Cry of the Sea (17 page)

I moved my left arm slightly to cover the
Affron grant pay stubs. He didn’t need to know that I’d been
snooping though his file cabinets just yet.

“You won’t find anything there,” Dr.
Schneider said. “It was all by phone.”

We stared at him until he went on. “You want
to know about the mermaids? Well, go ahead. Ask me.” He crossed his
arms and readied himself for our attack.

Ask him? I didn’t get it. Why was he being so
cavalier? Was he proud of himself that the mermaids were in
Affron’s oily hands? At least he wasn’t smiling. I’d have slugged
him in the jaw.

Carter continued to do the talking, which was
fine with me. I had nothing productive to say to the man. “So, what
happened?” His tone left no room for sympathy. He expected to be
told the truth by Dr. Schneider, and he didn’t expect to like
it.

Neither did I.

Dr. Schneider let out a long sigh.
“Everything that has happened here is my fault.”

I shot a look to Carter that related only one
thought:
Duh
!

“I called the president of the Board of
Directors for the Sea Mammal Rescue Center yesterday morning. These
seven people make all the decisions regarding how funds are to be
used and which projects are going to take priority. Very little of
what happens around here is up to me.” He fidgeted with the pen in
his lab coat pocket. “I had to call them regardless to let them
know about how the oil spill affected us and that we were full up
with rehabilitation cases.”

“You didn’t have to tell them about the
mermaids,” Carter said. “Not yet. Not until we’d learned more about
them.”

Dr. Schneider grimaced. “I didn’t. Not
exactly. I told them we had an extraordinary find that would
require more research. I suggested that if they could arrange the
funding, I could triple my efforts to learn about our discovery.”
He paused, then added, “I could have been the one to declare what
these creatures were with definitive testing results. I could
have...” He raised his hands to his face and pushed his fingers
under his glasses to rub his eyes. “I could have been a
pioneer.”

“Those men last night?” Carter urged him
on.

“They
were
from Affron,” Dr. Schneider
said. “They weren’t who they said they were. I could tell that as
well as you. I thought they were sent to find out what my discovery
was, but I didn’t think they knew exactly what they were looking
for. I assumed they were just making sure I wasn’t trying to fraud
Affron into grant money I didn’t need. And we had nothing ‘unusual’
here last night that they could see, did we? It was all very
awkward for me.”

“Did you call them back after we left?”
Carter asked. The accusation in his tone was clear. “Is that what
happened?”

“I don’t know what happened, Carter.
Honestly. I was here all night studying and I fell asleep on my
desk. I woke up to banging on the door. It was those same men. I
let them in and they went straight to our mermaid’s tank and ripped
down the tarps. Within moments they hauled her and the mermaid
cadavers out of here without saying one word to me.”

I couldn’t take this any longer. “Why aren’t
you with them, then? Why aren’t you wherever they took the mermaids
and testing them and becoming famous like you wanted?”

“I don’t know where they are,” he said,
burying his head in his hands. “I chased after them, but I lost
them about forty miles up the highway.” He clenched his jaw and
looked almost like he would snarl. “I don’t have anything. I didn’t
get a chance to take pictures of her. I don’t have any lab results.
I don’t have a single thing that suggests that she ever existed.”
He shook his head. “I swear that I never mentioned to anyone that
we had discovered mermaids. I don’t know how they figured it
out.”

“I do,” Carter said, the ice from his gaze
cutting through me. “And there is evidence, thanks to June and her
father doing some taping at the beach when they found the
mermaids.”

I could sense the relief flowing back into
Dr. Schneider as he realized that this fiasco wasn’t completely his
fault. The guilt transferred to me. I didn’t want to deal with it,
so I nearly shouted, “So, how do we find them?”

“They work for Affron,” Carter said. “We
figured out that much.”

“But why would they want the mermaids? Where
would they take them?”

