The Montauk Monster (4 page)

By the time Dalton returned to the beach, the sun was cresting on the horizon, hot and amber with promises of a hazy, humid day. Many of the first-responder vehicles were gone. The sun glinted off the sand as if it were a sea of gold. The beaches in Montauk were some of the prettiest in the state—until they were the setting for a grisly double homicide.

He tossed the keys to Mickey, who grabbed them in midair and checked his watch.

“I’m five minutes early, Mick,” Dalton said.

“Lucky for you,” he said, smiling. “The ME’s almost done collecting all the parts. Whatever gas was coming from the bodies is gone, too. All we have to do is keep the early joggers away for a little while.”

A dozen seagulls squawked overhead, circling the area where the bodies lay. Mickey followed Dalton’s gaze and gave a short laugh. “You missed it. One of those sea buzzards swooped down and gobbled up some of the parts. I thought Campos was going to shoot the damn thing out of the sky.”

“As far as they know, it’s just entrails thrown from the back of one of those party fishing boats. A meal’s a meal to them,” Dalton said.

Anita placed a hand over her stomach. “And on that note, I’m heading home. Gray, you call me if anything else comes up, okay?”

“I will. Go home and get some sleep. You earned it.”

She adjusted the strap of the case for her tranquilizer gun over her shoulder and headed for her van, waving back at them.

“Any luck?” Mickey asked. He took a sip of the dregs of coffee in his cup, grimaced and dumped it on the beach. A slight breeze blew the foam cup from his hand and they watched it tumble under Dalton’s car.

“Followed up on a few reports, but no one got a good look at whatever woke them up. They all agreed that whatever they saw, it was huge, like a Great Dane. One guy was chased by a pair of them back into his house.”

“Two dogs together? That’s strange. I wonder if we have one of those fight-dog places around. You know, those Michael Vick jackwads who abuse dogs so they’ll kill anything in sight? You think it could have anything to do with this?”

Dalton massaged some of the tension from his neck. “I haven’t a clue. If it’s dogs, what kind of dogs could do that? Anita said it looks like a lion tore those people apart. But there’s no way a lion, or a tiger or bear, could make it all the way out here without riling half the people on the island. I think some lunatic lost his mind. Hopefully the ME can pull some prints, give us some answers.”

Mickey clapped him on the back. “Bet you didn’t think you’d be dealing with psycho crap like this out here, did you?”

“No. It is kind of out of place.”

“You have no idea. I’ve been working Suffolk County a long time and I’ve never seen anything like it. Is it weird that I’m starving?”

“For you, no.”

The first jogger of the day, a woman in her forties in a black tracksuit, her hair tied up and earbuds firmly in her ears, approached the crime scene, oblivious. “I got this,” Dalton said. He intercepted her before she could get too close. Jogging in place, she asked him a few questions, which he declined to answer, then turned and went back the way she’d come.

It went like that for the next couple of hours. Dalton kept checking in on the progress of the ME. Almost everything had been collected, bagged and tagged. Sergeant Campos left along with Mickey not long after. Dalton stayed around with a couple of guys from the Montauk PD. One of them was Officer Norman Henderson.

“Randy Jenks wasn’t home,” he told Dalton.

“Any chance he may have crashed at a friend’s house?”

Henderson stared at Randy’s car, scratching his beer belly. “I doubt it. If I had money to bet, I’d put it all on Randy being one of those bodies. Now we have to find out who the woman was.” He considered the news crews. A pretty young brunette talked to the camera, the wind blowing her hair across her face. “If that is Randy, I don’t want to be the one to tell his mother. This will kill her. And I really hope she doesn’t find out by watching the news. If she sees Randy’s car on TV, she’ll assume the worst.”

“Should we tell them to keep their cameras away from that area?” Dalton was more than happy to relocate them to another part of the beach.

“If you do, they’ll get more curious than ever, and you can guarantee that they’ll focus on the car. Better to let them yammer where they are.”

By eight o’clock, a new shift of county cops came to relieve him. Dalton stuck around to fill them in, telling them they should appreciate the fact that the bodies had been taken away. Everyone was stunned by the severity of the murders. A typical crime out here was a celebrity getting drunk and making a scene in a fancy restaurant. He left the beach at nine.

He was glad he’d moved to his tiny apartment in Montauk. When he’d first joined the force, he lived near Queens, which was another world and hours away. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, he barely made the ten-minute drive home without falling asleep at the wheel.

