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The whereabouts of Hannah Huang suddenly took a backseat. The call woke Tommy as he napped on the couch, passively binging a mediocre TV show. He never replayed an episode when he fell asleep. He just soldiered on in a state of perpetual confusion and convoluted plotlines. He slept through a lot of episodes.
With a tall cup of coffee in his hand and a well-rested mind, Tommy walked into the office to meet Miriam Brooks. Twenty-one. Originally from Missouri. Student at Dobie Tech University in Dobie, Texas. Most of the work had already been done by the police who met her at the docks, and the coast guard was dutifully searching for her cousin, but Tommy knew better than to expect a happy outcome.
Now the case was his. Because Miriam Brooks insisted that her brother had been attacked by a giant sea monster. Like Emma Chu. Like Joe Hampton. Tommy didn’t like being the go-to guy for a case that he’d just be asked to downplay, but he wanted to help these people. If he could. Yet it felt like the only thing he could truly offer these days was toilet repair services.
When he rounded the corner into the bullpen, he peered into his window-lined office and saw only one girl inside — a knockout redhead that was way too young for Tommy to think of as a knockout. She paced back and forth in front of his desk, mascara streaking her face. He hadn’t met Miriam Brooks, but a hunch told him this wasn’t her.
He knocked on his own door to avoid startling the girl, but she jumped anyway, sniffled, and searched his face with big green eyes. He offered the best reassuring smile he could and set his coffee down on his desk.
“Ms. Brooks?” he asked.
The girl leaned over and shook his hand. Firmly. Like an adult. “No. She’s in the bathroom. She wouldn’t let me go with her.”
Tommy motioned to a seat across from him and sank down in his own chair when the girl had also sat. She plucked a tissue from a box on his desk and dabbed at her eyes, but there would be no repairing the havoc the tears had done to her makeup.
“I’m Macy Donner. My dad’s a cop. Or was, I guess. He’s the mayor now.”
Ah. A child of law enforcement. Tommy didn’t care if her dad was the president of Mars, but he admired the gumption to use her father as a way to get better treatment for her — friend? Tommy couldn’t be sure yet.
“And you know Ms. Brooks how?”
“Um. It’s uh... We met when... We’re friends. Roommates at DTech.”
Tommy nodded. The police didn’t mention anyone on the boat with Miriam and Newt other than the missing person. “And were you on the boat with Ms. Brooks at the time of the attack?”
“She called me,” Macy said as she shook her head. “I came as fast as I could. I don’t know if she’ll survive this. Maybe he’s still alive, right? Maybe he’ll wash up somewhere? Or a fisherman — maybe a fisherman’ll find him.”
Tommy doubted that very much, but it was always tough deciding when to be frank with family of the deceased. For now, he decided to ignore the notion completely. Maybe not the most responsible thing to do, but the easiest. Instead, he decided to go after the idea that Miriam wouldn’t survive losing him.
“People are stronger than we think, ya know. She’ll pull through, I’m sure.”
Fresh tears came, and Macy made no effort to catch these with the tissue. “No. You don’t understand. She already lost one brother. Almost two years ago. In Rose Valley.”
Rose Valley. The name rang a bell, but he couldn’t place it beyond knowing it was a tiny town somewhere in the vicinity of Fort Worth.
Wait. One brother? Tommy flipped through the case file that had been conveniently left on his desk.
“This must be wrong. Says here Tanner Brooks is Miriam’s cousin?”
“Technically,” a strained voice interrupted from the doorway.
Tommy looked up to see a girl of average height; thin, sinewy, and strong, with wide hips and a small chest. A girl who spent time in the gym, or maybe running marathons. Water seeped through her shirt, vaguely outlining a swimsuit underneath. Stringy brown hair curtained her shoulders. Her brown eyes were bloodshot.
Macy pulled Tommy’s attention back. “They were raised together.”
Tommy made a note in the file and sighed. The beat cops didn’t understand the first thing about detective work. He needed this sort of information to make people comfortable.
Miriam shuffled into the office and took the seat next to Macy, who immediately offered a hand for Miriam to hold. Miriam took it, looking stronger and more resolute than Tommy imagined she would. Certainly, more physically strong, but also mentally tough. A lot of times, people in this situation just withdrew. Tommy had been prepared to table this until the morning, but the police on the scene said that she insisted on talking to him tonight. But where to start?
Miriam didn’t give Tommy a chance. “They’re searching for him already?”
For all the good it would do. “Yes. They’ll be searching all night and into the morning.”
“He’s strong. If that thing didn’t kill him, he’ll fight to live. He’s a master swimmer. And survivalist.”
Seemed like a lot of skills for a college kid. Tommy wondered how much of it was true. Miriam looked sporty enough, so maybe they went camping a lot as children or something. But to be a master swimmer and survivalist? Not many adults could say that, much less university students.
“Let’s talk about that ‘thing’ as you call it. What do you think it was?” Tommy asked, deciding to ignore the survivalist comment entirely.
“Lusca,” Miriam said plainly.
Macy translated, “A cryptid.”
Tommy blinked again and looked back and forth between the two young faces, begging for a word that actually meant something to him. Both girls looked as if they had told him all he needed to know.
“And that is?” Tommy addressed the question to Macy, hoping to get a more coherent answer from her.
