The Loch

Chapter 23

The Nessie III remained in the area another two hours until the sun rose, by which time my bladder had inflated like a hot-water bottle.

Brandy docked. David kissed her good-bye, he and the provost heading off to prepare for yet another press conference. I waited until she went below, then climbed from my makeshift hiding place and crept out of the pilothouse onto the main deck.

"I was wonderin' when ye'd be leavin'?"

Startled, I turned, Brandy now dressed in a lavender bathrobe. "You knew?"

She leaned back casually against the stern rail, arms folded against her chest. "I smelled ye the moment we stopped movin'."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I figured ye'd a'ready made enough o' an arse out o' yersel' for one evenin'. Still afraid o' the water, are ye?"

"Your brother has a big mouth."

"An' you should've said somethin'. Ye think ye're the only one stricken by a phobia?" She parted her robe, showing me an exquisitely tanned leg, the inner thigh blemished by a series of zigzagging white scars. "When depression hit, I turned tae hurtin' mysel'. Sort o' gives all new meanin' to the term, shavin' yer legs."

"But you got over it?"

"I control it, that's all. Pills take the edge away, but the fear's always there. It sort o' lurks on the periphery, waitin' for me tae let my guard down."

I nodded. "I think I'm more angry now than scared. Guess that's an improvement."

"No' necessarily. Anger's a double-edged sword. While it gives ye the strength tae hunt one monster, it can turn ye intae another."

"Meaning?"

"Now's no' the time."

"No, go on. Finish."

"Okay then. The Zachary Wallace I knew never resorted tae usin' his fists tae make a point. Angus Wallace, on the other hand …"

"David's way out of line."

"That's Angus's ego talkin'."

"Brandy, I'm not about to let David destroy my life."

"Seems yer life was sufferin' long before David Caldwell ever came along."

"And you put it in my face. Why him, Brandy? Of all people, why get involved with him?"

"Look at me, Zachary. My boat's fallin' apart, I'm barely survivin', an' I've no money nor savings nor rich parents to borrow from. Bad enough I'm alone, but tae face the coming winter wi' no means tae live? David's job, it pays more in one day than I can earn in a good week."

"And in exchange, you're sleeping with him."

Her eyes angered. Stepping closer, she struck me hard in the chest with the heel of her palms. "First off, mister, I am no' a whore. Second, I'll sleep wi' who I please, when I please, an' it's none o' yer damn business!"

Glancing over my shoulder, she spotted David, Owen Hollifeld, and the engineer from NIST approaching along the pier.

"Ye need tae leave."

"Look, I'm sorry—"

"Did ye no' hear me? Get off my boat. Go on!" She pushed me toward the rail.

I climbed down just as David reached the berth. "What's all this?"

"He was lookin' for ye," Brandy lied. "Had tae threaten tae arrest him for trespassin' before he'd leave."

The NIST engineer hurried on board to check his equipment. The provost got in my face. "We're no' gonnae have any trouble from ye, are we Dr. Wallace?"

"I was just leaving."

"Good," David chirped. "I hear there's a nice vacant cell next to your father's."

I raised my hands, slowly backing away. "I was just making conversation with the lady. Do whatever you have to do to catch your monster, but you'd better think twice before you hurt Brandy, that's all I've got to say."

I walked away, the veins in my neck throbbing, my inflated ego shunting off any remaining whispers coming from the left side of my brain—

"Hey, Angus!"

— my psyche deflating once more as Brandy buried her open mouth against David's.

"Well, whit did ye expect?" said Angus, finishing his Scotch broth soup and chips. "Ne'er mess wi' a Scots livelihood, especially a woman's. Brandy kens whit she's doin', believe you me."

"I love her."

"Love? Ah, that's jist yer knob talkin'. B'sides, there's plenty o' fish in the sea. Last thing ye need is tae be hitchin' up wi' a MacDonald."

I shook my head, wondering how I'd sunk so low as to be asking advice about women from my father.

"So, lad, tell me again about this latest attack."

"I told you all I know. According to the papers, the American photographer's still in a coma."

"But he lost the camera?"

"Yes."

"Bollocks. My trial restarts next week. While every Nessie encounter pushes me that much closer tae freedom, Maxie says it's still no' enough. I need yer help here, son."

"Son? Not Alice or Deirdre? Why am I your son when you need something?"

"Point taken. Now when will ye go after this thing?"

"Not until I know more about it."

"Ugh… ye're wastin' valuable time. Whit else is there tae ken aboot it?"

"For starters, why did a benign fish-eating creature suddenly add red meat to its diet?"

"An' how dae ye expect tae learn that oot?"

"I don't know, seeing as how the Sheriff's lab conveniently managed to lose all the specimens I collected. Guess I'll just have to get more." I stood, heading down the corridor. "We'll talk in a few days. I wanna check out the salmon-spawning grounds."

