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

by Chris Grabenstein

  “You and Boyle stay here,” Santucci says to Ceepak. “Take her statement. We'll nab Winston. He can't have run too far.”

  “What about the girl in the photograph?” asks Ceepak.

  “Don't worry. We got other people on the street looking for her. Jesus, Ceepak—you think you're the only one who knows how to do this job?”

  Ceepak turns to the couch. “Does your husband carry a weapon, Mrs. Winston?”

  She shoots us a smoky spurt of a laugh. “Just the thing in his pants. He pulls that one out constantly.”

  Ceepak turns back to Santucci. “I don't think your pursuit of this suspect warrants armed intrusions into….”

  “Ceepak?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don't you even try to tell me how to do my job, okay?”

  I see Ceepak's jaw popping in and out near his ear. Guess that stops him from telling Santucci to fuck off, which is what I'd do.

  “Malloy?” says Santucci. “Let's roll.”

  They saunter out, leaving the sour smell of testosterone in their wake. Sea Haven's Finest.

  On the couch, Mrs. Winston turns toward the bay window. The vinyl blinds have been rolled all the way down to keep the sun out, the darkness in.

  Ceepak takes a step toward the sofa. The floorboards squeak.

  “Can you believe I'm the one who suggested this vacation?” she says to the window. She gives a snort. Laughing at herself. “Beautiful, sunny Sea Haven. Historic home of my husband's infamous frat-boy conquests. His glory days.”

  Oh, man—if she starts quoting Springsteen, I might need to borrow some of those antidepressants.

  “Now Teddy's picking up girls in the same house where he keeps his tired old hag of a wife locked up in her room. Typically he has the decency to carry out his vacation liaisons in some remote motel. I often find odd keys in the laundry bag when we unpack. Twisted up in his pants pockets.”

  “Did he recently lose his key to this room?”

  She turns to Ceepak. Smiles.

  “Oh. You know about that?”

  Ceepak shows her the key we found at the Palace pier. It's in a sealed plastic bag.

  “Where'd he lose this one?”

  “Ma'am?”

  “He drops his drawers so often, he's forever dropping his keys as well. Two—no three—so far this week. He just pays the fee at the front desk and asks for a new one. He loses cash, too. Or so he says. In truth, I suspect he sometimes pays the young ladies for services rendered. That's why he never carries his wallet.” She cocks her head toward a bedside table. “Doesn't want his ‘dates’ taking his credit cards, too.”

  Ceepak slips on a pair of evidence gloves and flips the wallet open. Flashes me the driver's license. I see Dr. Ted's DMV portrait. That'll help.

  “Mrs. Winston, we noted your name in the guest book of The Howland House Whaling Museum.”

  “So?”

  “Were you there yesterday?”

  “What can I say, Officer? I was bored out of my fucking gourd.”

  “Did your husband go with you?”

  She almost gags on a smoky chuckle. “Teddy?”

  “Yes, ma'am. Was he with you at the museum?”

  “Of course not. All he wants to do on our one vacation together all year is fish. First, he drags me on this charter boat with an imbecilic clown of a captain … “

  That would be Pete.

  “ … then, when I tell him how much I hate it, he drops me off at the dock and rents a dinghy for the day. Probably rented a first mate, too. In a bikini.”

  Ceepak folds up the wallet, tucks it into a plastic bag.

  “We need to take this with us,” he says. “We will return it as soon as possible.”

  Mrs. Winston waves her cigarette around in the air. She could care less.

  “What make and model of car does your husband drive?” asks Ceepak.

  “Down here?”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “Porsche Boxster. The girls love his little hot rod. Until later, of course—when they discover what it is he's compensating for.”

  The woman could write an antimarriage manual. It's like Springsteen says in that “Tunnel of Love” song: “Man meets woman and they fall in love. But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough.” I figure the Winstons’ ride ran off the rails ages ago.

  “He collects their panties,” she says out of the blue. “Sometimes earrings. I found them. At home. In the basement. He has all his souvenirs lined up in a footlocker, sorted and stored in little plastic bags. He even labels them. Name. Date. Score. I believe five stars is his highest rating.”

