Free Fall

by Chris Grabenstein

  So now I’m feeling sorry for David Rosen even though I know he murdered his father. Sitting up there at 140 feet, watching the sun go down, maybe picking up a snatch or two of the drunken crazy talk down below. He’s probably wishing he had another cyanide pill.

  I hear several sirens whining their way closer.

  “That’s them,” reports Jack Getze, our radioman. “The Chief, the mayor, paramedics, dozen more uniforms …”

  The sirens cut out.

  I hear an army of booted feet charging up the boardwalk.

  I take half a second to wipe the sweat off my brow.

  It’s almost time for the first-ever Ceepak family reunion, right here in sunny, funderful Sea Haven. Should be special.

  There might even be fireworks.

  67

  “WHERE ARE WE, BOYLE?” ASKS CHIEF ROY ROSSI.

  The way he says it, I know I can’t crack back with “inside a pizza joint on the boardwalk, sir.”

  So I give him the short version of what’s been going down—including doing our best to stop a drunken bum from bopping a button that’ll send David Rosen hurtling to his death.

  “I’ve heard good things about your shooting,” the Chief continues. “Can you handle this Sniper Weapon System if need be?”

  “I could try.”

  “Try?” This from Mayor Sinclair. “What kind of amateur operation are you running here, Chief Rossi?”

  The Chief ignores the honorable jerk.

  I take my eyes off Mr. Ceepak for two seconds. Do a quick visual sweep of the room. I see the Chief, the mayor, and maybe twelve other cops plus a couple paramedics from the rescue squad. The medics brought their big first-aid kit. And a body board with neck restraints.

  But if David Rosen goes flying, none of their gear will do him any good. We’re gonna need a spatula.

  All the uniforms have their weapons out and up, mirroring my stance, elbows on the countertop to steady their two-handed grips on their guns. It’s like we’ve set up a reverse shooting gallery at the front of the walk-up pizza stand. Instead of a dozen guns aiming into a booth, we’re all aiming out of one at a clown whose balloon definitely needs popping.

  “You have seventeen minutes, Johnny,” snarls drunken Joe. “Seventeen minutes till I show everybody how that little girl up in Michigan died when she flew out of her seat on this very same ride.”

  “Shut him up,” barks Mayor Sinclair. “What he’s saying isn’t true. This is not the same ride. It has been completely refurbished.”

  “Be careful, everyone. Joe is a very angry drunk.”

  I take my eyes off the target again. Glance over my shoulder.

  Adele Ceepak is in the pizzeria. Christine is with her. Officer Jen Forbus escorts the two of them up to the counter.

  “You okay, Danny?” asks Christine in a nervous whisper.

  “Hanging in.”

  “Who the hell are all those people over there?” snarls Joe Ceepak, who must’ve seen movement in the shadows.

  “Not knowing, can’t say,” replies Ceepak, who is still standing like a brick wall halfway between the pizza place and the StratosFEAR control shack.

  “Is he drinking vodka?” asks Mrs. Ceepak.

  One of our guys with binoculars zooms in. “Clear bottle poking out of the bag. Could be gin or rum.”

  “No, it’s vodka,” says Mrs. Ceepak. “He used to keep a bottle in the freezer. Slurp it down like it was maple syrup. How can I help here?”

  “He wants one million dollars,” I say.

  “Then he should try playing the lottery.”

  Believe it or not, just about everybody chuckles a little when she says that.

  “We need to buy some more time,” explains the Chief. “A State Police SWAT team is on its way.”

  “Okay,” says Adele. “Should I go out there and promise him whatever he wants?”

  “No.” This from Christine. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Not as dangerous as sitting up there in David Rosen’s shoes,” says Mrs. Ceepak. “And don’t worry, hon. Johnny will watch out for me. He always has. My son is a very brave and courageous young man.”

  I’m thinking he got a lot of that from his mom.

  Chief Rossi squeezes the button on the battery-powered bullhorn he probably borrowed from Dylan Murray down in the parking lot.

  “Mr. Ceepak? This is Chief Rossi, SHPD. Your ex-wife has arrived. She would like to come out and discuss your financial demands.”

