“But we know it’s too big to be anything but a blue whale or our Nessie,” Beau said.
Louisa thought about it. She looked at the sonar screen, then at the now blank screen where John had been documented as moving on. “Okay. So let’s take momma home.”
The team was again a team and acting with a common purpose. Six miles behind them, the sea floor dweller slithered through the crushing depths, listening to the call it knew to be of its natural prey. It knew the call but instinctively knew it was wrong. There was something missing. There was no smell. This quarry didn’t tire or sleep or feed. It was curious. It couldn’t let it go but it dare not approach. Not yet. It would wait and listen and keep its distance.
* * * * *
Linton’s office and lab were both housed in a partially restored two-story pub near the northwest bank of Loch Ness. Connor Murdock approached the building from the dark side, out of the moonlight. The antiquated windows and doors would have posed no real obstacle for a determined intruder but he was still concerned about noise.
Murdock tried the window and it held fast as though it hadn’t been opened for years. He glanced nervously around. There were no other houses nearby but passersby were always possible. The loch was a notorious draw for nighttime photography and it would end his storyline to be caught in one of them.
He briefly considered breaking the dark glass but preferred to slip in and out unnoticed if possible. With the theme song from Mission Impossible playing in his mind, he stepped back and scanned the dark wall. On the second story he spotted a bathroom window which had been left partially open. That was his access. He looked around the grounds and found a pair of wheeled plastic trashcans. He emptied the contents of one into the other for ballast and stacked the empty one onto the full one under the window. It was a daring balancing act to climb onto the shaky bins but once he had one hand on the lower frame of the window, the rest was relatively simple. He released the stay on the window and swung it as wide as it would. Then he hoisted his out-of-shape frame up and through the window to roll awkwardly onto the floor of the tiny bathroom.
Once in, Murdock set to finding the lab. Anything having to do with the monster would be there and he needed something tangible to print. He turned on a small desk lamp that was sufficient to illuminate the room enough to navigate but not to draw attention from outside. The closed room was also extremely warm. He opened the window and a cool breeze wafted in. Now he could concentrate. He moved about the room looking for something new and controversial. But this lab was depressingly devoid of anything monstrous. He found only soil samples and notes and a computer that required a password.
Out in the center of the loch, the surface of the water was gently breached. The trail of ripples moving southward was the only sign something was down there. It did not need to come up. It just needed a breath.
Murdock was at the point of being willing to settle for proof the beast was a hoax when he opened the door of the stainless steel fridge. With the light from inside bathing his face in a heavenly glow, Murdock was sure he could hear the angels chorusing for him. On the shelf of the fridge was a huge speckled gray egg. He carefully lifted the tremendous find and held it up as though it were the Holy Grail. It felt real but was clearly too large to be anything but what it was. He could not believe his luck.
The breeze from the window carried the scent of the egg out and across the surface of the lake. The ripples suddenly stopped trolling and turned abruptly toward the little lab.
Murdock used his pocket-sized digital camera to snap several incriminating photos of the egg. He used a plastic soft drink bottle standing next to it to demonstrate scale. Then he put the egg back into the airtight fridge and made his way out the way he had come. As he put the trash bins back in the position he had found them, he couldn’t help snickering at his luck. The story would make him millions.
Now fearless, Connor Murdock stepped around to the front of the house and into the moonlight; he could walk boldly down the road to his car. As he reached the road, the moonlight glimmering on the ground caught his eye. He looked toward the lake and saw what appeared to be a slide or flattened trail leading down to the lake, and the moonlight shimmered on the wide muddy path which seemed to lead up to the very building he’d just left.
He turned back and looked directly into the eyes of what appeared to be a giant serpent. The creature stared back at him from thirty feet away, as if contemplating its next move. The fifteen-foot neck supported a long, viper-like head with visible, three-inch fangs across the front of the upper and lower jaws. The greenish-black body was wide and glistening like wet leather. It pushed itself along the ground with long flippers like a sea turtle. It wasn’t quite close enough to strike but close enough to petrify Murdock with fear. As the huge yellow eyes stared emotionlessly back at him, Murdock lost all control of his bodily functions. Urine ran down his leg as he struggled to override the paralyzing terror that raced through him.
The beast opened its mouth and tasted the scent of the egg on this one. It was gone from the air but this one still carried it.
He was still out of reach of the beast and Murdock had one chance to race for cover. Drawing a breath, he turned and ran back to the house and around the back. It was not until he reached the window that he remembered he could not get into it without a balancing act. He had just enough time to look up at the second story window and realize the futility of his escape plan before the beast came around the other side of the building. The enormous neck turned the corner well before the body but Murdock could do nothing more than inch backward as the full mass of the fifty-foot predator came around to face him.
It sniffed and tasted the air and looked at both sides of this tiny man searching for the egg. It was not here. It found only the scent and that scent was on him. He was an intruder and reeked of the irrefutable evidence.
