The boarding officer stopped three paces away, his flashlight beam dropping across Keller’s wedged foot, the bent aluminum rail, and the sodden manila envelope protruding from the harbor officer's unzipped jacket.
"Port Officer Keller?" the boarding officer asked. His name tag read HARRIS. "We have a declared hazardous cargo obstruction logged on this slip at seventeen hundred hours."
Keller dragged his hands off the rail, leaning all his weight against his left thigh to ease the crushing torque on his trapped ankle. The color in his face had gone gray, the cold salt spray coating his forehead like sweat.
"Petty Officer," Keller said, drawing himself up as much as the angle allowed. "The vessel's mooring winch suffered a mechanical runaway while I was inspecting their discharge line. The master failed to maintain tension on the stern spring line. The bracket slipped and caught my gear. I need your crew to take a maul to this dog latch so I can clear the pier."
Harris didn't touch the winch release. He looked at me, then at the thick black fiber bypass running down from the camera dome into the wheelhouse hatch.
"Captain Miller," Harris said. "Are your refrigeration chillers running on ship's service power?"
"They're running on our emergency auxiliary diesel," I answered. "We switched over at twelve-fifteen when the main shore connection was severed at the breaker box behind the shed. If that auxiliary trips before midnight, we lose forty tons of commercial king salmon bound for the processing plant in Bellingham."
Harris turned his tablet toward Keller. "Officer Keller, did you log an electrical outage on Pier 48 with Seattle City Light this afternoon?"
"The transformer was running high resistance," Keller muttered, his eyes darting toward the shore end of the pier where the darkened access road disappeared into the industrial rail yard. "Protocol requires isolating the slip to prevent an arc flash into the fuel manifold."
"That’s strange," Harris said, his thumb scrolling across the screen. "City Light’s southern distribution log shows continuous draw on the 480-volt commercial line throughout the entire five-hour block. Forty-eight hundred kilowatt-hours pulled through the sub-panel behind shed three."
Keller’s left hand twitched against his coat. "The cold storage facility on the back lot operates under a legacy port lease. They run separate compressors."
"The legacy lease was canceled by the port commission eighteen months ago," I said.
I reached into the wheelhouse companionway and brought out the second document Frank had pulled from the registry office on Fourth Avenue: the certified tax parcel map for Pier 48's shoreward improvements. I unfolded the heavy laminated paper against the engine casing, keeping it under the beam of Harris's light.
"That shed isn't an active port lease," I said, pointing to the red-bordered parcel marked 48-B. "It’s currently held under a private month-to-month storage agreement registered to Puget Marine Transport LLC. The sole managing member listed on the corporate charter is Ronald Keller."
The rain seemed to slacken for a second, leaving only the hollow slap of Puget Sound against the pilings. Keller did not look at the parcel map. His gaze remained locked on the black fiber wire leading down to our lower deck.
"You had no authority to put surveillance gear on that light mast," Keller hissed, his voice dropping into an uneven whisper. "The mast belongs to the municipal harbor district. Any unauthorized tap onto city infrastructure is a Class C felony under state communications law. Whatever you recorded on that drive is inadmissible fruit. It won't survive an administrative review."
"It isn't an administrative review, Keller," Frank said.