Dinosaur Lake Read online

  ***

  The paleontologist was waiting at a corner table next to the blazing fireplace, hovering over a cup of coffee with a drained look on his face. Something was wrong.

  “My wife, Ann, won’t be joining us. She’s been detained at work,” Henry remarked as he sat down.

  “Sorry to hear that. I wanted to meet her.”

  “Oh, you will soon enough, I imagine. She’s as excited over the fossils as I am.” A subtle hand gesture and Molly, the evening waitress, went off to fetch Henry a cup of coffee. All the waitresses knew him well enough to keep the coffee coming.

  “Looks like you’ve had quite a day, young man.”

  “You might say that. I’ve been prowling around since dawn.” The kid lifted bloodshot eyes to meet his. “I’ve been all over the land around the caldera and am so exhausted I can barely stand up. It’s a lot of ground to cover. That lake’s bigger than it looks.”

  “Yes, it is. Take it from someone who’s been over every inch of it.” The coffee came and with it two menus. Henry dropped his eyes to the food list. Steak and mashed potatoes sounded good. Without raising his eyes, he asked, “Find anything interesting?”

  A pause. “I did.”

  Henry glanced up and caught the wary look on the scientist’s face.

  “I was doing some routine surveying along the lake and, out of curiosity, believing there’s a direct connection between the lava beneath the caldera and the earthquakes, I took some water temperatures.” He fell silent.

  Henry waited for him to continue as the waitress bustled over with his coffee and her order tablet.

  After they’d ordered (Henry the steak and Justin two cheeseburgers with onion rings) Justin said, “I read the data on your lake here. Did you know that the overall temperature of the water has gone up?”

  Henry blinked. “You don’t say?” So, George had been right about that.

  “I took a reading. A couple of them. The temperature of the water is over sixty degrees Fahrenheit. I think it’s rising steadily. And–”

  “And?”

  “I think there’s still major volcanic activity going on deep under the caldera, which would explain the temperature rise and other prevalent conditions. The cause could be moving rivers of freed molten lava under pressure. A potentially dangerous situation.”

  “Then there could be another earthquake?” Henry supplied, unhappily. “Worse than the last two?”

  “Eventually. That’s highly possible.”

  “Oh, boy.” Henry took a sip of his coffee, his eyes hooded, attempting to absorb the meaning behind it all. He didn’t need Justin to explain to him that if what the scientist maintained was true, it could affect the geological make-up of the park. It could even destroy everything.

  Their food came, steaming on the plates.

  “What else?” Something more was bothering Justin and Henry waited for the young man to tell him.

  Justin hunched his shoulders and leaned in closer so no one else could hear. “This has nothing to do with the lake’s rising temperature or the volcanic activity, but I also found some…tracks…in the mud down by the water.”

  “Tracks?” George’s worried face floated across Henry’s inner eyes.

  “Huge animal tracks.” Justin rubbed his eyes and shook his head. “The most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen, except for those bones you discovered yesterday. If I didn’t know better I’d swear–” he stopped talking when he caught the look in Henry’s eyes.

  “Go on, finish what you were going to say. I’m listening.” Henry started eating his dinner as if nothing was wrong, but pinpricks of unease had begun to needle him.

  He was aware the couple at the next table was having a fight of some kind. Distracting.

  Justin’s eyebrows lifted and a hesitant grin transformed his face. “If I say anymore you’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “I can’t decide what you are if you don’t tell me what you want to tell me first.”

  “All right.” Justin’s hands went up in a surrendering gesture. “Based on what expertise I have, I’d swear those tracks were made by some sort of,” he whispered the word, “dinosaur.”

  Henry practically choked on his steak. The idea was so ridiculous, he wanted to laugh. And here he’d thought the kid had no sense of humor. Boy was he wrong. “Some joke. You’re kidding, of course?”

  “No. Dead serious.”

  “A real one?”

  “Yes, a real breathing, walking one,” Justin hissed. “A live one.”

  Now with more than a hint of irritation, Henry mulled over the notion: what if Justin wasn’t what he’d presented himself to be, but was some kind of nut case? New York had Jaded Henry in that way. Anyone could say they were this or that but it didn’t mean they were. Some people were convincing liars. But the kid’s face was sincere; his eyes clear and bright. If he was a liar, he was damn good at it. And why would he be lying anyway?

  “It’s true. The tracks, whatever they are, seemed authentic. I don’t believe it myself. But I saw what I saw.” Justin lifted his cup of coffee with a shaky hand. They were nearly clean now, with just a hint of dirt beneath the nails. Exhausted, the guy looked even younger. About fifteen.

  “Did you take a picture of them with your cell phone?”

  “I would have if I had one. I dropped my last phone a week ago into some crevice I was climbing over. Lost three phones that way in the last year. I need to get to town and buy another.”

  “You’re hard on phones.”

  “I think I am.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Cell phones don’t work well in the park. Bad reception. Don’t work well in most places around here. But they still take photos.”

  “Oh.” Justin was watching him.

  Henry was a rational man, and he remembered that someone else had claimed to have seen something unusual in the lake. He nearly mentioned it to the scientist, but it was too preposterous to dwell on, much less repeat.

  He recalled George mentioning those strange tracks. Merely coincidences?

  “The tracks could be a hoax, Justin. Kids are always playing practical jokes around here. Like that Bigfoot scare up in Washington a couple of months ago. They had tracks, photos and everything. In the end, it turned out to be a prank. All of them do. For the attention and the tabloid money.”

  A negative nod. “No, I don’t think this is anything like that. I believe those tracks were made by something alive. Something real. Not any animal I know and not human, either.”

  “Where’d you find them?”

  “Down past Cleetwood Trail, before the steep walls begin again. The prints were going into the water. It’s easy to see how they could have gone unnoticed. The location is desolate. Hard to get to. I don’t know what made me hike that far off the beaten path.” He shook his head again, wonder and fear warring in his eyes. “Any paleontologist in his right mind would give twenty years of his life to see a real live dinosaur walking around–except me. As much as I adore studying the creatures, I believe there was a reason for their demise, their extinction. They’d be far too destructively anachronistic to coexist with humanity. What most people don’t realize is some dinosaur species were extremely intelligent. Rapacious in their behavior. I’d hate to come face to face with a live one and I’d hate to try to keep one in captivity. A good dinosaur is a dead dinosaur. They’re magnificent monsters, but they don’t belong in iron cages like circus freaks or running loose. Too unpredictable. Too volatile. Too big.”

  Henry wasn’t sure he agreed with the scientist. It’d be incredible to see a real, living, breathing dinosaur. Just once. A large tranquilizer gun would solve the problem easily.

  “Yeah, I remember what happened to King Kong,” Henry threw in for comedic relief, but Justin didn’t crack a smile.

  “Eat your food, Justin,” Henry ordered in a calm voice. The kid was a nervous wreck. “Then you can show me those prints. I’ve got to see them for myself. If we hurry we can make it down there bef
ore dark.”

  “Okay. It’ll be good to show them to someone else. Prove they’re actually there, that they weren’t a figment of my imagination. Maybe then I won’t feel like I’ve lost my sanity.”

  Justin gulped down his food.

  Henry wasn’t as hurried. He was convinced their journey down to the lake would turn out to be a wasted trip. Dinosaur tracks. Yeah, sure.