  “Hang on,” says Ceepak, inching backward. “Danny?”

  “Locked and loaded.”

  “Back-up?”

  “Twelve. The target has been acquired.”

  “That’ll work.” Ceepak moves a step closer to his father. “Sir? As you just heard, you ex-wife is willing to discuss your request.”

  “Good. Go get her. Hurry. We’re down to twelve minutes.”

  “If you make a move toward the control panel …”

  “Yeah, yeah. I heard. Your buddy Boyle will blow my brains out. Now hustle, jarhead.”

  Ceepak hurries into the pizza parlor.

  “Good of you to be here,” he says to his mother. “I’m sorry we had to drag you into this …”

  “Come on, John. Time’s a-wasting.”

  “We need another fifteen, twenty minutes,” says the Chief, getting real-time updates from the SWAT team on his earpiece.

  “We’ll try to buy it for you. You ready, Mom?”

  “Are you kidding? I was born ready.”

  “Mrs. Ceepak?” says Christine.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Be careful out there.”

  “Oh, I plan on it. And when this is all over, I want you and Danny to come over to my place for a cookout. Just the two of you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Stay behind me at all times,” Ceepak says to his mother.

  “Even when I’m talking to Joe?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’d like to look him in the eye, give him a piece of my mind …”

  “Mom? I need to be your shield.”

  “Fine. You’re the boss, honey. Let’s just do this thing.”

  And the two of them, son and mother, with Ceepak in the lead, march back out to the darkening no-man’s land between the pizza parlor and the Free Fall.

  I just hope nothing happens to ruin our cookout plans.

  68

  “WHERE THE HELL IS ADELE?”

  Mr. Ceepak is sort of teetering in the control booth, trying to see Mrs. Ceepak, who is hidden behind the massive bulk of her towering son.

  “I’m right here, Joseph.”

  “Step out where I can see you.”

  “Why? I thought you wanted to talk.”

  “I do.”

  “Then talk. You don’t have to see someone to talk to them. That’s why they invented the telephone.”

  “Still got a mouth on you, huh, Adele?

  “That’s right, Joseph. And I still know to use it.”

  “Okay, okay. Ease up already. Seriously, babe—what the hell happened to us? Where’d we go wrong?”

  Great. Mr. Ceepak’s drunk has moved into the sloppy sad stage.

  “I thought this was about money, Joseph, not us.”

  “It is, it is. But we’re a team, remember? You and me against the world. What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine.”

  “That stopped the first time I caught you stealing beer money out of my purse.”

  “Why do you have to say things like that, Adele? What’d I ever do to you?”

  “You mean besides murdering my youngest son?”

  “That was a suicide.”

  “No, it was not. You just fooled everybody into thinking it was for years and years. You killed your own son.”

  “I had to. Billy was a weakling. Hey, I did him a favor. The world was too tough for a sissy boy like him.”

  “Sir?” says Ceepak, stepping forward an inch or two, his mother scooting up behind him. “Curr
ently, you are the one wasting valuable time. I suggest we add a few more minutes to your countdown clock.”

  “What? No way. The SWAT team is coming …”

  “Be that as it may, it will take considerable time for mother to organize the one million dollars you have requested.”

  “How long?”

  “Well,” says Mrs. Ceepak, “the bank’s closed. But they open tomorrow at ten …”

  “Not gonna work. I need my money, Adele. I need it now. Hell, I earned that million dollars.”

  “Oh, really? How?”

  “Hey, I was married to you for twenty years, wasn’t I? I deserve that much in hazardous-duty pay.”

  Mr. Ceepak wheezes out a laugh. Guzzles more booze.

  “I’ll give you your money tomorrow, Joseph.”

  “Tomorrow? I need to fly to Cuba.”

  “Well, what do you propose I do? Write you a check?”

  “No. Because no one would cash a check for a million dollars. Not unless you had a bank account with them, and I don’t have a bank account in Cuba.”

  Yes, the drunker he gets, the stupider he becomes.

  “So, what exactly is it you want, Joseph?”

