Peter Benchley - Jaws

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Jaws
by Peter Benchley
Sceny Bookz Etext Version 1.0
PART 1
The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its
crescent tail. The mouth was open just enough to permit a rush of water over the gills.
There was little other motion: an occasional correction of the apparently aimless course
by the slight raising or lowering of a pectoral fin -- as a bird changes direction by
dipping
one wing and lifting the other. The eyes were sightless in the black, and the other
senses
transmitted nothing extraordinary to the small, primitive brain. The fish might have been
asleep, save for the movement dictated by countless millions of years of instinctive
continuity: lacking the flotation bladder common to other fish and the fluttering flaps
to
push oxygen-bearing water through its gills, it survived only by moving. Once stopped, it
would sink to the bottom and die of anoxia. The land seemed almost as dark as the water,
for there was no moon. All that separated sea from shore was a long, straight stretch of
beach -- so white that it shone. From a house behind the grass-splotched dunes, lights
cast
yellow glimmers on the sand. The front door to the house opened, and a man and a
woman stepped out onto the wooden porch. They stood for a moment staring at the sea,
embraced quickly, and scampered down the few steps onto the sand. The man was drunk,
and he stumbled on the bottom step. The woman laughed and took his hand, and together
they ran to the beach.
"First a swim," said the woman, "to clear your head."
"Forget my head," said the man. Giggling, he fell backward onto the sand, pulling
the woman down with him. They fumbled with each other's clothing, twined limbs
around limbs, and thrashed with urgent ardor on the cold sand. Afterward, the man lay
back and closed his eyes. The woman looked at him and smiled. "Now, how about that
swim?" she said.
"You go ahead. I'll wait for you here."
The woman rose and walked to where the gentle surf washed over her ankles. The
water was colder than the night air, for it was only mid-June. The woman called back,
"You're sure you don't want to come?" But there was no answer from the sleeping man.
She backed up a few steps, then ran at the water. At first her strides were long
and
graceful, but then a small wave crashed into her knees. She faltered, regained her
footing,
and flung herself over the next waist-high wave. The water was only up to her hips, so
she stood, pushed the hair out of her eyes, and continued walking until the water covered
her shoulders. There she began to swim -- with the jerky, head-above-water stroke of the
untutored.
A hundred yards offshore, the fish sensed a change in the sea's rhythm. It did
not
see the woman, nor yet did it smell her. Running within the length of its body were a
series of thin canals, filled with mucus and dotted with nerve endings, and these nerves
detected vibrations and signaled the brain. The fish turned toward shore.
The woman continued to swim away from the beach, stopping now and then to
check her position by the lights shining from the house. The tide was slack, so she had
not moved up or down the beach. But she was tiring, so she rested for a moment, treading
water, and then started for shore.
The vibrations were stronger now, and the fish recognized prey. The sweeps of its
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tail quickened, thrusting the giant body forward with a speed that agitated the tiny
phosphorescent animals in the water and caused them to glow, casting a mantle of sparks
over the fish.
The fish closed on the woman and hurtled past, a dozen feet to the side and six
feet below the surface. The woman felt only a wave of pressure that seemed to lift her up
in the water and ease her down again. She stopped swimming and held her breath.
Feeling nothing further, she resumed her lurching stroke.
The fish smelled her now, and the vibrations -- erratic and sharp -- signaled
distress. The fish began to circle close to the surface. Its dorsal fin broke water, and
its
tail, thrashing back and forth, cut the glassy surface with a hiss. A series of tremors
shook
its body.
For the first time, the woman felt fear, though she did not know why. Adrenaline
shot through her trunk and her limbs, generating a tingling heat and urging her to swim
faster. She guessed that she was fifty yards from shore. She could see the line of white
foam where the waves broke on the beach. She saw the lights in the house, and for a
comforting moment she thought she saw someone pass by one of the windows.
