The Bone Bed

board the Coast Guard boat and pull the buoy line in close to it so we can take care of what we need to do. And the minute we’re off this boat I suggest you get Lieutenant Klemens to move some distance from here so you can release our leatherback friend out of harm’s way.”
    I climb back up the transom steps and retrieve my coat from the upper deck while Marino collects the scene cases. Then we return to the bow.
    “Nice to look at, but she sure as hell doesn’t win any personality awards,” he says.
    “She’s just trying to do her job and wants no interference,” I reply. “You can’t blame her.”
    “Yeah, except she doesn’t give a shit someone’s dead. Not even interested.”
    Marino looks back in Pamela Quick’s direction as we remove gloves, shoe covers, and Tyvek, stuffing them into a red biohazard bag.
    “Some of these animal lovers are like that, though,” he says. “Fanatics. Certified whackos who will throw red paint on you or beat you up for wearing a fur collar or snakeskin boots. I got me a pair of rattlesnake-skin boots, and you think I don’t get a lot of shit when I wear them?”
    He hands the cases over the rail to Labella as the two boats plunge together and apart like an accordion.
    “Tanned rattlesnake skins bought off eBay and custom-made,” Marino continues to gripe.
    “Sounds disgusting.” I swing one leg over the first rail, and Labella reaches for me.
    “Well, don’t wear them in fucking Concord or Lincoln, in
Thoreau
ville”—Marino is right behind me—“where you go to jail for cutting down a damn tree,” he adds at the top of his lungs.

ten
    AN AIR HORN BLARES THREE TIMES, AND THE FIREBOAT backs away from where it was anchored, pivoting on its stern, nosing toward a lighthouse jutting up whitely on the horizon. Jet engines gush and churn foamy water that dissipates into a lacy wake as firefighters move the leatherback and its rescuers toward the open sea, leaving us to take care of the rest of it.
    The task I face is one I hope the media and the curious don’t know about, and I survey the water heaving in the sunlight, looking for any sign that spectators and TV crews will move on to witness the turtle’s release. I want everyone gone. I want whoever is dead recovered discreetly, respectfully, and at the same time I feel very protective of the huge old turtle and furious at human selfishness and ignorance.
    Leave him alone, for God’s sake
, I think, and I could easily worry myself sick about it, imagining any number of awful fates that might befall an almost extinct creature that lives simply to eat and swim and breed. I know the stories of people who motor too close to great whales and other magnificent animals, taking pictures, trying to touch or feed them, and inadvertently maim or kill them. I’m dismayed, then outraged, as I watch boaters pull up anchor and start their engines, the news helicopter already pursuing in a high hover.
    “At least they’re not going to hang around here,” Labella says.
    He’s crouched next to the Stokes basket, checking the restraint straps and the harness, making sure everything is functioning properly. What we don’t need is to have the body tumble out back into the water while we’re trying to hoist it in on board the boat.
    “Which tells me they don’t know the reason we’re here,” he adds.
    “Maybe they don’t, but what do you make of that?” I look up at the white twin-engine helicopter a thousand feet above us, I estimate. “It seems to be hanging around.”
    “Not a news chopper.” He stares up, shielding his eyes. “Not MedFlight. Not Boston or state police or Homeland Security. Maybe a Sikorsky, something big, but for sure not one of ours, so I’m guessing it’s private. Someone who’s out flying and maybe wonders what’s going on down here.”
    “It’s got a camera mounted on it.” I get an uneasy feeling as I watch the gleaming white machine hover steady as a rock, the nose pointed at us, the sun glaring on the windscreen.
    “Maybe a TV camera. But it could also be a FLIR,” Labella says. “I can’t tell from here.”
    The only private pilot I know who might have a Forward Looking Infrared Radar system thermal imager mounted on his or her helicopter is my niece, Lucy. But I don’t mention such a possibility, and it bothers me that I haven’t seen her new ship, a twin-engine Bell that was delivered to her barely a month ago. Lucy wouldn’t have a white helicopter, I reassure