18 Seconds

by George D. Shuman

  Tomorrow the beach would be filled with people. Someone would come by and look under and see her. Tomorrow she would be rescued, if not before.

  A chunk of something rose from her stomach and lodged in the back of her throat. Oh, please, she thought. Please don’t get sick. Not now.

  Sykes sat in the Lucky Seven drinking slow beers until the bar closed. He didn’t want to drink too many on an empty stomach and not with all the pills he’d been popping because of the chemo.

  It was 2:00 A.M. when he returned to the public works complex and parked his Jeep on the hillside where it couldn’t be seen from the road. It was Sandy Lyons’s night off, like he planned it. Sandy drove the meat wagon on midnights, and when Sandy wasn’t around, no one would be looking for the truck.

  He slipped in the side door to the garage and opened the bay doors to pull it out. By two-thirty he was parked alongside the boardwalk.

  Sykes lifted the tarp out of the back of the truck and dragged it into the shadows under the walk. He knew that if someone saw him, there was a 90 percent chance they’d be three states away by the time the cops started asking questions. That was how it was in a tourist town. Witnesses changed every three days and even if someone did see him, he appeared to be a man out doing his job. Most people subconsciously dismiss what seems normal. He would be doing something normal, and the cops would be asking them to remember something suspicious. He knew how the mind worked.

  He also knew that something was wrong the minute he saw her. Even from behind. Her head was slumped forward and something smelled bad. Real bad. Like she’d shit herself.

  The moon was low on the ocean, which gave him plenty of light when he got around front to see her. “Oh, fucking Jesus,” he whispered, turning away and gagging. Her cheeks were blown full of puke around the tape, her eyes were bulging out of their sockets, and vomit had begun to squeeze through her nose. Her bowels had let loose and created a mess between her legs. She was quite dead.

  He got his pocketknife and cut the tape away at her neck, careful to avoid her mouth. Goddamn it to hell. He needed to think. He’d worn gloves when he taped her up. That part was okay. He could leave all the tape behind; even if someone found it, there wouldn’t be any prints on it. But Sykes was a fanatic about evidence. He needed to get rid of her. He needed to get rid of the body.

  16

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 25

  WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY

  The last week of May brought six hundred calls for police service, one hundred and twenty-three arrests that were mostly minor, and half as many motor vehicle accidents. Crimes ranged from auto theft to shoplifting to public intoxication. O’Shaughnessy also counted a handful of narcotic arrests, two robberies, and a half-dozen larcenies of women’s pocketbooks from supermarket carts. Summer was a weekend away and Anne Carlino’s photos were sun-bleaching away in storefront windows.

  O’Shaughnessy kept the case file on her desk rather than in the filing cabinet. Putting it even that far away was a reminder that she and her people were no closer to solving it.

  She still had a few of the old Carlino crime scene photos—mostly of the graffiti on the pipes—tacked on her walls among her daughter’s colorful crayoned art.

  O’Shaughnessy wondered if Anne had died quickly that night or if her ordeal had continued at length. She couldn’t help but imagine what she herself would be thinking under the circumstances. Would she want to die quickly or hang on for the sake of a miracle? For the sake of her children or even for the sake of Tim?

  Tim? Why did it always come back to him? She knew the answer, but of course she had always known the answer: she loved him, no matter what a jerk he had been.

  The green Explorer was gone now. Anne’s father had removed it finally. He remained an outspoken critic of the department’s handling of his daughter’s disappearance, calling relentlessly on the state’s attorney general to look into the investigation. He gave the Patriot regular interviews, was quoted as saying that citizens were afraid for their children and that the business community should be concerned for its commerce. If there was one way to get the politicians off their asses, he knew, it was to make the business community nervous. Everyone understood that bad press didn’t do a tourist town any good in season, and he was intent on keeping that fear alive.

  O’Shaughnessy knew she needed a break, and she needed one fast. And when it came, it came in the form of Gus Meyers, standing unexpectedly in her doorway.

