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T he body moved gently, facedown, against the town dock, in the dark faintly oily water, among the broken crab shells, dead fish and fragments of Styrofoam which seemed to survive all adversity. It tossed easily on the small rounded swells of a powerboat wake. The seagulls were interested in the body, and below Jesse could see the shimmer of small fish.
Simpson said, “A woman, I think, wearing a dress.”
“Not proof positive, but we’ll assume,” Jesse said.
They looked at her as she eddied in the seaweed, and the body turned slightly so that the feet swung toward shore.
“Gotta get her out,” Jesse said.
S E A C H A N G E
“She been in awhile,” Simpson said. “You can see the bloat from here.”
“Get a tarp,” Jesse said, “and you and Arthur and Peter Perkins get her up on the dock and put the tarp over her.
Don’t want the sailors all puking before the race.”
“What about the cops?” Simpson said.
“Try not to,” Jesse said. “Bad for the department image.”
Jesse had seen enough floaters, and he had no need to see another one. Nor smell one. He looked at the small racing boats forming up and heading out to the harbor mouth where they would race off Stiles Island. Out by the end of Stiles Island he could see whitecaps. Be some bumpy races today. Behind him the coroner’s wagon arrived and the ME’s people got out a gurney and wheeled it down the ramp to the dock. One of them, a woman, squatted on her heels over the body and pulled back the canvas. Jesse saw all three of his cops look away. He smiled. The ME woman didn’t seem bothered, holding up the tarp, inspecting the body. When she was through she put the tarp back and jerked her thumb toward the wagon and they got the body on the gurney, and wheeled it up to the truck. A small crowd, mostly teenaged kids, watched the process. Occasionally one of them would giggle nervously.
“Anything interesting,” Jesse said to the woman.
“Need to get her on the table,” she said. “She’s too big a mess to tell much here.”
“ID?” Jesse said.
“Not yet.”
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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“She in the water long?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “Looks like the crabs been at her.”
“Crabs?”
“Un-huh.”
“Means she was on the bottom,” Jesse said.
“Or at the water’s edge.”
Jesse nodded. “Anything else?” he said.
She shook her head.
“We’ll know more after we get her into the shop,” she said.
“Mind if I send my evidence specialist along with you?”
Jesse said.
“Hell no,” the woman smiled, “we’ll show him some stuff.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Peter Perkins said.
Simpson watched the van pull away. He was very fair, with a round face and pink cheeks. Now there was no pink.
“You see something like that,” Simpson said, “chewed up, full of bloat, and stinking, makes you wonder about life and death, you know?”
Jesse nodded.
“I mean,” Simpson said, “it’s hard to imagine something like that going to heaven.”
“The body don’t go, anyway,” Arthur said.
“Yeah, I know.”
The three men didn’t say anything.
“You ever think about stuff like that, Jesse?” Simpson said.
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S E A C H A N G E
Jesse nodded.
“So whaddya think?”
Jesse smiled.
“I think I don’t know,” he said.