Dr. Schneider stood up and nudged me aside so
he could reach the computer mouse. “It could be any number of
places. Affron gives funding to every marine facility from
Monterey, California to Valdez, Alaska. Their way of ‘giving back
to the community’ as they put it.” He opened the Internet and went
to a site all about Affron’s philanthropic deeds. Their motto ‘We
Make the World Better’ scrolled across the page accompanied by some
pretty classical music.

“Guilt money,” I griped. “They ruin our
oceans and then put money into the rehab centers to make it look
like they care. With promotion like this, Affron lets all the
people know that they are the good guys who work very hard to take
care of the environment. They back up their slogan by putting money
into aquariums like this one. This way, no one can say they’re
lying. That’s why they’re always the first to show up at major oil
spills, too. Oh, my parents are going to have a field day with
this.”

Dr. Schneider went to a link on the site that
had a map of all the marine centers supported by Affron money.
Along the Atlantic shore of the United States there were only a
couple. Only one in Hawaii. However, from Northern California to
Alaska there were about twenty-five.

Carter pulled out his cell phone and opened
up the video link he’d saved there and played back my mermaid
video. I glanced back and forth from the video to the dots on the
map on Dr. Schneider’s computer screen. “Or there could be another
reason Affron always shows up first.”

A chill ran through me. They knew.

Affron knew about the mermaids all along.

Chapter
Eleven

“I have to go,” I told Carter and Dr.
Schneider. Before they could open their mouths to argue, I was up
and heading for the door. “Carter, can you give me a ride
home?”

“We’re kind of in the middle of a discussion
here, June,” he said, gesturing to the computer.

“There’s nothing else to discuss here,” I
said, heading out the office door.

Carter pushed back from the desk and followed
me. “I think there is.”

I stopped and looked him dead in the eye.
“Affron knows about the mermaids. I’m sure of it. I’ll bet they
discovered them long before we did.” I turned to Dr. Schneider who
was standing in his office doorway wringing his hands. “Those men
last night weren’t here to check you out for grant fraud. They were
looking for the mermaid. They knew exactly what we had and where we
had her. My video only made them move faster so they could snatch
up the mermaids before anyone else had a chance to see them. I’ll
bet the next move is to prove that you never saw them, Dr.
Schneider. You said yourself you had no evidence. And then they’ll
figure out how to prove my video is a fake.”

I started toward the double doors again.
Carter reached out and grabbed my arm. “But why? Why would they do
all that?”

“Because my mom is right. If people, ordinary
people, knew that there were real mermaids swimming around in the
Pacific Ocean, they wouldn’t allow Affron to continue leaking oil
in the ocean. People will finally stand up against them.”

“Why do you think it would make a
difference?” Carter said. “Polar bears, whales, sea otters... I
could go on. The slow extinction of those beautiful creatures
hasn’t stirred that kind of reaction.”

“They don’t look like people,” Dr. Schneider
said. “The mermaids are very humanesque in their upper torsos and
face. Human looking enough to stir the mind into thinking they are
like us. They are also mythological, and the human race will go to
extremes to discover and protect a find such as that. And what if
we can prove that the mermaids can communicate? People will want to
know how many mermaids exist. Are there male as well as female
mermaids? Where do they live? Are there cities under the oceans?
Are the mermaids immortal? Could they have existed since the age of
the Ancient Greeks? If so, does that mean that the Greek gods are
also in existence—or that other mythological creatures exist? What
impact could that have on the religions of the world and our
existence on this planet?”

“You’ve thought a lot about this,” Carter
said to the scientist.

“Up all night.”

Okay, that was taking it a bit further than
my brain could handle at the moment. But it sounded right. I only
nodded and said, “So, are you going to drive me or not?”

“Where are we going?”

“My house. We’re going to let the secret out
and make Affron scramble.”

“I don’t understand,” Carter said. “Don’t you
want to help find them?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I’m going to make that
his
job.” I pointed at Dr. Schneider. The way his neck
stiffened I could tell he didn’t like being told what to do by a
seventeen-year-old girl, or by anyone for that matter. “Dr.
Schneider, you need to figure out where Affron might have taken the
mermaids.”

