Mad Mouse js-2

by Chris Grabenstein

  I head for where I see a stack of foldable white boxes near a candy scale. There's a roll of “Saltwater Tammy's” cellophane sealing tape.

  “Exhale, Katie.” Ceepak waits for her to expel a breath. “That a girl.” He stretches the plastic sheet taut over the bullet hole. “Tape. Three long pieces.” He extends his right hand like a surgeon calling for a scalpel. My hands shake but I'm able to rip three pieces off the roll using my teeth. Ceepak tapes down three sides of the bag. “We need to leave one corner open to create a makeshift flutter valve,” he says after securing the plastic to Katie's bloody chest. “We don't want air becoming trapped in the chest cavity.”

  He leans in close to Katie's ear.

  “Help is on the way,” he says, lightly stroking damp hair out of Katie's eyes. “Help is on the way.”

  I sink back on my haunches. Scared. But I know: help has already arrived.

  A helicopter landing at the entrance to Schooner's Landing wasn't listed on the schedule of “Special Labor Day Weekend Events,” so the noisy arrival of the whirlybird draws a crowd when it touches down. Paper cups and napkins and newspaper sheets scatter like grass clippings in the wake of an enormous leaf blower.

  Ceepak and I run beside the gurney as they wheel Katie out. We move into the air wash under the blades. The EMTs have strapped an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. IV bags dangle off poles welded onto the sides of the rolling stretcher. The helicopter is thumping and whumping so I can't hear everything Ceepak's saying to the paramedics, but it sounds like he's giving them a rundown of Katie's vital signs. They give Ceepak the thumbs up and slide Katie into the chopper.

  “Danny? Go!” Ceepak tilts his head to tell me to climb in and ride in the helicopter with Katie.

  But I remember what Katie said: “Do your job.”

  “No,” I yell to Ceepak. “I can do more here.”

  Ceepak slaps the side of the chopper.

  “Go!” he yells to the pilot and, hunched over, we trot away as the helicopter lifts off, swoops south, banks west, and zooms across the bay.

  “She'll be at Mainland Medical in under five,” Ceepak says. “The trauma team is standing by at the ER and will be fully briefed by the incoming EMTs.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  “We need to notify her family.”

  “She … doesn't have any. Her parents are both dead.”

  Ceepak nods.

  “She's strong, Danny.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Real strong.”

  “Yeah.”

  “John?” It's Chief Baines. “Inside.” He does a quick head tilt toward the candy shop. “Now!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ithought you said this guy only attacked at night?”

  “Yes, sir. Until this morning.”

  The chief looks flustered. Ceepak looks like his mind is twirling as fast as those helicopter blades. The shooter just changed the rules of the game. Ceepak needs to adjust. Anticipate the next move.

  “And why the hell did you call in the chopper? The state police are going to start asking questions. Medevac is state!”

  “I assessed field conditions and determined the airlift to be the most prudent course of action given the severity of the situation.”

  “Jesus, John. You could've called an ambulance. Or isn't an ambulance dramatic enough for you?”

  “Drama did not enter into the equation, sir.”

  “Well, what the hell were you thinking?”

  “Sir, holiday weekend traffic patterns suggest the causeway will be gridlocked at this time on a Saturday morning. Even with an ambulance's siren, flashing lights, and a bridge full of cooperative motorists, the land route would have taken too long. We are in what search-and-rescue teams call ‘the golden hour.’ How quickly Ms. Landry receives thorough medical attention will determine her chances for survival.”

  Jesus. Survival?

  “I see,” Baines says, sucking in a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. Good call, John. Good call.”

  I hear brakes squeal outside and see the police department's flatbed truck pull up in front of Tammy's. It's the truck we use to haul parade barricades and detour signs and stuff like that around town. There are six guys in the back with a tall stack of full plywood sheets. The guys lower the tailgate and slide off the first twelve-foot panel. I see the cop in charge pointing to Saltwater Tammy's plate-glass windows, one of which now sports two bullet holes. One for me. One for Katie. The guys outside will seal off the scene of the crime. Hide it from public view. Keep what happened in here a big, fat secret.

  “We need to keep the evidence chain clean for Dr. McDaniels,” Chief Baines explains to Ceepak when the crew leans the first sheet of plywood against the plate glass windows. “Need to discourage the looky-lous from congregating outside, contaminating the crime scene.”

  “Right,” Ceepak says. I don't think he's even listening to the chief. I think he's thinking, working the mission. I also think Chief Baines may have his own mission. He wants to stop anybody from guessing what really happened in here before he has a chance to spin the story the way he wants it to go.

  “The shooter has undoubtedly fled the scene,” Ceepak says. “We need to immediately canvass all potential sniper sites.” He does his three-finger hand-chop in the direction of all the possible locations.

  Tammy's is situated in a valley shadowed by the shopping center's three-tiered boardwalk, the fake lighthouse up on the third floor, and the crow's nest atop that schooner's mast. Plus, there's a water slide across the street and about a hundred balconies being built onto condos across the parking lot at that construction site. Potential sniper sites, all.

  “You think he left another calling card?” the chief now asks.

  “Yes, sir. Unless he's changed that part of his M.O., too.”

  “Mook was upstairs,” I say.

  “Come again?” Ceepak says.

  “Who the hell is Mook?” The chief is a step or two behind.

  “Mook did this.” I have everybody's attention now. “Him and his friends. He was upstairs at the coffee shop. He has a buddy who's ex-army with a white minivan. A sharpshooter.”

  The chief jams his hands against his hips. “How do you-?”

