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Gone. Stolen. Ripped out of the ground. It was a huge mess. Trees had been chain-sawed down or simply pushed over by a sizeable vehicle which, judging by the tracks, had come down from the old bush track at the top of the slope. There were rock fragments and dirt heaps scattered all around the ugly crater where ‘Fossie’ used to guard her eggs. The villains had cut around it with some sort of cutting wheel, smashed the rock away from three sides, cut under it as far as the cutter blade could reach, then somehow split the naturally layered rock and lifted it out.
“Must have worked all night,” murmured Randy, looking on from behind Winton who was taking photos and telling everyone to get back and not disturb the evidence.
Randy was trying hard not to admit how upset he felt.
“They would have had a 4x4 truck,” declared Winton confidently, “plus a portable rock cutter. They definitely would have had to use a hydraulic crane, plus sledgehammers, wedges, generator, lights ...” His list went on and on.
Listening to him, Randy was immediately struck by a terrible idea. It could well have been Charlie Cobb who did the job. But he didn’t feel up to mentioning it to Winton, and since Piho was in such a violent mood he had no-one to share it with at all. Oh well, it was something he could toss to the police once they arrived. Maybe it would distract the coppers from the fact that Randy Cathro had actually been the first to break the law.
He knew it: he was in deep doo-doo. Not dino-doo-doo, either. The real stuff!
As Winton babbled on, Tammy wept inconsolably.
Nevertheless, Nikki still tried.
Randy stood about uselessly, feeling like he was going to faint or something. Probably from a lack of breakfast.
And Piho had temporarily disappeared. Probably to have a pee, thought Randy.
Finally Nikki pulled out her mobile phone. “Well, we’ve got to do this.”
“Who ya gonna call?” asked Randy.
“The police, of course!”
He slunk away, trying to find some fresher air. He felt terrible, but he didn’t dare go near Tammy, and Piho wasn’t likely to be sympathetic, and Winton was the last guy on Earth that Randy expected to get any sympathy from.
He wanted to find Reinhold and hit him with something really really big!
Nikki talked to someone for a while, got a bit cross with them, and finally shut off her phone. “They said they can’t get here for at least two hours.”
“Two hours!” yelled Tammy, “But the poachers are getting away! We’ve got to set up road blocks! We’ve got to get helicopters! This is a national emergency!”
Winton, meanwhile, was gingerly stepping through the mess, studying the ground. Suddenly he crouched down. “Tammy, come and look at this. Careful where you tread. Don’t mess up those footprints there, see? That’s good. Here.”
She crouched beside him. “What is it?”
“Hydraulic oil. It must have been leaking. But see this drop on the leaf?”
“It looks completely fresh.”
“Exactly. Whoever it was, they haven’t been gone very long.” He put his hand on the ground as if testing its temperature, then moved it onto the biggest patch of oil. “It’s still warm! They’ve only been gone a half hour at the most!”
Tammy jumped up, “We’ve got to chase them!”
“Yes, but which way? They might have taken the back-road towards Sydney.” He thought for a moment, then suddenly asked, “Where’s that laptop?”
“In the car.”
“Right, let’s go! Come on everyone, we’re moving out!”
“Why?”
But Winton wasn’t waiting around to explain himself. He was already off. The others scrambled to keep up, with Piho coming quietly up the rear.
At the car Winton got out the laptop and opened it on the bonnet.
“What are you looking for?” asked Tammy.
“That!” said Winton once he had a picture loaded. He got the picture to zoom in on the big yellow telephone, then turned to Randy and Piho. “What is that?”
“Satellite phone,” answered Randy, “That ... toe-rag gave it to us.”
“Gave it to you?”
“Yeah, so he could ring us anytime he wanted to.”
“And let me guess; he asked you to include it in the photos?”
“Yeah,” said Randy, surprised.
Winton went ballistic, “You pair of morons! He set you up! That’s an old DatSat180B! Everyone knows they can be used as positional tracers!”
“Huh?”
Winton heaved an impatient sigh and his voice went up a notch, “He’ll have another one exactly the same. He used it to track you, you Kiwi plonkers!”
“Hey watch it!” roared Piho, puffing up with rage.