The fish was about forty feet from the woman, off to the side, when it turned
suddenly to the left, dropped entirely below the surface, and, with two quick thrusts of
its
tail, was upon her.
At first, the woman thought she had snagged her leg on a rock or a piece of
floating wood. There was no initial pain, only one violent tug on her right leg. She
reached down to touch her foot, treading water with her left leg to keep her head up,
feeling in the blackness with her left hand. She could not find her foot. She reached
higher on her leg, and then she was overcome by a rush of nausea and dizziness. Her
groping fingers had found a hub of bone and tattered flesh. She knew that the warm,
pulsing flow over her fingers in the chill water was her own blood.
Pain and panic struck together. The woman threw her head back and screamed a
guttural cry of terror.
The fish had moved away. It swallowed the woman's limb without chewing.
Bones and meat passed down the massive gullet in a single spasm. Now the fish turned
again, homing on the stream of blood flushing from the woman's femoral artery, a beacon
as clear and true as a lighthouse on a cloudless night. This time the fish attacked from
below. It hurtled up under the woman, jaws agape. The great conical head struck her like
a locomotive, knocking her up out of the water. The jaws snapped shut around her torso,
crushing bones and flesh and organs into a jelly. The fish, with the woman's body in its
mouth, smashed down on the water with a thunderous splash, spewing foam and blood
and phosphorescence in a gaudy shower.
Below the surface, the fish shook its head from side to side, its serrated
triangular
teeth sawing through what little sinew still resisted. The corpse fell apart. The fish
swallowed, then turned to continue feeding. Its brain still registered the signals of
nearby
prey. The water was laced with blood and shreds of flesh, and the fish could not sort
signal from substance. It cut back and forth through the dissipating cloud of blood,
opening and closing its mouth, seining for a random morsel. But by now, most of the
pieces of the corpse had dispersed. A few sank slowly, coming to rest on the sandy
bottom, where they moved lazily in the current. A few drifted away just below the
surface, floating in the surge that ended in the surf.
The man awoke, shivering in the early morning cold. His mouth was sticky and
dry, and his wakening belch tasted of Bourbon and corn. The sun had not yet risen, but a
line of pink on the eastern horizon told him that daybreak was near. The stars still hung
faintly in the lightening sky. The man stood and began to dress. He was annoyed that the
woman had not woken him when she went back to the house, and he found it curious that
she had left her clothes on the beach. He picked them up and walked to the house.
He tiptoed across the porch and gently opened the screen door, remembering that
it screeched when yanked. The living room was dark and empty, littered with half-empty
glasses, ashtrays, and dirty plates. He walked across the living room, turned right down
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a
hall, past two closed doors. The door to the room he shared with the woman was open,
and a bedside light was on. Both beds were made. He tossed the woman's clothes on one
of the beds, then returned to the living room and switched on a light. Both couches were
empty.
There were two more bedrooms in the house. The owners slept in one. Two other
house guests occupied the other. As quietly as possible, the man opened the door to the
first bedroom. There were two beds, each obviously containing only one person. He
closed the door and moved to the next room. The host and hostess were asleep on each
side of a king-size bed. The man closed the door and went back to his room to find his
watch. It was nearly five.
He sat on one bed and stared at the bundle of clothes on the other. He was
certain
the woman wasn't in the house. There had been no other guests for dinner, so unless she
had met someone on the beach while he slept, she couldn't have gone off with anyone.
And even if she had, he thought, she probably would have taken at least some of her
clothes.
Only then did he permit his mind to consider the possibility of an accident. Very
quickly the possibility became a certainty. He returned to the host's bedroom, hesitated
for a moment beside the bed, and then softly placed his hand on a shoulder.
"Jack," he said, patting the shoulder. "Hey, Jack." The man sighed and opened his
eyes. "What?"
"It's me. Tom. I hate like hell to wake you up, but I think we may have a
problem."
"What problem?"
"Have you seen Chrissie?"
"What do you mean, have I seen Chrissie? She's with you."
