Skeleton Sea

by Dwiggins, Toni

  I caught Jake watching us. Waiting, it seemed, for us to say what the hell, Jake?

  When we didn’t speak, Jake wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and gave an exaggerated whew. And then he mimed squeezing a lime on his forearm, licking the salty limey skin, and then lifting a bottle of beer.

  I had no idea what to make of that. Of him. Letting us know that he knew the connections we were making—so obvious they could not be ignored. Letting us know that he didn’t give a shit? Or that he figured we could make connections until the cows came home and not lay anything on Jake Keasling.

  I glanced at Oscar Flynn. He’d been watching Jake and his pantomime. Flynn was unreadable, behind his shades.

  Jake edged up to the blond woman and spoke, and she nodded, and then Jake placed one hand over his heart and blew her a kiss with the other, and she smoothed her T-shirt and gave him a half-smile.

  The sea lion groaned.

  Flynn turned to the sick animal. Hush-a-bye don't you cry, go to sleep little baby. When you wake you shall have, all the pretty little horses.

  I wondered how many lullabies the big man knew, whether he’d recalled them from childhood or learned them from a Mother Goose book. Some research project, perhaps, how to soothe distressed animals. Specifically, poisoned sea lions. He was, after all, a scholar, with a double PhD. And one of those degrees was in microbiology.

  And beer-guzzling kayak-renting sand-castle-building flirtatious Jake Keasling? He didn’t need a degree in microbiology. All he needed was to listen to Oscar Flynn pontificate and he’d get quite the lesson in neurotoxicology.

  CHAPTER 21

  Detective Doug Tolliver’s silver Dodge Charger was frighteningly clean. There were no empty coffee cups in the cup holders. There were no sandy flip-flops on the floor. The windshield was unstreaked and the car body spotless—not easy to maintain in a beach town where salt spray left its mark.

  We'd ridden with him once before but this time we came from the beach and he asked us to clean off the sand before getting into his car.

  “One of the reasons I'm divorced,” he said. “Ever marry again, my best bet is another neatnik.”

  We emptied our shoes and boarded, Walter in the back, me in the front.

  “Either of you?” Tolliver asked, sliding behind the wheel. “Married?”

  “I'm afraid that ship has sailed,” Walter said.

  I shook my head. Not even a ship on the horizon.

  Walter changed the subject and began to relate the events on the beach.

  As we hit the highway, I gazed out my window.

  Highway 1 wound inland from Morro Bay, heading southeast. Up ahead and off to the right I spotted a muscular cone of rock rising high above the surrounding low hills. I knew it from the geological map back in our motel lab. This was Hollister Peak, one of a chain of volcanic plugs that ran from the town of Morro Bay to the town of San Luis Obispo, our destination. The volcanic chain began, actually, well out to sea with an underwater seamount. And then came Morro Rock, with which we’d become well acquainted. This peak up ahead could be the Rock’s twin. I thought about the zone of fissures that once produced an eighteen-mile long line of active volcanoes raining molten rock and fire over this land. And beneath the sea.

  “So,” Tolliver said, “Oscar Flynn reciting nursery rhymes. Huh.”

  I turned from the reminders of ancient mayhem to face Tolliver. “All The Pretty Little Horses.”

  He whistled. “You learn something new every day.”

  “If you’re paying attention,” Walter said, from the back seat.

  Tolliver’s eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror and then snapped back to the road. “Paying attention comes with the territory, in my job. Same with you two, huh?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “Then I figure you noticed how Flynn interacted with Jake Keasling back there on the beach?”

  I thought for a moment. “He didn’t.”

  “Why do you ask?” Walter said. “Are they friends?”

  Tolliver snorted. “I wouldn’t use ‘friend’ and ‘Oscar Flynn’ in the same sentence.”

  “Then what are you getting at?”

  “I’m just surprised to learn—speaking of learning something new every day—about Jake joining the rescue team. Didn’t expect that.”

  I said, “We were surprised to see Jake and Oscar on the team.”

