CHAPTER two
Body on the Beach
"Mr. Brody, this is Hendricks. We've got a problem. We received a call from a house on Old Mill Road a few minutes ago. A girl went out on the beach there last night and she didn't come back."
"What time is it?" Brody asks.
"Five-thirty. Sorry!"
"No, you were right to call. Tell me everything you know."
It is almost six-thirty when Brody drives his police car along Old Mill Road. He looks all along the beach but he does not see anything unusual. At eight o'clock Hendricks arrives, and the two policemen knock on the door of Jack Foote's house. A young man opens the door. "I'm Tom Cassidy," he says.
"I called you. Did you find her?"
"No, Mr Cassidy, we didn't find her," says Brody. "We're going to look on the beach now."
"I want to come, too," Cassidy responds.
The three men walk to the beach. "I went to sleep here," says Cassidy. “And I found the shoes here."
Brody looks up and down the beach. "Let's walk," he says.
"Come with me, Mr Cassidy. Leonard, can you walk back towards Mr. Foote's house?"
Hendricks takes his shoes off and begins to walk. After about fifteen minutes he turns and looks back. Brody and Cassidy are now a half kilometer away on the beach, so he begins to walk towards them. Suddenly Hendricks sees something in front of him. He walks quickly towards it and then stops. For a short time he does not move. Then he cries out. In front of him is a woman's head and some of her arm.
Brody and Cassidy run down the beach to Hendricks. Brody arrives first. He looks down and sees the woman. Then he closes his eyes. "Mr. Cassidy, is this her?"
Cassidy is very afraid. Then he looks down.
"Oh no!" he cries, and he puts his hand over his mouth.
"Is it her?"
He turns away. "Yes," he says. "What happened?”
"I don't know," says Brody. "But I think a shark attacked her."
That night Brody meets his friend Harry Meadows. Harry writes for the town's newspaper, “The Amity Leader”.
"I think it was a shark attack," says Brody.
"You're right," says Meadows. "This afternoon I talked to a young man called Matt Hooper. He knows everything about sharks."
"What did he say?"
"He thinks it's a Great White Shark. They call the Great White the ‘man-eater’. Other sharks don't usually attack people."
"Does he think it will attack again?"
"No. Hooper thinks this was an accident. He thinks the shark is now far away.” Meadows looks at Brody. "It's not going to happen again," he says. "And I'm not going to write about the accident in ‘The Amity Leader!’"
"But it's a big story for your newspaper."
"I know, Martin. But it's summer and this town must have visitors in the summer. People are afraid of sharks."
"That's true, Harry,” says Brody. “But I want to close the beaches for one or two days. And I want you to write the story."
Meadows sits back in his chair. "I can't do that, Harry," he says. "My bosses don't want me to. And I don't want to lose my job."
Ten minutes later, Lawrence P. Vaughan comes into Brody's office. Larry Vaughan is an old friend of Brody's. He buys and sells houses, and makes a lot of money. He is one of the most important people in the town. Vaughan sits down. "Please don't close the beaches," he says. "It will soon be the Fourth of July. That's our best weekend every summer."
"I don't want any more shark attacks," says Brody.
"There won't be any more shark attacks! But people will read about sharks in Amity, and they won't come here!"
Brody looks at his old friend. He likes Larry, but he does not see him much these days.
"OK," he says. "I don't like it, but I won't close the beaches."
Vaughan smiles for the first time. "Thanks, Martin," he says.
Brody arrives home two or three minutes before five. His wife, Ellen, is in the living room.
"Hello," she says. "What's wrong? Did something happen today?"
He goes and sits next to her.
"A shark killed a girl near Old Mill Beach."
She looks at him. “What are you going to do?"
“Nothing. Larry Vaughan doesn't want me to do anything. He wants the beaches to stay open."