Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

You're the audio person. What can you tell me?" He ran it back and played it again.
    "It's human speech."
    Clay looked at her as if to say, Uh-huh, I woke you up because I needed the obvious pointed out.
    "And it's military."
    "Why do you think it's military?"
    Now Amy gave Clay the same look that he had just finished giving her." 'Captain'?"
    "Oh, right," said Clay. "Speaker in the water? Divers with underwater communications? What do you think?"
    "Didn't sound like it. Did it sound like it was coming from small speakers to you?"
    "Nope." Clay played it again. "Sandwich?" he said.
    "Sandwich?"
    "The Old Broad said that someone called her claiming to be a whale and asked her to tell Nate to bring him a sandwich."
    Amy squeezed Clay's shoulder. "He's gone, Clay. I know you don't believe what I saw happened, but it certainly wasn't about a sandwich conspiracy."
    "I'm not saying that, Amy. Damn it. I'm not saying this had anything to do with Nate's" – he was going to say drowning and stopped himself – "accident. But it might have to do with the lab getting wrecked, the tapes getting stolen, and someone trying to mess with the Old Broad. Someone is fucking with us, Amy, and it might be whoever is recorded on this tape."
    "And there's no way the camera could have pulled a signal out of the air, something on the same frequency or something? A mobile phone or something?"
    "Through a half-inch of powder-coated aluminum housing and a hundred feet of water? No, that signal came in through the mike. That I'm sure of."
    Amy nodded and looked at the paused picture on the screen. "So you're looking for two things: someone military and someone who has an interest in Nate's work."
    "No one -" Clay stopped himself again, remembering what he'd said to Nate when the lab had been wrecked. That no one cared about their work. But obviously someone did. "Tarwater?"
    Amy shrugged. "He's military. Maybe. Leave the tape out. I'll run a spectrograph on the audio in the morning, see if I can tell if it's coming through some kind of amplifier. I've got nothing left tonight – I'm beat."
    "Thanks," Clay said. "You get some rest, kiddo. I'm going to hit it, too. I'll be heading down to the harbor first thing."
    " 'Kay."
    "Oh, and hey, the 'kiddo' thing, I didn't mean -"
    Amy threw her arms around him and kissed the top of his head. "You big mook. Don't worry, we'll get through this." She turned and started out the door.
    "Amy?"
    She paused in the doorway. "Yeah?"
    "Can I ask you a… personal question, kinda?"
    "Shoot."
    "The shirt – who's stupid?"
    She looked down at her shirt, then back at him and grinned. "Always seems to apply, Clay. No matter where I am or who I'm with, the smoke clears and the shirt is true. You gotta hang on to truth when you find it."
    "I like truth," Clay said.
    "Night, Clay."
    "Night, kiddo."
    * * *
    The next day the weather was blown out, with whitecaps frosting the entire channel across to Lanai and the coconut palms whipping overhead like epileptic dust mops. Clay drove by the harbor in his truck, noting that the cabin cruiser that Cliff Hyland's group had been using was parked in its slip. Then he turned around and caught a flash of white out of the corner of his eye as he drove past the hundred-year-old Pioneer Inn – Captain Tarwater's navy whites standing out against the green shiplap. He parked his truck by the giant banyan tree next door and humped it over to the restaurant.
    When Clay came up to the table, the hostess was just seating Cliff Hyland, Tarwater, and one of their grad students, a young blond woman with a raccoon sunburn and straw-dry hair.
    "Hey, Cliff," Clay said. "You got a minute?"
    "Clay, how you doing?" Hyland took off his sunglasses and stood to shake hands. "Please, join us."
    Clay looked at Tarwater, and the naval officer nodded. "Sorry to hear about your partner," he said. Then he looked back down at his menu. The young woman sitting with them was watching the dynamic between the three men as if she might write a paper on it.
    "Just a second," Clay said. "If I could talk to you outside."
    Now Tarwater glanced up and gave Cliff Hyland an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
    "Sure, Clay," Cliff said, "let's walk." He looked to the junior researcher. "When she comes, coffee, Portuguese sausage, eggs over easy, whole wheat."
    The girl nodded. Hyland followed Clay out to the front of the hotel, which overlooked the harbor fueling station and the Carthaginian, a steel-hulled replica