Dinosaur Lake Read online

  ***

  Henry stared out the window, lost in thought. Dressed in a heavy burgundy sweater and faded jeans, a cup of cold coffee poised, forgotten, in his hands, he waited. The rain had abated to a light drizzle, and he was restless.

  He longed to see if those strange tracks Justin discovered were still there. Yeah, sure, his good sense told him. They’re long gone, washed away from a night of storms.

  The imprints had been scored deep, though; perhaps he could get something on film.

  Henry put his cup down on the table and got his coat.

  He was pulling out of the driveway as the paleontologist came slogging across the muddy yard towards the front door. Henry would have missed seeing him, except for the kid’s brightly colored coat fluttering in the wind. He’d gotten smart and was wearing heavier clothes.

  Henry zipped back into the driveway and turned the engine off.

  Justin sauntered up, a stack of books cradled in his arms, and stood waiting while Henry rolled down the jeep’s window. The scientist’s expression held restrained excitement.

  “What’s up?” The wet air hit Henry in the face.

  “They said at park headquarters it was your day off, and directed me here. I thought I’d come by and save you a trip down to the lake, Chief Ranger.”

  “I told you to call me Henry.”

  “Okay, Henry. The tracks aren’t there any longer. Well, they probably aren’t. It rained so much the level of the lake rose and covered them. I have no idea now where they are or if they’re visible because they’re most likely under water.”

  “Crater Lake has no inlets or outlets. The only way the level in the lake changes is when it rains, or the water evaporates, so I’m not surprised the tracks are covered.”

  “We’d have to go under in wet suits with air tanks,” Justin grumbled. “I detest the water. And I’m no skin-diver, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m trained as a diver,” Henry confessed, “but I don’t think I’d have any luck finding those tracks underwater. The lake’s water is cloudy. So, thanks, you saved me a trip, I suppose. A wet and muddy one at that.”

  “That’s where you were headed, huh?”

  “Yes, that’s where I was headed.”

  “I come bearing information, however, that might shed light on what those prints could have been.” The scientist lifted his arms up so Henry could see the stack of books. “Last night after our adventure I called a colleague of mine at John Day’s and had him Federal Express some of my research books overnight. There’s something quite interesting in a few of them I wanted you to see.”

  “Good, come on in and you can show me,” Henry said, climbing out of the jeep and heading for the front door. “I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee, since I have nothing else much to do now.” But he was glad to see Justin and his smile showed it. Now he could talk about the fossils.

  Henry unlocked the door, Justin trailing behind like a big puppy. Henry had the feeling he’d been adopted or something. Didn’t the kid have a family?

  “I brought lunch if you haven’t had it yet,” Justin spoke cheerfully.

  “No, I haven’t. That was mighty kind of you.”

  The scientist hesitated as if he wasn’t used to being thanked or wasn’t used to doing acts of kindness, his long hair uncombed and wild around his head.

  “You like cheeseburgers and fries?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Some don’t. Though I don’t know any.” Justin produced a sheepish grin. Again, Henry thought how young the paleontologist seemed. Or maybe Henry was just getting old.

  “The food’s from your lodge’s kitchen. One of their picnic lunches.”

  “I know. I can tell by the box. The visitors buy them up like crazy so they can eat out in the woods with the trees and the wild animals. They like that.”

  Inside the house, Henry led his guest into the kitchen. Flicking on the overhead light, he motioned Justin to the table. He started a pot of coffee, pulled out two mugs, sugar and cream, and carried them to the table as the java perked.

  Justin placed the stack of books and the box lunches on the table and slouched into a chair. “Last night after you left I remembered what had been bugging me about those tracks.” He had his lunch open and was devouring it as if he hadn’t eaten in days, talking between bites.

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen the tracks or something similar to them before in a book.” His glasses slid down his nose and he used a greasy finger to shove them upward in an unconscious gesture. He put the cheeseburger down and picked up a book with a strip of torn paper marking a place, and opened it.

  “I’ve studied so many dinosaurs and their habits. My favorites have always been the prehistoric sea and water creatures. I’m fascinated by the myth of Scotland’s Loch Ness monster. I’ve read everything published about Nessie and the sightings. I’ve even spent time on the Loch searching for it. Unfortunately, I never got a glimpse. But it’s made me an expert on the water breeds.”

  That’s it. He thinks he’s got a Loch Ness monster here, Henry ruminated. Good thing I didn’t tell him what I thought I saw in the water last night. He’d be camped out on the lake waiting for it right now.

  “Here.” Justin held the book out to him.

  Henry looked at the open pages. There were artist’s drawings of dinosaurs from different angles and close-ups of their limbs and feet. He was surprised to feel the same thrill of pleasure he’d experienced as a kid when he’d look at a drawing of a dinosaur. One footprint caught his eye immediately. It did look somewhat like the tracks they’d seen last night. Somewhat. Not exactly.

  As if reading Henry’s mind, Justin revealed, “I got a better look at them yesterday than you. That’s it, kind of, except the ones I found were a little different and much bigger. They had an extra webbed claw. From the depth of the imprints I’d guess that the beast that made them was quite large and heavy.”

  Nothosaur, the copy blurb under the footprint illustrations and beside the first picture described, was a marine reptile that flourished in the Triassic times. It could grow to over twenty feet in length and had a back fin and webbed feet. Water dweller. Triassic period.

  On the facing page, Justin had marked another illustration. Allosaurus. Probably had a large skull and might have been equipped with dozens of large, sharp teeth. It averaged 28 feet in length, though fragmentary remains suggest it could have reached over 39 feet. Relative to the large and powerful hind limbs, its three-fingered forelimbs were small, and the body was balanced by a long, heavy tail. It is classified as an allosaurid, a type of carnosaurian theropod dinosaur. Land dweller. Jurassic period.

