The docks smelled like rot the day they found the body of Josias Garcia. That was about the only thing that made sense to Officer Portillo since the moment he woke up. Marta had been paranoid all week, raving about mysterious figures who were lurking around the house and staring at her through the living room window. She was worrying over it again that morning, spilling her coffee due to how intensely her hands were shaking. Marta was convinced there was some sort of serial killer on the loose since Marcel died and was convinced their Marcel was just his test victim. Officer Portillo withheld any judgement for his wife. It was painful to accept the cruelty in losing a daughter. It was even more painful to accept that the person who took her was Marcel herself.

  Whatever happened to Josias Garcia’s body was beyond cruel. Autopsy would ter note that he’d suffered decompression sickness and severe pulmonary barotrauma. Some time before his body was found, he’d been dragged down to the depths of the ocean and then pulled up rapidly, the difference in pressure causing lethal air bubbles to form in his blood and rupture his lungs. He’d died within moments. Whatever mercy that may have awarded him was not apparent from the exterior.

  Rounds of flesh had been taken out of his limbs and torso, like every aquatic predator in the North Pacific had taken a bite out of him. Internal bleeding discolored his skin with overpping purple splotches. Small needle-like holes dotted his face and shoulders; these would ter be revealed to be where lethal amounts of stonefish, pufferfish, and other natural venoms were injected into his veins. There were ten ways to hell this boy could have died.

  Where was he even supposed to start with an investigation? The academy never trained him for this. The only things that could possibly be counted as evidence were the clothes on Josias’ body, the pile of rope he’d been dumped on, and the wet remnants of his blood that trailed back to the edge of the water.

  Wailing echoed across the docks. Mrs. Garcia was kept well away from the sight of her son. The sight of a deceased child, especially one so gruesome, was far too much for any mother. When Marcie died, Marta had night terrors for weeks. She lost herself in looking at Marcel’s empty chair at the dinner table and sat at the far end of the couch to watch TV, as if their daughter was still ying there to have her head scratched.

  Officer Wilson marched over, lifting the yellow tape over his head. They were the only two officers assigned to the case, and it was clear on Wilson’s face he was not happy about it.

  “Anything?” Wilson asked.

  Portillo shook his head. “Not much else to find. The bite pattern looks the same as all those fish we found yesterday at the beach, but I don’t know what kind of animal could possibly do this. There doesn’t seem to be any signs of any other activity. No footprints in a two-hundred foot radius–”

  “–Okay, well if you have nothing better to do than stand around, go do interviews. I can’t understand a goddamn word coming out of their mouths.” Wilson squatted down to examine Josias further. He didn’t soften his request with a please. He didn’t even meet Portillo’s eyes for the whole exchange. Typical. Wilson barely had half of Portillo’s experience and still felt entitled to speak to him like his senior.

  Frustration made it difficult for Portillo to focus.. Besides his less-than-charming patrol partner, he still found it ridiculous that almost all department resources were being allocated towards investigating the disappearance of Martin Gillman, who was most likely off somewhere, high out of his mind. There wasn't that kind of frenzy when his daughter was missing for days on end. And there was none for Josias. Still, there was some soce in knowing his whole side of town would show out for his vigil as Marcel’s did only a year ago.

  Beyond the yellow tape, Nelson and Antonio, the two dock workers who found Josias, and Mrs. Garcia all looked haggard–for obvious reasons. Mrs. Garcia came to the scene in slippers and satin pajamas. Antonio had wrapped his own fishing coat around her shoulders for warmth, leaving himself shivering in the wind.

  Before he approached, Portillo grabbed an extra jacket from the patrol car and offered it to Antonio. He declined. Portillo flipped open his notepad, ready to transte from Spanish to English.

  “I’m sorry Mrs. Garcia. We have to do our investigation before you can see your son,” Portillo said.

  “?Qué le pasó a mi hijo?” She screamed.

  ‘What happened to my son?’ The desperation clung in her throat. It sounded like she was begging God more than Portillo for an answer. Regrettably, he couldn’t offer one to her.