"No, she isn't. I mean, I can't find her."
Jack sat up and turned on a light. His wife stirred and covered her head with a
sheet. Jack looked at his watch. "Jesus Christ. It's five in the morning. And you can't
find
your date."
"I know," said Tom. "I'm sorry. Do you remember when you saw her last?"
"Sure I remember. She said you were going for a swim, and you both went out on
the porch. When did you see her last?"
"On the beach. Then I fell asleep. You mean she didn't come back?"
"Not that I saw. At least not before we went to bed, and that was around one."
"I found her clothes."
"Where? On the beach?"
"Yes."
"You looked in the living room?" Tom nodded. "And in the Henkels' room."
"The Henkels' room!"
Tom blushed. "I haven't known her that long. For all I know she could be a little
weird. So could the Henkels. I mean, I'm not suggesting anything. I just wanted to check
the whole house before I woke you up."
"So what do you think?"
"What I'm beginning to think," said Tom, "is that maybe she had an accident.
Maybe she drowned."
Jack looked at him for a moment, then glanced again at his watch. "I don't know
what time the police in this town go to work," he said, "but I guess this is as good a
time
as any to find out."
Chapter 2
Patrolman Len Hendricks sat at his desk in the Amity police station, reading a detective
novel called Deadly, I'm Yours. At the moment the phone rang the heroine, a girl named
Whistling Dixie, was about to be raped by a motorcycle club. Hendricks let the phone
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ring until Miss Dixie castrated the first of her attackers with a linoleum knife she had
secreted in her hair.
He picked up the phone. "Amity Police, Patrolman Hendricks," he said. "Can I
help you?"
"This is Jack Foote, over on Old Mill Road. I want to report a missing person. Or
at least I think she's missing."
"Say again, sir?" Hendricks had served in Vietnam as a radio man, and he was
fond of military terminology.
"One of my house guests went for a swim at about one this morning," said Foote.
"She hasn't came back yet. Her date found her clothes on the beach."
Hendricks began to scribble on a pad. "What was the person's name?"
"Christine Watkins."
"Age?"
"I don't know. Just a second. Say around twenty-five. Her date says that's about
right."
"Height and weight?"
"Wait a minute." There was a pause. "We think probably about five-seven,
between one twenty and one thirty."
"Color of hair and eyes?"
"Listen, Officer, why do you need all this? If the woman's drowned, she's
probably going to be the only one you have -- at least tonight, right? You don't average
more than one drowning around here each night, do you?"
"Who said she drowned, Mr. Foote? Maybe she went for a walk."
"Stark naked at one in the morning? Have you had any reports about a woman
walking around naked?"
Hendricks relished the chance to be insufferably cool. "No, Mr. Foote, not yet.
But once the summer season starts, you never know what to expect. Last August, a bunch
of faggots staged a dance out by the club -- a nude dance. Color of hair and eyes?"
"Her hair is... oh, dirty blond, I guess. Sandy. I don't know what color her eyes
are. I'll have to ask her date. No, he says he doesn't know either. Let's say hazel."
"Okay, Mr. Foote. We'll get on it. As soon as we find out anything, we'll contact
you."
Hendricks hung up the phone and looked at his watch. It was 5:10. The chief
wouldn't be up for an hour, and Hendricks wasn't anxious to wake him up for something
as vague as a missing-person report. For all anybody knew, the broad was off humping in
the bushes with some guy she met on the beach. On the other hand, if she was washed up
somewhere, Chief Brody would want the whole thing taken care of before the body was
found by some nanny with a couple of young kids and it became a public nuisance.
