The Merchant of Seattle/Lake Washington/Sun Aug 8/5:34 pm: According to Officer Cepede, the victim of this report is a "merchant," which must mean he sells things like Persian carpets, Chinese silks, Nigerian masks--opulent objects that have arrived here by ships. The merchant is doing well in life because he has the luxury of owning a boat. During the Seafair hydroplane races, the merchant was aboard his boat with friends (presumably clients who want special stones from Italy, gilded chronometers from Switzerland, a "sea-hoard of deciduous things," as Ezra Pound put it in the greatest poem in English, "Portrait D'une Femme"). At this very point, this moment on the lake, the ghost of a crime (meaning, not a real crime) appeared and vanished. Officer Cepede writes: "At approximately 5:30, the suspects [both with visor caps, one with a tattoo on the right upper arm] floated by the [merchant's] ship. The suspects had water guns and indicated they were going to shoot the victim and the victim's friends. The victim and his friends yelled to the suspects not to shoot because they were holding cameras and didn't want to get water on them. The suspects made obscene hand gestures and shot the victim and his friends, getting the cameras wet in the process. The suspects floated away into the crowd of other boats at the Seafair event. The victim tried to snap pictures of the suspects and their boat, but his camera no longer worked." Evidently, this ghost of a crime haunted the merchant, because three days after the incident (Wednesday, 5 pm) he drove to the West Precinct and did the impossible: filed a report. His attempt to reach beyond the limits of time and retrieve a crime that is not even real is doomed to fail. All the merchant has left (and will have to contend with) is that image in his head (the boat, the water guns, the visor caps, the obscene gestures), which by means of a sudden heart collapse, a car crash, a resolute cancer, will one day also enter eternity.

Just One Drop/Green Lake/Wed Aug 11/5:17 pm: Officer Johnson reports: "Perkins approached me to report that a drop of blood was on the windshield of his vehicle. Perkins requested that I take a DNA sample of that drop of blood. I advised Mr. Perkins that the SPD did not do DNA tests unless a crime had been committed. Nevertheless Perkins insisted on documentation of this incident."

The Fate of Our Tower/Downtown/Thurs Aug 12/5:33 pm: Officer Beemster reports: "The witness stated that he watched individual number one [Middle Eastern, possibly from Pakistan] review the film on his video camera as he stood outside the bus tunnel at Third and Cherry. Individual one then walked up the street, stopped at the corner of Fourth and Cherry, and looked up at the Bank of America Tower." (At this moment we hear music--a suspenseful rush of strings.) "Individual one then proceeded eastbound on Cherry and met individual number two [also Middle Eastern]. The men crossed the street and were last seen conversing on the east side of Fifth and Cherry. The witness felt negligent that he did not follow them until the police arrived."