Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)
As noted in previous posts, we’ve made some improvements at Chez Carrabis.
And as also noted in previous posts, not everyone is happy about it.
Further and despite our best efforts…
Well, I suppose this is a different issue.
Willing to wait for a table indicates the food is good, the service is reasonable, the prices are worthy, …
Yeah, okay. We pass the grade.
Pretty sure this is brand new.
Maybe.
Sean, always careful when he dove, prepped as before at the USS Boston memorial.
Nothing and no one.
He put on gear not usually carried on a free dive: a small tank with a thirty minute air supply, a headlamp and a backup snapped to his belt, night vision goggles, an Argonaut knife strapped to his calf, and a multi purpose camera on a chest harness.
One last equipment and harness check and he slid into the water.
At the cave mouth he checked his watch and rechecked his gear and harness.
All good.
Okay, Sean. Let’s go exploring.
He surfaced so slowly and clean it seemed the ocean hesitated letting him go, as if fearful of losing one of its own. No wake, no ripple, less sound than that caused by the tunnel’s natural pulsing with the waves and tides.
He waited, only the crown of his head down to his eyes above the waterline and at the edge where the tunnel opened to the cave floor. He rotated slowly to go unnoticed by anything living be in the cave.
Nothing save the bioluminescence of the algae lining the walls. Did this cave fill at high tide? Water seeks its own level, but to fill the air in the cave must escape.
He focused and rotated again, this time seeking areas where algae didn’t cling to the walls.
Ah! There and there. And two more over there.
His hands shifted from maintaining depth to slightly lifting until his ears surfaced.
Again, nothing. Only the sound natural to a underground, underwater cave.
The water rippled softly.
He put his hands on the edge of the floor.
Vibration.
The passive sonar thing from before?
No, not the same.
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As noted in previous posts, we’ve made some improvements at Chez Carrabis.
We keep quiet about it.
We didn’t get zoning permission and didn’t file any paperwork.
Not that Two-Legs would be interested.
It wasn’t for them.
And in the end, Two-Legs is really only concerned about Two-Legs. Whatever they do, they really do for themselves.
(us included)
As I wrote in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 12 (New), rewrites are in progress.
The month of July saw chapter juggling to avoid timeline conflicts, lots of editing, plus several new chapters in what I’ve already shared and, of course, stuff you’ve never seen.
God, I hope it’s worth it.
Irene Casey smiled back at Professor Red “Gentleman John” Willmette as she took her seat in Forensics 517, an advanced lab with the prestigious title Forensics Materials, Standards, and Guidelines.
517 was the only course Willmette taught because he created the department some fifty plus years ago, had academic, government, industry, and law enforcement connections covering the globe, and was the Erdös of the Forensics community. Investigators evaluated each other by their Willmette number: Did you co-author a paper with Willmette? You were a Willmette-One. Did you co-author a paper with someone who was a Willmette-One? You were a Willmette-Two. Go to any conference and the floor was saturated with Willmette-Tens, -Elevens, and -Twelves, and you couldn’t get a teaching position in the field unless you were a Willmette-Six or better.
A recognized authority in several forensic disciplines, he created Semiotic Forensics, what some people called Environmental Forensics, and he always laughed when he heard the term. “Yes, we investigate the environmental system, but derive meaning from recognizing every element in a given environment is a sign, consciously or non-consciously chosen by the individual – from the petty crook to the white-collar likes of Madoff – to enhance their experience of the event under investigation.” Known as “Gentlemen John,” he lived the hobo life for six months to learn the language of their signs in order to solve a cold case.
Which he did.
And brought down an organization that made The French Connection look like a toddler’s soccer game.
Despite several attempts on his life.
Nobody did that kind of thing anymore.
But now?
Now he was everyone’s favorite uncle who knew all the funny stories about the family and neighborhood, and if you took 517 be prepared to laugh hard and work harder.
Lab benches ringed the room, the center taken up with the standard classroom desk layout, and he had people sit alphabetically, but by first name, not last, so Irene sat dead center of the fifteen students joining her.
Willmette, who had to dip his head when going through most doorways, reached down and rapped his knuckles on the desk. “Let’s get started. We’re going to have a guest with us today, and this guest,” he checked his watch, “in addition to a resume too long to recount in detail, is a member of CSAFE, a Senior Policy Advisor to the National Commission on Forensic Science, and a Senior Fellow at OSAC.” He checked his watch a second time and glanced at the door. “Yes, any minute now…”
One of Casey’s classmates nudged her. She wrote in the top margin of her notebook “CSAFE NIST Center of Excellence in Forensic Science. OSAC Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science.”
Willmette loosened his bow tie. “Why don’t we all continue with our lab work until our guest arrives. Ladies and gentleman, to your benches.”
Casey and the rest moved to their research stations. She kept some of the communion wafer she picked up that night she let Captain Romantic off the hook and analyzed it the best she could. She took a different tact than outlined in the manuals – look for compositional analogs. What were the communion wafers like?
Footsteps hurried down the hall. Willmette stood by the door and spread his arms like P.T. Barnum introducing Gargantua, the world’s largest gorilla.
“Ta-Da!”
A petite woman, just over half Willmette’s height, mid-fifties woman with close cropped, strikingly blonde hair and a deep Mediterranean complexion stopped in the door way. She supported herself with one hand on the doorjam, looked up at Willmette and smiled. “How late am I, sir?”
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Brother Joe moved…oh, two-thirds?…of the way across the country a while back. While he was packing up and moving out, some friends came by to wish him well, hope he succeeds in whatever he does, and above all, enjoys life as it comes to him.
He wrote “Also, as I was cleaning out the garage of the old house, these two little guys (a shedding blue tailed skink and the largest earth snake I’ve ever seen) came to say goodbye. Thought it would make for an interesting nature post. Enjoy! Talk to you soon.”
It does, me thinks, and thanks, Brother Joe.
Hope all is well where’ere your journey leads.