“I don’t know how,” he almost whined. “I used
up my cell phone battery trying to get through to someone at Affron
to find out who those men were and what department they were with.
No one over there could help me. No one seems to know
anything.”

Carter took his keys out of his pocket and
tossed them up and down in his right hand. “Which direction did
they go this morning?”

Dr. Schneider shrugged. “North. I lost
them.”

“Yeah,” Carter said slowly. “After forty
miles you said. That would have taken about half an hour. What have
you been doing since then?”

A good question. I hadn’t thought about that.
I took a step back toward Carter.

“I followed them to the freeway, but once
they got on the 5 I couldn’t keep up,” the scientist said. “Then I
kept driving for a while, hoping I’d see them at a gas station or
something. I drove quite a ways. Finally, I realized I was being
ridiculous and pulled over and got on the phone. I was on the phone
for a while, being put on hold over and over again. When my phone
died I started back.”

I bought it, but I wasn’t sure Carter did.
His lips were pressed tightly together, like he was trying not to
say anything. I spoke for him. “So, you know they went north.
That’s a starting place. The mermaid can’t survive long without
being in a good-size tank, so unless they wanted her to die, they
had to have taken her someplace not too far away.”

“I’ll look into our options,” Dr. Schneider
said.

Carter raised his cell phone out of his
pocket and waved it. “Charge your phone and please answer it when I
call.” With a dismissive nod and a wave, Dr. Schneider pulled out
his own phone and wiggled it in response before turning his back on
us and sitting down at his desk. Satisfied, Carter tapped my
shoulder and led me out the door.

After a quick stop at the drive-thru, we were
on our way back to Olympia. Carter practically devoured his burger
in one bite, wiped his mouth and then said, “So what’s your big
plan?” I was a bit preoccupied with texting a message to Haley and
took a moment to answer him.

“Hello.”

“Sorry,” I said, putting down my phone and
grabbing a couple fries. “I’m trying to get Haley to meet me at my
house.”

“Not Haley again,” he moaned. “Hasn’t she
caused enough damage? You need to get rid of her sorry butt.”

“No, you don’t understand,” I said.

“I understand that she’s not cool. That’s all
there is to it.”

“She’s my best friend.”

He shrugged as if to say that made no
difference to him at all, but he didn’t say anything. He kept his
eyes on the traffic, his right hand on the wheel while his left arm
rested on the door.

“She made a mistake, okay?” I said. “She
didn’t get what was going on here. But she’s a good person. Plus,
she’s the one who can help me do what I want to do.”

“What is that exactly?”

“I’m going to improve the video and get even
more attention to it.”

Carter swerved into another lane to avoid
running up the bumper of the car in front of us. My drink tipped a
bit into my lap, but I saved it in time. “Why?”

While I dabbed at my jeans with a couple
napkins, I reminded Carter about the phone conversation I’d had
with my mom at his house the morning before and what my mom had
suggested about releasing the video so people could know about the
mermaids.

“You heard all that, right?” He nodded at me,
so I went on while I freed my French fries from the bag so I could
shove the soggy napkins in there instead. “I thought she was wrong,
jumping the gun, but now I think she was right on the money. I’ve
got to make a splash with what we know. National. International.
People have got to know what we know.”

Carter reached over and grabbed the paper bag
out of my hand and tossed it over his shoulder into the back seat,
uncaring of where it landed. Then he took my hand and lowered it to
my knee gently and held it there. His hands were remarkably warm
compared to mine, and the touch was soothing to my tense nerves.
“Breathe, June,” he said. “Calm down a second.”

I did as he suggested, allowing air to pull
in through my nose and fill my lungs. I took three long breaths
before taking my free right hand and placing it over his, making a
hand sandwich.

He waited a moment for me to collect myself
before speaking again. “You need to think this stuff through.
You’re being impulsive.”

“I really don’t have time to think this
through,” I told him. “I’ve got to act now while there’s still oil
on the beach. If I wait, the oil will be cleaned up and no one out
there will relate this discovery with the problem. We need to get
Affron in the spotlight.”