Mad Mouse js-2

by Chris Grabenstein

  I start the long walk up the newly poured driveway. Dr. McDaniels and her crew run yellow yarn through a hole in the sports car's windshield. One CSI guy has a plastic protractor, like we had in seventh grade geometry class, even though I can't remember what we did with them. Something about angles. Triangles. Now he's pointing across the street and McDaniels is nodding her head. I look over my shoulder. There's another huge house on the other side of Oak Street with a Realtor's “For Rent” sign posted in the front yard beyond the white PVC picket fence. That house also has three stories, and a garage underneath. There are decks on all three floors and another one of those widow's walks up on the roof.

  Deer stands.

  It's like the architects design these beach houses for hunters and snipers. Give them lots of levels to work with. You can prop your rifle on any of the porch railings and nail your neighbor across the way if his dog barks too much.

  Some kids hang out in the street to watch the crime scene action. Junior looky-lous. There's a crowd of them in bathing suits, wrapped up in beach towels. All ages, six to twenty-six. They dragged their boogie boards up from the beach and bumped into cop cars and an ambulance and wondered what all the excitement was about.

  Word must be spreading. Behind the kids, I start seeing adults in swimsuits, moms with gauzy flowered sarongs wrapped around their bottoms. The grownups came up to rubberneck because this is better than anything down on the beach or over at the boardwalk; this is something to talk about when people at the office ask you what you did on your summer vacation.

  “He's dead,” Ceepak whispers when I reach the carport.

  I look into the driver seat.

  Mook's head has fallen backwards. There's a bloody bullet hole in his right shoulder. Another in the center of his forehead. His cell phone lies open in his lap, like he dropped it when the second shot hit him in the skull. He had his convertible top down, made himself an easier target. Behind Mook, there are gray spongy chunks spattered across folded roof fabric, blood is splashed on the roll bar. I think the second shot made his brain explode.

  My stomach lurches. I've never seen a dead person my own age before, never someone I used to hang out with, someone who used to be my friend back when we spent all day on the beach doing nothing. Even if I wanted to kill him, myself, yesterday.

  “You okay, Danny?”

  I swallow hard. I haven't eaten much today. There's nothing in my stomach so maybe nothing will come up. I let the wave of nausea roll over me and wash away. This job is teaching me a whole new kind of surfing.

  I look at Mook's face. His lips are purple.

  “Jesus. How long has he been dead?”

  “Approximately fifty-two minutes,” McDaniels says. “The call came in at twelve-oh-eight. He had already sustained the shoulder shot at that time, precipitating his call.”

  These professional people who poke around dead bodies all day long? They use words like “sustained” and “precipitating” to give them what they call “emotional distance.” I need to learn how to do that trick. Need to learn it quick.

  “He was able to speed dial nine-one-one with his thumb,” she continues. “When he brought the phone up to his ear, he alerted the shooter that the first shot wasn't fatal. ‘He fucking shot me,’ the victim stated, and the shooter fired a second round. Given the nature of the second shot, the cranial impact, the bullet path entering the frontal cortex, exiting the striate, I suspect death was instantaneous.”

  He fucking shot me. The famous last words of Harley Mook, the class clown who always had to get in the last word. He fucking shot me. Not your best line, Mook. In fact, it's not funny at all. Nobody here is laughing.

  “Why are his lips so purple?” I am totally fixated on the purple lips. Maybe it's my own emotional distancing technique, dwell on the weirdest thing in the scene. Don't look at the whole bloody picture, just the lips. I know lips turn blue when you die from lack of oxygen. But purple?

  “Grape soda,” Ceepak says and points to the car's cup holder.

  Mook has a twenty-four-ounce bottle of Fanta grape squeezed into it. Grape soda. Purple lips. Purple tongue. Mook must've been sitting here, sipping his favorite summertime soda, waiting for Wheezer to show up. Now that I see the bottle, I realize the whole car reeks of gumball grape, the mouth-puckering kind of grape you only taste in grape soda and grape gum, never in any real grapes they sell at the grocery store. Mook loved his artificially flavored grape soda. Fanta. Nehi. Welch's. Some summers, he was the only one on the whole beach drinking the stuff.

