Eli Signed His Name And Gave The Search A Shoreline

Eli went back into the office. I stayed beside the shelves until Naomi asked me to return.

She needed a chart I had used for service trips to remote camps.

I spread it on the clean end of my bench. Eli pointed at the inner arm of Slate Pocket, beyond the place where the vessels had met.

"There's an old bunkhouse there," he said. "Rusk keeps fuel and spare nets in it."

That was near the Bell Ledger's second stop.

Eli said Mira had seen fish pass from the tender to the Gray Lantern without the proper records. She had taken pictures. Hector ordered her phone taken and told the crew she would stay ashore until she learned to mind her work.

According to Eli, the tender took fish from boats that had no legal quota left. Hector sold those loads through false landing records. Mira had asked why one ticket carried a trip number she had already seen.

"He told us she was safe," Eli said. "Then I saw the missing notice."

"Who stayed with her?" Naomi asked.

"Gideon Voss. He looks after the camp. Rusk pays him cash."

"Did you see her go into the building?"

"Yes. Voss locked the outside door. I carried a case of food up there."

Naomi asked him to mark where he had stood. Then she asked what he had heard himself and what other people had told him.

The interview took far longer than a confession took in a movie.

When Eli asked if he would be arrested, she did not promise he would walk free.

"You can have a lawyer," she said. "Telling us where she is matters. I can't trade away charges."

He looked down at his statement.

Then he signed it.

The search team left with a warrant and a medical crew. I did not go. I knew engines and cold boxes. I would only be another person someone had to watch on a wet landing.

While they traveled, I replaced a door gasket for a woman who ran a small fish shop.

She paid the $215 invoice before I packed my tools.

"I heard you're having a week," she said.

"Yes."

"You still came when you said you would."

I sat in my van afterward with the check on my knee. For several minutes, I could not make myself start the engine.

Naomi called after dark.

"They found Mira. She's alive."

I put the phone on the seat, then picked it up again.

"Sorry. Say that again."

She did.

Mira had been locked in the bunkhouse for eleven days. Voss had given her food and water, but no way to call anyone. The team took him into custody. Mira was being brought to medical care.

"Can her family know?"

"They're being told now."

I leaned forward until my forehead touched the steering wheel.

Naomi stayed on the line. She did not ask me to speak.

Two days later, a message came through the investigators. Mira wanted to thank the repairman who had stopped when he saw her name.

I asked them to tell her she owed me nothing.

"That includes telling her story before she's ready," I added.

"I'll pass that on," Naomi said.

The harbor changed after the rescue. People who had repeated Hector's claims began saying they had always had doubts about him.

I did not argue. I wrote down who restored a canceled job and who still wanted me paid in promises.

Eli got a lawyer. He gave agents more records and stayed somewhere Hector's men could not reach him. His lawyer, rather than my shop, became the place to send him messages.

I was glad. I had been checking the road every time a truck slowed down.

Naomi stopped by once more to collect a corrected equipment list. I offered her the chair by the small heater.

"You've been standing all day," I said.

She sat with both feet under it.

For a little while, we talked about ordinary work. She had a cabinet drawer that stuck. I had a radio that only worked if nobody moved the cord.

"You fix machines for a living," she said.

"People pay me to fix theirs. Mine wait."

She looked at the empty mug in my hands.

"Do you ever put anything in that?"

"When the question is easy."

She smiled, and I felt how much I wanted an easy evening with her.

Before leaving, she said another investigator would handle my remaining witness interviews. Her supervisor wanted clear lines between the harbor work and the criminal case. All requests for my records would go through Beth.

I understood. I still missed seeing her notebook on my bench.

That Friday, Beth called before I opened the shop.

"Rusk filed an exhibit last night. He says you helped approve the fish transfer."

My email chimed.

On the attached cargo release, beneath a date I recognized, someone had placed my signature.