Authors: Keith Yocum
“I suppose,” she said. “But he did seem like an adventurous sort, so it’s not surprising. Ah, here we go.”
Dennis could finally see a long, low mound in the distance, running from left to right, that he took for a barrier sand dune demarcating the beach and ocean beyond. And to his surprise, he could finally see several cars ahead. A man waved at them; something on his chest sparkled in the sun’s rays.
Judy forgot to slow down gradually,
and her abrupt stop stirred up a cloud of dust and sand, forcing the three men to shield their eyes.
“Blast,” Judy said as she realized her breach of outback etiquette.
The introductions were slow and stilted. All three men repeated “G’day” to Dennis and shook his hand vigorously.
Dennis was struck by the searing heat radiating from the sand. The sun, directly overhead, cast small shadows hugging each person’s feet. There were virtually no bright colors: just white, gray, brown, and a dull ocher. He blinked several times to lubricate his eyes, but it did not help.
They walked through a spongy sand-soil mix to a forlorn-looking maroon Toyota covered in a thick layer of pale dust. Dennis could feel the heat reflecting off the metal car fender and took a small step back. Farther ahead, a thin path led through low spinifex-covered dunes to the beach.
“Has the car been dusted inside?” Dennis asked, panting slightly.
“Yes,” Judy said. “Mostly Garder’s prints, some from his friend, Roby, and one set we can’t match yet—but we’re working on it.”
On the back seat was an Adidas bag. Dennis opened the back door and was met by a rush of hot air. He poked through the bag and found a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, and a clean pair of underwear.
He bent down, putting his face inches away from the carpet floor covering, and holding his sunglasses in his right hand, scanned the entire area. The air temperature inside must have been at least one hundred twenty degrees, Dennis guessed, as a bead of perspiration slid lazily down his right temple. He stopped at the transmission hump and looked closely at a small, dark spot the size of a pencil eraser.
“How about latent fluids?” he asked. “Was that done?”
“No,” Judy said, consulting a sheet of paper. “Do you want it tested?”
“Not yet.” He stood up and stretched his back.
On the front passenger seat was a printed map from MapQuest. It gave directions from Garder’s apartment to a gas station nearby. An empty Diet Coke can sat in the cup holder.
“We found this under the front seat,” the police officer said, holding up a ziplock bag. Dennis took it and opened it. The car keys were attached to a simple Toyota keychain. Garder’s wallet was black and worn at the edges. Flipping it open, he counted three hundred ten dollars.
He dropped it back into the bag and handed it to the officer.
“So, what’s the story here?” he said. “Our guy drives way the hell up here by himself and goes snorkeling. And he gets eaten by a shark? Sounds a little too much like
Jaws
, if you ask me.”
Judy found herself fighting to contain a smile. Initially, she had been aghast at Dennis’s rough style of inquiry, especially with the watch-store owner. But now she found it amusing and even interesting.
“Mr. Cunningham, as the regional manager of in Western Australia, I’d like to answer that,” said a short man with a wrinkled, bronze face. He wore a white, wide-brim hat pulled down slightly at the ears. “As you can imagine, we have sharks along all our coasts in Australia. Tragically, it’s not uncommon that man and shark come into contact. This appears to be the case for your Mr. Jansen.”
“Are you telling me,” Dennis asked, turning to face him, “that a guy comes by himself to this desolate stretch of beach and dives right in to be gobbled up by a shark just waiting for him? No witnesses, no evidence? Just like that?”
“Mr. Cunningham,”—he bristled—“we certainly don’t condone going into the water alone. That would be imprudent, but we cannot stop people from doing what they set their minds to do. In the past five years, we’ve had nine people killed by sharks in Australia. It’s a reality of sharing the ocean with these creatures. We didn’t make the rules that govern predator and prey behavior.”
“Fine.” Dennis brushed away a fly. “So what happened to our guy, according to your theory?”
The regional manager shot Judy a quick what-kind-of-idiot-is-this look, but she glanced away. “Our guess is that he parked, changed into his swimmers, grabbed his gear, and walked to the beach,” he said, leading the group toward the water. “He likely entered the water so that he could sit down to pull on his flippers, and just went in. As you can see, the water is relatively calm here in the bay.”