"The spawnin' grounds? Zachary, wait! Forget the spawnin' grounds, laddie, ye're jist wastin' whit little time I've got left. Zack, are ye listenin' tae me? We need proof, real proof that this thing is oot there an' that it's killed folk. Call Theresa, she'll—"

"For the last time, I'm not interested in speaking with Johnny C.'s widow, or for that matter, any other woman you've shared bodily fluids with."

Pushing past the guards, I left the holding area and trudged up the dungeon's winding stone stairwell, the echoes of my father's rants following me until I reached the castle's ground floor.

An exhausted Michael Newman limped out of the Nessie III's cramped pilothouse, desperate to stretch his aching back. For the last six hours he had sat behind the makeshift wooden desk bolted to the pilothouse decking, attempting to patch together a working sonar grid. Each of the thirty-four sonar buoys floating in Loch Ness had to be recalibrated so that data transmissions could be received and analyzed, and in many cases, Newman had to order a less-than-pleased boat captain back out to reposition his vessel's buoys. Just when it finally seemed the NIST engineer had his grid up and working, the Nessie III's new generator had conked out, shutting down his GPS receiver, sending his blood pressure soaring.

It had taken him the rest of the afternoon to fix the problem, and now Newman's lower vertebrae felt as if someone had been twisting them with a monkey wrench. "Caldwell! Wake up and get in here."

David, asleep on a chaise lounge chair, opened his eyes. "We up and running?"

"We're up. Come in and I'll show you how it works, then I'm done. My back can't handle another minute of this."

David followed him inside.

"Now pay attention… and don't drip suntan oil on my equipment! See this monitor on the left? Hit Control-M and it displays your grid."

Newman typed in the command, displaying a GPS satellite view of Loch Ness, divided by grid lines. "The Loch's so long that I had to divide the screen into three sonar zones." Newman clicked on an area with his mouse. "There's your north display, central… and south. Use the mouse to zoom in and out."

"The grid's active?"

"All sonar buoys are active and pinging as of ten minutes ago. I set the target strength to report and record any objects larger than a sea turtle. If something large crosses the array's acoustical beam, an alarm will sound, and the targeted info will appear on this second screen."

"Good, great… so where's the monster? If the array's active—"

"It's active, but that doesn't mean there aren't dead zones. We're dealing with a cold-water trowel that's over eight-hundred feet deep. Even pinging the hell out of it, you'll still have geological anomalies and pockets around the shoreline that'll remain cloaked."

"Okay. So how much isn't cloaked?"

"Best guess? Between 85 and 90 percent, and that's about as good as it gets without one signal interfering with another. It took me all day and evening to get the array set, so you tell those boat captains of yours they'd better not move or add another buoy to the field, or I'll personally feed them to the monster. And another thing, warn your girlfriend I'd better not find that new generator being used for anything but the sonar control station. If she so much as plugs a hair dryer into that machine, I'm leaving and taking my equipment with me."

"Know what, dude, you need to lighten up."

"What I need is a chiropractor and bed. So good hunting and good night. If you need me, don't call until morning."

Newman exited the pilothouse, then limped off toward the Clansman Hotel.

It was late in the day by the time I arrived along the banks of the River Moriston.

The rivers of the Great Glen that feed Loch Ness also serve as autumn spawning grounds for the Atlantic salmon. As the waters warm toward the end of April, the salmon begin their seasonal run from the Moray Firth south through the River Ness into Loch Ness, eventually making their way up the rivers and streams to lay their eggs.

The River Moriston had a well-earned reputation as a popular salmon area. Each spring and summer, visitors watched from lookout posts as the big females leaped out of the water, struggling to make their way up the Falls of Invermoristion, leading into the calmer breeding pools.

Salmon lay eggs by the tens of thousands, producing young fish, known as parr. Once hatched, the parr consume their egg sacs, beginning what will be an annual eight-inch growth spurt. It takes about two years for the fish to become smolts, a time when bodily changes prepare them for their eventual return to the sea. Salmon grow even more rapidly in salt water, and by the time they reenter Loch Ness as adults, they may weigh as much as forty pounds.

After a steady hour of hiking parallel to the river, I came to a rocky area where the Moriston climbed steeply. Setting down my backpack, I situated myself atop a nice-sized boulder and took in the beauty of the falls, my mind wandering.

Angus had testified that John Cialino had been swarmed by a school of salmon just before he'd been attacked by the monster. While it was not unusual to see salmon along the surface, I still remained skeptical, especially when it came to the creature's diet. For one thing, salmon were epilimnion, meaning they preferred to inhabit the upper regions of Loch Ness. If the creature fed solely on salmon, there'd have been far more surface sightings over the years.