  “These labels,” says Ceepak. “Does he type them?”

  “I don't recall. As you might suspect, I didn't spend all that much time admiring his collection. One fleeting glance was enough.” She grinds her cigarette out in the juice glass. I hear it sizzle when it finds liquid. She pulls a fresh smoke out of the pack.

  “Do you have any idea where your husband has gone?”

  “You mean now?”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  She sends a jet of butane flame up to the tip of her cigarette. Sucks in to get it going. Blows out.

  “Well, let's see. Your fellow police officers probably scared off his tea-cart tart downstairs. Therefore, I can only assume Teddy is once again on the prowl, hunting for fresh, young meat.”

  Unexpectedly, she focuses on me. Gives me this lewd leer. Ceepak is watching her but she's zeroed in on the sidekick. So now he's watching her watch me. Meanwhile, I'm wishing I were somewhere— or someone—else.

  “How about you, young man?” she says almost flirtatiously, flicking her tongue at the white stuff caked in the corner of her dry lips. “Where do you go to meet eager and willing young girls?”

  I don't answer.

  Suddenly, the idea of ever meeting another girl, for any reason whatsoever, is totally grossing me out.

  In fact, it's downright frightening.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  We swing by the station house to drop off Dr. Winston's driver's license.

  Denise Diego scans it into her computer and in ten seconds flat, Dr. Theodore A. Winston's headshot is displayed on Mobile Data Terminals inside cop cars up and down the island and over on the mainland.

  “Handsome dude,” Diego says, wiping Dorito grease off her fingers and onto her pants.

  “Stay away from this one, Dee,” I say. “He's trouble.”

  “Roger that,” says Ceepak.

  “A bad boy, hunh?”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “Sometimes those are the most fun.”

  We leave our colleague to her dirty daydreams and head out of the computer room, into the open bullpen around the front desk.

  “Ceepak? Boyle?”

  It's Chief Baines, lurking in the doorway to his office.

  “Sir?”

  “Santucci's back on task,” he says. “I told him to concentrate on finding the girl.”

  Ceepak nods. It's not what he wants to hear, but he has to live with it for the moment.

  “Did the wife know where Dr. Winston went?”

  “Negative,” says Ceepak.

  “He's probably our doer. Why else would he run?”

  “It's a possibility, sir.”

  “The guilty ones always bolt.”

  “So do the frightened ones, sir.”

  “Yeah, well, I say he's guilty. Where do you think he's hiding out?”

  “No telling. He's pretty familiar with the island. He's vacationed here a number of summers over the years.”

  “He was here back in the 1980s? When those other girls were killed?”

  “Yes, sir. Our intelligence suggests as much.”

  I smile a little. I'm “our intelligence” because I let the jerk talk my ear off one night in a bar.

  The chief doesn't know this, however. I think he thinks he's the one who just figured it all out. “He's our man, John. Go nab him.”

  “Yes, sir.”
Ceepak says it without any of the gung-ho enthusiasm I suspect the chief was looking for.

  Ceepak just said it so the chief would shut up and let us go do our job.

  “Where now?” I ask.

  “Reverend Trumble's,” says Ceepak. “I suspect Life Under the Son is where our killer first met his victims. Perhaps his face is even captured in one of those photographs hanging on the Reverend's office wall.”

  “Those surf baptisms? The ones with the crowds?”

  Ceepak nods. “The killer may have heard the girls confess their so-called sins and then, his head filled with the Reverend's fire and brimstone, become something of a vigilante, enforcing a rigid code of justice as outlined in the writings of Ezekiel—a code he may have first learned from the Reverend himself.”

  We head over to Beach Lane and travel north to The Sonny Days Inn.

  “Let's see if the good Reverend is in.”

  We head toward the office. On the walk across the parking lot, my stomach growls because it's after five and I can smell Italian sausage, onions, and sweet peppers wafting on the breeze. We're that close to the boardwalk. I can even see the sausage booth. The curly fries shop. The funnel cakes wagon. It's hard to resist the siren call of indigestion.