Dennis stood looking over a placid, deserted beach and noticed a forest of mushroom-shaped rocks covering part of the beach and poking up through the water.
“What are those?”
“Stromatolites,” the fisheries manager said. “Ancient rock formations. That’s why this particular spot is popular.”
“They’re strange.”
“Strange, indeed,” the manager replied. “It appears Mr. Jansen entered the water here and must have been preoccupied when he was taken.”
“Was anything found in the water?” Dennis asked. “Anything at all? A broken snorkel, a piece of a flipper? Anything?”
“At the behest of the AFP,” the manager glanced at Judy, “we had two divers scour the area here. We found a single flipper about a quarter mile to the north wedged in some stromatolites. It appears that it’s the same brand as Mr. Jansen wore. It had two punctures near the foot that are consistent with the bite of a white pointer.”
“Could the punctures have been made by knife?” Dennis asked.
“No,” the manager said. “They were definitely made by a pointer. I looked at the punctures with a magnifying glass, and you can clearly see the small serrations made by the pointer’s triangular teeth.”
“Are these sharks big enough to eat a man whole like that?”
“Well, typically they don’t eat their prey in one fell swoop. They attack and wait for the prey to bleed out and perish. Then they move back in to feed on the carcass. And yes, some of the pointers are quite large, perhaps six to eight meters. There are tiger sharks, and bulls as well, that are capable of eating a human.”
“Are there any other plausible ideas for what might have happened to him?” Dennis asked. “Besides your
Jaws
theory?”
Judy noticed the manager’s irritation, and she intervened. “Is there anything else that could have happened to him in the water besides being taken by shark? Anything?”
“Well, he could have drowned, of course, or had a heart attack, certainly.”
“What would have happened to his body under those circumstances?” she asked.
“His body would have likely been eaten by smaller sharks and fish,” he said. “It would take a couple of weeks before the entire body was consumed. Your man has been missing, I’m told, for about six or seven weeks, so there wouldn’t be much left regardless.”
Dennis peered out over the calm green-blue water of the bay, looked north at the strange rocks, and turned to Judy.
“I think we’re done here,” he said.
Judy thanked the men, and Dennis walked back to the car by himself.
Judy remained with the policeman, her AFP colleague, and the fisheries manager.
After Dennis got into the car, the policeman said, “Mean as cat’s piss, wouldn’t you say?”
“Too right,” the AFP agent said.
Judy looked at the ocean over their shoulders, feeling a tepid sea breeze run across her face. A strand of hair caught in her mouth and she teased it out, flipping it to the side.
“Well, I thought I did tell you that he liked to snorkel,” Roby said.
“Did you ever go with him?” Dennis asked.
“Of course I did: snorkeling, that is,” he said.
“Did he mention that weekend he was going up to Shark Bay?”
“He might have,” Roby said. “Like I said, I can’t remember everything.”
“Would he often go by himself?”
“Once, when I said I couldn’t go with him, he told me he would go by himself. Otherwise, I don’t know.”
Dennis looked at his notes, and then up at the young man. “Is there anything surprising or strange to you about what happened to him? Anything at all?”
“Besides the fact that a big shark ate him?”
“Yes.”
“No. He loved adventure and he just got unlucky. Man, that poor bastard. A shark . . .”
After finishing with Roby, Dennis reluctantly visited St. Regis’s office. After a twenty-minute wait, he was allowed in.
“Are we done with you yet?” St. Regis said, sitting back and peering over the top of his reading glasses. “Was hoping you would be stateside by now.”
“We’re closing the investigation,” Dennis said.
“So what’s the verdict on your young man?”
“He was swallowed by a big, hungry shark.”
“Oh,” St. Regis said, raising his right hand in a flourish, “no Byzantine theories of official subterfuge and drug running? Really, Mr. Cunningham, how boring. A big shark. Do tell.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the way it is,” Dennis said. “Sometimes stupid things happen to nice people.”
“Well,” St. Regis said, standing, “I want to thank you for thoroughly disrupting our office. And as the old saying goes, don’t let the door hit you in the ass when you leave.”
***
Judy valeted the car at the hotel and checked her makeup in the car visor’s mirror. She brushed her hair several times to give it some life.
