Harwood set Sweeney on disposing of Bryce’s body, had the younger deputy take Bryce outside. He figured they’d have to burn him or something, chop him up and drop him off the end of the Grady-White somewhere far out in the strait. For now, it would suffice to get him out of the kitchen, away from Dale’s eyes. Harwood couldn’t predict how the younger Whitmer would react if he spent much more time around what remained of his brother, but he knew it wouldn’t much help their case with Ateke Okafor.

They adjourned to the dining room. Harwood sat opposite Joy at the table, and Dale stood by the door to the kitchen. And Harwood talked.

“It started like it was supposed to,” he explained. “Like every other time. We heard the clicks on the distress frequency as the ship came past Cape Flattery, three of them, one second in between. We’d been tracking the ship on the GPS, so we knew it was good to go, like always.”

Joy drummed his fingers on the table and studied Harwood. “Except…not,” he said.

“Well, no. It was a foggy night, kind of lumpy out on the water. Wasn’t the best night for a drop, but I wasn’t too worried, not with my boat. Except when I got her down to the launch and put her in the water, the damn engines wouldn’t start. Either of them.”

Joy leaned back. Tented his fingers. “Aha.”

“Turned out someone’d fucked around with the starter while the boat was on its trailer,” Harwood said. “They would have had to sneak into my backyard to do it, but there you go. Of course, I didn’t know that at first. All I knew was, I was crippled.”

“Protocol would dictate you immediately call Mr. Okafor.”

“And I did. Okafor said he’d call me back on a better line, and it took a while for that to happen. But when he did, he told me the guy on the freighter claimed he’d made the drop, there was a boat out there, knew the signs and everything.”

“The signs.”

“Yeah, the drop. We had a procedure. I show up off the stern of the ship, flash my lights three times. The guy chucks it back off the stern, fully sealed and, you know, taped up with flotation devices and a GPS so we can find it. Typically, it didn’t take much looking.”

“But that night someone else intercepted the package.”

“That’s right. And it took us a while to figure out who’d done it, but once we realized Ty Winslow’s boat was out of the harbor at the same time, we put it together. Ty didn’t deny it either, told us the package was safe somewhere, we could buy it back from him.”

Joy nodded. “And where is this man now?”

“Dead.”

“You killed him?”