Mysteries in Our National Parks: Out of the Deep: A Mystery in Acadia National Park

It wasn’t about the way she looked, although that had been odd enough. Bindy’s tie-dyed T-shirt was wildly bright, with fluorescent swirls that splashed across her in neon constellations. Mousy brown hair had been pulled into a limp ponytail, and her too-tight jeans looked as though they’d fused onto her skin. Loud and boisterous, Bindy seemed to think she knew something about absolutely everything. When Ms. Lopez, the social worker, tried to speak, Bindy talked right over her, waving her arms as though she were on stage.

“Be patient with her,” Jack’s father, Steven, had told him later. “I know she can be a bit—overpowering—but she’s been through a lot.”

“’Cause her own parents don’t want her,” Ashley told Jack. “I heard Ms. Lopez tell Mom about it.”

“Please don’t say anything about that to Bindy!” Steven urged.

“Oh, I won’t. It’s just really sad. I don’t know what I’d do if you and Mom didn’t want me.”

Now, as Bindy settled into a chair next to Jack, he tried to imagine what it would be like to be 14 years old and dumped into a foster home, waiting to hear what the judge ruled about your life. How would it be to have your family reject you? How would it be to have your whole future decided by someone you’d never even met before? No matter how annoying she was, Jack knew he’d have to give Bindy some space. It was the least he could do.

“Ashley, sit there,” Bindy directed, pointing to a spot on the floor. “I get the chair because I’m older than you. Age before beauty!”

Ashley shot Jack a look, shrugged her shoulders, then dropped onto the carpet.

“OK. But we have to be quiet, Bindy,” Ashley whispered. “Mom’s on the phone.”

Though Olivia Landon normally worked at the Elk Refuge at Jackson Hole, she’d converted a corner room into a home office. The large oak desk was piled high with papers stacked into a double helix. A tall coffee mug and a glass of water sat next to the computer keyboard, something their father said was dangerous, but Olivia insisted she was careful enough to handle things in her own space. Books wrapped in every color of the rainbow filled an oversize bookshelf, all of them bearing scientific titles that twisted Jack’s tongue when he tried to read them out loud. The pale blue walls had been peppered with pictures of every kind of wildlife, from soaring eagles to bright-eyed foxes to coiled snakes, all photographed by their father, who dreamed of becoming a full-time photographer. Jack loved the clutter of it all. “Ideas ferment in here,” Olivia always told them.

“So there’s no sign of disease?” she was asking into the phone. She twisted her chair from side to side, paused, then asked, “When will the results be in?”

As Bindy noisily sucked the butter off each finger, Jack felt his teeth clench, but he willed himself to be patient. It sounded as though there might be bigger problems than an annoying foster kid.

“Hey, Jack-o, you want some popcorn?” Bindy asked, extending the bowl in his direction. “I made it the real way, with a pan and oil and real butter instead of that imitation-powder-microwave junk—”

He shook his head. “Shhhh. Mom’s talking to a biologist at Acadia National Park. They found more bodies on the beach, which brings the total to 12.”

“Twelve people? No way!” Bindy bellowed, slapping a thick thigh.

“Don’t be stupid,” Jack hissed. “A whale and some seals and stuff from the ocean. They’ve washed up dead, and the park people can’t figure out why. Nothing quite like this has ever happened before. Try to be quiet, Bindy. My mom’s talking, and I want to listen.”

“Can you cut off the heads and put them on ice?” he heard his mother ask. Nodding tersely, she scratched notes on a yellow pad. Her reading glasses rested on her thin nose like half-moons, while her hair swirled to her shoulders in dark, smoky curls. Olivia, a wildlife veterinarian, was frequently called in by the parks to solve animal mysteries. There was a good possibility that she’d now be asked to Acadia National Park in Maine, about as far as you could go from their home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and still be in the continental United States. And maybe, Jack hoped, the rest of them would get to go, too. He’d never been to Maine.

Sighing, Olivia said, “It’s a big job, but you’ll need to cut off the whale’s head and cool it down fast. Decomposition hides details. Heads can yield valuable clues.”

Wrinkling her nose, Bindy cried, “Cutting off heads? That’s so gross.”

Ashley placed her finger to her lips. “Shhhh.”

“So, who’s Acadia?” Bindy asked Jack, not bothering to keep her voice low.

“Acadia is a park,” he answered softly.

Olivia gave the three of them a look and extended her hand in a signal that meant “be quiet or get out.” Flipping the page, she scrawled more notes.

“I still don’t get it,” Bindy pressed. “Why are the people in Acadia calling your mom? She’s a vet in Jackson Hole. Doesn’t she just deal with elk and other four-footed creatures?”

