Free Fall

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Whoa, wait a second, cowboy. It’s summer. Business is booming. You can’t come in here and shut down my back office operations.”

  “Yes, sir. We can. Immediately after Judge Rasmussen signs the search documents, which I anticipate happening within the hour.”

  The mayor turns to Rosen.

  “David?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Did you do this thing the detectives say you did?”

  Sweat is dribbling down David’s brow. “Of course not.”

  “We’ll also need the complete pay records for one Bartholomew Smith,” says Ceepak.

  “Who?” asks the mayor.

  Ceepak doesn’t answer.

  So the mayor turns to Rosen. “David?”

  “Short-timer, sir. Worked here in May. A little bit of June. Had that rodent infestation problem.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Cap’n Scrubby’s, I think. Could’ve been one of the ice cream parlors, though …”

  Panic fills the mayor’s eyes. The last thing he wants is for rumors to start spreading around town about what those brown lumps really are in his Moosetracks ice cream.

  “David, I’m wondering if, perhaps, you should take the rest of the day off. Maybe take a few personal days as well—until this police matter blows over …”

  “I promise you, sir, what these detectives are saying …”

  “Paid personal days, David. Okay? Go home. Spend some time with Little Arnie and Judith. Find yourself a good lawyer.”

  61

  WE FOLLOW DAVID ROSEN AS HE DRIVES HOME TO TUNA Street.

  On the ride, Ceepak advises Mrs. Rence, our dispatcher, to pull the cops keeping an eye on Christine Lemonopolous and Michael Rosen off their assignments.

  “However,” he adds, “we need to continue the twenty-four-hour surveillance detail outside 315 Tuna Street. David and Judith Rosen’s home.”

  “Will do,” says Mrs. Rence over the radio.

  “Can you put me through to Chief Rossi?”

  Ceepak and the Chief hammer out the details needed to get the legal paperwork moving through the system—warrants that will allow us to toss the headquarters of Sinclair Enterprises and confiscate all their hard drives.

  It’s a little after two in the afternoon when we reach the Rosen residence on Tuna Street.

  Santucci and his partner Cath Hoffner see us pull into the driveway behind David’s vehicle. The two uniforms emerge from their patrol car, most likely to find out what’s up. As David climbs out of his Subaru, he sees the two officers out in the street, adjusting their gun belts.

  “Why have those two police officers been parked there all day?” he asks.

  “It’s part of our new neighborhood watch program,” I crack. “Every day, we pick one house in a neighborhood and watch it. Today is your lucky day.”

  “What? You think I’m some kind of flight risk?”

  “Are you?” asks Ceepak.

  “Of course not. I didn’t do anything, why would I run away?”

  “Look,” I say. “We know Michael and your wife backed you into a corner. That Michael told you …”

  He ignores me. Turns to Ceepak. “Am I under arrest?”

  “No, sir. Not yet.”

  “Then get off of my property.”

  “Technically, sir, this is not your property. You are a renter and therefore …”

  “Come back when you have an arrest warrant.”

  “Yes, sir. We will. We’ll also come back when we have a search warrant.”

  “You’re going to search my home, too?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Several times,” I add. “If we have to.”

  David storms around the side of the house and makes his way to that back staircase.

  Ceepak waits until he hears David’s footfalls climbing the steps. Then we stroll into the street to have a word with Santucci and Hoffner.

  “Sal?” says Ceepak.

  “Sir?”

  “We have reason to believe that Mr. David Rosen murdered his father.”

  “I thought it was the wife,” says Cath Hoffner, his partner. “She’s such a witch, you know?”

  I nod. Surprisingly, so does Ceepak.

  “Currently,” he adds, “the husband, David Rosen is our primary suspect in what might have been a conspiracy to commit murder. However, we need to gather more evidence. Right now, everything we have is solid but highly circumstantial. We need to find a more direct link.”

  “Don’t worry,” says Santucci. “While you guys are digging up your direct links and whatnot, Hoffner and me won’t let the guy out of our sight.”

