Crooked River

18

In the next scheduled meeting, Chief P. B. Perelman contemplated Commander Baugh with fresh interest. The man had taken a cutter down to Cuba — a gutsy thing to do — and returned having provoked a minor diplomatic incident but with nothing tangible to show for his effort. Yet the man at the front of the briefing room didn’t look chastened. Instead, he was just as self-assured as ever, just as determined, every inch the confident commander. Perelman wondered if that wasn’t the very quality that had allowed him to advance so far.

Since the incident, however, the commander had shifted focus, dropping the Cuban prison idea and working instead from the hypothesis that the feet had been dumped at sea from a ship.

Perelman glanced at the back of the room, where Pendergast was standing in his usual spot, arms crossed, his expression obscured by the Panama hat that had been pulled down over his features.

Baugh cleared his throat, his gravelly voice filling the briefing room. “I would like to introduce Dr. Bob Kendry, who is a specialist in ocean currents, to explain the new line of inquiry. Dr. Kendry?”

A strikingly tall man took the podium. Bald and sixtyish, he had a lean, fit frame and wore a tailored blue suit. There was almost something of the movie star about him, and when he spoke, it was with a voice to match — deep, smooth, and calm.

“Thank you, Commander Baugh.” He removed some notes from his pocket and placed them on the lectern. “Over the course of three days, one hundred and twelve feet washed up on Captiva Island — or I should say, mostly on Captiva. Two drifted into Sanibel, and two more washed up on North Captiva, one on Cayo Costa, and one on Gasparilla Island. The investigative problem can be simply stated. Can we backtrack twenty-eight, thirty days to where these feet came from? The answer is: we can.”

The lights dimmed and he launched into a discussion of currents, winds, tides, and wave action, with several charts projected on the screen, along with a crude animation of how an array of floating objects the size and buoyancy of the feet would have traveled, ending on Captiva Island. After ten minutes of this, Perelman turned to Morris, who was sitting next to him. “‘Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.’”

Morris rolled his eyes. “I got lost a while ago myself.”

Kendry paused, and Perelman waited with hope that this signified the close.

“And so, to conclude—”

Thank you, Lord, Perelman thought.

“—as you can see, we were able to retrace the route that these feet took on their journey from the dumping point to Captiva. We zeroed in on this area, here.”

An image came up of an elongated dotted oval drawn not in the gulf, but in the Caribbean Sea.

“‘To unpathed waters, undreamed shores,’” Perelman murmured.

“You’ve got a quote for every occasion, don’t you, Chief?”

“I certainly do.”

“He never runs out,” said Towne.

Kendry went on. “This target area is located about two hundred miles due west of the Cayman Islands — an area of approximately six hundred square miles.”

“Thank you, Dr. Kendry,” said Baugh, resuming the podium as the lights came back up. “Our investigation has proceeded using Dr. Kendry’s analysis. Fortunately, the dotted area you see on the map lies outside the major shipping lanes. Which isn’t surprising, since one wouldn’t expect a ship dumping cargo of this sort to choose a well-traveled area. Using transponder AIS data, we’ve determined that four vessels passed through this area during the time frame in question: twenty-eight days, plus or minus three. We’ve also examined satellite imagery of the area and determined there were two other, smaller vessels in the area at the time not using AIS. We’ve managed to identify all six vessels.”

Towne leaned over and murmured, “Seems like the commander has finally gotten his act together.”

As Perelman was about to speak, Towne said: “Please, Chief, not more poetry.”

Perelman frowned. “Philistine.”

“Four ships,” Baugh continued, “were large, internationally flagged carriers: the M/V Pearl Nori, a chemical tanker; the container ship Empire Carrier; the Everest, also a container ship; and the M/V First Sea Lord, an LNG tanker. The other two vessels in the area were local boats. The first was a pleasure yacht known as—” He paused, frowning. “Monkey Sea Monkey Do. The other was an eighty-six-foot stern trawler called F/V Irish Wake. Both hail from Gulf Coast ports.”

He paused and looked around, squinting. “And so, the next stage of the investigation includes, among other things, tracking down and interviewing the captains of those six ships.” His eye fell on Pendergast. “Ah, Agent Pendergast, I’m glad to see you after an absence. Interviewing these captains is a perfect job for the FBI. I’d like you and the agency to take charge of that.”

When Pendergast didn’t respond, or even acknowledge he had heard, Baugh said, voice raised: “Agent Pendergast? Hello?”

The FBI agent was still standing with his arms crossed. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, his face still obscured by the hat. After a moment he nodded curtly.

“Any luck with the NCAVC databases?”

“It would seem this case has no precedent.”

“And how is the investigation on the source of the shoes coming?”

“Very well, thank you. We have an agent in China.”

The “thank you” somehow managed to sound faintly insolent, but maybe, Perelman thought, it was just his imagination.

The commander then began to dole out other assignments, and it was at this point Pendergast chose to slip out of the room like a cat.