Mysteries in Our National Parks: Deadly Waters: A Mystery in Everglades National Park

The snake flicked its tongue before it slowly wound its way down the tree to disappear into the dark tangle of mangrove roots. Coolly, the man started up the engine of his boat and headed it toward the dock, toward those kids.

“Whatever it takes,” he told himself again.

CHAPTER ONE

Upstream, two round alligator eyes blinked just above water. The gator was middle-size: about five feet from its tail tip to its blunt nose. As it skimmed forward, it left behind a rippled wake that barely disturbed the canal’s surface. While Jack Landon fumbled for his camera, his sister Ashley pointed, following the path of the dark shape in the water. The gator was closing in fast.

“Look, Bridger, he’s after that duck, or whatever it is,” Ashley murmured to the boy standing beside her. “Should I yell to warn it?”

“Gator’s got to eat, too,” was all Bridger answered. A tall, lean, tow-headed 14-year-old wearing a Stetson hat, jeans, and cowboy boots, Bridger Conley had already proved himself to be a boy of few words. And strong opinions.

The three of them—Jack, Ashley, and Bridger—stood beside a canal in the Florida Everglades, watching the large bird that kept swimming underwater, with its whole body submerged. Every minute or so the bird’s small head and long, skinny neck would snake upward, breaking through the sun’s reflection on the water. Then back down it would go, gliding beneath the surface like a seal. It didn’t seem to notice the danger it was in.

“Hold it…hold it,” Jack muttered, twisting his lens to focus. Catching both animals in one picture would make a magnificent shot. Jack knew the bird didn’t have much of a chance, not with those quick jaws and razor-sharp teeth coming nearer and nearer as the alligator quietly shortened the distance between them.

“I don’t think I want to watch this…” Ashley began, her hands clutching the wooden railing.

Seeming unconcerned, the bird ducked its head beneath the water and came up with a small fish speared on its beak. Immediately the bird’s rope-thin neck snapped like a whip. Momentum flipped the fish into the air before it fell back into the open beak. As the bird swallowed its catch, the alligator slid even closer, advancing through the grass-edged water, only inches from its prey. Closer, and….

With a splash, the alligator struck—too late! One split second before the big jaws snapped closed, the bird had exploded skyward, leaving the gator with nothing but a mouthful of air. If an alligator could look disappointed, this one did.

“Yes! My duck made it! It got away!” Ashley pumped her fist into the air as she gave a little half-bounce. “Did you see that, Jack?”

“Yes, I saw it,” he answered. “Only it isn’t a duck, it’s an anhinga.”

“How’d you know that?” Bridger asked.

“Read about it in the visitor center. Anhingas swim submerged. Look at it now, on top of that tree—it’s drying its feathers.” Silhouetted against the sky, the bird seemed to be posing for Jack’s camera, stretching out its wings to warm itself in the sun.

“Well, whatever it’s called, I’m glad the gator didn’t get it,” Ashley said. “I know you said everything in the food chain’s got to eat, Bridger, but I hate seeing an animal get killed. I don’t even like to see fish die, but I guess that kind of thing doesn’t bother you, since you said you like to go fishing.”

“Doesn’t bother me at all,” Bridger answered.

He was the latest in a series of foster children who’d lived short-term with the Landon family: Jack, Ashley, and their parents, Steven and Olivia. Bridger was unlike any of the other foster children the Landons had sheltered. He seemed friendly; he just didn’t talk much. For Ashley, who talked all the time, this made Bridger a real challenge.

“Still, don’t you feel sorry for fish when they flop all over, trying to get back in the water?” Ashley persisted.

“Nope. They’re just fish,” Bridger said evenly. “People are people, critters are critters.”

Jack slapped a mosquito off his arm. “Better not let Mom hear you say that. She’s brought us all the way to Florida to try and save the manatees, which I guess to you are just ‘critters.’”

When Bridger shrugged, Jack felt prickles of irritation. Everyone in his family, from his father to ten-year-old Ashley, loved animals, but Bridger seemed almost indifferent. How could anybody not care about the manatees? “You know, Bridger, all the park rangers are freaking out over the manatees getting sick. This is serious. They’re an endangered species.”

“Yeah, Mom was up all night, reading through stuff and trying to figure out what could be wrong,” Ashley added. “She says none of the other marine life in the Everglades is getting sick, but some of the manatees have started to die. Not all of them, though. Mom told me it’s the most mysterious case she’s ever been called on.”

Jack took a sip of bottled water and scanned the sky for another possible photo shot. Normally he wouldn’t try to keep a conversation going with a guy like Bridger, but since his dad encouraged him to reach out to the foster kids, Jack searched his mind for something else to say. That was one of the harder things about foster kids: Jack couldn’t just walk away from them without seeming rude. It was like they were guests in the Landon house. “Well, anyway, you might hook something major tomorrow, Bridger, when we go fishing. Dad says Frankie’s the best guide around here. And the Everglades has freshwater fish and saltwater fish. Lots of big ones.”

When Bridger nodded in reply, Jack recapped the bottle, then leaned over the wooden railing to get a better look at the water below.

