Another jumped off the bridge last week. That bridge had taken 34 in the last 5 years. If local legend was to be believed, the bay held fantastical creatures that granted you free passage to heaven if you were daring enough to jump. The theory was absolutely ridiculous, and it spoke volumes that it was the leading hypothesis.

Smith had been working as a detective at the police station for 26 years now, and in all that time, nobody had ever figured out how to tackle that bay. Anytime someone tried to measure, scan, or tamper with the bay for any reason, it went wrong. Equipment malfunctions, illogical readings, nothing had ever worked. And no bodies had ever been recovered.

The bay mystery had been Smith's pet project for months, but he'd made no headway whatsoever. It simply didn't make sense.

The most recent death had been one Matthew Enman, a law student visiting family for spring vacation. He had a well-off family, good friends, and a fiance that was to become a spouse in only a few months. Smith didn't claim to know about this boy's mental state, but by all accounts, he seemed to have been living a good life.

None of the deceased seemed to have anything in common. Wildly varying ages, backgrounds, and lives.

The bay was nothing if not a mystery, and Smith was set on figuring it out.