After a long, hot shower and before crashing in his darkened bedroom, he rooted around his drawers for a road map of Montauk and some Post-it notes. He dropped them on his living room table, yawned so hard and long his jaw cracked, and stumbled into bed. Maybe things would make more sense after a few hours of sleep.

Kelly first mistook her alarm for the chiming of the ice cream truck. In her dream, she ran down her driveway dressed in a one-piece bathing suit, her wet hair loose and wild, shouting for the ice cream man to stop. If she didn’t get a Creamsicle, the rest of the day would be ruined.

The dream shattered and she bolted up in bed long enough to slam a hand down on the snooze button. She settled back into her pillow and moaned.

It was Saturday morning. She wasn’t going to spend the day swimming in the pool and she sure as hell wasn’t going to wait around for the ice cream man. No, she had to get up for work at the Montauk information center. All she wanted to do was fall back into her dream, to a time before she had real responsibilities and summers meant total and absolute freedom.

Her head pounded. When she tried to move onto her side to get comfortable, a barbed pain rocketed up her leg. Cringing, she looked at the clock. If she was lucky, she’d slept two hours. She just couldn’t shut down. Joey invaded every thought.

Well, Joey and the dull throb in her ankle.

While she pondered calling in sick, she kicked the covers off so she could go to the bathroom. Kelly looked down at her ankle, wondering if she’d somehow twisted it when she tried to get away from that dog last night. The way it felt, she had to have a nice bruise.

She had to grab a pillow and bite down to hold back her scream.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” she stammered, flicking her hands to work out her mounting anxiety.

Her entire foot, from the ankle down, looked like it’d been driven over by a garbage truck. Her normally pale skin was mottled black and red and varying shades of purple. She felt a sick heat building under her tainted flesh.

Clear pus seeped from under the wet bandage.

Kelly had to drag her leg behind her as she dashed to the bathroom to throw up. Her stomach heaved until her ribs ached. Trembling on her knees, she voided everything until she was left convulsing with dry, painful hiccups.

She pulled herself up, holding on to the edge of the sink.

Her face was pale and beaded with sweat. Gray smudges underlined her eyes.

“How can I get so sick so fast?” she asked her ghostly reflection.

Now that the vomiting was over, the chills settled in.

The information center would have to live without her today. Kelly limped back to bed and called her boss. For once, she didn’t have to fake sounding sick.

And what the hell was up with her foot? Did she break something? It hurt like hell when she put pressure on it.

This is going to ruin everything!

If she didn’t get herself together by tonight, she might lose Joey—again. That couldn’t happen.

She had to practically shout at her body to get off the bed and go back to the bathroom. While she searched for some aspirin, her mother knocked on her door.

“Time to get up, honey. I’ll drive you to work today. Your father’s playing the Lawn Ranger.”

Kelly fumbled with the childproof top. It popped off and landed in the toilet with a plop.

“I’m not feeling so good, Mom,” she said. “I already called in. I’m just going to go back to sleep.”

“Is there anything I can get you? You want something to drink or some toast?”

“No, I don’t need anything. I just want to sleep.” She dropped four aspirin on her tongue, chasing them down with a glass of water. She gagged, but forced herself to keep the pills down.

Somehow, she stumbled back into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. Her foot felt like it was on fire. Hopefully the aspirin would take the swelling down, as well as the pain. She
had
to see Joey later.

Her mother came in, breaking the rule Kelly had set when she’d turned sixteen. Normally, an infraction like this would lead to a mini-war. She didn’t have it in her at the moment to fight.

“Oh, you don’t look good at all.” She pressed her lips to Kelly’s head. “You have a nice fever going.”

“I just took some pills. I’m going back to sleep.” Kelly rolled over, wincing when her good foot brushed against her bruised foot.

“How about I get you some burnt toast? It’s good for your stomach.”

“I hate burnt toast,
Mother
. Can you please just let me sleep?”

Her mother sat on the edge of the bed, stroking her hair. “Don’t get mad. It’s part of being a mother. You’ll know all about it some day.” She kissed the side of Kelly’s head. “You get some sleep. I’ll check on you later. You let me know if you need anything.”

A ball of fire worked its way into Kelly’s stomach. She held her breath for a moment, waiting for it to pass, which it did after a few seconds. On the one hand, she wanted to be a little kid again and throw herself into her mother’s arms. On the other, she knew she was well past that and would have to go through it herself, especially if she wanted to see Joey later.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said.

