Jaws Read Free Page A

“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.”

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 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 come 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