Death in Deep Water

by Paul Kemprecos

  I walked around the complex to a smaller parking lot occupied by half a dozen cars. A metal door marked STAFF ENTRANCE was set into the blank concrete face of a flat-roofed building. The door was locked. I pressed a button off to one side. A minute later the door was opened by a heavy-set man whose graying hair was cropped to a crew cut. He wore a uniform with the word Security stitched on his chest.

  He eyed me suspiciously.

  “I’m here to see Dan Austin,” I said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Socarides.”

  “Yeah. He’s expecting you. Through there and turn left.” He shambled off without another word.

  I walked past a pool whose concrete ledges were crowded with sun-bathing seals and sea lions that lay on their backs like giant whiskered sausages. Nearby, the tuxedoed inhabitants of the penguin rookery waddled about like playboys who’d lost their top hats after a night on the town. Eventually, I came to a wide, open space. Its centerpiece was an oval pool about fifty feet across ringed by bleachers on three sides. Behind the bleachers was a two-story building. I headed in that direction, walking along the perimeter of the pool.

  A loud splash came from the other side and the sun glinted off the broken surface of green water. Then came a steam valve whoof! of misty air. A torpedo streaked toward me in a shimmering, gunmetal blur. My eyebrows jumped to my hairline. I braced myself for the impact. At the last second, the projectile swerved to a swirling halt. The water exploded at my feet and spilled over the edge in a miniature tsunami that drenched my shoes and slacks from the knees down.

  “Jeez!” I yelled.

  A shiny gray head with a clown’s face and a beer-bottle nose looked up at me. It was a dolphin, grinning like a used-car salesman who’d just closed a deal. He checked me out, first with one round eye, then the other. I wrung the water ineffectually out of my slacks. They were wash-and-wear and would look good after they hung out for a few hours, but now they had more wrinkles than a box of prunes. I glowered at the dolphin.

  “Thanks for the bath, baldy.”

  His mouth was curved up in an expression that said, “Hey dude, what’s shakin’?” He let out a sharp whistle and made a sound like a rasp being drawn across the edge of a metal ruler.

  My irritation evaporated. “Hey, you’re one funny fish, aren’t you?”

  He answered with a wag of his head. I did a double take and leaned forward to make sure I wasn’t talking to a man in a dolphin suit.

  Someone laughed softly. I turned and saw a woman walking toward me.

  “You just gave Puff the operative word,” she said.

  Her chestnut hair bounced playfully in slow motion against her shoulders, catching the sun in tiny red highlights. She had high cheekbones and a chin just short of stubborn. The duskiness of her complexion suggested Mediterranean love songs in her family history. She wore a sky-colored polo shirt over full breasts and her tan shorts were snug against a body that was athletic but not hard looking. The word Oceanus was part of a stylized dolphin logo printed over the heart. I figured her in her early thirties.

  “Pardon me, I did what?”

  Amusement gleamed in blue eyes tinged with gentian purple. “You said fish. That’s the operative word when you phrase it in a question. Here,” she said, and stood close enough for me to smell the lemon in her shampoo. “It’s part of the show. A lot of kids who come with school field trips think a dolphin is no more than a very smart fish. So you explain that Puff is a warm-blooded, air-breathing mammal just like they are. Then to emphasize the point you say, ‘That’s right, Puff. You’re not a fish, are you?’ ” She drew the question out like somebody talking to a baby.

  The dolphin waggled its head as if to say, “Hell, I’m no damned sardine.”

  The woman reached into a white plastic bucket she’d been carrying and pulled out a chunk of herring. She leaned over and held the fish for the dolphin. He grabbed it, not even grazing her fingertips with his sharp teeth, and smacked his reward down whole.

  She turned back to me. “It makes the kids laugh and teaches them at the same time that there is a difference between fish and marine mammals. Puff thought you were throwing out a gag line.”

  I scratched my head. “First time I’ve ever played straight man to a f-i-s-h.”

  “You don’t have to spell it out. It’s not just the word. It’s the context, the tone of your voice, and your hand motions. Here’s another thing we do. We have a kid from the audience touch Puff’s skin and give their impressions. Usually, they say it feels like rubber. Then we turn to the animal and say, ‘That’s right; you’re not slimy or scaly, are you?’ ” She used the mother-talking-to-a-baby tone again.

  The dolphin repeated its cute head maneuver. The woman rewarded it with another fish, then flicked her hand in an upward motion. The dolphin flipped onto its back. Using powerful fluttering strokes of its wide flukes, it walked backward on the surface of the water. Surf stirred up by the dolphin’s jitterbug washed over the edge of the pool. The woman waved goodbye. The dolphin sank back into the water, rolled over, and waved with its right fin, then disappeared through an opening into another tank.

  “You’ll have to catch the show when we reopen,” the woman said. She surveyed the empty rows of bleacher seats. “If we reopen,” she added doubtfully. She rinsed her hand in the pool and dried it on her shorts. “My name is Sally Carlin. I’m the head dolphin trainer at Oceanus.”

  We shook hands. I was looking at her eyes. They were almond-shaped. “My name is Socarides. Most people call me Soc.”