  “One million dollars!”

  “Will you take cash?”

  “Yeah. Fine. Cache.”

  Mr. Ceepak sounds half asleep. His eyelids look heavy. His eyeballs blurry.

  Mrs. Ceepak keeps going. “Does it need to be in unmarked bills? Tens and twenties only, like in the movies?”

  “Are you mocking me, Adele?”

  “You bet. Because you deserve it. Who the heck do you think you are, anyway? What you’re doing here is wrong.”

  “No, Adele, what you did in Ohio was wrong. Taking all that money from Aunt Jennifer and not sharing it with me, your lawfully wedded husband.”

  “You are not my husband. We are divorced.”

  “We’re Catholic, Adele. Divorce is against the rules.”

  “That’s why I got an annulment, too.”

  “You can’t annul diddly. What God has joined together … let no man put us under a bus …”

  I think the alcohol has officially destroyed all the brain cells that used to be employed memorizing bible verses.

  “You stole from me, Adele. That’s a sin.”

  Mrs. Ceepak jabs up her arm to point at David Rosen’s perch atop the Free Fall. “Nothing I have ever done or ever will do is half as sinful as what you’re doing here.”

  “That boy murdered his father!”

  “Then let the police deal with it.”

  Mr. Ceepak brings up the brown paper bag and takes yet another swig. Or at least he tries to.

  He shakes the bag.

  I think his bottle is officially empty and the drunken fool doesn’t look happy about it.

  “Why didn’t Aunt Jennifer put me in her will with you?” he mutters, sounding like a mad six-year-old.

  “Maybe because she hated you for killing your own son.”

  “Billy deserved it!”

  Mrs. Ceepak disobeys her son. Steps to his side so she can directly confront her ex-husband.

  “No. He deserved better. Better than you, anyway.”

  “Screw you, Adele. Hey, am I in your will?”

  “Ha! Over my dead body.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  “Mother?” says Ceepak “Get behind me. Now.”

  Mrs. Ceepak holds her ground. “I’m not afraid of you, Joseph. Not any more.”

  “Mother?” Ceepak reaches for her,

  Mr. Ceepak stumbles off his stool. “You ungrateful bitch. After all I did for you.”

  And up comes Mr. Ceepak’s pistol.

  Every trigger finger in the pizza parlor is ready to fire.

  “Don’t!” shouts Ceepak.

  We all think he’s talking to us.

  He isn’t.

  He’s yelling at his father while jumping in front of his mother.

  A shot rings out.

  Smacks Ceepak.

  He goes spinning. Blood is spurting out of his thigh. As he twists around, he grits his teeth hard, grabs hold of his mother. The two of them topple in a heap to the boardwalk. My friend covers his mother, shields her from Crazy Joe’s second shot.

  I am so ready to take the bastard down.

  But Mr. Ceepak moves his free hand over that blinking green button.

  “Anybody takes a shot, David dies!” he screams.

  “Stand down!” orders the chief.

  “Don’t shoot!” shouts Mayor Sinclair.

  Mr. Ceepak’s hand inches closer to the button.

  And that’s when my whole world goes into free fall.

  69

  THERE’S A VIDEO GAME I SOMETIMES PLAY CALLED NCAA FOOTBALL by EA Sports.

  In the “Road To Glory” mode, you can flick a trigger on the game controller and enter hyper reality. The action slides into super slow motion so you can see every little detail of the play while you’re in the middle of running it.

  This is what happens when I tug back on the trigger to my Glock.

  I can see blood arcing in bursts out of Ceepak’s leg, keeping time to the thundering beats of my own amped-up heart.

  His father hit him in the femoral artery.

  My partner is going to bleed out, right here on the boardwalk, if those paramedics don’t start administering first aid immediately. John Ceepak is going to die shielding his mom, something he has done since he was a teenager. A fitting end for such a brave man? Maybe. But this is not his time. It can’t be.

  I won’t let it.

  And so I fire at his father when Mr. Ceepak’s hand moves half-an-inch closer to the green button glowing on, dimming off, glowing on, dimming off.