  Gus Meyers was a young-looking fifty-six, nearly six foot four; his knees never seemed to find enough room no matter where he sat. He had brilliant white hair and a perpetual tan, favored dark sports jackets with elbow patches and pastel cardigans. Today’s sweater was pink. His trousers were always charcoal. If you were asked to associate a hobby with Gus, it would be ship modeling or fly tying. In fact Gus liked to wreck dive; he had a china plate from the Andrea Doria on the credenza in his office.

  She had known Gus since she was old enough to sit on her father’s lap in his office. Gus was looking much older now, older than she could ever remember seeing him.

  “You have something?” She looked up hopefully.

  He nodded and smiled, reaching into his jacket for a plastic envelope. O’Shaughnessy recognized the contents immediately. It was Anne Carlino’s wristwatch, the one she’d found under the boardwalk on May 1. Her initials were scrawled across the face of the bag in Magic Marker.

  “You remember this?” He dangled it in front of her.

  She nodded. Anne’s mother had identified it one tearful afternoon in the Carlinos’ living room.

  “You remember the residue I found in the band? The stuff I sent off to the FBI?”

  She nodded again; her heart accelerated.

  He dropped it on the desk in front of her. “It’s auto paint. General Motors.”

  “It is?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Uh-huh, 1993 through ’97. That’s when they changed the composition. The color is a dark orange, not very common—but it gets better. It’s fleet paint, Kelly. They didn’t use it for the general market.”

  “Fleet paint,” she repeated.

  “Uh-huh. Probably a truck or some construction vehicle. Maybe a cab, though not many of them are orange anymore. I’m trying to get the distribution lists now; that’s harder than you would think with all the hubs they apportion to. It might take a week or more, but I think it’s enough to start looking.”

  O’Shaughnessy was thinking, but not about Gus Meyers and not about the FBI lab report. She was imagining Anne Carlino, upset about the fight she’d had with her boyfriend on the boardwalk, upset about finding a flat tire on her parents’ car. She would have been relieved to see an orange truck pull into the parking lot. Was that why Anne hadn’t run for the streets?

  Or maybe the truck was already sitting there? Waiting for her to notice the flat tire before he got out to offer help. Or maybe he waited for her to come over to him. Had he been parked near the drainpipe and attacked her there? A struggle by his truck would have accounted for the paint.

  One thing seemed sure. At that distance from Atlantic Avenue, no one would have heard. Anne had seen the drainpipe and thought if she could just get under there long enough to hide, he’d be forced to leave. But he didn’t leave. He went in after her and found her.

  “—of course the vehicle could have been parked there by anyone,” Gus continued, “and she just happened to scrape up against it. But with all the press about the kidnapping, someone should have come forward by now and said they were parked there that night, even if they didn’t see anything helpful.”

  He recrossed his legs. “The residue I took off that watch wouldn’t have stayed on it for long by itself. I think it happened when she was attacked, Kelly, and if you find a vehicle that matches that paint composition, you’re going to have some very convincing evidence that it was near the scene.”

  She nodded and heard herself thanking him, watching the boardwalk photos on the walls come alive. An orange ve
hicle had never come up in any of the interviews. Would the suggestion of it jog someone’s memory? She needed her detectives to question Anne’s boyfriend and anyone else who was on the boardwalk that night. She needed to find out how many orange fleet vehicles were in Cape May County or the whole state of New Jersey, for that matter.

  When Gus left the office, O’Shaughnessy saw that Sergeant McGuire was waiting outside the door.

  “Mac, I think we’ve got a break.”

  McGuire’s response wasn’t cheery. “I think we might have a problem, too, Lieu. Officer Ross from midnights is with me. I thought you’d want to see him.” He opened the door wide.

  A rumpled-looking patrolman came in and took a seat. His neck looked stiff, his face creased as if he’d been sleeping against a wall. McGuire stepped back and closed the door.

  “Shouldn’t you be under the blankets, Ross? It’s almost ten.”

