Peter Benchley - Jaws

The sound of tires grinding over gravel in the public parking lot out front stopped Brody. A car door slammed, and Len Hendricks charged into the station house, wearing nothing but a bathing suit. His body had the mottled gray-whiteness of a Styrofoam coffee cup. He stopped in the middle of the floor. “Chief…”

Brody was startled by the unlikely sight of Hendricks in a bathing suit — thighs flecked with pimples, genitals bulging in the tight fabric. “You’ve been swimming , Leonard?”

“There’s been another attack!” said Hendricks.

The Times man quickly asked, “When was the first one?”

Before Hendricks could answer, Brody said, “We were just discussing it, Leonard. I don’t want you or anyone else jumping to conclusions until you know what you’re talking about. For God’s sake, the boy could have drowned.”

“Boy?” said Hendricks. “What boy? This was a man, an old man. Five minutes ago. He was just beyond the surf, and suddenly he screamed bloody murder and his head went under water and it came up again and he screamed something else and then he went down again. There was all this splashing around, and blood was flying all over the place. The fish kept coming back and hitting him again and again and again. That’s the biggest fuckin’ fish I ever saw in my whole life, big as a fuckin’ station wagon. I went in up to my waist and tried to get to the guy, but the fish kept hitting him.” Hendricks paused, staring at the floor. His breath squeezed out of his chest in short bursts. “Then the fish quit. Maybe he went away, I don’t know. I waded out to where the guy was floating. His face was in the water. I took hold of one of his arms and pulled.”

Brody said, “And?”

“It came off in my hand. The fish must have chewed fight through it, all but a little bit of skin.” Hendricks looked up, his eyes red and filling with tears of exhaustion and fright.

“Are you going to be sick?” said Brody.

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you call the ambulance?”

Hendricks shook his head no.

“Ambulance?” said the Times reporter. “Isn’t that rather like shutting the barn door after the horse has left?”

“Shut your mouth, smart ass,” said Brody. “Bixby, call the hospital. Leonard, are you up to doing some work?” Hendricks nodded. “Then go put on some clothes and find some notices that close the beaches.”

“Do we have any?”

“I don’t know. We must. Maybe back in the stock room with those signs that say ‘This Property Protected by Police.’ If we don’t, we’ll have to make some that’ll do until we can have some made up. I don’t care. One way or another, let’s get the goddam beaches closed.”

Next morning, Brody arrived at the office a little after seven. “Did you get it?” he said to Hendricks.

“It’s on your desk.”

“Good or bad? Never mind. I’ll go see for myself.”

“You won’t have to look too hard.”

The city edition of the New York Times lay in the center of Brody’s desk. About three quarters of the way down the right-hand column on page one, he saw the headline: SHARK KILLS TWO ON LONG ISLAND Brody said, “Shit,” and began to read.

By William F. Whitman Special to The New York Times AMITY L.I. June 20 — A six-year-old boy and a 65-year-old man were killed today in separate shark attacks that occurred within an hour of each other near the beaches of this resort community.

Although the body of the boy, Alexander Kintner, was not found, officials said there was no question that he was killed by a shark. A witness, Thomas Daguerre, of New York, said he saw a large silver-colored object rise out of the water and seize the boy and his rubber raft and disappear into the water with a splash.

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 PM 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 ichthyologist 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.