FOURTEEN
“This is unbelievable.” Ben Shepard looked up from the curled-paper facsimile sheets that Mick Shay had handed him. The brisk breeze off San Francisco Bay tugged at the papers as Ben and Mick walked along the Hyde Street Pier and drank their morning coffee.
However charmless Shay’s windowless corner in the SFPD Marine Unit offices at the Hyde Street Pier was, the bay view outside the door was unbeatable.
Mick said, “I know. But I didn’t used to be too good with the email, so some comedians rescued a fax machine from the dumpster and hooked it up in my workspace.”
“I mean what the report says.”
“The Belvedere Police Department claims it’s believable.”
“I’m no cop, but I watch enough TV to know there’s DNA anyplace people spit or bleed or defecate or shed hair. But they didn’t find any in Colibri’s house?”
Mick shrugged. “I’m not one to speak ill of another department. But Belvedere Island’s not what you’d call a high crime area. The property values over there make Beverly Hills look like subsidized housing.” He flicked his coffee dregs into the water. “The BPD’s a chief, two sergeants, three full-time officers, and a secretary.”
“You think they’re incompetent?”
Mick shook his head. “Didn’t say that. I just think an officer could put in his whole twenty at the BPD and never have to learn to spell DNA. Maybe they outsourced the job. Maybe they tried to do it on their own and got it wrong.”
“So now what?”
“So I called a SFPD lab rat I know who’s ex-navy. She’s sharp and careful and she’s a single mom who needs the overtime. Brenda’s gonna give Colibri’s house a do-over, personally.”
“When will we get the new report?”
“Depends on her duty schedule. Maybe couple hours. Maybe couple days.”
“So ’til then the Farallon body remains unidentified?”
“Yes and no. Yes we don’t know who he was. No he wasn’t Manuel Colibri.”
“But you said—”
Mick pointed at the fax. “See back on the first page?”
Ben ran a finger across the collection particulars. “This says they collected samples of possible hair and skin from the clothes in Mr. Colibri’s closet. But you think they lied?”
“Don’t know. Don’t matter. You see what it says about the trouser labels?”
“Dockers? We already knew he wasn’t flashy. What’s that tell you?”
“It tells me that sometimes a policeman can see more by looking than he can by playin’ with a chemistry set. Those pants have a thirty-inch waist and a twenty-seven-inch inseam. I asked around. Turns out Mr. Colibri stood about five foot two. That matches the pants, more or less.”
“Then at least the report’s not made up.”
“Jury’s out on that. But the floater stood six foot two. Even on the one leg he’s got left.”
“Oh. So now what?”
“So we’re gonna have to recover enough of Mr. Colibri from his car to match against the rest of his DNA, after all.”
“How do we do that?”
Shay pointed out to the Golden Gate. Lit by the morning sun, a vast ship, low in the water and tiny in the distance, inched slowly in from the Pacific toward the opening between the bridge’s orange towers. “That bulker’s just about over top of Mr. Colibri’s car right now. The flood tide she’s riding in on is the Moon tryin’ to pull the biggest ocean in the world through a channel a mile and a quarter wide and three hundred feet deep. Later today, when the tide ebbs, all the water that’s drained down west from the Sierra Nevada mountains into San Pablo and San Francisco Bays is gonna try to squeeze back out through that same funnel.”
“You’re saying examining the car is going to be harder than finding it was?”
“That side scan sonar search took a next year’s model towfish and one fella from Houston in a polo shirt who could fit all his gear on two airport luggage carts. The Marine Unit’s got its own ROV. But the ROV we need is a Tether Managed Heavy Work Class ROV with enough oomph to manipulate a two-ton dry weight object, and operators who’re used to doing it every day. Preferably premounted on a DP2 or better dynamically positioned dedicated ROV tender boat. Those are three or four times the size of Marine 1, which is the biggest boat Marine Unit’s got.”
Ben’s mouth hung open. “Is that really necessary?”
Shay crossed his arms. “Friend of mine died saturation divin’ at three hundred feet because somebody thought a robot spread wasn’t really necessary.”
“Oh.”
Shay waved his hand. “An ROV’s just a refrigerator-shaped robot with headlights and claws. A crane lowers it over the side of the boat. A pilot topside drives it with joysticks and a TV screen, like playing Pac Man. There’s more Remotely Operated Vehicles workin’ in oil fields every day than there are tourists lined up for the Hyde Street cable car. One ROV just came off hire this morning. It’s as just-right for this job as the baby bear’s porridge.”
“Great.”
“Except it’s in the South China Sea. The mobilization time and charges would eat us alive. There’s another DP ROV boat that’s fishing up a dropped blowout preventer off the bottom of the Santa Barbara Channel. That one should come available in a couple days.”
Ben’s phone juddered in his trouser pocket. Petrie.
“Yes, Mr. Secretary?”
“Maureen Dunn’s benefactor wants confirmation.”
What benefactor? “We definitely found the car, if that’s what you mean, sir. But that’s old news.”
“CNN’s quoting sources that say you found the body, too. Were you planning to tell me that, Shepard?”
“The drone found a body out in the Pacific. That was paragraph three of the summary I sent you yesterday.” Ben rolled his eyes. If Petrie read an email longer than four lines at all, he missed, on average, two out of three salient points. Ben could almost see Petrie clicking back through his mail while he talked.
“I never got—oh.”
“But that body is definitely not Manuel Colibri. That’s new as of five minutes ago.” Ben raised his eyebrows at Mick Shay and cocked his head.
Mick nodded.
“My marine liaison here confirms that. CNN’s source either jumped to a conclusion or lied. But the story is just wrong. Sir, it may take a few days to get the submersible equipment that will allow a positive identification of the remains inside the car. I was just thinking I could use the slack time to look into the suspect’s background.”
“He’s not a suspect. He’s a wrongdoer that we already brought to justice. That part of the case is closed, and it needs to stay closed. And you don’t have slack time.”
“Sir?”
“Mayor Dunn says the donor who’s bankrolling this investigation wanted quick progress on recovering the body.”
“Sir, there’s nothing more I can—.”
“Yes there is. You’re out there as a liaison. Take down this name and address and phone number. Then go liaise your ass off with these people. Persuade them we’re making progress.”
“Sir—”
“Shepard, politics is fifty percent making gridlock look like progress and forty percent ass kissing. The other ten percent is knowing whose ass to kiss. Just go do it.”
Petrie hung up, and Ben swore while he dialed the number that his boss had just ordered him to call.