P Deutermann - The Moonpool

Which could still be all about testing his security crew over at Helios, I thought. “Does that mean he’s a fairly competent seaman?”

Cap’n Pete nodded. “Keeps his charts and safety gear up to date, handles that old dog like a pretty woman. Knows the tide tables. Can print out his met charts right on board. Refuels the moment he comes in. Runs a tight ship, he does.”

“When he goes, he go into the river estuary or out to sea?”

“Ain’t nobody knows,” he said. “Or asks, for that matter. Here we go.”

The main piers were open to pedestrians, but the finger piers where the boats actually tied up were blocked by chain-link sections and key-carded. His skeleton key opened the gate and bypassed the electronic devices.

The Keeper was second outboard, her bow pointed out. I’m no expert, but even I could see that she’d been well maintained. Her brightwork was polished, the hull paint clean, and the bitter ends of the mooring lines were coiled into tight white spirals. There was none of the usual recreational junk I’d seen on the other boats-bloodstained coolers, rods and lines, bait baskets, dirty clothes-anywhere in evidence. There was a small inflatable dinghy hoisted on davits above the main cabin, and even the davit sheaves were polished. The high bow had a reinforcing knife-edge on it to ward off logs and snags in the river, and this was polished, too.

Cap’n Pete asked me to wait on the pontoon pier and then walked up the short companionway to the fantail of the boat. He banged his key ring on the railing and called out for Trask. There was no reply. He went aboard through a gate in the railing, tried the aft cabin door, found it locked. He knocked on the door and called again. Silence. He looked at me and shook his head.

“If he’d had a heart attack and was inside, what would you do?”

“Call 911,” he replied promptly, and then realized what I was asking. He said, “Oh,” and went forward, peering into the cabin windows along the main deck. Then he went up a side ladder to the pilothouse area, found a door unlocked, and went into the interior of the boat. He was back in about a minute.

“Ain’t nobody home,” he said. “And that’s about all I can do, legal-like.”

I thanked him for looking, gave him one of my cards, and asked him to call me if Trask showed up.

He examined the card and then declared that he’d give it to Trask, when and if he showed up, and that he would call me, assuming he wanted to. I smiled and thanked him again. Cap’n Pete looked out for his permanent people.

I called Pardee from the car and told him I’d found the boat but no Trask. He reported that they were about a half hour north of Southport. He said Moira was a happy camper. She had purchased not one but two computers, and apparently the university had continued to direct-deposit her salary during the time she’d been “away.” The Octopus covering its bets. Interesting program.

Pardee had a question. “Seems to me,” he said, “that Trask would be all over a major problem in the plant. You thinking what I’m thinking?”

I told him it had certainly crossed my mind, but until those daring divers got there, we wouldn’t know anything.

I just made the Southport-bound ferry, parking on the very back of the boat. The ferry pulled out, but then slowed way down. The captain made an announcement on the topside speakers that the ferry at the other end had been delayed by a mechanical problem and that there would be a thirty-minute hold. We were all invited to enjoy the scenery while he milled about smartly in the river.

I got out of my car and walked up through the rows and lanes to the superstructure to get some fresh air. I left the shepherds in the car; the last thing I needed was for Frick to see a seagull flying by and make one of her impulsive bad judgments. Other people had also gotten out of their vehicles and were enjoying the afternoon, which was cool, clear, and breezy.

Then I saw a familiar face. It was Anna Petrowska’s number two at the moonpool. I didn’t remember his name, but I definitely recognized his face. He hadn’t seen me, or at least I didn’t think he had. I wondered what he’d been doing over in Carolina Beach when there was a dead body in his moonpool. He was talking to someone on a cell phone, so I went around to the other side of the superstructure and made a call of my own.

Ari answered on the second ring. “Anything?” he asked.

I told him about my visit to Carolina Beach, and then asked if he had the divers lined up.

“There was a crew finishing up a project up at our plant near Raleigh; they’ll be here in about an hour.”

“And then?”

“And then we’ll have to go through all the safety checks and briefs, set the bridge up so the handlers can do their thing, and all that. Two hours or so, then the guy can actually go down. But.”

“But?”

“They tell me a minicam won’t be of much use for making an ID-the water’s too turbulent around the stack. And they can’t get that close. There are several fairly young bundles in that stack.”

I thought about that. “Well, then, call the local cops and get some of their drowning-incident grappling gear. They don’t have to know where you’re going to put it.”

He laughed, although it was the short bark of an unhappy laugh. “It’s not like they’ll be getting it back,” he said. “Come by in an hour; maybe you’ll see something interesting.”

“Can’t wait,” I said. Having seen some floaters before, I had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

I joined the small crowd standing on the platform above the moonpool. It was, if anything, hotter and more humid in the chamber, and our paper moonsuits didn’t help. A steel, gantry-like motorized bridge was positioned out over the pool. There were four handlers on the bridge, all concentrating on the stream of bubbles foaming up beneath them and a bundle of cables, tubes, and smaller wires leading down into the water to a dark, helmeted shape. A compressor was clattering away on the side of the pool. Two nervous-looking Brunswick County EMS techs were waiting by the main access door, with a body bag folded discreetly at their feet.

Dr. Anna Petrowska was sitting at a console inside the control room, wearing the same kind of headphones that one of the techs out on the bridge was wearing. Her hair shimmered in the fluorescent light, but the steel glasses she wore took all the pretty right out of her fiercely concentrating face. Three more of her people were watching assorted instruments. Ari, dressed out in a white suit, was standing at the railing with some of his people. He walked over when he saw me come in.

“Can they get to it?” I asked him.

“Don’t know yet,” he said. “We’ve had to change the cooling water circulation around the fuel bundles. That’s why it’s so warm in here.”

“How does this work?”

“One diver on a platform that can be raised and lowered from that bridge. Another diver in contact with the diver who’s down. The guy in the water is covered in TLDs. They get readings every five feet, and that portable out there computes the allowable stay-time.”

“He seen anything useful?” I asked.

“Only that the body is stuck headfirst in the fuel assembly matrix.” He looked at me. “That’s the hottest part of the pool. Not good.”

“How the hell…?”

“The suction grates for the water circulation system are directly under the fuel elements.”

It was bad enough the guy was dead. But sucked down into the glowing water around the fuel elements? I shivered, even in the hot air. “You get grapples?” I asked.

He pointed to the bridge, where I saw the usual drowning retrieval gear and a frightened-looking cop in a white suit trying his best not to look down into that glowing water. Then one of the bridge techs was talking to him.