In a final split second of clarity, Connor began to formulate some sort of escape. It was in that second that the beast lunged. The huge mouth opened and snapped faster than a gasp, clamping securely around Murdock’s head and left shoulder. Despite the agony of the sharp teeth cutting into his chest, he struggled to free himself. The reptile lifted its struggling prey and whipped its head to one side, slamming the body against the side of the stone house. Connor went rigid and trembled violently as if he were receiving an electric shock. Another slam against the wall shattered his back and ribs and stopped his resistance. The limp body was now easily consumed.
Chapter Twenty
“Aisling, this is not me talking. You know this is not my decision to make,” said Leighton Tucker in a tone far too overly sympathetic to sound sincere.
Aisling lay back in her overstuffed chair and fumed at the news. She wanted to throw the telephone but managed to calm herself long enough to levy an attempt at an argument. “It sounds like you, Mr. Tucker. It sounds like you firing a teacher because she dared go on a date.”
“You know it’s more than that. You saw the paper. God knows all the mothers around here did.”
“The fathers as well, I’m thinking,” she grumbled. She was looking at the same headline as Tucker. It read, ‘Science and Education merge for profit’ and went on to suggest that failing scientist John Nagle and the primary school teacher collaborated to create interest in the Loch Ness Monster in order to gain funding for his project. It suggested that she deliberately put ideas about the monster into the children’s heads and told them each time someone disappeared or got killed that the monster had gotten them. This was intended to generate headlines and renewed interest in the floundering monster trade. She was far less worried about suggestions that she and John might be questioned with regard to the missing townspeople than she was about the pictures printed with the article. The headliner showed her on the boat with John just talking. But the smaller pictures showed a silhouette of her climbing out of the water and a slightly clearer shot of her topless and in Nagle’s arms. She was still aware of fact that Murdock had more exp
licit photos and was surely sleazy enough to use them. But she wondered if anything could exceed the negative impact these were already having.
“You know I have to respond to this kind of community demand. It’s their children they’re worried about.”
“What do they think I’m going to do? Feed them to the monster?”
“It’s a question of integrity. It’ll blow over. As soon as this thing dies down, they’ll forget about it. Just take a break for a few weeks.”
“And do what?”
“I don’t know. Catch up on your reading. Tell me. Is there anything really going on between you and this scientist? I mean relationship-wise?”
“If you weren’t my mother’s best friend I’d give you such a kicking for that. Fact is, Leigh, he’s a very special man. If things were different, I might actually think about pursuing it.”
“Things are different. Why don’t you go for it? Does he know?”
“He does. Smart bugger that he is, he actually figured it out.” She was still glossing over the article as she spoke. She noticed a passage addressing the validity of the monster claims, including a quote from the foremost local authority on the loch. Professor Carl Linton was quoted as saying, “There is absolutely no conclusive evidence to support the theory of a prehistoric sea creature in this loch. Nagle has made a career out of simply looking and as long as there is hope of success, funding is assured.” When asked what actual evidence would be worth he replied, “It would be a gold mine. It’s the Holy Grail for paleontologists.”
Tucker continued. “So take a break and spend some time with—”
“Good advice. If my mother were alive, you’d no longer be her friend. You know that. Don’t you, Leigh?”
* * * * *
Esperanza came into her mooring from a fruitless trek around the spot where the ples had vanished. Aisling was waiting on the dock as Mac stepped off to secure the boat.
“I sincerely hope your day went better than mine,” she said.
Mac tied the bowline to a mooring post. Always a gentleman, Mac found it difficult to greet a lady without standing and facing her, though in this instance she was the second to last person he wished to have a conversation with. He stood and smiled at her. “That would be highly unlikely, my dear.” With that he turned away to make sure Frank had the bowline secure.
John stood at the helm and she could see by his face, Mac wasn’t simply attempting some dark humor. She stepped aboard and came around to the bridge. John was meticulously going through the routine of switching off the engine and running lights. On his third check, she finally addressed his obvious discomfort.
“I take it you didn’t come up with more tangible evidence of your monster.”
John turned to face her, doing his best to hold a straight face. “I’m afraid we’re back to square one, Aisling.”
“Well, I don’t have time for square two. Have you seen this?” She waved the newspaper at him.
He hung his head briefly in shame as he speed-read through the story. He was cast as the profiteer luring the gullible schoolteacher into helping his fraudulent cause. Her integrity, her morals and her ability to teach children were inadvertently though assertively challenged. John saw nothing provable other than the fact that they spent the evening together but the suggestions were clearly damaging. He drew a deep breath and composed himself. “You know it’s a crock. Don’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter what I know, John. The morons around here believe every word they read and fill in the gaps with their filthy little imaginations. I got fired today for this.”
“Fired? They can’t do that. Can they?”
