by Bill Doyle
Copyright
Photos: pp. 15, 16, 64/Ablestock; p. 39/Library of Congress; p. 50/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service The Inspector photos: p. 1 (top)/Dick Darrell/Toronto Star/Zuma Press/Newscom, (bottom)/Jeff Goode/Toronto Star/Zuma Press/Newscom; p. 2 (top)/PR Newswire Photo Service/Newscom, (bottom)/NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA-MSFC); p. 3 (top)/Ablestock, (center left)/AMPAS/Zuma Press/Newscom, (center right)/SNAP/Zuma Press/Newscom, (bottom left and right)/Ablestock; p. 4 (top)/John Pineda/Zuma Press/Newscom
Text copyright © 2006 by Bill Doyle
Compilation, illustrations, and photographs copyright © 2006 by Nancy Hall, Inc.
Crime Through Time is a trademark of Nancy Hall, Inc.
Developed by Nancy Hall, Inc.
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-08455-0
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A thank-you of historic proportions to Nancy Hall for making this book and the Crime Through Times series a reality. To Kirsten Hall, for her keen editing and insightful grasp of the overall picture, and to Atif Toor for making the whole book come alive visually.
Special thanks to the editors at Little, Brown: Andrea Spooner, Jennifer Hunt, and Phoebe Sorkin, who are always dead-on, always incisive, and never discouraging. And thanks to Riccardo Salmona for his constant support.
Contents
Copyright
Acknowledgments
6:35 pm: September 22, 1969
11:30 am: September 23, 1969
7:20 pm: September 23, 1969
10:15 pm: September 23, 1969
11:40 am: September 30, 1969
4:35 pm: September 30, 1969
12:35 pm: October 8, 1969
9:40 PM: October 17, 1969
8:25 PM: October 18, 1969
2:15 PM: October 21, 1969
4:35 pm: October 24, 1969
9:10 pm: October 24, 1969
12:05 am: October 25, 1969
A Note from the Author
About the Author
Unravel the mystery with real historical crime-solving methods!
THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW
September 22, 1969
6:35 pm
Outside my dorm window, the rays of the setting sun are turning leaves from green to the color of blood. High, yapping howls pierce the air. A pack of coyotes is on the hunt, and their cries mean that prey is in sight. The hungry animals are getting ready to pounce. I scan the woods for signs of them in the growing gloom but find only expanding darkness.
As I write, I’m facing the san Rafael wilderness, which stretches across the stream from my new school. The wilderness is hundreds of thousands of protected acres that the government keeps in their original primitive state. The place is jammed full of canyons, mountains, forests, barren landscapes, raging rivers, deer trails, and bear dens. Best of all, there’s the Condor Sanctuary, where the great endangered birds can find shelter.
This school should be the perfect place for an environmental detective like myself.
Then why do I feel to strange—like something’s wrong?
Not that I had much choice in coming here. I’ve been kicked out of three boarding schools so far, so there aren’t many left that will take me.
JUDGE PINKERTON
My family’s friend Judge Pinkerton pulled some strings at the last minute and got me into walsington Academy—even though classes started three weeks ago. Judge is on the board, so she’s one of the people who makes decisions for the school. She visits a couple of times a year to give lectures on criminal psychology.
“You’ll love walsington, Mal,” Judge told me at our house in Los Angeles before I left. She’s seventy-two years old but her sharp blue eyes sparkle as brightly as ever. “It’s here in California and right on the edge of the San Rafael wilderness. Need I say more?”
She didn’t. Just the idea of being able to visit the Condor Sanctuary was enough to get my heart racing. But three hours ago, that feeling changed. After my parents helped me move in, we said goodbye outside my dorm. As they drove off in our Dodge Charger, I was struck by the strangest feeling.
OUR COOL FAMILY CAR!
Something wasn’t right…
The rustling of the nearby trees and chirping of the birds normally would have been soothing to me. Instead, the sounds seemed off-key and a little creepy.
Trying to shrug off the uneasy sensation, I went inside the dorm and climbed the creaking wooden stairs up to my third-floor room. Maybe I’m feeling weird because all the other kids have been here since late August, and I have to catch up in all my subjects.
Maybe it’s because I have to make all new friends.
Dr maybe it’s my roommate, Kyle. Right now, I’m sitting at my desk and he’s standing behind me, hitting a rubber ball with a tennis racquet, up and down, up and down, UP AND DOWN, pretending he’s not trying to read what I’m writing.
MY ROOMMATE
From the neck up, Kyle looks like a character on LEAVE IT TO BEAVER. His freckled face is topped by bright red hair worn in a crew cut. But his clothes—cut-off jeans and an orange and blue tie-dyed shirt—are straight out of a hippy’s wardrobe. On him, though, the outfit looks like a costume—like he’s trying to be something he’s not.
Earlier, I’d walked in and said, “Hi, Kyle. Looks likes we’re going to be rommates.” He hadn’t even moved. He’d just slouched on his bed and glared at me as I struggled to carry in my luggage and boxes of nature books.
