Whack A Mole jc-3

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Just this one,” says Ceepak. He shows the chief the second map. It's hand-drawn, with a spot marked by an X. If I have my bearings correct, the X would be on the beach just off a street now named Palm Drive.

  Our fearless leader sighs.

  “Okay, Ceepak. Tell me why this can't wait until sometime in October?”

  “The ears and nose.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The jars we found, sir. The killer is putting his trophies on display to taunt us. To let us know he's restless and ready to strike again. Are you familiar with the BTK serial killer in Kansas City?”

  “Of course.”

  Even I know this one. They called him BTK because he used to Bind, Torture, then Kill his victims. He teased the police. Sent them letters. His crimes, mostly committed in the 1970s, remained unsolved for nearly three decades.

  “BTK kept silent for twenty-five years, sir,” Ceepak says. “The police assumed he had died or disappeared. Maybe he had just burned out. Then something snapped. He sent the police a new piece of evidence. He couldn't resist the urge to reclaim the limelight. I believe we are currently facing a similar situation with Ezekiel.”

  The chief looks confused. “Ezekiel?”

  “It is the handle I have given the Sea Haven Serial Killer,” Ceepak explains.

  “On account of the Bible quote,” I chip in. “It comes from Ezekiel.”

  The chief stares at me. Probably wonders when I all of a sudden became a Scripture scholar.

  “I believe,” says Ceepak, “that, by placing his cherished souvenirs where we were absolutely certain to find them, our killer is sending us a signal. I fear Ezekiel is poised to strike again.”

  The chief stares at the two maps. I can see he's working his jaw, trying to find some moisture for his mouth.

  “In fact,” Ceepak continues, “it is quite common for serial killers to go through a period of depression and dormancy then….”

  There's a rustle of fabric. The tarp separating us from the Sand Castle site flaps open. It's Santucci.

  “Chief?” he says, his voice sounding shaky. “One of the bulldozers over here, one of 'em just dug something up….”

  “What is it, sergeant?” the chief snaps.

  Santucci sort of points at Ceepak.

  “Another of Ceepak's goddamn skulls.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Mary Guarneri.

  The girl who once wore a charm bracelet with a tiny church dangling off it. The girl who went to the World's Fair in New Orleans with her mother. The girl who ran away from Erie, Pennsylvania, then changed her name to Ruth when the Reverend Billy Trumble dunked her in the ocean and washed away all her sins.

  That's whose head it looks like the backhoe just dug up.

  “Her name was Ruth,” Santucci says. “Says so right here on the Polaroid. See? He wrote the name. ‘Ruth.’”

  “It's Mary Guarneri,” Ceepak says softly.

  “Sorry, Sherlock. You're wrong.”

  Santucci waggles one of the photographs he and Malloy found in the bottom of another plastic salad bowl. I can see the picture over Ceepak's shoulder.

  It's the After shot.

  I recognize Mary's face from the side of that milk carton Cap'n Pete dug up. Only in the Polaroid there's no smile and her whole head is tilted to one side, like it toppled off the neck. The head is barely attached to the rest of the girl's body by a few stringy tendons. Her eyes are wide and wild with terror. The neck looks like a bloody stump someone tore through with a chain saw.

  The chief is burping again. Trying to force down whatever it is that wants to sneak up.

  Ceepak looks away from the Polaroid.

  “Her name is Mary Guarneri.”

  “Jesus, Ceepak,” Santucci scoffs. “What? You can't fucking read? Her name is Ruth!”

  The chief finds his voice. “Stand down, Santucci. Ceepak? Do you know something about this girl? Why the hell do you keep calling her Mary?”

  “Mary Guarneri changed her name to Ruth when she was baptized by the Reverend Billy Trumble.”

  Santucci whips off his shades. “Says who?”

  “Is this the girl who had the church charm on her bracelet?” the chief asks. “The girl from the milk carton?”

  “Roger that.”

  “I see. Okay. You should've said so. Okay. We're making connections. Filling in the missing pieces. When was she murdered?”

