Skeleton Sea

CHAPTER 12

Oscar Flynn lived in a cave.

His house clung to the side of the hill overlooking Morro Bay, a multi-level place of redwood and tile, a place with terraced gardens and patios and a million-dollar view. In the late afternoon light, the place looked golden.

And yet, once through the front door, the visitor entered a cave. There were no windows. The walls were faux rock — worse, painted black. The floor was real slate — criminally, painted black. The vaulted black ceiling was inset with dozens of recessed lights, which cast a starry glow over the room.

Flynn flipped a switch on a control box near the door and the lights went up so bright I flinched.

The cave took on a more domesticated look, with leather seating and glass tables and a huge flat screen TV. Expensive domesticated.

Flynn faced us. Arms folded, feet apart, like some massive sentry. I thought of Morro Rock. He was well over six feet, well over two hundred muscled pounds. He wore a snug long-sleeved T-shirt and cargo pants and high-top sneakers — all in black, which streamlined his bulk. He wore a black goatee, which gave his round face some contour. His black hair was buzz-cut nearly to the scalp. He said, gruffly, “Show me your credentials.”

Walter shot me a look. I shrugged. He pulled out his wallet. I opened my purse and followed suit. We held up our driver licenses. We are who we said we are.

Flynn scowled. “That’s no good.”

Walter extracted a business card from his wallet. “Will this do?”

Flynn read the card. Unimpressed. “You carry nothing else?”

“Such as?”

“A professional association identification. Something prestigious. I carry mine in my wallet.”

“I'm afraid my semi-prestigious membership cards reside in my desk drawer. Back at our laboratory, in Bishop, on the eastern side of the Sierras. Bit of a drive.” Walter worked at a smile. “I was under the impression that Detective Tolliver vouched for us.”

“He did,” Flynn said. “And he directed me to your website.”

“Well, then.”

“People say anything they want on a website. If you carried a professional association card, that would lend some credence to your website claims.”

Walter’s eyebrows lifted. “Is this really necessary?”

“I don’t let laymen near my equipment.”

“PhD, geology,” Walter said, thinly. “And a master’s in criminalistics. UC Berkeley.”

“I’m a Stanford man. My degrees are microbiology and computer science — double PhD. Master’s in mechanical engineering.” Flynn turned to me. “You?”

“Me? I went to UCLA. Double master’s — geology and criminalistics.”

Flynn said, “I see.”

I suppressed a smile. Nothing to see here. I wasn’t going to be impressing Oscar Flynn with my credentials. Perhaps if I pulled out my library card I could truly piss him off. Bad idea, though. We needed access to his machine.

“Mr. Flynn,” Walter jumped in, “there has been a disappearance, possibly a death, possibly a murder — the victim’s boat was found adrift this past Sunday. Three days ago. I assume you’ve heard the news.”

“What’s that got to do with my machine?”

“We’re trying to shed light on events by analyzing some samples of sand, and unfortunately the equipment we have at hand is insufficient to the task. Your scanning electron scope would be of great help, Mr. Flynn.”

“It’s Doctor Flynn.”

“Ah.” Walter nodded, correcting himself. “Well Dr. Flynn, might we use your SEM?”

“You may, Dr. Shaws.” Flynn abruptly turned and walked away.

I threw Walter a wink, and whispered, “He’s all yours.”

We followed Flynn across the cave room to a hallway that had normal walls. It led past three closed doors and a circular stairway with metal treads that rose from a level below to a level above. It looked like something from a firehouse. I thought, this is a pricey playhouse and Oscar Flynn is an overgrown kid. With a surly teenage attitude.

The hallway turned left and dead-ended at a steel security door. There was an access-control panel alongside. Flynn flattened his palm onto an optical scanner.

I wondered what he was protecting.

There was a click and the door sucked open and we followed Flynn inside.

No cave here. The room was blinding white. LED cool-white lights on ceiling tracks. Gloss-white paint on the ceiling and walls, white laminate floor, white workbenches. No firehouse toys in here. Cool nerd toys. Microscopes — digital, video, ocular. Spectrophotometer, refractometer, various meters, Bunsen burner. Big freezer. A centrifuge. An autoclave. Glove box and a fume hood. Steel racks lined one wall, stacked with beakers, flasks, tubes, funnels, pipettes, specimen dishes, and on and on.

I blurted, “What do you do?”

Flynn spun on me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I gestured at the room, “what kind of work?”

“I consult.”

“As do we,” Walter said. “Forensic geology, as my business card says. And you?”

“For corporate,” he said. “For government.”

I asked again, “What kind of work?”

“Work nobody else can do.” He turned and led the way across the lab.

That, frankly, gave me the creeps. As we followed I peeked through a partly open door off the lab onto another room. Band saw, drill press, workbench piled with sheet metal. What, I thought, in hell is it that you do?

We came to the far end of the lab, where the scanning electron microscope reigned.

