Port Starbird (Storm Ketchum Adventures) (17 page)

Kari and the Captain promised they wouldn't. "What about the other part, though, losin' the house? It'll probably get around anyways," the Captain asked.

"I don't care anymore who knows about that," Ketch replied. "Everyone will know when it's floating out in the sound. But I'm not going through all this storytelling again. I'm not like you," he said, directing this remark to the Captain, "I find it exhausting. So if someone else wants to tell it, okay, and do it when I'm not around."

Exhausting, yes - but also cathartic, Ketch realized. Finally telling his story
to Kari and the Captain hadn't changed anything, as he'd known it wouldn't; but he was gratified to know he had their empathy and their support, and he felt like a great weight had been lifted from him. The difference between these folks and a therapist was, these people cared about him, and that was a world of difference to him. Also, they were cheaper. He wished he'd done this sooner.

He wondered how things might have turned out if he'd had friends like these a few years earlier
- when, he knew now, he'd been in real danger of running completely off the rails. The divorce, still a source of angst though many years had passed; the estrangement from his son; the loss of his parents and his dog, all in the same year; his career, such as it was...

He'd gotten hired as a researcher at a pharmaceutical company after the Ph.D., and had gradually moved away from the lab and into clinical data analysis as h
e'd developed his computer skills, initially as a hobby, along with that then-emerging technology - and despite his value to the company (though admittedly self-perceived), he along with a goodly number of the other employees had been overworked and underpaid, and basically treated like dirt in many respects by the soulless corporate machine. There'd been some casual friends, but he'd been essentially alone at that time and just watching the wheels go round and round, as John Lennon had put it; he'd felt like a powerless bystander just growing a little older every day as things around him kept changing for the worse, if they changed at all - and there came a point when he just hadn't been able to stand it all anymore.

He
might have had a nervous breakdown or something enough like one, or a severely deep depression at least; but his innate obstinacy had fortunately precluded thoughts of suicide. He'd be damned if he'd ever kill himself; his attitude was, if I'm feeling bad enough to think about doing that, then I want to know who it is who's making me feel that way - and that's who I'll kill. But instead of going postal, he simply dropped out. He'd been there long enough to retire early and start collecting a pension, so that's what he did; and when he did, he moved to Avon.

Kari's
siren voice put an end to his introspection; and he decided was glad to be here now, despite everything, and he had no desire to be anywhere else. "Do you think bein' charged with those felonies you talked about might slow Ingram down?" she asked. "Maybe he won't be able to afford to keep on with his project if he gets a big fine. Maybe he won't take your house!"

"I thought about that - and in fact, I pointed that out to him this morning, but he didn't seem impressed. Investigations and
legal actions take time, and even more so once the lawyers get involved, so it probably wouldn't happen soon enough."

"Huh, that's too bad."

"You know, gettin' that house in the water is only the beginnin'," the Captain observed. "You're gonna have to do a lot more work on it to make it livable, you thought about that?"

"Yes, I know. I have a rather large to-do list already for that," Ketch said. "But I decided to be practical about it. I might not be able to go on living there, as you mentioned earlier, so before I spend a lot of time and money on it, first I'll just do some minimal things to make it 'campable', so to speak. Like maybe get a chemical toilet,
a generator, a battery-powered lantern, some of those big jugs of water..."

"Hola, amigos! Permission to come aboard, Cap'n?"

"Mario! Come on in," the Captain said. "Oh hey, you got Len there with you too? Well, you boys just grab yourselves a cool one and set on down, we'll make room."

"Sure we're not interruptin'? Okay, thanks!"
Len said, "We heard y'all bustin' a gut over here, and we wondered what's so dang funny?"

"Ah, well, you had to be there," the Captain said. "Say, bring me another one a them bottles if you don't mind, I'm too
fat and lazy to get up since I ate all that good stuff these other two here brung me. And speakin' of, there's some left over if you're in the mood for some munchies. Which, knowin' you two, wouldn't surprise me," he insinuatingly added.

"Thanks,
man, don't mind if I do," Mario said, sampling a hush puppy.

"So Ketch, what you wanna do 'bout th
em floats?" Len asked. "Today was my last day on the job, I quit that ole mess."

"Well, you can get started whenever you're ready. Is tomorrow too soon?"

"Heck no, we can do that, right bro?" Len said.

"Sure, why not?" Mario agreed. "But we still need some equipment, right? So how about if we stop by in the mornin' and check things out
? And then we can go get what we need and get to work in the afternoon, or Saturday, dependin'."

"That sounds g
reat - and thank you again for doing this, I really appreciate it. I'll go to the ATM in the morning so I can give you cash for whatever you need. But Captain, that reminds me, I was thinking I should pass on Saturday's dive charter, with all this going on. Are you okay with that?"

