Fish

Fish are living animals in Matt Kellner’s aquarium and part of the Trawler’s recurring focus on pets; later, they appear among the animals used in the presentation of Audrey Barbour’s body. Across those contexts, fish connect an ordinary setting of adolescent life to the investigation’s widening evidence of cruelty toward animals and people.

Aquarium and Early Pattern

Matt’s pool house contained an elaborate aquarium that ran along one wall, with swordtails, pearl gourami, starfish, and multicolored snails among its inhabitants. The tank, lit in shades of blue, green, and purple, formed part of the room’s decorative and recreational environment, alongside a television, stereo, and stocked refrigerator. Its fish belonged to the familiar domestic world Matt shared with Bret, before the aquarium became entangled with the questions surrounding Matt’s disappearance and death.

The Trawler’s first home invasions began in 1980, and the apparent randomness of the victims initially obscured any consistent pattern. One clue later identified was the disappearance of pets: animals vanished not only from the targeted home but also from neighboring households. In some cases, three animals in a neighborhood were sacrificed before an assault. Fish were part of this wider pattern of animal disappearances, though the account does not establish that Matt’s aquarium fish were connected to a particular Trawler incident.

Evidence and Uncertainty Around Matt

When Matt’s father showed Bret photographs and discussed the official account of Matt’s death, the empty aquarium was part of a troubling set of unexplained circumstances. Bret wondered whether Matt might have moved the aquarium’s contents elsewhere before the events described in the supposed account of a psychotic break, but recognized that this idea seemed implausible. The account remained unsupported speculation rather than an established explanation for what happened to the fish.

The photographs included evidence of animal mutilation at the pool house, which intensified Bret’s doubts about the official narrative. They did not resolve the aquarium’s disappearance or prove who was responsible for it. Fish therefore remain a strand of the mystery rather than a definitive clue: the text places their absence beside the account of animal cruelty but preserves uncertainty about the connection.

Audrey Barbour and the Trawler’s Alterations

Months after Audrey Barbour’s body was discovered in a soundproofed room at the Benedict Canyon house, details of its presentation became known. Fish had been placed in her mouth as part of a larger arrangement involving animal remains. The account identifies this as part of the Trawler’s broader practice of altering victims’ bodies, but does not specify the fish’s species or establish where they came from.

The fish’s appearance at the crime scene sharply contrasts with their earlier presence in a functioning aquarium. In Matt’s room, they belonged to a maintained habitat; in the later account, they are incorporated into an act of violence against Audrey. The shift makes the animals visible across two different forms of human control, without granting them an independent perspective: they are first described as inhabitants of a domestic display and later as materials in a criminal tableau.

Narrative Significance

Fish recur at the boundary between ordinary life and the Trawler’s violence. The aquarium establishes their place in Matt’s everyday surroundings, while the animal-disappearance pattern makes pets a warning sign whose significance becomes legible only retrospectively. Their use in Audrey’s case then shows how the pattern culminates in animals being made part of the violence inflicted on human victims.

The narrative does not settle the fate of Matt’s aquarium fish or prove a direct link between their disappearance and the Trawler. That gap matters: the evidence supports an association between animal loss and the Trawler’s pattern, but not a complete account of every missing animal. Fish thus remain both a concrete part of the book’s animal imagery and an unresolved element in the investigation’s accumulating record.