Jaws Read online

  Amity coroner Carl Santos reported that traces of blood found on shreds of rubber recovered later left no doubt that the boy had died a violent death.

  At least fifteen persons witnessed the attack on Morris Cater, 65, which took place at approximately 2 P.M. a quarter of a mile down the beach from where young Kintner was attacked.

  Apparently, Mr. Cater was swimming just beyond the surf line when he was suddenly struck from behind. He called out for help, but all attempts to rescue him were in vain.

  “I went in up to my waist and tried to get to him,” said Amity police officer Leonard Hendricks, who was on the beach at the time, “but the fish kept hitting him.”

  Mr. Cater, a jewelry wholesaler with offices at 1224 Avenue of the Americas, was pronounced dead on arrival at Southampton Hospital.

  These incidents are the first documented cases of shark attacks on bathers on the Eastern Seaboard in more than two decades.

  According to Dr. David Dieter, an icthyologist at the New York Aquarium at Coney Island, it is logical to assume—but by no means a certainty—that both attacks were the work of one shark.

  “At this time of year in these waters,” said Dr. Dieter, “there are very few sharks. It’s rare at any time of year for sharks to come so close to the beach. So the chances that two sharks would be off the same beach at virtually the same time—and would each attack someone—are infinitesimal.”

  When informed that one witness described the shark that attacked Mr. Cater as being “as large as a station wagon,” Dr. Dieter said the shark was probably a “great white” (Carcharodon carcharias), a species known throughout the world for its voraciousness and aggressiveness.

  In 1916, he said, a great white killed four bathers in New Jersey on one day—the only other recorded instance of multiple shark-attack fatalities in the United States in this century. Dr. Dieter attributed the attacks to “bad luck, like a flash of lightning that hits a house. The shark was probably just passing by. It happened to be a nice day, and there happened to be people swimming, and he happened to come along. It was pure chance.”

  Amity is a summer community on the south shore of Long Island, approximately midway between Bridgehampton and East Hampton, with a wintertime population of 1,000. In the summer, the population increases to 10,000.

  Brody finished reading the article and set the paper on the desk. Chance, that doctor said, pure chance. What would he say if he knew about the first attack? Still pure chance? Or would it be negligence, gross and unforgivable? There were three people dead now, and two of them could still be alive, if only Brody had …

  “You’ve seen the Times,” said Meadows. He was standing in the doorway.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it. They didn’t pick up the Watkins thing.”

  “I know. Kind of curious, especially after Len’s little slip of the tongue.”

  “But you did use it.”

  “I did. I had to. Here.” Meadows handed Brody a copy of the Amity Leader. The banner headline ran across all six columns of page one: TWO KILLED BY MONSTER SHARK OFF AMITY BEACH. Below that, in smaller type, a subhead: Number of Victims of Killer Fish Rises to Three.

  “You sure get your news up high, Harry.”

  “Read on.”

  Brody read:

  Two summer visitors to Amity were brutally slain yesterday by a man-eating shark that attacked them as they frolicked in the chill waters off the Scotch Road beach.

  Alexander Kintner, age 6, who lived with his mother in the Goose Neck Lane house owned by Mr. and Mrs. Richard Packer, was the first to die—attacked from below as he lay on a rubber raft. His body has not been found.

  Less than half an hour later, Morris Cater, 65, who was spending the weekend at the Abelard Arms Inn, was attacked from behind as he swam in the gentle surf off the public beach.

  The giant fish struck again and again, savaging Mr. Cater as he cried for help. Patrolman Len Hendricks, who by sheer coincidence was taking his first swim in five years, made a valiant attempt to rescue the struggling victim, but the fish gave no quarter. Mr. Cater was dead by the time he was pulled clear of the water.

  The deaths were the second and third to be caused by shark attack off Amity in the past five days.

  Last Wednesday night, Miss Christine Watkins, a guest of Mr. and Mrs. John Foote of Old Mill Road, went for a swim and vanished.