“I love you, honey.”

“Love you, too.”

Her mother quietly closed the door. Kelly shut her eyes, praying she’d wake up feeling like a human being again.

Benny Franks woke up to the worst smell of his life. At first, he’d hoped it was a phantom odor from a bad dream. He’d had plenty of them through the night, thanks to the fever and stomach cramps.

As he shifted in bed, he realized it was no dream.

He pulled up the sheet and peered down, lifting his hip to the right.

“You did not crap yourself in your sleep,” he sighed.

His head throbbed and his tongue felt like cardboard. He was so tired, so weak, he was actually contemplating staying in his own waste and trying to get a few more hours’ sleep. The chills he’d had were gone, replaced by hot flashes. He closed his eyes.
Just put it out of your mind. You’ve been lying in it for who knows how long. A couple more hours couldn’t hurt.

Try as he might, the stench refused to let him sleep. Grimacing, he rolled over, plopping one leg over the side of the bed and onto the floor. Standing on shaky legs, he inspected the damage.

There was no saving the sheets. Or the mattress, for that matter.

“Thanks, Summer. Your pork turned me back into a damn baby.”

He grabbed a pillow and shuffled into the living room, shutting the bedroom door behind him. Maybe Summer would clean it up if he sounded pathetic enough when he called her later. Pathetic wouldn’t be a stretch.

Man, it was hot.

He staggered to the bathroom, chucked off his clothes and cleaned himself up as best he could with a soapy washcloth. Grabbing a bottle of Gatorade, he fell onto the couch stark naked. The remote for the air conditioner was on the coffee table, within arm’s reach.

The cool air felt amazing on his skin. His stomach was on fire, but at least the cramps were gone.

Benny turned on the TV and caught a live feed from the beach. He watched the news for a few minutes, which only conjured up images of the bodies. Black tarps had been placed over the parts as the reporter droned on about the viciousness of the attack. The victims had yet to be identified but sources speculated it was a man and a woman. You knew it was bad when the cops had to
speculate
on the sex of the bodies.

He thought back to the feel of the blob of flesh he’d been compelled to touch.

Disgusted, he changed the channel to an infomercial about bras without underwire and passed out.

Gray Dalton woke up at four p.m. as hungry as he’d ever been. He hadn’t eaten anything in over sixteen hours and had passed starvation some time in his sleep. Normally, he went to the gym before eating breakfast, but after last night, normal had been thrown out the window.

He made a five-egg omelet, sprinkling in some green onion and cheese, wolfing it down with several slices of wheat toast while standing over the sink. His mother called as he was loading the dishes in the dishwasher.

“Did you see it?” she asked without preamble. Muriel Dalton was high-strung and nervous on the calmest of days. When he’d told her he wanted to be a cop, she’d actually fainted, visions of his demise overwhelming her senses.

At the time, joining law enforcement had been a no-brainer. Three weeks after graduating Saint Francis Academy, his best friend Sal Mottola, “Wiggy” to everyone who knew him because his hair was too perfect to be real, was gunned down in a botched robbery at a convenience store. Poor Wiggy had gone to pick up some milk and bread for his mother. It was a heartbreaking case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His mother had told Gray at the funeral that she’d asked him to go to the store so she could make him French toast the next morning. As far as she was concerned, no one was to blame more than her and there wasn’t a soul who could convince her otherwise. They cried in each other’s arms until his chest ached.

The shooter was never caught. Wiggy’s mother overdosed on sleeping pills a month later.

Gray’s passing interest in criminology, an elective he took in his senior year, kicked into overdrive and he submitted his application a week after her funeral. A typical high school kid previously with little direction, he knew then exactly what he wanted to do for the rest of his life—catch bastards like that gunman and save lives, not just potential victims, but the ones they left behind in tatters.

His mother didn’t see his vision, though his father was proud as hell of his decision. She slept little during his time at the academy, waiting to get the news that he would be sent to one of the many war zones in the five boroughs.

Getting the gig out by the hoity-toity Hamptons helped to ease her fears, but like the great mother she was, she still worried every day.

“Hi, Ma, nice to talk to you,” he said, smiling, absentmindedly brushing his fingers over his scar.

“I saw what happened on the news. Please tell me you weren’t involved.”

