White Shark (19 page)

"There's Nate Green out here wants to
see you."

"Shit, I knew the fucking press would
get onto this."
 
Gibson sighed.
 
"You
might's
well send him in, else he'll have it all over
Connecticut
that Hannibal Lecter's out there
eating people."
 
When the patrolman
had left, Gibson said to Chase, "At least it's Nate and not some hotshot
looking for a Pulitzer
prize
.
 
I can keep Nate on the leash with an
exclusive or two and a couple of scotches."

Nate Green, a reporter for the Waterboro
Chronicle
, was a thirty-year veteran who
had once wanted to work for a big-city daily but had finally reconciled his
modest talent with a comfortable life by the seashore.

Green came into the room and closed the
door behind him.
 
He was in his
mid-fifties:
 
soft and overweight,
drinker's veins crisscrossing his nose and cheeks like a road map.

"I hear we got some excitement,"
he said as he smiled at Gibson and shook hands with Chase and sat down in the
empty chair facing the desk.

"Maybe," said Gibson.
 
"Do me a favor, Nate.
 
Let's not go jumping to any
conclusions."

"I hear Buck had a video camera on
him."

Gibson hesitated,
then
said, "Yeah, but it flooded, the tape got wet.
 
Maybe one of my geniuses did it when they
unloaded it, I don't know.
 
Anyway,
there's not much on it."

"Mind if I look?"

"Only ‘
cause
I trust you."
 
Gibson gestured to
Chase, who got up and pressed the ‘play’ button on the video camera.
 
"But keep all this to yourself.
 
We don't know exactly what happened here."

"You know me, Rollie."

A blurred image of Brian Bellamy came on
the screen, the tape flickering and jumping as if the signal wouldn't lock
in.
 
He seemed to be holding something up
to the camera.
 
They heard Buck's voice
telling Brian to smile.
 
Then Brian's
face changed.
 
His eyes popped wide and
his mouth opened and he dropped whatever he was holding and shouted something
incoherent.

"Looks like he's seen
something," said Green.

"Yeah," Chase said, "but
what?

They heard Buck say, "Brian!
 
Goddamnit!"

"Listen to that," said
Gibson.
 
"Buck's cussing him, like
maybe Brian started screwing around... or went apeshit."

Suddenly the camera zoomed in on the sand
bottom, and the screen went dark.
 
There
were sounds of shouts and screams, and the camera jolted up again, whirling
around in a cloud of fuzz.
 
The water
seemed to take on a greenish tone.

"What's that?
"
Green asked.

"Could be blood," Chase said,
"depending on how deep they were.
 
Below thirty-three feet, blood looks green."

The camera fell to the bottom again, more
lazily, as if it had been dropped, and all that filled the screen was water.

There was one last word, a voice yelling
"No!"

Green said, "Who was that?"

Chase said "We don't know."

"Run it again for me, Simon,"
Gibson said.

Chase rewound the tape and played the
scene again.
 
When it was over, Gibson
said, "Looks to me like maybe Brian killed Buck."

"
The what
killed Brian?" asked Chase.

"Could be they killed each
other."

Green shook his head...
 
"Doesn't make any
sense.
 
They were as close as brothers
can be.
 
Brian worshipped Buck.
 
Why would he kill him?"

"Drugs," Gibson said.
 
"Brian had a history.
 
Could be he had a relapse and wigged
out."

"No, Brian was scared to death of
drugs.
 
He went to every N.A. meeting he
could find, and if there wasn't one, he'd go to A.A. or Al-Anon
... even
church if he had to.
 
I remember one day I was getting gas, he told
me he'd already killed so many brain cells, he was taking care of the ones he
had left.
 
A beer now and then was all he
ever allowed himself.
 
The Bellamy boys
kill each other?
 
No, Rollie, it makes no
sense at all."

"You got any better idea?"
 
Gibson leaned back in his chair and stared at
the ceiling.

"Just a mystery, I guess," Green
said.
 
"Mysterious death always
makes good copy."

"Scares the shit outta people
too," Gibson said.

After a long moment, Gibson made a show of
looking at his watch, and stood up.
 
"Speaking of killing brain cells... it's only nine-thirty in the
morning, and already it's been one long sumbitch of a day."
 
He took a key from his pocket and opened the
bottom drawer of a file cabinet, pulled out a bottle of scotch and a stack of
paper cups and returned to his desk.
 
He
poured two inches of whiskey into a cup, passed it to Green, poured another and
offered it to Chase, who shook his head.
 
Then he took a sip himself and again leaned back in his chair.
 
"You got people coming in for the
Blessing of the Fleet, Nate?"

"My sister and her
kids.
 
They'll probably find some excuse to hang
around for a week."
 
Green sipped
his drink.
 
"Jesus."

Chase didn't know why Gibson had suddenly
started talking about the Blessing, but he didn't want to hear about it.
 
He wanted to find Max and return to the
island and get to work.
 
He leaned
forward as if to rise, started to say something, but Gibson cut him off.

