His Dark Obsession

Chapter 51: The Montauk Monsters

"You cannot expect me to sit around here and do nothing!" Ian lashed out at Detective Kelly while he instructed his subordinate to look for a black minivan with tinted windows across the city's surveillance cameras.
"What the hell do you want to do, Ian? You shouldn't have gone to your office, leaving her alone in your car. You should have dropped her home first. At least, she would have been under police protect..."
"Screw police protection. That asshole was able to get in and out of my apartment building with your damned cops keeping guard!"
"He abducted your girlfriend right out of your car, Blaine. So no need to give me bullshit right now! It is better for everyone if you wait here. I don't want you prowling the streets and ending up in trouble like Tara. You stay put. I have got my best men on this. We have the van leaving the parking garage. We have the number plate."
The fact that Ian could let all this happen in the first place, hit him like a ton of bricks. How could he have been such a fool? Kelly was right. He shouldn't have left her alone in the car. He should have dropped her home or he should have asked her to come up to the office with him. How could he ever have thought that a parking lot would be a safe space. There had been few cars parked in close proximity to Ian's vehicle but there was nobody nearby when he had gone up to the office. He couldn't believe that the emptiness of the garage hadn't bothered him -- how had it not raised a red flag?
He thought back to those few moments when he had gotten off the elevator and seen broken glass near the front door of his car; he still remembered the sheer panic with which he had looked inside. His heart had sank at the view of fresh drops of blood over the front seats; there had been obvious signs of struggle. Tara had fought to free herself but she had been taken. What he had felt in that moment was what he had felt when he had seen Jake's body lying on the bedroom floor. Ian hadn't been able to move, not even a muscle. A dark fog had clouded his mind and forced him into inaction. A feeling of numbness had spread through him like an ink stain in clear water. And then, he had had to snap out of it, which had been a herculean mental struggle; it took all his might to forcefully clear the haze that was his mind. He had then called Kelly and let him know what had happened, and then he had gone to building manager to have a look at the surveillance footage.
He saw her struggling with a masked man - and then unconscious. He saw her being carried to a black minivan not parked far from his own car. And he saw her being driven away -- it boiled the blood in his body. Cold fury and rage pulsated through his entire being and all he wanted to do was to find her and bring her back. He wanted to kill the murderer in cold blood.
As Ian sat in the police station, he racked his brain for any possible clues that he could have missed. He played over every little detail following Jake's death, like a tape in his mind. How the killer had cover his tracks by using bleach on the crime scene, how they had left evidence and threats. How Ian and Tara had gone to Montauk chasing the wrong lead. Montauk...what had happened there that was out of the usual?...Nothing! No, it could not be nothing or he would not be thinking about Montauk again. Suddenly, the Montauk Monster came to his mind, an ugly carcass of an unidentified creature, and then his mind ran to the grandmother and the two smiling kids who stood next to it. Such a hideous monster next to them and the kids had a smile plastered on their face and then...a moment of epiphany chanced upon Ian. How did he not think more about it at the time? His mind was crystal clear as he remembered...the grandkids had had amber eyes! The girl and boy in the picture had not been older than ten at the time, but since Ian clearly recalled Ida telling him that the monster had been found ashore in 2008, it meant that the kids were all grown up now.
Ian dialed his PI's number. "Hey, I would like it if you could look into the alibi of Ida Boyd and call me back as soon as you can."
As Ian waited for the PI to return his call, he looked up the Montauk Monster online and discovered that Ida Boyd had accurately remembered the year she had taken the picture with the creature.
Ian's phone screen lit up. It was the PI on the other line.
"What have you got for me." Ian desperately hoped to hear something good.
"Ok. So, something strange happened. I checked out Ida Boyd's statement about the medical bills and Jake's charity and well, everything checked out except for one little detail."
"And what is that?'
"Ida Boyd never received a cake from Jake. Jake's office doesn't have a record of him ordering a cake for her. In fact, he had never sent gifts to any of the patients his charity had helped out,"
The moment Ian heard this he jumped out of his chair and rushed out of the precinct to his car in the lot. He reversed his car out and the wheels screeched against the road as his car sped away.
The PI was still on the line with him, "this means that Ida never made that phone call to Jake to thank him about the cake."
Ida Boyd had been caught in a lie and even if it was grasping at straws, Ian was not going to sit around and wait for the police to investigate this brand new information. He was heading straight to Montauk.