Judgment, that's what the chief kept telling him he needed; that's what makes a
good cop. And the cerebral challenge of police work had played a part in Hendricks'
decision to join the Amity force after he returned from Vietnam. The pay was fair: $9,000
to start, $15,000 after fifteen years, plus fringes. Police work offered security,
regular
hours, and the chance for some fun -- not just thumping unruly kids or collaring drunks,
but solving burglaries, trying to catch the occasional rapist (the summer before, a black
gardener had raped seven rich white women, not one of whom would appear in court to
testify against him), and -- on a slightly more elevated plane -- the opportunity to
become
a respected, contributing member of the community. And being an Amity cop was not
very dangerous, certainly nothing like working for a metropolitan force. The last duty-
related fatality of an Amity policeman occurred in 1957 when an officer had tried to stop
a drunk speeding along the Montauk Highway and had been run off the road into a stone
wall.
Hendricks was convinced that as soon as he could get sprung from this God-forsaken
midnight-to-eight shift, he would start to enjoy his work. For the time being, though, it
was a drag. He knew perfectly well why he had the late shift. Chief Brody liked to break
in his young men slowly, letting them develop the fundamentals of police work -- good
sense, sound judgment, tolerance, and politeness -- at a time of day when they wouldn't
be overtaxed.
The business shift was 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., and it called for experience and
diplomacy. Six men worked that shift. One handled the summertime traffic at the
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intersection of Main and Water streets. Two patrolled in squad cars. One manned the
phones at the station house. One handled the clerical work. And the chief handled the
public -- the ladies who complained that they were unable to sleep because of the din
coming from the Randy Bear or Saxon's, the town's two gin mills; the homeowners who
complained that bums were littering the beaches or disturbing the peace; and the
vacationing bankers and brokers and lawyers who stopped in to discuss their various
plans for keeping Amity a pristine and exclusive summer colony. Four to midnight
was
the trouble shift, when the young studs from the Hamptons would flock to the Randy
Bear and get involved in a fight or simply get so drunk that they became a menace on the
roads; when, very rarely, a couple of predators from Queens would lurk in the dark side
streets and mug passersby; and when, about twice a month in the summer, enough
evidence having accumulated, the police would feel obliged to stage a pot bust at one of
the huge waterfront homes. There were six men on four to midnight, the six largest men
on the force, all between thirty and fifty years old.
Midnight to eight was usually quiet. For nine months of the year, peace was
virtually guaranteed. The biggest event of the previous winter had been an electrical
storm that had set off all the alarms linking the police station to forty-eight of
Amity's
biggest and most expensive homes. Normally during the summer, the mid-night-to-eight
shift was manned by three officers. One, however, a young fellow named Dick Angelo,
was now taking his two-week leave before the season began to swing. The other was a
thirty-year veteran named Henry Kimble, who had chosen the midnight-to-eight shift
because it permitted him to catch up on his sleep -- he held a daytime job as a bartender
at Saxon's. Hendricks tried to raise Kimble on the radio -- to get him to take a walk
along
the beach by Old Mill Road -- but he knew the attempt was hopeless. As usual, Kimble
was sound asleep in a squad car parked behind the Amity Pharmacy. And so Hendricks
picked up the phone and dialed Chief Brody's home number.
Brody was asleep, in that fitful state before waking when dreams rapidly change
and there are moments of bleary semiconsciousness. The first ring of the phone was
assimilated into his dream -- a vision that he was back in high school groping a girl on
a
stairwell. The second ring snapped the vision. He rolled over and picked up the receiver.
"Yeah?"
"Chief, this is Hendricks. I hate to bother you this early, but –“
"What time is it?"
"Five-twenty."
"Leonard, this better be good."
"I think we've got a floater on our hands, Chief."
"A floater? What in Christ's name is a floater?"
It was a word Hendricks had picked up from his night reading. "A drowning," he
said, embarrassed. He told Brody about the phone call from Foote. "I didn't know if you'd
want to check it out before people start swimming. I mean, it looks like it's going to be
a
nice day."
Brody heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Where's Kimble?" he said and then added
quickly, "Oh, never mind. It was a stupid question. One of these days I'm going to fix
that
radio of his so he can't turn it off."
Hendricks waited a moment, then said, "Like I said, Chief, I hate to bother..."