A hundred feet away, downstream, stood the round building that housed the Shark Valley ranger office, where Jack’s mother and father were gathering as much information as they could about the temperature, rain cycles, and wildlife of the area. Here in Shark Valley, and in all the rest of Everglades National Park, lived birds and animals and marine life that Jack had never seen before. Strange, exotic breeds that, if photographed just right, could maybe make a picture good enough to get published in a magazine. Jack had saved his money for almost a year to buy a telephoto lens he’d dreamed of owning ever since he could remember, a lens powerful enough to bring distant objects into crystal-clear view.

“Bridger, did you know that Frankie’s taking us kids all the way toward the Gulf of Mexico tomorrow?” Ashley chattered. “Mom’s here to concentrate on the manatees, so Frankie’s going to keep us busy. Except I’ve decided I’m not going to fish, I’m just going to sit in the end of Frankie’s boat and watch for manatees.”

Jack was startled by a loud smack as Bridger smashed a mosquito on his neck. “Buggy here,” he said. He pushed his Stetson back on his head, then wiped the sweat from his pale eyebrows. All the Landons were in T-shirts, shorts, and sandals, but Bridger had insisted on wearing his usual Western clothes, in spite of the Florida heat and humidity. Squinting against the bright sun, he asked Jack, “So, are you gonna stick your pole in the water? Or are you afraid of hurting some fish’s feelings, like your sister is? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just…girls.” He smiled, shaking his head.

“Hey—what do you mean—‘just girls?”” Ashley stuttered, her cheeks suddenly bright.

Bridger shrugged. “No offense. Most females feel like you, worrying about animals same as if they were human. Guys are different. We’re natural-born hunters. Right, Jack?”

“Don’t ask me. I fish, but I don’t hunt. The only thing I shoot is pictures.” Snapping the lens cover back onto his camera, Jack tried to give his sister a look that would tell her not to let Bridger’s comments get under her skin. They already knew that Bridger had a different way of looking at things.

The first night Bridger had come into the Landons’ home he’d told Steven how great it was that he was a wildlife veterinarian.

“No, it’s not me, Bridger,” Steven had corrected him. “My wife, Olivia, is the veterinarian. I’m a photographer—well, when I’m not running the photo lab. My favorite job is to follow Olivia around, photographing the animals she’s working with.”

A look of confusion had spread across Bridger’s face. “You mean you work for your wife?” He’d said it as though it were the strangest thing he’d ever heard.

“Not really,” Olivia had answered. “Oh, I couldn’t do my job without Steven’s help, but he doesn’t work for me. See, Bridger, whenever an animal or certain species is in trouble, the National Park Service calls on me to investigate. Steven comes along to take photographs. Lots of times I miss things that I discover later when I examine Steven’s photos.”

Olivia seemed ready to say more about married people helping each other, but she caught herself. Before Bridger came to their home, a social worker had told the Landons about his background—that his parents were divorced and his mother lived far away in Australia, that she’d left him when Bridger was only five years old. “Tell us about your dad,” Olivia had said instead.

“My dad’s a bull rider. You’ve heard of him, right?” Bridger had looked from Olivia to Steven expectantly. “Skip Conley—the Rodeo King?”

Olivia shook her head no, explaining that even though the Landons lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the heart of cowboy country, she’d never really seen a rodeo. “If I had, I’m sure I’d have heard of your father,” she apologized.

“He’s a star. Twelve-time finalist, eight-time bull-riding champ. Soon as he’s out of the hospital, me and him’ll be back on the rodeo circuit.”

“We heard your dad got gored by a bull, but he’ll be OK,” Steven said, his voice assuring.

Olivia nodded. “And we’re glad to have you stay here with us, Bridger, until your dad gets well.”

“Thanks, ma’am. Dad got slammed pretty bad on his last ride in Jackson Hole. Rest of the rodeo’s moved on, but Dad’s gonna be in that rehab place for a while longer. After he gets out, we’ll go back to the bulls and broncs on the circuit.” He could understand it, he’d told Olivia, that she didn’t know about his dad, her being a woman and all.

That’s when Jack had figured out that Bridger viewed the world differently, with girls on one side, guys on the other. And now, after being in Florida for less than a day, he’d announced to Jack that guys were hunters and girls weren’t, as if everything and everyone fit neatly into life’s spaces.

“Look!” Ashley exclaimed. “The alligator’s coming back again.”

The gator’s snout had broken through the upside-down tree reflections, making the branches ripple on the water’s surface. Once again the big jaws opened and snapped, and this time the gator caught his dinner—a red-bellied turtle.

“I can’t watch!” Ashley cried as the powerful jaws crunched right through the turtle’s shell. “It’s horrible!”

“Gator’s got to eat,” Bridger said again. “Right, Jack?”

Jack was so intent on capturing the scene that he didn’t answer. He fired off shots as if his camera were a machine gun spitting bullets. The pictures wouldn’t be pretty, but they’d be powerful.

With a final crushing bite, the gator flung back its neck and gulped down its prey, then slowly lowered itself into the murky water.

“Right, Jack?” Bridger asked again.