  “Well, sir,” says Santucci, hiking up his belt, “my best guesstimate is sometime on or about July 3, 1985.” He points to the newspaper he found the skull bone wrapped up in. “Lots of Fourth of July ads and whatnot in the newspaper there. So, we figure, she had to be, you know, dead before the Fourth.”

  Malloy muscles in with his two cents. “Also, sir-we picked up a pretty solid clue right here.” He holds up the other Polaroid. The Before.

  Ceepak cringes. Not because the picture is gruesome. It isn't. It just shows a young girl in a lacy black bustier with a big crucifix dangling down between her breasts-the kind of stuff Madonna used to wear back in the ’80s when she was still singing on MTV about being a virgin.

  No, Ceepak's cringing, I think, because our esteemed colleague is holding the evidence with his greasy, just-ate-a-melty-Snickers-bar fingers. No gloves. No evidence bag. Just his chocolate-covered thumb and forefinger.

  “See there, Chief?” Malloy says. “The killer wrote a date on the Polaroid! July 3, 1985.”

  Ceepak shakes his head.

  “You got some problem with our detective work here, Officer Ceepak?” Santucci snarls.

  “Yes, Sergeant Santucci. You've taken us out of sequence.”

  “Come again?” says the chief.

  “Danny and I were proceeding in an orderly, chronological fashion. The bowl containing the skull labeled DELILAH was, apparently, the killer's first. It was dated 1979. The map uncovered in that hole led us to another skull, dated 1980.”

  Santucci sniggers. “Wait a second, Ceepak. How do you know there ain't a 1978 head buried someplace else? Hunh? How can you be certain this Delilah was the first?”

  “We can't,” Ceepak admits.

  “See? Jesus. I don't know why everybody says you're such hot shit.”

  “All right, Santucci,” the chief says. “Enough. We're all on the same team here.”

  “Yes, sir. But Malloy and I want to follow up this lead.”

  Santucci waves what looks like another Resort Map in our collective face. Malloy pulls a second map out of his back pocket. It's the hand-drawn sketch, the one with the X marking the spot, and it's also smeared with chocolate from whatever he had for his mid-morning power snack.

  “According to these maps,” says Santucci, “we'll find something buried up north near the lighthouse. Request permission to go dig it up, sir. Tray can handle things here.”

  The chief looks confused. “Who the hell is Tray?”

  “Summer cop. Tray can maintain security. Keep the looky-lous away from the skull holes. Maybe Officer Boyle can assist. He was pretty good helping old ladies cross the street last summer-before he hooked up with Ceepak.” Santucci shoots me a look that says I should still be working crossguard duty.

  “I need Officer Boyle,” says Ceepak. “He knows the beaches on the South End.”

  The chief shakes his head. “North End. South End. This guy is sending half the department off on a scavenger hunt….”

  “One team will wind up back here,” says Ceepak. “Most likely Danny and I. We are following clues that predate the 1985 slaying of Mary a.k.a. Ruth. Of more importance, however, will be any evidence pertaining to killings which took place post-1985….”

  Santucci jumps in. “Those are ours!”

  Ceepak shakes his head. I know what he's thinking: we're trying to track down a serial killer. Santucci wants to play “first dibs.”

  The chief plucks at his mustache. That's what he does whenever he's stressed.

  “Ceepak?”

  “Sir?”


  “You and Boyle head south.”

  Ceepak was in the military for fourteen years. He knows how to follow orders.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sergeant Santucci?”

  “Sir?” He says it louder than Ceepak did. Wants to look like an even better soldier.

  “You and Malloy head north. Have your auxiliary officer maintain security here. Did you show the backhoe people what you found?”

  Santucci blinks. Tries to think. Come up with the right answer.

  “They, uh, unearthed it, so to speak. So, naturally, they were somewhat curious as to its contents.”

  “So you showed them?”

  “I wouldn't say we ‘showed’ them, sir.”

  Malloy tries to help out. “It was more like they watched us, you know, pull the skull out of the bowl and all.”

