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 turn, 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?