Shallow Waters

by Kay Jennings

  “No. Guess not. Say, do you want to go grab a bite? What are you going to do for food?”

  “No, you go on home, Jay. I’m almost finished here, and then I’ll head home, too. We’ll start bright and early tomorrow morning. I’d like you here by 7:00 a.m.”

  “Sure thing. You know how to get to your place, right?”

  “It’s dark as hell around here, but, yeah, I’ll find it eventually.”

  * * *

  In the dense fog, Matt missed the turnoff to his cottage, but it worked out. When he realized his mistake, he’d pulled into the parking lot of the Inn at Whale Rock hotel and restaurant just down the road from where he now knew his house to be. When he saw the neon sign of a martini and a crab in the restaurant’s front window, it dawned on him how hungry he was.

  The restaurant was done up in nautical style with natural wood walls and a carpet with an anchors design. The bar was the first thing one came to, with the restaurant beyond. It was two-level, with tables along the upper railing, and booths down five steps into a glass-walled room looking out to the Pacific. Relieved to find the restaurant still open, he’d slipped alone into a booth when the hostess said “sit anywhere you like”.

  Dead tired and weak with hunger, Matt reflected on this life-changing move he was making. He felt comfortable in Port Stirling with its slow vibe, but was he nuts to take this job? He knew virtually no one in Oregon except his professional colleagues. No friends here. Completely different weather. Unfamiliar business environment. Even the food was different from home, he thought, as he browsed the restaurant’s menu.

  “Can I get you a drink to start with?” asked his waitress. She smiled and slapped down a cocktail napkin on the table in front of him. Her nametag read “Vicki”. She looked to be about his age, and was sporting an older-model, dark brown version of a Farrah Fawcett hairdo. Matt recognized it because he had “that” poster in his college fraternity room at Texas. Vicki was dressed in brown slacks and a too-tight animal print sweater.

  “I’ll have a beer,” Matt responded. “How about a Coors?”

  “Really?” Vicki said. “Wouldn’t you rather try one of our craft beers?” She looked at Matt like he was a foreigner. In a way, he was.

  “Should I?”

  “Well, Coors was what we used to drink before we started making all these terrific beers around here. Seems a shame to go back in time, don’t it? Can I recommend one or two for you?” She did seem helpful.

  “Tell you what, Vicki. Why don’t you bring me a beer you think I should drink, and we’ll go from there?”

  “Smart man.”

  Vicki reappeared in a heartbeat with a pint of Pelican Silverspot IPA. “Taste this, and you’ll never touch a Coors again in your lifetime,” she said smugly.

  He did, and allowed that Vicki might be right.

  “OK, Miss Know-it-all, what should I eat?” he said, and closed his menu. Honestly, he was too tired to pore over the four-page menu.

  “Where you from?”

  “Texas.”

  “Oh, lord,” she rolled her eyes. “I had fish there once, and I swear it took three weeks for it to get from the water to my table. You sit back and I’ll bring you what you don’t know you need.” She trotted off before Matt could answer.

  While he waited for his surprise dinner, Matt at least was contented in the knowledge that everyone in town had been friendly and accommodating to this stranger. He felt welcome, and, in a strange fashion, taken care of. It was nice for a change, but he wondered if it would last.

  All Matt knew was that after his dinner of thick, creamy clam chowder, two whole Dungeness crabs, homemade sour dough bread, and a salad of wild greens, fresh cranberries, and hazelnuts, plus a second Pelican beer, he felt more taken care of than at any time in his recent life. He made it the few blocks to his new home in a fog as thick as his chowder, blissful for the first time on this dreadful day.

  * * *

  Saturday, 9:30 a.m.

  Look at them down there. All idiots. Love standing up here in a state park, one of several gawkers wondering what’s going on down on the beach.

  What do they think they’re going to find in that tunnel after last night’s high tide? Whatever was there, like a dead body, will be far out to sea by now.

  She will never be able to open her stupid little mouth again. Bite! Eat!

