Death in Deep Water

by Paul Kemprecos

  “No. Just those in the arm.”

  “You said Eddy wasn’t supposed to be in the pool. Something about park policy.”

  Austin nodded. “Rocky had bumped trainers a couple of times. Once he raked a trainer’s hand with his teeth. Just enough to leave pink marks on the skin. Another time he grabbed Eddy and pinned him to the bottom of the pool. Luckily, Eddy wasn’t hurt, but after that, we passed the rule prohibiting trainers from working with the whale in the water.”

  “Didn’t that cut down on your act?”

  “Somewhat, but we could still train the whale and work it from the side of the pool. It was better doing that than having all our trainers quit or end up in the hospital.”

  “Rocky being his lovable self again?”

  Austin chuckled. “You seem good-natured. But did you ever get mad enough to want to kill somebody?”

  I flashed back on a friend I almost blew away in Vietnam during a drunken rage. “Yeah,” I admitted. “I’ve been that mad.”

  “It’s the same with an orca. Technically, it’s just a big dolphin, but most people don’t realize that even a dolphin can get testy. And an orca is more independent than a dolphin. The navy found that out when it was experimenting with killer whales a few years ago. The whales would just go AWOL or refuse to work.”

  “So a killer whale can get angry. A job walkout or wildcat strike is still a far cry from a fatal attack. Lots of people would like to murder the boss, but they don’t.”

  “True, but those navy experiments were in the open sea with relatively new whales. An orca held in captivity for a few years can get bored or frustrated, even neurotic. Change its routine, or put it under too much pressure, and it gets irritated.”

  “Is that what the people at your front gate meant when they called this place a whale jail?”

  He gave me a sharp look. “Oh, I see you’ve met our friends from SOS.”

  “We had a nice chat. What does SOS mean?”

  “It stands for Sentinels of the Sea. They’re a fringe ecological group, much more radical than the mainstream organizations like Greenpeace. They’re real extremists.”

  “They didn’t look very dangerous.”

  “Those people out front with the signs are the nicey-nicies who’ll join any organization that says it wants to save the whales or the seals. They’re innocents. The hard-core guys who run the group stay out of the limelight.” Austin frowned. “The Sentinels are the reason Oceanus closed its doors. After Eddy’s death, they picketed the place and called for a boycott. When that didn’t work, we got the bomb threat. I’m sure it was the Sentinels, although they deny that, too.”

  “You said a whale can come under stress when there’s a change in routine or too much pressure. Was that true in the case of Rocky?”

  “He was kept pretty much to the same routine. But as you know, Oceanus is owned by a major corporation. That corporation’s goal is to get the best possible financial return to its stockholders. The more money we make, the more money they make. The more killer whale shows we put on, the more money we make.”

  “You’re saying that there was too much pressure to perform, and the whale may have been reacting.”

  He nodded. “When a whale bites a trainer or whacks him, it’s telling him it isn’t happy.”

  “If the whale was so edgy, why would Eddy have gone in the water with him, especially if it violated company rules?”

  “Eddy had been around orcas a long time. He thought he knew them better than anyone, and maybe he did. It would have been just like him to slip into the pool when nobody was around to see him—or help him. Eddy may simply have gotten too cocky.”

  “When can I interview the suspected felon?”

  “I’d show you the orca today, but the staff might get curious why the park manager is giving the new guy the VIP tour. It can wait until you’re officially on board. Otis said you’re a diver. That’s a good cover. We’ve only got a skeleton crew on right now, the trainers and a few people to feed the fish and do the dirty work. I’ll introduce you to Rocky tomorrow. Be here around eight A.M.”

  I got up to go. “Does anyone else know I’m a private cop?”

  “Just me. That’s the way Otis wanted it. Frankly, I can’t see what you’ll find. Nothing against you, understand, but Rocky’s not likely to sit down for the third degree. Hell, what do I care? It’s Otis’s dime. He wants to get things cleared up so he can sell us to the Japanese.”

