The Sandy Corpse - Essay Example

The Sandy Corpse It was a pleasant morning as Brent Stockett and I walked down the beach. This vacation was just what I needed and Stockett, who hadn't been to this town before, decided to come along. We passed by giggling children dashing out to the waves, exhausted parents looking half-drowned trudging back up to the towels and a pouty but pretty teenage girl watching the collection of sand castle's crumble at varying rates with the incoming tide. It all seemed so strangely innocent given Stockett's almost constant involvement with the world of crime as one of the best detectives in the city. Somehow, he always managed to drag me along on his adventures, I was glad I could drag him along for some vacation. We enjoyed a full day of relaxation before our vacation turned into a case. It started the following morning as Stockett and I were again walking down the beach, timing our walk for the outgoing tide in the hopes of finding some interesting seashells. We'd gone in the opposite direction this time since it was a less inhabited stretch of sand. As we walked, we noticed a crowd ahead and eventually came upon the scene of a tragic death. It was a teenaged boy in swim trunks laying crookedly on the ground as ambulance drivers approached with a stretcher. He was handsome I suppose, before he'd clearly drowned wearing nothing but a pair of swim trunks. Now, he was inhumanely blue and his face and neck had become swollen and pecked by seagulls. Seaweed stuck in his hair while the rest of him was covered with a fine layer of sand. Within moments, Stockett had worked his way to the front of the crowd and had taken up a conversation with one of the officers on hand. "... buried up to his nose in sand," the man was saying. "Must've been buried by the waves." "Is that quite normal when a body washes up?" Stockett asked. "Well, usually they aren't so completely covered, but it can happen," the officer said. "Strange that it happened so quick, though. Usually it takes a few days and the kid hasn't been dead that long." The detective in charge came walking back from a blackened fire pit higher up on the sand shaking his head. "Wrap it up," he told the officer. "Kid was clearly drunk. Fresh bottles, embers are still burning, just another accidental drowning." We stood and watched as the body was transferred to the stretcher, sand pouring out of his suit. The EMT's efforts to tie the body to the stretcher caused a set of car keys to fall out of the boy's pocket. Stockett was quiet as we walked back to our hotel. "Tragic accident, that," I commented, oppressed by the silence. "Yes, Roberts" Stockett said, "though I don't know that I agree it was an accident." I was shocked. Clearly the boy had drowned and there were no signs of struggle to indicate foul play. "What could possibly cause you to say such a thing," I demanded. "Did you see the sand pouring out of his shorts?" Stockett asked. "Of course." "A wet suit would have clung to his skin," Stockett pointed out. "They would have prevented some of that sand from entering. That suit was dry when the boy was buried." "Buried!" I exclaimed. "Why would you think the boy had been buried?" "My dear Chester," Stockett said, "the boy's body was not straight nor was it in line with the pull of the water. That boy wasn't washed up. If you don't believe me, look at the keys. They were still in his pocket so his body clearly wasn't tossed in the waves. The drivers struggled to get him straightened out and strapped to the stretcher. He was buried, probably in a sitting position with his head above ground." I remembered the seaweed in the boy's hair and the bloated nature of his head as compared to the rest of his body. Stockett had a point. Of course, we had to go to the police station immediately to speak with the detective. After Stockett explained what he'd seen, the detective, a Mr. Dennis, was forced to start an investigation. Within three hours, he had rounded up a group of about 10 sullen teenagers, all of whom had apparently attended a beach party the night before and none of whom seemed to know what had happened to their friend. Although each were interviewed alone, they provided Stockett with exactly the information he needed to put the story together. "I was pretty drunk," a boy named Matt said. "I was so wasted I even decided to build a sandcastle for some reason." He smiled a rueful smile. "I haven't done that since I was a kid." There was a Peggy who insisted they were all drunk and playing in the sand. "What else would you do on a beach?" she asked, her red eyes peering up at us through long brown bangs. "I think it was Susan's idea when we started," she added quietly, tears welling up in her eyes again. "No, Susan wasn't there," Jack added to the story. "She would've been able to get Charlie to shut up about that stupid car. She was still Rick's girlfriend then and knew all the details. I thought he'd never leave." Apparently, Charlie had spent a year's savings and three months of labor rebuilding an old Volkswagen Bug and Rick, the drowned boy, had crashed into it on its first day on the road. The car was rendered inoperable but the insurance wouldn't pay enough for Charlie to replace his actual loss. Charlie had been