by Keith Yocum
“Fine.” Dennis brushed away a fly. “So what happened to our guy, according to your theory?”
The regional manager shot Judy a quick what-kind-of-idiot-is-this look, but she glanced away. “Our guess is that he parked, changed into his swimmers, grabbed his gear, and walked to the beach,” he said, leading the group toward the water. “He likely entered the water so that he could sit down to pull on his flippers, and just went in. As you can see, the water is relatively calm here in the bay.”
Dennis stood looking over a placid, deserted beach and noticed a forest of mushroom-shaped rocks covering part of the beach and poking up through the water.
“What are those?”
“Stromatolites,” the fisheries manager said. “Ancient rock formations. That’s why this particular spot is popular.”
“They’re strange.”
“Strange, indeed,” the manager replied. “It appears Mr. Jansen entered the water here and must have been preoccupied when he was taken.”
“Was anything found in the water?” Dennis asked. “Anything at all? A broken snorkel, a piece of a flipper? Anything?”
“At the behest of the AFP,” the manager glanced at Judy, “we had two divers scour the area here. We found a single flipper about a quarter mile to the north wedged in some stromatolites. It appears that it’s the same brand as Mr. Jansen wore. It had two punctures near the foot that are consistent with the bite of a white pointer.”
“Could the punctures have been made by knife?” Dennis asked.
“No,” the manager said. “They were definitely made by a pointer. I looked at the punctures with a magnifying glass, and you can clearly see the small serrations made by the pointer’s triangular teeth.”
“Are these sharks big enough to eat a man whole like that?”
“Well, typically they don’t eat their prey in one fell swoop. They attack and wait for the prey to bleed out and perish. Then they move back in to feed on the carcass. And yes, some of the pointers are quite large, perhaps six to eight meters. There are tiger sharks, and bulls as well, that are capable of eating a human.”
“Are there any other plausible ideas for what might have happened to him?” Dennis asked. “Besides your Jaws theory?”
Judy noticed the manager’s irritation, and she intervened. “Is there anything else that could have happened to him in the water besides being taken by shark? Anything?”
“Well, he could have drowned, of course, or had a heart attack, certainly.”
“What would have happened to his body under those circumstances?” she asked.
“His body would have likely been eaten by smaller sharks and fish,” he said. “It would take a couple of weeks before the entire body was consumed. Your man has been missing, I’m told, for about six or seven weeks, so there wouldn’t be much left regardless.”
Dennis peered out over the calm green-blue water of the bay, looked north at the strange rocks, and turned to Judy.
“I think we’re done here,” he said.
Judy thanked the men, and Dennis walked back to the car by himself.
Judy remained with the policeman, her AFP colleague, and the fisheries manager.
After Dennis got into the car, the policeman said, “Mean as cat’s piss, wouldn’t you say?”
“Too right,” the AFP agent said.
Judy looked at the ocean over their shoulders, feeling a tepid sea breeze run across her face. A strand of hair caught in her mouth and she teased it out, flipping it to the side.
Chapter 14
“Well, I thought I did tell you that he liked to snorkel,” Roby said.
“Did you ever go with him?” Dennis asked.
“Of course I did: snorkeling, that is,” he said.
“Did he mention that weekend he was going up to Shark Bay?”
“He might have,” Roby said. “Like I said, I can’t remember everything.”
“Would he often go by himself?”
“Once, when I said I couldn’t go with him, he told me he would go by himself. Otherwise, I don’t know.”
Dennis looked at his notes, and then up at the young man. “Is there anything surprising or strange to you about what happened to him? Anything at all?”
“Besides the fact that a big shark ate him?”
“Yes.”
“No. He loved adventure and he just got unlucky. Man, that poor bastard. A shark . . .”
After finishing with Roby, Dennis reluctantly visited St. Regis’s office. After a twenty-minute wait, he was allowed in.