  Thursday morning, Police Chief Martin Brody and Officer Hendricks recovered her body. According to coroner Carl Santos, the cause of death was “definitely and incontrovertibly shark attack.”

  Asked why the cause of death was not made public, Mr. Santos declined to comment.

  Brody looked up from the paper and said, “Did Santos really decline to comment?”

  “No. He said nobody but you and I had asked him about the cause of death, so he didn’t feel compelled to tell anybody. As you can see, I couldn’t print that response. It would have pinned everything on you and me. I had hoped I could get him to say something like, ‘Her family requested that the cause of death be kept private, and since there was obviously no crime involved, I agreed,’ but he wouldn’t. I can’t say I blame him.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I tried to get hold of Larry Vaughan, but he was away for the weekend. I thought he’d be the best official spokesman.”

  “And when you couldn’t reach him?”

  “Read.”

  It was understood, however, that Amity police and government officials had decided to withhold the information in the public interest. “People tend to overreact when they hear about a shark attack,” said one member of the Board of Selectmen. “We didn’t want to start a panic. And we had an expert’s opinion that the odds against another attack were astronomical.”

  “Who was your talkative selectman?” asked Brody.

  “All of them and none of them,” said Meadows. “It’s basically what they all said, but none of them would be quoted.”

  “What about the beaches not being closed? Did you go into that?”

  “You did.”

  “I did?”

  Asked why he had not ordered the beaches closed until the marauding shark was apprehended, Chief Brody said, “The Atlantic Ocean is huge. Fish swim in it and move from place to place. They don’t always stay in one area, especially an area like this where there is no food source. What were we going to do? Close the Amity beaches, and people would just drive up to East Hampton and go swimming there. And there’s just as good a chance that they’d get killed in East Hampton as in Amity.”

  After yesterday’s attacks, however, Chief Brody did order the beaches closed until further notice.

  “Jesus, Harry,” said Brody, “you really put it to me. You’ve got me arguing a case I don’t believe, then being proved wrong and forced to do what I wanted to do all along. That’s a pretty shitty trick.”

  “It wasn’t a trick. I had to have someone give the official line, and with Vaughan away, you were the logical one. You admit that you agreed to go along with the decision, so—reluctantly or not—you supported it. I didn’t see any point in airing all the dirty laundry of private disputes.”

  “I suppose. Anyway, it’s done. Is there anything else I should read in this?”

  “No. I just quote Matt Hooper, that fellow from Woods Hole. He says it would be remarkable if we ever have another attack. But he’s a little less sure than he was last time.”

  “Does he think one fish is doing all this?”

  “He doesn’t know, of course, but offhand, yes. He thinks it’s a big white.”

  “I do, too. I mean, I don’t know from whites or greens or blues, but I think it’s one shark.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. Yesterday afternoon I called the Coast Guard out on Montauk. I asked them if they’d noticed a lot of sharks around here recently, and they said they hadn’t seen a one. Not one so far this spring. It’s still early, so that isn’t too strange. They said they’d send a boat down this way late
r on and give me a call if they saw anything. I finally called them back. They said they had cruised up and down this area for two hours and hadn’t seen a thing. So there sure aren’t many sharks around. They also said that when there are sharks around, they’re mostly medium-sized blue sharks—about five to ten feet—and sand sharks that don’t generally bother people. From what Leonard said he saw yesterday, this is no medium-sized blue.”

  “Hooper said there was one thing we could do,” Meadows said. “Now that you’ve got the beaches closed down, we could chum. You know, spread fish guts and goodies like that around in the water. If there’s a shark around, he said, that will bring him running.”

  “Oh, great. That’s what we need, to attract sharks. And what if he shows up? What do we do then?”

  “Catch him.”

  “With what? My trusty spinning rod?”

  “No, a harpoon.”

  “A harpoon. Harry, I don’t even have a police boat, let alone a boat with harpoons on it.”

  “There are fishermen around. They have boats.”

  “Yeah, for a hundred and a half a day, or whatever it is.”

