Chapter 8 – That never happened on Baywatch
Juliet was in the car, speeding towards Shoreline Park, filling Lassiter in on what had happened while he drove down the road with lights flashing. Lassiter's face had been a grim mask ever since Juliet had told him about Griggs being tipped off by somebody from inside the department. Dirty cops were always the hardest thing to grasp for other cops.
Juliet had run the badge number Shawn had given her, and it had led back to a patrol officer by the name of Julian Garner. Garner hadn't reported in for his night-shift an hour ago, and the patrol car they had sent to his house had reported back that nobody was there. So right now, Shoreline Park was their only lead.
"So now Spencer is having his visions over the phone? And he is on his way there now?", Lassiter said when Juliet had finished. "Whose great idea was that?"
"It's not exactly as if I had a chance of talking him out of it. He hung up before I could tell him to leave that to us."
Lassiter made a grunting sound in the back of his throat and swerved the car onto Shoreline Road.
"The area is huge. Can't Spencer be a little more specific?"
Juliet sighed and kept an eye out on the road. Discussing Shawn with Lassiter wouldn't bring forth any results, she knew that.
"Look there!"
She needn't have called out. The car standing right there in the middle of the road, engine still running, was rather hard to miss. Lassiter brought their car to a halt behind it, killed the engine and got out.
"It's Guster's car", he said. "And it's empty." His eyes swerved over towards the beach and scanned the area in the dim light.
"O'Hara, the pier!"
Juliet followed Lassiter's gaze and together the two started running towards the pier, both drawing their guns as they went. Out on the pier, they could just about make out the figures of two people struggling with each other, but they were too far away and it was too dark to make out details.
The two detectives had just crossed the beach and had reached the beginning of the pier when there as a flash in the darkness ahead and a gun discharged.
"SBPD, freeze!", Lassiter yelled and, if possible, ran even farther. The two figures were still struggling ahead, but as he got closer Lassiter saw one of them gain the upper hand. He pressed his opponent down onto the wooden pier, raised his right first and brought it down, hard. The second man stopped struggling then and just lay there, probably unconscious. What worried Lassiter more was the gun he suddenly saw in the first man's hand.
"Police! Drop the gun!"
"It's Henry Spencer", the first man tiredly said, took the gun by the barrel and put it down on the pier, out of reach of the unconscious man.
"Henry?", Carlton asked incredulously as he came to a halt beside the man. What on earth was Spencer's father doing here?
"What happened? Where's Shawn?", Juliet asked breathlessly as she came to a stop beside the two men.
Henry got to his feet, his right hand coming up to cover his upper right arm.
"Henry, you're bleeding!", Juliet exclaimed.
Henry just shook his head. "It's just a scratch, the gun went off as we struggled. We caught the bastard as he was chasing down Eric."
"Robertson is here? Where is he?"
Henry hurried over towards the railing of the pier, where he had last seen his son. "He tossed the kid over the railing. Shawn went in after him."
The three stared down at the turbulent water, searching for any sign of Shawn or Eric. After a second or two, Lassiter started pulling off his jacket.
"O'Hara, call EMTs and the Coast Guard. I'm going in after them."
As Juliet reached for her radio, Lassiter made move to climb the railing, but Henry's hand on his arm held him back.
"Don't", was all he said, and Lassiter stared at Shawn's father in astonishment.
"What? Didn't you just say your son was in there?"
Henry nodded with a sigh. "How good a swimmer are you, Carlton? Because with a sea that rough, the current is going to pull you under the pier." He looked up at the detective. "Ever taken a swim under a pier? It's like a real-life Pachinko machine, and you are the ball. Call the Coast Guard."
"So you want to do nothing?"
Henry turned around. "I didn't say that. But if you jump in after Shawn and Eric from here, it means the Coast Guard will have one more person to pull out. We need to get in from the beach, maybe we can reach them for there."
The two men turned around to see Juliet cuffing Garner to the railing of the pier. "Coast Guard is on its way, as are the EMTs. ETA is about eight minutes."
"We need to get to Shawn and the kid before that", Henry said and the three started running down the pier.
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The gunshot registered with Shawn the fragment of a second before he dove underwater. Had that cop gotten to his gun before Henry had reached him? Or had his father gotten a hold of the gun? But his father wouldn't just shoot a perp if he was disarmed, so something else must have happened.
Shawn forced those thoughts from his mind as he struggled against the movement of the water. He needed to find Eric now, that was the most important thing.
The water was rough, but as he dove deeper he could still feel the current, but it was no longer tossing and turning him from one direction to the other. He had gone into the water from roughly the same spot Eric had fallen, but with the water not being calm, he didn't have much time. The more time passed that Eric was underwater, the farther he could be drifted away from Shawn.
Shawn kicked hard along with the current, both hands stretched out in front of him, grasping wildly at the water. His lungs started burning and he needed to get up for air, but he knew that if he surfaced now, he'd probably never find Eric again. He could hold out a few seconds longer.