"Yeah, I know, Leonard. You were right to call. As long as I'm awake, I might as
well get up. I'll shave and shower and grab some coffee, and on my way in I'll take a
look
along the beach in front of Old Mill and Scotch, just to make sure your 'floater' isn't
cluttering up somebody's beach. Then when the day boys come on, I'll go out and talk to
Foote and the girl's date. I'll see you later."
Brody hung up the phone and stretched. He looked at his wife, lying next to him
in the double bed. She had stirred when the phone rang, but as soon as she determined
that there was no emergency, she lapsed back into sleep.
Ellen Brody was thirty-six, five years younger than her husband, and the fact
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that
she looked barely thirty was a source of both pride and annoyance to Brody: pride
because, since she looked handsome and young and was married to him, she made him
seem a man of excellent taste and substantial attraction; annoyance because she had been
able to keep her good looks despite the strains of bearing three children, whereas Brody
--
though hardly fat at six-foot-one and two hundred pounds -- was beginning to be
concerned about his blood pressure and his thickening middle. Sometimes during the
summer, Brody would catch himself gazing with idle lust at one of the young, long-
legged girls who pranced around town -- their untethered breasts bouncing beneath the
thinnest of cotton jerseys. But he never enjoyed the sensation, for it always made him
wonder whether Ellen felt the same stirring when she looked at the tanned, slim young
men who so perfectly complemented the long-legged girls. And as soon as that thought
occurred to him, he felt still worse, for he recognized it as a sign that he was on the
unfortunate side of forty and had already lived more than half his life.
Summers were bad times for Ellen Brody, for in summer she was tortured by
thoughts she didn't want to think -- thoughts of chances missed and lives that could have
been. She saw people she had grown up with: prep school classmates now married to
bankers and brokers, summering in Amity and wintering in New York, graceful women
who stroked tennis balls and enlivened conversations with equal ease, women who (Ellen
was convinced) joked among themselves about Ellen Shepherd marrying that policeman
because he got her pregnant in the back seat of his 1948 Ford, which had not been the
case.
Ellen was twenty-one when she met Brody. She had just finished her junior year
at Wellesley and was spending the summer in Amity with her parents -- as she had done
for the previous eleven summers, ever since her father's advertising agency transferred
him from Los Angeles to New York. Although, unlike several of her friends, Ellen
Shepherd was hardly obsessed by marriage, she assumed that within a year or two after
finishing college she would wed someone from approximately her own social and
financial station. The thought neither distressed nor delighted her. She enjoyed the
modest wealth her father had earned, and she knew her mother did too. But she was not
eager to live a life that was a repetition of her parents'. She was familiar with the
petty
social problems, and they bored her. She considered herself a simple girl, proud of the
fact that in the yearbook for the class of 1953 at Miss Porter's School she was voted
Most
Sincere.
Her first contact with Brody was professional. She was arrested -- or, rather,
her
date was. It was late at night, and she was being driven home by an extremely drunk
young man intent on driving very fast down very narrow streets. The car was intercepted
and stopped by a policeman who impressed Ellen with his youth, his looks, and his
civility. After issuing a summons, he confiscated the keys to Ellen's date's car and
drove
them both to their respective homes. The next morning, Ellen was shopping when she
found herself next to the police station. As a lark, she walked in and asked the name of
the young officer who had been working at about midnight the night before. Then she
went home and wrote Brody a thank-you note for being so nice, and she also wrote a note
to the chief of police commending young Martin Brody. Brody telephoned to thank her
for her thank-you note.
When he asked her out to dinner and the movies on his night off, she accepted out
of curiosity. She had scarcely ever talked to a policeman, let alone gone out with one.
Brody was nervous, but Ellen seemed so genuinely interested in him and his work that he
eventually calmed down enough to have a good time, Ellen found him delightful: strong,
simple, kind -- sincere. He had been a policeman for six years. He said his ambition was
to be chief of the Amity force, to have sons to take duck-shooting in the fall, to save
enough money to take a real vacation every second or third year.
