Protecting Sharks Prologue

I had to admit I was feeling better. The visions of Mr. Hanson’s murder were still vivid—too vivid—but they had stopped dominating all of my waking and sleeping hours. The invisible lead weights that made every step a struggle were gone, and I’d lost the urge to block out the sunlight I now saw peeking through the drapes. Maybe it was a week at the beach with a bottle of wine to top off each evening. Maybe it was the old saw “time heals all wounds” proving itself to be more than a cliché. Who’s to say? All I knew was that hiding under the covers had lost its appeal.

The shrinks say the first step to overcoming depression is getting back out among the living again. Since dealing with what Churchill referred to as the “black dog” was something I’d never experienced before, I was open to anything that would make the dark feelings disappear. What the hell, I figured. Getting out wouldn’t kill me and it might even help, so I followed the experts’ advice. Fixing my hair and putting on some badly-needed makeup, I slipped into a nice outfit, left the solitude of my rented condo for the first time in a week and found a quiet little restaurant off the beaten tourist path. To my surprise and delight, I actually tasted food and found myself enjoying the stuffed flounder the waiter served discreetly to the lonely lady dining alone.

I left very little on my plate and decided that a walk might help burn off the meal. The approaching dusk still gave me plenty of light as I headed down to the pier to enjoy the sunset. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have just strolled back to my condo. But I didn’t. I breathed in the cool, clean air the afternoon’s rain had left behind and felt a spring in my step that had been missing for a longer time than I wanted to think about.

As I neared the pier, I saw a crowd gathered. Damn! You’d think the tourists had never seen the sun go down. But as I drew closer, I saw that it wasn’t the sun that had them so fascinated.

My ears caught it before my eyes did—a whacking sound like someone beating the dirt out of a rug. What was this? My curiosity drew me into the crowd, even as I told myself that I was far from my jurisdiction, and an Atlanta police detective had no business sticking her nose into whatever was happening.

But stick it I did. Pushing my way to the front of the pack, I saw a young guy—no more than twenty-five—swinging a heavy stick down on something on the pier. Then I saw what the something was—a small shark, still alive, but just barely. The scrawny punk whacked the creature on the head a couple of times, moved away, then stepped in to dole out more punishment, spinning the stick like one of those cartoon Ninja turtles. He was performing for the tourists, who encouraged him with laughter and applause. One fat slug who would most likely die from gluttony before he turned forty, even held his small son up on his shoulders to get a better view of the sideshow. These cretins reminded me of rubberneckers on the freeway who bring traffic to a halt at the bloodthirsty possibility that a simple fender-bender might turn out to be a grotesque death scene.