The First Victim lbadm-6

by Ridley Pearson

  ‘‘Good to be here, Stevie.’’

  ‘‘The INS is the gateway through which every legal immigrant must enter this country,’’ she said. ‘‘It also maintains its own, independent federal police force at our borders and ports of entry. You detain how many individuals a year here in the Seattle area?’’

  Talmadge’s tan spoke of a low golf handicap. He said, ‘‘We detained approximately twenty-two hundred individuals in the last calendar year-but let me just say-’’

  ‘‘That says plenty,’’ Stevie interrupted, setting the tone for the interview. She would resist allowing Talmadge to stray and change the topic the way the media coaches taught. ‘‘And of those, approximately how many arrive by container or ship?’’

  ‘‘A third to one-half, perhaps.’’ He glanced imperceptibly off camera toward Brian Coughlie.

  She stated, ‘‘So, of those detained, seven hundred to one thousand illegal immigrants-political refugees-enter this city as stowaways or human cargo or slaves.’’

  ‘‘Political refugees account for only about ten percent of all illegal entries,’’ he corrected.

  ‘‘And what percentage of all illegal entries are in fact detained by your service?’’

  ‘‘We have no way to measure that.’’

  ‘‘An estimate?’’ she asked.

  ‘‘If we were fifty percent successful we’d be pleased.’’

  ‘‘Less than ten percent of drugs coming into this country are seized,’’ she challenged, reading from her notes. ‘‘Why would your results be significantly higher?’’

  ‘‘Drugs can be hidden in a ski pole, can be left on the bottom of the ocean for a month, air-dropped into national forest. We’re dealing with human beings,’’ he reminded.

  ‘‘So if your twenty-two hundred is fifty percent, there are roughly five thousand illegals entering via the Northwest each year. And yet the national number is more like three hundred thousand, isn’t it?’’

  ‘‘The majority of which-some eighty percent-come across our southern border.’’

  ‘‘Mexico.’’

  ‘‘From Mexico, yes.’’

  ‘‘And here, Asians account for most of the illegal immigration, do they not?’’

  ‘‘That’s correct.’’

  ‘‘Chinese?’’

  ‘‘A large percentage are from mainland China. Yes. Vietnam. Indonesia.’’

  ‘‘Political refugees,’’ she said, returning to her earlier point.

  Talmadge pursed his lips and cocked his head. ‘‘We screen carefully for those individuals with legitimate claims to political persecution.’’

  ‘‘And yet a recent ruling by Congress allows detained illegals only nine days to confirm their status as political refugees, isn’t that right?’’

  ‘‘Six working days,’’ he corrected.

  She attempted to contain the gleam in her eyes from having purposely overstated the waiting period, luring him into the correction.

  ‘‘After which they are deported and returned to their country of origin-whatever their fate there.’’

  ‘‘That is generally the procedure, yes.’’

  ‘‘And to qualify as a political refugee these individuals, these refugees, have to be able to prove they have been tortured.’’

  ‘‘Tortured is a strong word. Either physically or mentally abused,’’ he corrected. ‘‘Or at substantial physical risk if they remained in-country.’’

  ‘‘As I understand it,’’ she went on, ‘‘select INS agents are receiving special training that has itself come under fire from both Capitol Hill and the psychiatric community. Your department employs how many such specially trained interviewers?’’ she asked.

  ‘‘Three,’’ Talmadge replied with another glance to Coughlie. ‘‘Only a small percentage-ten percent perhaps-of all illegals claim political refugee status.’’

  ‘‘Then you support the new policies?’’ she tested.

  Talmadge returned quickly, ‘‘Congress has enacted one of the most far-reaching, sweeping overhauls to the Immigration Act this century, making our borders more welcoming than they have been in over seventy years, while reducing paperwork and increasing efficiency on the part of this agency. As to those people out there perpetrating these crimes against their fellow human beings, all I can say is that such behavior will not be condoned by this administration, nor by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. We will ferret out those responsible, and we will see them in prison for their actions. I should add that the Seattle police are currently conducting an active homicide investigation into the three deaths aboard that recent container. Let this serve as notice: The black market in human cargo is over. Immunity will be offered to the first few willing to expose this trade. The rest are going to prison.’’

