Vanished in the Dunes (14 page)

“Don't waste time waitin' for him to get out,” barked his father who had moved in behind him. “Shoot him right now.”

And he did. It was easy until he pulled the bloody pulp out of the tree and threw up right there, his breakfast and bile spilling out and over the dead white tail.

“Now skin him, and when you're done with that, bring him back to the house, and we'll have the cook make us a stew for supper.”

He did it all because he had to, but never hunted again and for all he knew maybe even became a doctor because of what had happened that day. But this was different. Whoever had taken Heidi had ruined his life and hers. The one who did it deserved to die, but a shotgun shell would be too quick. That's why he's brought the needles.

The needles each hold large doses of insulin. He had written the prescriptions himself. No problem there. He was still licensed as a doctor in New York state. More than once he pictures what will happen. He will force Posner or Welbrook to confess what happened to Heidi. Then he'll jab the man with the needle. No alcohol cloth to clean the skin. No bother to even roll up a sleeve. Just a simple large dose of insulin. So large the man's blood sugar will drop far below even common hypoglycemic conditions.

Posner or Welbrook will go into insulin shock. The skin will become cool and clammy. The skin color will pale. He might thrash about, but I'll be there to restrain him if he does. The speech will start to slur and convulsions will soon follow. Then a coma followed by a
stoppage of breathing or heart failure. Just enough time to make him suffer without it being torture.

If there were emergency medical personnel around, they might recognize the symptoms and force-feed him pure sugar or orange juice, but that won't be an option. Everything will happen when we're alone. Just the two of us.

Stern decides to follow Welbrook the morning after he arrives. He drives to the modern house in Amagansett and is pleased to see the man's twenty-year-old shiny Mercedes parked in front. He lingers for a moment then drives on down to the end of the street and parks out of sight behind an empty construction dumpster. He turns off the engine and waits. After a moment he dials Welbrook's home number from his cell phone. Welbrook's voice picks up after two rings and Stern cuts off. The man is home. That's all Stern needs to know.

The front passenger seat holds a pair of binoculars, a brown package with a cheese sandwich, an apple, two bottles of water, and a package of cigarettes. The insulin needles rest in a small cooler on the floor of the backseat. He's prepared to wait, but after only an hour he sees Welbrook emerge wearing dark pants and a soft-looking tan jacket that looks like suede. The unique engine hum of a diesel signals Welbrook's on the move as his car rolls gently down the block in the other direction. Stern follows him at some distance. At this time of year he can see Welbrook's car with ease from thirty yards away.

Welbrook drives into East Hampton and parks near the Ralph Lauren store. The high season is over and Stern has no problem finding a parking spot some four spaces behind.

His eyes follow Welbrook into Ralph Lauren. From outside the front window he watches his quarry buy three shirts that are on sale at over one hundred dollars each and have them gift wrapped.

He trails the man into a few other stores, but these visits are brief.
After wandering for another fifteen minutes, Welbrook heads back to where he parked his car and enters the Starbuck's a few doors down. Stern watches him order a coffee, take a seat at a window table, and wait. Stern stands across the street in front of the movie theatre, leans against a parked car and periodically watches the image in the window sip from a cup. The wait isn't long. A man closer to Stern's age joins Welbrook, who stands to greet his guest.

The man has short cut dark hair and wears jeans with a sports jacket. They lean into each other as they meet and the convergence ends with a full kiss on the mouth right there in the nearly filled coffee shop. Welbrook hands the man the gift-wrapped package and they hug before sitting down.

The suddenness of it all momentarily paralyzes Stern. One of his two suspects has just openly announced he's gay and thereby removed himself from serious consideration in less than two minutes. And all of this happens after Stern has spent months agonizing over whether the admittedly attractive-looking Welbrook has ever fucked Heidi and is still hiding her away somewhere out here in some deserted dune cottage. He smokes a cigarette and then another before he reenters his car and heads to the motel where he can regroup and plan his move with Posner.

