ELEVEN
By the time Marine 1 came about for the last time, with the towfish behind, far below, and set to record at its highest resolution, both the Golden Gate and the city beyond the bridge sparkled as their lights winked on in pre-evening twilight.
Ben peered out at the lights, arms crossed, and suffered buyer’s remorse at his decision to record this last pass of the day at high resolution. Life had taught him that gambling was foolhardy. Of course, life had also taught him that playing it safe was even worse.
Two minutes later, the sonar man whistled. “Mr. Shepard, next time you visit Vegas, take me along.”
Ben stared at the screen as hair rose on his neck. There was no need to overlay a photo of the Galvani. Its lines shone in ghostly, mottled brown silhouette as clearly as any stylist’s drawing.
It lay on its driver’s side, sunk perhaps six inches into the bottom silt. Both passenger side wheels were missing and suspension bits and disc brakes dangled in the empty wheel wells. The driver’s side wheel wells were obscured by the silt, so the other wheels’ fates were uncertain, and the battery tray floor pan was marred by an enormous dimple just left of its center.
Otherwise, the car could have been resting on an auto show stage, but turned up to display its aerodynamic underbelly.
As the boat ran out the rest of the track, Shay said, “The body’s—.”
“Still inside.” Ben pointed at the frozen image. “It has to be. Look. These doors are intact. And closed. The windows, windshield, too.” He asked the sonar man, “Is there a way to look inside?”
The rep removed his glasses again, rubbed his eyes, and shook his head. “Solid surfaces reflect sound energy. Far as the towfish knows, windows, especially coated with precipitated solids and bottom slime, which these probably are already, are as opaque as metal door panels.”
When the boat came about again, Shay and the rest of Marine 1’s crew began reeling in the towfish while the sonar man disconnected the cables that sprouted from his laptop and its pedestal. Then he coiled them and packed everything away in a foam-lined plastic case.
Ben asked him, “What do you make of the detached wheels?”
“Well, I’ve seen it once before. Pickup ran off a bridge and sank in a river two years ago. Hit the water in a perfect belly flop. The suspension and tires took so much of the shock that they disassociated from the chassis.”
“What happened to that driver?”
“Not really my department. But the wheels didn’t take enough of the shock. I heard when the divers got to the body he looked like a building fell on him. And that bridge was only sixty feet above the water.”
As the MLB passed beneath the Golden Gate, Ben craned his neck and peered out the side glass and up at the span.
The Haji Hilton had five flights of stairs, and its roof had surveyed out at sixty feet above ground.
Ben had read that a twenty-story building could fit between the Golden Gate’s deck, at midpoint, and the water. Maybe it was just as well the sonar couldn’t look inside the Galvani.
The sonar man went aft to check on his towfish and passed Shay as Mick entered the enclosed bridge, unsmiling, but waving his phone like a trophy.
Ben wrinkled his forehead. Except for the puking, this had been a very good day. So far. “Now what?”
“The drone we hired? Found a floater.”
“I don’t think we’re looking for a floater anymore, Mick.”
“True. But it’s gonna take time and money to get down on that car and sort through the nuts and guts inside.”
“Okay. For the sake of argument, why might this floater be Manuel Colibri?”
“Currents, mostly. That’s why we started looking for the car seaward of the bridge. This body was in a tide pool in the Farallons. Mostly-uninhabited islands thirty miles west of here. Jumpers that don’t get fished out right beneath the bridge get carried out there, if they don’t get eaten or drift south towards Monterey. And the timing’s right.”
Ben closed his eyes. “We don’t have to go pick up this corpse, do we?”
“Nah. The Coasties had a boat in the area. They fished him out an hour ago.”
“Him?”
“That’s about as specific as the description gets.”
Mick handed Ben his C-phone. “Read it for yourself.”
“One leg severed?”
“Lotta sharks in the Farallons.”
“What’s SMD?”
“Severe Marine Depredation.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Crabs have a taste for eyeballs. And they love cheek flesh.”
Ben winced. “Do they eat the teeth, too? Or can we match dental records?”
“Mr. Shepard!” Mick rolled his eyes and waved a hand as though flicking flies off a dead body. “Easier these days to just match DNA. The tests run eight-fifty a pop, but this case isn’t overtime parking. If we get a sample of Mr. Colibri’s DNA, and it matches up to this body, your mystery’s over.”