We had done an eyeball ID from the photo and called the whitish rock sandstone.
No discernible reddish iron-oxide tint to it. No obvious explanation there for the hematite particles embedded in the Outcast and the Sea Spray. In any case, if either boat had come close enough to collide with Birdshit Rock, the damage would have been grievous.
We’d nailed the hematite ID of the grains we’d taken from both boats. The grains were a match under the X-ray diffractometer. What we could reasonably say was that both boats acquired their grains in the same manner. Encountering the same phenomenon.
If not at Birdshit, where?
Waiting for the coffee to brew, I moved from the photo to the bathymetric map we’d printed and spread out on the coffee table.
What looked almost featureless beyond our glass door — the flat expanse of blue ocean reaching to the horizon — looked wildly different below the water.
At least, on the map.
It was a rugged world down there.
It was a submerged world of plains and cliffs and basins and pinnacles and canyons, and the part of this undersea world that extended from the shoreline was called the continental shelf. Here, off the central California coast, the shelf was narrow, sloping gently westward until it reached a break, and then dropping abruptly down into deeper waters.
It had not been mapped in the landlubber manner.
It had been mapped by sonar pinging the underwater landscape to show the topography. Backscatter data and sediment samples showed the geologic character of the seafloor.
It was, I thought, deeply cool. I thought of the ancient mariners whose maps marked the edge of the known seas with the caption Here There Be Dragons. I wondered what caption they’d give to the unknown and unknowable seafloor.
No longer unknowable.
Walter joined me. “Ah,” he said, handing me a mug of coffee, “there’s the neighborhood.”
Yup, there it was. About two miles out from shore there was a long chain of plateaus and canyons and reefs and pinnacles. It was named Cochrane Bank.
An ocean bank was different turf from the surrounding seafloor. It had its own geology and with its vertical nature and rocky surfaces it created its own knotty habitat for sea life. It was a high-rise city, more lively than the surrounding sandy silty suburbs.
One high spot on Cochrane Bank actually broke the surface — Birdshit Rock, more politely labeled on the map as Bird Rock — but the remainder of the bank was at depths ranging from ten feet to well below one hundred.
I said, “Good fishing out there in the ‘hood, I’d think.”
Walter nodded. “Robbie Donie evidently thought so.”
I pictured Donie out there in the ‘hood, at night, with gang of jumbo squid and perhaps a companion with lethal intentions. I rather liked one of the Keaslings for it right now. Well, Jake or Sandy. Certainly not Lanny, no matter what he did or did not take from the diver’s mesh bag.
“That is,” Walter said, “if the pebble in the kelp holdfast came from the site where Donie anchored.”
“I’ll buy that.”
According to the aerial survey kelp map we’d downloaded, Cochrane Bank had isolated forests of giant kelp.
Indeed, the bank sported a number of likely sites. Its bedrocks were sandstone and a chaotic mix of rocks known as the Franciscan Complex. Included in that melange were fine-grained volcanic rocks that had been heavily metamorphosed.
According to the ID we’d made of our pebble, it was of volcanic origin, a basalt of the Franciscan Complex. It was a dark gray, very fine-grained with a few microscopic quartz crystals.
It could have originated on one of the many volcanic reefs or pinnacles on Cochrane Bank.
We’d found what looked like the neighborhood. What we needed were samples from the target spots, to analyze trace elements that might differentiate one from another.
Good luck with that.
There were a lot of targets.
I said, “If this was on land we could just traipse from likely prospect to likely prospect and sample and do the geology.”
Walter said, “Sampling these will require diving.”
I nodded. Well, we'd been in the water before.
“Meanwhile,” Walter said, “we have other evidence to analyze.”
I managed a guilty smile of relief. “Time to get beachy.”
Time to get to the evidence Tolliver had gotten antsy about: the sand from Robbie Donie’s duffel pack.
Ten minutes later we could say with certainty that the duffel sand did not come from the tiny beach beneath Captain Kayak’s dock. We’d made quick work of it — the mineralogy was unlike the sand from the duffel.
Another cardinal rule of ours: in forensic comparison, if a possible match can be promptly excluded, by God exclude it.
Which led to the next question.
If the duffel sand didn’t come from Jake Keasling’s beach, where then?
CHAPTER 10
“Gone?” Sandy Keasling pressed her cell phone to her ear, thinking she hadn’t heard right.
“Gone,” the twit on the other end repeated. “Left the building.”
She couldn’t believe this. John Silva had been semi-conscious when they took him to the hospital yesterday. She knew. She’d phoned last night. And if he’d improved this morning, wouldn’t the hospital keep him there awhile longer? Run tests. Run up a bill.
“When was he discharged?” she asked.
Twit asked in turn, “What was your name?”
She stood on her dock, squinting through the bright afternoon sunshine at the passengers boarding the Sea Spray. Wishing Silva back out at sea where he’d come from. Wishing she’d never found him. She said to the twit, “Where’d Mr. Silva go?”
“I can’t give out that information.”
“I’m his aunt.”
Twit said, “Then you should know where he went.”
“I’m from out of town. I just heard.” Sandy decided to put some spin on it. “I left early this morning. I’ve been driving for hours.” Driving, that was true enough — although it was driving the whale-watching bird-watching bucket out to sea and back on its morning run. “Just tell me where my nephew John went. I'm worried. He still living at… Oh for Pete's sake, I’m dead tired and I can’t recall the street name.”
A silence, and then Twit said, “He skipped out. Flew the coop. Delirious when they checked him in, so no records. No insurance. No billing address. How about, Auntie No-name, you come in and arrange for payment of his bill and we’ll see about helping you track him down. Or maybe you should talk to the cops. Or the other ‘relative’ who called. Last night, this morning, he's really worried, too.”
She hung up.
What other relative?
When she returned from the afternoon bucket-run she had an idea where to start looking for John Silva. She'd thought it over, what she knew about him. Name, occupation, and something a whole lot more useful.
It took her awhile to get the location.
A long shot, but not too long of a drive.
She drove her old Dodge pickup along the highway and took the turnoff inland, following the two-lane road through the coastal oaks until she came to the little village in the clearing. Not even that. Couple dozen houses, couple businesses. Mostly bushes and trees. Pretty. Perfect, if you wanted privacy. Perfect, if you spoke Portuguese and had nowhere else to go.
If she was an illegal, she’d be living in the back of nowhere, too.
She parked outside the Café Oporto. She pulled her ball cap low and slumped in the seat. Raised a newspaper to hide her face. Feeling like a damn fool.