At first, I could kind of understand why he was acting like a jerk. After all, he’d had this room all to himself—and then I showed up. So I had tried not to take his reaction personally. And I didn’t get upset when I got the lousy bed next to the clanking radiator. And I’ve kept my patience, even though he keeps playing the carpenters on the record player. Over and over and over.
I’ve been to enough new schools to know the first night is always the worst, and I’ve got to keep my cool. Kyle and I are going to have to sleep in the same room, see each other every day—
“Are you writing about ME in that journal?” Kyle just asked me. “You are, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer him.
He must have taken my silence as a “no” because he said, “Then what are you scribbling about?”
“Not much,” I said.
Kyle tossed the ball and racquet on the floor. “Well, it’s making me crazy! Scribble, dip, scribble, dip, scribble.” He waved his finger in the air, imitating me dipping the quill I’d made from a duck feather into my inkwell.
Have I mentioned that I’m not crazy about Kyle?
Laughing, he jammed his finger into the inkwell, which was full of ink that I had made myself.
He actually seemed surprised when he yanked out his finger and it was dripping with dark ink. “Look what you did!” he cried.
I opened my mouth to suggest that he was out of his mind. And then I closed it. I continued to write furiously and thought about my parents’ advice.
“Write before you leap, Mal.” That’s what Dad had told me during the car ride from my last school. The principal there had given me the boot for releasing the amphibian prisoners of education. (In other words, I set the frogs free in biology class.)
MY MOM AND DAD
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I’d asked.
“You’re a detective, figure it out,” Mom answered with a smile from the front seat. She leaned back and handed me an empty journal.
Da
d said, “Write down your ideas before you act on them. Because you’ve got to cool it.” He tried to sound stern, but I’d seen the secret grins he shared with Mom when they talked about the frogs I’d set free hopping all over the school. I knew they were kind of proud of me for standing up for what I believe in.
Unlike some other fourteen-year-olds, I actually take my parents’ advice seriously. After all, that’s what they do for a living. They give advice. Both my parents are famous detectives who have cracked cases around the world. Right now, they’re working in Hollywood as consultants on TV shows like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and GET SMART! TV producers ask them if an actor is doing something the way a real detective would, or if they should change it—
I guess Kyle had been complaining about his inky finger, and I’d tuned him out. He just shouted, “I don’t have to put up with this!” and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
I took his leaving as a sign that things were going to get better.
But as I gaze out at the darkening wilderness, I feel that same sense of foreboding and wonder if that’s really the case.
MY ALARM CLOCK WAS UNPLUGGED.
September 23, 1969
11:30 am
My first full day at walsington Academy ditn’t get off to a spectacular start.
Stretching lazily in my lumpy bed, I opened my eyes and squinted against the morning sun. Kyle wasn’t in the room. His bed was empty and perfectly made. I was struck by the feeling that I was missing something…
The tolling bells in the high clock tower told me I was right.
I grabbed my pocket watch off the nightstand. It was nine o’clock!
Why hadn’t my alarm clock buzzed me awake? I looked down to see it had been unplugged. Gee, I wonder who could have done that?
Scrambling out of bed, I threw on some clothes—a pair of jeans, my hiking boots, and a flannel shirt. Luckily, walsington didn’t have stuffy dress code.
I plucked my schedule from the top of my desk. My first class was Ecology with Mr. Conrad Rusher, and it started at 9:15!
I grabbed my digging stick—it goes everywhere with me—and tucked it through the special loop on the waist of my pants. I rushed out the door.
Outside, a perfect fall day was waiting. The nippy air got my blood going. The campus was empty—all the other kids were already inside, waiting for their classes to start.
I sprinted along the sidewalk that snaked between the stone buildings of the school. Most of them looked like they’d been around for hundreds of years. There was the creepy administration building, Blanchard Hall, with its sky-reaching bell tower and walls covered with ivy. Next was the cafeteria—which gave off a gym-shoe odor. I wasn’t too sorry I’d missed breakfast.
Whizzing by the girl’s dorm and then the library, I finally arrived at Dulson Hall, sweating and out of breath. My schedule said Ecology with Mr. Rusher met IN FRONT of the hall. A group of about twenty-five boys and girls was already gathered there. Unfortunately, Kyle was one of them. He gave me a big phony smile and pointed to his watch as if to say, “Just on time!”
I considered sharing how grateful I was to him for making sure that I got extra sleep. Then thought maybe I should write about it later. No reason to get booted out of school my first day.
At least I wasn’t the last student to arrive. Another tall kid was loping toward us. His back was straight and he had wide shoulders. He gave off an ease with each step, as if he weren’t in any great hurry. His shoulder-length black hair had been tied in the back with a blue bandana. Like me, he carried a digging stick.
I knew the school didn’t enforce a strict dress code for students, but I imagined this kid was pushing it. He was sure to get an earful from the teacher.
That’s when he bellowed, “Okay, everyone here? Good! Into the wild we go, gorillas!”
I realized he was Mr. Rusher. The teacher!
MR.RUSHER
Turning away from the school, he stepped off the white concrete sidewalk and onto the soft grass. I joined the rest of the class and followed Mr. Rusher, who walked with long strides down the grassy slope.
