Undercurrents

by Ridley Pearson

  “Yes. So we’ll get a photo. And I’ve asked LAPD’s DMV to FAX us up a copy.” She paused. “How about the dental records?” She waited. “Lou?”

  He was watching Daphne. She was standing by her door looking in the opposite direction. She returned to her office and closed the door, never looking over.

  Still staring off, Boldt said, “We’ve located the dentist. He had X-rays of some bottom molars. That’s all. Not much to go on. They should be at the ME’s by now. Dixie will let us know if they’re any help.” He stood slowly.

  “What’s up?”

  “Following through on this Rutledge thing. He may be able to tell us where our Jane Doe has been, and therefore, where she came from. Did I tell you the Coast Guard called back?”

  “No.”

  He nodded, though somewhat painfully. “A sailboard was found a week ago adrift in the Admiralty Inlet, just off Whidbey. We’re cross-checking the board’s serial number with the manufacturer’s warranty list. We may be able to identify the board.”

  “Betsy Norvak?”

  “Meet me at The Flaming Griddle at one for lunch. With Miss Judith Fuller’s apartment number. It’s over in the U section.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “I’m buying.”

  “One o’clock.” She headed back toward the light.

  “And Bobbie?” he called out, waiting for her to face him. “I really am sorry about what I said. Forgive me?”

  She nodded reluctantly and pushed her way into the busy pedestrian traffic. She might forgive him—but she wouldn’t forget for a while. He could tell by the way she had nodded.

  He was pushing away anyone who dared try to befriend him, and he had no idea why. Daphne could probably tell him why, he realized. But that knowledge didn’t help a whole lot.

  28

  Dr. Byron Rutledge was head of the Sea Grant Program at the University. His offices were in a converted brick apartment duplex across from the Marine Sciences building. An innocuous wooden plaque marked the building. Boldt parked in a sticker-only parking lot. A single, chipped-cement path led between the two-story brick buildings; Rutledge’s office was midway down the left side. An attractive secretary in her early fifties alerted the professor by telephone, and a few minutes later Boldt was shown inside.

  Rutledge fit the salty sailor image perfectly: he had a black-gray beard, craggy teeth, and narrow-set, haunting blue eyes. His hands were thick and hard. He carried a pipe as a fixture in his left hand and had a confident, winning smile. His office was small, linoleum-floored, with a single viewless window. A busy blackboard occupied the inside wall. His desk was cluttered, though he clearly knew his way around it, and he sat in a chair that allowed him to tilt and to rock. He had a squeaky voice—like that of an old man, despite his forty-odd years—and the somewhat disconcerting habit of tapping the gnawed stem of his pipe against his jawbone and scratching his beard.

  Boldt introduced himself and took a seat in a captain’s chair. What else? The overhead fluorescent lights hummed loudly. Behind Rutledge were some pieces of cheap-motel artwork depicting sea scenes. “What I’m wondering,” Boldt began, “is whether or not you can help me identify where a body entered Puget Sound, given where it came back out and how long it was in. I guess what I’m asking is how tidal currents affect a submerged body.”

  “I see. Homicide, you say? Okay. Well, a submerged body may be neutrally buoyant—that is, it is neither completely floating nor really sinking—depending on the amount of bone in the body, body fat, and so on. In a dead person, it also depends on how much gas has been generated. Any neutrally buoyant object, including a corpse, that’s in the water occupies a space just as if it were a water parcel. And so it’s embedded in the flow, and will go wherever that water parcel would go.”

  “We found the body on Alki Point. It had been in the sound for about two weeks.”

