Dead Reckoning

[SFX: Old cassette starts. Bridge clock ticks]

NARRATOR: Rowan produced a cassette recorded by Nia's father. It described using ballast to defeat port tariffs, not trafficking. After his death, Rowan and Owen expanded the method. The recording gave Nia a reason to bury the case and Rowan a reason to believe she might.

NIA CROSS: You kept this as insurance against me.

CAPTAIN ROWAN PIKE: I kept it because he was my friend.

NIA CROSS: Friends are not blackmail you store in a waterproof safe.

NARRATOR: Elsie found another anomaly. The fire system recorded its activation at twelve sixteen, but Marr's watch stopped at twelve eleven. Samir first assumed the watch was damaged in his fall. Nia heard its second hand scraping the crystal and realized it had been pressed against something magnetic.

ELSIE TRAN: Cobalt is not strongly magnetic. The crane spreader is.

[SFX: Cable hum. Container latch slams]

NARRATOR: Marr had been attacked on deck beside the crane, dragged unconscious to the control room, and killed by gas five minutes later. The camera showed an empty corridor because the killer entered through a cable access panel from the cargo deck.

DR SAMIR VALE: The bruise behind his ear was hidden by lividity. I should have found it.

NIA CROSS: You examined a body inside a gas chamber during a grounding. Missing a bruise is error. Building the chamber is murder.

NARRATOR: Crane logs identified who moved the spreader at twelve eleven: Captain Pike's access card. Rowan said cards could be borrowed. Nia agreed, then asked why the crane had lifted exactly twenty-six tons with no container attached. The weight matched the false ceramic entries.

ELSIE TRAN: Someone used the hanging spreader to fool a remote load audit.

NIA CROSS: And Marr caught him doing it.

NARRATOR: The fraudulent lift had been ordered from the bridge terminal under Rowan's password while Rowan claimed to be asleep.