  They’ll never find her. Mystery in this shithole town forever and ever. Whatever do you think happened to little sugary Emily? They’ll ask each other in the stores and at the gas stations. The old biddies should thank me. Bite! Shark in tree! I’ve given them something to flap their yaps at for years. Talk about as they go about their small lives.

  How I killed her. Wonder if the killer is one of them. Ha! Hadn’t thought about that. Suspect each other. Eat! Bite! Afraid every night when they turn out the light. Never figure out it was me. Never. Shark! Tree! Cops in this town couldn’t find their shithole if it was sitting on a plate in front of them.

  Never find the twat. Never know it was me who put that knife in her belly. Went in so easily, like cutting a cake. Almost too easy.

  Took some fun out of it.

  Why is the ambulance here? What are those guys doing, for fuck’s sake? What are they carrying?

  Shit! Shit! Shit! The tide didn’t take her away! How is that possible? Bite! Bite! It was supposed to be the highest tide of the month. How could she still be in that tunnel? Fuck happened?

  Where are they taking you, Emily—where? You’re dead. I know you’re dead. Made sure of that.

  Eat! Bite! Bite!

  CHAPTER 13

  Sunday, 6:00 a.m.

  Wind and rain lashing at his window woke Matt just before dawn on Sunday. He felt as if he’d been born in this town perched on the rocky headland of the mighty Pacific Ocean, and had been dealing with the mystery of this child’s death for weeks, instead of the mere twenty-four hours since the discovery of Emily’s body.

  He showered, shaved, dressed and made a pot of coffee, all before the sky lightened enough to see the water. He’d been too tuckered out—and too full of food and beer—last night to unpack anything, and would live out of his suitcase another day. It was chilly in his cottage, and the wood floor in his bedroom was cold to his bare feet, even through the scattered area rugs. Matt looked forward to building his first fire in the massive stone fireplace, but that pleasure would have to wait, so, for now, he cranked up the electric baseboard heat.

  Now that dawn was breaking, he was drawn to the big picture window that overlooked the sea. Through the rain, he watched the white-capped pounders slamming onto the beach as he drank his coffee and thought about how he wanted today to unfold. Even on this crappy morning, the view was breathtaking.

  In spite of yesterday’s rocky start to his new life, Matt was falling for Port Stirling. The majesty of his view made him feel inconsequential on one hand, but that his life held significance on the other. He was a speck on the great Pacific, but he was here for a reason. Watching the gulls swooping and the relentless waves making their high tide inroads further onto the deserted beach, Matt knew he was going to have a tough time returning to Texas when the time came.

  Something near the shoreline caught his eye. At first Matt thought it was a log drifting in the shallow waters just offshore, but then he saw a pair of eyes. A seal was bobbing along, staring up at Matt above him on the bluff. For a split second, he was sure he and the seal made eye contact, and his new amigo was saying “What are you doing about Emily’s murder?”

  I’m trying to solve it, my friend.

  “You got this,” the seal said back to him, and he might have winked before disappearing under the surf.

  As much as he hated to pull himself away from the window, knowledgeable of what the day ahead of him was likely to bring, and fearful of the opportunity for regular meals, Matt went back into
the kitchen to see what he could dig up. Someone, likely Mary Lou, stocked his frig and cupboards with some essentials. Who does nice things like that anymore? He found bacon and eggs, and fried them up, pouring a second cup of coffee to wash it down.

  With a quick glance out the window to see if his new pet had returned—alas, no—Matt gathered up his notes off the dining room table, grabbed his jacket off the hook by the door, and headed out to his office on this bleak, gray, and very wet Sunday morning.

  * * *

  Sunday, 7:00 a.m.

  Matt figured to be the first one in City Hall this morning, but he figured wrong. Jay was there, which wasn’t a complete surprise, but so was Fern, who pulled into the parking lot just ahead of Matt and was locking her car as he drove up.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” she smiled in greeting. “You?”

