Shadows at Predator Reef (2 page)

I checked my watch and smiled. “It's almost time. Any minute now Predator Reef will come to life right before your eyes.”

“Is that going to be the turtle's home?” another child asked.

“It sure is,” I said, leaning down to the kids' level. “The aquarium rescued Captain Hook when she washed up on the beach and nursed her back to health. They normally would've had to release her back into the ocean, because green sea turtles are an endangered species, but the aquarium kept her because she would have had a hard time surviving in the wild with her injured flipper.”

The kids were mesmerized. One little boy in a Captain Hook T-shirt jumped up and down, asking his mom if he could have a giant turtle too. It was really cool how Captain Hook had turned into a Bayport celebrity before the exhibit had even opened.

Her biggest fan was probably Bradley Valledor, the aquarium board member whose architecture firm had built the new exhibit. Mr. V, as everyone at the aquarium called
him, fussed over Captain Hook like she was a spoiled grandkid.

“How was a small town like Bayport able to get such a big-name architect involved with the aquarium?” asked the dad of the boy in the Captain Hook shirt.

“Along with being a world-famous architect, Mr. V is a huge sea-life enthusiast. He jumped at the chance to build such an ambitious, groundbreaking exhibit,” I told the adults. “He was so passionate about the project that he even footed part of the bill.”

The father nodded, impressed. That was another great thing about Predator Reef—the parents were just as excited as the kids.

And now for the big moment when it would be revealed to the world.

“Are you ready to see Predator Reef ?!” I asked the tour group. The kids all cheered and the parents clapped.

They weren't the only ones. TV cameras were rolling as visitors packed into the aquarium by the hundreds, crowding the lobby level to catch their first look at the spectacular new exhibit.

Mr. V beamed with pride as he took the microphone in front of the curtain, looking sharp in a captain's blazer embroidered with the aquarium's logo. The crowd gave him a warm round of applause as he got ready to speak. Mr. V had only recently moved to Bayport, but he'd already become a very popular public figure. He was such a nice
guy and so enthusiastic about the aquarium that he was kind of like a cross between a grown-up kid and everyone's favorite uncle: You couldn't help but like him.

“Greetings, Bayport,” he said in a strong New England accent that made the word “Bayport” sound more like “Baypaat.”

New England wasn't really all that far from Bayport in terms of miles, but the strange non-rhotic accent with its drawn-out syllables and dropped
R
s (that's pretty much what non-rhotic means) was kind of funny and foreign-sounding to the ears of us Bayport High kids.

“As a child idolizing the great French sea explorer Jacques Cousteau, I developed a deep love of the ocean and all its many wonderful creatures,” he told the crowd. “I have been lucky in my career to get to build many different kinds of architectural projects all over the world, but none of them are closer to my heart than Bayport Aquarium's Predator Reef. It's been a lifelong dream to use my architectural talents in a way that allows me to share my passion for the sea with the rest of the world—and I couldn't be happier with the result. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.”

Applause turned to cheers as he cut the ribbon with an oversize pair of scissors. The big blue curtain swept aside, revealing Mr. V's fantastic seascape.

But something was wrong.

The crowd oohed and aahed at the swirl of colorful fish
and patrolling reef sharks, but I could tell something was off. From the nervous glances I saw Mr. V giving a couple of the staff members, I knew they sensed it too.

The animals seemed agitated, and the normally crystal clear water was stirred up and murky from all the activity. The blacktips were zipping back and forth instead of slowly cruising around the tank in their usual mellow glide. One of the larger zebra sharks was swimming in tight circles, whipping the surface with its long tail. And a lot of the smaller fish were clinging closely to the coral or hiding away in its many nooks and crannies.

There were BAD divers in the tank too, but that shouldn't have bothered the fish. The fish in Predator Reef were conditioned to pretty much ignore the divers when they weren't being fed, in which case they flocked to them like pigeons at the park. Even the predatory blacktip reef sharks were trained not to pay the divers any mind.

But it wasn't the animals we could see that had me worried. It was the one we couldn't.