  Stevie then understood Talmadge’s agenda. He had used the broadcast to soapbox for informants.

  The floor director signaled Stevie, who wrapped the interview quickly.

  ‘‘Clear!’’ the floor director shouted. ‘‘William, camera two, two minutes.’’

  Talmadge stood and unclipped his mike. He brushed himself off as if he’d eaten a meal.

  Brian Coughlie stepped up to Stevie. ‘‘Good questions.’’

  ‘‘Vague answers,’’ she replied.

  Talmadge winced a smile and headed for the exit; he clearly expected Coughlie at his side.

  ‘‘Dinner?’’ Coughlie asked her.

  ‘‘No thank you,’’ she answered.

  ‘‘An off-camera interview? ‘Source close to the investigation’?’’

  ‘‘You’re getting warmer,’’ she said.

  ‘‘I can provide more specific stats,’’ he offered.

  Stevie told him, ‘‘I’ll call you.’’

  ‘‘Good,’’ he said.

  He reached out and they shook hands. Coughlie kept hold of hers a moment longer than necessary. She didn’t like the feeling. She wouldn’t flirt to get a story. She turned and walked toward the anchor desk, confident that Brian Coughlie was watching.

  CHAPTER 9

  Seven years had passed since Boldt had consulted Dr. Byron Rutledge at the University of Washington’s-‘‘the U-Dub’s’’-School of Oceanography. Rutledge, a physical oceanographer who had a long history in the department, was a leading authority on the tidal currents of Puget Sound and had once assisted Boldt with a homicide investigation involving a body washed ashore by those currents. As North America’s largest estuary, Puget Sound experiences unusual but highly predictable tides and currents, including some of the fastest surface currents in the western United States.

  Rutledge was of medium build and height. With his carefully trimmed Abraham Lincoln beard, his ice blue eyes and his smoker’s pipe, he looked the part of salty dog. The office was cluttered with paperwork: graphs, charts and reports occupying most horizontal surfaces. Its walls were adorned with engravings of square-riggers, brigs and whalers, as well as a chalkboard and a rack of maps that retracted like window shades.

  ‘‘You know,’’ Rutledge said in a smoky voice, ‘‘about a year after we worked together, a prosecutor from Skagit County asked me up there to work another corpse. I had a hell of a good time with it. I’m almost ashamed to say so. A woman’s remains were found in Bowmans Bay west of Deception Pass, pretty much like the one you had on the beach. This one turned out to have been thrown off Deception Pass bridge by the husband.’’

  ‘‘A conviction, wasn’t it?’’ Boldt asked, recalling the sensational trial.

  Rutledge’s teeth, discolored from the pipe smoking, looked like a rotting picket fence. ‘‘You’re looking at the state’s expert witness. That boy won himself a cell for thirty-one years. His people challenged my findings on appeal and lost again.’’ The smile was contagious. ‘‘So this time,’’ the man said, referring to the phone call that had arranged the meeting, ‘‘it’s a shipping container.’’ He nodded. ‘‘You wouldn’t believe the number of lost containers drifting out there
in open water. They’re a primary cause of collision damage at sea. Ask the insurers.’’ Boldt said, ‘‘Your people had a chance to look over the container.’’

  Rutledge nodded. ‘‘Did you bring the stats for me?’’

  Boldt slid a piece of paper across the man’s desk. ‘‘Weight of the container, number of souls inside, weight and approximate volume of the bolts of fabric.’’ He added, ‘‘The fabric was sealed inside six-millimeter visquine.’’

  Rutledge peered over the top of reading glasses he had donned. ‘‘You want to be able to trace that container to its mother ship.’’

  Boldt told him, ‘‘We need the ship if we’re to get to the ship’s manifest. Did your inspection tell you anything?’’ Boldt had arranged for Rutledge to visit the container.

  ‘‘Smelling it did,’’ Rutledge said. ‘‘No Porta-potty.’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘You imagine living like that for a two-week Pacific crossing?’’

  Boldt repeated anxiously, ‘‘Anything at all?’’