  “We think the shooter positioned himself over there.” Ceepak gestures with a quick nod to the house across the street. He's not pointing, not chopping the air with his arm, because he knows several dozen civilians are currently watching our every move.

  “We need to secure the scene,” McDaniels says to her crew. “Come on, guys. Let's lock it down.”

  The CSI team trots across the street.

  Dr. McDaniels points at the corners of the lot, and her two guys start stringing POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape all around the house.

  Kiger and Malloy hustle up Oak Street to knock on doors, canvass for witnesses.

  Ceepak moves around the car, searching for clues. He peers into the cockpit of the convertible. I try not to look at Mook, who's frozen in place like he's leaning back to snore through a real long nap but kept his eyes wide open.

  Ceepak freezes. He just saw something, I can tell.

  “Dr. McDaniels?” He shouts across the street.

  She looks over.

  Ceepak waves for her to come back over to our side of the street. She steps into the street. He digs into his cargo pockets to pull out a pair of forceps.

  “What is it?” McDaniels is a little winded. I think she never usually moves that quickly.

  “Not sure.”

  Ceepak leans into the car. The center console seems to be his target. There are two air-conditioning vents up top, the climate-control knobs below those, a CD slot under that.

  “It's cardboard.”

  I see it now. A straight edge of gray sticking out like somebody jammed in a card where the CDs usually go.

  “Gentle,” McDaniels says.

  “Roger that.”

  Ceepak clips the edge with his forceps and slowly, carefully tugs out the piece of cardboard.

  It's another trading card. The man in purple. Another still frame from that movie. The Phantom.

  “Guess they're cheaper by the dozen,” McDaniels cracks.

  Ceepak turns the card over.

  “Fascinating.”

  “Something on the back?” McDaniels reaches into her cargo shorts, pulls out her reading glasses.

  “Yes, ma'am. He left us a note.”

  “What's it say?”

  “‘You'll never remember. I'll never forget.’ ”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Square one.

  I figure that's where we basically are. Back at the starting line, inside one of those tiny wooden boxes they squeeze the horses into at the Kentucky Derby.

  We're nowhere.

  Maybe Mook's ARMY buddy turned on him. Maybe he was done having fun when they wounded Katie, but maybe his ARMY buddy couldn't stop. Maybe Rick, I remember that was his name, maybe Rick is a killing machine without an “off” switch.

  “Richard Westerfield,” Ceepak says. His friends in the army just faxed us a list of discharged snipers known to have recently returned to college. “Pfc. Westerfield never saw action. He was honorably discharged before the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

  So Mook's college buddy learned all this sniper stuff but never got to use it, never hunted a human. Maybe, after shooting at us a couple of times and missing, he wanted more, wanted to see the pink mist when his bullet made a skull explode. Wanted to go for the kill when Mook wanted to move on to the next joke. Maybe Richard Wester-field took out party pooper Harley Mook.

  That's my best guess right now.

  Ceepak and I sit in the
front seats of the Explorer.

  He's on his cell phone to someone back at the house.

  “You have Westerfield's plate number?”

  Ceepak nods so I guess they do.

  “Able Baker four-nine-four Charlie seven. Got it.” Ceepak writes the number in his little spiral notebook. “Excellent. Thanks, Denise.” It's Diego. The woman puts in a full day. “This will help. Have Gus issue an APB. Suspect has been seen in the area but could be mobile, could be …” he looks at his watch, does some mental math, “anywhere in a radius of a hundred and fifty miles from our current position. Right. Thanks.”

  Ceepak closes up his cell and clips it back on his utility belt. He has so much gear dangling off that thing he could pass as a plumber.

  “You think it's Mook's new buddy?”

  “It's one possibility.”

  “Right.”

  When we're working a case, all things are possible with Ceepak until they have been proven otherwise. Or something like that. I forget sometimes, especially when people are shooting at my friends and me.