  The chief presses his clenched fist against his gassy gut again.

  “Okay. I'll call in more personnel. Cancel vacations. We can't have rumors running up and down the beach. We need to lock this down. Fast. Swear everybody inside the tent to secrecy. If they don't cooperate, we'll react accordingly. Jesus. Today's what?”

  Santucci answers fast because he wants more brownie points. “July 17, sir.”

  The chief shakes his head some more.

  “Well, at least we had half a summer of peace and quiet.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  We spent the next two hours racing up and down the island like we're one of the treasure-hunting tribes on Survivor, hoping we don't get voted off.

  Down south, we found our sixth skull. We did it without attracting any attention. The rich people whose beach we dug up weren't home. It's only Tuesday, so I figure they're up in the city working to pay the mortgage on their mansion.

  The skull was labeled ZEBUDAH. Probably not the name her parents gave her. Her decomposed head came complete with the whole kit. The Bible quote, the date, the Before and After headshots, the maps to guide us to the next location.

  And so we took off for Cherry Street, back up toward the center of the island. Our next X marked a spot near the public pier, close to The Rusty Scupper, where Aubrey Hamilton-the girl I might date sometime this century, when work slows down-waitresses.

  When we arrived on scene and marked off the paces indicated, we realized something: this seventh chest was buried underneath the dock.

  Fortunately, it was near a piling sunk into the dirt on shore, not permanently underwater. I didn't bring a change of clothes to work today. We dug up a big, mucky plastic box, some kind of watertight storage tub like they sell at Home Depot to stow tools in. It had a rubber gasket around its lip to seal the latched lid and keep the contents dry.

  All the evidence inside, another complete set, had survived high tides for over two decades.

  “Hey, Ceepak. What you guys doin’ down there?”

  Ceepak closes the box. We crabwalk out from under the dock.

  It's Gus Davis. This is the pier where our retired desk sergeant parks his boat.

  “Retrieving evidence.”

  Ceepak and I climb up to the dock.

  “What kind of freaking evidence you find down there? Barnacles?”

  Ceepak flashes a smile.

  “How are you, Gus?”

  “Can't complain. You still looking for that runaway from back in 1980-whatever?”

  “Not really,” says Ceepak. He doesn't add, “We already found her. Part of her, that is.” He just stands there, waits for Gus to say something.

  Gus tugs on the brim of his fishing cap. “Good,” he says. “You know why?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You ain't gonna find her down there!” Gus wheezes a laugh.

  I notice he's carrying a tackle box. I also notice that the tackle box looks a lot like the plastic container we just pulled out of the dirt underneath the dock. The one big difference? Ours is black, his is yellow.

  I glance at Ceepak. He nods. He sees it too.

  “That your tackle box?” Ceepak asks.

  “Yep. Kind of dinged up, hunh?”

  “I'm sure it's seen a great deal of use.”

  “Ain't that the truth? Used to keep it in my trunk, in case I ever caught a minute or two to hit the pier after my shift. Now, all I got is time, you know what I'm saying?”

  “You earned it, Gus,” says Ceepak.

  Gus adjusts his hat again. He gazes out at all the boats lined up along the pier. It's a little after two and the sun is starting its slow slink toward the west.

  “You know,” he says, “you have too much free time, you maybe think too much, too.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “That's what I've been doing. Thinking. Ruminating, so to speak. Ever since you two mamelukes came by my boat and started giving me the third degree….”

  “What's on your mind?” Ceepak steps sort of sideways so he's blocking the slanting sun and Gus's view of our muddy box.

  “That girl you were hassling me about. The runaway. What was her name again?”

  “Mary Guarneri.”

  “Yeah. I've been thinking that if this Mary Guarneri got herself in trouble or whatever, maybe it was her own fault.”

  “How so?”

  “You've been here, what? A year?”

  Ceepak nods.

  “You meet any of these girls? These runaways?”

  “A few.”

  “Then you know what I know. They're tramps. Whores. There. I said it. These girls come down here looking for a good time. You gotta figure one or two of 'em are gonna wind up partying with the wrong type of individual.”