“An animal. A monster. Um. Something unknown. Something science hasn’t found yet.” Macy fumbled through the words, clearly trying to find the exact right terminology to get her point across.
Miriam shifted in her seat, closed her eyes, and exhaled. “Like Bigfoot.”
Bigfoot? Tommy’s first reaction was to laugh, but his training successfully held that off. Instead, he tried to piece it all together. What Joe told him. Tentacles. Sea monsters. Something bigger than any octopus or squid had any right to be along the gulf coast. But Bigfoot came from myth, and this monster was all too real.
“Is that why you went out there? To find this thing?”
Miriam swallowed hard and blinked her eyes to clear the wetness. “Yes. I wanted to find it. To prove that it existed.”
“But why?”
The words came tumbling out, as if she wouldn’t be able to say them if she didn’t force them out as quickly as possible. “It’s all I know how to do. That girl, Emma. At the beach. She was attacked by this thing. Something fantastical. Unbelievable. But real.”
Tommy could tell more was coming, so he remained quiet as Macy squeezed Miriam’s hand in an offer of extra support. Miriam squeezed back before untangling her hand and leaning on Tommy’s desk.
“My father is a Cryptozoologist. Um. A scientist sort of... who hunts creatures just like this. He taught me everything he knows.”
That threw Tommy for a loop. He did not expect to be sitting across the desk from a self-proclaimed monster hunter. What did that even mean? He briefly entertained the notion that maybe Miriam Brooks was the answer to his prayers. Maybe she could help him save Cape Madre. While he could only repair toilets, maybe she could kill giant sea creatures. But no. She was a kid. From Missouri. With a friend who didn’t look like she’d done hard labor a day in her life. And if monster hunting was a thing, he would have heard of it.
“That’s all very impressive, Ms. Brooks, but I don’t under—”
“Help me, Detective,” Miriam said with determination. “I don’t have resources. You do. Tanner might still be out there. And even if he isn’t, I will find and hunt and kill this thing.”
Tommy believed it. He shouldn’t have, he knew that. But the fire in her eyes was undeniable. Miriam Brooks wasn’t delusional or grief-stricken. But he would need to verify. He needed to know there was at least some truth to what she said before sticking his neck out to get the sort of resources she’d ask for.
“I...” Tommy stammered and shook his head in disbelief. “Who are you?”
“Miriam Brooks. I killed Rose Valley’s beast for killing my brother, and I’m going to kill this thing too.”
The Beast of Rose Valley. The context brought it all flooding back. The news articles about an escaped government experiment terrorizing a small Texas town. He didn’t remember the details, but he knew that it had happened. Digging up the old articles would be easy enough. If that was really her... if she was telling the truth... then, maybe...
Head swimming, Tommy said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
***
Tommy started feeling foolish for even entertaining the idea of using Cape Madre resources to help a college kid hunt a monster. It sounded ridiculous. Then again, getting rid of a problem that could haunt the tourism industry for years to come might warrant going to any lengths. Maybe.
The news reports on The Beast of Rose Valley mostly corroborated Miriam’s claims, but there seemed to be conflicting reports on who had actually brought it down. Maybe that didn’t matter. Skylar Brooks had certainly benefited the most from the whole debacle, even moving his home base from Missouri to Rose Valley. In the end, though, The Beast had been a man. Not a monster. Tommy wasn’t confident that the skills necessary to hunt a man would translate to hunting a giant squid. Or Octopus. Or Kraken ... maybe? Hell. Tommy didn’t even know what to call it.
Tanner Brooks had to be dead, though. Had to be. Miriam seemed resolute and clear-headed, but she had lost someone close, and that had compromised her. Like it compromised Stacy. Tommy had spent months trying to convince Stacy to live again. To move past her pain. And this Miriam kid had done it in the span of a few hours. Few people could do that. That either made her very strong or a complete sociopath. Possibly both.
Tommy needed to get back to his mission. To figure out what was attacking tourists. To... what? Neutralize it? That was never really clear. So far, his job had consisted almost entirely of covering it up and downplaying it in order to make sure that it didn’t affect the bottom line. Maybe the real answer should be to clear the waters, shut down the beaches, and let Cape Madre waste away. That would save people from death-by-kraken, but it wouldn’t save all the people whose livelihoods depended on the city’s economy. This stuff was way the hell above his pay grade.
Tommy’s desk shook with the buzz of his cell phone, relieving him with distraction. He glanced at the clock as he picked up, noting that it was almost midnight. Too late for any reasonable person to text. It came from an unknown number.
Emma Chu woke up. Thought you might want to know. - Krissy
Krissy? It took Tommy a few seconds to place her: the nurse whose name he’d sworn had started with an ‘A.’
Did it even matter whether he talked to Emma Chu anymore? Miriam Brooks had provided a more-than-adequate description of what Tommy was dealing with. A repeat of what Joe had told him months before. If only he’d taken Joe more seriously.
Tommy ticked out a response, backing up a few times to correct his mistakes. Cell phone keyboards were not meant for his giant thumbs.
I’ll be by first thing in the morning.
He was exhausted, but not sleepy. He knew all of this would be turning through his head for hours still. He had a lot to do. Hannah Huang. Tanner Brooks. And now back to Emma Chu. She might not tell him anything new, but he had made a promise to keep an eye on her. A promise he couldn’t break.
