Whack A Mole: A John Ceepak Mystery (The John Ceepak Mysteries)

by Chris Grabenstein

  He splays open the paper. Unwraps the top of the package.

  It's not a soccer ball.

  It's a human skull.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I still don't understand,” says Cap'n Pete. “If it's a skull, nothing but bone, what set off the detector?”

  Ceepak points to the jawbone. “I suspect that several of these teeth have fillings. Metal fillings.”

  “This is horrible,” says Cap'n Pete.

  A human skull wrapped in the Sports section from a twenty-eight year-old newspaper, then packed into a re-sealable salad bowl and buried three feet deep on the beach? You ask me, that's worse than horrible.

  Ceepak looks solemn.

  We're about thirty feet up from the high tide line, close to the sea grass and rolled-out fencing. Fortunately, we're so far up from the ocean, no kid ever thought about building his castle on this patch of sand.

  “Danny? Hold open the bag.”

  He clamps onto the skull with his forceps, gripping it snugly.

  I hold open one of the brown paper grocery sacks we always keep stowed in the back of the Explorer. Ceepak says paper bags are better for evidence storage; they don't sweat like plastic. The bag boys at Acme let me take as many as I want. They even gave me a stack of those double-insulated ice cream bags you don't see too much anymore.

  “Danny? Focus.”

  Ceepak is tonging the cranium like I've seen Homer Simpson do with a rod of radioactive uranium. Only Ceepak is much more careful. When he lowers the skull into my bag, I wince to feel its weight.

  Next he uses the forceps to lift out the sheet of newsprint. It's stained. I figure dried blood. Maybe worse.

  I hold open another bag to take it from him. I'm sure it's loaded with clues. Maybe DNA.

  “What's that?” says Cap'n Pete.

  Taking out the newspaper revealed something shiny on the bottom of the Tupperware bowl.

  “Plastic baggie. Fold-down top.” Ceepak's speech patterns get clipped when things get serious. “Note card inside. Typed message. Folded paper behind note card.”

  Ceepak sinks back on his haunches. He's thinking.

  Cap'n Pete crouches down for a closer look.

  “Captain Pete?”

  “Yes, Johnny?”

  “This area is about to become a very major crime scene.” This is what he's thinking about.

  “Yes. I imagine it might … what with the skull and now what looks like a secret message sealed inside a plastic bag….”

  “I anticipate an influx of forensic personnel from the County and State Police. Possibly the FBI.”

  “Oh, yes. Of course. They'll be interested in this, that's for sure. The FBI.”

  “We might be better able to perform our tasks if you were to vacate this area and return to your fishing vessel.”

  “I see. Yes. Of course. You're right. Besides, I have my morning charter. Mustn't keep them waiting. They paid in advance, you know. Cash. Let me grab Bill's metal detector….”

  Ceepak holds up his hand.

  “Let's leave it here. We might have further use for a CZ-20.”

  “Oh. Okay. But what'll I tell Bill?”

  “That I will bring him his metal detector. Possibly this evening. I'm sure he'll understand. We'll also want to talk to you again.”

  “Me?”

  “We'll need to take a more formal statement.”

  “Yes. I see. Very good, Johnny. Of course. I'll be back at the dock by noon and I don't think I head out again until two … unless of course there's walk-in traffic … sometimes I get walk-ins … no reservations….”

  “We might not get to you today, Pete.”

  “No. Doesn't have to be. Not today. No, sir. Whatever's good for you, Johnny. I'm flexible. Schedule's wide open….”

  “Thank you. We appreciate your assistance and cooperation.”

  “See you later, Pete,” I say.

  “Yes. Of course. See you later, Danny.”

  The guy won't leave. He leans over, takes another peek into the hole.

  “Pete?” Ceepak is losing his patience, but not his courtesy. Not yet.

  “Right. See you later. When you come to take my statement. We'll talk then. Should I jot down some notes? Just to make certain I remember everything? While it's still fresh. Are notes allowed?”

