Walter snorted.
Flynn’s face was stony.
Tolliver said, “Cut the crap, Jake. What are you doing here?”
Jake pointed to his T-shirt.
Both Jake and Flynn wore the green T-shirts that they’d worn two days ago on the beach outside our lab. Marine Mammal Research & Rescue.
I said, “Haven’t seen a sea lion all day.”
Flynn shot me a look — his eyes were hidden by the shades but his mouth thinned in that stony face — a look like a warning shot from boat to boat.
After another moment waiting for Flynn to speak, Jake picked up a long pole with a scoop on the end and balanced it like a fishing rod over the rail above the teak dive platform. “We're algae collectors! Certified members of the Phytoplankton Monitoring Group of the Marine Mammal Research and Rescue Center. When the algae goes bad and messes up the sea life, who you gonna call? Me ‘n Oscar. Today anyway. You need somebody tomorrow, I’m renting kayaks, so go to the next names on the list. We get assigned our gigs and our partners. I mean, there is a certain lovely blonde I would have preferred to go sailing with but alas she doesn’t own a boat, and so I got slotted with Oscar here. Hot boat, though, right? I’m sure Oscar would have preferred that lovely blonde but he ended up with me. I mean, a volunteer is a volunteer and we show up when and where we’re told. Like today. Today, my friends, we are eco-warriors.” Jake tipped his head to look directly at Faith. “You wanna sign up?”
She said, “Screw off, Jake.”
Jake saluted.
Flynn said, “We're here on business.”
Tolliver said, “Actually, a marine scientist by the name of Violet Russell told us you consulted with her on the subject.”
“So?” Flynn said.
“So now you're here to sample this particular bloom?”
Flynn looked across the water to the spongy red mat that sat over the ailing world down below. “What else?”
“How about some other bloom? This isn’t the only one out here. It’s the season.”
“You state the obvious.”
“Well here’s an obvious for you, Oscar. It’s damned coincidental that you just happened to come upon this bloom. While we’re here.”
“Somebody reported this bloom to our group a few days ago. This is the first day the weather’s been good for collection. We’re not supposed to go out in unfavorable conditions. My boat can handle rough stuff but when I’m representing the Center I go by their rules.”
I wondered. Oscar Flynn seemed a guy who chafed under anybody's rules.
Walter spoke. “Still.” He rubbed his chin, the way he does when he’s considering the plausibility of a theory. “I must agree with Doug’s word choice. Coincidental.”
Jake set down his sampling pole and leaned over his rail and tipped his head to look up at Flynn. “Yo Oscar! We gonna do the job we came to do or we just gonna hang around shooting the shit with these dudes and dudettes?”
If I could see through Jake’s bad-boy persona I wondered what I would find. I didn’t have the benefit of Tolliver’s long view, watching the little blonde boy grow up into a goof-off, into a green-haired faux eco-warrior, but I sure did share Tolliver’s conjecture that Jake’s persona might cover an uglier core, somebody capable of murdering a rival over squid-fishing. Then again, maybe Jake was simply a goof-off. What you see is what you get.
Flynn ignored Jake.
And now I wondered how Oscar Flynn — this self-proclaimed genius with the world-class lab and the startling rapport with sick animals — felt about ending up with Jake Keasling as a partner. Flynn had ignored Jake during the sea lion rescue back on the beach. He appeared to be striving right now to ignore Jake, as if Jake were an inconvenient stowaway.
It struck me that Oscar Flynn and Jake Keasling were overworking the odd-couple angle.
An odd couple, I thought, who both had connections to the source of the toxin that bioaccumulated in the anchovies that poisoned the diver Joao Silva.
Walter stopped rubbing his chin in speculation and asked, bluntly, “Why are you here right now? Let me restate the obvious, Mr. Flynn. It’s a big ocean. There are other algal blooms. And yet you show up here, now. We could calculate the probabilities, if you like. Otherwise, let me point out that our radar indicated a boat following us on the way here. At a distance, perhaps hanging back in indecision. Was that the Destiny? And if so, what prompted you to finally join us?”
Flynn scowled. “It’s Doctor Flynn.”
“Pardon me, Doctor Flynn, of course, double PhD.” Walter smiled. “Here’s my theory. You wanted to know what we’re doing here. Why we came. What we found. You weren’t certain how to proceed but your curiosity finally prevailed.”
Jake was attached to his rail, still watching Flynn.
Flynn snapped, “If I wanted to sneak up on you I would have used my radar jamming. I came openly. I'm here on business. I don't care why you're here.”
Tolliver said, “Well that’s damned odd. Simple human curiosity would make just about anybody ask why we’re here. Haven’t you seen the crowd that gathers when the cops show up at a scene? This is a cop boat, Oscar. You really trying to tell me you’re not curious?”
“I don’t associate with the kind of people who gawk at crime scenes.”
I would have laughed at the pomposity of that but Oscar Flynn was just not laughable. He made me wary, like a large predatory animal encountered in the wild makes me wary.
Jake let go of his railing. He turned to us, fiddling with his aviator shades, resetting them. “Well hell, I gawk. I figure you’re here about Robbie going missing at sea. Since we’re at sea.”
Flynn gave a little jerk. He stared at Jake, stared at us.
Tolliver turned to Faith. “They ask you anything about our mission when they first arrived?”
Faith nodded at the dive flag, which still flew. “They asked who was diving.”
“What’d you say?”
“I said Seal Team Six.”
Tolliver chuckled.
Jake managed a grin. “And then I said, I may not be a Seal but I am a manly kayaker and I asked if she wanted to grab a beer when we all get back to shore.”
Bad-boy Jake hitting on the female, I wondered, or Jake trying desperately for casual?
Flynn spoke. “I asked if we would be interfering with official business if we conducted our business while divers were in the water.”
“And I told them to stand off,” Faith said. “And I told Jake to screw off.”
Jake put his hand over his heart and shook his head. But his attention quickly shifted back to Tolliver. “So, uh, given that you’re not Seal Team Six, we got a detective and two geologists diving out here and so I’m going to jump to the conclusion that you were doing your evidence stuff and that made you think Robbie the little shit came, uh, here.”
Flynn watched us, tapping his fingers on the railing, the impatient captain on his flybridge.
Tolliver raked his hair, which had dried in the sun and the breeze and now sprang up into spikes. “Yup, we’re working the Donie case. That’s what we’re doing out here.”
Jake leaned over the rail and looked down into the water. “Find him?”
I could not resist looking down, as well. Deep blue, and the leading edge of the healthy kelp forest. There was nothing else to see, no indication that this was the watery grave of Robbie Donie. If it was, we hadn't even found anything like a shoe that might have belonged to him.
Tolliver said, “No Jake, we didn’t find him. That surprise you?”
Jake laughed.
“What we did find, though,” Tolliver said, “was an underwater setup with a bunch of instruments. Some kind of monitoring setup, it looked like.”