Flat Surf

By Baer Charlton

California's Orange County is famous for television shows of the rich and famous, the rich and disturbed, and neither. Big surf to flat surf, Orange County isn't what you see on TV.

A headless body turns up on a beach.

Former sheriff's detective Frank Pounds is dragged from medical retirement because he may know the identity of the body.

Dressed in an irreverent t-shirt, a pair of board shorts, and rainbow-painted huaraches showing off his pink toenails, he stands over a familiar body with a distinctive tattoo.

As he glares up the beach to the pier lined with camera vultures with long lenses, it turns personal.