Mad Mouse: A John Ceepak Mystery (The John Ceepak Mysteries)

by Chris Grabenstein

  “You should always set the thermostat to seventy-five or higher when out of your residence for an extended period of time. Especially during peak hours of consumption.”

  Right.

  It's suddenly quiet, now that the sour-air recirculator is shut down. I hear a vehicle bump and crunch its bottom across the blacktop humps down in the parking lot. I step out on the crappy veranda to see if it's Mook's Miata.

  It's a white minivan.

  I guess the driver sees us, too—sees we're cops.

  He's peeling wheels in reverse, burning rubber and taking off like maybe he just did something really, really bad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The white van is out of the parking lot before I can spot its bumper sticker display, see if there's an ARMY plastered back there.

  “Male driver,” Ceepak announces as he dashes down the balcony toward the stairs.

  “What else?” I ask, running behind him. “Did it look like an army guy?”

  “Couldn't tell. Sun glare.”

  Ceepak grabs of the railings and slide-flies down the steps. I try to do the same thing. Rust chunks scrape my palms.

  “He's at the corner,” Ceepak says. “Turning onto Sunshine, direction Ocean.”

  “Great. That gives us a chance!” Traffic. You want to stay off Ocean Avenue on any summer Saturday because it's basically bumper-to-bumper from nine A.M. on.

  We leap into the Explorer. Ceepak snatches the radio mic.

  “This is Unit Twelve. Request all available backup. Ten-eighty. White van. We are in pursuit.”

  Those asphalt humps in the Smuggler's Cove parking lot feel more like moguls on a ski slope the way Ceepak blasts over them, slamming pedal to rubber floorpad. When we first started working together, Ceepak didn't drive on account of this horrible thing that happened in his Hummer back in Iraq. Now I see the man has driving skills, like the army sent him to Aggressive Driving School or he studied with the stunt guys who drove the Mini Coopers in that movie The Italian Job. We're barreling down this quiet residential street nobody's ever barreled down before and I see the minivan screech into a right turn. We do the same thing.

  “This is Twelve,” Ceepak says into the mic. “We are southbound on Sunshine, approaching Oak.”

  Make that Pine. We're moving fast and the streets are just clipping along.

  “Unit Twelve, this is Six. We're approaching on Spruce.”

  Ceepak flicks on the lightbar and sirens. No way the white van doesn't see us coming up behind him, no way he doesn't hear us, no way he can't tell we're the Police and he should slow down, pull over, and stop—now.

  But he doesn't, he keeps racing down the road, pushing his soccer-mom van to do 70 mph. If nothing else, he's earning himself a speeding ticket today.

  And one for reckless driving, too, because he just hung an incredible tilting Louie—both his right-side tires lift off the pavement. Ours do the same thing when Ceepak mirrors the move and hangs a hard left.

  “This is Twelve. Suspect vehicle is now east on Quince heading toward Ocean.

  There's a stop sign at Ocean Avenue.

  Mr. White Van doesn't stop, earning him traffic ticket number three.

  Tires squeal. Cars rock. The van shoots across the intersection. At least he gets everybody on Ocean Avenue to stop for us. We reach Ocean and zoom across because nobody's blocking our path.

  Except this one little girl on the other side of the intersection.

  Ceepak slams on the brakes.

  Maybe she's deaf. Didn't hear the police siren. Maybe she's blind. Didn't see the swirling lights. Whatever. Right now, this seven-year-old sweetie-pie in a pink sundress is in the crosswalk standing behind her baby doll stroller.

  Her parents run into the street and grab her. Boy, does the kid give us a dirty look—like we should know that when the sign says “WALK,” she and her dolly have the right-of-way.

  Ceepak nods, smiles, and gestures for the little girl to proceed.

  “She has the light,” he says.

  “He's getting away,” I say while we wait.

  Up ahead, I see the white van making another left turn, this time on Shore Drive, which will take him north, back toward town.

  “Ceepak? He's going to get away!”

  “No he's not, Danny.” Ceepak slams our Ford into reverse. The tires whine and spin and I smell fried rubber. We might need retreads before the morning's over. We whip backwards onto Ocean Avenue.