I finally caught up with him. “Mr. Rusher?”
He shook his head and said, “Conrad.”
I was confused. Was I in the right class? “Mr. Conrad?”
This made him smile. “No, man, my name is Conrad Rusher. But call me Conrad. I’m not into all those heavy labels, like mister and doctor and teacher.” His voice was deep and rumbling. “Let’s keep things real, okay?”
“Okay … Conrad.” I could definitely get used to this. “where are we going? I mean where’s the classroom?”
CONARAD HAD TWO MISSING FINGERS.
“You’re walking in it.” His hand gestured from the swaying tops of the nearby pines to the grassy trail beneath our feet. As he did, I could see that his little finger and ring finger were missing.
Conrad was saying, “I call this ecology class Mysteries of the wild. It’s about the relationships of animals and how they interact with their environment. What better place to learn about nature than in nature, dig?”
I nodded. It made sense to me. “So class is like an investigation.” He raised a questioning eyebrow at this. I explained, “when I’m trying to crack a case, I go to the scene so I can soak up everything about it.”
With a strong hand, Conrad clapped me on the back. “Groovy, man. I thought you’d be into this. I read about your family solving mysteries in the PEOPLE’S Press.”
“So students are allowed to explore the wilderness?” I asked.
“Sure, but only with a responsible adult.” Winking, he added, “when you see one, let me know.”
Then I got to the most important question. “what about the Condor Sanctuary?” At the mention of the place, Conrad’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“That’s a good two-day hike into the heart of the wilderness,” he said. “why are you asking?”
“I’ve been studying the California condor’s behavior,” I told him. “I’m trying to figure out why they’re on the verge of extinction, and I’d love to see them in person. Are we allowed to go to their sanctuary?”
Something glinted in his eyes. He said, “Man, that’s going to be up to you.”
Before I could ask what he meant, Kyle started making puckering noises and chanting, “Teacher’s pet. Teacher’s pet.” A few of the other kids laughed, and my face went hot.
As if he couldn’t contain his excitement, Conrad let out a whoop and started jogging ahead. The students were soon huffing and puffing, trying to keep up with him.
We went through a stand of trees and finally stopped at the edge of the rushing stream that divided the school property from the official wilderness area. And it’s where I had my first close-up view of the san Rafael wilderness.
Conrad stood by the gurgling stream, and we all gathered around. “Today’s challenge is the Mystery of the Stranded Fish,” he said. He pointed to a spot about 10 feet out into the water where a rock jutted out of the surface. A small piece of balsa wood in the shape of a fish sat on this little island. The fish was about the size of a pencil box and had the number 15 written on its side in black paint.
“How is a wooden fish a mystery?” a girl with three pigtails asked. She sounded just as confused as I was.
Conrad grinned. “The mystery is how you’ll solve the challenge without breaking the rule You can’t get wet. If you get wet before class is over, you’re disqualified. Dig?”
No, I didn’t dig. Not at all.
As if reading my thoughts, Conrad gave me a wink. “And if you don’t understand now, you’ll figure it out. Cool?” Without waiting for an answer, he headed back toward the trees. “I’ve got research to do,” he called over his shoulder and disappeared into the woods.
A skinny boy mumbled to his friend, “There goes Conrad. Off on his secret project again,” as they joined the other kids on the bank of the stream. I did the same, and we all gazed out at the numbered wooden fish.
&nb
sp; “What’s the 15 mean?” I said to the kid next to me without looking. Mistake! The kid was Kyle.
He sneered at me. “Aren’t you a famous superdetective? Why don’t you DETECT what it means?”
A tall girl standing on the other side of Kyle swatted the back of his head. “Behave, Kyle,” she scolded. “It’s his first day. Give him a break.”
Kyle’s face reddened. “Your wish is my command,” he said sarcastically, giving a mock bow and backing away.
“Don’t worry about him.” The girl moved closer once Kyle had gone. She pushed a strand of long brown hair away from her face. “The 15 means fifteen points. Conrad doesn’t believe in grades. But there’s this field trip he takes kids on every year. It’s far, so the school only lets him take five students. Conrad makes up mystery challenges like this to decide who goes.”
Still confused, I said, “I’m not even sure what the challenge is.”
The girl smiled, and her cheeks crinkled up like a chipmunk. A pretty chipmunk. “Sometimes Conrad doesn’t spell it out. He wants the challenges to be like mysteries that we figure out for ourselves. But I’m guessing whoever can get that fish back to the shore without getting wet will get fifteen points. The five kids with the most points at the end of the month get to go on the trip.”
JACKIE
All this excitement was over some dumb field trip? But I tried to get into the spirit of things.
“I’m three weeks behind,” I said. “I’ve got some catching up to do.”
“Well, let’s start with names.” The girl stuck out her hand. “I’m Jackie.”
“I’m Mal.” But before we could shake hands, two girls pushed between us, rushing to grab the same rock. “It’s mine! I’m going to throw it at the fish!” the first girl shouted and snatched up the rock.