“Mr. Austin,” he said, extending his hand. “Jason Witherell EPA. Pleasure to meet you. Glad to have NUMA interested. We might need to utilize your resources.”

“We're always ready to help the EPA,” Austin said. “My interest is more personal than official. I was in the race today when the whales made their appearance.”

“I saw the news clips.” Witherell laughed. “That was one hell of a maneuver you pulled off. Sorry about your boat.”

“Thanks. I was wondering, have you come up with a cause of death?”

“Sure, they died of DORK.”

“Pardon?”

Witherell grinned. “Don't Really Know. DORK.”

Austin smiled patiently. He knew pathologists sometimes cultivated a zany sense of humor to help maintain their sanity.

“Any guesses?”

Witherell said, 'As far as we can determine for now, there was no evidence of trauma or toxin, and we've tested tissue for virus. Negative so far. One whale had become entangled in a monofilament fishing net, but it doesn't seem to have prevented the animal from eating or harmed it in any fatal way."

“So at least for now you don't have a clue how they died?”

“Oh sure, we know how. They suffocated. There was heavy lung damage that caused pneumonia. The lungs seem to have been damaged by intense heat.”

“Heat? I'm not sure I follow you.”

“I'll put it this way. They were partially cooked internally, and their skin was blistered as well.”

“What could have done something like that?”

“DORIC,” Witherell said with a shrug of his shoulders.

Austin pondered the answer. “If you don't know what, how about when?”

“That's tough to pinpoint. The initial exposure might not have been instantly fatal. The mammals could have become ill several days before their deaths but continued to make their way along the coast. The little ones would have been the sickest, and maybe the adults waited for them. You'd have to factor in the time it would take for the body to decompose and for the putrefaction gases to bloat them up where they'd surface in the race course.”

“So if you backtracked you might be able to determine where they were when they died. You'd have to consider traveling and feeding time and currents of course.” He shook his head. “Too bad the whales can't tell us where they've been.”

Witherell chuckled. “Who says they can't tell us? C'mon, I'll show you.”

The EPA man led the way past the flatbeds around the puddles of bloody water being hosed into drains. The smell was like a sledgehammer this close to the dead whales, but Witherell didn't seem to be bothered.

“This is the male,” he said, stopping by the first carcass. “You can see why they're called gray whales. The skin is naturally dark, but it's blotched from barnacle scars and whale lice. He's a bit chopped up now. When we first measured him he was forty one feet.” They walked to the next flatbed which held a miniaturized version of the first whale. “This calf is also a male, born just a few months ago. There were other calves so we don't know if it belonged to the female.” They had paused before the last flatbed. “She's bigger than the male. Like the others, she's got no outward signs of any bruise or laceration that might be fatal. This is what might interest you.” He borrowed a knife from a colleague, climbed onto the flatbed, and bent over the whale's fin. After a minute he hopped down and handed Austin a flat square packet of metal and plastic.