He pulled out the chair next to her, sat, and laced his fingers together. “I did the after-action check on the motor launch. Pulled it out of the water and onto the dock according to protocol. I asked Kevina if she noticed anything weird about the boat while she was out dropping that buoy. Any funny noises. Felt anything through the hull. Asked if she’d hit anything floating. Or maybe a reef. She said no, but there’s gouges. You know, like someone has taken a chisel and scraped it down the hull a couple of times on either side of the keel.”

“There aren’t any shoals out there. Nothing she could have hit unless it was floating debris.”

Atumbo shrugged. “I’m just telling you that those gouges weren’t there when I lowered the launch into the water this morning. It’s my job to notice these things. The launch has a duraplast hull, so it’s not like sialon, but that’s still pretty tough stuff. Whatever peeled those slices had to be really sharp and really hard.”

“Okay, I’ll go over the charts again. They were generated a couple of decades ago, not to mention from space. Maybe they missed a shallow, something volcanic that bubbled up from the ocean floor after the impact. Anything else, Bryan?”

“Just some slimy stuff that was on the hull. Sort of like the tar we see stuck to hulls in the Gulf of Mexico or maybe the Persian Gulf. You know, where there’s oil seeping out. But it’s slimy and greenish blue. Didn’t feel like tar. It washed off with a power spray.”

“Bryan, make note of the gouges, put it in the service records.”

“Already done, Supervisor.”

Michaela glanced down the table where Kevina was in conversation with Lara Sanz. Beside her, Kim Yee had little Felix on his lap, holding the boy with one hand, using a slice of bread to sop up the last of the tomato sauce on his plate with the other.

Felix was telling Sheena something. Showing the little girl the tips of his fingers, letting her touch them. When she did, the little boy let out a giggle, and loud enough for Michaela to hear, cried, “That tickles!”

Gouges in the hull? Surely if Kevina had hit something, she’d have put it in her report.

7

The official name of the tavern was The Bloody Drink. Everyone on Donovan called it Inga’s for the owner proprietor, Inga Lock. Inga was a big-boned woman, blond, and buxom. Her personality matched her body; it came on strong. Across the alley, behind the tavern, Inga brewed, distilled, and fermented the finest beer, spirits, and wines on the planet. All of which she dispensed with a smile. At least she did as long as her patrons had coin to cover their food and beverages. What made Inga’s unique was that it was Donovan’s one and only tavern.