“It’s a map of the 1848 voyage of the Princess,” Rachael said. “Those position notations show where the whales were caught. Captains often illustrated their logbooks to record good whaling areas. The map would have given Caleb’s audience an idea of the extent of the voyage and shown where his adventures had occurred.”

Gamay got down on her hands and knees and followed a line with her index finger from Pohnpei to a speck called Trouble Island. The island’s position had been noted next to it.

The Trouts jotted down the coordinates, rolled the diorama back up, and carried it into the kitchen. Despite Rachael’s protest, they gave her a substantial contribution to start the ball rolling on a place for the mural.

While Rachael Dobbs went to close up the museum, the Trouts went out into the garden.

“What do you think?” Gamay asked.

“I’m not sure whether this will help them find the lab,” Paul said, “but it’s all linked somehow: the present and the past, the blue medusa, the miraculous cure of the men aboard the Princess.”

“Don’t forget that somebody thought the log was important enough to kill Brimmer over,” Gamay said. “We should let Kurt and Joe know what we found.”

Paul already had his cell phone in hand, scrolling down to a number on his contact list.

Unknown

NUMA 8 - Medusa

CHAPTER 39

LIKE ANY GOOD DETECTIVE, JOE ZAVALA BEGAN HIS SEARCH for Davy Jones’s Locker at the crime scene. Using a one-person submersible borrowed from the NUMA ship, he dove to the ocean bottom and made a couple of passes over the circular depressions left by the lab’s footings. Seeing nothing new, he broke away from the site and started to explore the surrounding area. The submersible’s searchlights suddenly reflected off a piece of metal.

Working the controls of the submersible’s mechanical arms, Zavala scooped a twisted piece of steel from the bottom and examined it under the lights before depositing it in a basket slung beneath the submersible.

“I just picked up a chunk of the Proud Mary,” he called up to the ship’s bridge.

“You’re sure it’s not a piece of the lab?” asked Captain Campbell, skipper of the NUMA ship.

“Reasonably sure. The metal is twisted and melted, the way it would be from a missile strike. It doesn’t look at all like the structures I saw in the diagrams. What I’ve seen fits with our theory that the lab was lifted off its site and towed away.”

“Have you checked out the canyon where the lab was prospecting for jellyfish?” asked Campbell.