Skeleton Sea

CHAPTER 29

I banged on Walter’s door and called out, “Wake up! We’re going on a treasure hunt!”

It took him a full minute to emerge from his room, venturing into the common room, looking around for the cause of the commotion. He wore his black fleece bathrobe. His face was wet from a pass at his bathroom sink. His thinning hair was wetted down, renegade bits sticking out hither and thither.

He cleared his throat and said, “A what?”

I slid my open laptop across the dinette table to face him.

He said, “Is there coffee?”

Of course there was coffee. I’d been up for an hour already. Last night I'd returned from the Keasling hacienda deeply fatigued — from a morning of diving and an afternoon of lab work and an evening trying to cajole Lanny into telling some truths. Walter had turned in early, leaving a note saying he was getting too old for extreme sports and twelve-hour work days. Old, hell. I was young and I was getting too old for this. I'd crashed right to sleep. And then woke up before dawn and went straight to the French press.

I said, “There is coffee.”

He vacillated between the kitchenette with the French press and the table with my open laptop, angling for a look.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll bring you a cup.”

“You are an angel,” he said. “I’m in your debt.”

“I’m an over-caffeinated enthusiast short on sleep because I woke up thinking about sand dune restoration and I spent the last hour online Google-earthing and I'd like to get going and so I'm more than happy to bring you coffee. No angels or debts in play.” I gave him a little nudge, toward the table. “Just please check out the geography.”

We took the road southward that looped around the bay and turned off onto another road, a narrow winding road that terminated in a parking lot. This early in the morning, even with the sun shining brightly, the lot was empty. We parked and studied the Google map on my tablet and then grabbed our packs.

A decomposed-granite trail led into coastal scrub.

It felt good to hike, feet on solid ground, breathing sweet air without needing to suck on a regulator. Yesterday’s dive had been an otherworldly experience. Today I slipped back into my world.

It was easy walking for a quarter mile and then we left the trail and struck out for the dunes and the bay that lay ahead.

We reached the southern end of the bay, where it pinched off alongside the white rolling dunes. From here northward, the land was a long narrow finger that separated bay from ocean, a stretch of high dune ridges and low rolling sandy humps and hard-pack sandspit.

The finger extended about three miles northward alongside the bay and then the channel and it terminated at the mouth of the harbor.

We weren’t going that far.

Last week I’d kayaked from the channel, following Lanny deep into the back bay, beaching my kayak below an elephantine dune. This morning I’d located that spot on Google Earth. I’d mapped it. I’d studied it. And I’d found what I was looking for.

No need for a kayak, on this trip.

We followed the silty ribbon of beach that bordered the dunes. To our left, the dunes humped up, in places carpeted with green scrubby bushes. To our right, the bay began to widen. The gray-green water was still, placid.

No kayakers.

No dune hikers.

Just us.

In short order we came to a wider flatter stretch of silty beach, below an elephantine dune.

I halted. “We’re here.”

“Are you certain?” Walter eyed the scene. “After all, it was night time.”

There was an edge in his voice, and the unspoken corollary: it had been night time and I was alone and I had on a hunch followed a mysterious kayaker and I was damned lucky that I had not gotten myself into trouble. Now, in the bright light of day, I could see what an excellent landing this place provided. The tide was receding, widening the available space, but even on a high tide there would be plenty of flat land upon which to beach a kayak. And the beach led onto the picture-perfect dune, the mountain of sugary white sand that rose higher than its neighbors. It was the kind of dune that turns you into a kid again, that makes you want to scramble up and then roll down screaming and getting sand in your ears. I wondered if the Sea Urchins had come here as kids. If this white elephant had been their favorite dune.

In any case, last week it had been Lanny Keasling’s favorite dune.

I said, to Walter, “I’m certain.”

The unspoken corollary: I’d been rash, fair enough, but the mysterious kayaker was Lanny and I’d gotten a general idea of what he had done with the red float. I’d had a bit of a scare when Fred Stavis showed up, overly polite but in the end harmless. What I had gotten, at the dune, was a clue. And then last night in the Keasling hacienda Lanny had let slip a more telling clue.

Walter grunted. “Lead on.”

I started up the dune.

Walter followed, grumbling about getting sand in his sneakers.

Huffing, we trudged our way to the summit.

We were met by a welcome cool breeze, scented with salt air.

It was as I remembered: a broad expanse of hummocky mounds and then a shallow descent onto dune waves, with the sea winking in the distance. Of course last time the sea had shone by moonlight, and this morning it shined bright blue in the sun. Excellent visibility.

I rotated slowly, looking along the seaward dunes, then looking along the transverse line of the dunes toward the north, toward the harbor, then looking along the line south in the direction we had come, where the dunes gradually disappeared into bluff tops that overlooked the sea.

This entire sand dune ridge, running south and north, was patched by shrubs and grasses and succulents. It was a fragile construct, stabilized by vegetation against the onslaught of winds and sea spray and rains.

