by K C Gillis
Looking out the kitchen window, her mind drifted back to her conversation with Travis. It still annoyed her that he’d had the nerve to insert himself into her career. Yes, he had helped to bring down GenPhage. But that didn’t make him her career manager. She would tackle another big story when she was good and ready. For now, she wanted to enjoy being out of the spotlight.
Jordan saw her phone sitting on the kitchen table. She grabbed it and brought it to her desk where she kept her charger. As she plugged it in, the screen came on, showing recent messages and notifications. At the top of the screen was a text from Travis, reminding her to look at the pictures of the dead fish he had sent.
Leave me alone.
Jordan set the phone down and topped up her coffee. She hadn’t looked at the pictures Travis sent her. Not even a glance. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. But it felt wrong for her not to at least take a look. She was a reporter, after all. Someday she might need to know something about dead fish in a lake. Travis wouldn’t have to know.
Jordan sat down at the kitchen table, unlocked her phone, and opened her messages, looking at the thread from Travis. In a message from last night were four pictures from Copper Lake, all of them showing dead fish. Two were wide-angle shots that showed a couple hundred feet of the rocky shoreline covered with hundreds of dead fish. There were also two close-ups, one that showed three fish and the other showing just one.
The wide-angle shots looked like something from a contagion or apocalypse movie. In these shots, the dead fish almost looked fake. The close-ups, on the other hand, seemed all too real. Jordan was no animal expert and didn’t even like to eat seafood, but the fish in the photos were disturbing. They seemed somehow misshapen, with bumps and ridges along their bodies. Their eyes bulged abnormally, as if they were looking for something important before they died. And the scales looked scraped or scratched, almost eliminating the shine she’d expect to see.
These fish didn’t look as though they died of some kind of extreme fishing. These fish looked sick.
Now Jordan had a problem. She had looked at the pictures. In her mind, these images raised the question as to how the fish died. With the logical next step being to research the causes of fish dying in large numbers. Which was exactly why Jordan had told Travis she didn’t want to get involved.
She closed the pictures and set her phone down. She needed to do something. Anything. If she didn’t, she’d find herself googling “mass fish deaths.” She hated cleaning but got up to make an attempt. It took all of five minutes to wash her dishes. Not very helpful. Doing her laundry would take some time. She didn’t think she had ever done laundry before seven a.m., but it was better than the alternative. Jordan didn’t have much to wash, but she gathered up the few items, put them in a small laundry basket, and went to the laundry room in the basement of her building. She took her phone so she could get some social media updates while the clothes were in the washing machine.
Jordan’s Twitter and Instagram feeds were remarkably quiet. In the absence of good social media entertainment, her mind kept coming back to the pictures of the dead fish. She knew that so many fish shouldn’t die at once. Not without a good reason. But as perplexing as the dead fish question was, she resisted the urge to dig deeper.
The washing machine had completed the final rinse cycle, and Jordan transferred the clothes to the dryer. This would take more time than the washing machine, maybe an hour, so she returned to her apartment. Still, pictures gnawed at the edge of her thoughts, begging her to learn more. Jordan knew this feeling well and was conditioned to act on it. It was only through force of will that she fought off the urge to investigate the dead fish.
Jordan wasn’t one to watch much television, but she liked to keep up with local news. She turned the TV to the local NBC station. Mixed in with the array of mostly uninteresting stories was one that caught her attention. The FDA apparently planned to reduce barriers to developing new technologies to boost agricultural production. They were proposing the elimination of several requirements for using certain classes of hormones, antibiotics, and other chemicals in beef and poultry products destined for human consumption. The story took the position that this was good for the agricultural industry and that it would spur innovation. Definitely another example of the administration propping up big business at the expense of anything that was in the way. Jordan’s perspective was that eliminating too many requirements and safety checks created unnecessary risk. Food productivity was already at historically high levels. No one really knew what could happen if they tried to push productivity too far.
It had been almost an hour since Jordan had put her clothes in the dryer, so she went to retrieve them. When she had finished putting them away, she heated up another cup of coffee. She somehow thought she had passed a good chunk of the rainy morning. But the clock revealed it was only 8:15.
Jordan fell back on her bed, exhaling loudly. She was at a loss for what to do.
Her mind came back to the dead fish. As long as she had those pictures from Travis, she wouldn’t be able to ignore them. Better to just delete them.
Jordan got up and went to the kitchen and grabbed her phone. She opened the messages, ready to delete the one with the pictures from Travis. But she couldn’t. To do so would have gone against every reporting instinct she had. The time to delete the message would have been when she’d first gotten it. Before looking at the pictures. She couldn’t unsee them now. This left only one option.
Jordan grabbed her laptop from her shoulder bag, sat down at the kitchen table, and turned it on. Once logged in, she went to her messages and viewed the message stream from Travis. She opened each picture, the laptop screen enhancing the realism of the pictures. Looking at the close-ups, she was more convinced the fish looked sick. She didn’t know with what, but something was wrong with them.
