“I understand, and later I’d certainly appreciate a copy of your report,” I reply. “But it’s important I know anything you can tell me now.”

She withdraws the needle from the rubber top and says, “Water temp is fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit, the ambient temp fifty-seven.”

“What can you tell me about him?” I have no choice but to be insistent.

“About him?” She glances up at me as if I have just offended her. “Not exactly relevant for your purposes.”

“At the moment, I consider everything relevant. He may be part of a crime scene.”

“He’s a critically endangered turtle who almost died because of reckless, careless human beings.”

“And I’m not one of those reckless, careless human beings.” I understand her hostility. “I want him to thrive as much as you do.”

She glances up at me condescendingly, angrily.

“Let’s do this,” I then say. “Tell me what you know.”

She doesn’t reply.

“I’m not the one wasting time,” I add pointedly.

“HR thirty-six, RR is two. Both times by Doppler,” she says. “Cloacal temp is seventy-four degrees.” She drips blood into a white plastic i-STAT cartridge.

“Is it unusual that his body temperature is some twenty-five degrees higher than the water he was in?”

“Leatherbacks are gigantothermic.”

“Meaning they can maintain a core temperature independently of the environmental temperature,” I reply. “That’s rather remarkable, and not what I’d expect.”

“Like the dinosaurs, they can survive in waters as warm as the tropics or cold enough to kill a human in minutes.”

“Certainly defies what I understand about reptiles.” I squat near her as the boat sways back and forth and water laps.

“Reptilian physiology is unable to explain the biology of dinosaurs.”

“You’re not really calling this a dinosaur?” I’m baffled and strangely unsettled, considering how my day began.

“A gigantic reptile that has been here for more than sixty-five million years, the earth’s last living dinosaur.” She continues to act as if I’m to blame. “And like the dinosaur is about to become extinct.”

She inserts the cartridge into a handheld blood analyzer while frigid water splashes over the platform and soaks the cuffs of my coveralls and begins to wick up the legs of my pants underneath.

“Fishing gear, ignorant people digging up their eggs, illegal poaching, speedboats, oil spills, and plastic pollution,” she continues, with undisguised disgust. “At least one-third of all leatherbacks have plastic in their stomachs. And they don’t do one damn thing to us. All they want to do is swim, eat jellies, and reproduce.”

The leatherback slowly lifts his watermelon-sized head and looks directly at me as if to emphasize his caretaker’s point. Nares flare as he exhales loudly, his protruding eyes dark pools on either side of a beaklike mouth that reminds me of a crooked jack-o’-lantern smile.

“I understand the way you feel better than you’ll ever imagine, and I’m eager to get out of your way,” I say to Pamela Quick. “But I have to know about his injuries before I can finish up here.”