Born Predators - Chapter 5
Bony, Skinny, Dead
As she tensed to bite, an alarm flashed in her brain. This prey had already been bitten! Fresh stiletto wounds, like her own but smaller, were stapled along the object’s flank. She wheeled away, instantly searching the dark water for her competitor. Her kind was solitary – she hunted alone - and she had rules of engagement for when she encountered her kin, specific rules of dominance and social power.
She found no other shark nearby, but already knew why. The wounds already had spoken to her with their chemical verdict. In an instant she achieved more knowledge of this creature than in all her prior examinations.
She wheeled away, carelessly leaving the body in a tumble of ripped tissues and somersault currents. The prey was worthless. The scavenger sharks could have it.
It was skinny. It was bony. It was human. It was already dead.
Chapter 5
A glass wall separated them from the room below. Will and Kinney stood side by side, looking out at a bright halogen glare that revealed Operating Theatre 2. It was a stark space, half hospital surgery, half frozen storage room, and Kinney squinted at it warily. It was a crowded space decked out in stainless steel, everything easily sterilized. But it also had hints of decades past, like the pink and turquoise tiles trimming the walls that recalled her parents 1970s bathroom, and the chairs pulled up to the computer monitors around the room, with seats of dark green vinyl scrupulously clean, but run through with tiny cracks like her grandfather’s recliner. Pushed dismissively to the walls hulked a collection of old and new surgical equipment – lights, instrument sets, video cameras, articulated arms mounted to cranes, all clad in an off-white tone of rigid plastic or the glare of steel.
The color of bone and knives, Kinney thought warily, shivering in the powerful climate control of the Suffolk County Examiner’s Office. The equipment included no instruments to measure blood pressure, pulse, or breathing. No need.
Dominating the room stood a gaunt and serious man wearing faded sky-blue scrubs with booties, gloves, a cap and a paper mask. He was turned away from Kinney, bent down and intently peering at a puffy wet object on a steel gurney. It was long and misshapen, pale as a sink basin, and lay in the cold room, pierced by spotlights so bright they practically made it steam. The man moved his hands over the object, the play of light over the lumpen thing made it seem like a fresh cut of meat —a queer sheen of moisture originating nowhere in particular but rather seeming a trait of the thing itself, an intrinsic property.
Kinney’s revery, her intense observation of this unusual scene, was shattered when Will stepped up to the glass and rapped his knuckles loudly on it. She turned to him in alarm, but the man on the other side instantly looked up, frowned, smiled, and surprisingly waved. An intercom box hung on the wall and Will held the white button down to a popping noise and the barely perceptible keen of static. “Morning, Harry,” he said.
“Hell of a day,” said the fellow, his voice coming out husky.
Surveying the scene from behind the glass, Kinney realized suddenly what it was she saw. Her uncooperative eyes could finally process the curves of the thing - now recognizing the swell of hipbone, the veins like fine blue glasswork, the supple curve of a spine. She was looking down at the body of Jamie Brinson.
She shuddered and swayed on her feet, squeezing her eyes shut. She forced herself to look again: the body was largely whole, she saw, and lay on its back with everything above the thighs, including the face, covered by a thick green cloth, enough of its humanity obscured that Kinney hadn’t recognized it. It shouted lifelessness, but also exerted a gravity that pulled her inexorably toward it. Kinney became momentarily unsure what was the floor and what were the walls. She stepped back clumsily into the leg of a chair.
“It’s strange for everyone, the first time,” said the coroner gently, in a congested Brooklyn accent, his voice coming through the intercom, his waving, gloved hand attracting their attention through the glass the dividing wall. “I’m Doctor Harold Wasserman.”
Will had told her the name on the drive over, in the process explaining his connection: Harry was Will’s father-in-law.
“Kinney Austin. I work with sharks.”
He emitted a sound best described as a harrumph, though its tone was a pleasant acknowledgement. “Will said they were bringing in a shark expert. What do you need?”
“I need measurements,” she said slowly. “Can we come down there? From here I can't see what you can see.”
“No guests inside the examining room, I’m afraid.”
Kinney’s assertiveness flared at this challenge. Her back straightened, her voice lowered, and her smile turned from tentative to commanding. “I am not a guest, Dr. Wasserman. I have a Ph.D. in marine science and have worked with sharks my whole career. Mayor DiStepano brought me in to investigate this death, and I need to see the body. So, do I come down there or go home?”