"Oh hey, sure, no problem. Th
em particular boys don't really need a divemaster, and I can get by without a mate since they ain't gonna be fishin'. They're locals, so I can get one a them to handle the lines and such."

Ketch and Kari stayed through one more drink and then made their farewells. When they were about to get in her car to return to the house, Ketch said, "It's such a nice night
, it's too bad we can't just walk back. I think Jack would enjoy it, too, after lying around on the boat all evening."

"
Well, why can't we? It's not that far, and we can get the car tomorrow. You could walk me back, or you could drive me back, or I could walk back by myself... Anythin's possible!" she laughed.

"
You're right. Okay, let's get walking then," he said, and they left the car behind. "Do you really believe that anything is possible? I think there are things that are obviously impossible - I'm not going to sprout horns before we get back to the house, for example - but I think I believe it on a grander scale. I agree with Douglas Adams."

"Huh? What do you mean?
Who's that?"

"
Douglas Adams wrote some very clever books. Have you heard of
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
? That's my favorite of his. Anyway, Conan Doyle, in his Sherlock Holmes stories, said that when you've eliminated the impossible, what remains must be true, however improbable. Well, Adams added a corollary to that. He said you should also consider that when you've eliminated the improbable, what remains might be true, even if it seems impossible."

"I see
- I think. Tray deep, O Wise One. Hey, speakin' of Sherlock Holmes, you really are a sneaky little shit, you know that? I can't believe you were off doin' all those crazy things all week long, and I was stayin' at your house and I didn't have a clue!"

"I know, and again, I'm sorry about that."

"Oh please, will you stop sayin' that? I think you've said 'sorry' more'n enough times already for one night. I'm over it, mostly anyway. I won't hold it against you - not 'til we get home, anyway, if you catch my meanin'."

"Subtlety is not one of your
many talents, my dear."

"Nor one of yours, sir. I know you were jealous."

"Jealous? Of what?"

"All that detective stuff you did,
followin' folks around, hoodwinkin' Mario so you could get to his GPS, takin' all those pictures, gettin' that dirt on Ingram - that all happened because you followed Mick, which you did because you were jealous."

"I was curious, not jealous."

"Uh huh, you just keep tellin' yourself that. Meanwhile, mister noir detective, I was wonderin' before, how did you distract Mario so you could look at his GPS?"

After a short internal debate, Ketch decided to tell her. What the he
ll, he'd told her everything else. "I got him to roll some joints for me."

"Ha! Are you kiddin' me?"

"No. Why don't we try one tonight and see what happens? I mean, since we're being so adventurous already, walking home and all. But please, tell absolutely no one where I got them. I don't want to be responsible for getting Mario busted for that, either."

"
Okay, you got it. Wow - you really are breakin' bad these days, huh? I like it!"

"Anything for you, m
ilady," he said - and meant it, for now anyway.

~  ~  ~

They both arose at the same time the next morning, at Ketch's usual hour and more than usually a bit on the silly side, and drove the dog to a north end beach this time for a relatively short, but to Ketch still soul-soothing, sunrise hike. They parked the truck at the Avon Pier and picked up some takeout breakfast from there to bring back to the house, to avoid missing the promised arrival of Mario and Len. Ketch had made a quick stop at the ATM and then dropped Kari off at the boatyard to pick up her car on their way back, and she'd gone to the shop after breakfast. Ketch and the dog were now relaxing on the front deck, Ketch with his laptop and the dog with a new filled bone to gnaw on.

He'd originally wanted to generate glossy photos from his digital files to send to the authorities, as
neither the pictures he'd taken on Roanoke nor the underwater ones had looked that great when he'd printed them out. But he'd learned he'd have to drive to another town to have that done, which he didn't want to take the time to do this morning since Len and Mario might show up at any moment. He still wanted to make his report and get his evidence into play as soon as possible, though. Who knew, maybe it might help stall Ingram - though realistically, he doubted it. But it was worth taking the shot.

The images looked fine on the computer screen,
and considerably better than they had on the printouts he'd left behind in Ingram's office during his hasty retreat yesterday morning - which he could now chuckle a little about as well as the others, he discovered. He'd made the right choice last night.

He knew from his earlier research that he could
submit an incident report online, which would certainly be faster than snail-mailing one anyway, and maybe he could attach the picture files to it. But he'd wanted to do it anonymously, and they'd want his e-mail address and other personal information. Well, he could easily create a new e-mail account on Google with a fake name and phone number, right? They could trace the IP address back to him if they really wanted to, though - unless he used Tor, free open source software that provided anonymity, which he also didn't have yet. He could download it sometime, but he didn't feel like doing it at the moment. They'd need to get a court order to identify him, and would they go to all that trouble? He didn't think so.

