THE CURRENT CROP of East Hampton cops has never had to deal with a horrifying, almost scatological crime scene like this, and it sure shows. There are actually too many cops, too many bodies, and too many emotions, which are all way too close to the surface.

Finally, Van Buren, the youngest detective on the force, stakes off a ten-yard square around the bodies and runs lights down from the court so Forensics can dust for prints and scrape for DNA.

I don’t want to bother Van Buren, so I approach Police Chief Bobby Flaherty, who I’ve known forever.

“Has Feif’s family been told yet?” I ask.

“I’m sending Rust,” he says, nodding toward a rookie cop who looks as green as I must have forty minutes ago.

“Let me do it, Bobby. Okay? They should hear it from somebody they know.”

“It’s not going to help, Tom.”

“I just need a ride back to the marina. To pick up my car.”

The Feifers live by the junior high on a quiet cul-de-sac in one of Montauk’s last year-round neighborhoods. It’s the kind of place where kids can still play baseball in the street without getting run over, and where families like Feif’s chose to raise their kids precisely because they thought they wouldn’t have to worry about some unspeakable thing like this ever happening.

Late as it is, the lights are still on in the den of the house, and I creep up near the picture window, quiet as a burglar.

Vic and Allison Feifer and their teenage daughter, Lisa, share the big, comfortable couch, their faces lit by the TV. A bag from Montauk Video hangs from a nearby chair, and maybe they’re watching a chick flick because old man Feifer’s chin is on his chest, and Ali and Lisa are transfixed, not taking their eyes off the screen even when they dig into the bowl of popcorn on the couch between them.