Then again, it had been a school of salmon that surrounded yours truly when I'd been bitten seventeen years ago.

Still, I reasoned the predator I was after preferred charr or pike or even Anguilla eels. Charr were migratory fish, smaller than salmon but far more numerous, and they inhabited the deeper regions of the Loch. Pike were also deep-water fish and grew as large as three feet in length, but did not exist in vast numbers in Loch Ness. Anguilla, on the other hand, not only grew in excess of eight feet and several hundred pounds, but were known to prefer the depths, suspending themselves vertically off the bottom of the Loch. Anguilla had poor eyesight and hunted by smell, but only frequented Loch Ness during the spring and summer months when the water warmed.

And yet Calum Forrest had specifically directed me to the salmon-spawning grounds.

I checked my watch. An hour had passed, and yet I still hadn't seen a single salmon leap the falls.

My cell phone rang. It was True.

"Zack? I stopped by Inverness Castle, but ye'd a'ready left. Angus… he says ye're headin' for the salmon burns?"

"I'm already here."

'An' where's here?"

"The forest, just west of Glenmoriston."

"Okay, I'll come and fetch ye."

"Don't bother. It's kind of nice here, peaceful. Besides, I still want to do some exploring, maybe take a few specimens. I'll probably just camp here for the night."

"Zack, have ye lost yer mind? The monster killed no' far frae there only last week."

"I'm much farther inland, in high ground. I'll be fine."

"Zack—"

"We'll meet tomorrow morning back at the lodge. See you then."

I powered off the cell phone, then left the boulder and headed farther upstream, looking for a suitable place to make camp.

As chief prosecutor in the Angus Wallace murder trial, Mitchell Obrecht had been feeling pressure from his superiors ever since the defendant had dropped his "Nessie bomb" in court. Experience alone told Obrecht that Angus was lying, but with each subsequent attack, the chances of winning a conviction — and salvaging his career— appeared to be a diminishing prospect.

It was Obrecht who had persuaded the judge to take a two-week continuance, knowing he needed more time to prove Angus Wallace had planned his entire over-the-top defense. The good news was that Wallace's defense opened the door for the prosecution to prove John Cialiano's murder had been premeditated. The bad news, the sudden difficulty in separating the monster's unprecedented rampage with Johnny C.'s murder.

Obrecht looked up as his assistant, Jennifer Shaw, entered the office, carrying a thick brief.

"I hope that's your PI's report."

The blonde smiled. "It is, and he found all sorts of new goodies on Johnny C. and his merry widow. For instance, did you know Cialino suspected his wife was having an affair with Angus?"

"I'm listening."

"He hired his own private investigator two months after he bought Wallace's land. Apparently, Theresa and Angus were doing a little rendezvousing in a bed and breakfast in Dores."

"Is that so?" Obrecht sat up, intrigued. 'And what do you have to back this up?"

She opened the brief and removed a manila folder. Inside were separate photos of Angus and Theresa Cialino, both entering the same bed and breakfast.

"What good is this? There's not a single photo of them together."

"I'm working on it. Meanwhile, the Cialinos' resort opens in three weeks and they're booked solid. Even the flats sold out, and they were asking twice the appraised value. This whole Nessie thing's made Theresa Cialino a very wealthy widow."

"She was wealthy before. You're grasping at straws, Jennifer. All you have are rumors wrapped around innuendo, nothing solid I can use to charge Theresa as an accomplice, or even to confront her with on the witness stand. No, forget money and forget the affair. The real key is to prove this monster, or whatever it is, had nothing to do with Johnny C.'s death. If we can do that, then everything else falls into place."

"What about the water bailiff? That guy definitely knows more than he's saying. I think we should recall him. Let's find out why all these mysterious Loch Ness drownings never made the papers? Maybe the bailiff knew exactly what they were and told Angus?"

"Again, how do you prove it? Calum Forrest is old Clan. He'd sooner die than speak out against his own." Obrecht paused, absorbed in thought. "Wait a second… "

"What?"

"The weak link… it isn't Angus or Theresa or this water bailiff, it's the son… Zachary."

"What do you mean?"

"The kid's no dummy. He's still out there searching."

"If you call walking around the Loch searching."

"Don't underestimate him. If something's really happening out there, my bet is he'll find it. And when he does, he won't hide the truth, not even to save his old man."

"Okay, so what do you want me to do?"

"Contact your private investigator. Tell him to shadow Zachary Wallace. Whatever the good doctor learns, I want to know, too."

"Huh!"

I shot up in my sleeping bag in pitch blackness, my T-shirt soaked in perspiration, my flesh covered in goose bumps. My muscles trembled with fear, but it was not from the night terror.

There's something outside the tent!

