Free Earth Thirst by Mark Teppo

mention of my fellow Arcadians, I scan the original stories written about the Cetacean Liberty accident. There is mention of another boat, but no names are given, and certainly no mention of the harpoon boat I wrecked or the one that Nigel attacked.
    A search on Kyodo Kujira turns up a number of recent stories. The company's senior management is all dead, lost in a freak fire that ripped through a private facility outside of Ehime, where they were all gathered for a corporate retreat. The timing is awfully coincidental too: three days after Nigel and I went after the harpoon boats. Other than stating the barest of facts, Japanese investigators aren't speculating about the cause of the blaze. A need for further investigation , they say. The blaze was too hot , they explain in a press conference, we can't be sure what really happened .
    I go back to the local news, noting the names of the writers who covered the incident for the major news outlets in Adelaide. I even find the name of the hospital where the survivors were airlifted. I find it curious there are no eyewitness reports of what happened. Eventually, I find a single, illuminating sentence tucked on the back page of one of the last stories written. All attempts to interview the survivors were referred to Prime Earth's lawyers—a firm with a long, comma-filled name. It isn't hard to guess the firm's basic response to anyone asking.
    Captain Morse's name does come up, and it's only because it is common knowledge that he was the captain of the ship. I learn his first name is Thaddeus. There is no crew or passenger roster, and we're as much guilty of that lack of data as anyone else on the boat. Our own need for anonymity working against me.
    I do a web search for Meredith Vanderhaven and find nothing but her byline on articles that are four months old. No hits on what she might have been doing in Australia. No hits on what story she is working on.
    Which isn't surprising either. After Beering, she knew to keep her stories under wraps until they were ready for publication. Less time for her targets to prepare. Less time for people to shred documents, disappear sources, and hide the dump sites.

    * * *

    When the sun starts to get lost behind the taller buildings, I get a cab and go visit Callis's bank. It's more centrally located than I want to be in the city, but there's enough of a brisk wind that everyone on the street is more interested in getting to their destinations than eyeballing a haggard tourist like myself. The cab drops me off in front of a worn four-story building that is the lone holdout for modernization on the corner of King Williams Street and Waymouth Street. I keep my back turned to the high-rise going up across the wide boulevard of King Williams; the windows are in, and they're reflecting the sunlight directly across the street.
    The bank's windows, on the other hand, are heavily tinted and the climate is tightly controlled at a reasonable temperature. The décor goes for ostentatious in its effort at replicating someone's vision of an aristocratic drawing room from a century ago. The ubiquitous security guard near the entrance straightens slightly when I enter. He's wearing a dark blue wool suit and an expensive silk tie.
    It's that sort of bank.
    I ignore the security guard who is eyeing me because I'm dressed down for bank's normal clientele, and I adopt the sort of laconic swagger that suggests more money than fashion sense as I head for the client services desks in the back. The ones with the comfortable leather chairs next to them. I throw myself down into one of the chairs, kick my legs out, and stare at the finely attired young man behind the desk.
    The nameplate on the desk reads Rupert Gillam , and his sandy brown hair is cut very precisely across the back of his head, a scant millimeter above the finely tailored line of his collar. His suit is perfectly muted for a conservative banker, and his tie is a shade of purple somewhere between