Here and there, it needed a little help.

In particular, a swathe of dune vegetation was undergoing rehabilitation. Don't you know about not walking on little plants? Lanny had said last night. You don’t walk on them, and you don’t dig there.

This morning, with the bird’s-eye view of Google Earth, I had spotted one area marked by thin wire lines.

Now, I put my eyes on the scene and looked for the fence.

Lanny had appeared from that patch of spiky dune bush, just over the summit.

Of course, that did not mean he'd buried the float there. He'd surely been able to hear us, me and Fred Stavis, calling his name. He might very well have zigged and zagged before making his appearance.

Walter unslung his pack and dug out the binoculars.

“Never mind,” I said, “I see it!”

It was several yards to the north, a strand of wire that caught the sunlight, the rest of the fencing hidden from my line of sight by the hillocky nature of the dune crest.

We tramped up and over the offending hillock and came to the fenced-in swathe of baby plants. The fence was an affair of gray wire strung from metal eyebolt post to post, low to the ground, a fence of suggestion: this area is off limits.

I grinned, and shot a glance at Walter. He was frowning.

“What?” I said.

“This is it?”

“Unless there’s another section that’s fenced, that didn’t show up on Google Earth. There could be. It’s a snapshot in time. But this one’s right in front of our noses. And this is a hop, skip, and a jump from the place where Lanny appeared.”

“You're certain?”

I was certain. “Okay, I’m Lanny. I come here to bury the red float. Why here, all the way into the depths of the bay? I could have chosen a dune closer to the channel, to the kayak shop, so I wouldn’t have to paddle so far. But instead I come here. Let's say that’s because I used to come here as a kid, because I know the lay of the land, because it’s night and I seek the familiar. And maybe I come here because I’ve been here recently enough to have seen the vegetation rehab project — to have seen the fencing. And you know what? A fence is a crackerjack landmark in a field of dunes. So I choose the spot to dig in relation to the fence, so that I can return if need be to find the spot again.”

Walter said, “A spot outside the fence, correct?”

“Definitely. I’m deeply sensitive to the environment, I would never set foot inside the protected area. In fact I’m appalled at the suggestion.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you dug inside. I was implying that, if you did indeed choose a spot in relation to the fence—outside—we are talking about a good deal of territory.” Walter put his binoculars to his eyes.

“Well yeah.” I took another long look at the fenced area. It stretched in both directions from the crest, toward the sea and toward the bay. “But I must have chosen a spot near the top. Otherwise why climb up to the ridge? I mean, I was up high enough to overhear voices that night, and I came along the ridge crest, more or less. Surely I wouldn’t have…” I trailed off. I had to admit that even up high it was a lot of territory.

“If I were Lanny,” Walter said, still glassing the fence-line, “I would choose a spot based on the geomorphology.”

I said, with an edge, “Who made you a geologist, Lanny?”

“I don’t need to be a geologist. I just need to look for a good place to dig a hole.” Walter lowered the binoculars. “I’ve made a fine start. I’ve chosen a parabolic dune, after all.”

I said, “Parabolic, Lanny? As in an arcuate feature?” I examined the sweep of the dune. I saw it, the U-shaped depression, the form of the parabola with its wings pointing upward and its convex U pointing downward. I said, “You take my breath away, Lanny, with your amazing expertise.”

Walter cast me a grin.

I said, slightly ruffled, “I presume you're going to tell me where Lanny would choose to dig?”

“I can make a prediction.”

“You're going to predict where a man with a trowel would choose to dig? A non-geologist?”

Walter took a trowel from his pack. “I am now a man with a trowel.”

“You're a man who knows what parabolic means.”

“Yes I am. You run off kayaking to the dunes at night and return with an interesting tale, and I start to study dune morphology.”

“You didn't mention it.”

“It wasn't pertinent.” He raised the trowel. “Now, it is. Now I can tell you that geomorphic features are predictable in their development. Parabolic dunes often develop from small depressions called blowouts. A blowout is a wind-scoured gap in the dune ridge. Blowouts are most common there because the dune crest is the site of maximum wind acceleration.”

“Well then. Somewhere near the crest.” At least I’d got that bit right.

“A man with a trowel could do worse than choose to dig in a place that is already in a deflationary form.” Walter tucked the trowel under his arm and cupped his hands. “A place with established structural integrity, where the walls won't collapse as the man is trying to dig in the loose sand.”

“The blowout.”

“Which Lanny Keasling stumbles upon in his search for the perfect place to bury the red float. Which he calls a hole. Which suffices.”

I nodded. “But we’re not going to wander around until we stumble upon it, because we know where to look. More or less.”

“With a dash of luck,” Walter said. He shouldered his pack. “Shall we go see if we can find a developing blowout?”

We found two.

One was a broad saucer-shaped depression. The other was a deeper narrower cup-shaped depression.