"They say this'll be the biggest
Blessing ever, folks coming in from everywhere, specially now the casino gives
‘em something to do if it rains and at night."

"So they say," said Green.

"Could give us a real shot in the
arm."

"Uh-huh."

Now Chase realized what Gibson was doing,
and he knew he'd have to sit there and listen.

"Now, Nate," Gibson said,
"I know you have to fill all those column inches, so whyn't you let Simon
and me give you a hand with the logic?"

"Okay."

"First off, there's no way this was a
shark attack.
 
Simon as
much as gave me a deposition about that.
 
Right, Simon?"

"More or less," said Chase.
 
"I said—"

"And the tape," Gibson said to
Green.
 
"Remember, you're the only
one's seen it, that's an exclusive, and you'd have to agree it sure looks like
Brian just suddenly went ape."

"Or saw something that made him go
ape."

"Saw what?
 
The Ghost of Christmas
Past?"
 
Gibson barked out a
laugh.

"Well, that's the question."

"Here's my point:
 
nothin’ down there
to
see.
 
The only conclusion
a reasonable man can reach is that Brian had an acid flashback or something and
went after Buck and got himself killed, too, in the process."

"Where's all the blood come
from?"

"Brian's
knife."

"Brian had a knife?"

"Sure," Gibson said.
 
"Didn't I tell you that?
 
Strapped to his leg.
 
But when they found him, the knife was
gone.
 
There's another exclusive for
you."

Green set his cup on the desk and turned
to look at Chase.
 
"What do you
think, Simon?"

"I don't know what to think,"
said Chase.
 
"But it all seems a
little—"

"You got a better explanation?
"
Gibson snapped at him.

"No," Chase said, for he
didn't.
 
All he would swear to, if it
ever came to that, was that neither man had been killed by a shark... at least
not by any shark he had ever heard of.

"There you have it then, Nate,"
said Gibson.
 
"You're too good a
reporter to go off half-cocked with a lot of dingbat speculation."

Green paused,
then
said, "You'll let me know what the M.E. says?"

"Soon as he
certifies the cause of death."
 
Gibson splashed more whiskey into Green's
cup.
 
"But I'll bet a dollar to a
dime it'll be death caused by a sharp instrument.
 
Seems to me one lesson to pass along to your
readers is, drug addicts and maniacs shouldn't go diving."

The patrolman rapped on the door again,
opened it and said to Chase, "There was a call for you."

"I'll take it outside," Chase
said, standing up.

"No, she's gone," said the
patrolman.
 
"It was Mrs.
Bixler.
 
She said to tell you the Little
Mermaid's arrived."

"Good.
 
Thanks, Tommy."
 
Chase said to Gibson, "Three months'
reprieve from debtor's prison
...
I hope."
 
He turned to go.

"Simon...
"
Gibson
said, stopping him.
 
"We're all
agreed here, right?
 
I mean, in case one
of those half-ass TV reporters calls you and wants to make a big deal out of
this."

"Sure,
Rollie."

"Good."
 
Gibson smiled.
 
"Your institute's getting a real good
reputation.
 
You wouldn't want to muddy
it up by poking around in police business."

Chase left the room with an uneasy
feeling; by the time he reached the lobby, he was sure he had just been
threatened.

The patrolman was waiting in the lobby
with Max, ready to drive them back to their boat.

"There was one of your buoys about a
hundred yards from where they found Brian," the patrolman said.
 
"Length of rubber
wire, some electronic thing on the end.
 
I told ‘em leave it there, you could pick it up on your way home."

"Thanks," Chase said.
 
"It must have sprung loose from whatever
it got snagged in."

When they were in the car, Max leaned
forward from the backseat and said to Chase, "I found her."

"Who?"

"The girl, the one I almost
hit."

"What d'you mean, you found
her."

"In the newspaper back there, while I
was waiting.
 
There was a picture, some
prize she won.
 
And I knew there had to
be a reason why she didn't hear me coming.
 
She's deaf."

"Who is she?"

"Her name's
Elizabeth
."

18

Chase slowed the Whaler as he approached
the tip of the low spit of land called Seagull Point, and turned toward shore
so he could cruise close to the beach.
 
Brian's body had been found about halfway down the peninsula; Chase's
wire should be just this side of the spot, or just beyond.

Max stood in the bow, steadying himself
with a rope attached to a cleat.
 
"What'll it look like," he asked.

"Against that white sand," Chase
said, "it should stand out like three hundred feet of black snake."

Seagull Point had once been private
property, then a state beach; now it was a bird sanctuary.
 
Gulls bred there, and terns, and though
people sometimes beached their boats to swim or picnic, anyone who ventured
inland beyond the dunes risked scalp lacerations form being dive-bombed by
birds protecting their nests.

Chase could hear the birds screeching at
one another, and saw them circling over their nests, but he noticed that there
were none diving or floating on the water.
 
He wondered why.
 
Usually, on a
day this calm, dozens of birds would be sitting on the surface, waiting for a
signal from sentinels overhead that schools of baitfish were on the move.

"Look!
"
Max
said, pointing off the starboard bow.