Two Lindsey Buckinghams were floating, their sides exposed so that it was easy to see, from the top of the tank, the way the spot patterns were sparse around their faces, the denser clusters near their tail fins, as though a magnet had pulled the spots from one end of the fish to the other. A couple of Stevies had sunk to the rocks at the bottom of the tank, the pink-blush stripe of their sides muted through the dirty glass. Mano pressed both her hands into her chest to hold her sinking heart steady. Tears wet her eyelashes and she blinked them back. She would do a lot of things at work, but she knew better than to cry.

“Lloyd is going to hand me my ass over this,” Keith said, “and I'm the one who told those guys they had to clean up their act.”

Mano thought to make a joke about his hands and her ass, but it didn't seem like the time. “What guys? Who would do this?”

Keith picked up the phone receiver and started dialing. Mano pressed the button on the saddle to cut the line. “Keith. Tell me.”

Keith looked at the ceiling, as though he'd find the right way to live printed in bold on the asbestos tiles. “Okay, but you have to keep it quiet, all right? It's the construction on the road upstream. Those guys have a reputation for being sloppy with chemicals, and they don't seem too fussed about a few dead fish.”

Mano worked to integrate this new horror into the story. She spread all ten fingers against the glass of the tank and pressed until the pads went pale. The rainbow trout were her favorites, Stevie over Lindsey forever. But the greenback cutthroat had been declared extinct in the 1930s, and who didn't love an underdog? Since they'd found some alive back in the fifties, the Fish and Wildlife Service had been breeding them in fisheries, stocking the rivers, hoping they'd take, once again, to their native habitat. To see them floating there on the top of the giant tank, just under the sign Big T. River, made her more angry than she could remember ever being. How many fish had to die before someone stopped this?

Keith's panic was seeping into the office air. Lloyd was yelling through the receiver like an angry teacher out of a Charlie Brown cartoon.

“Okay,” Keith said. “Yeah.” He covered the bottom end of the receiver with one hand and waved his other hand erratically. She thought he was swatting at a fly until she realized he was beckoning her. Mano pretended she didn't understand, because there was nothing in it for her. She held up one finger as though she would be right back, and fled outside, squinting against the spring sunshine.