“Mom knows all about whales. She did a whole seminar on them when she was at College of the Atlantic,” Ashley whispered. “Now hush—”

It was too late. “Excuse me, Sean. I’m sorry to interrupt, but my kids are chattering and I can’t hear a word you’re saying.” Olivia covered the mouthpiece of the phone and waved them away. “You kids go outside for awhile. Better yet, start packing. Something’s really wrong in Maine, and I need to get out there fast. We’ll all go.”

“Me too?” Bindy asked, wide-eyed.

“You too. We’re going to Acadia!”

To Jack, it seemed that Bindy never stopped blabbing the whole trip. Luckily, the airlines provided earphones that could be plugged in to recorded music. Jack turned the volume as loud as he could, trying to drown out Bindy. The only time she kept silent was when she munched on the pretzels the flight attendants brought. Bindy never settled for one bag of pretzels; she always demanded three or four.

For just a little while, when they reached their motel, Bindy stayed silent. She stood on the little deck outside the room she was to share with Ashley, awestruck at the beautiful Atlantic Ocean. Gulls swooped down into the waves, picking up shellfish and dropping them onto the rocks on the beach—when the shells broke open, the gulls feasted on the critters inside.

A long wooden pier stretched from the shore, reaching like a bony finger about 60 feet into the ocean. It looked rickety, as though its support pilings had been eroded by decades of salt water. Halfway along its length there was a No Trespassing sign hanging from a chain that stretched between two posts. Except for one small rowboat near the shore, no other boats were tied to the pier.

“This is my first look at the Atlantic,” Bindy murmured. “It looks greener than the Pacific.”

“You’ve seen the Pacific?” Ashley asked.

“I used to live in California,” she answered. “In Hollywood, actually.”

Yeah, sure, Jack thought. In Hollywood, with movie stars, no doubt. He’d had enough of Bindy. The deck outside the girls’ room was connected to the deck outside his parents’ room, where Jack would be sleeping on a cot. With one hand on the banister, Jack vaulted over the railing onto his parents’ deck. Then he felt like a fool, because the sliding door to his parents’ room was locked. He was stuck out there, while the girls laughed at him.

Even though he’d been trying to avoid Bindy, later that evening Jack found himself knocking on the girls’ door. He’d had enough of watching waves lap the shore, and his parents weren’t being much company right then.

“Mom’s reading a bunch of research papers about whales and Dad’s going through his camera stuff, so I came to see what you guys are doing,” he told Ashley when she opened the door.

“Not much. We’re just flipping around the different channels.” With her arm straight out, Ashley clicked the channel changer button on the remote control again and again. Bindy had spread herself on one of the queen-size beds with a book propped under her chin. She didn’t bother to look up.

Suddenly Ashley yelled, “Hey wait! Look there—it’s one of my favorite movies. Melissa’s Dream.”

“You’ve already seen that about ten times,” Jack told her, wrestling her for the remote. “You don’t need to watch it again.”

Ashley struggled to keep the channel changer out of Jack’s reach, but his arms were longer than hers. “Jack! The movie’s almost over anyway—just let me finish watching it ’cause the end’s the best part.”

Lifting the changer so high that Ashley couldn’t reach it—considering that Jack was a good head taller than his puny little sister—he said, “OK, we’ll let Bindy decide. Bindy, do you want to watch the end of this dumb movie or….”

“It’s not dumb,” Bindy answered. “I was in that movie.”

There she goes again, Jack thought. “You mean you were into the movie,” he said sarcastically. “Like if you go, ‘I’m really into stock-car racing.’ Or ‘I’m really into extreme sports.’ Or ‘I’m really into potato chips.’”

Bindy shook her head. “I mean I was in the movie. I acted in it. I didn’t have the leading role, but I was the cute little girl next door.”

Staring at the screen, Ashley asked, “You mean Amanda? That was you? No way.”

“Amanda’s a redhead,” Jack protested.

Scornfully, Bindy slapped her book onto her bed. “Well, duh! You’ve heard of hair dye, haven’t you? I told the set’s hairdresser not to make me so red, but she wouldn’t listen because she said red was what the script called for, so red I would be. I told her it made me look like a pumpkin head. She got all mad when I said that, and then told me I didn’t know anything about the business, and the only words I should speak in her presence were the lines from my script. What a grouch!” Pointing a ring-clad finger, Bindy said, “See, there I am—right there. I just walked into Melissa’s kitchen. That’s me.”

Jack studied the girl on the small screen. If he squinted, maybe that girl did look a little bit like Bindy, but she was a lot younger and she was—thin!

“Oh, come on. You’re just teasing…,” Ashley began.