“Robbie Donie?”
“A workable assumption.”
I approved of picking up floating trash but if it were me I’d throw it in the garbage. The recycling. But Donie brought it here. And then, I supposed, he lit the candle in that brass holder in the center of the triangle. I said, “This is some kind of offering? Donie being superstitious — as Jake Keasling said.”
“Mmmm.” Walter nodded. “Things lost at sea, perhaps from a shipwreck. He’s asking his gods to keep him safe.”
I thought that over. “Let's say he carries his duffel bag when he goes to sea. On the hunt. When he finds an appealing piece of flotsam, he nets it and puts it in his duffel. When he returns to shore, he brings it here. And let’s say he opens his duffel on that little beach and takes out the flotsam and puts it in his shrine. Meanwhile, sand blows into the open duffel. Or he’s sloppy and knocks some in. And next time he goes to sea he brings his duffel aboard, ready for the next piece of flotsam.” I was liking the scenario. “On the final trip, his duffel gets opened and ransacked.”
Walter nodded. “Ransacked, and left empty. As Doug found it. Which implies the ransacker didn't find what he was looking for, or that it wasn't there to begin with.”
“But he expected it to be there,” I said. “Else, why ransack?”
“That presents us with two likely scenarios. The ransacker took the item. Or Donie brought the item here, before he went to sea on his final journey.”
“If it is here,” I said, “I'd sure like to know which piece of flotsam is ransack-worthy.”
We again shined our lights inside the shrine.
Walter said, “Does anything in there strike your fancy?”
I jumped my light from flotsam to flotsam. And when my light hit the plastic float, I froze. The float was yellow as sulfur, a fat cylinder about two feet long. A black nylon rope trailed like a tail from one end.
Something nagged at me.
That now-familiar image came to mind, me on the Sea Spray watching Lanny with the dive gear, strangling the black mesh dive bag. I recalled the shape of the red thing in the bag — cylindrical. We had toyed with the idea that it was a pony bottle, a spare tank. But now, staring at the yellow float, I couldn’t shake the thought that the thing Lanny had taken from the dive bag, the thing he’d hidden in his own pack, was a float like this one. Starfish red instead of sulfur yellow — otherwise, the same.
Two floats, same shapes, different colors, each possibly connected to a mishap at sea.
One float stolen from an injured diver by Lanny Keasling, and taken who-knows-where.
One float acquired who-knows-where by Robbie Donie, and hidden here.
And sought by a ransacker aboard the Outcast on the night Donie disappeared.
I presented the scenario to Walter.
“Entirely plausible.”
I said, “You think Donie's gods would mind if we remove it?”
“I think Detective Tolliver would mind if we didn't.”
We gloved up and set to work. Walter took a plastic garbage bag from our field kit and laid it on the ground. Then he shined the flashlight inside the shrine to illuminate it, and I took several cell phone photos to document the scene. Then Walter removed the float and placed it on the garbage bag. I took two closeups.
The float was molded plastic — the kind of durable material used for everything from auto parts to kiddie pools — and other than a few scuffs this float appeared to have weathered its life in the sea fairly well.
Of more interest was the nylon rope. It was braided and embedded with a few bits of seafloor material.
We got our hand lenses and bent in for examination.
I focused on the mineral grains embedded in the braid. Just eyeballing it, the grains looked volcanic. Perhaps a basalt of the Franciscan Complex. Not out of the question that these grains were similar to our pebble, the pebble caught in the holdfast entangled on the Outcast’s anchor. Way too soon to say. Definitely worth a closer look in our lab.
Walter said, “See those purplish bits? At the end of the rope.”
I looked where he pointed. They were a gaudy pink-purple. I put my lens to them. The hatch marking on the bits looked, if I had to guess, like coral. I said, “Coral?”
“Or perhaps bits of shell.”
I nodded. I was getting very interested.
We moved on to examine the fasteners. The float had a metal eyebolt and the rope connected to it by means of a snap hook. The free end of the rope had another snap hook. It was bent. Twisted.
We looked at one another. The question now became: what had the float's rope been attached to? And how had the snap hook broken?
I said, “You know what would be nice? Getting that red float Lanny took. See what it has to say about what went on out there at sea.”
“The red item you thought you saw in the diver's bag, the item Lanny might have taken.”
“You quibble.”
“Always,” he said.
We turned our attention to the float at hand. The grains were firmly embedded in the rope, which explained how they had survived transport from the source to the shrine, and so Walter used the point of his field knife to pry them loose. I secured the evidence in specimen dishes. Walter wrapped the denuded float in the plastic garbage bag and stowed it in his pack.
We were heading back onto the bouldery fan when we heard the shout. It seemed to come from somewhere on the far side of the rock. We listened. Pounding of the surf. Cry of a seagull. Nothing more.
As we rounded the hip of the Rock and the jetty came into sight, we saw the man in the sweatshirt. He stood in the parking lot, head tipped back, scanning up the flank of Morro Rock.
CHAPTER 14
Sweatshirt guy saw us approaching and came to meet us, hand extended.
He waited until we clambered down off the rocky fan onto the solid ground of the parking lot. “Hi there!” he said. “Name’s Fred Stavis.” Hand still extended.
Walter met him first, shook hands, introduced us.
Stavis turned to me and we shook. He had a strong handshake, vigorous but not crushing. He held my hand long enough to establish that he’s the type who sets others at ease. Hi there — I see from your faces that I’ve surprised you, and there’s nobody else out here but the three of us this early, and I want you to know I’m a friendly sort. That kind of handshake. But not so long as to imply over-familiarity.
And I didn’t know why I was analyzing sweatshirt guy’s handshake. Maybe just because I’d been hallucinating him for the past hour and now I found him perfectly ordinary, in the flesh.
Stavis was a pleasant-looking man, regular features, average height, on the stocky side. Brown hair mussed, like he'd just lowered the sweatshirt hood. The black sweatshirt had a big white logo: DIVE SOLUTIONS. He wore cargo pants in a green-black camo print — one pocket sagging with binoculars — and white sneakers streaked with fresh dirt.
Dressed to hike.
I said, “You know it's forbidden to climb the Rock?” I hadn't meant it to sound so accusing but it rather did. So I smiled to show, no offense.
Stavis smiled in return, no offense taken. “Yes yes, it's forbidden for good reason, it's dangerous, but I've lived here all my life and I'm very careful.”
Walter said, “Were you waiting for us, here?”
“No — did it look like I was? No, I'd just finished what I came for and you happened to show up.”
“Ah,” Walter said. “My mistake. Earlier, you were watching us with binoculars.”
“Well well well, you are observant.” Stavis gave another smile, a touch less friendly. “Actually I was looking for someone — not you — and I made a thorough search. My man likes to come here. I tried calling his cell but he lets his battery get low. I don't suppose you've seen him out here? He’s about five-six, slim, hair about the color of mine, in his twenties but looks like a teenager. Real outgoing but a little…” he tapped his head, “slow.”