  “I always sleep. Just never quite as much as I want to, and, besides, we can sleep after we catch our killer. Thanks for getting here early on a Sunday morning.”

  “It’s my job, Chief. Doesn’t matter what day of the week it is. I have a plan for how to proceed on the family profiling you need, and I want to run it by you before we go back to the Bushnell house.”

  Matt swiped his key card to City Hall’s side entrance, and held open the door for Fern. He took note of how the merciless rain beaded up on her raspberry pink raincoat, and realized he needed to buy a new coat sooner rather than later; his lightweight jacket wasn’t cutting it in this climate. Two days, two different raincoats on Fern; maybe that’s all I need. They went straight to his office, and found Jay standing at the big window looking out to the lighthouse with his hands on his waist.

  “Another fine January day in western Oregon,” he said, turning to greet his new boss and Fern.

  “Yeah, I’m beginning to think I’ve been hoodwinked about the weather here,” Matt said. He thought Jay looked a little worse for wear than he did last night when they went home. The horror of what he saw yesterday had clearly fully kicked in.

  “You OK?” Matt asked him.

  “I’m OK. Just.”

  “It’s natural to be upset by violence of this nature,” said Fern. “I didn’t see Emily’s body, and I still had visions of her all night. I can’t imagine how you must feel today.” She walked over to Jay and patted his back.

  “She’s right,” said Matt. “It never gets easier, and you will never forget yesterday morning, I’m sorry to say. The only way to help the pain go away is to expose the killer. It won’t help Emily, but it will help us to feel that we made it up to her somehow. Let’s talk about where we are after Day 1.”

  Matt updated them on Patty Perkins’ phone call after her interrogation of Lydia Campbell. “Do either of you know Ted Frolick? He lives down Ocean Bend Road from Lydia.”

  “Is he that crazy old coot who lives in the dump with all the junk out in front?” Jay asked.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Matt. “I’m asking you. Lydia told Patty that he was the first person she thought of when she saw the light on the beach Friday night. Patty’s paying him a visit this morning.”

  “Oh my God,” Jay said, his eyes widening. “I should have thought of Frolick immediately. He lives right above where Emily was found, and he’s always down on the beach.”

  “Is he really crazy, or are you using the word lightly?”

  “He’s probably not really crazy,” Jay answered, his voice serious. “I don’t know him all that well. He just seems a little offbeat. And I don’t understand all the junk he collects and deposits in his front yard. It’s an eyesore if you ask me.”

  “Well, let’s see what Patty gets this morning. Our first job is to try to establish a motive,” said Matt. “Unfortunately, we’re running on empty when it comes to who had a reason to want her dead. The one thing we already know is that it wasn’t the result of a sexual assault, so somebody had to have another beef with this girl. I think we can rule out financial motive because we’re talking about a 4-year-old. It’s possible we’re dealing with a serial killer who kills for the thrill of it, or some other form of psychological gratification.”

  None of them were willing to address that possibility yet, and it seemed highly unlikely in such a small town, but it had creeped into the far reaches of the brains in Matt’s office.

  “Hmm,” said Fern, whose interest was piqued. “Well, except for the children who have been swept out to sea by sneaker waves, we haven’t had any other child deaths in Chinook County for over ten years that I can think of. Don’t serial killers always kill in a similar fashion—kids, gender, blondes, etc?”

  “Usually there is some sort of link, with a cooling-off period in between murders,” Matt said. “I’ll need a list of every non-natural death in the area for the past five years, children and adults.”

  “Even those swept out to sea?” asked Jay.

  “Yes, even if their deaths were declared ‘accidental’.” Matt asked. “I want to read the files.”

  “I can dig them up fast for you.”

  “Great. Thanks, Jay. We’re probably not dealing with a serial child killer, unless Emily was his first. It’s far more likely it’s one of the Bushnells. Fern, tell us how you intend to go about profiling the family.”

