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.”
TWO
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 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 AM to 4.00 PM, and it called for experience and diplomacy. Six men worked that shift. One handled the summertime traffic at the 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.