“You’re talking to the first man on the scene. Well, aside from the anonymous tipster who called it in.” He heard her partially cover the phone, then her muffled voice called out, “John, he said he was there. I told you.”

“I’m fine. There’s nothing to worry about. It was just a couple of bodies. I didn’t stumble into Hannibal Lecter. Whoever or whatever did it was long gone.”

“You sure you’re all right, Gray? Seeing a couple of dead people must have been awful.”

There was no way he was going to tell her just how awful.

“It’s part of the job. Remember last year when I told you I had to break into that house where the owner had died a week earlier?”

She gasped. “That’s right, you did.”

“So this wasn’t my first rodeo. And the smell was much better, seeing as it was out in the open on the beach. There’s nothing to worry about.” Truth be told, the smell wasn’t better but it was much different than the fruiting old man who had melded with his couch.

“Does anyone have an idea who did it?”

“No, not yet.” More like
what
did it, he thought.

“I want you to call me when your shift is over.”

“I will, Ma.”

“Promise?”

“I swear on Dad’s Civil War collection.”

They both laughed.

“You be careful. Knowing you, you’ll throw yourself right in the middle of things. You’re not invincible, kiddo.”

“I’m not?”

“Don’t be cute.”

“I’m always careful. I’ll call you tomorrow when I get off my shift.”

Dalton placed his cell phone on the kitchen counter and spied the map he’d left on the table. He fumbled through his junk drawer, extracting a pair of scissors. Sitting down, he cut the Post-it notes in half so the strips resembled little flags.

He turned his iPod on with a remote. It sat charging in its docking station on the living room side table. He had to scroll through several dozen playlists until he found some music to concentrate by. A live club performance by Sam Cooke played softly in the background. No one his age even knew who Sam Cooke was. Dalton was a sucker for soul music. He got that from his father.

Studying the map, he thought about the time he’d taken his niece out to lunch when his sister was visiting. She was eight and grabbed every brochure and map that was on display in the front of the diner. When she opened the map, she pointed at the drawing of the eastern end of Long Island and said, giggling, “It looks like a chicken finger!”

He’d thought of Long Island as a chicken finger ever since. Montauk itself was the last stop before the Atlantic Ocean. It boasted everyone from the rich and famous to the poor and nameless. Sprawling mansions could be found less than a mile from fishermen’s shacks. There were a good number of artists out this way, and more mom-and-pop motels than you could count.

When he first patrolled Montauk, he was shocked by how relatively small it was. He’d thought of it as this sprawling vacation mecca. It was actually pretty narrow, surrounded on one side by the ocean and the other by the Long Island Sound. The waves crashed and convulsed on the ocean side, where they lapped feebly along the beaches of the sound. It was like living between two worlds separated by a slender spit of land. Whatever was out there didn’t have many places to hide.

Flipping open his pocket notebook, he checked the time that the murder scene was called in, wrote it down on the half Post-it and stuck it to the beach at Shadmoor State Park.

Aside from the two animal disturbance calls he’d followed up on, there were two other reports that no one had the time to get to. He’d written them down as they came in, just in case.

He scribbled the time and incident for each and tacked them on to each street.

Dalton looked at the pastel flags and exhaled. “I’ll be damned.”

All of the calls last night had happened on the southeast end of the island. It looked like everyone in the area was either a light sleeper, or something (or things) was on the prowl with no concern about keeping a low profile.

The timeline followed a very specific path. Whatever had torn into that couple on the beach had then made its way slightly north and west from the beach while keeping to a relatively tight cluster of houses.

The last two calls bothered him the most. Animals went through garbage, chased cats and fought all the time. Whatever was out there wasn’t afraid of people and wanted in. Even more disconcerting was the possibility that there was more than one.

Were they working together? How would that even be possible?

He folded the map and put on some sweats and a PAL T-shirt. Maybe a jog would help him think. He grabbed his iPod, headphones and keys. The moment he closed the door, he turned around and went back inside. He found the small can of pepper spray he’d stuffed in his dresser drawer.

If some fearless, man-eating animal was lurking around, he wasn’t about to run around defenseless.

Can Man rooted through the garbage outside Nicky’s Cafe. A family of tourists passed by, crinkling their noses at him. He paused to smile, show there was nothing to be afraid of. He was dressed in his trademark Bermuda shorts and hideous Hawaiian shirt with a fresh pair of sandals that had been given to him by Annie, the owner of the thrift shop. His hair was long but he kept it clean. It was more gray than brown, as was his beard, which ended in the center of his chest. If he hadn’t been rooting through the garbage, they would have most likely thought he was just another old hippie.