  “This is Twelve,” he says to the radio. “Suspect has turned north on Shore. We will attempt to cut him off at Ocean and Maple.”

  Okay. Now I get it. Ceepak's been studying his Sea Haven street maps. He knows Shore Drive dead-ends when it hits Maple because that's where Sunnyside Playland is and they're spread out for two blocks from Ocean Avenue down to the Beach. You can't go very far on Shore before you have to head back up to Ocean.

  “We've got Maple blocked on the other side of Ocean,” says a voice I don't recognize over the radio.

  “This is Six. We are continuing down Spruce to Shore and will block his retreat.”

  “Ten-four,” Ceepak says. He's got the radio mic in one hand and the other one is twisting back and forth on the steering wheel as we wiggle our way up Ocean Avenue, snaking around cars, zigzagging past RVs, generally having a grand old time putting the Explorer through its paces like we're in one of those TV commercials talking about rack-and-pinion steering, which, I hope, is something that comes standard on Fords, especially the ones that leave Detroit and grow up to become police cars.

  We near the corner of Ocean and Maple. I hear what I think is a foghorn until I look over and see there's this fire truck straddling the far side of Maple, blocking the street. Guess that's who radioed in earlier. The fire department must've been mobile when all the radio chatter started and dropped by to help. They're blaring their air horn and making so much noise that most vehicles on Ocean Avenue have pulled over to the shoulder of the road so the drivers can cover their ears and cringe. This gives Ceepak and me our own express lane right up the center yellow line.

  The minivan shoots up Maple, slams on its brakes when it sees the fire truck blocking its path, and skids into a sharp right turn in front of us.

  I can see the bumper very clearly now.

  “No ARMY sticker,” I shout. “It's not my guy.”

  “Roger that.”

  So, naturally, I expect our little chase scene to be over.

  I, of course, am wrong.

  Ceepak presses down harder on the gas, and now we're, I swear, two inches from the van in front of us. I can read his window decals. Somebody apparently went to Dartmouth. They have a parking permit for a garage. The tiny little decal says they're number 3246. Like I said, we're that close.

  Whump.

  We're closer.

  Ceepak thumps the guy's bumper.

  Mr. White Minivan must not have felt our little love tap. He doesn't slow down or pull over.

  I make out two people in the minivan. The driver, who looks to be somebody's dad, mid-forties or early fifties. And the passenger. Female. Younger. A mop of wiry, curly hair bouncing up and down.

  Whump.

  I guess this why they call them bumpers. We bump the van again, nudging it forward, sending me bouncing.

  “Seat belt?” Now Ceepak asks.

  “Ten-four.” I strapped myself in back at Smuggler's Cove. It's instinct when Ceepak's behind the wheel.

  “Hang on.”

  He's done with the love taps. He eases up on the gas for a second. When the space between bumpers widens, he jams back down on the accelerator, twists the steering wheel. We slam into the van's rear end at a slight angle and send the vehicle spinning into a spiraling skid.

  Of course the road ahead of the van is clear. Ceepak wouldn't have made his move if it wasn't.

  Now the van makes its move—sliding off the road, scooting backwards, careering into the parking lot of Barnacle Bob's Beach Bikes, this hut of a shop where they r
ent all kinds of bikes and have about a hundred of them lined up in their parking lot. The white van slams into one end! The whole row dominoes down in a rippling wave. One hundred beach bikes lay wounded on their sides, sparkling in the sun.

  The van has finally stopped.

  “Call in our location.” Ceepak tosses me the radio mic.

  He's out the door, gun drawn.

  “This is Twelve,” I say. “Our twenty is Barnacle Bob's Beach Bikes. Ocean and Jacaranda. Uh, possible ten … ten … uh—I think we might need an ambulance.”

  I really gotta memorize those 10-codes by Tuesday.

  I hop out in time to see a girl stumble out of the van. She's wearing some kind of Victoria's Secret swimsuit. She's basically naked except for her stiletto heel sandals. One stiletto must've snapped off because she's limping. Her face is hidden, covered with a tangle of wild curly hair.