Surprised at the sudden challenge, Harry walked towards the glass. Then, as if remembering something, he checked a small piece of paper in his pocket.
“Kinney… Right. Dr. Austin. Well, I also have an order here from Tim Leach not to let anybody else through this door, and—”
“I don’t know who that is, Dr. Wasserman,” Kinney interrupted, “but since it isn’t the Mayor, can you open the door for me, so I can do what the Mayor asks?”
Reluctantly, Harry nodded. “Very well, Dr. Austin, come on through the door to your left. You’ll find scrubs and gloves and masks there. For heaven’s sake, don’t touch anything.”
Will nodded once and said, “I’d better relieve Ronnie at the front desk, Maxi has a way of overwhelming him in about six minutes. See you after, all right?”
Moments later, Kinney stood at Jamie’s side. Wasserman described his findings to Kinney in the fashion of a man accustomed to dictation. “What we have here is an otherwise healthy male in his late-twenties, recently deceased. Notable in his presentation are the extensive infiltration of fluids into soft tissues, and most important for our purposes, the excision of a large portion of the right quadriceps. Skin and muscle are traumatically removed, ligaments missing or fully retracted. The femoral artery is completely severed.”
Kinney steeled herself before looking and found it wasn’t so bad at close range, not once you wrapped your head around it and forced the sight of the body into a kind of abstraction. It was almost like a model, almost latex and plastic and molded polymers, almost just a bunch of components on display. Like Anatomy lab. And—it wasn’t a person anymore, she told herself. Just something she needed to learn from. So, she looked at what had been Jamie Brinson, into him, and felt relief and a little shame that she could reduce what had been a living person to inanimate observation.
A lump of flesh the size of a grapefruit was missing from his right rear thigh. A two-inch stretch of pearly white bone was exposed to air. The skin around the wound, and the thick flesh underneath, were cut to ribbons and Dr. Wasserman had folded back the strips to aid viewing. Even after days of decay Kinney recognized the razored perfection of the cuts, and the ripped off bite of a feeding shark.
“They look like shark wounds,” she conceded.
“As you might imagine, Dr. Austin, I’ve had very little experience with these injuries. The county hasn’t suffered a shark-related fatality since…well, I don’t know. Certainly not during my tenure.”
“Never.” Kinney corrected absentmindedly. “There’s never been a recorded shark fatality on Long Island. In fact, in New York, only three people have ever died from a shark attack, and one of them was in 1642.”
“Three? That doesn’t sound right.”
“It doesn’t sound right because Hollywood’s spent decades making sharks seem scary. But the facts are just as I’ve said.”
“Well, this would seem to be our first,” Wasserman said, continuing his tour by pointing at other wounds. “Anyone who sustained this kind of trauma would bleed to death in minutes.”
“Like Avila Beach,” Kinney nodded. “California coast in 2003. White shark swam away after the strike, but had hit the femoral artery and the victim didn’t make it to shore. But what if it’s like the Snead case in ‘09? In that case, he drowned first and got bitten later?”
At Harry’s quizzical look, she explained. “When people die suddenly of such a wound, they don’t have time to breathe in water. They don’t live long enough to drown.”
Harry winced slightly, and Kinney continued, “You said his tissues were flooded. Does that mean his lungs? Just hypothetically, if he drowned, his lungs would be full right? Would you be able to tell if he drowned?”
He shook his head. “His lungs are filled, of course. Just as in drowning. The body was in the water for days. What’s unquestionable from my perspective is the trauma to the leg.”
“Several bites in the same area.” Kinney muttered to herself as she got closer to the body. “Half the muscle is still attached and the rest of his leg is intact. So, he was sort of chewed on,”
There would come a moment later, she suspected, when the defenses that her brain had erected would fall, and the sickening truth of the object would return. But now it was a lumpen, soggy puzzle box—a bounded labyrinth demanding all her intellect to explore. And her biology brain sprang to life, relishing the mystery. The ragged tissues in front of her evidenced the teeth that had raked through them: their size and spacing, the depth to which they’d plunged. In Kinney’s mind, a rapid-fire set of possible shark attackers flitted across the evidence.
The coroner was fascinated. “Are there different wounds from different species?”