“Are we done with you yet?” St. Regis said, sitting back and peering over the top of his reading glasses. “Was hoping you would be stateside by now.”
“We’re closing the investigation,” Dennis said.
“So what’s the verdict on your young man?”
“He was swallowed by a big, hungry shark.”
“Oh,” St. Regis said, raising his right hand in a flourish, “no Byzantine theories of official subterfuge and drug running? Really, Mr. Cunningham, how boring. A big shark. Do tell.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the way it is,” Dennis said. “Sometimes stupid things happen to nice people.”
“Well,” St. Regis said, standing, “I want to thank you for thoroughly disrupting our office. And as the old saying goes, don’t let the door hit you in the ass when you leave.”
***
Judy valeted the car at the hotel and checked her makeup in the car visor’s mirror. She brushed her hair several times to give it some life. My stupid hair just hangs there, she thought, giving it an extra swipe. Ugh.
She was thirty minutes late, having been pulled into a new assignment involving a methamphetamine lab in Albany.
Dennis was hunched at the bar, swirling his drink with the plastic swizzle stick. Uncharacteristically, he wore a white, short-sleeve polo shirt and jeans. From the back his shoulders looked muscular and taut, and Judy paused, thinking it might not be him.
“Oh, Dennis, it’s you.” She sat next to him. “I’m so sorry I’m late. I’ve been tossed into a new assignment.”
“That’s OK. Plane doesn’t leave until this evening.”
Judy ordered a sauvignon blanc. The two investigators sat side by side, looking down at their drinks in silence, the piped-in jazz a stilted backdrop.
“Are you anxious to get home?” Judy asked.
“No, not really. I’m finally starting to like this place, which for me is quite a change.”
“Well, at least you’ll get a chance to see your daughter.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s so.”
They grew silent, and Judy wondered whether she’d ever see him again. As cantankerous and boorish as he was at times, she was intrigued. Every now and then, when he looked at her just the right way, his deep blue eyes sparkled in the bright, clear Australian air, making him unaccountably attractive.
But even if Judy had wanted to flirt with her American visitor, she felt uncomfortable doing it. She’d really had no practice; Phillip had been her first and only serious relationship. After seventeen years of marriage, she was starting the relationship game all over again, and it was a confusing game indeed. Judy even struggled with how to make small talk, to fill in the odd moments of silence that occur between two adults.
Suddenly anxious and self-conscious, she pushed her drink away.
“Dennis, well, I really should be going,” she said. “It was a pleasure working with you. I’ve really enjoyed it: a real breath of fresh air from the normal copper stuff here.”
“Don’t go,” Dennis said. “You just got here.”
“I really need to leave,” she said.
“You didn’t even finish your drink,” he said.
“Well, that’s true. I just wanted to say good-bye and wish you luck.”
“Well then, why don’t you stay?” he said. “Please.”
Judy grabbed the stem of her glass and slid it toward her. She looked at him and smiled, her mind racing ahead. Just bloo
dy say what’s on your mind, she berated herself. For heaven’s sake, just talk!
“Do you mind if I ask you something personal?” she blurted. “I have to ask this question, and I know you’ll think it’s silly, but I’m going to ask you just the same.”
Dennis turned to her, wrinkling his brow; a combination of caution and curiosity.
“Shoot,” he said carefully.
“OK, here goes. Has anyone mentioned the color of your eyes before? Don’t laugh. They’re unbelievably blue; almost like an effervescent indigo, or something like that. See, you’re laughing at me. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a person with that kind of blue eye color before. I mean it. Stop laughing, Dennis.”
“Yes, OK, some people have mentioned it before.” He laughed. “At one point when I was a kid my Mom thought I had something called Waardenburg syndrome. It’s condition that presents with these super blue eyes. But the doctor said I didn’t have that. Over the years some women have mentioned it. Actually, not sure what I’d do if a guy mentioned it to me.”
“Well, I had to ask,” she said. “Your eyes are so different.”
