Micro. Michael Crichton
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pointing offshore—he’s spotted the boat in trouble.”
The camera panned to show the ocean. The white hull of the Boston Whaler bobbing against the blue horizon. The boat was still a hundred yards offshore, too distant for him to make out his brother. The camera panned back to Bobby Choy, who now was looking through binoculars.
When Peter next saw the boat, it was much closer to the shore. Now he could make out the figure of his brother, bent over, intermittently appearing, then disappearing again. “I think he was trying to clear the clogged lines,” Watanabe said. “That’s what it looks like.”
“Yes,” Peter said.
The camera now showed Grace Choy, shaking her head, trying to place a cell phone call.
Then it panned back to the boat, closer now to the white surf.
Then back to Grace Choy, shaking her head as she talked on the phone. “You don’t have good cellular reception up there,” Watanabe said. “She called 911 but couldn’t get through for a while. The call kept breaking up. If she’d gotten 911, they would’ve called the Coast Guard right away.”
The camera work was jerky, but Peter saw something that—“Hold it!”
“What?”
“Pause it, pause it,” Peter said quickly. As the image froze, he pointed to the screen. “Who’s that in the background?”
The screen showed a woman, dressed in white, standing on the hill a few yards above the Choys. The woman stared intently offshore, and seemed to be pointing at the boat.
“That’s one of the other witnesses,” Watanabe said. “There were three joggers as well. We haven’t been able to identify any of them yet. But I doubt they would give us more information than we already have.”
Peter said, “Does that woman have something in her hand?”
“I think she’s just pointing at the boat.”
“I don’t know,” Peter said, “I think she has something in her hand.”
Watanabe said, “I’ll get the AV evidence guys to look at it. You might be right.”
“What does this woman do next?” Peter said.
The tape started again.
“She leaves right away,” Watanabe said. “Goes up the hill and out of sight. You see: there she goes now. She’s hurrying, looks like maybe she’s going for help, but nobody ever saw her again. And there were no more calls logged to 911.”
Moments later on the tape, Eric jumped from the Boston Whaler into the roiling surf. It was difficult to be sure, but he appeared to be about thirty yards offshore at the time. He didn’t dive, but rather jumped feet-first, vanishing into white foam.
Peter watched closely to see if he emerged, but he did not seem to. And Eric had done something jarring, even disturbing: he had not put on a life jacket before he jumped. Eric knew enough to put on a life jacket in an emergency. “My brother wasn’t wearing a life jacket,” Peter remarked.
“I noticed,” Watanabe commented. “Maybe he forgot to bring it on the boat. It happens—you know—”
“Did he send out a mayday call on the radio?” Peter asked the police officer. Eric’s boat had certainly been equipped with a VHF marine radio. Eric, as an experienced boater, would have sent out a distress call on channel 16, the channel always monitored by the Coast Guard.
“Coast Guard didn’t hear anything.”
That was very strange. No life jacket, no distress call. Had Eric’s radio broken down? Peter continued to stare at the heave and pulse of the blank ocean in the video…an ocean that showed no trace of his brother. After another minute, he said, “Turn it off.”
Watanabe stopped the camera. “He was lost in the boneyard.”
“The what?”
“The boneyard. It’s that churning wash after the waves break. Where all the foam slick is boiling. He may have hit rocks in the boneyard. There are some outcrops that are only five, six feet below the surface. We just don’t know.” He paused. “Do you want to see any of it again?”
“No,” Peter said. “I’ve seen enough.”
Watanabe flipped the screen shut, turned the camera off. “That woman on the hill,” he said casually. “Do you know who she is?”
“Me? No. She could be anybody.”
“I wondered…You had such a strong reaction.”
“No, sorry. I was just surprised by—it was like she just suddenly appeared, that’s all. No idea who she is.”
Watanabe was very still. “You’d tell me, if you knew,” he said.
“Sure, of course. Yes.”
“Well, thanks for your time.” Watanabe gave him his card. “I’ll get one of the detectives to drop you at your hotel.”
Peter said little on the drive back. He wasn’t inclined to talk, and the detective didn’t press him. It was true the images of his brother vanishing in the surf were disturbing. But not as disturbing as the woman on the hill, the woman in white pointing at the boat with some object in her hand. Because that woman was Alyson Bender, the CFO of Nanigen, and her presence at the scene changed everything.
Waikiki
27 October, 5:45 p.m.
In his hotel room, Peter Jansen lay down on top of the bed, experiencing a sense of unreality. He didn’t know what to do next. Why hadn’t he told Watanabe who Alyson Bender was? He felt exhausted, but couldn’t rest. The video kept running through his mind. He saw Alyson holding something in her hand in the video, while watching Eric’s death as if it meant nothing to her. And then she had hurried away. Why?
He began thinking about something Rick Hutter had said to him about Erika Moll. How to check up on somebody. He took out his wallet and began going through it, pulling out cards, money. There it was—the card Rick had given him, back in the lab, more than a week ago. It had Rick Hutter’s handwriting on it. Just the word JORGE and a number.
The guy who could access telephone records. The MIT phone hacker.
It was a Massachusetts area code. He called the number. It rang for a while. And rang some more. There was no voice mail, so Peter just let it ring. Finally it was answered, sort of, with a grunt: “Yuh?”
Jansen identified himself and explained what he wanted. “I’m a friend of Rick Hutter. Can you get me a list of recent calls to and from a certain phone number?”
“Yuh? Why?”
“Rick told me you could do it. I’ll pay whatever you ask.”
“Money doesn’t work. I only do something if it’s…intriguing.” A faint Latino accent, a soft voice.
Peter explained the situation. “A woman may be involved in my brother’s…my brother’s…death.” Death. It was the first time he’d used the word in connection with Eric.
There was quite a long pause.
“Listen—I have the phone number that the woman used to call me. Can you find out who else she talked to on that phone? I’m assuming it’s her phone.” He read out Alyson’s number.
There was an emptiness on the line, a silence that extended. Peter held his breath. Finally Jorge said, “Give me—” pause—“a couple of hours.”
Peter lay back on the bed, his heart pounding. He could hear traffic going past on Kalakaua Avenue, for his room faced mauka—inland, across the