“Teeth are pretty identifiable for each species, which helps because most sharks produce teeth all their lives.” Kinney narrated while she peered more and more closely at the wound. “Sometimes teeth’re triangular and broad with a quick taper, sometimes curved, sometimes serrated. And sometimes the lower and upper teeth are different.” She looked carefully at the upper and lower edges of the gouge.
Then it was if she remembered Harry was there – she stood and faced him. “So, the cuts can tell us what kind of shark we’re looking at.” Kinney unconsciously took the probe from Wasserman’s un-protesting hand, and she pointed to the wounds near the large chuck of missing leg. “Look here. Shredded muscles and dangling gray chords of tendon indicate a lot of violent shaking. Like a Bull shark.” Kinney looked more closely. “Now a Bull shark has cutting teeth in the upper jaw for slicing and stiletto points in the lower jaw for grasping. And I don’t see that.”
“So, not a Bull shark,” Harry offered.
“Correct.” She reviewed the wounds, lining them up in her mind with the anatomy of different species teeth. “Sandbar sharks also have different upper and lower teeth. So not that.”
“But look here!” Kinney gestured with the probe at what looked like a round hole in the skin. “These marks are puncture wounds. That rules out Blue sharks and Threshers, because their upper teeth are like curved knives that don’t leave puncture wounds. And those sharks are only rarely seen close to shore anyway. That leaves a Sand Tiger shark, where each tooth is like an icepick jammed into the prey to hold onto it. Now, they have an extra spike on the right and left of each tooth, so…” Kinney looked minutely at the largest puncture holes. “There! See?” she showed Wasserman. “See the tiny extra punctures on either side of each large hole?”
She concluded, “This damage is from a five-to-eight foot sand tiger shark.
Wasserman’s professional opinion of Kinney grew with each confident use of the probe. “So, we have our culprit?”
“Not sure. The trouble is that they seldom swim in shallow coves, they’re often scavengers, and they almost never have satellite tags.”
The coroner squinted. “My dear, I have no clue what you mean.”
“People say there was a shark in the bay because they could see the satellite tag on their phones. A sand tiger shark would usually be too small for satellite tagging.”
Doctor Wasserman chewed on this. “But it’s all the same, isn’t it? Whether the shark was tagged or not, a shark killed the kid.”
“This bite is more like the chewing of a shark on already deceased prey, than a shark attacking a thrashing, swimming person.” Kinney took a breath. “It might not be the one that killed him.”
Kinney peered across the body, outside the obvious wound area. “What are these?” She pointed to a set of lines in a large semi-circle – much larger than the obvious sand tiger bite. She traced the set of lines, like dashes on the upper and lower part of Brinson’s leg that continued in an arc. A much bigger arc.
Wasserman peered at them, “I don’t know, I never noticed them.”
Kinney picked up a silver probe and moved it to the spot she’d indicated. As she expected, the skin parted immediately, allowing the probe to sink quickly into a very sharp, deep wound. It was made so cleanly that the flesh all but sealed back together when the wound closed. This wound was repeated on the front and the back of Jamie’s upper leg. Kinney followed them one at a time.
She peered at Wasserman,” Can we get a closer look at the bite? Obviously, there’s no microscope, but…”
“Oh, we have an endoscope.” Harry went to the tray where the tools were laid out and took up a tiny camera mounted on a pivoting arm and sprouting a flexible fiber optic cable. Inserting it into the wound with firmness and admirable precision, he managed to get a murky pink and grey image on the nearby video screen.
“Fabulous! Run the camera in there,” Kinney directed, not noticing that now Wasserman was the assistant.
Both Wasserman and Kinney watched the screen as the tiny camera at the end of its probe explored one of the wounds. Kinney held the wound open while Wasserman ran the camera. “Very clean cut,” Wasserman observed.
Kinney nodded, “These teeth are sharper than razor blades. A little deeper please.”
As the camera pushed deeper, a white streak appeared. “There’s the bone,” Kinney said. “Rack the focus up and down, please…There!”
On the screen were three parallel lines scored into the bone. Kinney gestured. “That’s definitely a White Shark. The serrations on their teeth scrape bone in exactly this way. Different than a Tiger Shark or Hammerhead. So, this is a test bite from a White.”
The coroner sat back, squinted at her. “Test bite? Doctor Austin, once again, I have no clue what you mean.”