  We shook hands and I walked down the stairs and out by the dolphin pool, aware Austin was probably watching me from his window. Puff saw me and came over and swam back and forth in front of me. I lingered for a minute, watching the water ballet, listening to the dolphin’s chuckles and creaks, thinking about what the ancients said about dolphins. They thought dolphins embodied the souls of the dead. I smiled at the implications. If the ancients were right, Eddy Byron could find himself back at Oceanus performing with the dolphins he once trained.

  Chapter 5

  Only two picketers were at the Oceanus front gate as I drove out. The women in tie-dyed shirts leaned against the concrete whales, drinking from plastic liter bottles of Evian water. It had been a hot day and their hair was frizzled. Their faces glistened with perspiration. They perked up when they saw me and waved the truck over. I stopped and looked around for the man and the younger woman.

  “Where’d your friends go?” I asked.

  One of the woman said, “They had to go pick up their kids.”

  I nodded. “Guess I’ll call it a day, too.”

  “Wait,” she commanded.

  I braced myself for another off-key chorus of the whale-jail blues.

  She took a sheet of paper from a canvas bag and stuck it under my nose. “This will change your mind about a lot of things.”

  I tucked the paper in the overhead visor. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be sure to read it.”

  They both smiled. I put the truck in gear and waved out the window. They waved back. Nice people. Maybe a little overenthusiastic, but hardly bomb-tossing zealots.

  Route 28 was a slow-moving river of bumper-to-bumper hot cars and hotter people. The tourists had basted and baked their bodies and were leaving the beaches, heading to the bars to compare tans and drink frozen margaritas before going back to their motel rooms to wash the sand out of their hair. Soon they would crowd the pizzerias and fried-fish joints to chow down for the energy to hit the club scene. Vacationing is tough work.

  Near a sneaker discount store, I turned off the strip onto a side road. It was like entering a time warp. The narrow, tree-shaded lane meandered through an historic district of neatly kept old Cape Cod cottages of shingle and clapboard, well-tended flower gardens, and past a miniature white spired church. Cape Cod has a split personality. In between ghastly islands of commercial development are neighborhoods that haven’t changed outwardly in a hundred years. I took a series of shortcuts east, in the direction the old-timers called “down Cape.” A half hour after leaving Oceanus, the pickup rattled down a bumpy quarter-mile sand road and I was home.

  Kojak was at the door. He rubbed against my leg in an outpouring of undying affection that ended as soon as I spooned a can of 9-Lives tuna into his dish. I popped a Bud and took the file folder of news clips Otis had given me to the kitchen table.

  Nudged by the southwest breeze, dozens of sailboats crisscrossed the blue-green waters of the bay. I sat at the kitchen table for a minute or two, clearing my mind of clutter, and watched the white triangles move almost imperceptibly against the hazy backdrop of Strong Island and the headland at Eastward Point. Then I opened the file folder.

  The news stories fell into three rough categories.

  The first reports were routine one-column articles saying Eddy Byron, forty-nine, head marine mammal trainer at Oceanus, apparently drowned in the whale tank. The story might have fizzled, except f
or an enterprising weekly newspaper reporter who dug out the stuff about the holes in Eddy’s wet suit and the connection to Rocky’s teeth. The big media guns picked up on the piece and Eddy’s death blossomed into major news.

  The tabloid Boston Herald cleared its front page of unimportant copy like arms conferences, African famine, and federal budget deficits in order to run a cover story devoted entirely to Eddy’s death. The centerpiece was a full column width photo of a toothy killer whale who lunged out at the reader over his scrambled eggs and toast like a creature from hell. In case anyone missed the point, the story was headlined JAWS in type three inches high. The overline said: “Killer Whale Slays Trainer.” The caption identified the whale as Rocky, the main suspect in a bizarre death at Oceanus marine theme park on Cape Cod.

