First Victim

CHAPTER 9

even years had passed since Boldt had consulted Dr. Byron Rutledge at the University of Washington’s—‘‘the U-Dub’s’’—School of Oceanography. Rutledge, a physical oceanographer who had a long history in the department, was a leading authority on the tidal currents of Puget Sound and had once assisted Boldt with a homicide investigation involving a body washed ashore by those currents. As North America’s largest estuary, Puget Sound experiences unusual but highly predictable tides and currents, including some of the fastest surface currents in the western United States.

Rutledge was of medium build and height. With his carefully trimmed Abraham Lincoln beard, his ice blue eyes and his smoker’s pipe, he looked the part of salty dog. The office was cluttered with paperwork: graphs, charts and reports occupying most horizontal surfaces. Its walls were adorned with engravings of square-riggers, brigs and whalers, as well as a chalkboard and a rack of maps that retracted like window shades.

‘‘You know,’’ Rutledge said in a smoky voice, ‘‘about a year after we worked together, a prosecutor from Skagit County asked me up there to work another corpse. I had a hell of a good time with it. I’m almost ashamed to say so. A woman’s remains were found in Bowmans Bay west of Deception Pass, pretty much like the one you had on the beach. This one turned out to have been thrown off Deception Pass bridge by the husband.’’

‘‘A conviction, wasn’t it?’’ Boldt asked, recalling the sensational trial.

Rutledge’s teeth, discolored from the pipe smoking, looked like a rotting picket fence. ‘‘You’re looking at the state’s expert witness. That boy won himself a cell for thirty-one years. His people challenged my findings on appeal and lost again.’’ The smile was contagious. ‘‘So this time,’’ the man said, referring to the phone call that had arranged the meeting, ‘‘it’s a shipping container.’’ He nodded. ‘‘You wouldn’t believe the number of lost containers drifting out there in open water. They’re a primary cause of collision damage at sea. Ask the insurers.’’ Boldt said, ‘‘Your people had a chance to look over the container.’’

Rutledge nodded. ‘‘Did you bring the stats for me?’’

Boldt slid a piece of paper across the man’s desk. ‘‘Weight of the container, number of souls inside, weight and approximate volume of the bolts of fabric.’’ He added, ‘‘The fabric was sealed inside six-millimeter visquine.’’

Rutledge peered over the top of reading glasses he had donned. ‘‘You want to be able to trace that container to its mother ship.’’

Boldt told him, ‘‘We need the ship if we’re to get to the ship’s manifest. Did your inspection tell you anything?’’ Boldt had arranged for Rutledge to visit the container.

‘‘Smelling it did,’’ Rutledge said. ‘‘No Porta-potty.’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘You imagine living like that for a two-week Pacific crossing?’’

Boldt repeated anxiously, ‘‘Anything at all?’’

‘‘Open water exerts its personality on anyone or anything it contacts. The waters of the Northern Pacific differ greatly from the more brackish estuary water we find in the Sound,’’ began the professor. ‘‘This can be attributed to the presence of fresh water from the dozens of rivers and tributaries within its seven hundred square miles. The rivers empty into the estuary fast enough so the estuary refreshes despite the higher saline-content ocean water in the outer strait and west of Vancouver Island. For that reason, Puget Sound plays host to several hundred specific floral and fauna indigenous only to estuarine waters, microorganisms that won’t be found a hundred miles north or forty miles west. You remember raising pollywogs in fifth grade science and how fast scum coated the walls of the aquarium? The same thing happens in the Sound or out in the ocean; it’s real apparent if a vessel is left sitting a long time—the algae and barnacles take over quickly. That algae is preceded by bacteria and diatoms that begin affixing themselves within six hours of submersion. A puddle, a freshwater pond, an estuary, the ocean, it doesn’t matter. There is a long food chain just waiting in the cafeteria line. And that gives marine biologists a trail to follow.

‘‘The same way an entomologist can study a corpse for insects,’’ Rutledge continued, ‘‘a marine biologist can study microorganisms and algae on the hull of a ship—or even a container—and estimate fairly accurately how long that surface material has been immersed, and in what kind of water.’’

‘‘A clock?’’ Boldt asked apprehensively.

‘‘Very much so. You gave our arriving students a very valuable field trip followed by equally valuable lab time. I’m grateful for that opportunity.’’

‘‘And did we learn something?’’ Boldt said.

Rutledge answered, ‘‘One man’s slime is another man’s gold mine.’’ He hesitated for effect, leaving Boldt hanging. ‘‘Several million small organisms adhering themselves in predictable progression to the immersed sides and bottom of your container. What these marine bacteria, diatoms and attached larvae tell us is that the container was immersed in brackish water—more precisely, the waters of the Sound’s central basin—for between sixteen and twenty hours. No more, no less. The accumulation of hydrocarbons from the water’s surface that adhered to the sides of the container tell us that it was at one pitch for maybe half that time—about fifteen degrees—and then took on additional water sometime around the eight-hour mark, changing the pitch closer to twenty-two degrees while increasing the depth of its draft by three feet.’’