But if they tried to call and couldn't reach him, they might think it was just a hoax, some smartass kid horsing around on a computer. If he didn't name Mick and Mario, what would be the harm in letting the authorities know who he was?
His friends now knew what was going on and he didn't care if Ingram found out about it, as he'd already told the man what he was going to do and it shouldn't come as a surprise to him; and if Mick ever got caught and found out who had reported the violations, he could legitimately feign innocence. Okay then, he'd play it straight.

He navigated to the NRC link he'd bookmarked. The National Response Center, he read, was now the
national contact point for reporting all illegal discharges of all potential environmental pollutants anywhere in the United States and its territories. It in turn reported to numerous federal agencies including the White House and Homeland Security if necessary, and worked with the Coast Guard and the EPA. It looked like this outfit did a heck of a lot more as well, including getting involved in national disasters, transportation of munitions, and in fact just about everything under the sun that might have anything to do with the environment, national security, public health issues, or any combination thereof. The NRC had a National Response Team (NRT), Federal On-Scene Coordinators (FOSC), Regional Response Teams (RRT), an EPA Response Team (ERT), a Coast Guard National Strike Force (NSF), and a slew of other sub-entities. The superabundance of ominous-looking acronyms made him a little leery; he wondered how much of a shitstorm he might be about to unleash.

It had to be done, though. And it also said here that he should expect to be contacted with an official NRC Report Number within thirty minutes after submitting an online report, via e-mail it sounded like.
He found a snail mail address as well, and a toll-free number - but online was definitely the way to go for him, he decided, so he clicked on the link to the online reporting app and got started.

It didn't take long
; except for some text to describe the event, he only filled in the starred fields. He didn't know what kinds of materials were in the drums, nor the quantities, so that made things easier. He was of course able to give the coordinates for the dumping location, thanks to his stellar sleuthing, and he named Tibbleson Construction as the offender. He entered 'UNKNOWN' for the name of the vessel, and gave no names of any of the individuals involved; they could find out who ran things at Tibbleson pretty easily on their own, he figured, and as he'd decided earlier, he wasn't going to be the one to implicate Mick and Mario. He was disappointed to find no way to attach his picture files, but there was a box where he could make additional comments, so he used that to state he had pictures and could e-mail them if necessary.

So, that was that. He pushed the button and
launched what he'd done out into the ether. Now all he could do was wait. He reminded himself  to remember to check his e-mail later.

Before he
shut the laptop down, he decided to take another look at the pictures. The faded stenciling on the stern of Mario's boat had definitely been indecipherable in the printouts, and he hoped the same would be true when the pictures were viewed on the screen. Ah, good - you couldn't make out the name of the boat that way, either.

Glancing through the rest of the gallery, he came across an anomaly in one of the photos that h
adn't caught his eye in the lower-quality printouts. It looked like one of those larger 85-gallon salvage drums had something with what appeared to be orange and yellow stripes on it sticking out from under the lid. He didn't recall noticing it either when he'd been at the bottom of the ocean taking the picture, but that wasn't strange as everything had been shades of blue and green to his eyes due to the absorption of the red and yellow wavelengths of the sunlight at that depth; those colors would have only been visible to him during the momentary camera flash and if he'd shined his dive light directly on that spot, which he apparently hadn't.

Now what could that be? He zoomed in some on it and was able to determine
that it wasn't a discoloration or label on the surface of the drum, nor did it appear to be any marine organism that he knew of. It was kind of wavy and floating maybe an inch or two from the side of the drum - that is, its free end was not attached to the drum, and the other end was definitely protruding from under the ring clamp that surrounded the edge of the lid. It wasn't very thick, and it looked too flexible to be plastic unless it was something like a household trash bag; but he'd never seen orange and yellow striped trash bags. Maybe a plastic shopping bag? But then it probably wouldn't be undulating in the current in that manner. Could it be part of a flag or a sign, a piece of detritus that had blown or fallen into the drum while it was being sealed? It couldn't be paper; this particular drum had been there long enough to accumulate accretions, and a loose piece of paper like that wouldn't have remained intact for very long down there. So it was probably some kind of fabric. Part of an article of clothing, perhaps, like a scarf or a shirtsleeve? Or a bathing suit? Or maybe a dress?

A thought struck him then that made him s
it up straight in his chair and almost caused him to drop the laptop - which startled the dog, who he had to take a moment to reassure. "It's okay, boy, I'm okay," he said as he gave the dog a distracted rub on the head. But no, it couldn't be - could it? That was crazy. Or was it? Could Mario have been dumping these drums every now and then for about the last, say, two or three years? Had he even been in town then? Ketch tried to remember. He doubted that, in the vast expanse of the Atlantic, someone else would have chosen the exact same dumping spot. Or maybe that drum had been stored somewhere for a while and then dumped into the sea later on.

