The call had come as a surprise. He had barely gotten his morning coffee poured. There was no video to accompany the voice, which set off alarm bells in his mind. This was a man with something to hide.
The voice had offered to give him certain facts in return for his cooperation. By cooperation, the voice had explained, he meant that Rivers would quit digging into the case of the Ford’s missing front end.
Rivers had been noncommittal until the man had identified himself as being with the Navy. That had piqued his interest, the Navy having been behind the incident with the plane. Was it possible that they had had something to do with the car, as well?
Now, an hour after Rivers had slowly walked the length of the dock to where Hoffman stood, he had answers to his questions. Most of them, anyway. For the rest, he could read between the lines.
The only catch was that he couldn’t do anything with the knowledge. He couldn’t close the case, at least not officially. Hoffman had pointed out the fact that the information he was about to receive was classified, and that the Navy would not look kindly upon someone who let out military secrets.
Caught between a rock and a hard place.
It wasn’t that he had even been that close. The Navy had simply been afraid that he might stumble upon something damaging. They had been burned badly enough over their ill-advised attempt to cover up the loss of the plane. They certainly didn’t want to go through that again if they could avoid it.
Rivers sighed. At least his curiosity had been assuaged. And his professional pride.
He didn’t believe in so-called Acts of God. Things happened for reasons. Nice, tidy, logical chains of events led to observable end results. The missing front of the car, however, had tempted him to consider divine intervention. Now the case had come firmly back to Earth, and he felt relieved.
Levering himself to his feet, he gazed out across the water to the east. Somewhere out there, roughly five kilometers past the mouth of the harbor, the front of a Ford was attracting the curiosity of the fish. Keeping it around had been too big a risk, so they had dumped it the night before.
Somehow, knowing where it was, even if it was a long ways from the groove in the pavement out on I-26, made him feel better. Rationality once again ruled the world. Things made sense again. And if he couldn’t write it up… well, that was just the way it would have to be.