  Ross had been in her squad when she was a midnight sergeant in uniform. The night shift got off at seven. He should have been home hours ago.

  “I wish.” He smiled tiredly. “I needed to fill your guys in on something. Mac said to talk to you directly. We got a missing person’s call last night, tourist, sixteen years old. The family is all but out of their minds. They were supposed to leave town this morning. The mother says the daughter’s never done anything like this before. The father agrees with his wife. Says this isn’t like her.”

  “When did they last see her?”

  “Just after eight last evening. She was going to the boardwalk to look for other kids her age. I’ve been with the family since three A.M. That’s when the father called us.”

  “What’s been done?”

  “All the checklist stuff. Hospitals, clinics, and shelters. I put it on the clipboard for day work, so patrol has the description. Also tried some of the hangouts, but the night owls are home in bed. We’ll go back up there tonight.”

  “Good,” she said. “Good.”

  “Girl’s father went out at midnight looking for her. He said he drove up and down the strip and walked the lower end of the boardwalk twice. I asked them for photographs of her, but all they had was an undeveloped roll of thirty-five millimeter. I took it up to the One Hour Photo this morning. Thought if she didn’t turn up, we’d at least have something to work with.”

  “Great idea,” she said, nodding.

  “Other than that, they’ve been sitting in their room and waiting for her to walk through the door. You know how this stuff usually turns out, but something feels wrong about this already.”

  O’Shaughnessy knew exactly what he meant. Anne Carlino loomed in her mind. “Shoot me copies of the pictures when you get them. I’ll see that the detectives put them in their cars. You want me to notify Youth Division?”

  “Already did. Celia Davis is on the way to meet them. She’s really good with parents.”

  “Sounds like you’re covered,” she said. “Where are they staying?”

  “Dunes, room 1212.”

  She jotted a note. “Thanks for the heads-up, Ross. I’ll ask Celia to keep me posted.”

  “Thanks.”

  Missing sixteen-year-olds, even those staying in hotels with their parents, had been known to meet up with other teens and wake up hungover in strange houses. She hoped that’s all it was.

  She looked at the bloody May Day pictures on her wall.

  She hoped.

  THURSDAY MORNING, MAY 26

  Barf, who earned his moniker at countless fraternity parties, caught the Frisbee on a dead run, managing a full pirouette before releasing the disk backhand and pitching face-first into the wet sand. It was an impressive stunt for the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound boy, except that the Frisbee soared over his intended receiver’s head and disappeared under the boardwalk.

  He got up in time to see his playmates ambling back to their blankets and beers and leaving him to retrieve his own out-of-control pass. Barf brushed sand and broken shells from his face and jogged determinedly toward the boardwalk, thinking it was time to put more lotion on his back.

  The smell hit him from ten feet away; flies swarmed the place he had last seen the Frisbee. Something dead was under there: a gull or a small shark left to cook in the afternoon sun. If the Frisbee hadn’t cost ten bucks he’d have walked away, but ten bucks was six and a half beers, so he dove headlong under the walk.

  His friends said later that they saw his broad white back disappear and then reappear a minute later; he didn’t turn around or come to his feet, he just knelt there in the sand for the longest time. Then he went back under.

  “Hey, Barf! Barf! You gonna spend the day there?”

  O’Shaughnessy looked up at the towering hotels facing the ocean. There were hundreds of people around. It wasn’t like May Day when no one was in town to hear the screams. This was high season and right under their noses. So why hadn’t anyone seen or heard anything?

  The girl was sixteen by a month. Her curfew was at 11:00, according to the parents, so it was assumed she was attacked some time between 8:00—when her parents last saw her—and 10:45 when she would have most likely started back to the hotel. That presupposed she had been abiding by her curfew, but no one had reason to think otherwise. Not now.