  Portillo hesitated before putting his hands out to comfort her. He wasn’t Rafael in that moment, Rafael who did his best to protect her son and all the other sons of Redwood Cove, or Rafael the father who knew what it was like to grieve, who was still grieving. When he was in uniform, he was Officer Portillo. “We don’t know what the circumstances are yet. For now, I just need to know what you witnessed–”

  “I already told your compadre what I just fucking saw, motherfucker.” Nelson moved to push Portillo away but must have considered the consequences mid-action. Instead, he waved him off. “I don’t want to have to say it again.”

  “I’m sure it’s frustrating. Officer Wilson’s Spanish is shit.” He could see on Nelson’s face that the quip did little to build a rapport. Portillo had forgotten how difficult it was to straddle this line between cop and safe. Sometime during his three-year absence from w enforcement, trust in the RCPD had sunk low. It seemed the town's trust in him had sunk even lower. “All I need is for you to quickly run me through what you saw one more time.”

  “Fine,” Nelson relented.

  Portillo got the details he needed. Josias’ body was found at 11am, and they were the only two men who saw it since his body was so out of the way from the common footpaths. The only shred of helpful testimony was that in the murky water, they heard some sort of moan. Maybe a fish or marine mammal; maybe whatever did that to him. Josias was a hard worker, always showing up the earliest out of all the fishermen to set up the boats and fill in the daily logs. If he fell into the water and was attacked by an animal—which was the prevailing theory at the moment—being alone so early in the morning meant no one was there to help. No one was there to watch him suffer. Maybe that was for the best.

  Wilson concluded that Josias must have climbed back onto the docks and dragged himself to where he was found. He wanted to rule it an accident, just a freak animal attack. A feeling in Portillo’s gut told him there was something more they were missing.

  “This might have something to do with the Gillman case.” Portillo voiced his thoughts aloud.

  “Hrmm?” Wilson was still kneeling by Josias’ body, prodding the open wounds with his ballpoint pen. “If you’re finished with witness testimony, then I’m gonna pack up. Chief wants me back on patrol. The county is sending their medical examiner. You’ll wait here until they arrive, got it?”

  “I got it,” Portillo confirmed, straining to maintain a professional tone.

  After a while, Nelson and Antonio left to go work and so it was only Mrs. Garcia and him left on this side of the docks. He stayed with her, at first as a comfort to the grieving woman, but soon more as a comfort to himself. He couldn’t look at Josias’ body anymore. The boy had to have been Marcel’s age, or rather the age she would have been. Portillo resolved to ask Victor and Javier what they wanted to do when they grew up and make sure it wasn’t boat fishing or packing at the docks.

  The sloshing of waves usually faded into background noise, but as Portillo waited, he was unbearably aware of it.

  “I’m sure he was a good kid,” Portillo offered, trying to take his thoughts away from the ocean.

  Mrs. Garcia wiped at her cheeks and sniffed her runny nose several times, but clearing her sinuses amounted to little. Composing herself didn’t seem to be in the cards, so she continued crying and Portillo returned to staring at the wet dirt beneath his boots. He should've known what to say. He’d heard every variation of sympathetic phrases and he knew that none of them ever made it easier. He still hated not knowing what to say.

  “We argued a lot,” Mrs. Garcia said, shakily. “He sold his car to get his fiance a ring. I told him, she isn’t worth your sacrifices. But Josie was so sure about her. And then she ran out on him. He told me it was my fault, because I wasn’t welcoming to her. And before that, we argued about him getting that car at all. I already had a good car for him to use but he said it wasn’t reliable. We argued st night. My car broke down so he had to stay up fixing it so he could get to work early…”

  The ambience of the ocean seemed to still. The quiet was worse. In his mind, Portillo couldn’t unsee Josias’ body bathed in sunlight.

  Mrs. Garcia sniffled again. “He was a good kid.”

  Then a moan came from somewhere further off. Not the moan of an animal, but a man. Antonio described the sound like someone in pain. He’d been right. Someone or something cried like they got the wind kicked out of them.

  “Stay here,” Portillo instructed.

  Mrs. Garcia nodded, but ran off towards the parking lot instead as soon as he’d stepped away.

