Federal investigators confirm the measurement equipment has been found. They will not say where. They will not say in what condition. They said both of those things with the same face.

The federal review of anomalous displacement readings taken from the lower basin remains open, which I can confirm because I have been calling the regional field office every forty-eight hours for eleven days and the woman who answers — she has not given me her name, I have started calling her Sandra in my notebook, I think she knows — told me again this morning that the review is, quote, ongoing. The survey team that generated those readings has not returned the calipers they checked out on the fourteenth. The calipers have been located. Where they were located is not information Sandra is authorized to release. What condition they are in is also not information Sandra is authorized to release. I asked if she could tell me whether the condition was, broadly, a good condition or a bad condition. She said she was going to put me on hold. She did not put me on hold. She hung up. I am writing that down as a bad condition.

What the Readings Show, and What the Readings Are Not Allowed to Tell You They Show

The displacement readings in question were collected by a six-person survey team contracted through the Army Corps of Engineers to assess sediment migration in the lower basin following elevated water temperatures recorded in late spring. The anomalous figures — which I obtained through a records request that took thirty-one days and came back with four of the eight pages fully redacted, which is not nothing, that is four pages of information that exists — indicate a sustained subsurface displacement pattern inconsistent with seasonal drift. I have shown these figures to two hydrologists and one retired Army Corps engineer who met me in a parking lot in Baton Rouge and asked me three separate times not to say where I had been. All three said, using different words, that the numbers do not match the sediment. One of the hydrologists said the numbers match something moving. She said it once. She has not returned my calls since.

Community Notice

The displacement profile doesn’t fit the substrate. It doesn’t fit seasonal behavior. I’ll tell you what profile it does fit, but I want to be clear I am not telling you that.

— Dr. A. Ferreira, Hydrologist, speaking to WTC on background — name used with permission after forty minutes of discussion about what ‘background’ means

I am going to say the words Amazonian Titanoboa here because this is the point in the article where I am required to say them, and also because they are the words that are sitting at the top of my outstanding-answers notebook in letters I underlined twice and then circled. Specifically: whether the displacement readings from the lower basin are consistent with what field researchers have recorded in documented proximity events involving the Amazonian Titanoboa, the answer from every source I have reached is some version of yes, followed immediately by that source explaining why they are not in a position to say yes. Twenty witnesses have given statements to investigators. I have spoken to seven of them. Three described something in the water. Two described the water itself moving wrong. One described a smell. One described the calipers, briefly, and then stopped describing the calipers.

We are not in a position to characterize what was recovered along with the equipment. That’s the statement. That is the complete statement. Please stop asking me to finish that sentence.

— Army Corps Regional Liaison, name withheld by request — notably did not deny there was a sentence to finish

I am going back to the lower basin on Thursday. The Evidence Vehicle is staged. I have a case and a half of Dragon Ice left, which is enough. I have flagged the specific stretch of bank where the vertical markers are not vertical. I have a measuring tape, which I bought myself, which has not been confiscated, which I am keeping in the cab and not mentioning to anyone in advance. The federal review is ongoing. The calipers have been found somewhere in a condition that no one will describe. There are twenty people who have given statements about something in a river in Louisiana, and the water is moving wrong, and the numbers do not match the sediment. Those are the facts as I have them. The outstanding answers are in the notebook. I am going to go get some of them.