  “Alki, eh? Now that’s not surprising really. Alki tends to catch a lot of debris that enters East Passage. Let me show you something, Detective Boldt.” Rutledge had trouble lighting his pipe. He tried several times, blue sulfur smoke twisting in the air, and when he finally had it going, he rose and walked over to his blackboard, erasing a large area and picking up the chalk with the familiarity of a man who has been doing this for years. He drew several hard lines, and after a moment, Boldt began to recognize the outline as the lower half of Puget Sound, with Vashon Island in the center and Alki Point to the right, below a circle he drew for the city. He marked Colvos Passage, a narrow strip of water between Vashon Island and the Olympic Peninsula of western Washington, as well as East Passage, a wider body of water to the east of Vashon. “We look at surface flow versus flow at depth. We find that in the tidal currents, the net flow in the East Passage region is this direction—southerly. Now, I don’t mean for one tide period or an average flood, but if you average over both ebbs and floods you find both surface and depth flows—especially depth—tends to run down the estuary and into this region. When your tide is rising to fill the Puget Sound estuary, water is preferentially taken from this side,” he said, pointing to the east of Vashon Island. “It’s driven down through these lower narrows”—he indicated an area off his map, below the island—“and we get a lot of vertical mixing in here. When the flood is done and the tide starts to drop, then because of the way Point Defiance sticks out here, the water is directed this way, up Colvos Passage.”

  Rutledge continued, “Now, on the next flood, because Colvos Passage is such a narrow, restricted channel, and is very shallow, the tide moves more quickly, and as it reaches the north end of Vashon, it tends to hook around and begin the process again, in a kind of continual clockwise circular motion then, around Vashon Island. Actually, some of the surface water on the ebb coming out of Colvos Passage shoots across toward Alki. Some of it goes north with the surface currents, some of it south to recycle.

  “In your case, Detective, you say you found a body on Alki. I’d say the body may have submerged initially over here in East Passage. After five days, a week—you’d have to check with a pathologist—the decomposition would generate some gases and the body would become neutrally buoyant. Remember, the water at depth here is extremely cold, slowing decomposition. Now, the body spends time in the water flow and moves through here,” he said, once again pointing toward Point Defiance. “It lifts with the water parcel that is pulled up from depth out of East Passage, and on an ebb it enters Colvos Passage. As it hits shallower, warmer water, decomposition accelerates. By the end of Colvos Passage it is buoyant from the gases. It begins to float and is carried by surface currents over to Alki Point.” He stabbed the blackboard with the chalk. It shattered into several pieces. Sparks of white chalk cascaded to the tile floor.

  Boldt asked, “Then in your opinion, the body would have entered inside of East Passage?”

  “You said two weeks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I can almost guarantee it. If it had been four or six weeks, there is a slight chance it might have traveled from further up the estuary. Two, even three weeks, then it is more than likely the body entered below Alki, inside of East Passage.”

  “Not at Carkeek?”

  “Carkeek?” Rutledge asked in despair. “Carkeek? I should say not! The surface and depth flow at Carkeek is much the opposite. Water is drawn toward Admiralty Inlet and out into the straits.”

  “Let’s say,” Boldt suggested, “that I put a surfboard in the water at Carkeek. Where would it end up, say a week later?”

  “Ah, a surfboard is another thing entirely. Being entirely on the surface, it is carried not only by surface currents, but is greatly affected by wind. You would have to check the meteorological people for the time period in question and determine the force and direction of winds.”

  “Discounting the wind.” Boldt felt revitalized. Rutledge’s expertise seemed to be supporting the inconsistencies that Boldt had sensed.

  “Discounting? Seven to ten days? I’d put it up off
of Whidbey.”

  “That’s where the Coast Guard found a sailboard. Whidbey. The deceased is believed to have been sailboarding at the time of her death.”

  “In the sound?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s highly unlikely, Detective. Windsurfers much prefer the lakes.”

  “But if a person had an accident off of Carkeek, would the board go one way and the body another?”

  “Different directions is possible. You’re asking about surface currents versus depth, and there are too many variables on the surface. For your purposes, the thing to stress is that given the two-week time restriction, it’s highly unlikely that a body entering at Carkeek could find its way to Alki Point. It must do this clockwise loop I showed you, and if it entered clear up by Carkeek there simply isn’t time enough to make this loop.”

  Boldt nodded. “Is there any way I can corroborate that? Anything that could confirm where a body entered the sound? Saltwater in the lungs… anything like that?”

  This seemed to intrigue Doctor Rutledge. He relit his pipe and pondered the question. After a moment he spoke. “Yes, I see. Well, if the lungs were to contain water with a very low degree of salinity, then in this region there would be only two possibilities—obviously both freshwater rivers—the Duwamish or over here at the Puyallup River—”

  “Okay.”

