Skeleton Sea

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When the detective phoned to enlist our services he characterized the case as a mystery at sea.

Thirty-eight hours later we got our first look at the ghost boat.

It had been found adrift and deserted.

It looked ghostly enough right now, docked in the fog at the end of the pier.

Fog eclipsed the horizon. Best I could tell, the pier jutted into a channel near the mouth of a harbor. I strained to see farther but I could not find the ocean beyond. Best I could do was taste its salt and smell its kelp and hear its waves.

Walter and I stepped onto the ramp that led down to the pier where a man in a Morro Bay Police Department parka awaited us. He was tall and lean with graphite-gray hair worn in a spiky pompadour. He looked to be in his forties or fifties — younger than Walter's sixties-ish, as Walter liked to phrase it, older than my straight-up thirty — in any case, experienced.

The detective greeted us first. “I'm Doug Tolliver, and if I'm not mistaken you'll be Cassie Oldfield and Walter Shaws of Sierra Geoforensics.”

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