The scale of the docks was hard to ignore, and Jordan found herself drawn to the hundreds of boats. Copper Lake may have been a small town, but one couldn’t tell from the size of the marina. Jordan counted ten main docks, each one floating and connected to a large section of dock that ran for hundreds of feet. The docks had boat slips on each side and were of similar length. Jordan counted twenty slips on one side of a dock. This meant the marina had about four hundred slips available. It looked like a giant floating parking lot with boats arranged in orderly, discrete spaces.
Jordan walked past the end of the docks. She could see that the shore curved to her right, generally toward Copper Lake Road. She wondered what was out of sight. Jordan walked around the curve and saw the marina boat launch, a large, paved slope that ran into the lake. It had more than enough space to park two boat trailers side by side.
Looking over and beyond the boat ramp, Jordan could see another large lot and a building that looked like a warehouse. It must have been reachable from the parking lot. The lot was clearly for boats, as there were at least a couple dozen parked there and covered in shrink-wrap.
The warehouse-looking building was likely used for storing boats. Jordan figured that inside storage was more expensive than the outdoor shrink-wrapped option. Jordan didn’t know what it cost to rent a slip or to store a boat for the winter, but these two revenue streams had to be large, especially considering the size of the marina and its facilities.
In the distance, well beyond the boat warehouse, were trees. They extended as far as Jordan could see. In fact, apart from a few homes close to the marina, most of the land within Jordan’s view was treed. That included some of the shore that Jordan could see, implying that the land was largely unoccupied. She wondered who owned the land and why it wasn’t more developed. It certainly enhanced the tranquility of the area not having it crammed with roads and houses. But it should have been prime real estate.
Jordan found her way to a bench facing the docks and the lakes. It was almost five p.m., so she expected to talk to Derek soon. A few minutes after she sat down, she saw a boat heading into the first slip on a dock just to her left. The boat was a beautiful deep blue with red accents. It had a wake tower, a hardtop sunshade, and all the attachments for water sports one would expect, including speakers attached to the wake tower. As the boat turned sideways, positioning to pull into the slip, Jordan noticed that the make of the boat was Cobalt. The model, R7, was printed in big letters on the boat’s stern. The engine sounded like one from a sports car.
The driver glided the boat in expertly and turned off the engine. Two teenagers who worked for the marina came down to tie off the boat. As the driver came up the ramp from the dock, Jordan saw that he had on a marina golf shirt like the one the gatekeeper wore, but in a different color. Jordan wondered if this might be Derek. She stood up, loosely facing the direction he was coming from. He noticed Jordan, flashed a smile, and came over.
“You must be Jordan,” he said.
“That’s right. And you must be Derek. How did you know it was me?”
“Technology,” he said, still smiling. “Kasey texted me that you were here and that you were hanging out by the docks. When I saw you stand up, I figured it was you. Plus, I’ve never seen you before, so that tipped me off.”
“Smart. I know you just got off work, but I was hoping you could tell me about what you found and what happened?”
“I’ll do better than that. I can take you to where I found them.”
“That’s definitely better. When do you want to go?”
“How about in five minutes? Just let me hit the restroom.”
The Cobalt R7 flew across the lake, easily cutting through the water and air. The amount of boat traffic on the lake was light, and the water was relatively calm, amplifying the sense of speed. According to Derek, the boat had a 450-horsepower engine and could easily do fifty miles per hour. The ride was remarkably smooth, the boat seeming to skim across the lake’s surface, easily powering through the wake of other boats.
Jordan hadn’t been on a speedboat since she was a kid, when her family had rented one while on a vacation. Her memory of the event was vague, but she remembered sitting in the boat’s bow with her brother and sister while her dad drove. The pleasant childhood memory only made her current family situation seem even worse. A father she almost completely ignored and a brother she had little connection with. Fortunately, she and her sister were still close. She put the memory aside. Worrying about family issues would just cloud her thinking.
Jordan stood close to Derek so she could talk to him over the noise of the engine and the air whipping by.
“Are we close to where you found the dead fish?”
“Not quite. The location is about three miles from the marina, near the north end of the lake.”
Jordan watched as Derek eased the throttle back, dropping the rpm from over five thousand to about twenty-seven hundred, producing a speed more comfortable for talking.
“Cool. I can enjoy the ride.”
“That’s what I’d recommend. By the way, thanks for coming up here. I really didn’t think you would.”
“I didn’t have much else to work on. And spending a couple of days at a lake didn’t seem so bad.”
“You know, I read all about that GenPhage stuff. That was one hell of a story.”
Jordan had lots of practice brushing off her apparent journalistic greatness. “There was a lot of luck involved. That story was nothing like what I usually work on.”
“I bet looking into dead fish isn’t so exciting. What made you come?”
“It was the pictures of the fish. Looking at them, I couldn’t help but think they were sick. A few sick fish is probably nothing. But a few hundred, at the same time, that felt unnatural. And if it’s unnatural, then someone probably did something wrong.”
“You’re so right about the fish. Something was off. I grew up on this lake and have been driving a boat on it since I was twelve. I know every inch of shoreline and have never seen anything like it. Come to think of it, I’ve only ever seen a few dead fish over the years. So, yeah, this was absolutely unnatural.”
“Before getting into what you did after you saw the dead fish, what do you think killed the fish?”
Derek’s face darkened for just a moment, maybe out of concern for the lake. “I have no idea. My first thought was that there must have been some kind of poison in the lake. At least in that area of the lake. But I’ve gone out there a few times a day since it happened and didn’t see any more fish.”
“What about other parts of the lake?”
“Nothing that looks unusual.”
“OK, so it’s localized. Do you think a gas spill could have killed the fish?”
“It would have to have been one hell of a spill. There’s always a bit of gas getting into the lake, not to mention engine exhaust. But there’s no boat on the lake big enough to carry the amount of fuel it would take to kill that many fish. Think about how fast the gas dissipates. Plus, fish aren’t as dumb as we think. They’ll get away from something toxic if they can. I don’t think it was a spill. Not unless someone ran a gasoline line into the lake.”
Jordan thought about what Derek said. It made sense. Those hundreds of fish that died would have been occupying a large volume of water. It would take a hell of a lot of gas to make that much water toxic.