Seaweed and algae passed through Shawn's fingers, but just as he thought his lungs were going to burst if he didn't surface soon, his right hand brushed against something else. Fabric. Not thinking, Shawn grabbed at it, kicking to the surface while he pulled whatever it was his hand had caught closer. It took a moment to register that he was holding onto an arm, but once he figured that out he knew where to reach to grab Eric under the armpits and pull him up more quickly.
Eric was struggling, feebly, Shawn was relieved to notice. But the way the kid was jerking, he was about to take a deep breath, whether or not he was still under water.
They broke the surface and immediately a wave broke over them, pulling them under again. They resurfaced a second later, Shawn taking deep gulps of air, and Eric chocking and coughing. Now that he was getting some air again, Eric's struggles grew more forceful. He started kicking and trying to twist out of Shawn's grasp, not understanding that it was Shawn's hold on him that kept him above the water in the first place. Shawn didn't begrudge him for not thinking clearly, but all Eric's struggles did was pull them both under again.
"Eric", he yelled over the sound of the waves as they surfaced again. "Eric's, it's me!"
He loosened his grip around Eric's body somewhat to force the boy's face towards him with a hand. "It's me."
"Shawn?"
Eric was still struggling for breath, but Shawn guessed that it was the shock more than anything else.
"Yes, it's me. Just hold on, I've got you."
Eric wrapped his arms tightly around Shawn's neck and Shawn freed one of his arms from holding Eric to start swimming back towards the beach. If they could just stay on the surface and use the waves pushing them forward, he'd only have to kick hard when the water retreated and pulled them away from the beach again. It would take a little, but they'd get to the beach safely.
The next wave raised them up and Shawn tried to turn sideways. But before he could even look into the direction of the beach, Eric yelled something over the roar of the waves and before Shawn could even fully register that he didn't understand the words, something slammed into his back with the force of a brick-wall coming at him at fifty miles and hour. Shawn lost his grip on Eric and only the boy's dead-grip around his neck held them together, but they went under water again.
It felt like his back was on fire, despite the cold water, and as they surfaced again Shawn was coughing so hard that it was difficult to draw breath. They were under the pier, he realised with a start, and the water was pushing them along between the wooden support poles of the construction. It was one thing to swim towards the beach on the open ocean, but here, underneath the pier, the waves and currents were too strong and unpredictable. Shawn couldn't steer them into any specific direction, no matter how hard he struggled, all he could do was try to keep them above water for long enough until help arrived. Or until the water drove them to the beach.
Shawn felt the next wave raise them up and he tightened his grip on Eric, pressing the boy's head into his shoulder with a hand on the back of his head. He couldn't see where the supports poles of the pier were, it was too dark around him and he still had his back to the beach, so there was no way to brace himself.
The wave was pushing them along rapidly now and Shawn no longer knew whether to hold his breath or whether to try and suck in as much oxygen as he could while he still could.
Something brushed his left leg and for a glorious second Shawn thought they had missed another of the poles by inches, but just as he drew a couple of rapid breaths in relief the wave tossed them against another of the poles. Shawn's left shoulder took the brunt of the impact this time, not his back, and as the wave broke above and around them Shawn suddenly realised that he was under water again and he hadn't even had the chance to draw a breath. But somehow, he just couldn't move. His back, his shoulder, all that was just one mass of burning pain, his lungs were joining into the chorus, and his limbs just wouldn't follow his commands anymore.
Then he felt Eric kicking out, struggling to bring them to the surface but failing, and his body slid back under his command. If there ever was a time not to give up, this was it.
The waves were breaking all around them now, making it difficult to stay above water for long. Shawn didn't even know in which direction the beach was anymore, there was nothing he could focus on, nothing he could do but make sure that he and Eric had a few precious seconds to draw breath before the next wave crashed over them again. It was getting harder and harder to know up from down, Eric was a dead weight in his arms, clutching at Shawn's neck, and Shawn felt like a human flipper-ball as he was pushed into yet another of the poles. He tried to hold on to it with his free arm, if he could only stop their movement and make sure that they stayed in one place, they could wait this out till help arrived. But the pole was too slippery, and his arm was hurting too much, and before Shawn even had the chance to make a grab for it his fingers were brushing along the thick wooden beam and then it was gone.
And that was when Shawn knew, with a sudden clarity, that they weren't going to make it out of this mess. For all he knew, they could still be drifting underneath the platform at the end of the pier and not be one yard closer to the beach. His father might have been shot, and who knew when Jules and Lassiter would arrive. If they didn't come within the next minute or two, it would be too late.
Shawn no longer kicked along with the current, all he did was hold on to Eric with all his strength as yet another wave broke and pulled them under. It took them longer and longer to get to the surface again, and just as Shawn was drawing the first coughing breath, the water raised them up again, their speed increased, then suddenly there was an explosion of pain in the back of Shawn's head and everything went dark.
