Harbormaster Blowhard.”
“ Mr. Abrams?” started Bierdsley.
“ Captain, son… Captain.”
“ That shrimper's where the body is?” asked Plummer, rushing ahead, Bierdsley following. Their boots beat an anthem as they rushed down the wooden platform ahead of Captain Abrams to where he'd illegally put his dilapidated shrimp boat in, nose first.
A strident warning from the old fisherman trailed the two Duval County deputies down the ramp to the old man's vessel: “Prepare yourselves for the worst most horriblest thing I ever seen in this life. Prepare!”
“ Can I help here?” asked the lone yachtsman who had rushed out to try to get a look at the dead body. “I'm Jervis Swantor, boat owners' association, and we all pay dearly to use these spots. What's happened?”
“ I told you what happened!” Abrams shouted at the man.
It was the one truly dark spot along the wharf where missing lights added to the overcast sky. “Looks like she's beyond help,” muttered Lamar Plummer, the beefy black deputy.
Bierdsley, a moderately sized, plump white man, stood beside Plummer, still on the wharf. From where they stood, they saw the mermaid like figure caught up in the shrimper's netting. “Yeah, looks bad, and now it's getting crowded. Civilians starting to gather. We'll need back up just to keep them at bay.” He turned to Swantor and asked him to back off. Bierdsley and Plummer had seen floaters before. They imagined it was a suicide, so what was the old man ranting about? Some massive hole in the head? In the dark, they saw nothing of a bullet wound.
“ Let's see what kind of package the old man's got caught up in his net,” Bierdsley calmly said to Plummer as they boarded the bobbing boat.
Getting shakily aboard himself, Plummer asked no one in particular, “Is this boat tied secure? It's bouncing like a cork.” At the same time, Plummer pounded his flashlight in an effort to improve the beam. “Fucking Eveready.”
Behind them, they saw Jacksonville police cruisers lining up, their strobe lights challenging one another. “We beat the Jax boys this time,” said Lamar, laughing. Off to one side of the harbor, the well-to-do yachts-people huddled. Swantor promised the crowd that he'd get to the bottom of this hullabaloo for them all.
The old fisherman had scurried down behind them now, storming off from the harbormaster, and he warned again, “I'm telling you two, it's one awful, awful sight.”
“ Floaters always are,” agreed Bierdsley. “Worst kinda things happen to a body that's been in water too long.”
“ Not to worry, old man,” Plummer assured the captain, his black face becoming all smile as he winked at Bierdsley.
The deputies rocked on their boots aboard the fishing vessel, and from where they stood in their brown uniforms, they could see the broad expanse of US-295 where the bridge spanned the river, and they could see the Jacksonville Naval Air Station. In the opposite direction a patient skyline awaited the eye. A beautiful blue-lit city on the waters of the St. John's River.
Captain Abrams's boat was like any of a hundred others along the Florida coastal waters, plying a trade in the fresh fish markets that lined up to buy their goods. Going aft, the two deputies closed the distance between themselves and the body.
She lay in a curled position, her form seemingly cut into the square pieces of a gingham cloth due to netting she lay in. A few of the fish inside the net with the body remained fresh enough to flop from side to side. Obvious to the deputies, the fisherman's crew had worked to salvage what they could of the most profitable fish-red fin and grouper- leaving some pockets of cod and halibut in the net with the dead girl.
Lamar Plummer ignored the odors and went to his knees beside the crumpled body and net. “Least she's all in one piece and still has her skin, so she's not been in the water for too very long.”
Dark shadow obliterated the face. Wayne Bierdsley moved in closer and stared at the girl's drenched form; her dress had the look of a shrink-wrapped shroud, the net was like an oversized shawl. Then his eyes fell on the dark concave black portion of the white head. In the darkness of shadow, with only the harbor lights on, he didn't know what he was looking at or what to make of it when something strange happened. It must be a hallucination, Bierdsley thought a moment before Plummer said, “Jesus, Joseph and Mary… She's got a third eye, and it's looking right at us.”
Bierdsley saw the eye at the center of shadow along the dead girl's forehead a moment before it disappeared, and for a nanosecond he believed in the supernatural and in mermaids. Then he saw a silver-looking reflection replace the eye. Finally, he located and flipped on his flashlight, placing the beam to the dead girl's forehead. As he did so, he found himself in a graceless motion going to his knees opposite his partner, “Jesus…” escaping his lips.
Both officers gasped in response. The dark blotch was indeed a large cavity the size and length of her forehead; in fact, what ought to be her forehead stood out as a void, and inside the void another dying fish struggled for air in a losing battle. It made Bierdsley wonder what kind of fight the young woman had put up. Now in its death throes, the small cod began to blow out its gills, wink wide and flutter.
“ G'damn old man was right. That is a big sum-bitchin' hole,” Lamar said. “I thought he was talking gunshot. Ain't never seen anything like this, Wayne.”
“ It'd take a cannon to make a hold that big; besides, it's too damn neat around the edges for a gun blast. OK, we gotta get that fish out of the cavity,” Bierdsley insisted.
“ Now wait a minute. It's not our job to go fishing inside somebody's splayed open head for no fish.”
“ Captain Abrams!” shouted Bierdsley.
“ Yes?” Abrams had been standing alongside the deputies the entire time. “What can I do you for?”
“ You got something I can use to spear a fish? Maybe something like clamps?” Bierdsley didn't want to place his hand inside the hole. “How the hell's there room enough for a fish inside her head anyway?”
“ Wayne, you're messin' round with the crime scene when you tamper with shit. You know that, so let the damn fish be.”
“ Close-range sawed-off shotgun, maybe?” asked a man who'd gotten down to the boat before a single Jacksonville cop had. “I come to find out what happened, relay the news to the rest of the people tied-to here.”
Plummer and Bierdsley exchanged a look of exasperation. “We told you, Mr. Swantor, to get back of that police line and stay there. You can't help here.”
A Jacksonville policeman tugged the curious yachtsman back. “You believe that guy?” asked Bierdsley. “Some guys with money think they can get away with anything.”
Another Jacksonville cop came aboard and looked over the body from a safe distance, remaining in a standing position. “You guys need help?” he asked.
“ No… something's just weird here.” Bierdsley hunkered down closer, and he leaned in over the body, flashing the beam ahead.
Lamar added, “She's been cut open somehow like a goddamn can opener was put to her head. Cut clean through the bone.”
The Jacksonville officer pulled out another flashlight and the beam somehow motivated the fish in the victim's head to dart out, which caused the officers to all jolt back and laugh at themselves all at once. Their laughter ceased as they stared at what the lights now revealed.
The forehead was indeed gone, so too was the crown, which had been shaved of hair. A large, half-conical- shaped doorway had been removed from the top of the eyebrows toward each ear and up and over the crown. The cut had gone through the cranial bone. It had created a kind of open trapdoor large enough for a small hand to enter.
Lamar moaned to the dark sky overhead. “Lord God in Heaven.”
Captain Abrams, a Georgia-born fisherman, added, “May God forgive us all.”
“ It's worse,” said Bierdsley. “Take a look inside the hole.”
Lamar fearfully did so.
Bierdsley knew he was near gagging. “Whoever did this, he… he took her brain.”
“ What the fuck for?” asked the Jacksonville cop.
Bierdsley muttered, “Sick fuck.”
More city cops arrived boat side, asking if the deputies needed any help. Lamar was doubled over the keel,