“Where is it now?” demanded Winton, seemingly unaware of the large fist that Piho was waving near his face, “This is really critical! Have you still got it?”
“Yuh.” said Randy, mystified by Winton’s excess of passion.
“Then there’s still some hope! Quick, Tammy, back to your place!”
#
TAMMY WISELY PUT WINTON in the front and Piho in the back and they drove straight home to the Turinger’s place. Winton seemed obsessed with the yellow phone.
“Get it,” he ordered Randy impatiently as soon as the car had stopped, “I might still be able to make you guys look like heroes.”
Puzzled by this, Randy went to his room, dug the phone out of hiding and returned with it to the kitchen. The others had the laptop open and were once again looking at the best photo of ‘Fossie’. Tammy was crying about it again. Randy decided not to try and comfort her. He figured she was still mad with him.
He was absolutely right on that score.
She dried her tears angrily on a tea-towel then absent-mindedly blew her nose on it too, “He’s not getting away with this!” she said as she then absentmindedly tried to put it in her pocket like it was a handkerchief, “He’s just not!”
Then a determined look came over her face. She stood up, “Excuse me, I’m going to make a few phone calls.” She picked up the cordless phone, then reached for the laptop, “I’ll need the photos too.”
“What for?” asked Piho protectively.
“I’m going to e-mail them to the museum. We’ve got to let the right people know about this.” She seized the computer and hurried away to another room.
Winton, meanwhile, had been sitting at the table studying the yellow telephone, poking at the controls and scrolling through the menus. “Ah ha,” he murmured now and again. He poked some more, then sat back. “Password protected, of course.”
Whatever Winton had planned he was now stumped, or so Randy thought. But Winton continued thinking aloud, “Okay, he goes by the name of Reinhold. German name, but a literal translation is ‘holding the reins’ , that is, to control the horse, or in other words to control one’s destiny...”
Randy glanced at Piho over Winton’s head. Piho rolled his eyes and pulled a face. Randy grinned and tried to mouth the words ‘Geek Man’. Piho’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. He mouthed something back. It looked nasty.
Meanwhile Winton was asking them a question, “... so was that what he was like, psychologically speaking?”
“Eh? What?”
Winton sighed in frustration. Nikki translated, “What was the dealer’s personality like? Was he like, you know, a control freak?”
“Oh yeah!” Randy answered, “He was ah, what’s the word: assertive?”
“More like; ‘asshole’,” murmured Piho.
“Hmmm.” Winton hunched over the phone, thinking. Piho sighed and glanced out the window, perhaps planning where to bury Winton and Randy after he was through with them. Randy slumped deeper in his chair at the prospect of having the police involved, and that he had broken Tammy’s heart, and that he was never going to get his million dollars now, and that he was probably going to have to go to jail, and that Australian jails probably didn’t have air conditioning, and that the wedding was probably going to have to be called off for a few years, and that Tammy would probably never ever talk to him again anyway.
He began wishing he’d never found that fossil.
Winton suddenly reached a decision in his mysterious geek-brain. Randy heard him murmur, “Okay; it has to be a six letter word. Something obscure. Let’s start with the old Teutonic gods. Six letters... six letters... Of course! Good old Svasud: God of Summer.” He entered the word via the telephone’s keypad, paused in thought for another second, then hit the ‘YES’ key. The phone emitted an optimistic beep. Winton relaxed slightly, sat back, even smiled, but said nothing. Randy and Piho seemed to snap to attention, both jumping up and swinging around behind Winton so fast their heads collided together with a hollow clonk.
PASSWORD ACCEPTED said the little screen.
“How’d you do that!?” they both shouted at once, rubbing their heads like mirror-images of each other.
Winton shrugged smugly, “Aw, it was nothing to someone with a brain.”
Randy and Nikki dragged Piho away before his flailing hands could catch onto Winton’s geeky shirt. “Knock it off!” Randy hissed as they wrestled him to the other end of the kitchen, “He’s going to make us heroes, remember?”
“Yeah, sure, right,” snorted Piho disbelievingly, “But one more shot at us about our brain-power and so help me God I’m going to knock his smug little block off!”
“Look,” murmured Randy firmly, “if you want something to do, why don’t you go out and get a refund for the laptop. We don’t need it any more. And hey; look on the bright side: we made a truckload of money out of the swine, didn’t we?”