  But I do.

  I pull open the squeaky aluminum storm door and we enter the motel office. In here it smells wholesome. Like air-conditioned lemonade and sugar cookies and crisp apples.

  The young girl behind the counter is definitely a devoted member of the Trumble flock. I can tell by the tight green T-shirt hugging her ample chest. It says, NO TRESPASSING. MY FATHER IS WATCHING. Clever. Disappointing, but clever.

  “We need to see Reverend Trumble,” says Ceepak.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “We need to see him now.”

  “I understand, but….”

  There is the sound of a door opening.

  “Hello, Officers.”

  We turn around. Smiling at us, the Reverend Billy waves off his anxious, T-shirted minion and beckons us into his private chambers.

  “Are you familiar with Ezekiel Twenty-three, verses twenty-five to twenty-seven?” asks Ceepak.

  “Of course. ‘And I will set my jealousy against thee, and they shall deal furiously with thee: they shall take away thy nose and thine ears;

  and thy remnant shall fall by the sword!’”

  He recites it like he's Charlton Heston in that movie about Moses. He points a finger toward the ceiling, up where God is, I guess. In a room on the second floor. Maybe higher.

  “‘They shall take thy sons and thy daughters; and thy residue shall be devoured by the fire. They shall also strip thee out of thy clothes, and take away thy fair jewels. Thus will I make thy lewdness to cease from thee, and thy whoredom brought from the land of Egypt!’”

  He looks at us when he finishes.

  “I believe I quoted it correctly.”

  “Have you preached on this text?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Often?”

  “Indeed. For it describes the punishment God promises all promiscuous women.”

  “Really?” says Ceepak. “I always thought it was more of a metaphor.”

  Another smile. “Officer, there are no ‘metaphors’ in the Bible. It is, quite simply, God's Holy Word.” He picks up the Bible conveniently perched on his desk. “I, sir, believe in the whole Bible. I don't throw out the unpopular parts, the verses that make so many so-called Christians squeamish. For instance, I firmly believe that, as is stated in First Corinthians, all those who engage in premarital sex are automatically damned to Hell.”

  He says it to Ceepak like he knows about Rita. Then he points his finger upstairs to God's room again.

  “‘Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor abusers of themselves shall inherit the kingdom of God.’”

  Now I think he's talking about me.

  Ceepak edges closer to the preacher's big desk.

  “Tell me, sir, exactly how many ears and noses have you personally cut off?” Ceepak points to the framed pictures lining the walls. “These girls. The ones you baptized after they confessed their sins. Some of them had been promiscuous?”

  “Indeed. It is a common transgression.”

  “Then I'll ask you again, how many noses and ears did you take away? Or did you ask someone else do it for you?”

  Ceepak pulls out a copy of Teddy Winston's driver's license photo.

  “Was this one of your disciples?”

  Trumble studies the picture.

  “Doubtful. He looks far too old.”

  “What about twenty-eight years ago? 1979. Was he here the same summer as Delilah?”

  “I have no way of….”

  “What about 1980? Was he here with Miriam and Rebecca?”

  “As I stated….”

  “Maybe 1981. That's the summer Esther and Deborah had their ears and noses cut off. The summer one of your followers amputated their heads. Mutilated their faces. Did exactly what you and Ezekiel told them to do!”

  The preacher looks shocked. He's finally figured out that Ceepak and I didn't come here for Tuesday evening Bible class.

  “Someone actually … ?”

  “A dozen times we know of.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I'll ask you one more time: is this man in any of those photos?”

  “I … I….”

  “Was Theodore A. Winston one of your disciples?”

  Trumble is fresh out of smiles.

  “Many youngsters who heard my words chose to take up the road to redemption….”

  “And one chose to do exactly what you told him to do. Remember, there are no metaphors.”

  The Reverend holds on to the armrests of his chair; he's a shriveled balloon all out of hot air.

