Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 02 - A Deadly Bargain, Plan C (6 page)

Morgan touched me on the shoulder and pointed to his
watch.  Our ten minutes were up.  W
e had to return to the surface.

Clancy helped me over the railing,
then
reached for Morgan’s hand.  I struggled to get my gear off.

Morgan climbed over the rail, spit out his mouthpiece and
said,
“Do you know what that is down there?  My God!  That’s the
Gigabyte
!”

“Bates’ yacht?”
Clancy asked.

“Bates’ yacht!
  Yes!  She’s down there, right now!  The whole country’s been looking for that yacht for six months
—
and we’ve found it!  Where’s my phone.  I’ve
gotta
call the office,” Morgan babbled.

“Well, I’ll be danged.  What do you think the salvage award would be on that one?” Clancy asked.

“Salvage?
  Clancy,
it’s
a hundred footer.  It’ll take a couple barges to bring her up.  You don’t have the equipment to raise something that size.  I’ll call the Coast Guard.”

“Now wait a minute, Morgan
.  Maybe I can get my hands on—
“

“
Clancey
.”
  Morgan held his hand
up
.  “This is Gerald Bates’ yacht we’re talking about.  The man is the richest computer industrialist in the world.  He and this yacht have been missing for over six months.  You think the Bates Corporation is going to let Tex and Clancy’s Marine Salvage get anywhere within a mile of this spot when they find out?”

I watched Clancy’s chin drop two floors.  He knew Morgan was right.

“Olive and
me
could’ve retired on what that salvage award would be.”

Morgan put an arm over Clancy’s shoulders.  “Retire?  
You?
  Then how would you have any fun?  You can’t ever
retire,
old man.  You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself with no purpose in life.”

“Maybe so.
  But I sure as heck wouldn’t mind giving it a try for a while,” Clancy
said
.

“I know, Clancy.  But
you know I’m right.  Don’t you?”

“I suppose.  Go ahead.  Make the call.”

I sat quietly on a padded bench and gazed
out over the Pacific
.  My mind was a thousand miles away.  We had just discovered Gerald Bates’ sunken yacht.  Gerald Bates, the wealthiest man in the world.

Chapter
Seven

I
pounded
on Spencer’s door for the third time.  “Come on, Spence.  Open up!” I yelled into the solid piece of oak standing between me and the most accomplished computer geek
this side of the Mississippi—
and probably the other side, too.  I could hear his pathetic voice call back to me from somewhere inside the house. 

During the twelve-hour drive from San Diego to Sacramento, I tried to imagine what Spencer’s house might look like.  I pictured a scene from NASA
—
rows of computer terminals
,
little orange, red, and green flashing lights
,
racks full of electronic paraphernalia.  A vision of wires running along the baseboards, anchored with straps and ties, disappearing into countless boxes mounted on the walls danced through my mind.  You’d have to know Spencer to understand why I’d conjure up such a picture.

“
Devonie
?
  Is that you?”  I could hear him fumble with the lock.  The door opened slowly and a picture I didn’t expect brought a smile to my face.

I’d driven all night and it was nearly six in the morning by the time I arrived in Sacramento.  I’d obviously gotten Spencer out of bed.  His mouth opened in a yawn so large I could see his tonsils.  He scratched his head and rubbed his eyes.  His hair, naturally brown, but bleached to a nearly yellow blonde, stood strait up from his head.  But it didn’t stand at attention.  The result of too much bleaching and styling gel left the mess looking like the victim of a lightning strike.  He stood about six-foot-four and probably weighed about one-seventy, soaking wet.  The skinny frame was bare from the waist up.  I’d never seen Spencer without a shirt before.  My eyes fixed on the small tattoo he’d permanently branded onto his chest.  The image, a green square with small black and silver dots and lines running in all directions like a city street map, was framed with the words, “I love my Motherboard.”  From the waist down, an entirely different story was told.  Spiderman pajama
bottoms
hung on the slim hips, too short for his long
legs.  The hem fell about mid-calf.  His bare feet were large and striking against the cold tile floor.  I gawked at the curled up toes on those number
twelves
.  “You paint your toenails?” I marveled.