  “Nice to meet you, Soc. Can I be of help?”

  “I’m looking for the manager, Dan Austin.”

  She pointed to a passageway. “Go through there, then climb the stairs on your right. Dan’s office is on the second floor.”

  She looked at my soaked shoes and cuffs and shook her head.

  “Sorry Puff got you wet. He likes to splash people and watch their reaction. Wait, I’ll have him apologize.” She blew a sharp note on the police whistle hanging from a leather thong around her neck. Seconds later, the porpoise dashed back into the main pool and playfully stuck his head out of the water at our feet like a dog begging at the table.

  “Shake hands with Soc and say you’re sorry,” Sally ordered. Puff came straight up like a missile off the launching pad. He leaped clear of the water, treading air on his tail so we were eyeball to eyeball, extended his right flipper, and whistled. I gave the fin a quick shake. He splashed back into the water and dashed around the pool.

  Sally Carlin said: “You should feel flattered, Soc. Puff doesn’t take so easy to strangers.”

  I watched the streak of silvery lightning and said, “Dolphin, drunken with the lyre, across the dark blue prows, like fire, did bound and quiver.”

  Sally’s gaze moved from the dolphin to me. “That’s very beautiful,” she said.

  “It’s a quote from Electra, by Euripides. It’s my way of telling Puff his apology is accepted.”

  I said goodbye and continued around the pool, climbed an outside stairway to an office, and gave the secretary my name. She asked me to take a seat. Moments later, the door behind the secretary opened, and a pale-skinned man with longish black hair and horn-rim glasses emerged.

  The secretary said, “Mr. Austin will see you now.” I stepped through the open door into a sunlit office.

  A stocky blond man got up from behind his desk and came over to shake my hand.

  “I’m Dan Austin,” he said. “Please have a seat.” He was around forty-years-old, of medium height, with thinning hair combed over his balding head from a low side part. He was wearing tan slacks and a blue Oceanus polo shirt similar to the one I had seen on the dolphin trainer. It looked better on Sally Carlin.

  He shut the door while I settled in a chair, and came back to his desk.

  I glanced around at the framed p
hotos and posters covering the walls, then past Austin. The office windows behind him overlooked the pool. Sally Carlin was still working with her finny friend Puff.

  Austin followed my gaze. “This is a great spot,” he said. “You can watch the whole show from here. I see that you’ve already met our head dolphin trainer.”

  “I met the Puff the dolphin, too.”

  “Oh yes, Puff is quite a character. Smart as hell.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder who is training whom.” He tented his hands and tapped his fingertips together a few times. “Well, now to the business at hand. Otis called and asked me to cooperate fully with you.”

  “Mr. Otis hoped I might be able to clear up some of the questions lingering over your trainer’s death.”

  Austin folded his arms across the chest and looked at me with unfriendly eyes.

  “I’m not clear what he had in mind. After the police conducted their investigation, Otis hired a private-detective firm from Boston to poke around. They didn’t turn up a damned thing new. Otis is wasting his money and your time.”

  “You may be right,” I said, “but it never hurts to have a fresh look at a case. I’ll try to be in and out of here real quick.”

  He unfolded his arms. “Look, I’m not trying to make your job any tougher. It’s just been hell around here since Eddy’s death.” Austin pulled his chair close to his desk. “Okay,” he said, “where should I start?”

  “At the beginning. Tell me how your trainer died.”

  Austin looked out the window as he collected his thoughts. Sally Carlin was tossing a beach ball into the pool. The dolphin would grab the ball between its flippers, race back to Sally, and jump out of the water so she could retrieve the ball and throw it out again. Puff had his own trained human. As we watched, a guy with a physique like Conan the Barbarian walked over to Sally. He was wearing an Oceanus uniform. He and Sally chatted, then they strolled off together.

  Austin swiveled in his chair. “What do you know about killer whales, Mr. Socarides?”

  “Virtually nothing.”

  He pointed to the promotional pictures on the walls. In one, a black-and-white whale leaped like a bronco while a woman in a wet suit rode on its back cowboy-style. In another, a killer whale came straight up to take a fish from the hand of a little girl. Still another had a whale shooting out of the water like a NASA rocket. A smiling female trainer balanced on its nose, arms spread wide.

  “The animal you see performing like a clown in those pictures is the biggest predator in the sea, which makes it the biggest on earth. The Romans called it sea devil. Orcinus orca can grown to more than thirty-one feet, weigh in at ten tons, and swim more than thirty miles an hour. It’s got up to fifty teeth and knows how to use them.” He let that sink in, then went on. “But the killer whale is more than just an eating machine. The brain driving all that power is one of the most highly developed on the planet. The killer whale is smart as hell, maybe more intelligent than the dolphin. It is also sociable and good-natured.”

  I glanced at the posters again. “You make the orca sound like a cross between Mack the Knife and someone you’d like to introduce to your unmarried daughter.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, the whale is a killer, all right. Orca will eat anything in the sea, including its cousin the dolphin. Packs of them will bring down much bigger whales. They systematically tear them apart, usually starting at the lips.”

  “Are human beings normally part of their menu?”