“They can if the parents in the school won’t bring their children around me. I’m either a gold-digging liar or a shameless hussy. Either way, I’m not fit to teach the wee-uns.”
“Is there something I can do? Should I talk to your boss or principal or whatever?”
“I need you to show them what you have. Show them that the monster is really out there.”
“I can’t.”
“I don’t care if they’ll doubt it. At least they’ll be doubting that and not me. John, please help me here.”
“Aisling. I can’t.” He stepped closer and looked her in the eye. “The video we recorded is gone. It was deleted somehow.”
“No. How?”
“We’re working on it. All I know is the next morning it was wiped from our system.”
Kyle Murphy had been sitting in the corner with his back to the awkward confrontation. He had spent the day stripping and reformatting the hard drive on their computer. “I don’t know if this helps or what,” he offered, turning slowly to them. “It was a Trojan. Someone loaded spyware on the system and was watching everything we did. I only found it when I was clearing all the programs.”
“Could it delete a file like that?”
“It could do anything I could do. Whoever loaded it was able to access this terminal and download, upload or just plain delete files and programs from this system and there would be no record of it here. Mean bugger too. I had it in the recycle bin and it was still running. They’re not supposed to be able to do that.”
Mac and Frank were in the room now. “Is it gone now?” Frank asked.
“There’s nothing on here I didn’t load myself. It’s offline until I get all the filters and firewalls lit up.”
Mac harrumphed. “That’s kind of like closing the gate after the cows come home.”
“So there’s no chance of getting the sighting back?” John asked.
“About as much chance as a snowflake in a blast furnace. I tried to find a name or trace it but there was no ISP signature. It could have been anywhere.”
“Great. That’s just grand!” Aisling said on the verge of tears. “So I’m just fooked again.”
“Not necessarily,” John said. “We can still go to the school and explain.”
“Explain what? We’ve got nothing but the word of two people the whole county knows as liars.”
Mac tried to be the voice of reason. “Maybe there’s another way of recovering the data. Would you say this was a random invasion or did someone deliberately target John’s database?”
Kyle seemed unsure. “Hard to say, really. Anyone with the technology could do it. But it requires a lot of effort and monitoring. It wouldn’t make sense to go to that kind of effort just to spy on your neighbors.”
“So you think it was aimed at me?” John asked. “Who would do that?”
“Who would have something to gain by it?” Mac countered. “We find that out and I’m willing to bet we’ll find your footage.”
Aisling was inconsolable. None of the proposed solutions gave her the least reason to hope for reprieve. She turned away from them and ran from the boat in tears.
The four men watched her but no one had anything to offer to placate her. They had no alternative.
Frank looked at John. “You really have the worst luck with women. No offense.”
John had no reply other than, “All things considered, none taken.”
“Why’s that?” Mac asked.
“Well, between the overemotional, out-of-work school teacher who hates scientists and the two-faced back-stabbing scientist, I really didn’t have much of a chance.”
Kyle was again working at the terminal. As he continued loading the required software, “Hey. I just thought of something. There’s no IP address on this computer so I couldn’t trace who loaded it.”
“So you told us.”
“Well, I was thinking the guy who did it was pretty smart because that’s not easy to do from a remote terminal.”
“So he’s smart.” John wasn’t interested.
“Or so I thought until you mentioned the two-faced-back-stabbing bitch and I remembered what we were talking about.”
Frank was first to get it. “You don’t have a remote ISP address because he was here when he loaded it.”
John wasn’t quite up with them yet. “Wh
o was here? When?”
“Who was the last person other than us to work with this computer? And who has something to gain by you not finding the beast?”
An expression of enlightenment came across John’s face. “Billikin. Spencer. They’ve got it now?”
“And if I know Spencer, he’s already counting the money,” Kyle said.
“No,” John said. “Not yet. He’s got the same problem we did.”
“No proof?”
“Right. He can hardly claim to film the thing in Scotland if he’s in New Zealand. He has to come up here and find the thing himself to take any credit at all.”
* * * * *
Aisling drove faster than was safe on the winding Scottish road. The tears in her eyes were no longer fresh as her anguish was turning to rage. The world was pummeling her from every angle. She felt she was being tested.
She had already taken the best shot, the crippling one-two punch, and bounced back. Then came the firing. Then the loss of her vindicating evidence. She was left unemployed and hopelessly alone. Someone hated her. Someone was having a good laugh at her expense. Someone… someone had something to gain from it. That was what John had said. That was what they were thinking about now.
She looked at the folded newspaper on the car seat next to her. What was his name? That local authority. She stopped the car and read the article anew. Carl Linton was the man who should by all rights be the one to find the first irrefutable evidence of the monster. If an outsider did, he could no longer be the foremost authority; he was just another person living near the beast and had been for God knows how long without finding it. This was actually a step backward for him. For John to find the monster was a professional slap in the face. Linton had plenty to gain by stealing this file, and if he did, he must still have it. She resolved to go get it.
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