  “Appreciate it. We’re working up a twenty-four/seven duty detail that should have your relief out here by nineteen hundred hours.”

  “Cool. You think the Chief could maybe send somebody out with sandwiches for us so we don’t have to desert our post? Maybe a couple cold drinks?”

  “We’ll make it happen,” says Ceepak.

  I’m about to reach for my radio and put in the food and drink request when my cell phone starts chirping.

  Ceepak nods his permission for me to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  “Danny?” It’s Becca. “Sorry to bother you at work …”

  “What’s up?”

  “Well, right after the cop car you guys had staking out my parking lot pulled away, Christine took off.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “Yeah. Down to Roxbury Drive. Isn’t that where this whole mess got started?”

  Becca’s right.

  102 Roxbury Drive is Shona Oppenheimer’s address.

  62

  I TELL CEEPAK WHAT’S UP.

  “Let’s roll,” he says, practically ripping a car door off its hinges.

  “Shouldn’t we be chasing down evidence against David?” I say as we blast off in reverse, slam into drive, and squeal wheels up Tuna Street.

  “We are in a holding pattern until the various search warrants come down. We can spare thirty minutes to prevent Ms. Lemonopolous from doing something foolish that could haunt her for the rest of her life.”

  I’m remembering what Christine told me.

  How she hates when mean people push other people around. “They shouldn’t get away with the horrible stuff they do. Someone has to stop them.”

  Has she decided to go vigilante on us and administer a little swift and righteous justice on Shona Oppenheimer?

  With Ceepak at the wheel, we race down the length of the island in about twelve minutes. The smoky black Taurus’s interior no longer has that New Car scent. It smells more like a fried fan belt.

  We reach Beach Crest Heights.

  My high school buddy Kurt Steilberger is once again on clipboard duty inside the guardhouse.

  Ceepak fishtails to a stop with the nose of our vehicle maybe one inch away from his gate. I pop out of the passenger side door, so Kurt can see something besides smoky black glass, strobing lights, and shiny black sheet metal.

  “Kurt?”

  “Oh. Hey, Danny. Cool car.”

  “Did you just let a Volkswagen in?”

  “Yeah. Couple minutes ago.”

  “Open the gate!” I shout.

  “What’s up?”

  “Open. The. Gate!”

  Ceepak gooses the gas pedal. The engine roars. The gate still doesn’t budge.

  It’s like Kurt can’t find the button.

  Finally, as I slip back into my seat, the gate arm creeps skyward. When Ceepak knows he has half an inch clearance, we blast off again.

  “Hang left,” I say. “One-oh-two is down the block.”

  We shoot up the street.

  Christine’s VW is parked in the driveway outside the three-story mansion.

  The front door to the house is wide open.

  We’re up and out of the car just in time to hear Shona Oppenheimer screaming at Christine.

  “Get the hell out of here!”

  “B-b-bu
t …”

  “Leave or I’ll call the police.”

  Ceepak takes that as his cue.

  “Police!” he shouts.

  Christine backs out the door.

  She has something clutched in her left hand.

  It glints in the sun.

  “Christine?” I holler.

  She whirls around.

  I see what’s in her hand: A slim, foil-wrapped box.

  Shona Oppenheimer comes out on the porch.

  “Arrest this woman!” she snarls. “She’s trespassing. She should be …”

  And then she recognizes me.

  “Oh. It’s you.”

  “Ma’am?” says Ceepak, striding up the walkway to the front steps. “What seems to be the problem?”

  Shona waggles a disgusted hand at Christine. “This one. She has the nerve to invade my privacy …”

  “It’s Samuel’s birthday,” says Christine.

  “So?” says Shona.

  “I didn’t want him to think I’d forgotten.”

  “Well, we’d all rather you did. You are not welcome here, Christine. And if you keep harassing me and my family, I will have another Restraining Order issued against you and this time it’ll stick!”