Then Jordan did what she had been avoiding since Travis had mentioned the dead fish the previous night. She did what she was wired to do. She began to investigate.
First, she looked for published reports of dead fish from Copper Lake, either in the last week or anytime previously. There was nothing. Not a single report of any dead lake animal in Copper Lake, anytime in the last ten years. The lake had no public history of large numbers of fish dying. More importantly, recent mass deaths, often referred to as a “fish kill,” apparently did not make any news feed. Not even the local town news sites common across New England. That struck Jordan as a bit strange, especially since Copper Lake was a large lake with lots of summer traffic.
Jordan expanded the geography of her search, specifically including other big lakes. Nothing. Whatever caused the fish kill in Copper Lake appeared to have been an isolated event that had not otherwise occurred in the region. Or it was the first of what could be more future events.
Jordan moved on to try to learn about possible causes of a fish kill. She went from not finding anything on the Copper Lake fish kill to getting buried by stories about fish kills around the globe. Many of the stories were from reputable news sources. But there were also a few from some wacko sites quoting fish kills as signs that Armageddon was coming. That the end was near. Jordan gave those sites a wide berth.
Jordan stood up and paced around her apartment, trying to convince herself that she shouldn’t go to Copper Lake. Her instincts told her there was something wrong and that she wouldn’t be able to figure out much unless she was there. And that meant she wouldn’t be on vacation anymore. And Jordan really needed a break. Not that she had any money to go away, but she needed downtime.
As the reality set in that she would be going to Copper Lake, she managed to find a bright side. After all, how bad could it be to work on a story at a beautiful lake retreat in the summer? She could even get in some open-water swimming if she was lucky. Besides, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of days to come up with an explanation for what killed the fish. Once she knew the cause, there would be either an innocuous explanation or one that suggested
something sinister or illegal.
Travis, you bastard.
Jordan grabbed her phone and called Travis. She hoped he was asleep.
He answered the call on the fourth ring. “Hello.” His voice was raw and gravelly. Definitely still sleeping.
“I hope I woke you up.”
“Jordan. Why is my little ray of sunshine calling me when she knows I worked late last night?”
“You know why. Those damned dead fish.”
“Oh, those. I thought you weren’t interested?”
“Fuck you. You knew damn well I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself from looking at them. Which would lead me to do some digging. And that the digging would tell me I needed to go to Copper Lake to poke around in person.”
“Look, I just passed a potential lead to a great reporter. You should thank me, not curse me.”
“Well, I don’t feel very thankful at the moment. I’m going to lose some of my well-deserved vacation because of this.”
“Tell me, what was it that convinced you?”
“First was that the fish looked distorted. Almost grotesque. You must have noticed?”
“Oh yeah. They creeped me out. Was that all?”
“No. There wasn’t a single report. Nothing. You’d think that hundreds of fish dying would have made at least some local rag. The other thing that seemed off was the scale of this thing. It’s called a fish kill, by the way. It’s not that I don’t think hundreds of dead fish is significant. But when you hear about fish kills, they’re often on the order of thousands. Either this one was relatively small, or we haven’t seen it all yet. Either way, it’s odd.”
“So maybe there’s something to it. Look, I can think of worse ways to lose some vacation than having to spend a few days at a lakeside retreat in the summer. Poor you.”
“Very funny. Call your friend and tell him I’ll be heading up there today. I’d like to meet his sister and the guy who took the pictures.”
“Yeah, no problem. I’ll give him a heads-up. His sister’s name is Kasey. She works the bar at the marina.”
“One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“If I uncover something, I might need some assistance. You know, data mining, computer stuff, shit like that. Any chance you could take a day or two and go up to the lake as well?”
“Just because I helped you once doesn’t mean I like being your assistant.”
“You haven’t risen to the level of assistant yet, but if you work hard, you might. Seriously, though, would you be able to help if I need it?”
“I can probably make myself available. I’ll tell Sandy that she may need to cover for a day or two. Let me know once you have something.”
“Thanks. But don’t think this makes up for screwing up my vacation.”
“No worries on that one.”
Time to pack some shit.
3
Mike Banfield stood on the main dock at East Bay Marina taking in the expansive view of the lake. Ever since he could remember, this had been his favorite place to just relax and watch life on the lake. He wished his dad was still alive to sit with him, but a heart attack at fifty-five had taken him from his family and the marina community he’d built. Mike often thought about what his dad would think about how he ran the family business. This thought was the reference point for every marina decision Mike made.
It was just before noon, and the crowd was decent, the clearing weather encouraging his clients to get out on their boats and enjoy the lake. It didn’t hurt that it was the Monday before the Fourth of July. The days around the holiday were always busy at the marina, in part because the marina did an annual fireworks celebration, the largest in the county. With the Fourth being on a Saturday, the actual holiday would be observed on the Friday before. That would also be the day for the marina’s fireworks so as not to compete with the fireworks displays of neighboring towns. Mike sipped his iced tea, waiting for his noon appointment, though, in his mind, the word “appointment” didn’t accurately represent the situation.