The crowd could sense the staff's distress and started murmuring.

“Where's the turtle, Mommy?” one little girl asked.

Just then a dark shape began to swim up from the deepest part of the tank. Everyone peered down into the water expectantly.

“Is that Captain Hook?” another little kid asked, pointing at the figure.

It wasn't. It was one of the divers. Joe's dive instructor Aly swam to the surface and pulled off her mask. She looked frantic.

“She's gone!” she cried. “Captain Hook is gone!”

In her hand, Aly held a piece of broken coral smeared with what looked like blood.

P
REDATOR REEF WAS MISSING ITS
star attraction.

When Aly broke the surface holding the gory coral and told everyone that Captain Hook was gone, it sent the place into chaos. The crowd was horrified, the aquarium staff went into crisis mode, the news reporters started shouting questions, and some of the little kids started crying.

I was standing off to the side with some of my diving classmates when it happened. Frank turned around and shot me a look from his spot in the front row. I nodded. If Captain Hook really was missing—and I wasn't ready to concede that a five-hundred-pound giant turtle had just vanished without a trace—we were going to do everything
we could to help find her. I knew how important the aquarium was to Frank.

When I got to the front, Frank was huddled with Aly and some of the other aquarium staff. I peered over the glass rail into the tank and took in the exhibit while I waited for them to finish. The water was kind of hazy from all the sand kicked up by the fish and divers, but the exhibit was still breathtaking. All the different colors and shapes amid the movement of the animals were almost hypnotic. I could see why Frank got so into this stuff.

Some of the BAD divers were still swimming around the tank, searching for any sign of what had happened to Captain Hook. How do you lose a giant sea turtle? I shook my head. I couldn't make sense of it.

I scoped out the rest of the lobby. Off to the side of the reef tank there was some kind of hydraulic lift, a robotic-looking piece of equipment with a small platform for raising and lowering heavy objects. What really grabbed my attention, though, was what was circling Predator Reef.

The entire lobby was surrounded by Shark Row, the huge doughnut-shaped tank where they kept the really big sharks. I didn't know what kind of sharks they were, but some of them were monstrous, as long as ten feet or even more, easily big enough to gobble up the little three-foot blacktip reef sharks in Predator Reef whole. The fact that they were slowly circling with grinning jaws full of jagged teeth made the whole scene extra sinister. It was enough to give you chills.

Frank shook my attention from the sharks as he and Aly briefed me on what they knew.

“Nobody has a clue what happened or when she might have disappeared,” Frank said.

“No one saw her when the trainers fed the sharks this morning, but that's not so unusual,” Aly explained. “Captain Hook is a late sleeper and will sometimes stay in her favorite nook until it's her turn for breakfast.”

“So nobody was alarmed when they didn't see her,” Frank said, picking up where Aly left off. “They had planned to feed her right after they cut the ribbon, so everybody could get a look.”

“That's when we realized she was gone,” Aly said. She paused before adding, “The nook is where I found the broken piece of coral.”

“The red stuff on it . . . is it blood?” I asked after a second, not sure I really wanted to know the answer.

Aly hesitated. “That's what it looked like.”

“They won't know for sure until they test it,” Frank said. “We think someone took her, Joe. Five-hundred-pound turtles don't just disappear.”

“The security cameras catch anything?” I asked.

“They're checking, but you don't just pick up a giant sea turtle, put it in your pocket, and walk out of the aquarium without anyone noticing,” Frank said.

“Just getting her safely in and out of the exhibit requires a small hydraulic lift.” Aly pointed to the piece of equipment
I'd seen off to the side of the exhibit just as her phone buzzed with a text.

“They're fast-forwarding through the security footage, but nothing so far,” she reported. “It doesn't look like anyone who wasn't supposed to came or went through any of the aquarium exits after hours.”

Her phone buzzed with another text.

“Gotta go,” she said. “Emergency meeting.”

