Reunion in Carmel

It had started with screams. At first the screaming was indistinguishable from the normal kid noise along the length of the white beach. But soon enough the difference in the sound, muting even the rolling waves, became alarmingly clear to all within earshot.

            When the shouting started, Jack Ames had been jogging. Stopped in his tracks, he tried to locate precisely the source of the sound, and honed in on a small, curly-haired blonde girl struggling frantically in the soft sand to propel herself backward—and failing.

            Jack sprinted the fifty or so yards to the little girl. As he neared her, he saw it was Will Kempton’s daughter making the racket. There was a pile of sand in front of her. Jack’s first thought was that some other kids had probably destroyed her sand castle. But, Jesus, what a noise.

            “Whoa, Sari. Come on, sweetheart, we’ll build another castle,” Jack said, as he dropped to his knees and reached for his friend’s daughter.

            Sari spun around. Her face was slick with tears and her eyes were wild. She pulled back, staring at him in stark terror until recognition penetrated the barrier of her fear. She collapsed against him.

            “Mr. Ames. Get it outta here! Get it outta here!” she screamed.

            Through her tangled mop of curls he looked at what had indeed been her sand castle. Resting atop the pile of sand was a human head.

            “What the hell!” Jack said, then quickly realized that getting Sari away from the hideously grinning face was the first order of business. He picked her up, keeping her back to the nightmarish scene, and hustled up the beach. Only then did he yell for help. “Call the cops! Get Will Kempton down here quick!”

            It seemed like an hour before Will and Jim came screeching up to the edge of the sand. But, in fact, they were there four minutes after Will hung up the phone.

            Instinct dictated their actions. As Will gathered Sari into his arms, Jim ran down the hill to the spot Jack had pointed out. It was not hard to find. In response to Jack Ames’ repeated shouts to call the station, nearly everyone on the three-mile stretch of Carmel’s white sand had congregated at the site of Sari’s defiled sand castle.

            As Jim reached the onlookers, he heard the mechanisms of a high-speed camera, which may have accounted for the harshness in his voice as he bellowed, “Everybody back!” As Jim bobbed and weaved and gestured them away, he knew he was only delaying the moment he would have to look again into the face of death.

            The last—and only—time Jim had seen a dead man had been when, as a teenager, he’d had to help his father carry the body of a worker, who’d had a heart attack, from the artichoke field to the row of huts occupied by the migrants. As Jim turned and knelt to confront this new meeting with death, he wished his father was there with him.

            “Oh, holy shit. Jesus, where’s the…” Jim’s next words were choked off by a sourness in his throat. When he had the urge to retch under control, Jim glanced again at the head. With one eye closed and one open, it seemed to cast a wink from another world.

            Jim stood up quickly—too quickly—and staggered backward a step or two. Dexter White stepped forward and asked Jim if he needed help.

            “No. Yes. Get up the hill, and tell Will to call the coroner. Then get me something so I can cordon off the area.”

            “I’m on my way.”

            “Also, tell him to get Jeff and Jennie down here.”

            “You’re sure you’re okay? You look pretty pale.”

            “I’m still breathing. All right, everybody, show’s over! This is police business—please clear the hell outta here!”