  Christine tries to hand the shiny package to Shona. “Will you at least give this to Samuel?”

  “Hell, no. It’s probably poison. Like the stuff you gave to Arnold Rosen.”

  “Actually,” says Ceepak, climbing up the steps to put his big body between Shona and Christine, “we currently suspect that your brother-in-law, David, was the one who poisoned Dr. Rosen.”

  “I know. Judith called me. Are all the cops in this town as crazy as you two?”

  “No,” I say, hiking up the steps to stand beside Ceepak. “We’re special.”

  I take Christine by the elbow and give her a police escort down to her parked vehicle.

  “You can drop your gift off with Kurt in the guardhouse,” I whisper. “He’ll make sure it gets delivered.”

  “It’s a game Samuel wanted. For his X-box.”

  “Awesome.”

  I hold open the door to Christine’s ride.

  “David killed his father?” she says after she slides in behind the wheel.

  “Yeah. We think so.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “That it is.”

  While the two of us take a moment to ponder the monstrosity of what David Rosen did, up on the porch, I can hear poor Ceepak asking Shona Oppenheimer if she “wants to press trespassing charges.”

  “I’m thinking about it!”

  “Then,” Ceepak says, “you should know, since your property is not marked, fenced in, or enclosed and I observe no notice against trespassing being otherwise given …”

  Ceepak. I love when he sticks it to people and they don’t even know he’s telling them to sit on it and rotate.

  “Go back to Becca’s,” I suggest to Christine. “Ceepak and I have a bunch of loose ends to tie up.”

  “I have one more gift to deliver.”

  “For who?”

  “Ceepak’s mom. I know she’s from Ohio and Pudgy’s Fudgery does chocolate Buckeyes. There’s peanut butter in the middle …”

  “Save me one,” I say.

  She smiles. “I will.”

  I back Ceepak’s ride out of the driveway so Christine can pull out, too.

  As I watch her putter away in the rearview mirror, my cell phone rings.

  “Hello?”

  “Um, officer Boyle?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is Arnie Rosen.”

  “Hey, Arnie. Everything okay?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay. Officer Santucci is out front …”

  “I know. But they snuck out the back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My dad and that old guy who runs the Free Fall. He’s helping Dad run away.”

  63

  “I GUESS I SHOULD’VE CALLED SOONER,” SAYS ARNIE.“BUT that old guy, he’s scary.”

  Yeah. Tell me about it.

  That old guy is, of course, Joe “Six Pack” Ceepak.

  “He said, ‘Boy, you need to be a man. Don’t call the cops. I heard what people are saying about your Pops. Him and me need to make a run for the border.’ And then, my mother, she said, ‘You heard him, Arnold. Not a word about this to anybody.’ So, it took me like ten minutes to figure out what I should do. Call you.”

  Arnie is whispering all this. Probably doesn’t want his mother to know that he did the right thing. He called the cops.

  “You’re in your room?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. Lock the door. Don’t open it till you know for sure that Officer Santucci or his partner, a nice lady named Cath Hoffner, are on the other side. Can you do that for me, Arnie?”

  “Yeah. I guess. But Mister Santucci doesn’t even know Dad is gone because he didn’t see them sneak out. See, he’s out front and they cut through the backyard to our back-door neighbor’s yard and then they ran up their driveway to Swordfish Street.”

  “You saw all this, Arnie?”

  “Yeah. A while ago, I heard Mom being all sweet with Dad so, you know, I thought everything was all better. I went into the living room. Mom was hugging Dad but the Free Fall guy was in there, too.”

  “What did the Free Fall guy say?”

  “That they’d fry Dad in the electric chair for killing his father.”

  Great. Mr. Ceepak couldn’t be content with scarring his own son for life, now he’s got to give young Arnold Rosen nightmares, too?

  “I watched them run away from out on the deck.”

  “And then what?”

  “My mother told me to get my butt in the house. That I should be proud of my father for finally doing what needed to be done.”