He decides to shadow Posner with more caution. Welbrook's unintentional revelation has increased the odds to infinite levels that Posner is the man he's after. He intends to follow Posner to the extent necessary to determine his behavior patterns and then confront him. Yes. He will challenge Posner to tell him where Heidi is hidden. And when he finds her, that's when he'll kill Posner. And then it'll just be Heidi and him. Just like before.

Posner seems less gregarious than Welbrook, as he seems to stick closer to home. Stern has chosen a spot for observation on the corner
farthest from the house. His small blue rental car is barely visible from Posner's home, but not without some effort. Stern sits as he had with Welbrook, with enough food and water for a long day of waiting. This is what much of police work must entail, he thinks. Waiting and then waiting some more.

He positions himself that first day before seven and waits until the rain comes. It starts slowly, but after a few hours the wind gusts and sheets of water convince him that only a madman would attempt to move around and so he goes back to his motel.

He sits there in the small tidy room for nearly a full day while the storm hurls its engorged fury at the hamlet, which at that time is anything but a resort. At one point the lights go out, but the motel has its own generator and power is restored without incident. There is nothing Stern can do but wait and he falls asleep fully clothed. The night does not bring the expected dream, and he wakes not only refreshed, but convinced that he now closer to the truth and to the point where he can both rescue Heidi and exact justice.

When the weather returns to normal, daylight greets him with a cloudless blue sky. Even here, a mile from the beach, the storm's effects are obvious. Broken branches are strewn across the parking lot together with a miscellaneous assortment of rubbish, including broken lawn furniture, plastic garbage bags, and one red-soled flip-flop that lies perched atop a scattered pile of leaves. He walks to his car, brushes a small ragged branch off his windshield, and then walks to the office to see about the local roads. The news is not good. Trees and power lines are down everywhere. He is advised to stay close to the motel. In this regard he is lucky. A restaurant is open less than a hundred yards away so he won't be forced to drive anywhere.

He is reluctant to accept the fact that he will need to wait but refines his plans to catch up with Posner the next morning. Later that day he calls Posner's number to confirm his prey has not evacuated.
It is a possibility. He knows Posner and his wife have an apartment in the city but he guesses that Posner spends much of his time out here. To be closer to Heidi, he thinks.

Posner answers on the fourth ring, just as Stern is about to give up. So he's home. Good.

He hangs up without speaking.

He wakes early on Thursday and is so anxious to get to Posner's house that he forgets breakfast. He doesn't care, and is there just before eight. He parks down the block in the spot he'd chosen earlier in the week. It's another clear day. The streets here have already been emptied of debris and almost all of the houses are vacant. He rolls the window down and hears a still angry surf behind him as it says a final goodbye to the storm. Otherwise there is a stillness that unnerves him.

It is so calm that the sound of the engine starting on the blue Lexus in Posner's driveway shatters the air as if it were a thick and brittle object. He hasn't even noticed that Posner is already in the car when he arrives. He's lucky and knows it. Another few minutes and Posner might be off somewhere, and he would waste a full day's surveillance.

Posner backs slowly down the driveway onto an empty street. “He's a careful man. I'll have to remember that,” Stern says to the empty passenger seat. He has begun to talk to himself aloud with some regularity in the past few months. Sometimes it's to Heidi, but more often to an unknown audience, a shapeless companion who agrees never to disagree.

Stern watches as Posner turns onto the main street and moments later accelerates onto the highway going east. He's easy to follow. There are few other cars in sight. But he must lay back more than a casual distance to avoid drawing even accidental attention. Posner
stays at the limit of fifty-five although the road ahead is empty. A town police car comes from the other direction and Stern sees Posner's brake lights flicker as the cars near each other.

“What's he afraid of?” Stern asks aloud. “You're going slowly enough. Feel guilty about something, do ya?”

He follows Posner into the village of Montauk past the mostly empty motels and food shops. Posner drives through the village without stopping and picks up speed as he reenters the highway still going east.

“How much farther can he go? He's gonna be in the ocean pretty soon.”