Flynn took a seat in front of the control console and started up the system.

Walter took our dishes of duffel-pack sand from his field kit and set them on a table. “I’ll prepare the samples myself,” he said. “Chain of evidence.”

Flynn frowned at the sand, like he’d never seen sand before.

“We’ll be looking at the quartz grains.” Walter glued the grains onto the specimen stubs, then put the stubs into the sputter coater, which looked somewhat like a microwave oven with a big jar on top. But the grains would come out cooked with an ultra-thin coating of gold, making them conductive for the electron beam.

When the samples were coated, Walter moved on to the heart of the SEM, the electron column. It was a tall metal cylinder with an electron gun at the top and a specimen chamber at its base. Walter opened the chamber door, placed the stubs on the specimen stage, closed the door.

Flynn watched his every move.

I said, “Don’t worry about your machine. Walter’s done this a thousand times.”

“I’ve done it two thousand,” Flynn said.

Mighty delicate ego you’ve got, Dr. Flynn.

Flynn smoothly took over now, working the dials on the console, pumping air out of the vacuum column. As he waited for the ready light, he asked, “Where’s the sand from?”

Walter and I exchanged a look. How much to reveal? Our working code is don’t reveal details about a case to anyone not authorized, but the corollary is don’t withhold details if that would be counterproductive. I considered Flynn. Stonewall him and he might very well shut off his machine and tell us to go home. Walter gave a brusque nod. Answer the question. Price of admission.

I said, “It came from a duffel bag belonging to the man who disappeared at sea.” I added, “Name of Robbie Donie. Do you know him?”

“I don’t associate with fishermen.”

“Oh? How did you know he’s a fisherman?”

“Tolliver,” Flynn said. “Tolliver told me.”

Walter and I exchanged another look. Made sense, but it wouldn’t hurt to confirm with Tolliver.

Flynn asked, “What good is the sand?”

I said, “It might tell us something about what happened. At the least, about Mr. Donie’s recent whereabouts.”

Flynn turned to Walter. “You have fingerprints? DNA?”

“According to Detective Tolliver, nothing helpful,” Walter said. “Then again, that’s not our bailiwick.”

“Just sand.” Flynn snorted.

Walter smiled. “There’s poetry in sand.”

“Poetry? I don’t know what you mean. I don’t like poetry. Poetry hides things. It’s full of words that don’t mean anything. It’s trying to trick you. If you don’t understand what it means then you’re not in fashion. But you’re supposed to pretend you understand just so they’ll accept you. I don’t use tricky words. If I tell somebody something, it’s certain. I don’t care if I shock them. I don’t hide behind poetry.”

“In this case, Dr. Flynn, poetry is apt. Perhaps you’re familiar with William Blake’s words? They’re quite famous. To see a world in a grain of sand.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“I think,” Walter said, “it means we can find large truths in the tiniest of things.”

“That doesn’t mean anything either.”

“Then let’s put it this way,” I said. “One grain of sand might solve a case.”

Flynn turned to me. Locked eyes with me. I thought, this guy’s not just socially awkward. This guy doesn’t like what we’re doing. Doesn’t want us here. Then why agree? Flynn’s eyes, black as his cave, gave no answer.

Walter said, “Dr. Flynn. The ready light has stopped blinking.”

Flynn spun to the console and began working the knobs.

We waited in silence as the beam traveled down the column through magnetic lenses to focus on the stage, to scan the samples, to compile the electrons into images and send them to the monitor.

And when Flynn brought up the first image onscreen I felt a little thrill.

Always happens. The SEM can magnify a specimen many thousands of times, showing every bump and pit, every twist and turn. Nothing is hidden. You see down to the micro-world and what you see doesn’t look like what you knew. A piece of my shirt would look like a plate of noodles. A salt crystal would look like a Mayan temple. I’ve seen thousands of SEM-scapes and every time it’s like learning a secret.

The quartz grain was a vast landscape of canyons and buttes and peaks.

Walter eyed the image. Grunted.

I knew that grunt. Satisfaction.

Flynn said, “What’s it prove?”

Again, Walter and I silently consulted. We could try to bullshit Flynn with a vague it’s beach sand but the guy had a double PhD from Stanford and a world-class lab. A lab we might need to borrow again. We silently agreed.

Walter explained. “You see how the triangular pits form a pattern of Vs? That likely comes from violent grain-on-grain collision in an aqueous environment.”

“It came from the ocean? That’s what you found out?”

“Oh,” Walter said, “we can say more than that. The abundance of pits tells us these grains were whacked about in a high-energy environment.”

Despite himself, Flynn leaned forward to stare at the image. “You mean waves?”

“Yes. These grains likely came from a beach with high-energy waves.”

“Likely.” Flynn snorted.

“Highly likely.”

“Likely you can find this beach?”

Walter just smiled.

Flynn spun the brightness-control button and the screen went dark.

Like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, I thought. Too late, Mr. Flynn.