  I hear Arnie sob a little.

  “Did my dad really kill my grandfather?”

  I’m not Ceepak so I go ahead and lie a little. “We’re not sure about that, Arnie. So, do me a favor, and stay in your room, like I said. I’m going to call Officer Santucci. He or his partner, they’re going to take you and your mom to the police station.”

  “Why?”

  “You can help us protect your dad better at the police station, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Hang tight.”

  “Okay. Oh, Mr. Boyle?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think the Free Fall guy has a gun.”

  “Did you see a weapon?”

  “No, but he told Dad he didn’t have to worry about the cops and tapped his jacket, like that tough guy does in the Mafia 2 video game.”

  “Okay. Thanks for that. That’s very important.”

  “Officer Boyle?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t let that creepy old guy shoot you. I think he’s kind of crazy.”

  “Don’t worry, Arnie. I’m very good with my gun. Check out Urban Termination II the next time you’re at Sunnyside Playland. You’ll see my initials in all three top scorer slots.”

  “Cool.”

  “Stay in your room. Wait for Santucci or Hoffner.”

  “Right.”

  We hang up.

  I’m up and out of the Batmobile in a flash and waving my arms over my head like a lunatic at Ceepak who is still on the porch schooling Shona Oppenheimer on the burden of proof necessary to prove Defiant Trespass in the State of New Jersey.

  “Ceepak?” Yes, I am shouting.

  He whips around. Sees the frantic look in my eyes.

  “Good day, Mrs. Oppenheimer,” he says on the run. “If you have any further complaints or suggestions, please bring them to Police Headquarters on Cherry Street at your earliest convenience.”

  He dashes across the lawn, joins me in the street.

  “What’s up?”

  “Your father. He just sprung David Rosen.”

  “Come again?”

  “Little Arnie called. Said the old guy who run
s the Free Fall snuck into their house and told his father that they needed to make a run for the border.”

  “And David fled?”

  “Yeah. Ten minutes ago. Guess he admitted he’s guilty with his feet.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Santucci and Hoffner didn’t see the jailbreak because your dad took David out the back door and cut through the house behind them’s lawn. Took him over to Swordfish Street.”

  “Do we know what sort of vehicle my father is currently driving?”

  “No,” I say.

  Then I remember that night at Neptune’s Nog, the package store.

  “Wait. Dinged up Ford F-150. Maybe ten, twelve years old. Ohio license plates.”

  Ceepak raises his quizzical eyebrow.

  “We bumped into each other at the beer store. Remember?”

  Ceepak reaches into the car to grab the radio mic.

  And my phone rings again.

  Ceepak holds on. Waits to hear who is calling me. Looks like he thinks it might be Arnie with an update.

  It is.

  “They’re heading toward the pier!”

  “Arnie? Take it easy. How can you know that?”

  “Dad has an iPhone and I have the ‘Find My iPhone’ app on my computer. I punched in his number. It’s tracking them. They were in the parking lot near Pier Two; now they’re heading out over the ocean. If I switch to satellite, I can tell you what they’re near.”

  Arnie goes silent.

  “Arnie?”

  “Yeah. They’ve stopped. Right in front of the Mad Mouse roller coaster. I think that crazy old guy took Dad back to the Free Fall!”

  “Okay. I’m going to call Officer Santucci right now.”

  “You won’t hurt my dad, will you? When you catch them?”

  “No, Arnie. I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  Now the radio starts chattering.

  “I’ve got to run.”

  “Okay.”

  I end the call with Arnie.

  “All available units.”

  It’s not the dispatcher. It’s Chief Rossi. This is not a good sign.

  “Pier Two. Reports of a gunshot. Repeat. Reports of a gunshot and potential hostage situation. All available units please respond. Initiate lockdown protocols.”

  Guess Little Arnie was right.

  Mr. Ceepak has a gun.

  64

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, WHEN WE SCREAM INTO THE MUNICIPAL parking lot fronting Pier Two, we enter bedlam.