Peter Benchley - Jaws

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.

He and Brody heard Bixby say, “I told you, ma’am, he’s in conference.” Then a woman’s voice said, “Bullshit! I don’t care what he’s doing. I’m going in there.”

The sound of running feet, first one pair, then two. The door to Brody’s office flew open, and standing in the doorway, clutching a newspaper, tears streaming down her face, was Alexander Kintner’s mother.

Bixby came up behind her and said, “I’m sorry, Chief. I tried to stop her.”

“That’s okay, Bixby,” said Brody. “Come in, Mrs. Kintner.”

Meadows stood and offered her his chair, which was the closest one to Brody’s desk. She ignored him and walked up to Brody, who was standing behind his desk.

“What can I do…”

The woman slapped the newspaper across his face. It didn’t hurt Brody so much as startle him — especially the noise, a sharp report that rang deep into his left ear. The paper fell to the floor.

“What about this?” Mrs. Kintner screamed. “What about it?”

“What about what?” said Brody.

“What they say here. That you knew it was dangerous to swim. That somebody had already been killed by that shark. That you kept it a secret.”

Brody didn’t know what to say. Of course it was true, all of it, at least technically. He couldn’t deny it. And yet he couldn’t admit it, either, because it wasn’t the whole truth.

“Sort of,” he said. “I mean yes, it’s true, but it’s — look, Mrs. Kintner…” He was pleading with her to control herself until he could explain.

“You killed Alex!” She shrieked the words, and Brody was sure they were heard in the parking lot, on the street, in the center of town, on the beaches, all over Amity. He was sure his wife heard them, and his children.

He thought to himself: Stop her before she says anything else. But all he could say was, “Ssshhh!”

“You did! You killed him!” Her fists were clenched at her sides, and her head snapped forward as she screamed, as if she were trying to inject the words into Brody. “You won’t get away with it!”

“Please, Mrs. Kintner,” said Brody. “Calm down. Just for a minute. Let me explain.” He reached to touch her shoulder and help her to a chair, but she jerked away.

“Keep your fucking hands off me!” she cried. “You knew. You knew all along, but you wouldn’t say. And now a six-year-old boy, a beautiful six-year-old boy, my boy…” Tears seemed to pulse from her eyes, and as she quivered in her rage, droplets were cast from her face. “You knew! Why didn’t you tell? Why?” She clutched herself, wrapping her arms around her body as they would be wrapped in a straitjacket, and she looked into Brody’s eyes. “Why?”