  “This drug dealer Wheezer? What do we know about him?”

  “Not much. Just what Mook told me.”

  Ceepak waits.

  “Focus, Danny.”

  I try. But my eyes and mind drift over to the small crowd of civilians clustered around Chief Buzz Baines and Mayor Sinclair. The bosses have arrived on Oak Street and are giving the curious citizens some sort of impromptu press conference. They're quite the dynamic duo: the tall, handsome police chief and the sandy-haired, boyish mayor. They're smiling, then frowning, then smiling again, then shaking their heads in dismay, telling everybody that Mook's murder was “the tragic consequence” of a “drug deal gone bad.” The chief says the good people of Sea Haven have nothing to fear, unless, of course, they have plans to purchase illegal narcotics in the near future.

  The crowd chuckles.

  I hear Baines wind up: “Unfortunately, this is where underage drinking ultimately leads. There's an express lane that takes teenagers from beer blasts on the beach to marijuana binges to crack houses and heroin addiction. That express lane dead-ends right here.” He hangs his head like a graveside preacher, and everybody knows what he means: Harley Mook got shot in a carport by drug thugs because he bought beer with a fake ID when he was fifteen.

  Buzz Baines has done it again. He's linked Mook's murder to his favorite boogeyman-underage drinking.

  “Danny?” Ceepak must sense that I'm floating along like a stringy clump of seaweed. “Wheezer?”

  I need to focus. Work the evidence. Chief Baines can tell the people out in the street anything he wants. It's up to us to find out the truth.

  “Yeah. Okay. What Mook said was that Wheezer was a guy ‘from back in the day.’ ”

  “A school friend?”

  “I don't know. He wasn't specific. Just ‘back in the day.’ ”

  “Go on.”

  “Mook said he never really liked the guy but that Wheezer had this primo ganga. That's-”

  “Marijuana. Was Wheezer Mook's usual dealer?”

  “I doubt it. But I really don't know. Mook was just in town for a week or two. Summer break from grad school. He was here having fun, seeing old friends. Wheezer sounded like someone Mook accidentally reconnected with, or bumped into at a bar. Not like a guy he went looking for. He also said he never ‘pictured the dude for a dealer.’ ”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah. Said Wheezer was more like a loser.”

  “Interesting. Do you remember this Wheezer?”

  “No.”

  Ceepak nods. “He didn't think you would.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The note.”

  You'll never remember, I'll never forget.

  If only I hadn't done so much underage drinking. All that beer, Boone's Farm and those Icees laced with Bacardi, which is how we used to enjoy rum and Coke without buying cocktail glasses or ice.

  “You think he left that note for me?”

  “Yes, Danny, I do.” Ceepak fixes me with an odd look. “I think he intended the note to be read by you and your friends from, as you say, ‘back in the day.’ The beach crew from nineteen ninety-six.”

  “The six targets.”

  “Five, Danny. Five.”

  Yeah. Mook was just scratched off the list. One down, five to go. Unless, of course, Katie doesn't pull through. Then, there's only four little Indians left.

  “Don't worry, Danny. We'll nail the guy.”

  “Yeah.”

  The chief and mayor march over to our car. The crowd has now dispersed. I guess they bought the chief's act. Now that he's not on, I can see Baines looks worried. Angry. I wouldn't want to be his mustache right now. He's in a plucking mood.

  Ceepak and I climb out of the car. We stand in front of the chief.

  “Noon tomorrow,” Baines says in this real tight whisper. “If you don't catch this kook, we're calling the other thing off.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ceepak says.

  “Call it off?” Mayor Sinclair pushes his Ray-Bans up his nose. “We can't just ‘call it off,’ Buzz-”

  Baines cuts the mayor off in midbabble. “Noon tomorrow, John. That's it. Catch this creep, or we tell everybody to go home. We shut this island down.”

  Good for Chief Baines. He'd rather lose his big new job than see anybody else lose a life.