“A lot of people would say I’m different, that’s for sure. And not because of my eyes.”
“Oh, I just don’t think they know you well enough,” she said. “People love to judge, even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
She was surprised how his casual appearance softened her view of him. The collar of his worn shirt hung open, and she could see the hair at the top of his chest. His neck, no longer constrained by the white shirt and occasional jacket, seemed muscular and strong, and his sandy-brown, short-cropped hair gave him a youthful look. Hell, she thought, he could be forty-five or sixty-five; men age like that. Women just sag.
Dennis began to pepper her with inquiries about her life in Australia, her Catholic upbringing, everything really. At one point, feeling buoyed by her second glass of wine and inoculated by the knowledge she’d never see this rough-edged American again, she vented about her divorce.
“I could have killed him,” she said, staring at the row of liquor bottles at the back of the bar, “really killed him. I was so bloody furious and humiliated. I actually locked my service weapon in the trunk of my car one night for fear I’d use it on him if I took it inside. Isn’t that awful? God, what a bloody wreck I was.”
At some point, Judy realized she was a little tipsy and had talked too much. A little embarrassed, she got up and said she needed to leave.
They hugged each other, and to Judy’s surprise, Dennis held her awkwardly with his arms partially extended and brushed her cheek with his.
Judy pushed Dennis back. “Was that a good-bye hug? My God, you act like I have typhus.”
Dennis frowned and pulled her back into his grasp, unexpectedly pressing his lips against hers, kissing her hard at first and then parting gently at the end. Judy was startled and then thrilled. At the end of the kiss, she hung on for a millisecond, feeling his lips.
“You’re always surprising me, Dennis,” she said in a slightly husky voice.
“I’m, um, sorry about that. It just happened.”
They stared at each other.
“I really must go,” she said again.
“Good-bye, Judy.” He pressed her two hands in his. “Take care. Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”
“Not likely,” Judy said. “We only live about fourteen thousand miles apart.”
“Well, that’s true,” he said.
She left Dennis at the bar and stood inside, waiting for her car. Outside, vehicles whizzed by in silence, muffled by the plate glass. Two gardeners plucked and trimmed a strand of flowers, talking and gesturing animatedly, but she could hear nothing except the silly beating of her heart.
Chapter 15
The house had a musty odor, as if it had not been inhabited for years. Dennis chose to continue living in the small, two-story Cape Cod–style house because it meant that nothing changed.
He and Martha had lived in the ordinary white house with blue shutters in Arlington, Virginia, for almost eighteen years, and it had suited him just fine. Why should he think about moving now? There was nothing to be gained, really. The commute to Langley was not bad. The constantly changing neighbors—slick, young professional couples driving Audis and BMWs, or rootless military families on Pentagon rotation—were simply a backdrop to Dennis’s plodding life.
Yet, returning home from this latest mission left him forlorn. The house smelled stale; the modest front yard was littered with small branches and a child’s empty, flattened juice box. It took him a while to feel comfortable again.
Back at work, Dennis kept a low profile. Mercifully, Marty had not made a fuss about the complaint from the State Department, and Dennis hoped it was a dead issue.
He had just finished brushing his teeth one evening when his home phone rang. He went into the bedroom and glanced at the clock radio—it was 10:56 p.m., and he wondered whether his daughter was calling.
“Yes?”
“Is this Dennis Cunningham?”
“Yes it is. Who is this?”
“Matthew Clancy, sir. I’m the shift supervisor at Warehouse B in Silver Spring.”
“Warehouse B? What’d you say your name was?”
“Clancy, sir. Matthew Clancy.”
“Well, Clancy, could you make it quick?”
“Are we on a landline, sir?”
“Yes we are,” Dennis said.
“We need to go to a secure line. Can I give you a phone number to call back?”
Dennis had never received a call from anyone at Warehouse B, the huge storage facility run by the Agency in suburban Maryland.