He glanced down at the bright-red tips on his toes and wiggled them proudly.  “Like them?  Cindy did it.  She’s practicing to get her cosmetology license.  I could find out the color for you if you want.”

“That’s okay.  I go for a lighter shade,” I replied, grinning.

I picked up the heavy scuba tank I’d brought and carried it inside.  I set it down in the entryway and marveled at the surroundings
—
not a computer in sight. 
Nothing on the walls but tasteful artwork and bookshelves.
  The only electro
nics I could see were the usual—
television,
stereo, VCR, and microwave
.  I set my purse on the table.  “Is this your parent’s house?”

“No.  Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  I just pictured something different.”

Spencer examined the scuba tank.  “
This the
tank you want to check out?” he asked.

“Yeah.
  Think we can lift any prints off it?”

“Don’t know.  It’s been in the water.  You’ve been handling it like a stress ball. 
Probably been touched by a half-dozen people since you bought it.
  What’s the deal with it, anyway?”

“You see
the news today?” I asked.

“News?”

I picked up the remote and turned on the television.  Nearly every station
was reporting on
the discovery of Gerald Bates’ yacht, the
Gigabyte
.

Spencer sat down in a big leather recliner and gaped at the TV screen.  “They found Bates?”

“
Not Bates. 
Just his yacht.
  Actually, I found it.”

“You?
 
How?”

“The guy who owned this tank
discovered the wreck and recorded its location on his GPS.  That’s Roy Hastings, the guy I asked you to check out.  Get anything?”

“Not much. 
Nothing on him in the California Criminal History database.
  I went to the DMV database. 
Got the basics: date of birth, height, weight, address.
  Had a pickup and a boat registered in his name and a certified dive instructor license issued back in the seventies.”

“Th
at’s it? 
Nothing else?”
I said
.

“That’s all I could come up with.  If you want to know more, why don’t you call the guy up and ask him yourself?”

“I would if he were anywhere on the face of the Earth.  It seems the
Gigabyte
was
Hasting’s
last stop before he disappeared.  This tank,
filled
with poison gas, was on Hastings’ boat when it was found, abandoned.”

Spencer scratched his mop-top head and peered at the tank.  “Just let me down some Cheerios and grab a quick shower
, then
we can run it down to the DOJ.”

Spencer commandeered a Radio Flyer wagon from his garage to transport the tank.  I don’t know why a grown man with no children has a wagon, but then I don’t know why he allowed his girlfriend to paint his toenails, either.

I pulled the wagon through the massive glass doors Spencer held open for me.  A guard behind a glass wall glanced up from his morning paper.

“Morning, Spencer.  Kind of early for you, isn’t it?”

“Special project.
  Research knows no time boun
daries,” Spencer replied.  “Howard, t
his is
Devonie
Lace.  I need a guest badge for her.”

“Sure thing.
  Just fill out this form.”  Howard pushed a sheet of paper and pen under the pass-through.

Howard issued me a special guest badge and let us through the glass doors into the California Department of Justice building.  I pulled the little wagon behind me down the long corridors, following Spencer through the maze of hallways. 

A man trudged from the other direction, overburdened with a stack of folders.  He stopped to rest and propped his load on a handrail.  “Morning, Spencer.”

“Good morning, Marv,” Spencer replied.  “How’s it going?”

Marv rolled his eyes and adjusted his grip on the mass of paper in his arms.  “It’s going to be one of
those
days.  I can just tell.”

“What’s the problem?” Spencer
asked
.

“You name it.  I’ve got fifty-two apps for gun permits here
.  Fo
ur ex-postal workers, eighteen recently divorced, nine with rap sheets a mile long.  Man, they’ve got nerve.  To top it all off, Hollywood wants to blow
up the city of San Francisco, and the joker who filed the app thinks it’ll be more
artistic
if they do it for real instead of hiring the special effects team.”

Spencer chuckled and patted the weary man on the back.  “Cheer up, Marv. 
Only fifteen more years till retirement.”

“Thanks a lot, Spencer,” Marv grumbled, and then he continued on his long trek down the hallway and disappeared around a corner.

We pushed through a pair of swinging doors and entered some sort of lab.  A man sat on a stool in front of a strange looking device and peered over his
glasses at us.  Then he glanced at my little wagon.  “Sorry, guys.  I can’t come out and play right now.  I’ve got work to do.”