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"O'Hara, get the Maglite from the car!", Lassiter yelled as the three of them reached the end of the pier. Juliet ran across the beach and towards the car as fast as she could, and Henry and Lassiter hurried down underneath the pier and into the water.
From down here, the ocean looked even more rough than from up at the pier, the white spray of the breaking waves the only points of orientation in the dark water.
"Do you see anything?", Lassiter yelled, but Henry acted as if he hadn't heard the detective. He kept on running into the water wordlessly, his eyes roaming the darkness ahead for any sign of his son.
They needed some light, and they needed it fast. Already, the water was nearly reaching Henry's hips, and the farther he got in the harder it got to keep his balance as the waves tugged forcefully at him on their way to the beach. Henry knew that he couldn't loose his footing, otherwise the water would only pull him out, as well.
Lassiter was wading through the water beside him. The detective was at an advantage. His slightly taller build allowed him to go further into the water without losing his balance. But without any light, they could walk in as far as they wanted to, they'd probably not find Shawn or Eric, anyway.
And then there suddenly was a beam of light bopping over the surface from behind them. Lassiter turned towards her.
"Don't go in too far, O'Hara", Lassiter yelled at the smaller detective. "Sweep the light from side to side, slowly."
Juliet nodded and started sweeping the light from left to right. It was a strong flashlight, able to penetrate the darkness ahead, but still the rising and breaking waves made it difficult to see anything. Lassiter and Henry stood there, their eyes following the light of the flashlight with bated breath.
"There!", Henry yelled. "Keep the light pointed there!"
He stretched out his arm and Juliet quickly pointed the flashlight back into that direction. Lassiter strained his eyes, and just as he thought that Henry had probably imagined seeing whatever he thought he had seen, the flashlight suddenly lightened on something floating on the surface.
"It's them!", Lassiter shouted over the sound of the waves as he recognised what he saw as two heads floating on the surface of the water. They were ten, maybe twelve metres away, but with the water as rough as it was now, it might as well have been miles.
Juliet struggled to keep the flashlight pointed at Shawn's and Eric's heads, and Henry started towards his son without thinking about it. He was slower than he would have liked, much slower, but the water nearly reached his chest by now and it was getting almost impossible to keep his footing. The water was slowly floating Shawn and Eric towards them, but they needed to get to them as fast as possible.
Another wave broke and suddenly Henry could no longer see his son's head.
"Juliet!", he yelled. "Get the light back on them!"
The light started swerving slightly, never straying too far from the spot where Shawn and Eric had vanished, but it took endlessly long until suddenly the two heads broke the surface again. Henry was watching his son as intently as possible, and even though Shawn was still some metres away he was worried by what he saw. There was barely any sputtering as Shawn broke the surface again, and Henry could see that his son was too exhausted for much besides trying to stay above water.
"Henry, watch out!", he heard Lassiter yell. A large wave was coming towards them, and with wide eyes Henry watched as it raised Shawn and Eric up. The wave would take the two quite a bit closer to the beach, maybe even close enough for Henry and Lassiter to grab them, but somehow Henry knew that something would happen even before it did. And all he could do was watch as the wave carried Shawn and Eric dangerously close to one of the support poles the pier was resting on.
Henry was already moving forward again as he saw his son being thrown against the pole. Shawn's head hit the wood and Henry saw how Shawn's body went slack. No longer thinking about keeping his own footing, Henry threw himself into the water and started to swim over towards his son.
He plunged under water and grabbed for his son. His fingers closed around Shawn's shirt and he pulled, but Shawn was too heavy. And suddenly, Lassiter was beside him and together the two men somehow, Henry didn't know how, managed to get Shawn and the child back to the surface. Eric was still clinging to Shawn's neck, and without bothering to pry the child off of Shawn each man grabbed one of Shawn's arms and started pulling him towards the beach.
It was too slow, only getting faster again as the two men had ground underneath their feet and the water no longer reached up to their shoulders.
Juliet came running towards them as fast as the water would allow.
"Get the kid", Lassiter said and with a nod, Juliet reached for Eric's arm and pulled him towards herself. At first he resisted, didn't want to let go of Shawn, but he was too weak to put up much of a fight as Juliet pried his arms away from Shawn's neck and pulled him towards herself.
"Can you walk?"
Eric nodded numbly and with a firm grip on the boy's arm Juliet led him out of the water. Henry and Lassiter were dragging Shawn along faster now, and as soon as they had cleared the water, the two let go of Shawn's arms and fell to their knees beside the psychic.
Trembling slightly from the exhaustion, Lassiter brought a hand up to Shawn's neck.
"I got a pulse", he said with a sigh of relief.
"He's not breathing", Henry said at nearly the same time, voice frantic
"Where are those EMTs?", Lassiter yelled at nobody in particular, but Henry didn't even listen to him. He took Shawn's chin in his hand, tilted his head back, and started rescue breathing.