My stupid hair just hangs there,
she thought, giving it an extra swipe.
Ugh.
She was thirty minutes late, having been pulled into a new assignment involving a methamphetamine lab in Albany.
Dennis was hunched at the bar, swirling his drink with the plastic swizzle stick. Uncharacteristically, he wore a white, short-sleeve polo shirt and jeans. From the back his shoulders looked muscular and taut, and Judy paused, thinking it might not be him.
“Oh, Dennis, it’s you.” She sat next to him. “I’m so sorry I’m late. I’ve been tossed into a new assignment.”
“That’s OK. Plane doesn’t leave until this evening.”
Judy ordered a sauvignon blanc. The two investigators sat side by side, looking down at their drinks in silence, the piped-in jazz a stilted backdrop.
“Are you anxious to get home?” Judy asked.
“No, not really. I’m finally starting to like this place, which for me is quite a change.”
“Well, at least you’ll get a chance to see your daughter.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s so.”
They grew silent, and Judy wondered whether she’d ever see him again. As cantankerous and boorish as he was at times, she was intrigued. Every now and then, when he looked at her just the right way, his deep blue eyes sparkled in the bright, clear Australian air, making him unaccountably attractive.
But even if Judy had wanted to flirt with her American visitor, she felt uncomfortable doing it. She’d really had no practice; Phillip had been her first and only serious relationship. After seventeen years of marriage, she was starting the relationship game all over again, and it was a confusing game indeed. Judy even struggled with how to make small talk, to fill in the odd moments of silence that occur between two adults.
Suddenly anxious and self-conscious, she pushed her drink away.
“Dennis, well, I really should be going,” she said. “It was a pleasure working with you. I’ve really enjoyed it: a real breath of fresh air from the normal copper stuff here.”
“Don’t go,” Dennis said. “You just got here.”
“I really need to leave,” she said.
“You didn’t even finish your drink,” he said.
“Well, that’s true. I just wanted to say good-bye and wish you luck.”
“Well then, why don’t you stay?” he said. “Please.”
Judy grabbed the stem of her glass and slid it toward her. She looked at him and smiled, her mind racing ahead.
Just bloody say what’s on your mind,
she berated herself.
For heaven’s sake, just talk!
“Do you mind if I ask you something personal?” she blurted. “I have to ask this question, and I know you’ll think it’s silly, but I’m going to ask you just the same.”
Dennis turned to her, wrinkling his brow; a combination of caution and curiosity.
“Shoot,” he said carefully.
“OK, here goes. Has anyone mentioned the color of your eyes before? Don’t laugh. They’re unbelievably blue; almost like an effervescent indigo, or something like that. See, you’re laughing at me. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a person with that kind of blue eye color before. I mean it. Stop laughing, Dennis.”
“Yes, OK, some people have mentioned it before.” He laughed. “At one point when I was a kid my Mom thought I had something called Waardenburg syndrome. It’s condition that presents with these super blue eyes. But the doctor said I didn’t have that. Over the years some women have mentioned it. Actually, not sure what I’d do if a guy mentioned it to me.”
“Well, I had to ask,” she said. “Your eyes are so different.”
“A lot of people would say I’m different, that’s for sure. And not because of my eyes.”
“Oh, I just don’t think they know you well enough,” she said. “People love to judge, even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
She was surprised how his casual appearance softened her view of him. The collar of his worn shirt hung open, and she could see the hair at the top of his chest. His neck, no longer constrained by the white shirt and occasional jacket, seemed muscular and strong, and his sandy-brown, short-cropped hair gave him a youthful look.
Hell,
she thought,
he could be forty-five or sixty-five; men age like that. Women just sag.
Dennis began to pepper her with inquiries about her life in Australia, her Catholic upbringing, everything really. At one point, feeling buoyed by her second glass of wine and inoculated by the knowledge she’d never see this rough-edged American again, she vented about her divorce.
“I could have killed him,” she said, staring at the row of liquor bottles at the back of the bar, “really killed him. I was so bloody furious and humiliated. I actually locked my service weapon in the trunk of my car one night for fear I’d use it on him if I took it inside. Isn’t that awful? God, what a bloody wreck I was.”