and a special police vehicle showed up to cart the body of the marine biologist away to the morgue.

  The police interviewed the guide and Muck and Mr. Dillinger, and after they’d all signed statements and given their addresses and telephone numbers while staying in Vancouver, the police told the Screech Owls they were free to go.

  “Why wouldn’t they interview me?” Nish whined as the last of the police cars pulled out. “I’m the one who identified the body.”

  “Perhaps you could tell them how he was killed, too,” said Sam with more than a touch of sarcasm. Her eyes were red from crying.

  “Obviously,” protested Nish, “he was shot.”

  “By who?” Sarah asked. “And why?”

  “You expect me to know everything?”

  “You always act like you do.”

  But not this time, Travis thought. No one knew.

  Why had there been a dolphin out there floating dead, a gaping black hole in its side?

  And why a short distance away a man–a man who knew everything there was to know about dolphins–obviously murdered?

  Mr. Dillinger was wonderful on the way back to Vancouver. He cranked up the rock music on the old bus the organizers had made available to the various teams, and once they were on the ferry he got change for a hundred-dollar bill and walked around handing out money so the Owls could lose themselves and their thoughts in chips and gravy and video games.

  Nish, now fully recovered from his seasickness, was intent on winning a wristwatch from a machine that required him to work a crane with a metal grab over the desired object, drop it down, snatch the prize and then drop it into a chute. So far he’d won three “prizes”: a key chain, a pair of ruby-red plastic lips, and a badly stitched, stuffed doll. He hadn’t even come close to the watch.

  Travis left his pal pumping in quarters and cursing the fates, and went out on the deck for a walk around the big ferry. The wind felt fresh on his face. The sun was out, a spring sun burning like summer, and he thought he’d walk back towards the stern of the boat–“The poop deck!” Nish had happily shouted when one of the deckhands asked the Owls if they knew any of the names for the parts of a ship–and watch the gulls swirl above the wake.

  Travis hoped Nish left his brain to science when he died. It was worth taking a closer look at the mind of a twelve-year-old whose great ambition in life was to find a nude beach. Of course, they’d have to scrub it down before touching it.

  The ferry was just crossing a narrows between two large islands. It was such a beautiful sight, the leaves already out, the trees and bushes in bloom, the hills in the distance and rocky shoreline so near. He could see a farmhouse on one side, and wondered what it was like to live there and be able to look out one window and see horses grazing and out the other and see a huge ferry filled with people and cars and trucks churning by, everyone on deck trying to stare in at you and see what you look like.

  There were others out on the deck. An old couple, just standing at the rail and staring, their arms linked. A student sitting up beside one of the vents, an open book on her lap with the pages flipping in the wind. And down towards the stern, Nish’s “poop deck,” he could make out a couple of Screech Owls windbreakers.

  Their backs were turned to Travis, but he knew who it was. The flying, waving light brown hair was obviously Sarah. And the carrot top bouncing wildly in the wind was Sam.

  The noise was extraordinary. He could hear the big engines churning and pounding. He could hear the bubbling roar that came up from the big propellers.

  “Hey!” he called out over the noise.

  Travis wasn’t sure exactly what he saw next. A quick motion by Sam. Sarah hunching her shoulders as if she was trying to hide herself in her windbreaker. Something spinning out into the wake. Perhaps it was only a gull twisting down.

  Sarah turned, sheepishly. “Hey, Trav–how’s it going?”

  “Okay–what’s up?”

  “Nothin’,” Sarah said. He couldn’t help but notice the high colour in her cheeks. It couldn’t be from the sun; the clouds had parted only half an hour before.

  Sam was breathing out, hard, her lips so tightly pursed it looked like she was whistling. Only instead of a shrill whistle coming out, there was a steady, thin flow of steam. Like winter breath in Tamarack–only here it wasn’t cold.

  It wasn’t steam, it was smoke!

  Travis tried to think of something to say but found he couldn’t.

  “You guys see Lars?” he asked instead. He hadn’t even been thinking of Lars up to this moment.

  Sarah seemed relieved. She smiled, flushing even deeper. “I saw him earlier. I think he’s on the upper deck.”

  Sam said nothing. She was looking warily at Travis, as if trying to figure out how much he’d seen.

  “Okay,” Travis found himself saying. “Thanks. See you later.”

  He was gone before they said anything, gone in one quick tu
rn, and was soon bounding up the stairs in search of time to think, not looking for Lars at all.

  What was happening here?

  Bodies in the water?

  Murder?

  Sarah Cuthbertson smoking?

  This latest development was almost as upsetting.

  Sarah Cuthbertson smoking?

  I wasn’t smoking, Travis. I swear!”

  Sarah spoke in a whisper, but it may as well have been a shout the way her pained voice cut through the small dressing room. She was hurt, and it showed in her eyes and sounded in her voice.

  Sarah hadn’t denied that Sam was smoking. She said Sam had bummed the smoke off another passenger, an older teenager. This older girl had even offered Sarah one and just shrugged when Sarah refused. Sam had taken the second one and had smoked them both.

  “Sam was upset about what we’d seen,” Sarah said. “That was all.”

  “Muck would suspend her if he knew,” Travis said. “Besides, she shouldn’t smoke.”

  It rattled Travis to think that a teammate–someone exactly the same age as he was–would be smoking. And not one cigarette as an experiment, but a second, almost as if she needed it.

  “He’d have kicked you off the team, too,” Travis thought to add.

  Sarah looked on the verge of tears. “I was just standing with her,” she protested.

  “You didn’t stop her.”

  Sarah was frustrated. “I’m not her mother!”

  “You’re her teammate,” Travis said. “You both have a responsibility to the Owls.”

  Inside, Travis winced. It was he who sounded like someone’s mother. But he was captain, wasn’t he? He was supposed to set an example. And if he saw something that wasn’t right, he had to say so. Either that or go to Muck.

  Any further discussion on the matter was over when a large rear end came through the door. It was Nish, in full gear except for skates, pushing the door open with his butt while he made sure his freshly sharpened blades didn’t nick up against the door frame.