Mike was waiting for a lawyer named Alex Koffman, despite having no desire whatsoever to meet with him. It had nothing to do with the man himself. He was a total stranger to Mike. But Mike knew that Alex Koffman was representing someone, a person or a company, that wanted to buy the marina. He and Alex had had a brief telephone discussion a couple of weeks back, at Koffman’s request, to discuss the interest in his property. Mike had stated clearly that he had no intention to sell his business. Period. But the man was relentless and pressed hard for a face-to-face meeting. Mike had finally relented. He still had no intention of selling but figured that meeting with the man would end the discussion once and for all.
At exactly 11:59 a.m., Mike saw a man dressed in a slim-fitting blue suit with white leather sneakers and a plain white cotton crewneck T-shirt. Alex Koffman was definitely on the young side of forty, and the slimness of his frame and the way he moved conveyed strength and fitness. Mike figured he must make a small fortune to be able to dress like that and have time to stay fit. As the man approached the docks, Mike gave a quick wave.
“You must be Alex,” Mike said.
“That’s right. You must be Mike. Pleased to meet you.”
Mike took the hand that Alex extended. Alex had a man’s handshake, firm but relaxed.
“Well, you’re right on time. Let’s go to my office.”
“Sure. Too bad we can’t stay out here. The view is amazing.”
Mike took the opportunity to indirectly state his intention not to sell. “Priceless, in fact.”
Alex didn’t miss the double meaning. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
The two men left the docks and headed toward the offices, just past the pro shop entrance.
Mike sat down behind his desk, while Alex sat in the one chair in front of the desk. Mike’s office was cluttered, the walls covered with an array of photos of people in and around the marina. On the wall behind Mike was a large framed photograph of Mike and his father, Martin Banfield.
Alex began by handing Mike his business card. “Thank you for seeing me today, Mike. I know we spoke on the phone, but given the importance of this topic to my client, I want to make sure you know exactly what’s being offered.”
“Well, I can appreciate that, but as I told you on the phone, my marina isn’t for sale. The marina and Copper Lake are as much a part of me as my family is. My father poured everything he had into the marina and created a place where families can come to escape the rat race of city life. It may not be glamorous to you folks from a big city, but our members know the marina is a quiet jewel, just for them.”
Alex leaned forward, placing his forearms on his knees. “That is exactly what my client sees. But he also sees untapped potential. Most of the Copper Lake area is undeveloped, including much of the land within a few miles of the marina. There is potential to make this ‘jewel’ a true diamond. Imagine a marina double or triple this size, with new commercial development to make Copper Lake the go-to summer destination. My client can do this, but the marina has to be the centerpiece.”
“I’m sure that, to some, the vision you describe is very attractive. But East Bay Marina’s vision is to provide a premium, low-key getaway for families to spend time on a beautiful lake. To enjoy the peace that Copper Lake and its surroundings offer. Besides, I know pretty much everyone around. Few would be pleased if we turned this place into some mini-metropolis.”
“Not even for the right price?”
“No. They wouldn’t care.”
“Not even for double what the property may be worth today?”
Mike paused. He hadn’t seriously considered how much property values would rise if the area were more developed. If this guy was being straight with him, there would be people willing to consider selling. Not that this would change his position, but it would increase pressure on others in the area who had property the anonymous developer wanted to buy.
“I can’t speak for my neighbors. But if
you have an offer your client wants me to hear, let’s get it over with.”
“I do. And I think you’ll find it to be very generous. There are two components to the offer. First, my client wants to purchase your entire marina, including all land, property, and equipment, for a sum of five million dollars. Second, my client will offer you a share of the future developed property. Specifically, you’ll be entitled to five percent of the net profit of the future development the marina will support, for a ten-year period. Note that in the first couple of years, there may be no profit as we further develop the property. But the outer years stand to drive considerable profit. Obviously, we’re prepared to spell out the specific details if you agree to sell.”
Mike thought his face was calm and composed, but he didn’t know for sure. He had expected a solid offer. But $5 million was way above what he could have imagined. Yes, the marina had some good asset value, and it was on a pristine lakefront location, but the offer price was probably a third more than he would have ever expected. Not to mention a share in future profits. It was more than generous. So generous, it made Mike think the lawyer wasn’t sharing everything. How could the buyer ever recoup the purchase costs just by improving the marina? There had to be more to it.
Mike knew he was taking too long to respond. “That’s certainly a generous offer. But it strikes me as overly generous. I’m not sure how someone could justify this price knowing the book value of the marina. What does your buyer have planned that makes the investment worthwhile?”
“I’m not able to share those details at the moment. If you agree to the basic terms of the deal and sign a consent to sell, my client will share the development plans.”
“Really? You expect me to agree to sell my property without knowing what your buyer is planning to do with it?”
“Yes. If you agree to sell, then future decisions regarding the property aren’t yours. Though you will share in the profits of those decisions.”