  Ceepak gets the driver to spread-eagle on the ground. White hair. Fancy Rolex watch. Maybe he's the girl's father.

  “Hands behind your back,” Ceepak barks. “Now.”

  “You could've killed me,” the guy whimpers into the hot blacktop.

  “Now!” Ceepak orders.

  “You drive like a fucking maniac!”

  “Only when forced to do so, sir.” Ceepak slips a pair of plastic cuffs on the guy's hands. He tugs them snug but not nearly as snug as I would after some idiot almost made me run over a little kid in a crosswalk pushing her dolly's stroller. I do a quick visual inspection of the minivan interior. I see juice boxes and sippy cups on the floor. Scattered Disney DVDs. The idiot kissing asphalt is somebody's dad. I don't think the woman who stumbled out the side door is his wife. I think we caught them sneaking off to Smuggler's Cove—and not just to buy videos in the gift shop.

  “Danny?” It's the female. Of course she recognizes me. Like Ceepak said, I know just about everybody on the island.

  “Marny?”

  “Hey.” She pulls the curls out of her eyes and tries to smile and fluff her hair. She can't do it with her usual flip and flair because some stray hair strands are glued to her lip with blood.

  “You okay?”

  “I think so.” She tugs on a bikini strap and looks down at her cocoa-brown breasts to see if anything got punctured or jostled out of alignment.

  “Who's your friend?”

  “Stan. Stan Something.”

  “Okay.”

  “I swear I didn't know he was mental … driving like that.”

  “Unh-hunh.”

  “He's from out of town. We kind of hooked up last night and this morning … you know …”

  “Right.”

  “Hey, Danny? Guess what?”

  Marny does this little finger wiggle suggesting I come closer so she can whisper her big secret in my ear. She does this, I know, so I will be forced to stare directly at her gravity-defying breasts and, therefore, be much more likely to believe anything she tells me.

  “What?”

  “He's rich,” she gushes, her breath reeking of orange juice and champagne. “Really, really, really rich.”

  “Cool.” I try not to be too judgmental. Especially since Marny has that bloody lip.

  She leans on my arm for balance so she can slide her broken-heeled sandal back on her left foot. “I think he might be married, too.” She holds her finger to her lips to shush me because she thinks it's a big secret.

  “You okay?” I ask again.

  “Yeah. I think I bit my lip.” She shivers, and goosebumps pop up all over her body.

  “Hang on, Marny. I've got a jacket in the car. Some Band-Aids, too.”

  “Thanks, Danny.” She gives up on her sandal and sits down on the pavement.

  I go to the car to get my navy blue windbreaker. Ceepak is stuffing the driver into our back seat. The guy looks scared. Yeah. His life and wife are flashing in front of his eyes.

  “He's not Mook's buddy,” I say. “He's not the guy.”

  “Oh, yes, he is,” Ceepak says. “He's the guy who needlessly endangered several lives by attempting to evade a police officer.”

  Yeah. Okay. He's that guy.

  “Ceepak?” I don't recognize the voice now squawking across our radio. “Ceepak? Come in. Am I pushing the right button?”

  “Danny? Can you handle that?”

  “Ten-four.” I say, repeating the one code I know I know.

  I reach for the radio. The lady keeps squawking. “Listen,” she says, not using any kind of code, “when you boys get done playing Smokey and the Bandit, we have some bullet holes we should talk about. Over.”

  “Tell her we're on our way,” Ceepak says.

  I'm confused. “Okay. Who is it?”

  “Dr. McDaniels. Who else?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The state's top crime scene investigator, Dr. Sandra McDaniels, is waiting for us back at Saltwater Tammy's, so we hand Marny off to the paramedics.

  They seem happy to have caught this call instead of making another run to a motel bathtub to help a grandmother who's fallen and can't get up. When we left, I noticed that one of the EMTs was kindly helping Marny reexamine her bikini'd breasts in the back of the ambulance. He was holding his flashlight. She was searching for silicone leaks.

  We dumped Stan, the white minivan man, back at the house. The desk sergeant, Gus Davis, said he'd handle the paper work and “book the cheap, cheating bastard.” Gus says stuff like that. He's old. He's grumpy. He's spent too much time in the sun.