  “Well, first, you need to know I haven’t done this yet in the real world, only in school,” Fern started. “And I probably won’t do it the same way an FBI agent, or whoever else you might have worked with previously does it. Instead of trying to develop a criminal profile for a possible murderer, I’m going to focus on the family’s personality traits and examine their behavior. You seem to think it’s one of them, so that’s where I think I can help the most.”

  “Go on,” said Matt.

  “I’m going to focus on the most unusual aspect of Emily’s case, and that’s the human bite marks that Bernice found on her body,” said Fern, swallowing hard and brushing a wayward hair away from her face. “I’ll do a study on individuals who have committed similar offenses across the country, and then I’ll compare the Bushnells’ personality traits that may parallel traits of these other killers. I’ll be closely observing the family today and making my own notes.”

  “That sounds good,” said Matt, nodding his head. “Do you know of any previous cases, dead or wounded, in the area with human bites?”

  “No,” answered Jay. “I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this. It’s so gross.”

  “OK, let’s move down to the War Room and go through the questions I came up with last night. I want these fresh in your minds when we go back to the family today, and I want to be able to fill in some answers by tonight. Here’s how we’re going to handle the family.”

  Chapter 14

  Sunday, 8:10 a.m.

  Patty Perkins found Ted Frolick’s house easily from Lydia’s directions. Truly, one couldn’t miss it. What looked like decades of beachcombing had ended up in his front yard, which nestled right up against Ocean Bend Road. Only a gravel walkway—no sidewalks here—separated his low, rickety fence from the road.

  A wispy smoke curled out of the chimney, and the curtains were drawn closed over the two wide windows that flanked the cottage’s front door. Patty couldn’t tell if anyone was home or not. She hadn’t tried to call Ted Frolick first, thinking she would surprise him with her visit. But now, as she approached the gray, weather-beaten door on the uneven stone pathway, she felt a stab of trepidation.

  There were no cars going by on Ocean Bend Road. This morning’s earlier rain and wind had passed by, and the air was still. The clouds coming off the sea were moving lickety-split overhead, and, looking up, Patty was happy to see occasional patches of blue sky. She could hear the waves breaking below the clifftop, and the occasional squawk of a gull, but, otherwise, it was eerily quiet. Perhaps she should call for backup? Nonsense. Her beleaguered colleagues on the crime team all had their hands full with their own investi
gations. Wary or not, she would have to put on her big-girl panties, and see precisely what was up with Mr. Frolick.

  She stepped up on the one rickety step in front of the door and rapped sharply with her knuckles. Then, she stepped back and listened.

  Nothing.

  Decades of experience taught her to look at the windows and

  see if she might detect any movement behind the curtains, but she

  saw nothing or no one. She stepped up and knocked again. And waited again.

  Still nothing.

  OK, now what?

  Lydia had mentioned Frolick’s garden in the back of the house. Patty thought it possible that he might be out there on this calm morning. She noticed a somewhat dilapidated gate to the right of the house, and gave it a try. It opened easily, and she found a slightly overgrown path close to the south side of the cottage.

  Patty started gingerly walking forward, going slowly and with her ears perked up.

  “Who the hell are you?” a man’s voice bellowed from the far end of the path.

  Startled, Patty stopped in her tracks. Ted Frolick stood facing her with a trowel in his hand about ten feet away. He was wearing overalls over a deep purple long-sleeved tee shirt. Bare-headed, his shock of silver hair was disheveled, and he had a rumpled air about him. His face was lean and clean shaven, and his intelligent eyes stared calmly at Patty. It was hard to guess his age, but Patty thought he was somewhere in his late-60’s—just a few years older than her—and definitely younger than she had expected since people referred to him as “old Ted Frolick”.

  Collecting her wits, Patty said, “I’m looking for Mr. Ted Frolick. Might that be you?” She smiled to let him know she was on a friendly mission.

  “You found him. Who are you?” He did not return her smile.

  “My name is Patricia Perkins, and I work for the Twisty River Police Department,” she said, while simultaneously holding up her police ID. “Can I take a few minutes of your time to talk?”