  ‘‘Open water exerts its personality on anyone or anything it contacts. The waters of the Northern Pacific differ greatly from the more brackish estuary water we find in the Sound,’’ began the professor. ‘‘This can be attributed to the presence of fresh water from the dozens of rivers and tributaries within its seven hundred square miles. The rivers empty into the estuary fast enough so the estuary refreshes despite the higher saline-content ocean water in the outer strait and west of Vancouver Island. For that reason, Puget Sound plays host to several hundred specific floral and fauna indigenous only to estuarine waters, microorganisms that won’t be found a hundred miles north or forty miles west. You remember raising pollywogs in fifth grade science and how fast scum coated the walls of the aquarium? The same thing happens in the Sound or out in the ocean; it’s real apparent if a vessel is left sitting a long time-the algae and barnacles take over quickly. That algae is preceded by bacteria and diatoms that begin affixing themselves within six hours of submersion. A puddle, a freshwater pond, an estuary, the ocean, it doesn’t matter. There is a long food chain just waiting in the cafeteria line. And that gives marine biologists a trail to follow.

  ‘‘The same way an entomologist can study a corpse for insects,’’ Rutledge continued, ‘‘a marine biologist can study microorganisms and algae on the hull of a ship-or even a container-and estimate fairly accurately how long that surface material has been immersed, and in what kind of water.’’

  ‘‘A clock?’’ Boldt asked apprehensively.

  ‘‘Very much so. You gave our arriving students a very valuable field trip followed by equally valuable lab time. I’m grateful for that opportunity.’’

  ‘‘And did we learn something?’’ Boldt said.

  Rutledge answered, ‘‘One man’s slime is another man’s gold mine.’’ He hesitated for effect, leaving Boldt hanging. ‘‘Several million small organisms adhering themselves in predictable progression to the immersed sides and bottom of your container. What these marine bacteria, diatoms and attached larvae tell us is that the container was immersed in brackish water-more precisely, the waters of the Sound’s central basin-for between sixteen and twenty hours. No more, no less. The accumulation of hydrocarbons from the water’s surface that adhered to the sides of the container tell us that it was at one pitch for maybe half that time-about fifteen degrees-and then took on additional water sometime around the eight-hour mark, changing the pitch closer to twenty-two degrees while increasing the depth of its draft by three feet.’’

  ‘‘We can use that? Sixteen hours?’’

  ‘‘The presence of diatoms and barnacle larvae attached over the bacterial colonies confirms this, yes. All the work done by the students has been double-checked. Sixteen to twenty hours. That’s your window of time.’’

  ‘‘No more, no less,’’ Boldt repeated while taking notes. ‘‘Just maybe, you’ve saved this investigation.’’

  ‘‘We’re not through.’’

  ‘‘No?’’

  Rutledge challenged Boldt, ‘‘We’ve looked carefully at those bales of polarfleece fabric and the way that they were sealed, and it presents an interesting possibility.’’

  ‘‘I’m listening.’’

  Rutledge answered, ‘‘What if this particular container was never intended to reach a dock, but was supposed to be transferred at sea? Such a transfer is exceptionally dangerous. Your organizer planned for this, bought himself insurance by using those bales as internal flotation in case a container leaked water. Those bales are effectively huge balloons.’’

  ‘‘He’d lost one before?’’ Boldt said, noting Rutledge’s expression.

  ‘‘Let me just say that even with enough flotation to keep it from sinking, even in calm waters, I wouldn’t want to have been inside that container. If they attempted this in the storm we had the other night-’’ He didn’t bother completing his thought.

  ‘‘If they did attempt it during the storm,’’ Boldt said, ‘‘could you tell me where?’’

  Indicating the paper Boldt had provided, Rutledge said, ‘‘These are the coordinates where it was found?’’

  ‘‘The first is approximate, noted by the plane that spotted it. The second was provided by the Coast Guard: exact time and GPS location of the intercept.’’

  Rutledge approached his maps. He wore wrinkled khakis and leather deck shoes, the same as Boldt. An expert on the waters of Puget Sound, Rutledge pointed to a spot on the surface current map nearly instantly. ‘‘It was first spotted here, recovered here,’’ he said, moving his fingertip an inch west. ‘‘Surface area exposure to wind, weight and the speed and direction of currents will all have affected its course. I can’t give you a specific location, as we have a four-hour window of time within which to work. But what I can do is backtrack its probable drift route for a period of sixteen to twenty-four hours prior to its being spotted to estimate the transfer location. We have satellite images of that storm, weather station records of surface winds, tidal charts and current information for all depths. Plenty of data.’’

