The figure before her still does not move, he does not appear to hear, as her fingers fumble to silence the radio.
She moistens her lips, makes another assessment.
The suspect is not responding. He has no visible weapons but could possibly have a concealed one, though where he might be hiding it she does not know. His clothes are loose and wet, clinging to his chest and arms. He could already have hypothermia. He could be in shock. His behavior could be erratic.
It would be possible for her to overpower him for the short amount of time necessary for Officer Poole to make up the distance across the beach between them, should she need to, in the unlikely event the suspect becomes violent.
She proceeds, with caution. “Sir?”
A movement. His back muscles tense at the sound of her voice. He can hear her, that much is clear.
“Hello, sir? Can you hear me, sir?”
He does not respond.
“Bit of a cold morning for a swim, isn’t it? Why don’t we all head in somewhere warm?”
He remains motionless, his back to her.
“Can I ask what exactly you’re doing, sir?”
The distance between them fills with the roar of the wind and waves.
She makes a decision and moves in a wide semicircle up the beach until she has an angle on his face.
He’s looking out at the sea, his features slack, tension around his eyes, lost in thought.
He could be in shock, she thinks; it certainly looks like it. In which case whatever has happened to him has already happened, this is the aftermath of something. Whether he is the victim or the perpetrator remains uncertain.
“Sir, I’m going to need you to respond to me. Can you do that?”
He doesn’t answer.
Tricky, she thinks. They usually run at you or away from you at this point. Either they’re being chased by you or rescued by you. She can’t tell which she’s doing here. The other shoe usually drops at this point.
But then he has no shoes.
“Sir. I’m going to need you to look at me.” He briefly glances away in the other direction as if he hears something in the distance.
She tries again.
“Sir, I’m going to need you to turn around—”
He turns, calmly, and looks straight at her.
His features are striking though softened with age. An attractive man in his late thirties or early forties, she guesses. She takes in his thick dark hair, his brown eyes, the shadow of stubble across his jaw sprinkled with the first signs of gray.
Then their eyes lock and the sounds of the beach around them seeming to fade away, a bubble forming around them, a connection.
There is something odd in the way he looks at her.
When questioned afterward she will struggle to accurately articulate how his look made her feel…but after some thought she will settle on the adjective “peculiar.”
A calm descends over them, like being underwater, like falling through the air, together. Like a dream.
A gull shrieks and the female officer’s attention flicks up and away for the fraction of a second, but the spell is broken.
She looks back just in time to see the man’s eyes flutter as he slumps softly down onto the wet sand, unconscious.
