“Do I have idiot written on my forehead?”
She refrained from answering that.
“Yeah Sis, I realized Robbie might have a fix on me. He probably shut off his radar when he stopped — he sure didn't yell who goes there.”
“What was he doing?”
“Squid jigging, I guess. There was some noise. Thrashing around in the water noise.”
“Any voices?”
Jake hesitated. “Maybe. Low voices. Could have been his radio.”
“Then what?”
“Then I sat there freezing my ass off debating if I should go back to harbor and get another beer at Pedro’s or go home and eat leftover pizza.”
“What did you decide?”
He tossed the crumpled Coke can toward the trash basket. Missed.
Normally she'd tell him to pick it up but now she just waited.
He said, “Finally heard the Outcast engine start up. I waited until he left then decided to go see whassup in Squidville.”
“What was up?”
“No more squid.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“How’d you scratch my boat?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” He gave her a straight-ahead look. He waited for her to buy it. “There might have been an old buoy in the water. Rusting. I might have bumped into it, looking for squid.”
“Might have?”
“Okay yeah, sure, there was. I didn't see it in time.”
She stared at her brother. She didn't buy it. She didn't not buy it. “What about Robbie's boat?”
“Same place. I assume he was as shitty a driver as I was.”
“Then what?”
“Then I decided on the pizza. Headed for the harbor.”
“No sign of the Outcast, along the way?”
“Nope.”
“Next day when you heard about the Outcast adrift, about Robbie going missing, didn’t you wonder?”
“Yup. Didn’t really give a shit, to be honest. I assumed he went off looking for more squid and tangled with Moby Dick or something.”
“Why didn’t you report what you saw to Doug?”
Jake hesitated. Then said, “I didn’t see anything Doug could use. I didn’t know where the Outcast went after leaving Squidville.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Didn't think you'd approve of my joyride.”
“So you deleted the trip from my GPS track log?”
“Yup.”
“That’s it?”
“You have it all now.” He mimed throwing a dart. “I’ll send you a link to the kayak soon as I get to my computer.”
She nodded. A deal’s a deal. But she thought, he's holding something back. She could keep asking. And he'd keep saying you have it all.
Jake got out of the beanbag chair and went to the closet.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Looking for something.”
She said, “It's not there.”
“The red float's not there.” He waded into the stuff on the floor and picked up the Checkers box. “This is.”
She could not endure another game.
He unhooked the bungee cord that held the box closed and flipped open the lid. There was no board, no game pieces. Instead, inside, swaddled in bubble-wrap, there was a pistol.
She stared. “Where’d you get Dad's gun?”
“In his dresser drawer. After they died. You told me to go through his stuff and take what I wanted. I took. Father-son legacy.”
“Why did you hide it here?”
“I didn't have any use for it.”
Her headache went full sea snake. “And now you do?”
“Uh, once you start wondering if your pizza is poisoned you get a little defensive.”
“Do you know how to shoot?”
He smiled. “Practice.”
CHAPTER 24
Doug Tolliver ushered us on board the police boat.
“Your choice, port or starboard, ocean view from either seat.” Tolliver smiled at his own joke.
Walter took port, I took starboard.
Joining us was Tolliver’s sergeant, a taciturn young woman who headed for the cabin to take the helm. “Faith James.” She gave us a nod. “Yes, Faith’s my real name. No, you don’t need it to ride with me.”
Walter chuckled.
I appreciated the good humor. I had nothing to offer.
Tolliver settled himself on the jump seat at the back railing. He planned to give us diving tips on the way.
The police boat was a thirty-footer painted in crisp blue and white, everything in its place, antennae and nav gear bristling atop the cabin, ropes tightly coiled along the steel rails, bench cushions spotless, deck gleaming, tank rack shipshape, the rest of the dive gear stowed in a locker. The Breaker was a neatnik’s boat.
As we left the harbor Tolliver explained that the boat had been named in a contest at the local middle school.
As we motored into open sea, the Breaker showed its moves.
Brawny and fast, at least with Faith at the helm.
Tolliver beamed, his pompadour quickly destroyed by wind and sea spray.
Walter hooked an arm over the railing and stuck his face into the wind, looking nearly as happy as Tolliver.
I chewed fennel seeds.
It helped that the day was warm and sunny, unlike the chilly fog on our last outing aboard Sandy Keasling’s boat. I preferred seeing where I was going. Today I could see ahead to the far horizon. I turned to check on the view behind us. The coastline was shrinking. The seascape was expanding, boats here and there.
Next time I looked back, the boats were specks and the coastline had shrunk to a thin brownish line.
I watched until the line disappeared.
Blue sky, blue sea, nothing in the world but two blocks of blue.
And us.
“Couldn’t ask for better seas,” Tolliver said.
We had waited two days to make this trip.
Day before yesterday, after leaving the CalPoly campus and the inimitable Violet Russell, Walter and I had returned to our motel lab and put the final pieces of the puzzle together.
We had Franciscan basalt that pointed to several areas on Cochrane Bank, we had Stylaster californicus that narrowed the range to a pinnacle and a reef, and we had Macrocystis pyrifera, giant kelp, that pointed to a small patch of kelp forest spanning the two targets.
Today, the time had come to pay our targets a visit. Faith James had fed the coordinates into the Breaker’s Garmin chart plotter.
Tolliver was talking diving and I was watching the view behind us when another speck of a boat appeared. I waited for it to grow into a recognizable shape. Sailboat, cruiser, harbor patrol, fishing boat, whale-watching boat?
It maintained its pace, at a speck-like distance.
After awhile I said, “Is that boat following us?”
Tolliver went into the cabin and checked the radar display. He came back and took his seat. “Okay, we’ve tagged the target. We’ll watch its direction of travel.”
“A big boat?” Walter asked. “A small boat?”
“Hard to say. The material and shape of the target affects how large the onscreen blip appears. I’ve seen hundred-footers look smaller onscreen than fifty-footers. And then you get into the math, and that’s where I bail.” He shrugged. “Faith will keep an eye on it.”
Sometime later I saw a new speck on the horizon, this time ahead of us.
As we advanced, the speck expanded into a thin line.
It put me in mind of the coastline when it had shrunk to a thin line.
However, this line ahead was a different color, a reddish-orange.