  “Good idea. Write everything down. Do it now. And please—for the time being, do not tell anyone else what you discovered. Not even your wife or sons.”

  “Of course not. Won't breathe a word. Sorry to have … you know … ruined your day.”

  “We'll be fine, Pete.”

  Pete does a quick sign-of-the-cross. Head, heart, chest, chest. Turns. Walks away.

  Ceepak waits until he is absolutely certain Pete has crested the dune and is on his way down to the street.

  “Danny? Camera.”

  I hand him the digital.

  Ceepak snaps a half-dozen shots of the plastic bag resting at the bottom of the bowl.

  “I am now going to remove the bag from the bowl.”

  I just nod. Ceepak sounds like he's narrating brain surgery for the first-year students up in the cheap seats of one of those operating rooms they always have on doctor shows.

  He pulls out tweezers from another pants pocket.

  “Inspecting first item. Typewritten note on 3-by-5 ruled index card.”

  He holds the note card with his tweezers in one hand, fishes out his magnifying glass.

  “Message appears to have been typed on an IBM Selectric. Pica 10 Pitch font.”

  “What's it say?”

  “We start with a name. Centered and underlined: ‘Delilah.’

  Delilah. Samson's girlfriend. The hairstylist.

  “Another name from the Bible,” I say.

  “10-4. Beneath the name is recorded a date: ‘Tuesday. 8-1-79.’”

  The creep marked down the harvest date—just like some people do on freezer bags full of summer corn.

  “Under the date there is a typed quote. It too appears biblical in nature: ‘Thus will I make thy lewdness to cease.’”

  I figure it's the “thus” and “thy” that peg it as coming from Scripture.

  He offers no interpretations. Not yet. Not about the mention of lewdness. Not about the date, 1979—which sort of puts the skull back in the disco days with the ears and nose we already found. Ceepak never conjectures right away. First he examines all the evidence. That means tweezering and unfolding the other piece of paper tucked into the baggie because it's only halfway visible behind the index card.

  “Map,” he says. “Hand-drawn. Permanent black marker on foolscap paper.”

  It looks like a treasure map drawn on that old-fashioned parchment stuff you always see in souvenir shops with the Declaration of Independence printed on it .

  I see there is a big X on the map.

  And a dotted line—like footprints.

  And, in the corner, one of those orientating compass deals: N, E, S, W.

  “Ten paces due north,” says Ceepak as he studies the map.

  Then he turns to me.

  “Danny, I believe we're going to need the field shovel.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  We keep an Army-issue field shovel stowed in the back of our cop car with the flares and rolls of POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape.

  The sun glints off the tinted glass and I can already tell: this day's going to be a scorcher. Probably hit 90, maybe 95 degrees. And the wind has shifted. It's blowing across the island from the bay to the ocean. West to east. That means the greenhead flies will be blowing this way, too.

  The greenheads are vicious little devils, our local locusts, the shore's summertime plague. Their heads aren't really green. They take their name from their big buggy eyes. Huge green peepers popping out of humongous black bodies. These suckers fly slow—maybe because their eyeballs are so huge. They sort of lumber through the air like one of those C-130 military cargo planes that shouldn't even be able to fly. You s
wat at a greenhead, it'll stare at you, ask if you've got some kind of problem, then loop back to take a snap at your ankles.

  Ouch. All this, and greenheads, too.

  • • •

  Ceepak is waiting for me—standing on a clump of sea grass ten feet north of the first hole.

  I hand him the shovel. He looks like he's ready to play some serious Whack-A-Mole. Like he's there to bop anything that dares pop up out of a hole in the sand.

  “I radioed the chief,” he says.

  “And? Is he calling the FBI?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I think we should.”

  “As do I. However, the chief reminded me that we retain primary jurisdiction in the case for investigative purposes unless and until we determine that these individuals were killed elsewhere and transported across state lines.”

  Chief Baines never does like the FBI dropping by Sea Haven. They scare away more cash-carrying tourists than all the sharks in Jaws I, II, and III combined.

