Jaws

instance of multiple shark-attack fatalities in the United States in this century. Dr. Dieter attributed the attacks to “bad luck, like a flash of lightning that hits a house. The shark was probably just passing by. It happened to be a nice day, and there happened to be people swimming, and he happened to come along. It was pure chance.”

Amity is a summer community on the south shore of Long Island, approximately midway between Bridgehampton and East Hampton, with a wintertime population of 1,000. In the summer, the population increases to 10,000.

Brody finished reading the article and set the paper on the desk. Chance, that doctor said, pure chance. What would he say if he knew about the first attack? Still pure chance? Or would it be negligence, gross and unforgivable? There were three people dead now, and two of them could still be alive, if only Brody had… “You’ve seen the Times,” said Meadows. He was standing in the doorway.

“Yeah, I’ve seen it. They didn’t pick up the Watkins thing.”

“I know. Kind of curious, especially after Len’s little slip of the tongue.”

“But you did use it.”

“I did. I had to. Here.” Meadows handed Brody a copy of the Amity Leader. The banner headline ran across all six columns of page one: TWO KILLED BY MONSTER SHARK OFF AMITY BEACH. Below that, in smaller type, a subhead: Number of Victims of Killer Fish Rises to Three.

“You sure get your news up high, Harry.”

“Read on.”

Brody read:

Two summer visitors to Amity were brutally slain yesterday by a man-eating shark that attacked them as they frolicked in the chill waters off the Scotch Road beach.

Alexander Kintner, age 6, who lived with his mother in the Goose Neck Lane house owned by Mr. and Mrs. Richard Packer, was the first to die — attacked from below as he lay on a rubber raft. His body has not been found.

Less than half an hour later, Morris Cater, 65, who was spending the weekend at the Abelard Arms Inn, was attacked from behind as he swam in the gentle surf off the public beach.

The giant fish struck again and again, savaging Mr. Cater as he cried for help. Patrolman Len Hendricks, who by sheer coincidence was taking his first swim in five years, made a valiant attempt to rescue the struggling victim, but the fish gave no quarter. Mr. Cater was dead by the time he was pulled clear of the water.

The deaths were the second and third to be caused by shark attack off Amity in the past five days.

Last Wednesday night, Miss Christine Watkins, a guest of Mr. and Mr. John Foote of Old Mill Road, went for a swim and vanished.

Thursday morning, Police Chief Martin Brody and Officer Hendricks recovered her body. According to coroner Carl Santos, the cause of death was “definitely and incontrovertibly shark attack.”

Asked why the cause of death was not made public, Mr. Santos declined to comment.

Brody looked up from the paper and said, “Did Santos really decline to comment?”

“No. He said nobody but you and I had asked him about the cause of death, so he didn’t feel compelled to tell anybody. As you can see, I couldn’t print that response. It would have pinned everything on you and me. I had hoped I could get him to say something like, ‘Her family requested that the cause of death be kept private, and since there was obviously no crime involved, I agreed,’ but he wouldn’t. I can’t say I blame him.”

“So what did you do?”

“I tried to get hold of Larry Vaughan, but he was away for the weekend. I thought he’d be the best official spokesman.”

“And when you couldn’t reach him?”

“Read.”

It was understood, however, that Amity police and government officials had decided to withhold the information in the public interest. “People tend to overreact when they hear about a shark attack,” said one member of the Board of Selectmen. “We didn’t want to start a panic. And we had an expert’s opinion that the odds against another attack were astronomical.”

“Who was your talkative selectman?” asked Brody.

“All of them and none of them,” said Meadows. “It’s basically what they all said, but none of them would be quoted.”

“What about the beaches not being closed? Did you go into that?”

“You did.”

“I did?”

Asked why he had not ordered the beaches closed until the marauding shark was apprehended, Chief Brody said, “The Atlantic Ocean is huge. Fish swim in it and move from place to place. They don’t always stay in one area, especially an area like this where there is no food source. What were we going to do? Close the Amity beaches, and people would just drive up to East Hampton and go swimming there. And there’s just as good a chance that they’d get killed in East Hampton as in Amity.”

After yesterday’s attacks, however, Chief Brody did order the beaches closed until further notice.

“Jesus, Harry,” said Brody, “you really put it to me. You’ve got me arguing a case I don’t believe, then being proved wrong and forced to do what I wanted to do all along. That’s a pretty shitty trick.”

“It wasn’t a trick. I had to have someone give the official line, and with Vaughan away, you were the logical one. You admit that you agreed to go along with the decision, so — reluctantly or not — you supported it. I didn’t see any point in airing all the dirty laundry of private disputes.”

“I suppose. Anyway, it’s done. Is there anything else I should read in this?”

“No. I just quote Matt Hooper, that fellow from Woods Hole. He says it would be remarkable if we ever have another attack. But he’s a little less sure than he was last time.”

“Does he think one fish is doing all this?”

“He doesn’t know, of course, but offhand, yes. He thinks it’s a big white.”

“I do, too. I mean, I don’t know from whites or greens or blues, but I think it’s one shark.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. Yesterday afternoon I called the Coast Guard out on Montauk. I asked them if they’d noticed a lot of sharks around here recently, and they said they hadn’t seen a one. Not one so far this spring. It’s still early, so that isn’t too strange. They said they’d send a boat down this way later on and give me a call if they saw anything. I finally called them back. They said they had cruised up and down this area for two hours and hadn’t seen a thing. So there sure aren’t many sharks around. They also said that when there are sharks around, they’re mostly medium-sized blue sharks — about five to ten feet — and sand sharks that don’t generally bother people. From what Leonard said he saw yesterday, this is no medium-sized blue.

“Hooper said there was one thing we could do,” Meadows said. “Now that you’ve got the beaches closed down, we could chum. You know, spread fish guts and goodies like that around in the water. If there’s a shark around, he said, that will bring him running.”

“Oh, great. That’s what we need, to attract sharks. And what if he shows up? What do we do then?”

“Catch him.”

“With what? My trusty spinning rod?”

“No, a harpoon.”

“A harpoon. Harry, I don’t even have a police boat, let alone a boat with harpoons on it.”

“There are fishermen around. They have boats.”

“Yeah, for a hundred and a half a day, or whatever it is.”

“True. But still it seems to me…” A commotion out in the hall stopped Meadows in mid-sentence.