  Henry examined both of the creature’s drawings. The Allosaurus had a long snake-like neck and huge gaping jaws full of razor-sharp teeth. Big head for such a slender neck. Fat slick reptilian body with stubby short legs also ended in webbed, almost clawed, feet.

  “My fellow paleontologists now believe that Nothosaurs were warm-blooded mammals, and not actually dinosaurs. A powerful swimmer who preferred cooler water, it was probably a ferocious predator that often went after other marine animals, especially short and long-necked Plesiosaurs, if it was hungry enough. It was one formidable, mean creature.”

  “Triassic was even earlier than the Jurassic period, right?”

  “It was.” Justin inclined his head. “But, none of that matters. I don’t believe the tracks we discovered actually belonged to either of those species in this book. Not totally anyway. They’re something like them, but not. Whatever made those prints is a mutant, big time, a more highly developed strain of their ancestors, something like a Nothosaur/Allosaurus combination, because it likes the water and the land, but not really either. A cross breed. Or something else entirely–previously undiscovered and unknown–that lives in water but can also move around on the land. Maybe bigger than a Giganotosaurus, believed to be the biggest dinosaur that ever walked the earth. This could be a new kind of dinosaur. A mind-blow
ing discovery.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “All theory, of course. Every paleontologist will admit, as much as we know about dinosaurs, there’s still so much we don’t know.”

  Out of the mouth of an expert, Henry thought, closing the book. “Well, its original ancestor, if it was its ancestor, sure was ugly. I give it that much.” As ugly as the creature that had made those tracks? A shiver tingled Henry’s skin. He was being silly. Those dinosaur prints hadn’t been real. There weren’t any live mutant dinosaurs or undiscovered new breed dinosaurs in the lake or anywhere in the real world. Nonsense. It was some kind of joke. That’s what it’d been. A big fat joke. There were a bunch of kids laughing their asses off somewhere over it. They’d undoubtedly watched poor Justin going nuts by the water yesterday and had had a good old time.

  “Ah, there you’d be wrong. I think it was a beautiful beast.” Justin’s eyes gleamed with his obsession.

  Henry glanced at the boy and laughed. “You would believe that, wouldn’t you? But I bet you wouldn’t feel that way if you came face to face with a live one out in the woods? And it happened to be hungry?”

  “Probably not.” Justin’s face broke into a grin. “Unless I had a giant tranquilizer gun with me or I was invisible.”

  This time both of them laughed.

  “So you think some distant descendant of a cross between a Nothosaur and an Allosaurus, or a totally new breed of dinosaur, made those tracks, huh?” Henry asked, as he put sugar in his coffee and gulped it down.

  Justin must have caught the disbelief in his voice because he closed his empty box lunch, wiped his fingers on a paper towel, and sighed aloud. His glasses came off, and his fingers rubbed at the bridge of his nose around his eyes.

  “You’re right, Chief Ranger, this is crazy. As authentic as those prints looked to me yesterday, the idea there’s a genuine dinosaur swimming around in Crater Lake is too bizarre to continue going on about. It’s insane, isn’t it?” He laughed again, but it was flat and tinged with disappointment.

  “Yes, it’s insane.” Henry poured fresh cups of coffee and carried them to the table. Empathy in his eyes. Yet what a discovery of a lifetime a real breathing dinosaur would be for a paleontologist. Poor Justin.

  “I guess in some ways we never grow up,” Henry said. “Even at my age. For a couple of startling moments yesterday when I first spied those tracks, I wanted to believe a real dinosaur could be walking the earth again. Preposterous as the idea is, I wanted it to be true.”

  “Me, too. It’d be fantastic to discover one. Or a new breed. I’d go in the history books for sure.” Justin’s gaze was dreamy.

  “Well, anyway, it’s been an adventure. You’ve been good company. Interesting to talk with. And we can’t forget those fossils, now can we? They’re real.”

  “Yes, they are that.”

  Finishing his lunch, Henry opened another book and browsed through it. More information paraded before his eyes.

  “Dinosaurs,” he read snatches aloud and tapped the book with his finger, “were dubbed the terrible lizards. Hmm. No doubt. Some of them, they say, were gargantuan in size, and probably as unfriendly as hell. Look at this monster. Palaeoscinus. Do you really think it looked like that? Weighed three tons? How do you guys know that?”

  The question spurred Justin into a lecture about the battery of scientific tests they performed on the ancient fossils, and all the other research techniques paleontologists used.

  Henry realized the scientist was brilliant on his subject. He really knew what he was talking about. An interesting human being. Impressive. He was beginning to respect the man as much as he liked him.

  As they lingered in the kitchen, drank coffee and talked, Henry learned more about the scientist himself. He was thirty-three, not much younger as Henry had thought. Out of college for years, he’d worked other places and had traveled to digs on different continents; as he’d said, he’d been working at John Day’s for two years. He wasn’t married, or engaged, or involved with anyone at the moment. Had lofty goals to be a director at John Day’s and to eventually lead the most prestigious paleontological expeditions around the world. He knew what he wanted. But underneath, Henry sensed a basic loneliness, underlying everything the young man said or did. It was an invisible shadow, but there.

  Henry began to look at Justin differently. He was an intelligent man who lacked the knack of making close friends. He’d known men like that, mostly cops.

  God, he contemplated more than once, if only his daughter had fallen in love with an ambitious man like Justin instead of that jerk Chad.

  They were still gabbing when Ann got home from work. Henry introduced Justin and was pleased when his wife seemed to take an instant shine to the scientist. Before Henry knew it, she’d invited him to supper. Then he recalled that Laura and Phoebe were coming, too.

  What a conniving woman he’d married.