  My first round rips across the twenty open feet of air separating us. I swear I can see the slug soaring like a guided missile to its target.

  It slams into Mr. Ceepak’s shoulder. Hard.

  He flies backward. Looks stunned.

  But his liquor-soaked brain has been numbed down to its reptilian stub. It’s fight or flight time. He chooses to fight. He fires his own weapon.

  “Down!” someone shouts behind me.

  I hear bodies thudding to the floor.

  Mr. Ceepak’s bullet whizzes past my head.

  Glass shatters.

  Christine screams.

  I cannot turn around to see if she is okay.

  All I can do is line up my next shot.

  Mr. Ceepak drops his pistol.

  He lunges forward and fights through the pain searing his shoulder to place both hands over that glimmering launch switch. He is ready to kill David Rosen, to make that his final, dying act.

  But I kill him first.

  My second bullet blows through Mr. Ceepak’s chest.

  He glares and snarls at the world one last time.

  And then, thank God, Ceepak’s father finally dies.

  70

  WHEN I AM ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT MR. JOSEPH CEEPAK has lost the ability to harm anyone else, I whirl around.

  Christine is okay. Shocked, but okay.

  I can’t say the same thing for the pizza shop’s Coke case. The sliding glass doors are shattered. Foamy orange soda is spewing out of the row of innocent Fanta cans that took a direct hit from Mr. Ceepak’s second bullet.

  I hop up and over the counter. Nearly beat the team of paramedics to Ceepak’s side.

  They roll him over onto their body board. Mrs. Ceepak is weeping when I help her up off the ground. She nearly faints when she sees the fountain of blood jetting up out of her son’s wounded leg.

  Fortunately, Christine came running out of the pizza place right behind me. Officer Getze, too. They gently take Ceepak’s mother by her elbows and guide her away from the horror show. Christine automatically switches into the calming nurse mode I saw in action when that kid was choking on his seafood.

  “Let’s move back inside, Mrs. Ceepak,” Christine says, her voice soft and soothing. “Let the paramedics do t
heir job …”

  “Johnny?”

  “It’s all good, mom,” Ceepak says weakly. And even though his wound must hurt like hell, he manages a small smile for her.

  I lean down near his head while the two EMTs apply pressure with a jumbo gauze square to his leg.

  “Take it easy, partner.”

  Ceepak looks me in the eye.

  “Danny … did you … were you able to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank you, my friend.”

  Ceepak closes his eyes as all sorts of paper cups and sandwich wrappers and scattered trash start swirling around us. I hear chopper blades thumping and whumping overhead, obliterating poor David Rosen’s cries for help from the peak of the StratosFEAR.

  The SWAT team has arrived.

  A black-suited ninja rappels down a line.

  “What’s our situation?” he screams over the rotor wash.

  “Secure,” I say. “We need to medevac this man to Mainland Medical. Trauma unit. Stat.”

  “Roger that.”

  The armored warrior makes a series of hand gestures. The helicopter touches down in the middle of the boardwalk. Four SWAT team members hop out to make room for Ceepak, the EMTs, and all that first-aid gear.

  The chopper lifts off.

  I know Ceepak will be at Mainland Medical in less than five minutes.

  That’s how long it took for the whirlybird to make the trip with Katie Landry after she was shot.

  “I’m taking Mrs. Ceepak to Mainland,” Christine hollers as she leads Ceepak’s mom out of the pizza place. She makes sure to steer her in a direction away from the StratosFEAR control booth where her dead ex-husband, slumped against the blood-streaked back wall, looks like a floppy scarecrow sleeping off a really bad three-day drunk.

  “I’ll meet you there,” I shout back as they leave.

  Then Mayor Sinclair gets in my grill.

  “What the hell did you do, Detective Boyle?”

  Chief Rossi leads a squad of uniforms over to the control booth to deal with Joe Ceepak’s body. They need to remove his corpse to make room for Shaun McKinnon. Hopefully, the operator can work the knobs, feather the air brakes, and safely lower David Rosen down to the ground.

  “What the hell did you do?” The mayor won’t let up. He props his hands on his hips and glares at me.