  “But the Duwamish is really too high, you see, clear up here, to allow the body to become embedded in this southerly flow we’re talking about, so I would say if you found a low degree of salinity in the lungs it would have to be from the Puyallup.”

  “So, the Tacoma area is a possibility?”

  “Sure. What we’re talking about is what we call a distinct label. A way to distinguish one source from another. The Duwamish happens to have a higher mercury content, but these kinds of toxicants don’t tend to stay in the water. They tend to adhere to particulate matter and fall out of the water. I doubt the mercury would show up. Ah!” he coughed out. “There is a distinguishing label. The Puyallup is fed more by streams that have glacier sources, like the White River. This glacier water tends to contain very, very fine rock particle. That might be a label for you.”

  “There was some mud found on the body… mud caught in her wetsuit. Can that tell us anything?”

  “Mud? Why didn’t you say so?” Rutledge seemed to come alive with enthusiasm. He was the detective now. “Mud! That’s it exactly.” He moved back over to his crudely drawn map. He spiked the blackboard with his stick of chalk. White sparks flew to the floor. “As I mentioned before, the body would be quite low in the water at the southernmost region of East Passage, right before the water parcel is lifted up and into or through the Tacoma Narrows.” He tapped the blackboard below Vashon Island. “That’s the most likely place it will catch some mud. And we can tell whether or not it did. Years ago at Ruston, the ASARCO smelter operated a copper smelter. Arsenic is used in copper smelting, and it’s a well-known fact that the seafloor in this area is still permeated with arsenic. The arsenic was discharged into the atmosphere through smokestacks and because of northerly winds, it settled into Commencement Bay and Dalco Passage, where it still remains today. If that mud contains arsenic, then you can prove beyond a doubt that the body passed through the Dalco Passage area, confirming what we’ve hypothesized here. And if it passed through Commencement Bay or Dalco, and was in the water two, even three weeks, then we know there’s no way it entered as high as Carkeek Park. It would have had to have been somewhere in here.” He pointed. “Somewhere in East Passage.

  “I’ll tell you how you can confirm it, Detective.” He waited until Boldt looked up from his notes. Ever the professor. “There’s a working model of the estuary at the Poly Pacific Science Center over in Seattle Center. Building number four, I think. We could use dye and neutrally dense wax to determine very closely what the exact progress of your body was. I could call over there and arrange for one of my colleagues to meet you, if you think that necessary.”

  “I’d like that very much, Doctor.”

  ***

  At one o’clock, Boldt picked up Bobbie Gaynes at The Flaming Griddle, explaining that they didn’t have time to eat. His stomach penalized him for the neglect and he chewed down three antacid tablets, much to Bobbie’s horror. On the way over she explained that her efforts had netted them Fuller’s apartment number. Boldt was pleased. In truth, he had expected no less.

  The Seattle Center was an odd assortment of buildings and kiddy rides, set in a park atmosphere on the edge of the sprawling downtown business center. Its most famous resident was the Space Needle. A monorail from downtown led to the park. It passed overhead as the two detectives entered the Center and approached a directory.

  The Poly Pacific Science Center charged an admission of two dollars and fifty cents. Boldt tried to bypass the fee, but the man in the glassed-in booth would have none of it. A group of sixty grade-school children were lining up behind Boldt so he went ahead and paid the five dollars and asked for building number four. He and Bobbie circumnavigated some reflecting pools and eventually came upon a steel door that looked like the side entrance to an auditorium. On the door in bold lettering was NUMBER FOUR.

  Inside the open area were dozens of scientific user-interactive teaching modules. Some used computer screens and electronic cuing, others were reminiscent of science demonstrations from junior high. On the far side of the building, steps led up to a walkway that overlooked the model of Puget Sound. Retired Chief of Staff of the United States Coast Guard Richard Melnor was on hand, a nametag pinned to his sport coat. He was big man with a happy face and large hands he used to demonstrate every point. He was awaiting Boldt, who leaned over the rail to shake hands and introduced Bobbie as his assistant.

