Butler Did It! by Sally Pomeroy Page A

long with a
particularly unique tri-lobed tail. It had two pair of thick stubby
fins almost like paddles, whose constant motion kept it stationary
in the water.
    Revelation suddenly hit Katherine. Oh my God! It’s a Coelacanth!
    Katherine was marveling at just how
close she could get to a fish that had once been only a legend. She
wanted to reach out and touch it, but knew that it was a predator
and could attack her on a whim. She had been keenly interested in
the news reports during the summer of 2000 when three living
specimens had been photographed in Sodwana Bay in the St. Lucia
Wetlands Park near her home. She had never visited those deep
submarine canyons, those depths were only for very skilled divers.
She knew that one of the three divers who had first photographed
the Coelacanth had died on that expedition, when a problem had
resulted in an uncontrolled ascent.
    I know coelacanths have
never been seen in the Seychelles, and especially never in shallow
water. Why is it here?
    She suddenly remembered the camera in
her hand and began clicking off photographs as fast as possible.
The camera shy fish kept turning its head away from Katherine.
Despite all of her efforts, the Coelacanth would not come into the
light. Every flash of her camera strobe only drove the fish further
into the dark recesses of the fissure. Instead of forcing the
issue, Katherine backed into another fissure on the opposite side
of the main chamber, effectively giving the fish a route past her.
She waited patiently in the hope that if the fish bolted for
freedom, it would have to pass through the beam of sunlight and
give her a good daylight photograph. Katherine guessed correctly.
After a few minutes, the great fish slowly moved out of the shadows
and into the sunlight. Katherine found that she was holding her
breath, and nearly choked on her regulator mouthpiece. As the fish
approached, she took picture after picture.
    This is my great photo
opportunity! This series of shots will give me international
recognition.
    The fish, equally curious, slowly
approached the girl, much like a suspicious dog prepared to sniff a
stranger’s hand. The fish edged forward a few inches just by using
its front fins, hovered a few seconds, only to back up moments
later. Katherine marveled at the combined beauty and inherent
ugliness of the creature.
    I wonder if it thinks the
same thing about me.
    Suddenly, the fish’s scales flushed to
a gray blue. At the same time, Katherine heard a deep rumbling
sound that was getting louder by the second. She glanced at the
blowhole’s large entrance just as a dark shadow passed over the sea
bottom near the reef wall. The Coelacanth suddenly flipped its tail
and flashed out of the entrance. Curious Katherine followed the
fish out to the face of the reef wall. Several hundred feet off the
reef, a large, dark ship hull was silhouetted on the surface. The
ship was long and narrow. Its engines idled ominously. Still trying
to keep the fish in view, Katherine swam closer to the ship,
approaching to a position just above the slope of the reef
wall.
    Without warning, a man plunged into the
water above her. At first, she thought it was a diver in a dark wet
suit, but once the bubbles cleared, she saw that it was a nearly
naked black man with his hands bound behind his back. He sank
quickly, thrashing and spinning. Katherine instantly understood
that he would soon be running out of air. Without hesitation, she
wedged her camera in a convenient cleft in a rocky outcrop at the
base of the reef wall and began swimming hard toward the rapidly
descending man. Seconds later, bullets began zipping into the water
around the man like mad bees, only to slow and fall as an
ineffective hard rain as they sank to the bottom. Instinctively,
the man curled into a ball to avoid the bullets. Katherine judged
that, at his rate of descent, she would get to him just about the
time he reached the seabed. As she arrived, the frantic man had one
foot through