  “Please believe me, Officer,” he says weakly. “I never thought any one would … never, ever believed….”

  His voice fades into silence.

  “Danny?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Take the photographs off the wall. All of them.” Ceepak leans on the desk. “Sir, do you have a box we might use?”

  “Hmm?”

  “A box.”

  “Yes.” Billy Trumble has lost his radio voice. He sounds like a sad old man. “Take whatever you need….”

  “Use that one,” says Ceepak, pointing at an empty carton on the floor. Probably left over after somebody made a food donation. I don't think Reverend Billy would ever let his flock down a whole case of Captain Morgan Rum.

  “Take down the photos, Danny.”

  I yank the framed photographs off the wall. They're all from the ’80s and early ’90s. Strange hairdos. Bushy sideburns. College-aged kids lined up along the beach, watching the Reverend dunk another sinner in the surf. I scan their faces, looking for a younger version of Teddy Winston. Did he crash the scene on the beach? Was this his happy hunting ground?

  In one picture, I see a girl on the shore I think might be Ceepak's Rita, only younger, her hair wilder.

  “Let's roll, Danny.”

  Reverend Billy Trumble sits slumped in his chair—probably wondering what he's going to tell God the next time the two of them chat.

  We hit the parking lot.

  “We need to rush these pictures back to HQ,” says Ceepak. “Find someone to examine them more closely, check for a younger Dr. Winston. Meanwhile, we will remain mobile and continue field pursuit of our prime suspect.”

  “Right.”

  I pull open the cargo bay to stow the cardboard carton. I take one last look at the boardwalk to bid a fond farewell to the sausage-andpepper sandwich I know I won't be eating any time soon.

  Suddenly, I see her. Strolling up the boardwalk near The Frog Bog.

  The redheaded girl.

  The one with the green hair.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Stacey still looks as sexy as I remember.

  She has on a new bikini top. I can see the red
-and-white sunburn lines from the other bathing suit, the one she was wearing Sunday. Today's is even skimpier.

  Now she turns and bends. Her tiny Catholic schoolgirl miniskirt rides up high on her thighs and reveals a bikini bottom that looks more like a pair of white panties.

  I watch her fingers dip into the back pocket of the guy in front of her at The Frog Bog, who's paying no attention to what's happening behind him. He's too busy smacking his mallet down on a tiny seesaw to send a rubber frog flopping up into the air, aiming to land it on a floating lily pad too small to actually hold the fake amphibian.

  “Ceepak!” I yell. “Girl.” I point. “Girl!”

  Ceepak's momentarily confused, trying to figure out what the hell I'm yelling about.

  “Redhead! Boardwalk. Green hair!”

  He pivots. Sees her. Makes the connection. He rips the Motorola mike off his shoulder.

  “This is Ceepak. Request all available backup. Boardwalk area near Sonny Days Inn.”

  “The Frog Bog!” I try to help out.

  “Frog Bog. We have made visual contact with target. Repeat. We have spotted the girl from the photograph.”

  Ceepak has good breath support. He's able to say all that stuff while we run across Reverend Billy's parking lot. A chest-high chain-link fence is fast approaching. It separates the motel property from the boardwalk. I figure we'll be scaling it soon.

  “Girl is approximately 5'5",” Ceepak continues. “She is wearing a white bikini top, short plaid skirt, yellow sandals. Her hair is green. Repeat. Hair is currently dyed green.”

  We reach the fence.

  Ceepak braces the top bar, swings his legs sideways, does an Olympic-style vault, and flies over. I need to jam my toes into the chain gaps and climb it like a ladder. When I reach the top, I sort of haul myself up and over in stages. The fence shakes, rattles, and pings.

  The girl hears the metallic racket. She turns. Sees us.

  She kicks off her flip-flops and runs.

  Man, she's fast. Like one of those Olympic sprinters who train up in the mountains of Kenya. Her bare feet barely touch the boardwalk. At least she won't have to worry about splinters.

  We take off after her.

  She has a head start and a better idea of where she might be going.