  “If you read the early literature, you’d think they were more dangerous to human beings than the great white shark.”

  “I hear a but in there.”

  “You hear right. As a general rule, orcas don’t attack human beings.”

  “Never?”

  “A couple of boats have been rammed and sunk and a surfer got chewed up by an orca in California. I think those attacks were cases of mistaken identity. I’ll bet the killer whales thought the boat was another whale, or the diver a seal maybe. You see, all the stories had something in common.”

  “What was that?”

  “Every one of the storytellers lived to tell the tale. Some were thrown into the water with the whales swimming around them, but the orcas didn’t attack.” He gestured toward a photo. “Look at the size and power of those babies. If a killer whale really wants somebody for dinner, there is nothing that can stop him.”

  I had to agree with him; the whales in the pictures were as long as a bus.

  “So you’re saying orca would never kill a human being?”

  “Not exactly. The first case was in British Columbia. Three orcas attacked and killed a trainer during a performance at a marine park. That was the first time anything like that happened, but not the last. The same whale killed another trainer at another marine park.”

  “So there is precedent.”

  “Yes. I’ve got my doubts about Rocky, though.”

  “Bounce them off me. Then maybe I’ll have doubts, too.”

  He shook his head. “The whole damned thing just goes against the character of the beast. It’s the most ferocious creature in the world, but it not only puts up with human beings, it seems to like them. Don’t ask me why. That thing in British Columbia was a freak accident in my view.”

  “The second case an accident, too?”

  He shrugged wearily. “A killer whale is not like a fish. It has a brain, and emotions, and it can get angry and frustrated. It’s not uncommon for an orca to nip a trainer, rake him with its teeth or bump against him. Maybe even pin the trainer to the side of the pool to show that it’s irritated. We’ve had it happen here.”

  I ran my hand down my slacks to the cuffs, still damp from Puff’s practical joke. I couldn’t even handle a measly little dolphin. How was I going to deal with a critter who routinely snacked on humpbacks? I cut to the chase.

  “I confuse easily, Mr. Austin. So let’s put the speculation aside and start with the something everybody agrees on. We know Eddy is dead. Tell me what happened the day he died.”

  Austin nodded. “It was about three weeks ago. Start of the busy season. We were gearing up for a heavy schedule of shows. Eddy had been working with Rocky, our killer whale. He was having problems with the act.”

  “What sort of problems?”

  “Rocky wouldn’t allow a trainer on his back. Eddy was determined to train him. Some of the staff were beginning to kid Eddy, and he didn’t take kindly to ribbing. He said they’d see him riding Rocky when they came to work the next day.”

  “Go on.”

  “The night watchman found Eddy’s body on his morning rounds.”

  “The newspapers said the cause of death was drowning.”

  “The autopsy showed Eddy had been drinking, so he may have fallen into the pool.”

  “Was he a heavy drinker?”

  “Eddy was probably an alcoholic, although he would have been the first to deny that.”

  “Why did you keep him on?”

  “Looking back at this whole mess, now, sometimes I wonder. But Eddy was one of the best trainers in the business. And he kept his drinking and work separate.”

  “Except for the night he was killed.”

  “I didn’t see him that afternoon because I wasn’t here, but people who talked to him said he was pretty well sloshed.”

  “Nobody thought it was a lousy idea for him to be drunk while he was working around a killer whale?”

  “Probably lots of people did, but most of the staff was afraid of Eddy. He had a violent temper. Besides, everybody figured he could pretty much take care of himself around the animals, drunk or sober.”

  “If Eddy was drunk, he could have slipped and knocked himself out and drowned.”

  “That’s right. At first, people thought that’s what happened.”

  “What changed their minds?”

 
“When the staff left, Eddy was working Rocky from the side of the tank. There’s a sunken platform where the trainers stand. It’s about a half foot below water level, so the whale can actually pull itself out of the pool. It gives the audience the chance to appreciate the full size of an orca. The last people to leave Oceanus saw Eddy standing on the stage in shorts and a jersey.”

  “Why is what he was wearing important?”

  “When Eddy was found, he had on a wet suit. That would indicate he had changed, and was probably with Rocky in the pool in violation of park policy.”

  “Maybe he was standing on the stage in his wet suit and he slipped into the pool.”

  “That’s possible. Except for one thing. There were three holes in the arm of his wet suit.”

  “Any holes in the arm itself?”

  “None.”

  “I’ve had holes in my wet suits. Why is that significant?”

  “Eddy was fastidious about his gear. He wouldn’t have worn a wet suit if it had so much as a pinhole.”

  “What are you driving at, Mr. Austin?”

  “We measured the distance between the holes.”

  “And?”

  “We keep pretty complete records on all our animals. Part of it is to satisfy federal regulations, but it’s also for our own good. We have files on the mammals’ health, their physical characteristics, like length, weight, coloring. We even have a dentist come in to check out their teeth. We have some very nice dental charts, not much different than the type you’d see in a dentist’s office.”

  “What does that have to do with the holes in Byron’s wet suit?”

  Austin drew in a deep breath and let it out. “The space separating the holes corresponded to the distances between Rocky’s teeth.”

  “No mistake?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “Were there any other holes?”