  “Flynn’s one of those guys who volunteers. Won’t give you the time of day but damned if he doesn’t pitch in at any event involving animals. The rescue team. Fundraiser for the animal shelter. That kind of thing.”

  “How long has he lived in Morro Bay?” Walter asked.

  “He came to town about ten years ago. Bought that fancy place up in the hills. Keeps to himself—aside from the volunteer stuff.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “he’s not real good with people.”

  “So you’d think.”

  After a moment Walter said, “I’m paying attention, Doug.”

  Tolliver grinned.

  I said, “Huh?”

  Walter cleared his throat. “Detective Tolliver has a story to tell us about Oscar Flynn. He’s been leading the line of conversation, angling for our take on Flynn—before he will tell us what he has to tell us.”

  Well I sure as shit hadn’t been paying enough attention. I said, “I’m listening.”

  Tolliver turned his grin my way.

  I said, “Does your Oscar story have something to do with Jake?”

  “Wrong Keasling.”

  I came alert. I heard Walter, in the back seat, shift forward.

  “About five years ago Oscar Flynn saved Lanny Keasling’s life.”

  If Tolliver had just tossed a half-eaten cheeseburger onto the spotless floor mat I could not have been more surprised.

  “It was at the harbor. Lanny was in the water cleaning gunk off the Sea Spray propeller and he managed to hit his head on the hull. He blacked out. He would have drowned if Flynn hadn’t jumped in and saved him. Fully dressed.”

  I said, “Wow.” I added, “So okay, Flynn isn’t inhuman, he did what just about anybody would have done in the situation.”

  Walter said, “What was Flynn doing there?”

  “Passing by.”

  “Nobody else around?”

  “A lot of people were there to witness it but they were up on the deck of the shopping area that overlooks the harbor. Too far away to get to Lanny in time.”

  “Where was Sandy?”

  “Visiting the ladies’ room at the cafe at the end of the dock.”

  “So if Flynn hadn’t acted,” Walter said, “Lanny would have drowned.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Admirable. In fact, if you think about it, his valor in the case of Lanny is of a kind with his actions today on the beach with the sea lion.”

  “Good point,” Tolliver said. “In fact, if you think about it, Flynn probably viewed Lanny the same way he views hurt animals.”

  I nodded. Vulnerable. No threat to Oscar Flynn. Rather, something to be protected.

  Walter said, “Still, valor is valor.”

  “Still,” Tolliver said, “it surprises you, right?”

  I said, “Doug, what are you getting at, with this story?”

  “You think you know somebody. Maybe you don’t.”

  I spoke, before Walter could bring it up. “Speaking of which, let me fill you in on what happened last night.”

  Tolliver glanced at me.

  I explained my kayak trip to the dunes.

  Tolliver's face tightened.

  “Nothing solid, I know, but I thought it warranted a mention.”

  “I'll speak to Lanny and Fred.” Tolliver suddenly released the wheel with one hand and raked his pompadour. “You ever get jaded, doing what you do?” His free hand clamped back onto the wheel. “I live in a small town, a town without much serious crime, but I’ll tell you there are days when I see enough mean-spirited ugliness to ruin my lunch. Hell, just l
ook at the feud between Robbie Donie and Jake Keasling. So here I am with the biggest case since I made detective, and I’m doing my job and looking at my fellow citizens with my goddamn jaded eyes and not liking what I’m seeing. And I wonder if I’m jaded or naïve. Some days I want to think everybody in Morro Bay was given a golden pass, living in this paradise by the ocean, and that deep down they’re all good people and whatever happened to Robbie and Joao Silva were accidents. And so I’m flipping back and forth between wearing my rainbow-colored glasses and following my cop radar. Yesterday on the Keasling beach I suspected that the little blonde girl who grew up to become a tugboat captain and then lost her license and grew bitter has grown into somebody capable of attempted murder. Couple days ago on Jake’s dock I suspected that the little blonde boy—he was blonde before he went green—who grew up to become a goof-off has grown into something much uglier, somebody capable of murdering a rival over a goddamn squid-fishing gig. And then I pick you up at the motel and you tell me about Flynn’s expertise with algae blooms and domoic acid, and I'm suspecting that the oddball who nevertheless saved Lanny Keasling’s life—which gives Flynn a pass into heaven, in my book—now I’m suspecting he had something to do with a poisoned diver who ate toxic anchovies. I’m suspecting that Oscar and Jake turning up together at a sea-lion rescue operation is some kind of conspiracy. And now you tell me about Fred and Lanny out at the dunes and I'm suspecting something hinky is going on with those two. I’m suspecting goddamn everybody I come across.” Tolliver scowled at a dirty pickup zipping by in the fast lane. “And I don’t like it.”