  “True. But still it seems to me …” A commotion out in the hall stopped Meadows in mid-sentence.

  He and Brody heard Bixby say, “I told you, ma’am, he’s in conference.” Then a woman’s voice said, “Bullshit! I don’t care what he’s doing. I’m going in there.”

  The sound of running feet—first one pair, then two. The door to Brody’s office flew open, and standing in the doorway, clutching a newspaper, tears streaming down her face, was Alexander Kintner’s mother.

  Bixby came up behind her and said, “I’m sorry, Chief. I tried to stop her.”

  “That’s okay, Bixby,” said Brody. “Come in, Mrs. Kintner.”

  Meadows stood and offered her his chair, which was the closest one to Brody’s desk. She ignored him and walked up to Brody, who was standing behind his desk.

  “What can I do …”

  The woman slapped the newspaper across his face. It didn’t hurt Brody so much as startle him—especially the noise, a sharp report that rang deep into his left ear. The paper fell to the floor.

  “What about this?” Mrs. Kintner screamed. “What about it?”

  “What about what?” said Brody.

  “What they say here. That you knew it was dangerous to swim. That somebody had already been killed by that shark. That you kept it a secret.”

  Brody didn’t know what to say. Of course it was true, all of it, at least technically. He couldn’t deny it. And yet he couldn’t admit it, either, because it wasn’t the whole truth.

  “Sort of,” he said. “I mean yes, it’s true, but it’s—look, Mrs. Kintner …” He was pleading with her to control herself until he could explain.

  “You killed Alex!” She shrieked the words, and Brody was sure they were heard in the parking lot, on the street, in the center of town, on the beaches, all over Amity. He was sure his wife heard them, and his children.

  He thought to himself: Stop her before she says anything else. But all he could say was, “Ssshhh!”

  “You did! You killed him!” Her fists were clenched at her sides, and her head snapped forward as she screamed, as if she were trying to inject the words into Brody. “You won’t get away with it!”

  “Please, Mrs. Kintner,” said Brody. “Calm down. Just for a minute. Let me explain.” He reached to touch her shoulder and help her to a chair, but she jerked away.

  “Keep your fucking hands off me!” she cried. “You knew. You knew all along, but you wouldn’t say. And now a six-year-old boy, a beautiful six-year-old boy, my boy …” Tears seemed to pulse from her eyes, and as she quivered in her rage, droplets were cast from her face. “You knew! Why didn’t you tell? Why?” She clutched herself, wrapping her arms around her body as they would be wrapped in a strait-jacket, and she looked into Brody’s eyes. “Why?”

  “It’s …” Brody fumbled for words. “It’s a long story.” He felt wounded, incapacitated as surely as if he had been shot. He didn’t know if he could explain now. He wasn’t even sure he could speak.

  “I bet it is,” said the woman. “Oh, you evil man. You evil, evil man. You …”

  “Stop it!” Brody’s shout was both plea and command. It stopped her. “Now look, Mrs. Kintner, you’ve got it wrong, all wrong. Ask Mr. Meadows.”

  Meadows, transfixed by the scene, nodded dumbly.

  “Of course he’d say that. Why shouldn’t he? He’s your pal, isn’t he? He probably told you you were doing the right thing.” Her rage was mounting again, flooding, resuscitated by a new burst of emotional amperage. “You probably decided together. That makes it easier, doesn’t it? Did you make money?”

  “What?”

  “Did you make money from my son’s blood? Did someone pay you not to tell what you knew?”

  Brody was horrified. “No! Christ, of course not.”

  “Then why? Tell me. Tell me why. I’ll pay you. Just tell me why!”

  “Because we didn’t think it could happen again.” Brody was surprised by his brevity. That was it, really, wasn’t it?

  The woman was silent for a moment, letting the words register in her muddled mind. She seemed to repeat them to herself. She said, “Oh,” then, a second later, “Jesus.” All of a sudden, as if a switch had been turned somewhere inside her, shutting off power, she had no more self-control. She slumped into the chair next to Meadows and began to weep in gasping, choking sobs.

