Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

They stared at each other after that, in the ensuing silence. Finally the sheriff sighed, then stood. Rube held his stare.

“Go on home. But I’ll be in touch.”

Rube nodded and stood himself. He backed out the door.

And that’s that, he thought. He threaded his way through the tourists with a sense of anger. He’d only done his civic duty. Why was Boggert so nasty?

But then Rube thought of the woman in the kelp, the big dog gnawing possessively on her hand. God, she was so cold. She radiated cold. Colder than the sea had been when his bare feet hit it early that morning.

The thought cooled some of Rube’s anger, but the images playing in the minefields of his brain made him wobble a bit and he strayed into a fat lady with a big sack and almost tipped her over. He caught himself and bowed and made apologies — though she glared at him in anger, beady little tourist eyes like two stones fitted in a bowl of fat — and Rube wobbled on over to a bench in the plaza off the street and let his head down on his arms.

He wondered, as he buried his head, where the big old dog, Buddy, had gone?

Rube would have been all right if it weren’t for the other memory. He shook off most of the day’s effects, made a light supper of tuna on French bread, with a nice salad; he cleaned the apartment — it was a house, not an apartment, but he couldn’t shake his East Coast mentality. The place had one bedroom and a living room-kitchenette, with the inevitable sliding doors that led to the little deck looking out upon nothing. Actually there was a view back there, a wispy tree that loomed high over the garden plot and cut the afternoon sunlight to a drizzle. Beyond there was a hill that towered and cut the morning sunlight, but that was okay. Rube could live with a few shadows.

But then he’d lain down to rest and he’d almost dozed off when that old memory kicked in to reveal a scene he thought lost forever.

His only other visit to an ocean marched like a slideshow past his inner eyes. Only this was the Atlantic, a long time ago. He’d just received his first promotion from Mercer Chemical, a boost up from common chemist to research supervisor, and the boss had taken a group of them out on his fishing boat. The day was blustery and bright, the ocean a cruel, hard-edged blue with waves that frothed and leaped against the boat. The other supervisors were old hands, playing with their fishing tackle, but Rube just held to the rail and stared out at the sea. In front of the bow something long and sleek and beautiful leaped and swam, and Rube was hypnotized by the sight. He turned to ask his boss about this beautiful thing, but his boss was leaning next to the rail, an ugly harpoon in his big hands, yelling at the mate, “Close on it! Starboard now, quickly!” and his big arm moved and the harpoon flew and the blue-grey skin of the dolphin erupted with a flash bright as a red flower. Bright as the red carnations Eleshia had grown in their garden before the cancer took her. The harpoon ripped the dolphin’s flesh as the cancer had ripped Eleshia’s. Only there was something more terrible about the harpoon wound. Something more insidious and needless because it was wielded by a man who didn’t need to kill. The cancer had been mindless...

Rube sat up in a sweat and tried to shake off the mix of images. Two dreams in one, both horrible memories, both repressed; but that’s what was bothering him. He’d seen a wound like that before, and it was definitely made by a harpoon.

Outside the late afternoon sun filtered weakly through the leaves of the big tree above his tiny deck. Someone had harpooned that girl, Rube was certain of it now.

He put his shoes and socks back on and plucked a lightweight nylon jacket from the back of the chair and shut the house door behind him. Rube had never said a word to his boss about the slaying of the dolphin, had just stood open-mouthed and dumbfounded and shocked. He was afraid to spill out his anger, was afraid of losing his precious job and his new promotion. In some small way he’d hated his lack of courage for years now. But he’d have to talk to Sheriff Boggert again. He had to tell the man what he knew.

The tourists had thinned out, and the going was clear. To the west, over the Pacific, the sky was turning pink from the refraction of dust in the clouds. Rube cursed his scientist’s mind as he thought it. Why ruin a pretty image like that, with the petty small knowledge of why it happened? But it was part and parcel of the animal he was, the mind he lived in, and he’d grown more accepting with age.

The pink in the clouds was quickly turning red, and Rube kept seeing the rent in the girl’s chest. She’d probably been pretty, and she was obviously young. And now she’s dead, a part of his mind screamed. Or was it some horrible accident? Was it some terrible mishap that no one wanted to report? Maybe by now someone had reported it.

Sheriff Boggert would know.

Much as Rube hated seeing the man again.