The wife looked at him with a flash of pity before taking her husband’s hand and disappearing around the block.

Probably going back to get in their bathing suits to spend what was left of the day at the beach. This time of year, Montauk’s endless motels, both large and small, were packed to the gills with summer folk. The town was happy to take their money, offering beautiful beaches, whale-watching tours, fishing and golfing. For Can Man, whose real name was Paul Landon in a time and place too far removed to recall, Montauk in the summer meant sleeping under the stars with the rolling of the surf to lull him into dreamland. During the cold months, he spent his time on the streets in Queens.

But every year, when summer came around, he cleaned himself up at a shelter, scrounged up enough money to take the Hampton Jitney bus out to the end of the island and became a kind of tourist himself. He couldn’t think of a better place to be homeless in the summer. At least not somewhere that was a short and cheap bus ride away.

Collecting cans was his game. It kept him fed. Most locals and even some of the businesses intentionally left empty cans and bottles within reach when they saw him. He wasn’t crazy or an alcoholic or drug addict. He’d simply fallen on hard times many moons ago and decided he preferred living free to going back to an office and a family, complete with stress, deadlines, bills to pay and expectations that could never be met.

A pair of teenage boys rode by on their bikes. “Hey, Can Man!” one of them shouted, waving. He waved back, smiling. The boy who hadn’t greeted him made a half turn, putting on the brakes just in front of him.

He reached into the big pocket of his shorts and pulled out an empty cola can. “Here you go,” the boy said.

“Thank you,” Can Man said. “You boys do anything fun today?”

Both had crew cut hair and white sleeveless shirts. They could have been twins. It was the official summer look of most boys their age.

“Nah, just rode around a lot. My game system broke and my father said I had to get some sun and air.”

“Your father’s a smart man. You play those video games too much and you’ll get cross-eyed and fat. It’ll get dark soon, so don’t ride too far from home.” Can Man didn’t want to tell them about the bodies that had been found at the beach the night before. It was the hushed talk of all the adults today. The locals were on edge, the tourists were intrigued. He hoped the boys were still young enough to avoid the news and live in their own special and fleeting world.

The boys turned around, pointing toward the eastern end of Main Street. “We won’t.”

He watched them go, envying their youth. Hefting the plastic bag with its dozen or so cans, he whistled an intricate tune as he walked toward the beach.

Dalton started his shift at exactly midnight. He’d arrived at the station earlier than usual to see if there had been any progress made with yesterday’s grisly discovery.

“Nada,” Meredith Hernandez said from her desk. In her early thirties, Meredith had become a permanent desk jockey the night her squad car had been steamrolled by a stolen garbage truck. A couple of out-of-towners had gotten stinking drunk and thought it would be fun to nick a truck and take it out for a boisterous joyride. They never even hit the brakes when they rammed her patrol car. Three back surgeries later, she still found it hard to walk. She used a cane with a forearm cuff to get around.

“How about animal disturbance calls. Any come in yet?”

She wrinkled her nose. “What the heck does one have to do with the other?”

He pursed his lips. “Probably nothing. I spent last night looking at body parts and following up on stray-dog crap. I’m hoping for a little more variety tonight.”

“How about no variety and no problems?” She stapled a stack of papers with a hard smack.

“That I wouldn’t mind, either. What are you even doing here this late?”

She sat back against the large cushion strapped to her chair. “It’s either this or stare at the walls in my house.”

“You need to get out more,” he joked.

Meredith narrowed her eyes and grinned. “Oh yeah, and do what?”

Dalton shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Go out to a nice dinner, maybe catch a movie.”

“Women just love eating and going to movies alone. No, thank you.”

“Did I say ‘alone’?” He sat on the edge of her desk and leaned in to her. “I’d be more than happy to share a nice steak and see some chick flick.”

Meredith blushed. She was so pretty—medium height, olive skin and long dark hair, with gray-green eyes that had the ability to hypnotize him if she so desired. Guys couldn’t get past the cane or the way she walked, as if they were models of perfection. Dalton could care less. If he had to be honest, there was something about her slight disability that made him like her even more. Maybe it was the compulsion to protect everyone he met that made him want to wrap her in his arms.