“Clancy, are you sure you got the right guy? I don’t have anything in the warehouse. I think your wires got crossed somewhere.”
“No, sir, I don’t think so,” he said with the kind of clipped precision Dennis had learned to expect from the Agency’s administrative employees. It was easier for the Agency to hire former military personnel from Smalltown, USA, that already had a security clearance and an appreciation for lines of authority than it was to place a Help Wanted ad in the Washington Post for a snot-nosed twenty-one-year-old kid fresh out of George Washington University.
Dennis took down the number, found his encrypted cell phone, and returned the call.
“Clancy, can we make this quick?”
“Absolutely, sir. We have a shipment that’s a Level 2 hazmat, and we had to quarantine it. Your name’s listed on the intake form.”
“Clancy, you’re not listening to me,” Dennis said, feeling his face flush with anger. “I just told you that I don’t have anything in Warehouse B. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had anything stored in Warehouse B.”
“Sir, we have two crates that were received yesterday for storage and processing. You were listed on the shipment authorization. It says here,”—he rustled some papers—“we have two hundred-pound plastic storage crates originating from the US Consulate in Perth, Western Australia. You’re Dennis Cunningham, correct? Inspector general’s office?”
“Oh,” Dennis said. “Maybe I know about these. Do you know what’s inside?”
“Sir, the form says ‘Personal effects of G. Garder. Store until cleared for release to family.’ That’s all.”
“Why’d my name get stuck on those forms?” Dennis said. “He’s an Operations employee. That’s not how it’s done.”
“Sir, I cannot answer that question for you, but I’m required to alert the person on this form, which I’m doing right now. You’ll need to come down to sign some disclosure forms. Tomorrow morning first thing would be preferable. We don’t get a lot of these hazmats, so the sooner we get the forms filled out, the better it’ll be for everyone.”
“Wait, I’m trying to catch up here. What’s this about contamination? Who’s contaminated?”
“The crates,” he said. “Or what’s inside.”
“How do you know they’re contaminated?”
Dennis said.
“Oh, that’s easy, sir,” Clancy said. “We run all incoming material through several scans. Your two crates lit up one of the scanners like a Christmas tree.”
“They did?”
“Roger that, sir. Radiation contamination: both crates.”
“Jesus Christ, Clancy, are you sure your scanner’s calibrated properly? I just can’t believe that’s correct.”
“No, sir; we ran it through twice. Stuff’s hot. No doubt about it.”
“You’re shitting me,” Dennis said, almost to himself.
“Negative. I’m not shitting you, sir.”
***
The room was barren except for a small, fake wood laminate table and two chairs. The walls were cinderblock and painted high-gloss white. A bank of fluorescent lights hummed from the dropped ceiling. A video camera peered down from the corner of the ceiling like a lone crow on a telephone pole.
Dennis looked at his watch again; it had been twenty minutes since the woman had left him there.
“Are you claustrophobic?” the woman had asked when she led him to the room. She warned him that both doors on the small room were locked from the outside and that he would not be allowed to leave the room.
Dennis had lied and said he was not worried about confined spaces, but a low-grade feeling of anxiety was starting to creep into his consciousness; the room seemed too small, the white walls too bright. He kept staring at the brushed-steel doorknobs, hoping someone would open them soon.
“Shit,” he said out loud. “Let’s get going! I don’t have all damn day.”
He stood, arched his back a little to release some tension, and gave a derisive glance at the video camera.
“Boo!” he said.
The door to the right opened; two men walked in and closed the door behind them. While Dennis was glad to see some action, he was also aware that there were now three people in the very small room.
One of the men—a small, freckly guy with reddish-brown hair—looked at a clipboard and said, “Mr. Cunningham, we just have a couple of questions to ask you about your shipment.”
“It’s not my shipment,” Dennis said. “I already told you guys about it. It’s a mistake. They put my name on it by mistake.”