Piho seemed to relax a little. “Yeah, yeah maybe you’re right. Except of course we’ll probably have to give it all back.”
Winton suddenly said, “Done it! Now we’re tracking him.”
The boys once again zoomed into position behind Winton, taking care this time not to clonk their heads together. The telephone screen showed a peculiar number, something like: E149-17-05 / S27-31-45. As Randy watched it winked and became E149-17-08 / S27-31-46. The numbers had changed slightly.
“Right,” said Randy, trying not to sound too stupid. He had seen enough action movies to figure out what it meant. “So, like, that means he’s on the move, right?”
“Yes,” answered Winton like an annoying teacher would, “But do you know in which direction?”
Based on a guess, knowing that Reinhold hadn’t gone so far away last time that he couldn’t drive back in a day, Randy said, “Brisbane?”
“He is heading east-south-east,” replied Winton, unimpressed, “so it could be Brisbane, yes.”
“Where else would he go?” said Piho impatiently, “He’s got a ton of rock he needs to get out of the country. He’ll need a ship wouldn’t he? Or a pretty big aeroplane. Brisbane would be the obvious place to go.”
“A reasonable deduction my dear Watson,” answered Winton without taking his eyes from the yellow phone, ‘but he might just be delivering it directly to the buyer. Plenty of millionaires live down on the Gold Coast, for example.”
Nikki spoke, her voice edged with excitement, “So we could follow him, right? We could nab him in the act?”
The numbers winked again as she spoke. They hadn’t changed.
“Ah, he’s stopped,” said Winton. “I wonder where? We need a map.” He sprang up suddenly, shoving his smelly hair into the boy's faces, “To the library!”
Of course there was no library in the house. Winton meant the big book case in the lounge. He returned with a massive Australian atlas, banged in down on the table and flipped through it until he got to the right page. Then he glanced at the numbers winking on the telephone’s screen and began tracing his fingers in from the edges of the page.
“He’s on the Warrego Highway. Possibly in Drillham. Damn! This is so inaccurate! If we’re going to pin him down we’re going to need your laptop.” He looked up hopefully at the boys.
“What for?”
Winton assumed his usual I-am-talking-to-idiots tone and explained, “I can connect the satellite interface via fire-wire and input directly to ‘i-Map’. Then we’ll have a totally accurate position, updateable, track-able, incredibly accurate.”
“Err, what’s an i-Map?” asked Randy.
“Software!” snapped Winton, “You have heard of ‘computers’?”
Nikki exploded at him, “Listen, geek! That was uncalled for!”
Winton shrank back.
Randy glanced at Piho, “Well, what do you reckon?”
Piho looked decidedly uncooperative. “Weren’t we going for a refund?”
“It’s only for another day. Think of the reward money!”
“Reward?” echoed Winton, a gleam of interest in his eye.
“Yeah,” explained Randy, trying to sound knowledgeable, “the federal whatzit has a reward out for, like, information leading to the arrest of fossil poochers.”
“Poachers, you moron,” said Piho testily, “But we don’t need laptops and maps, dudes. All we have to do is give that phone to the cops and we’re sweet, eh?”
“Ah, but the thrill of the chase!” said Winton, his eyes lighting up, “The excitement! The satisfaction! Getting that fossil back! Seeing the look in that guy’s eyes! That’s got to be a reward in itself!”
“Ahhhhh, I know what’s going on,” said Piho suspiciously, “you just want the reward all for yourself. You fixed the phone, so now you want all the glory!”
“No no no no no!” responded Winton angrily, “I just want to nobble that crook!”
“So, you’re suggesting we chase him?”
“Yes! The cops’ll be useless. They’re already going to be two hours too late getting to the crime scene! And besides, we’ve no idea how long this is going to stay operational. He could switch his end off at any minute.”
The Kiwi boys looked at each other, trying to decide what to say.
Randy knew he had to do it. He’d already screwed up massively. Now he had to make amends, especially to Tammy. Piho, meanwhile, was having very similar thoughts regarding Nikki, who had not spoken to him for the last hour.