  After a long moment I said, “Sometimes the job cuts close to the bone.”

  Walter, in the back seat, was silent.

  We’d each lost loved ones six months ago. We’d each trusted in the humanity of someone who had none.

  We all fell silent.

  I understood Tolliver’s rant, in spades. I’d grown up in a small town, too. I’d joined Walter in the forensic geology lab but we were based in an idyllic ski town without much serious crime. I'd worn rose-colored glasses about my hometown, just like Doug Tolliver. For the most part, the serious crime that required forensic geologist expertise took place elsewhere. Walter and I would leave the nest to do our job. And then one day everything went bad at home. We lived on a volcano that blew the town to hell, and murder went along with the hellishness. Yeah, I knew the shock of losing faith.

  I yanked my thoughts from the small town of Mammoth Lakes back to the small town of Morro Bay.

  Back to the town at hand.

  Not having grown up in Morro Bay, not having watched these little kids grow up into their destinies, I had no trouble suspecting the Keaslings of foul play or at the least subterfuge. Even Lanny, I was distressed to admit. And Fred Stavis? Oscar Flynn? Wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them.

  But mistrust and suspicion were, at best, like cat whiskers. Sensors of something on the wind. Finding and proving that something required another animal. A dog on the hunt.

  It was hard evidence that would tell the story.

  I turned to Tolliver. “Doug, anything new on the diver's boat?”

  “Nothing.” He sighed. “Nobody's reported a boat missing. And no more boats found adrift.”

  “What about prints on his dive tank?”

  “Nothing. My techs are rushing this case but what we've got is a big fat zero on the entire fingerprint front. No prints on your yellow float—be standard for somebody handling marine gear to wear gloves. No unidentified prints on Robbie Donie's duffel bag. Far as the Outcast prints go, unless we find some record of Robbie's charters we've got no way to find out who might have been on board with him the night he disappeared.” Tolliver drummed the wheel. “And the latest in the department of nothing, we've got zip on the container of anchovies that poisoned Joao Silva. Smart perp. No prints.”

  I said, “You've got the anchovies. That's a something.”

  Tolliver gave a short laugh. “That it is. The lab's on it.”

  Walter said, “Has it been determined that it was domoic acid that poisoned Silva?”

  “Looks like it. He's still unconscious but the docs diagnosed him by the symptoms, and the symptoms fit with domoic poisoning.” Tolliver glanced at Walter in the rear view. “I know, small world, what with that sea lion thing you two just saw.”

  “Any chance there are toxin-bearing anchovies being caught and distributed?”

  “Already on it,” Tolliver said. “I sent my people out to the docks and the bait shops. They didn’t turn up any bad chovies. Doesn’t mean there aren’t any out there—everybody's on alert.”

  I asked, “What about the container, itself? Anything more on that?”

  “Department of nothing,” Tolliver said. “This particular style is standard. Like Sandy said, used all over town.”

  “Sandy seems the CYA-type.” I added, “Cover your ass.”

  Tolliver snorted. “I’ve run across plenty of CYA. As for Sandy, she can be a bitch on wheels but she tells it like it is.” Tolliver's hands tightened on the wheel. “At least that's what I always thought.”

  I asked, “You mentioned that she lost her tugboat license. How?”