They were married that November. Ellen's parents had wanted her to finish
college, and Brody had been willing to wait until the following summer, but Ellen
couldn't imagine that one more year of college could make any difference in the life she
had chosen to lead.
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There were some awkward moments during the first few years. Ellen's friends
would ask them to dinner or lunch or for a swim, and they would go, but Brody would
feel ill at ease and patronized. When they got together with Brody's friends, Ellen's
past
seemed to stifle fun. People behaved as if they were fearful of committing a faux pas.
Gradually, as friendships developed, the awkwardness disappeared. But they never saw
any of Ellen's old friends any more. Although the shedding of the "summer people"
stigma earned her the affection of the year-round residents of Amity, it cost her much
that
was pleasant and familiar from the first twenty-one years of her life. It was as if she
had
moved to another country.
Until about four years ago, the estrangement hadn't bothered her. She was too
busy, and too happy, raising children to let her mind linger on alternatives long past.
But
when her last child started school, she found herself adrift, and she began to dwell on
memories of how her mother had lived her life once her children had begun to detach
from her: shopping excursions (fun because there was enough money to buy all but the
most outrageously expensive items), long lunches with friends, tennis, cocktail parties,
weekend trips. What had once seemed shallow and tedious now loomed in memory like
paradise.
At first she tried to re-establish bonds with friends she hadn't seen in ten
years,
but all commonality of interest and experience had long since vanished. Ellen talked
gaily
about the community, about local polities, about her job as a volunteer at the
Southampton Hospital -- all subjects about which her old friends, many of whom had
been coming to Amity every summer for more than thirty years, knew little and cared
less. They talked about New York polities, about art galleries and painters and writers
they knew. Most conversations ended with feeble reminiscences and speculations about
where old friends were now. Always there were pledges about calling each other and
getting together again.
Once in a while she would try to make new friends among the summer people she
hadn't known, but the associations were forced and brief. They might have endured if
Ellen had been less self-conscious about her house, about her husband's job and how
poorly it paid. She made sure that everyone she met knew she had started her Amity life
on an entirely different plane. She was aware of what she was doing, and she hated
herself for it, because in fact she loved her husband deeply, adored her children, and --
for most of the year -- was quite content with her lot.
By now, she had largely given up active forays into the summer community, but
the resentments and the longings lingered. She was unhappy, and she took out most of
her unhappiness on her husband, a fact that both of them understood but only he could
tolerate. She wished she could go into suspended animation for that quarter of every
year.
Brody rolled over toward Ellen, raising himself up on one elbow and resting his
head on his hand. With his other hand he flicked away a strand of hair that was tickling
Ellen's nose and making it twitch. He still had an erection from the remnants of his last
dream, and he debated rousing her for a quick bit of sex. He knew she was a slow waker
and her early morning moods were more cantankerous than romantic. Still, it would be
fun. There had not been much sex in the Brody household recently. There seldom was,
when Ellen was in her summer moods.
Just then, Ellen's mouth fell open and she began to snore. Brody felt himself
turn
off as quickly as if someone had poured ice water on his loins. He got up and went into
the bathroom.
It was nearly 6:30 when Brody turned onto Old Mill Road. The sun was well up.
It had lost its daybreak red and was turning from orange to bright yellow. The sky was
cloudless.
Theoretically, there was a statutory right-of-way between each house, to permit public
access to the beach, which could be privately owned only to the mean-high-water mark.
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But the rights-of-way between most houses were filled with garages or privet hedges.
From the road there was no view of the beach. All Brody could see was the tops of the
dunes. So every hundred yards or so he had to stop the squad car and walk up a driveway
to reach a point from which he could survey the beach.