  “Record my location,” says Ceepak, ready to shoulder the grim responsibility of moving forward.

  I pull out the digital camera and snap a frame. I check the viewfinder. The shot looks like one of those groundbreaking ceremonies for a new bank.

  “Got it.”

  Ceepak nods.

  Digs.

  Shovels up several buckets of sand, making a tidy pile to the left of his hole.

  “Approximate depth: one foot.”

  He keeps digging. The sand is soft.

  “Two feet.”

  The pile of powder next to his hole grows taller. Sugary sand slides off the peak, trickles down along the sides.

  “Three feet.”

  I hear steel tap plastic. Ceepak stops. Steps away from the hole. Lays down his shovel and drops to his knees.

  “Danny? Will you please bring me a paintbrush?”

  “On it.”

  I slap one into his open palm and say, “Paintbrush.”

  “Thank you.”

  I crouch down and watch Ceepak start to dust off what we both know is going to be the lid to another Tupperware bowl. Ceepak whisks away the sand with his brush, an umpire cleaning off home plate for the next batter up.

  I see a translucent top with the raised ridge of a lip. The famous, vacuum-sealed lid designed to keep the bowl's contents fresh and crisp. Even if you store your head of lettuce—make that a human head—in the hot sand.

  Of course, it's another skull.

  A small oblong ball, really. Maybe five inches wide, eight inches tall, six inches deep. Wrapped in another newspaper.

  “Again, a Friday edition of the Sandpaper. July 12, 1980.”

  There's another baggie in the bottom of the bowl. Inside the baggie, another note card and another little folded map.

  “‘Miriam,’” Ceepak says, reading the index card. “‘Monday. 7-8-80.’”

  “Oh, man,” I whisper, even though I feel like screaming. “Miriam.”

  Ceepak just nods.

  We have to assume it's the same Miriam whose nose we found with the local souvenirs back at The Treasure Chest.

  Ceepak holds up the card and reads what's typed along the bottom: “‘Thus will I make thy lewdness to cease.’”

  “He's repeating himself.”

  “They usually do.”

  Ceepak puts the index card into an evidence bag, and then uses his tweezers to unfold the little map. I study it over his shoulder: it's dotted with dashes of footprints leading to another X. Ten feet due west this time.

  “Of course!” says Ceepak. He's having one of his eureka moments. “It was near the pirate chests.”

  “Pirate chests?” I'm a little behind him, somewhere south of Eureka! “What pirate chests?”

  “At the souvenir shop. Remember? The jar was on a shelf surrounded by snow globes depicting pirate chests filled with gold doubloons. The killer was being cute. Alluding to his private necropolis filled with treasure chests.”

  “So you think this Miriam is the same Miriam who, you know….”

  “I do.”

  Usually, he says, “It's a possibility.” Not today. Today, he's definite.

  “The nose, most likely, was the souvenir the killer kept for himself during the totem stage of his cyclical spree. During or after the murder, the killer performs a ritualistic taking of trophies, often involving mutilation of his dead victim's corpse. He needs a souvenir, something to help him perpetuate the erotic pleasure sparked during the actual killing.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It's no wonder he placed his formaldehyde jars in a museum and, later, The Treasure Chest. One building storehouses trophies, the other contains nothing but souvenirs. This man is taunting us.”

  “Why?”

  “He wants us to know he's back in town. Perhaps to complete another killing cycle. A serial killer is very similar to a drug addict, Danny. Sooner or later he will give in to his cravings and return to the one thing in the world that gives him pleasure.”

  Ceepak pulls a pair of latex gloves out of his hip pocket, snaps them onto his hands. Next, he finds his magnifying lens. Finally, he uses his free hand to hold the skull. He looks like Hamlet crossed with Sherlock Holmes. I make sure no one's watching.

  It's amazing. The beach is still empty.

  “Can you see it, Danny?”

  I lean over his shoulder, try to look through the lens, but all I'm getting is a rubbery, funhouse-mirror close-up of white.