I stifled my breathing and listened to the forest, the sound of my pounding heart throbbing in my ears.

Sounds… on my left! Something's leaving the river, moving along the rocks — moving toward me!

Get the light!

I grabbed my flashlight, a sixty-five-thousand candlepower waterproof lantern I had purchased the previous morning in Inverness. Clicking on the beacon, I slipped on my hiking boots and peered outside the tent.

The boulders? Nothing.

The tent grounds? Nothing.

Had I dreamed it? The hairs standing along the back of my neck assured me no.

"Ahhh… shiiiiiit!"

I hurled backwards into the tent in searing pain, the light flailing from my grip, my body sent writhing in spasms, an immense beast upon me, its stiletto-sharp teeth tearing into my left boot and ankle as if I'd stepped into a bear trap!

I thrashed about on my back in the darkness, kicking the unseen, gnashing brute with my free leg, while my right hand strained to reach my light.

Grabbing it, I turned the beacon upon the source of pain.

The beast released me and froze, its round, opaque eyes turning luminescent silver in the light, its chocolate brown head poised to strike again, its mouth, filled with bared fangs, dripping with my blood.

My brain churned data, even as my body remained paralyzed in fear.

Anguilla eel.

Seven footer.

Hundred and fifty pounds.

A high-pitched growl emanated from its open mouth, caused by its gurgling bloody spittle. It was a Mexican standoff, the animal held at bay, mesmerized by my light, me by its jaws and their proximity to my more vital organs.

And then I heard something else… something bigger, and it was approaching quickly through the woods.

The eel heard it, too, its growls intensifying as it grew more agitated.

The second beast was right outside the tent, circling!

I blinked back sweat, coiling my injured body to move, when the canvass was suddenly lifted away as if caught in a tornado's updraft, my light glinting off a gold-plated sword as the ancient weapon lashed across the flashlight's beam, its deadly blade lopping off the head of the startled eel.

"Jesus Christ!"

I was up on my haunches, my entire leg throbbing in pain, my free hand shielding my eyes from the three lights that cloaked the identities of my rescuers.

"He's been bitten."

"Aye, looks bad. He'll need medical attention."

Their voices muffled by hoods.

"Can ye walk, lad?"

I stood, trying my weight on my injured ankle. "Ahh. It's too sore, it might be broken."

"You two take him, I'll grab the Anguilla."

The beams lowered, revealing the three Templar Knights, all cloaked in black tunics from hood to boots. Two of the men, one on each side, shouldered my weight while the third collected the gushing remains of the Anguilla eel, stuffing it into a heavy burlap sack.

We hurried through darkness along an unseen path, the Knights' flashlights continuously searching the brush.

"The eel… why did it attack me?"

No reply.

"How did you know I was out here?"

No reply.

I saw lights up ahead. We were approaching a village.

"Why are the Black Knights guarding Loch Ness? What's their mission?"

The three Templars stopped dead in their tracks.

The leader turned and approached, raising his bloodied sword to my face. "Ye think ye ken somethin', Dr. Wallace?"

"I… I know there's something affecting the wildlife inhabiting the Glen. I also know the Templar care deeply about the land. But what you're doing… patrolling the forests… it's not going to change anything."

"Whit's done is done. We'll dae whit we must."

"It may not be too late. Maybe I can help."

"How?"

"Leave the remains of the eel with me. I'll take it to a lab, I'll do an autopsy myself. Whatever caused that eel to attack might be affecting the monster in the same way."

"No."

"Let him try," urged the Knight on my left.

"I said no. If word got oot—"

"I'll tell no one, I promise."

"I dinnae trust him," spat the Knight on my right. "Remember, he's Angus's kin."

"Aye. Enough said."

We continued on.

"Forget my father," I called out. "Do you think I trust him? Don't you remember what happened to me when I was nine? Believe me, I'm nothing like him."

The leader slowed, coming to the edge of the woods, but I could tell he was listening.

"One bad egg shouldn't destroy an entire clan. I swear, on the soul of my kin, Sir William Wallace, that I won't speak of what I find. Ever!"

We left the woods and hurried down a cobbled path, eventually coming to the Glenmoriston Arms Hotel.

My escorts left me on the porch stoop. One of them banged on the front door, then they disappeared into the night.

A yellow porch light flicked on. The front door creaked open, revealing an elderly man wearing a bathrobe. "We're filled beyond capacity, go away."

"Wait, I'm injured. Could you phone a doctor?"

The old man stepped out onto the porch and inspected my bleeding foot. "Whit happened tae ye?"

"A wild dog… it came out of nowhere."

"Hmm. There's a doctor stayin' wi' us. Wait here, an' dinnae bleed a' ower my porch."

He went back inside, leaving the outside light on.

That's when I noticed the burlap sack.