Rolling Thunder (John Ceepak Mystery)

by Chris Grabenstein

  They’re tiny bottles with bright yellow labels and metal caps, the kind doctors tip over and jab needles into to draw out serum when they give you a shot. Six of them. My eyes are young enough to read the label: Potassium Chloride—Concentrate Must Be Diluted Before Use. Four vials are empty, their lids punctured.

  “So,” says Botzong, “either one of the men in the house had a serious potassium deficiency or they wanted to jump straight to step three of the lethal injection sequence.”

  Ceepak nods. “They knock you out with sodium thiopental. Paralyze you with pancuronium bromide. Stop your heart with potassium chloride. A bolus injection of 100 milliequivalents affects the electrical potential of the heart muscle. It simply stops.”

  “Remember that male nurse in Indiana?” says Botzong. “They convicted him of killing six people by injecting them with potassium chloride to induce heart attack.”

  “They suspected him of killing a hundred,” adds Ceepak. “Mostly elderly patients at the county hospital where he worked.”

  “Wait a second,” I say, confusion wrinkling my brow. “Gail Baker didn’t have a heart attack.”

  “No,” says Ceepak. “But Mrs. O’Malley certainly did.”

  Jeez-o, man.

  “He killed them both?”

  “We can’t make that assumption,” says Botzong. “Not yet, anyway. But this?” He gestures at the lineup of little bottles, all of which, I now notice, are labeled as 20 ml vials with 40 mEq, which must be that milliequivalent thing Ceepak rattled off. I do the math: Fill a syringe with two and a half bottles and you could stop a condemned man’s heart on death row in the thirty-six states where lethal injection is the preferred form of capital punishment.

  And, like I said, three of the six ampoules are empty.

  “Did you find needles and syringes?” asks Ceepak.

  “No,” says Miller.

  “Were there any other suspicious drugs in the medicine chest?” asks Ceepak. “Anything that might’ve been utilized to incapacitate Ms. Baker? Chloroform? GHB?”

  Miller shakes her head. “No. I’m wondering now if our guy just didn’t sneak up behind Baker and bop her on the head with that blunt object Dr. Kurth labeled as the murder weapon. Maybe he tried knocking her out like they do in the movies and ended up killing her instead with the blow that cracked the skull and breached the dura matter.”

  I guess I look confused again because Ceepak explains, “That’s the outermost meningeal layer of the brain, Danny.”

  Okay. Now I’ve got a headache to go with my queasy stomach.

  “Would the potassium chloride show up in Mrs. O’Malley’s body?” I ask, mostly so I can quit picturing my brain as a squishy layer cake packed inside a Tupperware carrying case.

  “Not really,” says Botzong. “It’s not even a poison. Just a chemical compound you need to live. Too much, it screws with nerve signals in your heart. Plus, now Mrs. O’Malley’s body has been embalmed for burial. Embalming fluid wipes out just about everything else that might be swimming around inside a corpse.”

  “So somebody killed Mrs. O’Malley, and then, the day of her funeral, they killed Gail? Why?”

  “Danny?” This from Ceepak. “So far, we have nothing to link the two deaths.”

  “Except Mr. O’Malley,” I say. “He killed his wife and then his mistress, who wanted to become his new wife. He killed her before she had a chance to start nagging him.”

  “It’s a possibility, Danny,” is all Ceepak says in reply to my lame excuse for a criminal motive.

  “So,” says Botzong, “where does Mr. O’Malley—or whoever—get this many vials of the concentrate?”

  “We need to check with hospitals, doctor’s offices,” says Ceepak. “See if any has gone missing from the pharmacy closets.”

  “Of course,” adds Miller, “the majority of the potassium chloride produced is used for making fertilizer.”

  “Peter O’Malley runs a landscaping company!” I say.

  “True,” says Ceepak. “But he was nowhere near the roller coaster last weekend and I don’t think potassium chloride would be packaged in bottles like this for horticultural purposes. This most likely came from a doctor’s office or a hospital, somewhere patients are treated for hypokalemia, low potassium”

  “What about Dr. Hausler?” I say to Ceepak, remembering the broken-hearted, monkey-faced dentist. “Would he have access to this drug?”

