On Deception Watch Chapter 1

On Deception Watch

1

The two boys, one seventeen and the other nineteen, left their car parked on the grass, under a tree off East Absecon Boulevard, and walked with their buckets and rakes to the water’s edge. No one would bother their car as this was a well-known clamming area and was a more or less understood sanctuary from crime. The police would leave their car alone as well. Especially on Saturdays. It was an informal neighborhood understanding. The day was starting out warm and sunny, and the boys quickly kicked off their sandals and with their clamming gear waded into the shallow water. 

They quickly adjusted to the slight chill of the shallow Absecon Bay water and moved out until they were about waist-deep. They separated, working with about twenty yards between them, moving their feet into the sandy bottom, feeling for clams with their toes that had grown experienced and discriminating. When they felt the hard lump of a quahog shell, they took their rake and scooped it up, the sand and muck falling away between the tines. Cherrystones were what they were getting, the main ingredient in their mother’s New England clam chowder.

The older brother filled his bucket first and walked back to the shore to place his haul in the cooler they had left in the car. As he was putting his sandals back on to walk to the car, he noticed something shining in the cordgrass, about ten feet from where he was standing. Looking closer, he found it was only a pair glasses. Bending down to pick them up, he saw about ten more feet into the cordgrass what looked like a shoe. Walking over to it, he was startled to see that it was a shoe, but connected to a foot and to the rest of the body as well. It was the body of a well-dressed middle-aged man lying face up among the floppy, broad green blades. The young man went to his car to retrieve his cell phone and called 911. He called to his brother to come out of the water. He wanted to show him something, he said. Then they waited for the police.

The newspapers the next day reported that the body of Brian Sorenson, an optical design engineer working for AJC Fusion, a New Jersey–based high-tech company, washed ashore Saturday morning along the edge of Absecon Bay, just north of Atlantic City. The sheriff’s spokesperson said the body showed signs of a struggle. There were several broken bones. The police speculated that it was probably a homicide related to sizable winnings by the victim at the Tropicana where he had been playing until the early hours of the morning of the day his body was discovered. No money was found with the body, according to a police spokesperson.