She took a moment to compose her thoughts, slapping together the sort of explanation she might make to an Aquarium donor. “Okay, when White Sharks bite people—which is very rare, but it happens—when they bite people, it’s once. Almost always once, because we’re not good food for them. These animals see the world in very specific ways. Things are food, or not-food. Human beings are bony and skinny compared to their favorite food, so they’re not trying to eat us, but they also don’t know what to think about us. We’re the unknown.”
Kinney bent over for another look at the larger wound. “And if it does choose to engage, it’s got one best way to learn about something: bite it. A lot of its sensory ability is based in its mouth, taste buds galore, so a large White Shark will take what we call a ‘test bite.’ It’s a quick strike, hit and run, a quick grab and release. The shark is seeking information, not feeding.”
Dr. Wasserman pondered. “Doesn’t it all seem a bit academic? No offense intended, but this young man clearly sustained a shark bite causing major trauma. Test bite or not, I have to declare the shark as the cause.”
“But lungs are full of water, and what if he drowned before the shark appeared? That’s a drowning death - with some scavenging after the fact.”
“It’s still means there is a big shark out there biting people, doesn't it?”
“There’s a huge difference between biting something living as opposed to scavenging the dead! That’s not an attack, is it? If someone dies of heart failure on the street and then gets run over by a truck, did the truck kill him?”
As Wasserman was puzzling out his answer, Kinney changed the subject., “Do you have a measuring tape of some kind?”
Wasserman dug around in a drawer and produced a nylon tape, more like something from a sewing kit than a surgery. He passed it to Kinney and watched fascinated as she measured the width of each of the thin cuts on Brinson’s body, and their distance from one another. She dug out a thin notebook, wrote down this set of values, and compared it to another set of numbers already in the book, intently scanning both columns of numbers like she was checking a lottery ticket.
Wasserman couldn’t contain his questions, “This is helping?”
Kinney looked up at him, as if she’d forgotten he was there. “Yes! It was a smallish shark. The test bite was from a 13-foot white shark.”
“And we know this because…?”
“The spacing of the teeth and the curve of the wounds tells me the size of the mouth. And that gives me her approximate length. Thirteen feet. But the shark in the bay was much bigger – over 16 feet. Kind of strange isn't it?”
Wasserman looked on, waiting.
“It means the tagged shark that people saw on their phones was not the shark that made these bite marks. Some smaller white shark did. So, were there two white sharks in Hampton Bay? Seems very unlikely. Where did they find the body? Inside or outside the harbor?”
“I’m not sure. But again, I’m not sure why this matters when the body has such obvious bite trauma.”
“It’s not usually this complicated, Harry. There’s usually a single shark. And a frightened but living victim.”
“Well, things around here tend to be complicated…” Wasserman mumbled. He was fingering his front pocket and the note from Tim Leach again.
Kinney pretended not to notice, thinking through what she had learned. “So here is a way to explain all this.”
Wasserman waited, rapt.
“Brinson drowned. His body was eventually discovered by a small white shark which took a test bite. A sand tiger shark nosed in later and scavenged a chuck of thigh. If a larger shark like Hennessey was involved at all, she didn’t even take a test bite. Maybe because by then the prey was unappealing.”
“OK, Dr. Austin, I see the evidence chain here. But it is a little circumstantial, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, there are a couple of odd things,” Kinney admitted.
“Like?”
“Location,” Kinney said almost to herself. “Like in real estate, Location. Location. Location. Hennessey was seen in the Bay. Sand tigers aren’t there. Small white sharks are not there either.”
“Brinson was in the Bay,” Wasserman pointed out.
“When he went in the water, yes,” Kinney nodded. “…when he drowned. But where did he get bitten?”
“Don’t know,” Wasserman said, covering the body. He led Kinney from the exam table to an adjoining ante room where they could strip off their gloves and gowns. They entered the lobby with its green metal reception desk where Will was waiting, holding Maxi on his lap while she played with his phone.
“Maxi! My girl!” Wasserman called and knelt to engage the onrushing child in a tightly rehearsed ritual of hand slaps.
“It’s time to go see the Mayor,” Kinney said, looking on.
Will nodded, “All right. What will you tell him?”
“I guess Hampton Bay has two White sharks on its hands. But both might be innocent.”