  ‘‘So if I get a list of all container ships that docked twenty to forty-eight hours after this one was spotted-’’

  ‘‘And you can do that through Port Authority,’’ Rutledge suggested.

  Boldt followed the reasoning to its logical conclusion. ‘‘If you can give me a probable location where the transfer was attempted, then we might be able to predict which of the arriving container ships could have been in that area of the Sound during that window of time.’’

  Nodding, Rutledge informed him, ‘‘Since we last worked together, we’ve computerized much of the data. Do you remember the model in the Science Center?’’

  Several years earlier, Boldt had spent an afternoon testing Rutledge’s predictions on a working model of Puget Sound that accounted for tidal flow and water salinity. Rutledge’s work had been proven flawless. ‘‘Of course I do.’’

  ‘‘Gone. It’s all done on computer now, and it’s far more accurate. The computer analysis group should be able to give us the exact course that container traveled.’’ He indicated a spot on the map of surface currents. ‘‘My guess is the transfer was attempted in here somewhere.’’ He turned his attention to a stack of bound volumes by his desk and, referencing the map on the wall, selected the third in the stack. The volume contained pages upon pages of computerized maps marked by time and date and containing curving arrows and numbers that clearly indicated tidal current direction and speed. Several times Rutledge referenced the wall chart before leafing several more pages deeper into the images. Then, drawing a gentle curve with his crooked index finger with its long flat nail, and tugging with his lips on the unlit pipe so that it whistled, he concluded, ‘‘Somewhere in here, is my guess.’’ He crossed to the wall chart and declared, ‘‘We’ll have the computers work the real-time data so that wind conditions can be considered for greater accuracy.’’ He stabbed the chart with authority. Rutledge was
of an era and a mind to not leave everything to computers. ‘‘But whatever ship lost that container, whatever fool captain was insane enough to attempt a transfer on that, of all nights, he did so right in here.’’ The man drew a small eyebrow of an arc on the map well away from where Boldt might have guessed. He said, ‘‘He was a mile or more out of the shipping lanes.’’

  ‘‘Does that give me anything to work with?’’ Boldt wondered aloud.

  ‘‘On-board radar,’’ Rutledge said, suddenly brighter. ‘‘The Port Authority should have had him on radar, but on a night like that, the other ship captains certainly did. You talk to the watch officers of the transiting vessels. They’d have been watching him carefully, since the vessel was well outside the shipping lanes, that would have aroused curiosity. A night like that you remember, believe me. The bridge officers,’’ he paused, drawing on the pipe again, ‘‘they’ll be able to tell you who or what the hell was out there.’’

  CHAPTER 10

  An all-consuming darkness spread before Melissa so that she moved forward with the caution of the blind. This had developed into a mission, no longer a job, so that as she moved through this darkness quietly and slowly, a knot gripping the center of her chest, drenched in sweat driven to the surface by taut nerves, she also experienced a sense of righteousness.

  A gray mouth of a windowlike opening appeared ahead of her, and she approached it cautiously, inching forward in tiny, thoughtful steps, the strap of the camera case slung over her neck and shoulder. This opening accessed a descending conveyor belt of cracked black rubber that smelled horribly sour and hadn’t run in a decade or more. She tucked her five feet two, 103-pound frame into a ball and slipped through the opening and down the conveyor, the unnerving sound of machinery growing ever louder, ever closer, her fear manifested as a sharp pain at her temples, and pricking her searching eyes. The fear resulted not only from awareness of her predicament but also from the knowledge that she had directly ignored Stevie’s instructions, had failed to call, and despite Melissa’s seeming impatience with Stevie at the time, she trusted her older ‘‘sister’s’’ instincts and experience. Somewhere not too far down inside her, she felt like a child disobeying her parent. She now knew she should have at least left Stevie a voice mail message to apprise her of her whereabouts and plans, this annoying sense of having done wrong continuing to plague her as the sounds of machinery grew ever louder, the area inside the conveyor more constricted, and the air more foul.