“But no one else saw the boat,” Eric notes. “I don't understand why no one else would notice it there.”
“Because they don't think it would be. It's easy to miss something you don't think should be there. Think about the kind of clientele we've seen here at the resort. Can you honestly tell me you think a whole lot of them are avid hikers? How many do you think would go up on that cliff and spend a lot of time looking around? The boat isn't visible from the beach. You have to be up on the rocks in order to see it.”
“Yeah, we were pretty high up,” Bellamy chimes in.
“The driver Joshua goes up there. There are probably a couple of other people who work here who are from the neighboring islands who might. But every single one of them grew up with the legends about this island. Even if they did notice the boat, they wouldn't want to mention it. They wouldn't want to say anything and have people think they've somehow been cursed because of the boat.”
“Do you really believe that?” Bellamy asks. “They must know it's just a story.”
“Just a story or not, legends like that are deeply important to people. They're part of cultural identity, and even if someone knows for sure it's not true, there's still a part of them that wants to respect it. Those memories can really run deep. I mean, we can all claim we don’t think Santa or the tooth fairy is real. But what do you do when some jolly old man in red shows up in your chimney?”
She nods like she understands.
“But Catherine isn't from any of those cultures. She would have no reason to not talk about a boat,” Eric says.
“That's true, but again, she wouldn't see it if she didn't go up on the cliffs. She would have no idea it was even there. I told her I worried the resort wasn't safe, because maybe what I was seeing was someone who wasn't supposed to be here. Remember when I told you about the security cameras? I mentioned to her that I knew one of them covered an unused portion of the island. She admitted that was the section near those rocks. So she got me the footage for the last few days, and there was nothing. No boats, no people, nothing that got anywhere near that area,” I tell them.
“So, there was no boat?” Bellamy asks.
“Not exactly. I rented a boat and went out there to see it for myself," I explain.
“Alone? Why would you do that?” Eric gasps. “You need to have someone with you.”
"No, I don't. I need to be as unobtrusive as possible. The less you and Bellamy think I'm up to anything, the less the staff will pay attention to me. And it worked. They rented me a boat without question, and I went to see what was there. Like they said, there was a barrier saying it was a sanctuary, and no boats were permitted anywhere near as close as I saw the boat yesterday and the other day."
"But you just said you saw the footage," Bellamy points out. "Not only do you know there was no boat, but you know the cameras were there and were going to catch you being out there."
"Not exactly," I say. "From the footage I watched, security isn't going to get much information from the camera focused on those rocks."
"Why not?" she asks.
"There were no tides."
Chapter Thirty
"No tides?" Eric asks.
"The water level never changed," I explain. "The video went from morning to night a few times, but the tide didn't go from low to high. It stayed at essentially the same level the entire time. But that’s not how shorelines work. There are two low tides and two high tides every day. It takes a little more than six hours for the tide to go from its highest point to its lowest point, so the tide is at the same point a little more than twelve hours apart each time. But there was no evidence of that on the video."
"So, what’s that mean? The security footage was hacked?” asks Bellamy.
"That, or it was manipulated," I say. "But not by someone who was paying very good attention. They wanted to control what the security team sees. They would need it to look like time was passing. But they didn't want them seeing what was really happening on that area of the island. So, they pieced together pieces of footage and created what I'm assuming is a very long loop. Several days' worth that look like they are a continually changing live feed but is actually just a recording. If I had to take a guess, there are other recordings to plug in when the weather changes, but it doesn't always work out. The footage I saw should have covered the storm, but the section of the night footage I saw didn't even have rain. It was only a few minutes of it, but there should have been massive lightning and pouring rain.”
"Catherine showed you fake footage to prove there was no boat?" Eric asks.
"Right now, all I know is she showed me what security gave her. My thought is security doesn't even know the footage isn't real."
"What do you mean?" Bellamy asks.
"There are only a few security cameras here and they probably never record anything interesting. I doubt Desmond is sitting around watching the feed from the cameras all the time. More than