Aly ran off to the side of the exhibit where Carter and the other BAD divers had assembled. When Carter saw she'd been talking to me, he tried to stare me down again. I just ignored him. Now wasn't the time to sweat some petty beef.

“What about underwater cameras?” I asked Frank. “They were going to launch a Turtle Cam, right?” The Turtle Cam, a twenty-four-hour webcam broadcast on the aquarium's website, had been a big part of the Predator Reef marketing push.

“They're checking that, too, but the exhibit is supposed to simulate the natural light cycle of a real tropical reef environment, so the lights don't come on until later in the morning. Anything that happened before that would just show up as dark shadows.”

“But even if something did show up on the underwater cameras, the thieves still would have had to get her out of the tank without being seen by the aquarium's security cameras,” I added, baffled by the lack of clues. “They must have
left some kind of trail, right? It's not like she spontaneously combusted . . . and I know she wasn't abducted by aliens.”

This was starting to look like one very big magic trick. Maybe we'd have better luck if we tried to figure out who the magician might be instead of how he or she did it.

“So who would have reason to take her?” I asked Frank.

“None of your business, that's who.”

Unfortunately, it wasn't Frank who answered. It was Chief Olaf, Bayport's top cop. The chief tends to frown on our amateur detective work, even if we do often get better results than the professionals. I think it bugs him that a couple of unlicensed teenage investigators have just as impressive a crime-stopping track record as he does.

“This is a police matter, boys. I don't want you meddling,” he said, fixing us with his patented stern glare. The chief likes to play the bad cop with us, but he's actually a pretty nice guy. For all the times he's threatened to have us arrested, he's never actually hauled us in. At least not yet.

“Besides, I think we've got our prime suspects right here,” Chief Olaf pointed to the black-tipped shark fins slicing through the surface of Predator Reef. “I've watched enough
Shark Week
on TV to know a pack of aquatic killers when I see one.”

“I don't think so, Chief,” Frank said. “The sharks in the exhibit are too small to attack a large sea turtle like Captain Hook.”

Judging from the annoyed look on his face, I don't think
the chief appreciated the marine biology lesson.

“Humph,” the chief grunted, motioning toward the sharks. “If all two dozen of those things ganged up on it, that turtle wouldn't stand a chance.”

“The blacktips may be social pack hunters, but they still wouldn't bother with prey that big. Even if they did, they wouldn't be able to eat Captain Hook's shell, so there would be evidence left behind.” Frank went on schooling the chief despite the daggers he was shooting Frank's way. I swear, for someone so smart, my brother can be pretty dense sometimes. “You could maybe make the case that one of the big guys in Shark Row did it, but they're kept in a separate tank, and even the ten-foot sand tiger sharks wouldn't normally try to eat a five-hundred-pound turtle. Biologists think the great white that took a chunk out of Captain Hook's fin was at least a twenty-footer.”

“Frank, why don't you worry about your job and let me do mine?” snapped the chief.

“Young Mr. Hardy is right, Chief,” a voice said from behind us. Bradley Valledor walked up and put his hand on Frank's shoulder. “Our blacktips are too small and too well trained to have attacked Captain Hook.”

Chief Olaf sighed. “You sure about that, Mr. Valledor? It would be the most obvious explanation, and in my experience the most obvious suspect is usually the culprit.”

“Not this time, I'm afraid. It wasn't sharks that got Captain Hook. Someone stole her.”

I could tell the chief didn't like that. If Mr. V was right, his job had just gotten a lot harder.

“Okay then, tell me what you think happened,” he said to Mr. V. Chief Olaf turned to us. “If you boys would excuse us, I have official police business I need to discuss with Mr. Valledor.”

“Actually, I'd prefer it if Frank and his brother stayed,” Mr. V said.

“I'm sorry, come again?” Chief Olaf said, putting his hand to his ear like he'd misheard.

“Chief, you and your detectives will have full access to the aquarium and our staff—”

“Thank you, Mr. Valledor, but I don't see what that—” the chief began.

“And so will the Hardys.”

“Now wait a second. I can't have a couple of kids running around interfering with our investigation.”