  “Perhaps,” says Ceepak. “But, as you recall, Danny, he was jealous of the rich men giving Gail gifts. I do not think he would supply one of them with the chemical compound they needed to induce a heart attack in their wife.”

  “Who’s this Hausler?” asks Botzong.

  “A local dentist who was romantically linked for a short period of time with Ms. Baker.”

  “Marco?”

  “Putting him on the list.”

  “Here is his business card,” says Ceepak. “When we interviewed Dr. Hausler, he had a pretty solid alibi for the time of death.”

  “Any reason he’d want to kill Mrs. O’Malley, too?” asks Botzong.

  “None that is readily apparent.”

  “Okay, let’s make Mr. O’Malley and those who might want to frame him our prime targets,” says Botzong. “You two guys were there when Mrs. O’Malley died, right?”

  We nod.

  “Did you see anything up on that roller coaster? Anything hit you as hinky?”

  “Not at the time,” says Ceepak.

  “Could Mr. O’Malley have injected his wife with an undiluted dose without her knowing it?”

  “Perhaps,” says Ceepak. “If he waited until the ride started rolling. Used the commotion and excitement to cover his actions.”

  “If he injected a large enough dose,” says Miller, “the effects would be almost instantaneous.”

  Yeah. She’d have a “heart attack” by the time they hit the second hill.

  “Kevin O’Malley was sitting right behind her,” I add. “He could have jabbed her in the neck. The headrests in the roller coaster cars had those slotted vents—like in a sports car, you know? He could’ve poked the needle right through one of the openings.”

  “And why does Kevin O’Malley want us to arrest his old man for murder?” asks Botzong

  “With the death of his mother and the incarceration of his father,” Ceepak explains, “Kevin O’Malley would assume total control of the O’Malley family empire.”

  “Maybe Kevin did it when they were climbing that first hill,” I say. “Gravity pins his mom’s head to the back of the seat. He leans forward like he wants to tell her something. Bam! Pokes her with the poison dart!”

  Everybody around the marble countertop is sort of staring at me now. I hypothesize out loud more dramatically than most cops.

  “Are their video cameras on the roller coaster track?” asks Botzong.

  “Yes,” says Ceepak. “I noticed several. The operator in the control room most likely uses their video feeds to monitor the ride.”

  “We need to track down the digital recordings from last Saturday morning,” Botzong says to his team. “Might help us see what actually went on up there.”

  “Sir?” says Carolyn Miller. “I seriously doubt whether they record the input from those track cameras. After all, they’re utilized for operational purposes, not enhanced security.”

  True. You don’t get many shoplifters on a roller coaster ride.

  “The dead air,” I mumble.

  “Come again?” says Ceepak.

  “Cliff Skeete did that live remote broadcast on WAVY. He was riding the ride with the O’Malleys and all the local big wigs. When they all started screaming ‘heart attack,’ the station took him off the air. But they were probably rolling tape on his feed at the station. Recording it. We could also hear what happened.”

  Half of the State Police Major Crimes Unit is working the phones, calling up doctors, surgeons and pharmaceutical supply companies.

  Meanwhile Ceepak and I race up Ocean A
venue to the studios of WAVY.

  So it’s only fitting that we’re listening to their live broadcast from the Rolling Thunder on the radio in our police cruiser.

  It’s nine fifty-nine A.M. One minute to blastoff.

  “And so,” we hear Mr. O’Malley say into Skeeter’s microphone, “I hereby dedicate the Rolling Thunder to my late wife, Mrs. Jacqueline O’Malley—a woman who loved family and fun more than anything in the world.”

  I wait for him to say, “so I’m sorry I killed her,” but he doesn’t.

  “Thank you, Mr. O’Malley,” says Skeeter in his deep-and-velvety voice, the same one he used whenever he would intro a Barry White track when we did wedding gigs together back in the day. “Thank you for those truly touching and inspirational words.”

  And then he shifts gears.

  “Are we ready to do this thing? Boo-yeah! Let the thunder roll!”

  My cell phone starts blaring Springsteen’s “Born to Run.”

