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.

Chase turned, following Max's gesture, took the boat out of gear and let it coast.  He saw something white on the surface; it slipped along the side of the Whaler unit Chase reached over the side and stopped it.

It was a dead seagull, floating belly-up.  At first Chase thought it was whole, but then he picked it up by one leg and saw that the bird's head was gone.

"Jeez!" Max said, startled.

Chase examined the stump of the bird's neck.  He looked for tooth marks, slash marks, anything that might tell him what had decapitated the gull, but there was nothing.  As far as he could see, the bird's head had simply been torn from its body.

"There's another one!" Max said.

Chase dropped the dead gull into the bottom of the boat and put the motor in gear.

The second gull was floating upright, its head lolling forward.  It almost looked asleep, but it lay too low in the water, and it bobbed unsteadily.  Chase picked it up by its neck, turned it over.  Its legs had been ripped off, and there was a ragged wound in its belly.

"What the hell..." Chase said.

"Bluefish?" asked Max.

"No, I think bluefish would've finished the job, eaten the whole bird."

"What, then?  What did it?"

Chase shook his head.  "I don't get it.  I don't get any of this."

Max stood on tiptoe in the bow, bracing himself with the rope, and looked toward the beach.  "There's our wire," he said.  "And more birds.  Lots more.  In the waves."

Chase aimed the boat at the shore and gunned the motor.  When he reached shallow water, he turned off the outboard, raised it and locked it in place so the propeller wouldn't catch in the sand.  The boat had enough momentum to coast through the wavewash and nudge its bow onto dry sand.

It was like traveling through a slaughterhouse.  Dead birds were scattered everywhere in the wavewash — some decapitated, some eviscerated, some with their throats cut.  Chase picked up one or two, glanced at their wounds and dropped them back into the water.

"It almost looks like something kids would do," Chase said.

"What do you mean, kids?" said Max.

"Sickos... you know... vandals.  Practically nothing in the ocean kills for the sake of killing.  Animals kill for two reasons:  to eat and to defend themselves."

Max hopped off the bow; Chase followed and pulled the Whaler farther up onto the sand.  They walked up the beach to the black wire, which the policeman had coiled and tied.

They dragged the wire back to the boat, loaded it aboard and pushed off from shore.  When Chase judged that the water was deep enough, he lowered the motor and started it.  As the propeller roiled the water, another dead bird surfaced and bumped against the side of the boat.  Chase lifted it from the water.  It was a young tern; its wings had been torn from its body.

"Whatever did this," Chase said, setting the bird gently back into the water, "did it just to do it.  Almost for the thrill of it."

He aimed the boat eastward, toward the island.

*          *          *          *          *

When they were halfway home, slicing through the long, easy swells, they saw a big, slow, broad-beamed boat heading toward them.  The boat had a tiny deckhouse forward and a huge open stern with a davit on each side.  As they passed the port-to-port, the captain of the big boat tooted his horn, leaned out of the deckhouse door and waved.  Chase waved back.

"Who's that?" asked Max.

"Lou Sims.  He hauls freight.  I guess he just dropped off Dr. Macy and her sea lions... must've picked them up at the New London docks."

In the wake of the freight boat was another boat, still a quarter of a mile away but coming fast.  It was a sleek white sportfisherman, with a flying bridge and outriggers.  As it drew near, it slowed, and a man on the flying bridge signaled to Chase that he wanted to talk.

Chase took the motor out of gear and let the Whaler drift.  "Hold on tight," he said to Max.  "That thing pushes a mountain of water around it."

As the fishing boat stopped, its deep hull wallowed, and waves surged out from its sides.  Chase braced himself as the waves tossed the Whaler from side to side; he saw Max stagger, then half fall, half sit onto the forward thwart.

"Been lookin' for you, Simon," said the man on the bridge.  "We were trolling off Watch Hill; I seen a dead dolphin, for chrissakes, hitched up in the rocks."

"A dolphin," Chase said.  "You're sure it wasn't a shark?  It was a dolphin... a porpoise?"

"You think I don't know a dolphin from a shark?  It was a porpoise.  Just like Flipper, only younger, a baby.  I couldn’t get too close, but the thing looked all cut to ribbons, like something had had at it.  I thought you might want to have a look."

"I appreciate it, Tony," said Chase.  "I will, right now.  Where was it exactly?"

"Just this side of the lighthouse.  What the hell lives around here that can catch and kill a porpoise?"

"Beats me."  Chase picked up one of the dead birds.  "Maybe the same thing that's cutting the heads off seagulls."  And maybe, Chase thought to himself, the same thing that killed those two divers.

"Well, anyway... give me a call when you figure it out."

"I will."

"Is that your boy?"

"Yep," Chase said.  "Max... Captain Madeiras."

Max waved, and Madeiras said, "Come work for me some summer.  You can earn your lunch-pail degree."

"Thank you," Max said, "But I don't have much exper—"

"Don't worry, you couldn't do any worse than that worthless Bobby down three."  Madeiras laughed and gestured at the stern of his boat.  Then he shoved his throttles forward, and as the boat leaped ahead, its two propellers scooped a deep cavity in the water.

A teenaged boy stood in the stern, looking unwell and unhappy.