  We park on the walkway outside Saltwater Tammy's plywood-covered windows. The chief pulls me aside to give me an update: Katie's still unconscious, still on the operating table. He says they're sewing her back up. Closing up the bullet hole in her chest and the exit wound out her back.

  When he tells me the news, I don't think about punctured lungs and nicked spinal cords.

  I think about freckles.

  The ones splattered across Katie's chest. In the summer, in the sun, her freckles blossom and creep across her skin like clover flowers popping up in a weedy field. I used to tease her about them. One game was to connect a few with my finger and make freckle constellations. The dog. The cat. The guy with the bow and arrow and six-pack. The Greeks never saw that one. I saw it right below her collarbone, right above where her halter top usually stopped.

  Katie always giggled when I connected her dots. Partly because my fingertip tickled. Partly because she thought my made-up myth about the Greek hunter hoisting his six-pack to appease the gods of beer and pretzels was funny.

  After the chief gives me the update, he gives me a bulletproof vest. Actually, as Ceepak reminds me, it's a bullet-resistant vest. Ceepak also tells me that the vests don't help much with rifle rounds.

  “So why wear it?” I ask, when I feel how heavy it is.

  “Let's take what precautions we can,” Ceepak suggests. “The layers of Kevlar could catch the bullet and spread its momentum over a larger portion of your body, deforming the round and, hopefully, bringing it to a stop before it can penetrate your skin.”

  Before it can rip a hole in my lung and nick my spine.

  “Put on the vest, Boyle,” the chief says, smiling over my shoulder at the small cluster of shoppers surprised to see cop cars parked outside the boarded-over candy shop. “Put it on, or I'm putting you on administrative leave.” He says all this through a huge smile, in case any tourists are looking our way.

  I start peeling off my polo shirt.

  “Inside!” the chief says before I finish working the shirt up over my head. “Inside.”

  Through the knit holes in my shirt I see his smile go so wide and toothy he might split his cheeks. He pushes me into the store. Since we're telling everybody in town that Katie had been “injured” by a BB gun fired by a rowdy gang of underage drinkers, I can't be seen in public putting on a flak jacket. You don't slip on a bulletproof vest because you're afraid of BBs.

  Inside, with my shirt up over my head, I hear this little voice.

  “You need
to do more crunches,” she says. “Need to tighten up those abs, Mr. Boyle. You're looking a little flabby.”

  It's Dr. McDaniels, the CSI whiz, examining my physical evidence.

  “Dr. McDaniels,” I hear Ceepak say. “Good to see you again.”

  “You can't see me,” she says. “I'm not officially here, remember?”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  Dr. McDaniels is pushing sixty and doesn't take guff from anybody. She probably thinks the whole “keep-it-a-secret” deal is stupid. And she'd be right, too.

  “I can't wait until we actually work together,” she says to Ceepak.

  “Me, too.”

  “Don't tell my husband I snuck down to meet you. Let's make that another one of our little secrets.”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “Dr. McDaniels?” says Chief Baines. “Thank you so much for coming down on such short notice. We need you to wrap this thing up ASAP.”

  Wrap it up? ASAP?

  He acts like we're in total control of the situation here, that if we work a little harder, move a little faster, we should have the case cracked before the first rack of ribs hits the barbecue pit Monday morning.

  “And John?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I need you to start using your brain. I do not need you racing up and down the street chasing the wrong minivan, scaring pedestrians, and endangering motorists!”

  Ouch. That's gotta hurt. Ceepak doesn't say anything. Neither does the chief or anybody else for a couple of seconds.

  “Okay, John?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I'm heading back to the house. Sandy, if you need anything, give me a holler. Pleasure to meet you.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, too,” says Dr. McDaniels.

  She says it, but I can tell she doesn't mean it. McDaniels and Ceepak worked together back in July when she helped us on the Tilt-A-Whirl case. I don't think she's keen on anybody suggesting Ceepak's not doing his job the way it should be done.

  “Santucci? Let's roll.” The chief and his sidekick leave.