  The forensics people collected the dried contents of someone’s stomach and the crust of human excreta Barf had plunged his hand through. Barf said he might have tossed his cookies and been on his way if he hadn’t seen the white thong under his Frisbee. Then he saw the small beige purse covered in puke and above it a foot of duct tape with long blond hairs stuck all over it; someone’s head had been strapped to a piling! Barf knew that whatever had happened here, it wasn’t good.

  Police had closed down a fifty-foot section of the boardwalk and detoured pedestrians back to Atlantic Avenue. Barf—his real name was Charles Dubois—confessed that he had added his own breakfast to the mess before running to the ocean to clean himself off. He then used his cell phone to call 911. The EMTs checked him out, handed him over to the detectives for a statement; they then released him to his friends. Reporters chasing the story on police scanners started arriving with cameras. The veteran puker was heard to say that anyone regurgitating so much blood would be in dire need of medical attention. Barf was getting his fifteen minutes of fame.

  The Yolands were taken to a private conference room in the hotel while their son toured the police station. O’Shaughnessy headed to the hotel to join them. She didn’t want them hearing about Barf’s discovery of the crime scene on the television.

  Hours later she walked around the entrance to Strayer’s Pier. She wished that things were the way they used to be with Tim. She would tell him the harder things she went through, not for his advice or opinion, but just to talk about it, to get it out. She was only human and she was just as worried and helpless as the families of her victims.

  The Ferris wheel was spinning on Strayer’s Pier. Hundreds of people strolled along the boardwalk. The day was on its decline, and the diehard sun worshipers were pivoting their towels to claim the last bit of light.

  Soon it would be the dinner hour and everyone would leave to shower and change their clothes in anticipation of churning up the town’s nightlife.

  She walked past T-Tops with their racks of rowdy T-shirts, past James Taffy House and Planters Peanuts and the wax museum.

  At last she stopped at a newspaper stand and worked her way around the wooden rack of cigarettes to a squat man sitting on a footstool.

  “How are you doing, Newsy?” she asked.

  He looked up and squinted toothlessly, “Heyyy, Sarge. Ain’t seen you since last summer.” He took in her street attire. “You get fired?”

  Newsy had gray stubble on his face and was overdressed in a heavy flannel shirt and dirty chinos. He had never before seen her out of uniform.

  “Promoted,” she told him, taking a pack of gum from the rack and unwrapping it. She popped a stick in her mouth and turned to look at the green demon hunched over the steel
gates of Strayer’s Pier.

  “Lieutenant.” He grinned. “Not surprised.”

  “Anything new around here?” She nodded toward the pier.

  “Carny trash, if that’s what you’re asking. They’re all new. Make quite a scene down at the Anchorage after closing. Moe never had guys like that before. You looking for someone in particular?”

  “A man that would drag a teenager under the boardwalk.”

  Newsy nodded. “Yeah, I seen them flyers this morning. Parents shouldn’t let their children go around dressed like that.”

  O’Shaughnessy was painfully aware of the photo Sergeant Dillon had selected. Dillon had been the highest-ranking officer in the station when the film came back from One Hour Photo. He had chosen a full-body shot of the sixteen-year-old in her bikini. He later said it was the best likeness of her face.

  O’Shaughnessy nodded. “It still shouldn’t make her a target, Newsy.”

  “Now that’s the truth, I swear it shouldn’t, but you know how it is.”

  Her eyes traveled to the colorful rack of cigarettes. “Ever smoke, Newsy?”

  “Sure. Everyone smoked when I was a kid. We thought it was good for us.”

  “You quit?”

  “Thirty years ago.”

  “I’m trying to kick it.”

  “Not easy,” he said. “Little bastards crawl into your mind and talk to you.”

  She nodded, looking back at the demon. “They do, don’t they, Newsy. Keep your ears open for me.” She tucked a five-dollar bill behind the register and fished a card from her pocket.

  Newsy dropped it in his shirt pocket.

  O’Shaughnessy walked to the other side of the boardwalk and took a seat on a bench. Some of the joggers and power walkers were out taking advantage of the dinner lull while there was still daylight.