Page 121 of The Session

“Yes, sir,” Mark answered simply.

“You look like you could be Kevin’s brother,” Sweeting pressed.

“Half,” Mark replied.

“Ah, I understand. Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. We all loved Kevin a lot. His death hit us pretty hard,” Sweeting said.

“You knew him?”

Sweeting pointed at the other end of the deck. “I used to sit out there in those chairs and drink with him all the time. We all miss him,” he added.

“The feeling is shared by a lot of people. The reason we’re here is that there have been a couple things that have come up and we wanted to find out more,” Morris explained.

“About his death?” Rolle asked.

“Were you the one that filed the report?” Mark asked.

“No, that would be Inspector Pinder,” Rolle replied.

“Is he coming?” Mark asked.

“He had court today in Nassau and couldn’t make it.”

“Can one of you call him and see if we can meet with him later?” Mark asked.

“Mark,” said Morris, “one step at a time. You had some questions. Let’s just begin there.”

“I’ve read the file. I’m happy to be helpful,” Rolle told them.

“Okay, maybe you can help explain this,” Morris said.

Mark walked over to the rack where the kayaks were sitting under the plastic tarp. “Kevin’s kayak had two straps, front and back. The front cord looked old and worn like the straps on the other kayaks. The back cord was completely different. I took it to a lab, had it examined, and found it had never been exposed to salt water. Which, if his kayak had been in the water, upside down like they said, it would have had plenty of opportunity to be saturated. Yet this was factory-new,” Mark said. “Never used.”

“You’re saying that it had been replaced?” Rolle asked.

“Yes, after Kevin died,” Mark replied.

“Was this a police lab you took it to?” Sweeting asked.

“No, some other facility, but it’s state of the art,” Mark assured him.

“Huh,” Sweeting said.

“Why do you think it was replaced?” Rolle asked.

“Probably because it was broken,” Morris offered.

Rolle knelt down and lifted the tarp to inspect the kayaks.

“There’s no lock here,” he noted.

“Anybody could have borrowed a kayak,” Sweeting added.

“And broken the strap, then replaced it?” Mark asked.

“If you borrow something around here and you break it, you better fix it or else there’ll be hell to pay,” Sweeting replied.

“So you think somebody borrowed the kayak?” Morris asked.