Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

“Are you saying I’m easy?”

“Confess, before this, you just wanted to get into my pants, but now you don’t want to take advantage of the mentally challenged, right?”

“Hold on… I just wanted to get to know you.”

“Now you’re lying.” She smiled and slapped his shoulder. “Come clean.”

“Well, of course, I had thoughts.”

“I’m flattered, but your attention held no evil, ulterior motive—just sex on your mind, eh sailor?”

“OK, I can’t deny it, but why not? I’m single, you’re single—you are single, aren’t you?” His eyes met her emerald irises.

“Yes, I am single.”

“And you kissed me, remember, and you invited me here to your room, as I recall.”

“I did, and I stand guilty of manipulating you.”

“I confess I’d been wanting to hear that invitation to your cabin since we boarded, but now…”

“It’s important you get the full story, David; of all the divers, I chose you to watch my back—I trust you alone.”

“So now what?”

“You need to read the journal! Read Declan’s words, I implore you.” She poured him a second drink.

He started reading the 1912 journal from page one.

Tim McAffey’s dead features were intact beneath the bark-hardened exterior, at least enough to identify him, and still no sign of the other man, Francis. Also lying here was the mysterious, ancient wolf-like creature with its enormous haunches and hair as thick and matted as a woolly mammoth. The creature was stiff as old tree bark. It looked like a once muscular, energy-charged, huge, long dead and dehydrated beastie of fable.

All this lay before them. Thomas Coogan had returned with his professor and mentor, Dr. Enoch Bellingham and a tall, imposing Chief Inspector Ian Reahall.

Reahall quickly sized up the situation as Ransom studied him and the professor. Bellingham looked uncomfortable, shaky—his thin frame hardly capable of holding his coat on his shoulders. In fact, the good doctor, perhaps in his late fifties, looked sickly and appeared somewhat corpselike himself, but he at least had his color. Dr. Bellingham or Dr. B as everyone was calling him tentatively knelt over McAffey’s dessicated body.

Ransom quickly concluded that Reahall, a man slightly larger than Ransom himself and looking like he enjoyed three meals a day, was most assuredly given to a bad habit he’d found in most police investigators—a preference for wild conjecture over fact. Ransom recalled fashioning the facts to fit the crime; it was a dangerous practice and could lead a man down a primrose lane faster than falling down a rabbit hole.

“Enoch,” Reahall said to Dr. Bellingham and Ransom noted the two were on a first name basis. "The dead man must have been attacked by the missing O’Toole who appears to’ve used a blow torch as his weapon to so disfigure a man! You know, the sort used at the shipyards by the riveters and steel workers.”

While it sounded just dandy, Ransom knew the local constable was drawing at straws and hoping for quick corroboration from the doctor.

“We find O’Toole,” continued Reahall, “and by God, we find the weapon, case closed.” Reahall’s self-assured tone had the effect of getting a nod from everyone except Ransom and Declan, and why not? It answered the unsettling thoughts, the unfamiliar odors, and unheard of sights before them; in a word it made sense—converted the unknown to the known and so fended off unreasonable fear.

Usually a good approach, but in this case, Ransom knew better, and so he guessed, did Declan. The details simply did not fit with Reahall’s ‘facts’. Still, the others quickly grasped at the proffered straw.

“And what of the beast?” asked Ransom with a kick at the animal corpse which he immediately regretted as he shouted in pain shooting through his toe. Once he regained his composure, he said to his Belfast counterpart, “Constable, really how can a torch do this kind of damage to a man? It’s not burns; you’d smell the flesh if it’d been caused by fire—and look at the man’s clothes! Untouched by fire. No, this… this is something I’ve never encountered, sir. Have you? Have you really?”

“I know of you, sir. Mr. Private Detective, and I know you were once yourself on the Pinkerton payroll—as strike breaker, correct?”

Like most men, Reahall’s tone made it clear that a strike breaker was a creature of the lowest depths, worthy only of contempt, but Ransom had only hired on in Dublin for a month so as not to starve. The Constable’s done some digging about, like a pig at truffles, Ransom thought but said, “Wyland, sir, Wyland’s the name, but that’s hardly the question before us, inspector.”

“Constable… here in Belfast it is constable. I understand until recently a select few detectives in Chicago were called inspectors—masters at their work, I understand?”

Ransom fought an urge to scratch his ear or head, thinking if not careful down to each word that this man smelling of cheap cologne had him dead-to-rights. “I wouldn’t know about that, Constable!” He gave out with a laugh. “A-And no, sir, never with the Pinkertons.”

“I have a report of a Wyland in Dublin at a mine there working for the Pinkertons.”

“I applied once, but flatly turned down. Something about my drinking turned up in a background check, and those Pinkerton executives are sorely conservative fellows. Wouldn’t have the likes of me, no sir, so—” he continued to fabricate. “Not me, no. This old man…”

“I see, you’re just a private investigator.”

“Rather poor one at that these many years. Work for hire, it is. I work for citizens who need a wee bit of help is all—like the lads here.” He indicated Declan and Thomas.

“Ahh, provide a bit’o muscle from time to time, eh?”

“Leverage… clout when needed.”

“Yes, clout it is, I see,” replied Reahall, a man Ransom’s height and girth. Ransom imagined it would be a close fight between them in a ring or back alley. “There’s now a fourth missing man too close on for comfort.” Reahall indicated to Ransom to step off with him to speak in relative privacy.

“Another man gone missing?”

“Yes, well, not a man so much as a Pinkerton agent!” Reahall laughed at his own joke before calming enough to continue. “Man’s name is Tuttle. One of a handful guarding Titanic at holding slip 401. Harry Tuttle—ever any dealings with him?”

“Tuttle, Tuttle? Hmmm… no, can’t say as I have.”

“Tuttle?” gasped Thomas, overhearing. “Declan, you remember—”

“Tuttle, yes, the night Uncle went missing, this fellow Tuttle was at the forecastle. Shooed us off from where we stood at the base of the ship near the open cargo hold.”

“You spoke to him?” asked Reahall.

“Yes, I mean no but—”

“Which is it Coogan?”

“I mean, we told him we were looking for my uncle.”

Declan added, “We were about to step onto the ship in search of Mr. Fiore when Tuttle threatened us.”

“Threatened you?” Reahall grew excited at the term.

“He had two others with guns all pointing, so we got out of there fast.”

“Did Tuttle look upset, make any strange remarks, what?” pressed Ransom.

“We couldn’t really see him or read him,” replied Thomas.

“He was on the topmost deck and we on the dock,” explained Declan. “And it was dark.”

“I argued with him.” Thomas waved his hands in the air. “He called my uncle a drunk.”

Declan leaped in with, “Tuttle said he thought the watchman might be at the nearest watering hole as he put it, implied since Thomas’ uncle was Irish, he’d be after a drink—along with all the other Paddy’s.”