But they had no time to say anything because Tammy rushed in right then. “I just called the Queensland Museum,” she said, “and they’re going to call in the Feds! Yay! They’ve got a task force for exactly this sort of thing, just as I thought! They’ll be flying out here as soon as they can; should be here by mid-afternoon.”
“Oh that’s hopeless!” howled Winton, “We’ve got to act sooner than that!”
He hastily told Tammy about his discovery with the phone. Her mouth fell slowly open. Randy gazed at it, wanting to kiss it like crazy.
Her eyes lit up when she heard where Reinhold had stopped, “Drillham? But that’s only like forty minutes away!”
“Yes! I know!”
“Let’s do it!” shouted Nikki, “Let’s bust this guy!”
“Alright!” said Tammy, “He is not getting away with Fossie! No way!” She started issuing orders at everyone. “Nikki, take Winton home and get the software sorted. I’m going to call the museum back and get a direct number for the federal police and tell them what’s going on. Randy, ... um, make some sandwiches. And Piho, ahhh, do the dishes. Okay everyone, move, move, move!”
Moments later Randy and Piho were alone in the kitchen.
“Sandwiches?”
“Dishes!?”
“Screw that!”
“Want to swap?”
“Yeah, ... hey hang on...!”
“Too late, you’ve got the dishes now.” Piho strode to the fridge and yanked it open. He stood gazing at the contents for several long seconds, then said, “Ah, you got any idea how to make a sandwich?”
#
BY THE TIME TAMMY GOT back, Piho had managed to get a bag of bread out of the pantry and put it on the table. The boys were bickering as usual, and the kitchen sink was sprouting a tall wobbling jelly-blob of detergent bubbles.
“Randy! Turn off the water!”
She had the cordless phone in one hand and a school pad in the other. She plonked the pad on the table, went to speak, and the phone rang in her hand. She answered it.
“Hello this is Tammy Turinger. Can I help you?” She listened for about ten seconds. “Channel Nine News! ... Ahhh, no,” she glanced at Randy, “No he’s not here. ... Yes. Yes we are but right now we .... yes, ... no, ... sorry, look I’d love to help but...” for a moment she held the phone away from her ear, looking helpless, then she quickly put it back, “I think you’ve got the wrong number, goodbye!”
“What was that all about?” asked Randy as she decisively shut off the call.
“Unbelievable. It was Channel Nine. They found out you had discovered the fossil and they wanted to do an interview.”
“How did they...?” began Randy just as the phone rang again.
“Hello, this is Tammy Turinger. Can I help you? ... Channel Seven News! Well yes but, .. Look we ... No I ... But ... Oh goodbye!”
“How did they find out?!” asked Piho.
“I don’t know, but ... oh I suppose I told a few people, but ...” The phone rang again. She slammed it back to her ear and snapped, “What?!” Then her voice went polite and she added, “Oh, ah, this is Tammy Turinger. Can I help you?”
Someone spoke to her for some time. She nodded a few times, “Yes. Yes that’s right but... What!? Well yes but... no. No they didn’t take it! It was stolen by some fraud posing as a museum worker! Yes, ripped right out of the ground... Look I think you should talk to the police. No I don’t think I, ... it might... hang on.”
Suddenly Tammy strode across to the wall and pulled out the phone jack.
“That was ABCTV! They all want to do interviews! They all want Randy!” She gazed at the floor, perplexed, then suddenly uttered an un-becoming expletive, “They must have got the story from the museum!”
“But you said ...”
“I know! And apparently your photos are already on the internet!”
“Cool!” said Piho.
“Not cool!” shouted Tammy, “I sent them to the museum only. Oh this is hopeless! It’s going to be mad house ...” Even as she spoke the phone at the other end of the house started ringing. Tammy looked towards it in despair, hesitated, hurried off, and came back a few minutes later.
“That was the Brisbane newspaper. This is hopeless! We can’t stay here! They’ve got the address and everything! Let’s get to Winton’s. And we’ll switch the police to Nikki's mobile. They’ll never get through here!” Flustered she grabbed her pad, gathered up the big atlas, ignored the failed sandwich project and hurried out.
“Lock up behind you, will you?” she called back, “I'm getting the car out.”
One minute later they were accelerating down the street, Tammy more intent and adult than anything Randy had ever seen before. His love for her instantly doubled.