Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

the kelp tank.”
    We stepped into the exhibit area.
    * * *
     
    The Monterey Bay Aquarium is very different indeed from other aquariums, which are basically collections of fish from around the world, especially the tropics. This one shows you what you’d see if you were a hermit crab living in the bay, which itself is not just any bay. As anyone knows who’s read
Cannery Row
, it teems with darting, swirling, multicolored, many-shaped life. Even when you know that, it’s quite a bit more than you could possibly imagine it is, standing on the shore and looking out. Underneath it, stretching sixty miles out to sea, and two miles down at its seaward end, is Monterey Canyon, as large and deep as the Grand Canyon.
    So that’s the bay. Its many habitats, from the deep reefs to the wharf, are recreated within the aquarium, in panoramic vistas that make your breath catch—far, far, from the old-fashioned window-in-the-wall approach. The most famous of the exhibits is the towering kelp forest, three stories high, sixty-six feet long, containing 335,000 gallons of water, its seven-inch-think acrylic walls made in Japan by a secret process and assembled on Cannery Row by experts who forbade aquarium officials to watch. It is the tallest aquarium exhibit in the world, and arguably the most spectacular.
    “Damn!”
    “What is it?”
    “The lights are off.”
    The kelp forest was dark.
    “The lights are on the roof. They usually have them on for night parties,” said Marty. “I forgot they might be off. Tell you what we’ll do—we’ll call the control room and get them turned on. The surge machine, too.”
    We walked down the stairs to the first floor, where there’s a little gallery in front of the kelp forest. Here the floor is carpeted, and there are a few stair-step benches where you can sit in case you become mesmerized and unable to move.
    Marty left me and went to the information desk to use the phone. In a moment, the lights lit the tank, as if the house lights had gone up on a stage. A big gold garibaldi darted away, startled. A sea cucumber, spiny and, to tell you the truth, somewhat revolting, had pasted itself to the far wall. Leopard sharks glided by, and thin, black-tailed senoritas. A rockfish, looking baleful, flapped its pectoral fins like wings. I was staring back at it, wondering if it was trying to make friends (and knowing better), when the surge machine went on.
    The kelp, twenty-eight feet tall, as impressive in its own way as a stand of redwoods, began to sway. Water swirled as if a wave had hit, which is what the surge simulates, and an object caught in the forest worked its way loose. It looked like a gray jacket, windbreaker-style, with a red splatter on it. Another foreign object floated gracefully toward the bottom—a woman’s high heel. Automatically, I looked up.
    The body of a woman floated on top of the kelp canopy. She was wearing a black business suit, which looked as if it was made of linen. I stared, transfixed, at a leopard shark shaking its body, its teeth caught in the woman’s pantyhose. Silver sardines swam under the body. Suddenly something yellow darted into the water, and one of the sardines flowed red.
    The body changed position and surged downward for a moment so that I could see its face, black hair wreathing it eerily, like Medusa’s. Something nasty was sticking out of the woman’s eye; it looked like the ivory handle of a fancy knife.
    Again, fast as a cat’s paw, a pair of yellow pincers, now at the woman’s neck, plunged toward a fish, this time missing. And another, at the waist. They were beaks.
    I realized, knees starting to shake, that there were gulls standing on top of the body, fishing.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    “Marty!”
    But she’d already seen it. She was making little noises like someone having a dream, trying to wake up. Her body was shaking. I took her shoulders and spoke softly. “It’s okay, Marty. You’re okay, we’ll call security. Here—I’ll help you sit down.”
    I pushed gently on her shoulders, trying to get her to sit on one of the benches, but she resisted. “It’s Sadie,” she whispered.
    “Sadie Swedlow,” I said, to show I understood.
    She nodded.
    “Okay. It’s not you—it’s not me. It’s Sadie Swedlow.”
    “Rebecca!” Her teeth were chattering. “Look at that thing! That thing in her eye—”
    “Yes. Someone stabbed her. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
    “Look at it!”
    “Marty. We’ve got to call