P Deutermann - The Moonpool

A Southport cop car came along on a slow roll through the neighborhood. It went past our rental, stopped, and then backed up. The shepherds got up to watch from the top of the steps. A fifty-something uniformed cop with an Irish face, a prominent belly, and sergeant’s stripes got out and put his cap on. He then walked casually up the front walk. He stepped up to the porch, patted each dog on the head, and asked if he could have a word. I pointed to one of the wicker rockers, and he sank into it with the sigh of a man who does not like to spend time on his feet.

“Sergeant Lloyd J. McMichaels, at your service, sir,” he said pleasantly. “And aren’t those lovely shepherds.”

“They are indeed, Sergeant,” I said. “Can I offer you a coffee or something?”

He eyed the Scotch briefly, smiled, and said thank you, no, on duty and all that. I then asked how I could help him.

“You would be the retired Lieutenant of Police Cameron Richter, would you not, sir?”

I nodded.

“And your two associates, also retired police officers, from up in the Triad of North Carolina?”

“Correct again, Sergeant. We’re actually all retired from the sheriff’s office in Manceford County. I formed a private investigations company when I got out, and several of my cohorts joined me when their time was up.”

“Lovely, lovely,” he said, nodding. “Sounds like an ideal setup, it does-cops working with other cops. It must save a lot of bother, not having to work for or with civilians.”

“That was the point,” I said. “We wanted to be around people who knew how to act, as it were.” The shepherds were back to lying down again, obviously comfortable with a uniformed policeman on the front porch. They always reacted well to confident people.

“Would you be so kind as to share with me your reasons for being here in our little village?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “And I apologize for not stopping by the House and making my manners. I actually didn’t think you’d care.”

He gave me a droll look over the bridge of his spectacles.

I explained who we were working for and a little bit about the case, focusing mostly on Allie’s death by radiation poisoning. He nodded when I was done.

“It was the presence of all those fierce-looking G-men in town which provoked my interest,” he said. “Southport is a touristy place, of course, although at this time of year, not many of them, to be sure. So seeing federal officers lurking about our streets, without so much as a squeak from the Wilmington office, by the by, piqued our attention.”

“I guess we all forgot our manners,” I said. “But this doesn’t involve Southport, as best I can tell. Helios is where the action is.”

“Ah, Helios,” he said. “The land of the captive suns. Does this action perhaps include a homicide, as I’m being told?”

“Are you being told?”

“Actually, no, not officially. But you know how locals are, Lieutenant. People do like to gossip.”

The EMS guys, for instance, I thought. I told him what had happened at the moonpool, and that the current thinking was that it might be Carl Trask who had drowned in the moonpool. Surprisingly, that produced another skeptical look.

I told him the Bureau special agent in charge was named Caswell, and then asked McMichaels if he knew Colonel Trask personally. He did. The colonel had made his manners some time ago when he took the physical security job at Helios. He’d called on all the local police departments and sheriff’s offices within twenty miles of Helios, and he was a prominent member of the multi-county nuclear accident response organization, as was Dr. Quartermain. Then the sergeant asked why we thought the body in the moonpool might be the good colonel. I told him, explaining the problem of making the physical identification. He grimaced, thought about that for a moment, and then asked when, exactly, all this had happened. I told him.

“That’s very odd, then,” he said. “Because I think you may be mistaken. In fact, I’m sure you’re mistaken. I saw Colonel Trask down at the Southport marina earlier this evening-he was refueling a rather large cabin cruiser, on which I believe he lives. Named the Keeper, is it?”

He was smiling now at my obvious surprise, and then he reached into his trousers pocket and produced a small envelope. “He even asked me to deliver this little love note to you; that’s how very sure I am that the good colonel is alive and well. Drop by the House sometime; we always have a pot of coffee going.”

He heaved himself out of the rocker and then paused at the top of the steps. “Dr. Quartermain,” he said. “An odd choice for the job he holds over there.”

“Because… what?” I was hoping McMichaels wasn’t some kind of closet racist.

“The word around town is that the good doctor has a bit of a gambling problem,” he said. “Of the compulsive persuasion, or so I’m told.”

“This something you know?”

“Indeed not. Just what I’ve been told by people who fancy the occasional game of cards.”

“Does the company know?”

He eyed me over those antique-looking spectacles. “Probably not,” he said. “Good night to you, sir.”

I opened the envelope after he left. Inside was a single sheet of paper with a series of numbers handwritten across the top. If Trask was trying for a secret code, he’d succeeded-I couldn’t make any sense of the numbers. The bigger news, of course, was that Trask was not the corpus delicti in dry layup at the plant. I looked at my watch-almost one o’clock. I decided to let my news wait until morning. There was no grieving widow, and, as best I knew, no clear and present danger to the plant.

The gossip about Ari Quartermain was interesting, if true, but I couldn’t see any connection between that and Allie Gardner. My brain swirled with all sorts of possibilities and mysteries, but I elected to shut down and get some much-needed sleep.

In the morning I briefed Pardee and Tony on our late-night visitor. Tony examined the note, then passed it to Pardee.

“Why would he send you a note?” Pardee asked.

“I don’t know-to let me know he’s alive? Maybe he’s heard all the rumors.”

“Or to set up a meet?” Pardee said. Tony asked for the note back and took a pencil to the numbers.

“Right,” he said. “The first set of numbers is very likely a latitude and longitude position; the second one is a date-time group, probably in Greenwich time-there’s a Z at the end of it. So: place and time.” He looked at his watch, which was festooned with time-zone dials. “Tonight, in fact, at 11:00 P.M. ”

“Good headwork,” I said. “Can you tell where?”

“I’ll need the GPS set on the boat, or at least a chart of the area. But these numbers look local-maybe in the Cape Fear estuary, or just off Carolina Beach, in the Atlantic. Did you tell him we have a boat?”

“He knows, and this makes sense, of sorts-a rendezvous at sea ought to be fairly private.”

“Unless one of the alphabets planted some devices,” Pardee said.

“Would they work out at sea?”

“They could record, but probably not transmit. But they could have placed a satellite tag, and if they did, they’ll know someone’s moving that boat around.”

“Shouldn’t we tell Dr. Quartermain?” Tony asked.

I hesitated. I felt ninety-percent sure that Ari Quartermain was not a bad guy, but the local police sergeant had sowed a seed or two of doubt. “Let’s lay eyes on Trask; that way our information will be firsthand,” I said. “Then we can tell Ari. In the meantime, let’s confirm the rendezvous point, and then we’ll start working backwards on Allie’s timeline.”

Tony went down to the marina to pull a chart so he could verify that the numbers did translate into a rendezvous position. Pardee and I called Ari’s office and asked his new secretary to see if those visitor log copies were available for us to pick up. My plan was to get those and then go into Wilmington and talk to Bernie about getting a look at her vehicle, or the report of their search, assuming they’d done one. I called our H amp;S offices back in Triboro to get the videotape Allie had taken of the legal lovebirds.