We selected the cup because it was adjacent to a fence post, because that was one more point of reference, should Lanny wish to find his burial site again.

We did not have to dig far. Troweling down half a foot brought us to a piece of black plastic, which upon further excavation turned out to be a garbage bag wrapped around a cylindrical object.

We swapped trowels for latex gloves.

We removed the bag from the hole and set it on the sand.

We slipped off the rubber bands securing the bag.

Still on hands and knees, we opened the bag wide and peered at the object inside.

It was a red float.

Walter said, softly, “Well well.”

Yeah.

It was real. I had theorized for so long, never entirely certain that the red thing I'd glimpsed in Joao Silva's mesh bag on board the Sea Spray—the thing Lanny had squirreled away in his duffel bag — was indeed a float. When we found the yellow float in Robbie Donie’s shrine I had thought that’s the shape of the thing Lanny took—but I was going on supposition and memory. One solid thing I’ve learned in my work is that memory is a slippery fish. And easily shaped by desire. I had wanted to fit the mysterious red object into the parameters of the case. Once we discovered the yellow float, the glimpsed object became in my mind a red float.

I'd lucked out.

The red float was real.

Walter said, “Let's have a look.”

He carefully slid aside the edge of the plastic bag, laying the float bare in the bright light of day. It was molded plastic, about two feet long. Structurally, it was like its cousin the yellow float, a standard marine float, so common you could surely find its like on a standard working boat in the Morro Bay harbor.

But there were differences. First, most obvious, was that the red float did not have a nylon rope attached.

Second — a much larger difference — was the nature of the color.

I said, “This float’s been painted.”

“Indeed,” Walter said, “and a rather slapdash job of it.”

Indeed. Either the paint had been applied hastily, or the painter was unskilled. The red coating was streaked, splotchy. Darker here, lighter there. And in one spot, I saw, the painter had missed a spot entirely, a thin strip with no red coating at all. The strip was yellow.

Somebody had covered a yellow float with red paint.

I didn't get it. “It's a molded-plastic float with molded-in color. Why apply a different color coating — even sloppily?”

Walter got his hand lens and bent to study the paint under the twenty-power lens. And then he sat back and folded the lens. He gave me a twenty-power look, that face he wears when he's circling a hypothesis. “It’s a somewhat granulated paint.”

“I know zilch about paints. Granulated or not.”

“Consider the color.”

I looked at the float, red as that bat-shaped starfish in the tide pool outside our motel. That color had lived in my dreams. “Yeah?”

“I know enough about paints to say that the red iron oxide hematite is often used as a pigment in red paint.”

I hadn't known that. Now I did. How about that — hematite in the rub-off on the Outcast and the Sea Spray, and used as a pigment here. I wondered if this was going to qualify as an aha moment. Neither of us said the word. Best to get this sucker back to the lab and confirm.

I still wanted a look at the eyebolt end of this float. The yellow float had a rope attached and I wondered why this float did not. I took out my hand lens and made my own small discovery. There were a few scratches on the eyebolt end and I thought perhaps the float had caught on something scratchy and then been yanked free and the rope fastener had broken.

I showed Walter my discovery and presented my small hypothesis.

“Plausible.”

“Good. Because I have no freaking idea about your discovery — why this float's been painted.”

He said, “We'll find out.”

We returned to the lab high on discoveries and vexed by questions and put the X-ray diffractometer to work.

The first answer came easily and made a certain sense. The scratches on the base of the float contained residue of stainless steel, a composition that included nickel and chromium — marine grade.

It was not out of the question that this float had been attached to something like that instrument cage we had found on the reef. Something with a sharp edge or two.

We moved on to the red paint.

Walter took a scraping and put it through the XRD and confirmed the identification of the powdery granules as the iron oxide Fe203. Hematite. It was an aha moment until the XRD identified a second component in the paint, sodium polysilicate. Googling identified that as, among its other uses, an adhesive agent that was soluble with extended duration in water.

This float was getting odder and odder.

Why use a water-soluble binder in a marine paint?

Further Googling led us to a class of marine paints called anti-fouling. They used biocides that were slowly released to repel organisms that liked to attach to all sorts of substrates in and around the sea. Hence the need for a water-soluble adhesive.

Not only that, red iron oxide primer was used as an anti-corrosive coating before the anti-fouling paint was applied.

We could have made sense of our paint, but for one thing: we did not have a biocide.

What we had was a puzzle.

I gazed out the glass door at the blue sea, and then back to the red float on our worktable. “So what's the point of this paint, with a temporary adhesive? If not anti-fouling?”

“I'd like to put that question to a forensic paint specialist.” Walter picked up his cell phone.

“You have somebody on speed-dial?”

“I'm phoning Doug, first, to bring him up to speed.”

“Maybe he'll know about weird marine paints.”

“You put marine and Doug Tolliver in the same sentence and who knows what pops up.”