At this point there's no other traffic so Stern has to fall farther behind. He loses sight of Posner as the road bends and when it straightens out the blue Lexus is gone. Stern speeds up and goes for another mile before he realizes that Posner must have turned off. He makes a sharp U-turn and speeds back the other way. He barely looks at the road ahead as he scans both sides of the highway until he comes to a sign announcing the Montauk Overlook turnoff and wonders why he didn't see it when he first passed. He slows and enters the parking lot and sees the blue Lexus on the far end where it's hidden from the main road.

He pulls into a spot as far from where Posner parked as he can and still keep it in sight. There is no movement in the Lexus. Now he must decide whether to exit his car or wait till Posner returns. He squirms with indecision for a few minutes, then decides he just can't wait and opts for leaving his car and moving with as little sound as possible along the fringe of the woods until he approaches Posner's car. In less than a minute he's close enough so that a subtle noise draws his attention down the slope. Posner is stooped over the ground and picking up an object. From a distance Stern can't identify the item but he sees Posner put it into his windbreaker pocket and look around furtively. For an instant Stern thinks he's been seen, but
Posner's subsequent stride up the slope without a second look convinces him otherwise. He races back to his car, considers taking off, but then decides he'd rather Posner be unnerved about being seen.

He lights a cigarette and watches as Posner exits the woods and looks in his general direction for a moment before he reenters the Lexus. Now he's been seen. He's sure of it. He watches Posner hesitate then put his car in motion. Stern slides down the seat and half turns the other way to avoid any possible detection.

As soon as the Lexus clears the parking lot, Stern pulls ahead to the area where Posner parked. He gets out and moves down the slope. He's heading for the gnarled sand pine that he noticed moments before. He reaches the area in seconds, but there is nothing special to see. He scans the ground. Maybe there's more of what Posner picked up, he thinks, but he sees nothing but pine needles and cones. He turns in an arc one last time. He'll have to come back again. There is no need to remember the spot. The gnarled pine is a good landmark, but he remains puzzled as to why Posner would come all the way out here for just a few minutes. Back at the parking lot, he uses a felt-tipped pen to darken the base of the sand pine closest to the edge of the lot, so he'll know where to park the next time.

He drives back westward through Montauk and passes the Lexus parked in front of a drive-in restaurant. “Surprised he's not stopping at a bar for a real drink,” he says to his unspecified companion before he dissolves into a spasm of giggles.

That night the dream returns, but there's a difference. He wakes moments before the end, just as the shadow carrying the body disappears from his view behind some trees. He doesn't scream. Every sensation in his body tells him she's dead and that the shadow carrying her body is Posner's. The landscape in the dream is familiar. He's been there. That very day he walked among the same sand pines in his dream. The thought drives him awake and all he can think of
now is an image of Posner burying Heidi's body. He has to prove it to himself. He doesn't care anymore about the police. They've been useless. Even imagining him as somehow involved is idiotic. No. He'll have to find some evidence and then confront Posner. He relishes the thought of seeing Posner sweat and plead for his life, knowing that it's a plea he will not grant.

The next day he goes to the hardware store and buys a shovel and a flashlight.

“Looking for night crawlers, are ya?” asks the woman behind the counter.

“Something like that,” Stern answers as he wonders over the woman's unintentional insight.

Then he drives to Posner's house. He sees the car in the driveway, pulls up, and calls the number, but it's busy.

“Too bad. I almost wanted to reintroduce myself,” he says and exhales a stream of mock laughter. Then he turns the car to the east and begins to drive out to the Montauk Overlook.

After a few minutes on the highway his voice returns to normal. “There must be something in that area near the gnarled sand pine that he wants to hide. He must have been the one carrying Heidi. What do you think?”

His companion's silence affirms the assertion.

Everything about the drive to the overlook seems mechanical. He drives at maximum speed along the highway, slows through Montauk village and accelerates again until the overlook turnoff. The spot he's marked on the base of a tree the previous day is still there, but he realizes he could have found it easily enough without the marking. One car is parked in the lot near where he pulls up. Actually, it is a small white pickup with the words “Marine Patrol” printed on the side and rear. He presumes it's some official car and prepares himself to wait until the occupant moves. He turns on the radio and lights
a cigarette. The wait isn't long, as a uniformed officer of some kind appears from the far side of the lot. The man raises a small hand in greeting.