  “Accident of some kind. There was a question of negligence. I don’t have the details.”

  “But she’s licensed to captain a whale-watching boat?”

  “Different license. Her tug master’s license was suspended for eight months. The tug owner wouldn’t rehire her once she was off probation. Word is, he blacklisted her. So she ended up buying the Sea Spray and getting an inspected-vessel license to drive it. Like I said, different license, different gig.”

  I recalled Sandy’s bitter silence when Walter asked about the tugboat photo on her office wall. I recalled her obvious disdain at captaining a whale-watching boat. So Sandy Keasling ends up nursing her grievance in her hacienda on the bluff. Still, as best I could see, the loss of her tugboat license had nothing to do with Robbie Donie or John Silva. There was no logical connection.

  “Welcome to San Luis Obispo,” Tolliver said, lifting a finger from the wheel to point ahead.

  The highway now entered a good-sized town sprawled beneath another towering volcanic plug.

  “Up ahead, to the left,” Tolliver said. “There’s the Cal Poly campus. Let’s leave human ugliness aside and go find out what’s happening in my ocean.”

  “And get an ID of my coral,” Walter said.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Think of it as the sucky zone,” Dr. Russell said, gesturing at the undulating red blob on the giant auditorium screen.

  She flashed us a movie-star smile.

  Violet Russell, Professor of Marine Ecology at Cal Poly State University, had just finished conducting a class and remained on stage for our instruction. She'd promised to get to Walter's coral, once she explained what was going on in Tolliver's patch of ocean.

  “Right now we're gasping for breath,” she said. “We're oxygen-starved.”

  I bet her delivery went over well with her students. Sure had our attention. The woman could command a room. Professional in her white linen pants and red linen blazer and beige silk tee. Witty in the silver starfish clipped to the silver streak in her Afro. Practical in her leather sneakers, smoothly striding across the stage to the podium.

  She tapped a computer keyboard and our blob was now superimposed on a profile of the continental shelf.

  We hovered just off the shelf.

  “Any idea what causes it?” she asked.

  Nobody volunteered.

  “I’ll give you a hint. It’s not caused by the zombie apocalypse.”

  We dutifully laughed.

  “Oookay, bear with me, I’m used to competing with Facebook, or whatever the site-du-jour is with my students. Let me adjust. I’ve got two scientists and a police detective.”

  Tolliver found his voice. “I’m not a scientist. Student-level is fine with me.”

  Walter nodded. “Cassie and I aren't oce
anographers. We’re students here.”

  “Then I'll give it to you straight,” she said. “Our sucky zone is caused by oxygen depletion. At the ocean surface, the waters are rich in plankton. When they die and sink and decay, that uses up oxygen in the water column. And for that reason it’s called an oxygen minimum zone. OMZ, for short.” She added, “Not OMG.”

  We laughed, again.

  Tolliver said, “We've got one of those zones?”

  “We do—and there are hundreds more rimming coasts around the world. They're naturally occurring. They’re not new. What’s new is what they’re doing.”

  “Which is?” Walter asked.

  “Expanding.”

  She clicked another slide and the red blob was rising, with red arrows flowing up the continental slope, lapping onto the shelf. “Our OMZs are creeping into shallow waters.”

  I said, “I assume that's not good.”

  “No,” she said. “It sucks.”

  “I’ll bite,” Walter said. “Why are they expanding?”

  “Short and sweet? Global warming.”

  Tolliver snorted.

  “Ah Detective, I sense a skeptic.”

  “I just know what I read in the paper.”

  “And you scientists?”

  Walter said, “The evidence is certainly in.”

  “In spades,” I said.

  Tolliver folded his arms.

  She said, “We can debate the causes until hell freezes over—which it likely won’t, at this rate. But the fact is that the last two decades of the twentieth century were the hottest in four hundred years. And it’s getting hotter.”

  Tolliver uncrossed his arms and lifted his hands.

  “Surrender, Detective?”

  “I just thought the jury was still out.”