  Herald readers have a short attention span, and the newspaper normally doesn’t run stories longer than six paragraphs, but this was hot copy and continued inside for a two-page spread. The layout included a photo of Eddy Bryon enlarged too many times. The picture was so grainy Eddy looked as if he had the measles, but you could make out a square-jawed man with dark hair going to white. There was a picture of the Oceanus gate, sans picketers, and the whale pool with a white circle drawn in to mark the spot where the body was found. In another shot, probably a publicity photo from the Herald’s files, a less menacing Rocky leaped from the water to the delight of spectators.

  The story was big on pictures and short on words, but you got the gist of it. At least a third of the report was a rehash of the fairly thorough account in the weekly newspaper, but the story played up the Jekyll-Hyde contrasts of Rocky’s character. The friendly killer whale who had thrilled kids and their parents with his playful antics, was, gasp, in reality a homicidal maniac.

  I turned to the Boston Globe clips. The Globe considers itself more intellectual than the Herald. Its lead story is usually about the elections in Romania or Botswana, and it looks down its long nose at any hint of sensationalism. Eddy Byron’s story made page one of the inside Metro and Region section. The killer whale picture could have been taken from a textbook. The section editor was probably frustrated at having to downplay a story that got his newsman’s juices running. He couldn’t resist the Jaws cliché in the headline. The Herald had all but convicted Rocky in the killing. The Globe account was more balanced, with the predictable quotes from Harvard faculty and noncontroversial statements from PR people at other aquariums.

  Dan Austin was quoted in several stories. He did a good job walking the tightrope. He didn’t admit to the holes in the wet suit, but he didn’t deny it. He said killer whales don’t kill people, but admittedly Rocky had attacked trainers, including Eddy. The cops said the case was still under investigation, shorthand meaning they didn’t have the slightest idea what to do and hoped the whole thing would go away so they could get back to filling their speed-trap quotas.

  But the story was too hot to cool off. With the basic channels of information dried up or played out, the press put together follow-up articles that focused on the burning question: could Rocky have done it? Most of the cetacean scientists interviewed echoed what Austin had told me: that it was totally against the orca’s character to kill a human being. Like Austin, they, too, admitted they were talking about behavior under natural conditions, and that while cases of attack were rare, whales in captivity have shown that they might react differently than they would in the wild.

  The best report was in The New York Times. The Times talked to scientists and trainers all over the world. The face in one head shot was familiar. I looked closer. It was the pale man with the tortoiseshell glasses I saw leaving Austin’s office. The caption said he was Dr. Henry Livingston. I found his name in the story. Livingston was director of the Cape Cod Center for Cetacean Studies, a nonprofit institution. Small world.

  Livingston was cautious about laying the rap on Rocky, but some of his colleagues were less conservative. One researcher said the orca may be smart and playful, but it is still the ocean’s major predator; under the stress of confinement the whale could have reacted in angry reflex. Austin’s assessment again. Except for the press guys who had leaped to monumental conclusions to sell papers, nobody wanted to finger Rocky as the perp. But everyone seemed to agree that even a jolly old clown like the orca has its bad days, and any human who gets in the way of an eight-ton temper tantrum better have his medical insurance paid up.

  Even the tentative suggestion that Rocky might have killed Eddy was like throwing gasoline onto a fire. Environmental groups worldwide jumped into the fray. Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund. Organizations big and small. They said the incident proved whales and dolphins belonged in the ocean, not in big manmade tanks.

  I scanned The New York Times story and came across the name Sentinels of the Sea. The Times described the Sentinels as a small but highly active ecological group in the tradition of the Monkey Wrench Gang, the fictitious ecosaboteurs in Edward Abbey’s book by the same name. They were similar to Earth First!, except their particular protectorate was the ocean. The Sentinels tended toward guerrilla warfare, more commonly called ecoterrorism. The Times said they had been accused, but never charged for sabotaging California tuna boats that caught dolphins in their nets, and were also suspected of sinking a whaleboat in Iceland.

  I ran my finger down the news column. The story quoted a guy named Walden Schiller who was identified as the spokesman for the Sentinels. Schiller told the Times no self-respecting killer whale would ever intentionally harm a person in the wild. Rocky, he said, was like a frustrated convict who strikes out at a sadistic prison guard. Schiller’s message was simple. Release every dolphin and whale in captivity. I could see why Simon Otis was nervous.