  The model was twenty feet square, made of formed fiberglass. The water in the model duplicated the estuary’s salinity, diluted in appropriate ratios by freshwater running from copper tubes that could be seen at the mouth of each of the dozens of rivers that fed the system. At the far end of the model, an electronic machine depressed a flat metal arm into the water out where the Pacific Ocean would have been. The tidal generator’s plate then retracted, representing the ebb flow. Melnor said, “Every three seconds is an hour, every seventy-three seconds a day. In seven hours, forty-nine seconds we can duplicate an entire year. But from what Rut told me, you’re interested in East Passage and Colvos Passage.”

  Boldt confirmed this with a nod.

  Two teenagers came over and rang an ear-piercing nautical bell not five feet from Melnor. The one boy rang it three times and Melnor called out harshly, “Young man, if you ring that one more time, I’m going to ring your bell,” and the boys backed away and wandered off. “Kids,” he grunted.

  “He said something about dye and pieces of wax,” Boldt prompted.

  “Yes,” Melnor confirmed, picking up a bottle of blue dye marked SALTWATER. “Mind you, this model is so small, we only get the gross effects of net flow.” He withdrew a bit of blue dye via a long eyedropper, inserted the device deep into one of the channels off of the bay, and squirted the dye into the model. “You can see,” he said, “that at extreme depths there is very little flow. I’m using saltwater dye because Byron said you were interested in neutral buoyancy, and the freshwater dye would rise to the surface. Now, if I elevate this slightly,” he said, squirting out more dye, “you can see that the net flow at depth is incoming. And here, at the surface, the net flow is outgoing. This is a general rule of the tidal system here. Since we are talking about a body, it is more than likely the body would initially go to depth.”

  “And the undercurrents would carry it toward Tacoma,” Boldt stated.

  “Tidal currents,” he corrected. “Depending on where it entered. Yes.”

  “Could you show us the surface flow by Carkeek Park, please.”

  Melnor nodded, switched bottles, and squeezed another blue dye onto the surface by Carkeek’s approximate location. The dye hesitated and then moved q
uickly, dissipating past Whidbey Island, drawn toward the ocean.

  “And at depth there?”

  Melnor used saltwater dye at a deeper depth and the blob hung in the deep channel, edging slowly to the south. Too slowly, Boldt thought, realizing Rutledge’s explanation of time scheduling had been accurate. The blob had barely moved, even after three minutes—over two days.

  Melnor said, “I’ve got some wax balls here we use to demonstrate the effect of the currents on boats, debris, and that sort of thing. Byron recommended we run them through the system starting at East Passage and clock their movements for a two-week period. We have a Polaroid here we use to record the actual movements. If you’ll just give me a minute…” He hurried off.

  “Nice man,” Bobbie said. “Knows his stuff.”

  “Look there,” Boldt said, checking his watch and pointing to the fading dye by Whidbey Island. “There’s her windsurfer. That’s where the Coast Guard found it. And there—that blob of ink. Her body has hardly moved. Rutledge is right. The body didn’t enter at Carkeek.”

  Bobbie questioned, “So, even if Norvak had a windsurfing accident up by Carkeek, which someone evidently went to a great deal of trouble to make us believe, she couldn’t wash ashore at Alki.”

  “Not in two weeks. The currents move too slowly.”

  “So Jane Doe isn’t Betsy Norvak. She’s someone else.”

  “At least there’s a possibility the body isn’t Norvak’s. And there’s a possibility someone wants us to think it is. And that leaves us with two conceivable scenarios.” He caught himself about to lecture her, and instead asked for her opinion.

  Bobbie thought aloud, speaking slowly and choosing her words carefully. “If the Jane Doe corpse isn’t Norvak, then it’s possible someone killed Norvak and wants us to believe the body we found at Alki is hers, when in fact it isn’t. I suppose Norvak might not be connected to this at all”—she noticed Boldt’s skeptical look—“except that someone went to a lot of trouble to make it appear Norvak disappeared windsurfing, when, in fact, we now know it’s unlikely she did. We have the burned clothing, the van with prints indicating it was last driven by a man, the Rockports in the garage….”