Free TUNA LIFE by Erik Hamre

employers and friends, check public records? Andrew had no idea how to do those sorts of things. It was simply not feasible. Frank’s real background would have to stay unknown for now.
     
     

17
    A broken road sign narrowly missed Scott’s car as it whirled past him on the highway. The coast had been hit with several days of torrential rain and strong winds, and Scott Davis had preferred to stay at home on his couch if it was up to him. But Mark Moss had called him an hour earlier; enquiring whether Scott had reviewed the material Mark had left in his inbox several weeks ago. Scott hadn’t even bothered to attempt a lie. He simply hadn’t prioritised it. He had been busy planning the match schedules for the upcoming rugby season, busy fixing the engine on the boat he never used, busy with a million unimportant things. Chores he really didn’t want to do, but still did to pass time.
    Mark Moss had claimed the police had found one of the women. She had washed ashore at the Spit, the point that marked the mouth from Southport into the Pacific Ocean. Mark’s claim that they had found one of the women proved to be a slight exaggeration. What they had found was a hand, a foot and something else, something unidentifiable. But Mark’s plea had evoked something in Scott Davis, something that had been dormant for a long time. It had piqued his interest.
    Scott had wondered how Mark knew it was one of the missing blondes who had been found, given that the police only had found a hand and a foot, and had yet to confirm any identity. Mark Moss had said that he had interviewed the person making the find. The guy had mentioned that the arm had been covered with a tattoo of a snake. A young woman, Marissa Soo, had been reported missing two weeks ago. The missing person report clearly stated that she had a snake tattoo on her right arm.
    “Everyone has a tattoo these days,” Scott had said condescendingly. But Mark Moss hadn’t backed down. He had seemed convinced. The arm had been partially covered by black plastic, possibly from a garbage bag. Mark Moss knew he was right. This wasn’t any ordinary missing persons’ case. Marissa Soo had been murdered. And her killer had carved the corpse up in small pieces, before dumping it in the seaway. Calm down, Scott Davis had said. The last thing this city needs is a reporter running around spreading rumours about a possible serial killer on the loose. True, it would probably benefit Scott. Maybe then the idiots running the paper would realise what a monumental mistake they had made replacing Scott with a twenty-five-year-old kid, without any real journalistic experience, without any bloody life experience. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The young kid was only trying to do his best.
    The weather was too wild to take the boat out anyway; not that it mattered, he never seemed to take it out anymore. And he had already decided the team line-up for next week’s bout against the archrivals Mermaid Bears Rugby Team. He had nothing pressing to do. He might as well take a drive down to the Spit to check out what all the fuss was about. It would be a good excuse to get out of the house to grab a coffee.
     
    A short hour later he stepped out of his car and put his mobile to his ear.
    “Where are you?”
    “I’m at the beach. They are still securing evidence down here.”
    Scott Davis slid back into the driver’s seat. “I’m at the parking lot for the next fifteen minutes. I’m in a grey Land Rover.”
    “I’ll be there in five,” Mark Moss replied.
    Scott swore. The coffee cup from Zaraffa’s had leaked, and the centre console now had a thick layer of brown fluid where the coffee cup had once stood. He swore again. You almost needed a bloody university degree to order a coffee these days. There were so many variants and foreign words that he had given up buying coffee for other people than himself. They made coffee from beans that had passed through the digestive system