Within the hour, Zavala and the Trouts arrived at the hotel. After a brief reunion, Zavala said, "Not that it matters, but we were wondering if you could give us a hint why we raced halfway across the world at warp speed."
"I missed your smiling faces?"
"Right," Zavala said. "That's why you asked me to bring along your shooting iron and my own metal delivery system."
"I'll admit I had an ulterior motive, but I'm not lying when I say it's good to see you."
Austin glanced around at the other members of the Special Assignments Team and grinned with pleasure at their eager expressions. Then he began to outline his plan.
12
ROCKY POINT, MAINE
THE IMAGE ON the oversized computer monitor looked like the profile of a very tall tortoise. Leroy Jenkins clicked the computer mouse until the shell flattened as if it had been run over by an eighteen-wheeler. Jenkins made some computations from the numbers on the screen, then exploded with the blue-lightning curses he usually reserved for a tangled lobster pot line. He turned away from the computer and swiveled his chair so he was facing a big picture window. From its position high on the hill, the tall white clapboard house offered an unequaled view of the harbor and the sea beyond.
The harbor swarmed with activity. Front-end loaders scooped scattered debris into a waiting line of dump trucks. Forklifts normally used to hoist boats onto multistory racks for winter storage were plucking battered wrecks from the parking lot and lining them up where their owners could claim them. Cranes had been brought in to pick remnants of the motel off the breakwaters.
Jenkins's boat was tied up at the town pier with the others lucky enough to have been out of the way when the big wave struck. Jenkins rubbed his eyes and turned back to the computer to enter some new numbers. After a few minutes, he shook his head in frustration. He had gone through the modeling process dozens of times, feeding in different combinations of data, and his findings still didn't make sense. Jenkins was grateful when the doorbell rang. He went out into the hallway and yelled down the stairs, "Come in."
The door opened and Charlie Howes stepped inside. "Not bothering you, am I?" the police chief said.
"Hell no, Charlie. Come on up. I was just fiddling around on the computer."
The chief climbed to the second-floor office. "You've done a nice job with the house," he said, glancing around at the well-ordered space with its neatly arranged filing cabinets and bookcases.
"Thanks, Charlie. Wish I could claim credit." He picked up a framed photograph of a handsome middle-aged woman who was smiling directly at the camera from a sailboat cockpit. "Mary knew that I'd need more than lobstering to keep my brain from fossilizing. Setting up my office in the attic space was her idea. You know how she was. She could make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."
"She didn't do a bad job of filing down some of your rough edges."
Jenkins laughed. "I consider that a miracle, given the material she had to work with." He glanced out the window again. "Looks like they're making progress down there."
"Getting the harbor cleared out real fast. There was some worry about oil spills from the fuel tanks, but the environmental people from the state got it under control. I needed a break from the press people. Started getting in the way anyhow, with all the insurance guys showing up." He jerked his head toward the computer. "See you've been workin'. Got things figured out yet?"
"Been trying. Pull up a seat and take a look. I could use your detective's intuition."
Despite the chief's folksy language and country ways, he was no bumpkin. Howes had a master's degree in criminal science from the state university. He replied with a skeptical snort, dragged a stool next to Jenkins's chair and squinted into the computer monitor.
"What's that thing that looks like a pregnant snake?" Jenkins raised an eyebrow. "Rorschach would ha
ve a field day with you. What do you know about tsunamis?"
"I know I never want to see one again !"
"That's a good start. Let me don my professor's hat, and I'll give you a crash course." He wrote out the words tsu and nami on a pad of paper. "These words represent the Japanese characters for 'harbor' and 'wave.' An international conference adopted the term in 1963 to avoid confusion."
"I always heard them called tidal waves."
"That was the popular term, but it isn't accurate. Tides come from gravitational forces such as the moon, sun and planets. Even we scientists were wrong. We called them seismic sea waves, which implies that earthquakes generate all tsunamis. A quake is only one cause."
"You think a quake caused that mess out there?"
"Yes. No. Maybe." He grinned at the chief's befuddled reaction and ripped a sheet of paper off the pad. "Here's the real culprit." He held the paper horizontally. "Make believe this is the ocean bottom." He pushed the ends in so that the middle of the paper humped up. "A quake occurs when tectonic plates bump together and deform the seafloor. This hump pushes up the column of water all the way to the surface. The water tries to regain its equilibrium."
"You're losing me."
Jenkins thought for a moment. "It's like Joe Johnson, the town drunk, staggering home after a night on the town. Reason he zigzags is because the booze has affected his equilibrium. He has to keep catching himself from going off in the wrong direction. Sometimes he can't stop and slams into a wall and knocks himself out." He frowned. "Okay, it's a rough analogy."
"I get the picture."