There was no sign of a body. All he saw on the broad, white expanse was a few
pieces of driftwood, a can or two, and a yard-wide belt of seaweed and kelp pushed
ashore by the southerly breeze. There was practically no surf, so if a body was floating
on
the surface it would have been visible. If there is a floater out there, Brody thought,
it's
floating beneath the surface and I'll never see it till it washes up.
By seven o'clock Brody had covered the whole beach along Old Mill and Scotch
roads. The only thing he had seen that struck him as even remotely odd was a paper plate
on which sat three scalloped orange rinds -- a sign that the summer's beach picnics were
going to be more elegant than ever.
He drove back along Scotch Road, turned north toward town on Bayberry Lane,
and arrived at the station house at 7:10.
Hendricks was finishing up his paper work when Brody walked in, and he looked
disappointed that Brody wasn't dragging a corpse behind him. "No luck, Chief?" he said.
"That depends on what you mean by luck, Leonard. If you mean did I find a body
and if I didn't isn't it too bad, the answer to both questions is no. Is Kimble in yet?"
"No."
"Well, I hope he isn't asleep. That'd look just dandy, having him snoring away in
a
cop car when people start to do their shopping."
"He'll be here by eight," said Hendricks. "He always is."
Brody poured himself a cup of coffee, walked into his office, and began to flip through
the morning papers -- the early edition of the New York Daily News and the local paper,
the Amity Leader, which came out weekly in the winter and daily in the summer.
Kimble arrived a little before eight, looking, aptly enough, as if he had been
sleeping in his uniform, and he had a cup of coffee with Hendricks while they waited for
the day shift to appear. Hendricks' replacement came in at eight sharp, and Hendricks was
putting on his leather flight jacket and getting ready to leave when Brody came out of
his
office.
"I'm going out to see Foote, Leonard," Brody said. "You want to come along?
You don't have to, but I thought you might want to follow up on your... floater." Brody
smiled.
"Sure, I guess so," said Hendricks. "I got nothing else going today, so I can
sleep
all afternoon."
They drove out in Brody's car. As they pulled into Foote's driveway, Hendricks
said, "What do you bet they're all asleep? I remember last summer a woman called at one
in the morning and asked if I could come out as early as possible the next morning
because she thought some of her jewelry was missing. I offered to go right then, but she
said no, she was going to bed. Anyway, I showed up at ten o'clock the next morning and
she threw me out. 'I didn't mean this early,' she says."
"We'll see," said Brody. "If they're really worried about this dame, they'll be
awake."
The door opened almost before Brody had finished knocking. "We've been
waiting to hear from you," said a young man. "I'm Tom Cassidy. Did you find her?"
"I'm Chief Brody. This is Officer Hendricks. No, Mr. Cassidy, we didn't find her.
Can we come in?"
"Oh sure, sure. I'm sorry. Go on in the riving room. I'll get the Footes."
It took less than five minutes for Brody to learn everything he felt he needed to
know. Then, as much to seem thorough as from any hope of learning anything useful, he
asked to see the missing woman's clothes. He was shown into the bedroom, and he
looked through the clothing on the bed.
"She didn't have a bathing suit with her?"
"No," said Cassidy. "It's in the top drawer over there. I looked."
Brody paused for a moment, taking care with his words, then said, "Mr. Cassidy, I
file:///C|/My Documents/Mike's Shit/utilities/books/pdf format/Benchley, Peter - Jaws.txt
file:///C|/My Documents/Mike's Shit/utilities/books/pdf format/Benchley, Peter - Jaws.txt (8 of 131) [1/18/2001 2:02:21 AM]
don't mean to sound flip or anything, but has this Miss Watkins got a habit of doing
strange things? I mean, like taking off in the middle of the night... or walking around
naked?"
"Not that I know of," said Cassidy. "But I really don't know her too well."
"I see," said Brody. "Then I guess we'd better go down to the beach again. You
don't have to come. Hendricks and I can handle it."
"I'd like to come, if you don't mind."
"I don't mind. I just thought you might not want to."