  “See what?”

  “Between the eye sockets. Where the nasal bone is joined to the frontal bone.”

  I see an upside-down Valentine-heart-shaped hole between the skull's two eye sockets. Not much else.

  “Definitely nicked,” says Ceepak. “Slightly notched. There are noticeable groove marks where a blade sawed too close to the bone when severing the cartilage forming the support structure for the nose.”

  He flips the skull around in his hand and zooms in for a look at the ear canal.

  “Here, too. I note chipping near the exterior auditory meatus. A cut line crossing into the adjoining temporal bone.”

  “He cut off Miriam's ears?”

  “Yes, Danny.”

  “But we didn't find her ears.”

  “Not yet. Most likely, those were the souvenirs he chose to keep for himself, in his personal museum.”

  Ceepak slips the skull back into its paper sack.

  “I believe we may have just isolated the killer's signature.”

  Ceepak hikes back across the sand to Hole Number One and the ring of evidence bags circling it—everything we found with “Delilah's” skull.

  Ceepak reaches into the bag, pulls out the skull, and examines it with his magnifying glass. First the front, then both sides.

  “Again. The nose and both ears were chopped off. The cuts in this instance were much cruder, less skilled. I note a false start with a serrated blade high up on the nasal bone, along an imaginary line running between the girl's pupils.”

  I don't want to imagine that line. I don't want to imagine some lunatic drawing it in with a stubby carpenter's pencil or snapping a blue chalk line across the girl's face so he could saw off her nose with a serrated steak knife.

  “He kills his victims, decapitates them, then cuts off their nose and their ears. This is his signature.”

  “Why?”

  “Unclear.”

  He puts away Skull Number One and marches over to Hole Number Two.

  “We need to call Officer Diego. Have her run down the Bible quote.”

  “Diego doesn't come in until nine.”

  “Let's radio the house. Have Dispatch call her at home and instruct her to report for duty ASAP.”

  “It's only like a half hour until….”

  “Danny? Time is of the essence.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We should also request uniformed backup to help us secure this crime scene and work crowd control. The beach will be filling up soon. We should contact the munici
pal garage. See if we can procure some privacy screens. You know, the type of tarps the Highway Patrol puts up around serious accident scenes on the Interstate.”

  “Right.”

  “I will once again urge the chief to request county, state, and/or federal assistance. He should also contact the Chamber of Commerce. Postponement of the Sand Castle Competition would seem the most prudent course of action.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Danny, if you had any plans for this evening, please cancel them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We need to move fast. This killer may not wait for Chief Baines to call the FBI before striking again.”

  And I was worried about the greenheads.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  One hour later, we have two more holes, two more plastic containers, two more skulls pulled up from the sand.

  Hole Number Three: Rebecca. Tuesday, August 13, 1980.

  Hole Number Four: Deborah. Tuesday, July 29, 1981.

  Each skull was wrapped in the local newspaper from the following Friday. Each was stored in Tupperware-type bins slightly different from each other and the ones we found earlier, but big enough to handle the job. All four plastic containers held sandwich bags with neatly typed index cards identifying the victim and proclaiming, “Thus will I make thy lewdness to cease.”

  Each find also contained a map leading us gruesomely onward.

  One hour later, we have company. Lots of it. First came the lifeguards. Now the beach is almost full, fed by a steady parade of sun worshippers. They march across the sand and claim their territory, planting the family umbrella. They haul lawn chairs, ice chests, boogie boards, and rolling laundry carts stuffed with towels, paddle-ball paddles, and brightly-colored sponge toys. They wear bathing suits, sarongs, sun visors, and the occasional unfortunate Speedo. Children squeal and splash at the foamy edge of the shallow water, down where the sand sucks at your toes. Parents lounge in low-slung chairs. Every now and then, the lifeguard up on his platform blows a whistle, calling foul on some hotshot boldly venturing beyond the safety flags staked fifty feet out from his chair. The flags tell you where it's safe to swim.