‘‘We can use that? Sixteen hours?’’

‘‘The presence of diatoms and barnacle larvae attached over the bacterial colonies confirms this, yes. All the work done by the students has been double-checked. Sixteen to twenty hours. That’s your window of time.’’

‘‘No more, no less,’’ Boldt repeated while taking notes. ‘‘Just maybe, you’ve saved this investigation.’’

‘‘We’re not through.’’

‘‘No?’’

Rutledge challenged Boldt, ‘‘We’ve looked carefully at those bales of polarfleece fabric and the way that they were sealed, and it presents an interesting possibility.’’

‘‘I’m listening.’’

Rutledge answered, ‘‘What if this particular container was never intended to reach a dock, but was supposed to be transferred at sea? Such a transfer is exceptionally dangerous. Your organizer planned for this, bought himself insurance by using those bales as internal flotation in case a container leaked water. Those bales are effectively huge balloons.’’

‘‘He’d lost one before?’’ Boldt said, noting Rutledge’s expression.

‘‘Let me just say that even with enough flotation to keep it from sinking, even in calm waters, I wouldn’t want to have been inside that container. If they attempted this in the storm we had the other night—’’ He didn’t bother completing his thought.

‘‘If they did attempt it during the storm,’’ Boldt said, ‘‘could you tell me where?’’

Indicating the paper Boldt had provided, Rutledge said, ‘‘These are the coordinates where it was found?’’

‘‘The first is approximate, noted by the plane that spotted it. The second was provided by the Coast Guard: exact time and GPS location of the intercept.’’

Rutledge approached his maps. He wore wrinkled khakis and leather deck shoes, the same as Boldt. An expert on the waters of Puget Sound, Rutledge pointed to a spot on the surface current map nearly instantly. ‘‘It was first spotted here, recovered here,’’ he said, moving his fingertip an inch west. ‘‘Surface area exposure to wind, weight and the speed and direction of currents will all have affected its course. I can’t give you a specific location, as we have a four-hour window of time within which to work. But what I can do is backtrack its probable drift route for a period of sixteen to twenty-four hours prior to its being spotted to estimate the transfer location. We have satellite images of that storm, weather station records of surface winds, tidal charts and current information for all depths. Plenty of data.’’

‘‘So if I get a list of all container ships that docked twenty to forty-eight hours after this one was spotted—’’

‘‘And you can do that through Port Authority,’’ Rutledge suggested.

Boldt followed the reasoning to its logical conclusion. ‘‘If you can give me a probable location where the transfer was attempted, then we might be able to predict which of the arriving container ships could have been in that area of the Sound during that window of time.’’

Nodding, Rutledge informed him, ‘‘Since we last worked together, we’ve computerized much of the data. Do you remember the model in the Science Center?’’

Several years earlier, Boldt had spent an afternoon testing Rutledge’s predictions on a working model of Puget Sound that accounted for tidal flow and water salinity. Rutledge’s work had been proven flawless. ‘‘Of course I do.’’

‘‘Gone. It’s all done on computer now, and it’s far more accurate. The computer analysis group should be able to give us the exact course that container traveled.’’ He indicated a spot on the map of surface currents. ‘‘My guess is the transfer was attempted in here somewhere.’’ He turned his attention to a stack of bound volumes by his desk and, referencing the map on the wall, selected the third in the stack. The volume contained pages upon pages of computerized maps marked by time and date and containing curving arrows and numbers that clearly indicated tidal current direction and speed. Several times Rutledge referenced the wall chart before leafing several more pages deeper into the images. Then, drawing a gentle curve with his crooked index finger with its long flat nail, and tugging with his lips on the unlit pipe so that it whistled, he concluded, ‘‘Somewhere in here, is my guess.’’ He crossed to the wall chart and declared, ‘‘We’ll have the computers work the real-time data so that wind conditions can be considered for greater accuracy.’’ He stabbed the chart with authority. Rutledge was of an era and a mind to not leave everything to computers. ‘‘But whatever ship lost that container, whatever fool captain was insane enough to attempt a transfer on that, of all nights, he did so right in here.’’ The man drew a small eyebrow of an arc on the map well away from where Boldt might have guessed. He said, ‘‘He was a mile or more out of the shipping lanes.’’

‘‘Does that give me anything to work with?’’ Boldt wondered aloud.

‘‘On-board radar,’’ Rutledge said, suddenly brighter. ‘‘The Port Authority should have had him on radar, but on a night like that, the other ship captains certainly did. You talk to the watch officers of the transiting vessels. They’d have been watching him carefully, since the vessel was well outside the shipping lanes, that would have aroused curiosity. A night like that you remember, believe me. The bridge officers,’’ he paused, drawing on the pipe again, ‘‘they’ll be able to tell you who or what the hell was out there.’’