“Everyone’s a comedian,” Spencer said.
 
“
Sam, this is
Devonie
.”  Spencer motioned toward me and I extended my hand.  “We want to lift some prints off this tank.
 
Any ideas?”

Sam examined the tank. 
“Hmm.
  Been in the water?”

“Yes,” I
said
.

Sam shook his head.  “How old are the prints you want to lift?”

“I don’t know.  Probably at least six months,” I replied.

Sam frowned, his head still shaking.  “Six months…been submerged.  Hope you’re not hanging your hat on these prints.”

Spencer kneeled next to the wagon.  “To top it off, it’s been handled by every Tom, Dick, and Harry this side of the border.  We’ll be lucky to get one good print.”

Sam took the handle of the wagon and pulled it to the end of a long bench.  “Don’t think superglue will work.  Best bet is probably the VMD.”

“VMD?”
I questioned.

“VMD
.  That’s
Vacuum Metal Deposition,” Sam explained.

I raised an eyebrow and looked at Spenc
er
.  Spencer shrugged his shoulders.  “You got me.  By the time I get them, they’ve already been developed and are ready to load into the computer.”

Sam put on a pair of latex gloves and hoisted the tank up onto the bench.  “VMD develops latent prints in situations where other methods fail.”

“How does it work?” I asked.

“Well, we just put the tank in this sealed chamber,” Sam explained as he closed the door on the box.  “Then all the air is sucked out, making it a vacuum.  A few milligrams of gold and zinc are evaporated in the chamber.  The gold and zinc interact with the stuff that makes up a fingerprint.  The metals will condense on the tank, rendering usable images out of any latent prints. 
Pretty remarkable.”

“How long does it take?” I
asked
.

“About fifteen minutes.  Enough time to go have a coffee break.  Come on,” he motioned.  “Just put on a fresh pot.”

We found fourteen usable prints on the tank. 
Usable, in that there was enough of the fingerprint pattern area to make a comparison and, hopefully, an identification.
  Spencer loaded the developed fingerprint images into a computer and we began the process of separating and grouping them.  After that procedure, we determined the fourteen prints belonged to a
total of five different fingers
—fingers from people, as yet, unidentified.

Spencer stood and walked to a machine labeled, “Live Scan.”  “Come over here,” he called to me.

I obeyed and stood next to the contraption, gazing at the glass plate.

“Put your hand on the glass” he instructed.

I looked at Spencer and hid my hands behind my back.

“It’s okay. 
Won’t hurt.
 
Promise.
  This is Live Scan.  We use it to scan fingerprints directly to a file.  We’ll scan yours, compare
them
to the ones we found on the tank and eliminate
them
to narrow our search of the database.”

“I see.”  I placed my hand on the glass and waited while the machine made the equivalent of a Xerox copy of my handprint.

We sat down at the computer and Spencer brought an image of a fingerprint up on the screen. “Okay.  Let
’
s see what kind of score this one gets.”

I watched, mesmerized by the technology.

“Six
fifty.  No match.  Let’s try the next one.”  He brought up the next print and retried the operation.

“Bingo. 
Thirty-eight-ninety-two.
  That’s you.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“Got a score
of
over three thousand.
  Anything over a thousand is a possible.  Anything over three thousand is a pretty definite match.”

“Wow. 
Now what?”

“Now we see if we can find a hit with the other four
prints
we got.  Tell me who
else
you know f
or sure has handled it
,” Spencer asked.

“Let’s see.  Jason helped me with it.  Paddy, down at the dive shop
—
he filled it and checked it for me.  And Clancy
—
no, wait
—
Clan
cy didn’t touch it.  I remember.  H
e made me carry the heavy stuff. 
Real gentleman.
  That’s it.”

Spencer rubbed his chin with the back of his hand.  “Not likely we’ll find a match in this database, unless they’ve been arrested.  But I have access to some others we can search.  Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Hours of searching through millions of records turned up nothing.  Exhausted from driving all night, I laid my head on my folded arms on the desk.  “I guess this was a mistake.  I’m sorry I wasted your time, Spencer.”