“I don’t know,” I replied, setting down my empty pint glass.
“You doing okay out here in the boonies? Making a good living? I mean, if this is what you want, then fine. But I’d help you come back. Recommendation letters, interviews, that kind of thing.”
“Thanks, Glenn. I’ll think about it.” My memory recalled the stack of unpaid bills on my desk at the law office.
“Well, this is probably too much right now with your mind wrapped around that hearing next week.”
“Yeah, the case has me all knotted up.”
Glenn leaned back against the booth with his fist gripping his beer mug. “So you think Marisa Dupree killed her boss, that Kostas guy, right?”
The bluntness of his question made me pause, but I waved it off. Sure, it was a possibility, but I had interviewed Marisa face-to-face the day after the sheriff dragged the body out of the water. Marisa had been stunned and visibly upset. She was probably involved in all this somehow, but I could not image her as a murderer.
The server arrived with a tray of steaming red crabs covered in traditional orange spices. The salty, zesty aroma filled the booth. She slid the crabs off the tray onto the brown paper covering our table. Grabbing wooden mallets and thin knives, we started the feast.
She asked, “Can I get you’z guys anything else?”
“Another round of beers,” I replied.
Glenn agreed, his eyes surveying the pile of crabs between us.
When the server walked away, Glenn said, “My theory makes sense. A confidential research project suddenly shows up on an anti-secrecy website. The most likely leaker was either Kostas or Dupree. Maybe both of them. He could have known something about her … maybe he could have exposed her. If so, then she’d have a reason to kill him.”
“Marisa doesn’t seem like anything other than an average middle-aged woman with a corporate job. Plain as potato salad.”
Glenn shrugged. “They’re the dangerous ones. Normal on the surface, but you never know what’s lurking underneath.”
“I really don’t see her that way.”
He asked, “She’s got you convinced she’s innocent?”
“No, not convinced … but she’s credible.”
I could tell by Glenn’s expression and sudden silence that a thought had formed in his mind that he declined to say out loud.
We removed the claws and separated the bottoms of our crabs from the top shells. The edges felt sharp and pointy. Our fingers were orange from the spices as we picked the tender white meat from the interiors. The backfin lumps tasted juicy and salty.
The lights in the restaurant dimmed. Over in the far corner, the singer started a drum machine and strummed a choppy Jamaican rhythm on her guitar. She sang a folksy tune about Caribbean beaches and a long-lost lover. We were into our second crab by the time the song ended.
Glenn said, “I can see why you like it here. Good food, music, quiet life.”
“Yeah,” I replied as I finished my India Pale Ale and looked for the server for my next one. “Anything else you can tell me about Benton Dynamics?”
“No, I pretty much covered what I learned. You want me to dive deeper?”
I hammered a crab claw and dug out the meat. “Sure, if you can. Just nothing that can come back on you or me. I appreciate all you’ve done, Glenn, and on short notice. But you said something that got me thinking. What’s your theory on why the article about the Remora Shadow drone ended up on that website?”
“I figure that Kostas, Dupree, or both of them were leaking to Project Transparrior — maybe for money, fame, or revenge. There’re a lot of possible reasons why they did it, but I keep coming back to one motive.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Look, that underwater drone changes everything. If it can do what they say, then our Navy will eventually use it. That’ll have global consequences.”
“True, but I’m still hazy on how this drone gets so close to a sub without being seen. I get the fact that submarines launch from certain ports and follow predictable patterns near the shore. But how does it avoid being detected?”
Glenn fidgeted with his plate. “All I can tell you is what was on the Project Transparrior website. There wasn’t much detail. The same technology that helps a stealth fighter plane deflect and absorb radar also prevents anyone from picking up the Remora Shadow.”
I guess that made some sense, but not completely. More than seven years had passed since I had left the U.S. Navy, and my work was in the courtroom, not at sea. Physics was not my strongest subject, but I knew that submarines used sonar to identify objects in the water. Radar located planes in the sky. Sonar relied on sound waves reflecting back to microphones. Radar used electromagnetic pulses. The two systems for detecting the locations of objects were similar, but not the same. How the Remora Shadow could latch onto a vessel unnoticed remained a mystery.
Glenn said, “If Benton Dynamics has a working prototype, the Navy will be very interested, as well as every foreign intelligence agency that learns about it. The Remora Shadow is intense. It attaches onto submarines, tracks them, and renders a foreign sub fleet visible for attack. That’s a game-changer.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Could start a major war,” he said. “Nuclear missile subs keep the peace, because there’s no way to know where they are. This underwater drone pinpoints their locations. Maybe your client had enough smarts to foresee the consequences.”
We finished our first round of crabs, and the server brought a smaller, second pile. The guitarist sang an upbeat island tune before taking her first break. Glenn ate a last forgotten oyster off the appetizer plate. We had both put a dent in the nachos deluxe. Against my better judgment, I ordered another IPA, but Glenn stopped at his second beer. He was planning to ride his motorcycle