  He followed the noise around the corners of packing facilities and sheds until he came upon the source. It was the missing boy, Martin Gillman. He was barely recognizable. Portillo was only able to identify him since he had seen his picture pstered all over the station.

  The pungent scent of brine struck Portillo’s nostrils. Heavy brown curls hung off Martin’s head like seaweed, drenched and dripping with seawater. The boy was breathing heavily. He heaved his chest as if it weighed twice as much as it should and when he exhaled, water trickled from his lips. Then the boy spoke, broken and struggling, as if the effort was killing him.

  “Help me…” he said and his next words were garbled, obfuscated by the liquid pouring from his mouth.

  “Martin Gillman? My name is Officer Portillo. I’m gonna get you help, okay?” Something about Martin’s posture put him on guard.

  Martin was a known drug user, but Portillo hadn’t ever seen anyone actually on something like this. His eyes were open unnaturally wide, and he seemed to look through Portillo instead of at him. The boy hobbled forward like something was constricting his muscles.

  More words attempted to escape his frothing mouth. Portillo stepped closer. Closer. The closer he got, the more his panic rose. He’d ter feel ashamed of his instinct to pull his gun from its holster, but in that moment, he decided to wrap his fingers around the grip.

  With every step, the sound of waves got louder and louder. Like he was walking into the ocean instead of towards the person the entire Redwood Cove precinct had been so occupied with finding. He found himself cheek to cheek with the boy, drawn in before he knew how he had gotten so close.

  Portillo could finally understand the wet gurgles of what the boy had been trying to say. “Help me, Annabelle,” he said.

  “Help me, Annabelle,” he repeated. “I need you Annabelle, please.”

  Then Martin’s voice changed into an unsettling baritone. “I’ll find you. Your tina p dog– that’s what Julie alway called her …haha… she’s back from the dead just to stop me. Well, this time she can’t get in my way. Now I can show you just how perfect we are for each other.”

  “Y–y–you! You were the one who desecrated my daughter’s grave. Latina p dog…That was written on her grave. I–I knew it had to be one of you,” Officer Portillo said shakily.

  Standing near this boy made his legs feel heavy and his thoughts slow. His muscles were locking and any of his attempts at moving, even getting one foot away from Martin, felt like wading against a rushing current. Portillo forced himself through that resistance and shoved himself away.

  Even though Martin’s drenched hair obscured his face, Portillo could still see the look in his eyes: a look of terror, pleading, and mournful apology. He would never forget it.

  Martin’s body started to contort. The only way Portillo could describe it, and what he would ter note in his official report, was that his body began to slither. His spine unduted like he was a shark attempting to swim using nonexistent fins. Martin lunged towards him.

  Just as he swung his gun out of its holster and just before Martin reached him, several dogs rushed from out of the shadows of the dock buildings, snarling and gnashing their teeth. One wrapped its jaw around Martin’s leg, another two around both of his arms. A fourth pounced into the air and cwed at his back. All the sense Portillo could make of the situation was lost as dog after dog ravaged the boy.

  Portillo would spend several weeks making fruitless attempts to forget the sounds of the attack. Dogs barking. Flesh tearing. Teeth cmping together like vises. Water spilling to the ground from the boy's mouth. Shifting ocean waves. But there was one sound in his memory that should have been there, but wasn’t. Maybe Portillo had the fortune of forgetting this one detail.

  Martin Gillman’s jaw stretched open so wide it was about ready to pop out of its socket. Yet, he did not scream.

  Portillo found the strength to run. He ran as far and as fast as he could. He should have returned to the station. More so, he should have waited with Josias’ body. But fuck duty.

  He didn’t know where he was headed as he bolted from the cluster of warehouses, past the parking lot, and away from the docks entirely. His first thought was to go home, but he thought better of leading those animals right to his wife and children. Instead he let his legs take him to someone else he could trust.

  Fear for his life had carried him all the way to Jacinto’s apartment complex. He had no idea where the energy or endurance had come from, but all of it drained out of him the moment he stopped to sm his fist on his brother’s front door. When the door swung open, Portillo colpsed.