  The demonstrations and boycott organized by the Sentinels backfired because they generated publicity. Ticket sales actually increased. People paid the fat admission price for a chance to see a killer whale with blood on its flippers. The public has never been short on morbid curiosity. A crime scene immediately becomes a tourist attraction. The worse the crime, the greater the interest.

  Rocky had been benched temporarily. Even without the killer whale show, the park did a brisk business. After all, who knows when a dolphin might go berserk. I could just see Joe Six-pack and his family sitting in the stands not really hoping a dolphin would rip its trainer’s throat out, but if it had to happen, be nice to have the Instamatic handy.

  Oceanus stayed open even after the first bomb threat. Dan Austin vowed defiantly not to cave in to the threats. Then a phony bomb with a timer but no explosive was discovered outside his office door in a warning of what could happen, and Austin found religion. The next day he announced Oceanus would close until further notice. The Sentinels were the obvious target of suspicion, but Walden Schiller said SOS was not responsible for the bomb threats.

  I put the file aside. I wanted to cut away all the extraneous stuff, to concentrate on Eddy, to see what made him tick. I wanted to give him life again, like Odysseus summoning the dead at the door to Hades. If I could get Eddy’s shade walking and talking, maybe he’d tell me who killed him.

  The news clips provided only a sketchy portrait of Eddy. He was born in Seattle and fished a few years in the Pacific Northwest before joining the navy. Later, he worked as a trainer in marine theme parks in California and Florida before coming to Oceanus. There was no indication of Eddy’s next of kin.

  I leaned back in my chair and looked out the window. The breeze had freshened and the white cotton curtains tumbled and snapped. The ranks of sailboats on the bay were thinning. So far, I had one dead trainer. A killer whale accused and tried in the press. And a few suspects. But suspected of what?

  I picked up the phone and called Ed Shaughnessy.

  “Been expecting you,” he said. “Otis said you agreed to take the case. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. I’m a soft touch when it comes to animals, the bigger the better. You were right, this
is a weird one. What’s your assessment?”

  “I had two of my boys look into it. They went down to Oceanus and talked to Dan Austin. Have you met him?”

  “Couple of hours ago. He seems to have doubts about the guilt of the, ah, prime suspect.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s what he told my guys. They looked at the wet suit with the holes in it, but weren’t impressed. They’re both ex-cops, so what do they know from whales? After they talked to Austin, they nosed around the park.”

  “What did they say in their report?”

  “They said something was fishy. Chrissakes, Soc, what else did you expect in an aquarium?” Shaughnessy brayed like a barking seal.

  I smiled as I pictured the bucktoothed grin on his wide face. “I guess it wasn’t a bad dream, I really did put up with your bad jokes all those nights in the cruiser.”

  “Sorry, pal, I couldn’t resist that. Seriously, they said something was going on, but they couldn’t figure it out. Staff was really friendly about answering questions, but nobody volunteered anything. And the stories all could have been cut out on the same template. So there it was, neatly tied up in a package. Guy dies. Finger points to the whale. Case closed. That’s when I told Otis that if he really wanted to get to the bottom of this, he had better send someone in to see if it was really accidental.”

  “How could it not be an accident?”

  “Dunno, pal. Hoped you’d come up with an answer to that question.”

  “We’ll see. Otis said to ask you about some possible human perps.”

  “Yeah, we came up with three people who might have a hard-on against the park management. One is Phil Hanley, the former PR guy. He was fired and didn’t like it. Then there’s Lew Atwood, who was the trainer before Eddy Byron. He was fired, too. Hanley and Atwood have both been vocal about their cases, threatened to close the park with lawsuits. Maybe they decided to be more direct. Both of them live on Cape Cod. Lastly, we’ve got a fruitcake named Walden Schiller who runs a looney tunes whale-lover group called Sentinels of the Sea. We’ve got a trace out on him. I’ll let you know.”