Sea Change

T he body moved gently, facedown, against the town dock, in the dark faintly oily water, among the broken crab shells, dead fish and fragments of Styrofoam which seemed to survive all adversity. It tossed easily on the small rounded swells of a powerboat wake. The seagulls were interested in the body, and below Jesse could see the shimmer of small fish.

Simpson said, “A woman, I think, wearing a dress.”

“Not proof positive, but we’ll assume,” Jesse said.

They looked at her as she eddied in the seaweed, and the body turned slightly so that the feet swung toward shore.

“Gotta get her out,” Jesse said.

S E A C H A N G E

“She been in awhile,” Simpson said. “You can see the bloat from here.”

“Get a tarp,” Jesse said, “and you and Arthur and Peter Perkins get her up on the dock and put the tarp over her.

Don’t want the sailors all puking before the race.”

“What about the cops?” Simpson said.

“Try not to,” Jesse said. “Bad for the department image.”

Jesse had seen enough floaters, and he had no need to see another one. Nor smell one. He looked at the small racing boats forming up and heading out to the harbor mouth where they would race off Stiles Island. Out by the end of Stiles Island he could see whitecaps. Be some bumpy races today. Behind him the coroner’s wagon arrived and the ME’s people got out a gurney and wheeled it down the ramp to the dock. One of them, a woman, squatted on her heels over the body and pulled back the canvas. Jesse saw all three of his cops look away. He smiled. The ME woman didn’t seem bothered, holding up the tarp, inspecting the body. When she was through she put the tarp back and jerked her thumb toward the wagon and they got the body on the gurney, and wheeled it up to the truck. A small crowd, mostly teenaged kids, watched the process. Occasionally one of them would giggle nervously.

“Anything interesting,” Jesse said to the woman.

“Need to get her on the table,” she said. “She’s too big a mess to tell much here.”

“ID?” Jesse said.

“Not yet.”

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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“She in the water long?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “Looks like the crabs been at her.”

“Crabs?”

“Un-huh.”

“Means she was on the bottom,” Jesse said.

“Or at the water’s edge.”

Jesse nodded. “Anything else?” he said.

She shook her head.

“We’ll know more after we get her into the shop,” she said.

“Mind if I send my evidence specialist along with you?”

Jesse said.

“Hell no,” the woman smiled, “we’ll show him some stuff.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Peter Perkins said.

Simpson watched the van pull away. He was very fair, with a round face and pink cheeks. Now there was no pink.

“You see something like that,” Simpson said, “chewed up, full of bloat, and stinking, makes you wonder about life and death, you know?”

Jesse nodded.

“I mean,” Simpson said, “it’s hard to imagine something like that going to heaven.”

“The body don’t go, anyway,” Arthur said.

“Yeah, I know.”

The three men didn’t say anything.

“You ever think about stuff like that, Jesse?” Simpson said.

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S E A C H A N G E

Jesse nodded.

“So whaddya think?”

Jesse smiled.

“I think I don’t know,” he said.

“That’s it?” Simpson said.

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “I don’t know doesn’t mean there’s no afterlife. Doesn’t mean there is. Means, I don’t know. ”

“That enough for you, Jesse?”

“Kind of has to be. Universe is too big and complicated for me to understand.”

“That’s where faith comes in,” Arthur said.

“If it can,” Jesse said.

“Can for me,” Arthur said.

Jesse nodded.

“Whatever works,” he said. “Let’s see if we can find out who our floater was.”

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4

J esse was leaning on the front desk in Paradise Police Headquarters reading the ME’s report on the floater. Molly was working

the phones. It was only 8:40 in the morning and the phones were quiet.

“You think she came off one of the yachts?” Molly said.

Jesse smiled. Molly always looked too small for the gun belt. In fact there wasn’t all that much that Molly was too small for. She was dark-haired and cute, full of curiosity and absolute resolve.

“Only if they got here before Race Week,” Jesse said. “ME

says she’s been in the water awhile.”

S E A C H A N G E

“Any signs of trauma?”

“Nope, but it’s pretty hard to tell. Crab, ah, markings indicate she was probably on the bottom, which might suggest she was weighted, and decomposition, tidal movement, whatever, pulled her loose and sent her up. Or she could just have been in shallow water.”

“Could be lobster markings,” Molly said.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Jesse said. “Next time I’m ordering dinner at the Gray Gull.”

He heard himself say Gray Gull the way locals did, as if it were one word, with the stress on gray, not gull. I been here awhile, Jesse thought. I’m beginning to be local.

“It couldn’t be gulls?” Molly said.

“No.”

“How do they know?”

“They know,” Jesse said. “There’s evidence of blunt trauma on her body, but nothing that couldn’t have come from being rolled against rocks by the surf.”