Ingram's second wife had disappeared
about three years ago, around the time Ketch had moved to Avon, and no one had ever been able to find out what had happened to her. No one even knew for sure whether she was alive or dead - she'd simply vanished into thin air. Was it so crazy to think her remains might in fact be inside that drum?

Ingram certainly had a hand in whatever went on at Tibbleson, so he could have arranged it; and though i
t would probably be hard to stuff a body into one of the 55-gallon ones, Ketch imagined it could be managed with a salvage drum. It would be a pretty effective way to dispose of a body; who would ever find it at the bottom of the ocean? Well, Ketch had, maybe - but if whoever unloaded the drum there had had half a brain and gone farther out to deeper water, no one would have ever found it. Maybe Mario or whoever it was hadn't known what was in the drum, and had just dumped it along with the rest of one of their usual loads. He hoped Mario hadn't known, if it had been him.

He checked the time on his laptop - 10:38 again.
That was when he'd awakened the morning after his little house party, at the beginning of what had turned out to be a rather wild week for him - but also a strangely satisfying one as well in certain respects, such as the one he'd gone beachcombing with early this morning. It seemed like such a long time ago... That one he'd gone to the beach with just might be almost worth all the other aggravation, he thought - and it occurred to him that this picture might be worth even more.

He thought of
an observation someone had made in some book he'd read that true happiness generally seems to go hand-in-hand with pain. Maybe that was really so, and maybe it was necessary; maybe if there was no strife or struggle to stimulate awareness, you couldn't really tell whether or not you were happy. Would a victory like the one this picture potentially represented be as savory without the occasional defeats in the mix to spice it up?

Well, we'll soon see
what that picture's worth, he thought. He tried to quell his mounting excitement for the time being and focus on the here and now. Len and Mario must be keeping banker's hours, he guessed, and it was getting hot out on the deck, so he started thinking about going back inside and giving the Captain a call.

Just then an old pickup truck
pulled into the driveway, and the two of them stepped out and waved hello. As the dog descended the front steps to greet them, Ketch shut down his laptop. He'd have to see what Kari and the Captain thought about his theory as soon as possible, that was for sure; but for now he'd better settle himself down and deal with these guys. He tried to banish the thought of Mario as an accomplice to murder from his mind, and forced a smile onto his face.

"Hey, Ketch," Mario called. "Sorry we didn't get here sooner. Guess we're not much good at bein' early birds.
"

"Yeah, we don't catch too many worms down there at the boatyard," Len grinned.
"But don't you worry, we'll git 'er done."

"I'm sure you will
," Ketch said. "I'm not worried, and thanks again for coming. Let me show you how the blocks work, and then we can take a look under the house."

They discussed what additional materials they might need
in order to attach the foam blocks to the underside of the house. Mario thought if they had three people, two could hold a block up while the third screwed it in, but Len disagreed, citing the cramped work space and the difficulty of holding a heavy weight over one's head for any length of time.

"Besides, no offense intended, but ole Ketch here is gettin' a little gray around the gills," Len said. "He
probly shouldn't be doin' this kind a work, and I don't imagine he wants to neither - that's why he hired us."

You got that right, Ketch thought
; thanks for saving me yet again. "No offense taken, and you're right, I don't think I should get too physically involved with this," he said. Not to mention he was chafing at the bit and had no desire to spend any more time than strictly necessary on this at the moment. "I think you should get a couple of sawhorses and try using two hydraulic jacks with wood planks above and below, to hold up the blocks one at a time. I saw some reasonably priced jacks down at Ace Hardware a while back; it would be cheaper to just buy them instead of renting. I have enough extension cords, but I only have one power drill, so I think you should buy another one. If they don't have the lumber we need at Ace, you can get that at Dare Building Supply in Buxton."

"All right," Len said. "We might need some more lumber
than that anyway. I'm thinkin' we shouldn't be screwin' these things into your floor, so I think we should put up some more crossbeams here and there. We can pick up some two-by-fours and four-by-fours and cut 'em to fit. You got a saw?"

"I have a circular saw
, and hammers and nails," Ketch said.

"We might have to take the sides off your storage area under there to fit all those blocks in," Mario said, "but maybe not. Anyway, you okay with that, Ketch?"

"Yes, but save that part for last. Now let me make you a list and give you some money. I think you should go get what you need and then try to install one block. If everything works out, you can do more after that, or you can come back tomorrow instead, whatever you want to do. Lastly, tell me what you like and I'll go pick up some subs for lunch."