  Samantha Starky’s ringtone.

  I ignore it.

  Ceepak, who is currently behind the wheel, punches off the radio.

  “Go ahead and answer it, partner.”

  “It’s a personal call. Sam Starky. I’ll let it bounce over to voice mail.”

  Ceepak gives me this pursed-lip look to say, “It’s okay this one time.”

  Bruce is screaming, “tramps like us” as I flip open the phone.

  “Hey, Sam.”

  “Hey, Danny. Where are you?”

  “On the job.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. Hey—thanks for getting me home last night. I was kind of tanked. Three drinks, you know?”

  “Sure.”

  “So, did that other girl spend the night at your place?”

  “Yeah. She had nowhere else to go.”

  I refuse to say “but I didn’t sleep with her.” If Sam thinks that, well, it’s her problem.

  “Hey, a bunch of us are down here at the new roller coaster.

  “Sounds like fun.”

  Roller coasters usually are—as long as no one jabs you in the back of the neck with a hypodermic on that first hill.

  “You want to come hang out with us? So far, no one’s had a heart attack.”

  She’s making a joke. I’m not laughing.

  “Of course, we’re stuck in this incredibly long line—longer than last weekend and I thought it might be neat if you came down and rode with us and then maybe you and me could have the talk we need to have if we want to do this the right way.”

  “Do what?”

  She takes a breath. A rare occurrence. “Break up.”

  “Sam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m on the job.”

  “I know, but … well … it’s Saturday.”

  “So?”

  “Saturday is supposed to be a day off.”

  “Not for a cop running a case. Come on. You know that.”

  I gesture to a squat and boxy building sandwiched between Pizza My Heart and Captain Video—the not so glamorous WAVY studios. Ceepak sees it, pulls to the curb.

  “I gotta run, Sam.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have fun with your friends.”

  “Say hi to Ceepak.”

  “Yeah.”

  I fold up the phone.

  “Problems?” says Ceepak as he slides the transmission into park.

  “Sam. She wants me to go hang out with her college pals, ride the new roller coaster, and then have a deep meaningful discussion so she can dump me with a clean conscience.”

  “Sorry, Danny.”

  I grab my door handle. “I’ll deal with it later. Right now, we need to focus on figuring out who killed Gail Baker and Mrs. O’Malley.”

  “Roger that.”

  As we climb out of the cop car it hits me: Damn. I’ve turned into Ceepak junior. The guy’s contagious.

  30

  ANDREW MEYER, ONE OF THE YOUNG GUYS AT WAVY, escorts Ceepak and me into an audio studio.

  “This is where we cut commercials and promos,” he says. “You can use the computer there, call up the digital archives.”

  The walls are covered with gray foam rubber shaped like egg cartons. Soundproofing panels. Out in the hall, we can hear Cliff Skeete at the Rolling Thunder.

  “There they go! Whoo-hoo. Listen to that rumble! Like thunder rolling across the clouds!”

  Poor guy. He’s already running out of material and the ride’s only been open for fifteen minutes. Cliff promises to be right back with more “fun in the thundering sun” and segues into Springsteen’s biggest radio hit: “Hungry Heart,” the one about the wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack. Makes me think about Sam. And boardwalk nachos smothered in jack cheese. Guess we should’ve grabbed those eggs at The Rusty Scupper. I’m starving.

  Meyer closes the door to cut off Cliff while Ceepak sits down in front of the microphone and mixer board.

  “Can you call up last weekend’s live remote?” he says to Andrew Meyer.

  “Sure.” Meyer leans in. Clacks some keys on the keyboard. Scoots the mouse around. Clicks it.

  “Whoo-hoo!” The Skeeter from last Saturday is back.

  “Can we fast forward to the point in time where the disc jockey was taken off the air?” asks Ceepak.

  “Yeah. Hang on.” Meyer slips on a pair of headphones. Skitters the mouse around. I see sound waves scroll across the screen like a rapid-fire lie detector test.

  “Here we go.” Meyer flicks a switch to put the sound back up in the speakers.