  Meadows tried to calm her, but she didn’t hear him. She didn’t hear Brody when he told Bixby to call a doctor. And she saw, heard, and felt nothing when the doctor came into the office, listened to Brody’s description of what had happened, tried to talk to her, gave her a shot of Librium, led her—with the help of one of Brody’s men—to his car, and drove her to the hospital.

  When she had left, Brody looked at his watch and said, “It’s not even nine o’clock yet. If ever I felt like I could use a drink … wow.”

  “If you’re serious,” said Meadows, “I have some Bourbon back in my office.”

  “No. If this was any indication of how the rest of the day’s going to go, I better not fuck up my head.”

  “It’s hard, but you’ve got to try not to take what she said too seriously. I mean, the woman was in shock, for one thing.”

  “I know, Harry. Any doctor would say she didn’t know what she was saying. The trouble is, I’d already thought a lot of the things she was saying. Not in those words, maybe, but the thoughts were the same.”

  “Come on, Martin, you know you can’t blame yourself.”

  “I know. I could blame Larry Vaughan. Or maybe even you. But the point is, the two deaths yesterday could have been prevented. I could have prevented them, and I didn’t. Period.”

  The phone rang. It was answered in the other room, and a voice on the intercom said, “It’s Mr. Vaughan.”

  Brody pushed the lighted button, picked up the receiver, and said, “Hi, Larry. Did you have a nice weekend?”

  “Until about eleven o’clock last night,” said Vaughan, “when I turned on my car radio driving home. I was tempted to call you last night, but I figured you had had a rough enough day without being bothered at that hour.”

  “That’s one decision I agree with.”

  “Don’t rub it in, Martin. I feel bad enough.”

  Brody wanted to say, “Do you, Larry?” He wanted to scrape the wound raw, to unload some of the anguish onto someone else. But he knew it was both unfair to attempt and impossible to accomplish, so all he said was, “Sure.”

  “I had two cancellations already this morning. Big leases. Good people. They had already signed, and I told them I could take them to court. They said, Go ahead: we’re going somewhere else. I’m scared to answer the phone. I still have twenty houses that aren’t rented for August.”

  “I wish I could tell you different, Larry, but it’s going to get worse.”

  “What do you mean?”<
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  “With the beaches closed.”

  “How long do you think you’ll have to keep them closed?”

  “I don’t know. As long as it takes. A few days. Maybe more.”

  “You know that the end of next week is the Fourth of July weekend.”

  “Sure, I know.”

  “It’s already too late to hope for a good summer, but we may be able to salvage something—for August, at least—if the Fourth is good.”

  Brody couldn’t read the tone in Vaughan’s voice. “Are you arguing with me, Larry?”

  “No. I guess I was thinking out loud. Or praying out loud. Anyway, you plan to keep the beaches closed until what? Indefinitely? How will you know when that thing’s gone away?”

  “I haven’t had time to think that far ahead. I don’t even know why it’s here. Let me ask you something, Larry. Just out of curiosity.”

  “What?”

  “Who are your partners?”

  It was a long moment before Vaughan said, “Why do you want to know? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Like I said, just curiosity.”

  “You keep your curiosity for your job, Martin. Let me worry about my business.”

  “Sure, Larry. No offense.”

  “So what are you going to do? We can’t just sit around and hope it will go away. We could starve to death while we waited.”

  “I know. Meadows and I were just talking about our options. A fish-expert friend of Harry’s says we could try to catch the fish. What would you think about getting up a couple of hundred dollars to charter Ben Gardner’s boat for a day or two? I don’t know that he’s ever caught any sharks, but it might be worth a try.”

  “Anything’s worth a try, just so we get rid of that thing and go back to making a living. Go ahead. Tell him I’ll get the money from somewhere.”

  Brody hung up the phone and said to Meadows, “I don’t know why I care, but I’d give my ass to know more about Mr. Vaughan’s business affairs.”