  “Buzz?” Mayor Sinclair doesn't give up easy. “Come on. Don't be rash. What about MTV? Kids all across America are counting on us! This is their beach party, too! And what about Bruno Mazzilli? He just unloaded ten tons of raw pork ribs off a refrigerated truck down by the boardwalk. You ever smell what happens to pork after it sits in the sun? It's worse than fish, Buzz. Worse than fish!”

  Baines turns his back on the mayor and walks away.

  “Buzz? Hold up. Wait a second.” Sinclair chases the chief up the street.

  The chief climbs into his SUV and slams its heavy black door in the mayor's face. Sinclair, being a politician, is used to people slamming doors in his face. He's like one of those Jehovah's Witness ladies with the free magazines. He doesn't take it personally, he just runs over to his own car, hops in, and races after the chief so he'll be poised and ready to knock on his door again wherever the chief stops.

  “What's our situation?” Dr. McDaniels comes over for an update.

  “We have a deadline,” Ceepak says.

  “Interesting choice of words.”

  “Noon tomorrow.”

  “Fine.”

  “You found something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Shell casings?”

  “No. Our shooter is still quite tidy. However, he needs to watch where he walks. There was an oil stain on the garage floor across the street.”

  “He stepped in it?”

  “You can say that again. Size twelve. Converse All-Stars. Looks like he went for a little walk.”

  “Where to?”

  “Around the front of the vehicle, over to the passenger side. Reached the rear tires, stopped, turned around, walked back to the driver-side door.”

  “You think he had a flat rear tire?” Ceepak asks.

  “One possibility.”

  “We should alert the service stations.”

  “Yep. You really should.” McDaniels smiles happily. This could qualify as a break. If the sniper had tire trouble, he might've gone to a gas station after shooting Mook. We might be able to track this guy down, maybe even before noon tomorrow.

  Ceepak radios Gus Davis back at the house and tells the desk sergeant to coordinate the service station sweep. Phone calls from police headquarters start going out the second Ceepak signs off. He turns to McDaniels, eager for more.

  “Any tire tracks?”

  “Oh, yeah. Whoever owns that house? They must have one hell of a leaky Mercedes. Puddles everywhere. Oil. Transmission fluid. We picked up several tire tread patterns that look similar.”

  Ceepak nods. “The homeowner
's vehicle.”

  “Right. And one set that doesn't match any of the others. Very fresh.”

  “Minivan?”

  “That'd be my first guess. Need to run it by the lab. But they look like all-season radials. Maybe Bridgestone BT70s, which are pretty common on minivans.”

  “You know your treads,” I say.

  McDaniels shrugs off the compliment. “American, Japanese, German, and Italian. I need to bone up on my Chinese. Anyhow, I'd bet serious money it's our minivan.”

  I'm thinking about Rick again, the trained sharpshooter with the white van.

  “I'll ride to the morgue with the body,” McDaniels says, seeing the EMTs zip Mook up inside a black vinyl bag. “See if the late Mr. Mook can tell us anything else. You boys heading back to the house?”

  “Negative,” Ceepak says. “Danny and I will remain in the field. We need to talk to some people. Fast. We have less than twenty-four hours now to grab our shooter. The clock is ticking.”

  “Okay.” She waves to her team across the street. McDaniels climbs into the back of the ambulance with Mook's body bag. When she thinks no one is looking, I see her make a sign of the cross and say a quick prayer.

  The ambulance and CSI car pull away from the scene. It looks like a very small funeral.

  Adam Kiger, one of the cops who went up the street to hunt for witnesses, jogs down toward us.

  “Ceepak?” he says. “I think we found somebody.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  If Kiger and Malloy have found a witness to go with our foot and tire prints, things are definitely starting to look up. Which is good. We need to catch our killer or else summer ends early this year in Sea Haven and may never reopen again.

  Mark Malloy, another of our guys, is about ten yards behind Kiger. He walks alongside this very tan thirtysomething guy in khaki shorts and a King Putt T-shirt. King Putt is one of the many miniature golf courses on the island. They have the best logo: a pharaoh who looks pretty authentic until you see the putter in his hands where the staff of Ra should be.