angry with Rick ever since. Another suspect was added to the list with Nancy's story. "Well, Rick and I have only been dating for a few weeks and we weren't really that close," she said, partly to explain her lack of grief. "He never even noticed how angry Steve was when we were kissing." Lizzy also seemed to remember Susan being at the party. "Ever since Rick dumped her, she's been kinda strange so we've pretty much left her alone to get over it. I was happy to see her even though she came so late. I thought maybe she was trying to get back to normal." Steve couldn't remember anyone who was at the party other than Nancy and Rick causing me to place the strongest suspicion on him. He also said he left the party early, but no one else could say for certain. The girl Susan had to be called in to answer whether she'd been at the party or not. She was already angry walking in the door. "None of these people are my friends," she said with a wave toward the window. "They never want to have anything to do with me, why would I be at one of their parties? If I were you, I'd be asking Matt a few more questions. He's had a grudge against Rick ever since Rick humiliated him in a wrestling match last winter." After she left the room, Stockett stopped the detective from calling in the next teenager. "It was Susan," he said, just like that. Of course, the detective wanted an explanation. So did I. How could someone as small as Susan manage to kill a strong, athletic boy like Rick and how could Stockett possibly know that? "It's simple, my friends," Stockett said, leaning back in his chair. "She arrived at the party late, knowing the group would already be drunk and less likely to remember her presence. She talked them into building sandcastles near the water and then convinced them to bury their friend in the sand, a common beach activity. Rick was, of course, the elected friend and willingly allowed his friends to bury him. None of the others realized how close they were to the tide line and none of them will likely remember leaving him to drown when the tide came in. Check at the local liquor store and you'll probably discover she even provided them with the alcohol and led them to an all-night diner just before the tide changed." "How can you possibly know this?" I asked, astonished. "Why, didn't you notice, Roberts? She is the same girl experimenting with sandcastles we saw yesterday. She needed to know how close to the water to dig the hole." Sure enough, when confronted, Susan broke down and confessed. She, along with her accomplices Steve and Jack, Susan's current boyfriend, were taken into custody. Explanation The above creative writing piece conforms to the genre conventions of the detective story discussed by this week's readings in a number of ways. within the readings. For example, Landrum says, "Detective novels as a more specialized form of the mystery are constructed around a formal investigation - usually of a murdered or vanished person - while mysteries more broadly address the solution to a generally threatening situation" (1). In the above piece, the focus is centered on a formalized investigation of a murder, although not one that is immediately recognized as a murder. The above piece builds on the genre in that the detective also has to make a case that a crime has actually been committed. Landrum further explains that "in the detective story focus is on investigative action, reasoned explanation of a chain of clues, discovery of motive, and the progressive elimination of all possible suspects or causes except one. This involves a detective figure who identifies motive, assesses probable cause, and sifts through a mass of information to identify evidence following some method or course of action" (2). Space requirements reduced my ability to have my detective carefully eliminate the various suspects I provided, but he was required to sift through the available information to prove a crime had taken place and to eliminate the suspects down to the actual mastermind of the plot. At each stage, Stockett had to observe and make sense of the evidence before him in order to solve the crime. Another element of the detective story discussed by Landrum is the detective's use of superior mental skill to deduce what happened. This is certainly evident in the above story as, even though Roberts and Detective Dennis see all the same evidence Stockett sees, they do not observe the connections between these pieces of evidence and therefore miss important clues. As a result of his ability to make these connections, Stockett is seen as something of a wizard in his understanding of events. One weakness in the above story is the way in which Stockett fingers the girl Susan as Rick's murderer. This is mostly due to tight space constraints that prevented me from developing the case to any great depth. Instead, Stockett was forced to rely more heavily on intuition than a typical detective story might. According to Landrum, realism is an important element of the detective story which only continued to grow more necessary as the genre grew (9). While the above story is rooted in realism, there is an element of intuition that may not have been completely accepted when the detective genre was at its peak. Read More