  Ceepak's eyes narrow.

  Gus doesn't notice. “So all I'm saying is-don't come around here blaming me. This girl got in trouble? Chances are, trouble is exactly what she came looking for in the first place.”

  Ceepak stays silent.

  “Nice bumping into you guys,” says Gus. “See you 'round. I got fish to catch.”

  He shuffles up the dock, raises his fishing rod hand to signal goodbye.

  “Do you think?” I whisper.

  “It's a possibility,” says Ceepak. “Hopefully remote.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let's take this box back to the car. Catalog the evidence.”

  “Yeah.”

  We don't want to scare the people on the dining deck outside The Rusty Scupper. The food the Scupper serves is already scary enough.

  Secure behind the tinted windows of our patrol car, we re-open the box.

  It's Lisa DeFranco. Killed in the summer of 1983. When I look at her Before Polaroid, I can see the LISA earring sparkling in her left ear lobe.

  “It's the end of our line,” says Ceepak. He's been studying the map. “It leads us back to Oak Beach and the spot where the backhoe unearthed Mary Guarneri.”

  “So now where do we go?”

  “The Sonny Days Inn. We need to talk to Reverend Trumble again. ASAP.”

  The Ezekiel quote. The biblical names. The Polaroids of girls with a placard draped around their necks proclaiming their sin of whoredom. The kindly preacher man they might have confessed their sins to has to be a prime suspect.

  “What about the surgeon? The jerk from Princeton. He used to come here back in the 1980s.”

  “He's on the list, too. As is your bartender friend. I believe he was in town during the 1980s as well.”

  “Yeah.”

  In my mind, I see Ralph slicing and dicing lime wedges like the guy in the Ginzu commercials. He does it with a couple quick flicks of his wrist.

  “Let's roll,” I say, juiced to be doing something besides digging up buried skulls all over the island. As soon as I slap the transmission into drive, the radio crackles with static.

  “Ceepak? Come in. Over.”

  It's the chief.

  Ceepak reaches for the radio mike mounted on the dash.

  “This is Ceepak. Over.”

  “We need you on the North End. Now. Meet me at the pier behind the former location of The Palace
Hotel. Copy?”

  “10-4.” Ceepak gestures for me to make the appropriate course correction. I hang a U-turn in the middle of Bayside Boulevard. Burn a little rubber.

  Ceepak grabs an overhead grip and steadies himself so he can continue his chat with the chief.

  “What's the situation, sir?”

  “Santucci and Malloy worked the North End. Dug up six more boxes. Followed the trail. Found the final hole.”

  “Come again?”

  “We found the final hole. It was empty. Except for a photograph tucked inside a plastic sheet protector.”

  “A photograph?”

  “Yeah. The Before shot. You were right, Ceepak. This guy's getting ready to kill again. He's already picked out his next victim.”

  “Do you recognize her?”

  “No. Doesn't look to be a local.”

  Ceepak waits a beat, stares out the front window. Then he brings the microphone back up to his mouth.

  “Is the photograph dated, sir?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “It's today.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  We're speeding up Ocean Avenue, flashers topside twirling.

  I'm not using the siren. Don't really need to. Folks see all those police lights in their rearview mirror, they usually move out of my way.

  One of Ceepak's cell phones blurts out an odd ring tone. A synthesized samba. Ceepak pulls the phone from its plastic holster, checks the caller ID, flips it open.

  “Hello?”

  Must be his personal line. He never says “Hello” when fielding official calls. He says “Ceepak” or “Go.” Brusque walkie-talkie stuff like that.

  “We're just running around the island,” he says. “Looks like it could be another long night.”

  He's right. If the killer really wants to slay his next victim today, he's only got ten hours left to do it. Coincidentally, we've only got ten hours left to stop him. Even if the chief decides it's finally okay to call in the FBI, no way will they get here in time to do us much good.

  “I'd appreciate it,” says Ceepak. “So would he. Thank you.”

  I figure it's Rita.