  “We need someone to call nine–one–one! Now! Omigod! She’s in bad shape! Call nine–one–one. We need an ambulance. Go to music! Go to music!”

  A second or two of jumbled screams and shouts.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Oh, Jesus Jackie. Jesus.”

  “We need to go back down!”

  “No! She’s having a heart attack! Unbutton her blouse.”

  Ceepak raises a hand. Meyer pauses the playback.

  “Any idea who said, ‘no,’ Danny?”

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure, but it might be Kevin. Skippy’s definitely the one who said they should go back down.”

  Ceepak nods. That was his pick, too.

  “Please continue,” he says to Meyer.

  More commotion. Screams. Cliff taps his microphone a couple of times.

  “Elyssa?” he says to whomever must’ve been his engineer/ producer last Saturday. “Listen, sister, we need a goddamn ambulance and we need it fast! She looks bad, man. Bad. Call nine–one–one.”

  And then a new voice is heard—closer to the microphone.

  “Daddy killed Mommy!”

  “That’s Mary,” I say. “The sister. She was sitting right in front of Cliff.”

  Ceepak leans in. Me, too. We’re straining to isolate Mary’s voice from the general hubbub.

  “Daddy did it! I saw him! Daddy killed Mommy!”

  “Shut the fuck up, Mary.” Sean. The sensitive son.

  “Daddy did it, Daddy did it.”

  “Shut! Up!”

  “I’m a little birdy and I’m gonna tell—”

  “Okay, lady. You’re freaking me out.” Cliff. “Just sit down and chill, all right?”

  “Does anybody know CPR?” Kevin.

  “Please, God, someone help!” Mr. O’Malley.

  “Skip? Help Mom.” Kevin again.

  “I … I …”

  “You were a fucking cop, for Christ’s sake! Help her!”

  “I can’t.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Jesus!”

  “They never taught me.”

  Um, yes they did.

  “I’m a little birdy and I’m gonna tell everybody!”

  “Sit down, lady. You’re rockin’ the damn car.”

  It goes on like that for nearly ten minutes.

  Skippy starts crying.

  Kevin c
alls him a worthless sack of shit.

  Sean tells Kevin to “cut Skipperdoodle some fucking slack, man.”

  Mr. O’Malley tells them all to “be quiet, the whole damn lot of you!”

  Mary giggles like a maniac and softly chants, “I saw Daddy do it,” over and over and over.

  Cliff keeps talking to his producer, telling her it’s getting ugly up here and he sees the cop cars and the ambulances and maybe a fire truck and two guys running up the roller coaster track.

  “Wait—it’s Danny … Danny Boyle … and … Ceepak. We’re gonna be okay. Hey, Danny? Yo!”

  Ceepak motions for Andrew Meyer to stop the playback.

  We know what happens next.

  Mrs. O’Malley dies.

  31

  “MR. O’MALLEY IS READY TO TALK,” SAYS CHIEF BAINES when he radios us at the radio station.

  Andrew Meyer is burning us a CD of what was recorded when Cliff was bumped off the air.

  “Big Paddy and his lawyer have already left the Rolling Thunder,” the chief continues, “and are currently en route to headquarters to complete their interview with you two.”

  “We’re on our way,” says Ceepak.

  “Good. The lawyer says he’s bringing in a witness to corroborate O’Malley’s story.”

  “Any idea who?”

  “Of course not. The shyster’s slicker than an eel in olive oil. He’s building suspense, trying to play us like he plays the poor saps in the jury box.”

  “We may need to question Mr. O’Malley about a second death.”

  More dead air on the radio, this time from the chief. Even though he’s a couple of miles away, I can see him tugging at his mustache, trying to pluck the thing out of his lip. It’s what he always does when one of us gives him a new ulcer.

  “Second death?” he says finally.

  “Yes, sir. New evidence recovered inside the home at number One Tangerine suggests that Mrs. O’Malley’s death last week may have been something other than a heart attack.”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  “Numerous vials of potassium chloride, several of which were empty.”

  “You’re telling me somebody poisoned Mrs. O’Malley?”

  “No. I’m saying that is what the evidence recovered so far would seem to suggest.”

  “That’s what I just said, John.”