The three men walked down to the beach. Cassidy showed the policemen where
he had fallen asleep -- the indentation his body had made in the sand had not been
disturbed -- and he pointed out where he had found the woman's clothes.
Brody looked up and down the beach. For as far as he could see, more than a mile
in both directions, the beach was empty. Clumps of seaweed were the only dark spots on
the white sand. "Let's take a walk," he said. "Leonard, you go east as far as the point.
Mr.
Cassidy, let's you and I go west. You got your whistle, Leonard? Just in case."
"I've got it," said Hendricks. "You care if I take my shoes off? It's easier
walking
on the hard sand, I don't want to get them wet."
"I don't care," said Brody. "Technically you're off duty. You can take your pants
off if you want. Of course, then I'll arrest you for indecent exposure."
Hendricks started eastward. The wet sand felt crisp and cool on his feet. He
walked with his head down and his hands in his pockets, looking at the tiny shells and
tangles of seaweed. A few bugs -- they looked like little black beetles -- skittered out
of
his path, and when the wavewash receded, he saw minute bubbles pop above the holes
made by sandworms. He enjoyed the walk. It was a funny thing, he thought, that when
you live all your life in a place, you almost never do the things that tourists go there
to do
-- like walk on the beach or go swimming in the ocean. He couldn't remember the last
time he went swimming. He wasn't even sure he still owned a bathing suit. It was like
something he had heard about New York -- that half the people who live in the city never
go to the top of the Empire State Building or visit the Statue of Liberty.
Every now and then, Hendricks looked up to see how much closer he was to the
point. Once he turned back to see if Brody and Cassidy had found anything. He guessed
that they were nearly half a mile away.
As he turned back and started walking again, Hendricks saw something ahead of him,
a clump of weed and kelp that seemed unusually large. He was about thirty yards away
from the clump when he began to think the weed might be clinging to something.
When he reached the clump, Hendricks bent down to pull some of the weed away.
Suddenly he stopped. For a few seconds he stared, frozen rigid. He fumbled in his pants
pocket for his whistle, put it to his lips, and tried to blow; instead, he vomited,
staggered
back, and fell to his knees.
Snarled within the clump of weed was a woman's head, still attached to shoulders,
part of an arm, and about a third of her trunk. The mass of tattered flesh was a mottled
blue-gray, and as Hendricks spilled his guts into the sand, he thought -- and the thought
made him retch again -- that the woman's remaining breast looked as flat as a flower
pressed in a memory book.
"Wait," said Brody, stopping and touching Cassidy's arm. "I think that was a
whistle." He listened, squinting into the morning sun. He saw a black spot on the sand,
which he assumed was Hendricks, and then he heard the whistle more clearly. "Come
on," he said, and the two men began to trot along the sand.
Hendricks was still on his knees when they got to him. He had stopped puking, but his
head still hung, mouth open, and his breathing rattled with phlegm.
Brody was several steps ahead of Cassidy, and he said, "Mr. Cassidy, stay back
there a second, will you?" He pulled apart some of the weeds, and when he saw what was
inside, he felt bile rise in his throat. He swallowed and closed his eyes. After a moment
he said, "You might as well look now, Mr. Cassidy, and tell me if it's her or not."
Cassidy was terrified. His eyes shifted between the exhausted Hendricks and the
file:///C|/My Documents/Mike's Shit/utilities/books/pdf format/Benchley, Peter - Jaws.txt
file:///C|/My Documents/Mike's Shit/utilities/books/pdf format/Benchley, Peter - Jaws.txt (9 of 131) [1/18/2001 2:02:21 AM]
摘要：

JawsbyPeterBenchleyScenyBookzEtextVersion1.0PART1Thegreatfishmovedsilentlythroughthenightwater,propelledbyshor sweepsofitscrescenttail.Themouthwasopenjustenoughtopermitarushofwateroverthegills.Therewaslittleothermotion:anoccasionalcorrectionoftheapparentlyaimlesscoursebytheslightraisingorlowering...

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