Boldt correctly guessed that a shipping captain’s greatest enemy was not the Coast Guard or the Port Authority, or a homicide cop, but time. He would not want to be delayed again from weighing anchor, and he would not want to leave any crew behind. By combining Rutledge’s data with the Port Authority docking schedule and interviews with the Port Authority’s radar station personnel, the Visage appeared to be the vessel in question. It had been well outside the shipping lanes the night of the storm, a night every navigator had been glued to his radar scope hoping to make it into port without incident. The Visage had gone radio dead for more than three hours-inexplicable in such traffic and high seas. The Port Authority radar controller distinctly recalled the ship’s return to the southern shipping lane on scope but off the air, and how, predawn, it had slipped back into the lane, causing all ships behind it to give berth and thereby experience delays, forcing them to endure even more of the storm-something no one forgot.
Boldt and LaMoia climbed up a noisy steel ladder suspended from heavy chains, a crew member behind them, presumably, as a backstop should they slip. The pungent odors of a ship ripe with a three-week ocean crossing struck them-seaweed, diesel fuel and a tangy metallic rust that formed in the back of Boldt’s mouth like the scent of blood at a crime scene. He gripped the chain, steadied himself and looked back toward shore and the noble city skyline that gave the Emerald City its jewels.
Nostalgia tightened his chest-he had devoted his life to service of this city, and was now considering plans to abandon it. At forty-four, with over twenty years on the force, the possibility of a job in the private sector insinuated itself. The unspoken evil of Liz’s cancer treatment was the lingering debt, caused not by medical bills-all paid for by the bank’s health care-but by loss of their double income for over a year. The bank had paid her full salary for three weeks of ‘‘vacation’’ and had then reduced her to one-quarter pay for her ‘‘leave of absence.’’ But their lifestyle, which included day care and a house-cleaner, had left more going out than was coming in. Even Boldt’s advancement to lieutenant had not made up the gap. He was seriously considering a private security position that paid nearly double his city salary. He had an interview scheduled, though he had not told Liz.
With the captain of the Visage on ‘‘shore leave,’’ and therefore unavailable, the crew was all they had. A list of fifteen names was provided by the ship’s first mate, an Asian with few teeth and a leathery face. Boldt and LaMoia divided their energies. Boldt was led below deck through cramped hallways, the gray steel reminding him of prisons, to a game room that contained an oversized projection TV and an enormous video library.
Thirty minutes of frustration left Boldt’s patience brittle and his nerves raw. The first two crewmen had not spoken a word of English, replying to Boldt in some Balkan-sounding tongue. The third crewman listed as a deckhand, a young man with a stubble head and dark eyes that contained a tinge of fear, marched in wearily and, like his fellow seamen, spoke this same foreign language.
‘‘English,’’ Boldt instructed, knowing that at least someone on this ship spoke the language-the international language of the sea and a Coast Guard requirement. The young deckhand shook his head and prattled on in his native tongue again.
It was then that Boldt’s eye landed on the wall of videos, and the titles there-all in English-included Super Bowls and NBA title games. He said to the deckhand, ‘‘Michael Jordan! Now there was a player!’’ He paused. ‘‘Even so, Sean Kemp is a better shooter.’’
‘‘No way!’’ the young man protested.
Boldt did not so much as flinch. He said, ‘‘Kemp’s jump shot?’’
‘‘Jordan was the best play-’’ the boy caught himself as Boldt’s grin surfaced.
Boldt said, ‘‘Do you know that refusal to cooperate with police is a crime here? I could have you locked up.’’
The boy’s eyes went wide and he shook his head as if not understanding.
‘‘You think I’ll tell the others? Is that it? Do you think I would say anything? How does it benefit me to expose a possible witness?’’
‘‘I witness nothing,’’ the man returned.
‘‘You are a deckhand. It says so right here. You spent the last three weeks up on deck. Hong Kong. Hawaii. Three weeks with that container. You know the one I’m talking about.’’
The boy’s upper lip shone as he said, ‘‘The trip it takes longer to expected. The storming.’’
Boldt understood the malnutrition and dehydration then. ‘‘How much longer than expected?’’
‘‘Normal, ten days. This crossing, two times that.’’
‘‘The people in the container?’’
The boy shook his head.
‘‘I can detain you here in Seattle. The ship leaves without you.’’
‘‘There was nothing us people able to do. It was shut up.’’
‘‘Locked.’’
‘‘Yes, locked.’’
‘‘But you heard them?’’
The young man looked back suspiciously and shook his head again, a familiar response.
‘‘We have laws about lying to police.’’
‘‘We hear them. It bad, all the crying. Locked,’’ he confirmed. He crossed himself.
‘‘Food? Didn’t you feed them?’’
Again, the young man shook his head no.
‘‘Water?’’
Another.
‘‘You heard them,’’ Boldt pressed, remembering the shrill cries and haunting pounding. ‘‘And did nothing?’’
The man’s eyes glassed under a tightly knit brow exaggerated by his nearly shaved head. He mumbled, ‘‘The captain.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ Boldt said, seizing upon this. ‘‘The captain.’’ The captain, who no doubt had taken the bribe; the captain, who had the connections to make the drop; the all-important captain. ‘‘You were paid extra because of this container.’’
The man appeared angry.
‘‘How many times before?’’
‘‘No. Not me. The others, yes. Not me. This, my first crossing with Visage.’’
‘‘No food, no water.’’ Boldt hesitated. ‘‘People died. Three people died. You understand?’’
A small nod, the man’s first.
‘‘Murder. You understand ‘murder’?’’
Terror-stricken eyes. Moist lips from a nervous tongue. A faint nod.
‘‘I arrest you,’’ Boldt said.
‘‘No!’’ the man protested.
‘‘The captain,’’ Boldt suggested.
A reluctance in the eyes. A stiffening of the spine. Then the slumped shoulders of resignation. The man mumbled, ‘‘The captain not open the container. He said, ‘The sea plays tricks on the ears.’ ’’
‘‘It’s blood money,’’ Boldt said. ‘‘You understand?’’
A nod.
‘‘Jail,’’ Boldt stated.
A nod. ‘‘The captain, he is not talk to you.’’
‘‘We’ll see about that.’’
‘‘He not talk. No. And I? I not talk against him. Jail?’’ he shrugged. ‘‘Better than to talk against this captain.’’
Boldt saw crew members ‘‘lost at sea.’’ He saw bodies caught in the ocean’s midnight swells fading into blackness, a hand crying from the waves. A crew kept loyal through fear. A silent captain. He saw a brick wall ahead of him.
‘‘The transfer during the storm. Something went wrong. Tell me about it.’’
‘‘Bad seas.’’
‘‘Your people lost the container?’’
‘‘Us people? No way! The others on the barge. That tug captain, has brain of a baby. Not able to handle barge. Their tower, not ours! They lost that piece, not us!’’
‘‘Their crane?’’ Boldt asked. ‘‘Is that what you mean by tower?’’ He gestured to indicate a crane and finally resorted to demonstrating with his pen.
The deckhand nodded vigorously. ‘‘Crane on barge.’’
‘‘Yes, of course.’’ Boldt wondered how many crane-and-barge combinations there were available to such people. He saw a narrow opportunity for investigation. ‘‘Something went wrong with the crane?’’