‘‘But that’s just the point. Right? That’s exactly why we want in there ourselves.’’ He had checked his voice mail only moments before. Suddenly McNeal’s oblique message made more sense: She realized the graveyard was under Coughlie’s jurisdictional control.
‘‘I understand that, but it isn’t going to happen. You crash those gates and you lose anything and everything you discover.’’
‘‘So I have to go back to Talmadge.’’
‘‘Right.’’
‘‘And if he’s in on it?’’
She shrugged. ‘‘Chalk one up for the bad guys.’’
‘‘Unacceptable.’’
‘‘Suggestions?’’
‘‘Other fed agencies? Do they have access?’’
Delgato pursed her lips and gave her next words considerable thought. ‘‘U.S. Attorney would have to be brought in. If you gave him enough evidence, enough probable cause, he might work the Bureau for the raid.’’ She added, ‘‘The Bureau could invite you along for the ride. Nothing preventing that. Yeah. It could work, I suppose.’’
‘‘Put it in motion,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m going to get a surveillance team in place.’’
‘‘Tomorrow, I’m talking about,’’ Delgato complained. ‘‘No way this is going down tonight.’’
‘‘Make the calls,’’ Boldt ordered.
‘‘It’s late.’’
‘‘Now.’’
‘‘I’ll wake him up.’’
‘‘You want a hundred lives on your hands? You want this whole thing to come down to your refusal to make a call, to wake someone up? Fine,’’ he said. ‘‘I’ll make a note of it.’’
‘‘You had better be right about this,’’ she threatened.
‘‘Amen,’’ Boldt said.
CHAPTER 75
he constant coming and going had worn a trail through the rust and corrosion on the trawler’s deck, beating a path around to the far side where any opening of a hatch or door was fully blocked from view of land. Even from across Salmon Bay, because of the trawler’s angle in the graveyard, there was no chance of anyone being seen using this entrance. Coughlie had found himself the perfect hideaway.
The ship’s deck vibrated underfoot like a kitchen appliance. She left the worn route and found her way along the determined shadow on the port side, moving incredibly slowly, every pore in her body alert, every hair at attention. She passed one door after another, having no idea where she was or which to use, and it was only her reporter’s eye that finally spotted the fresh litter of cigarette butts accumulated around one particular door at her feet, causing her to stop and press her ear to this door.
A confusing rumble filled her head, the clatter louder but distant. She looked up to see the tractor trailer truck backing down between two rows in the boatyard. The trailer stopped just on the other side of the chain-link gate and the air brakes hissed.
She eased down on the levered handle and it moved, and she pulled the door open no more than it took to aim her eye inside.
The pitch-black foreground was accompanied by a warm yellow light to her left. She gathered her courage and slipped quickly inside, pressing her back to the cold metal and holding her breath for the benefit of her hearing. Blood pulsed so loudly in her ears that she heard nothing else. She stayed flat against the wall while her eyes adjusted to the limited light and her ears to the distant sounds. Although at first she thought she was in a room, she was in fact in some kind of hallway; the yellow light came from yet another passageway at the end. She gathered her courage and slowly walked toward that light, each footfall feeling like a lifetime, her mind cluttered with memory and thought to the point of confusion. She fought to clear her head but won little ground, conscious thought subverted by whatever process demands reflection at such moments. She saw her father, Melissa, Su-Su. She saw the studio set.
At the end of the long passageway she came across a narrow stairway leading down into the guts of the ship. An aluminum work light hung from an orange extension cord strung through the overhead metal beam at the bottom of the stairs. Stevie stood there, reluctant to descend, to risk putting herself into that light. But at last there seemed no choice in the matter.
She knew enough about ships to know that they were comprised of companionways, passageways, cabins, staterooms, holds, heads and galleys. But to her the trawler was a labyrinth of poorly lit gray steel corridors and steep ladder stairways, one leading to the other, leading to the next, lined with pipes and filled with the occasionally deafening groan of industry. The way they all connected seemed somebody’s joke. For the most part, she followed the string of lights—crudely fashioned extension cords and bare bulbs strung at random, stretching shadows along the walls and turning a simple hallway into something at once both terrifying and mysterious. The farther she ventured, the less likely it seemed to her she would ever find her way out. And if those lights were to fail. . .
When there’s nowhere else to go, try moving forward, Su-Su had once advised. She trusted that.
Stevie placed her foot onto the step, like a swimmer testing the water. Then the next step. The third. Down she went, into that light, a shadow stretching behind her. She assumed they would kill her if they caught her, or maybe not because of her celebrity—she wasn’t sure. On reflection, Brian Coughlie had had ample opportunity to kill her, to make her disappear. So why not? Because he had missed on his first try? The hard metal walls amplified both her breathing and the grind of machinery, and thankfully covered her footfalls. She reached the bottom where the passageway turned sharply back on itself and she crept along, one hand touching the wall to give her reassurance. The smells were more caustic here: the salty tang of human toil and sea, urine and sweat, and a bitter taste like plastic in her mouth. The air grew hazy, and that haze grew thicker to her right where another passageway fed off this one. This new hallway was darker, and it led to a partially open door that was clearly the source of that sound. She felt drawn to it, unable to stop herself from entering the darker passageway and approaching that cacophony. Step by precious step she continued, checking both behind her and in front of her, expecting someone to jump out and grab her at any second. Beyond that partially open door was more darkness, but the locker-room smell of women grew more intense, and that sound—how could she describe that sound?—ever louder. Without being fully aware of her actions, her hands sought out the zipper on the camera case and blindly ran it down and around the corners to where the lid lifted open and the camera itself found its way into her hands. The lens cap came off. The switch went on. Stevie stepped up to the metal hatch and peered through. She jumped at the sound of her own gasp. She’d never seen anything like it.
This hatch led to a catwalk landing that hung like an observation balcony out over the enormous hold and in turn accessed a steel grate stairway that turned back and forth on itself descending through yet another landing before reaching the floor. She stood looking out over the forward hold of the ship, once intended to store tens of tons of fish, forty feet deep, forty wide, and perhaps sixty feet long, its floor converted to an industrial plant where dozens of women—a hundred or more—with their heads shaved bare, bowed over poorly lit sewing machines that echoed off the steel walls into a deafening noise. The machinery was crowded tightly in rows, the scraps of discarded fabric like a patchwork-quilt carpet on the floor, the lone Asian guard patrolling the aisles with what appeared to be a stun stick in his hand. The size of the operation overwhelmed her, as did the dusty air and the putrid stink. She raised the camera to her eye and began to shoot, mesmerized by it all, determined to capture it, painfully aware that as her eye took to the camera she lost all peripheral sense of her surroundings. She moved behind that steel hatch door, using it as a shield so she couldn’t be seen from the hallway. It required both hands and a heavy pull to open it slightly farther in order to screen her from the stairway as well. She pushed herself more tightly into the far corner of the tiny landing, comfortable with her hiding spot and able to see and film the activities below.