  “Last night,” I interrupt the chief. I'm probably not supposed to do that but I'm new on the job. “I ran into Harley Mook at the diner. He's someone I know. He said his friend was a better shot than Ceepak. Mr. Mook also gave some indication he was jealous about the nature of my relationship with Ms. Landry.” I'm trying my best to say it like Ceepak would say it.

  “Where did you see him, Danny?” Ceepak asks. “Where was he this morning?”

  “Sun Coast Coffee. Upstairs.”

  I point out the front window. I never had any reason before to notice that you can see the tops of Sun Coast's caf, umbrellas from down here, that Saltwater Tammy's was a stone's throw away from the coffee shop upstairs.

  A stone or a bullet-take your pick.

  Ceepak and I walk purposefully up the boardwalk ramps to the third level. Other cops are scouting all the other possible sniper locations. We're only walking when we'd rather run because the chief specifically ordered us not to run, not to draw any “undue attention” to ourselves.

  “Where was he?” Ceepak asks.

  “Over there. That table. Closest to the door.”

  I notice Ceepak's eyes scanning the horizon. I do the same. Mook is long gone.

  “Was the other one here?” Ceepak asks. “His soldier friend?”

  “No. Not that I saw.”

  We reach the café table and do a quick visual survey of the scene. No plastic-wrapped trading cards. Ceepak feels around underneath the table.

  Stops.

  “What's wrong?”

  “I forgot to put on my gloves.”

  Ceepak pulls his hands out from under the table, reaches into his cargo pants, pulls out a pair of white evidence gloves, slips them over his hands, and goes back to work, patting under the bo
ttom of the circular table.

  He finds something, drops to his knees, fishes out his tweezers. He peels whatever it is from the underside of the table.

  “Baseball card.” Ceepak shows me his tweezered treasure. “Derek Jeter. New York Yankees.”

  “Excuse me? Officers?”

  We look over. It's this guy wearing a chef's apron and bow tie. He has colorful buttons pinned up and down his apron straps. I recognize the costume. It's what the waiters wear at The Chowder Pot. I check out their outdoor dining deck. If you kneeled behind the wooden railing, you'd have another clean shot down at Saltwater Tammy's windows.

  “I was setting up tables on the deck, and I think somebody might've lost this. Sorry it's wet. The sprinklers must've hit it this morning.” He holds another baseball card with water beads dotting its plastic sleeve. “It's Jeter's rookie card. 1996. Could be pretty valuable. Figure I better turn it in.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Ceepak uses his tweezers to take it from him. “Thank you for doing the right thing. This card might prove very valuable, indeed.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Thirty minutes later, the municipal brain trust from the Sea Haven Chamber of Commerce and the mayor's office is assembled inside Saltwater Tammy's.

  Good thing the candy shop has bright fluorescent bulbs. Because the plywood walls the police crew propped against the windows have totally blocked out any natural light. Two cops are posted in front of the makeshift door-a sheet of plywood that wasn't screw-gunned into place with all the others. Tammy won't be very happy when she sees what we've done with her place.

  Mazzilli is behind the counter. He helps himself to free malted milk balls. Mayor Sinclair is next to him nibbling nervously on a foot-long gummi worm, taking it in a centimeter at a time, like Bugs Bunny working his way down a carrot. I'd write them both up for shoplifting, but we're kind of busy.

  “I still feel we can safely assume no immediate threat to the general population,” Baines says, mostly to hear himself say it.

  “You're right,” Mazzilli says and pops another malted milk ball in his mouth. “It's some kind of vendetta against one young man and his friends.” He points at me. There's melted chocolate smeared all over his fingers.

  “He's right,” says Mr. Weese, the mortgage broker. “We can't risk everything we've worked for all year long to protect one individual. Sorry, son.”

  Yeah, as long as your kids and grandkids are safe, who cares about everybody else?

  “Boyle here is a professional,” Chief Baines says. “He understands that this town cannot and will not be held hostage by terrorists.”

  Baines is strutting again. His flop sweat is gone. Somebody must've brought him a fresh shirt from the office. It also looks like he nipped into Tammy's washroom and slicked down his hair after a refreshing head dunk in the sink.

  “Officer Ceepak and his team will continue their investigation. Right, John?” Baines doesn't give Ceepak time to answer. “Meanwhile, we'll tell anybody who asks that what happened here this morning was the work of intoxicated college students armed with BB guns.”

  BB guns, my ass.

  We found another one of those special ball cartridges buried in the cinnamon-hearts tub. It had been meant for me, but I'd just happened to duck down to open a crate of candy when it whizzed past. The good news? Ceepak says the hole in the window coupled with the hole in the Plexiglas Red Hots tub will enable us to calculate a pretty precise trajectory. Two points make a straight line, he reminded me.

  Dr. McDaniels is also on her way. She'll probably point out something we don't see, probably something that's right under our noses.

  Ceepak has been working his phone. I told him what Mook told me this morning: that he'd been paying for his Sea Haven stay with a credit card. Ceepak just asked our computer people back at the house to track Mook's recent transactions and tell us which motel.

  Other calls are also going out from headquarters to sporting goods stores and eBay on account of all the Derek Jeter baseball cards. So far, we have seven, one Jeter taped in almost every possible sniper location. Upstairs at the coffee shop and The Chowder Pot, across the street at the water slide, on top of the schooner mast-the Derek Jeters were everywhere. The ones near any kind of shrubbery were wet, spritzed by sprinklers.

  “Our doer placed them prior to six A.M.,” Ceepak concludes. He's talked to some maintenance people and found out when Schooner's Landing automatically flips on the waterworks every morning. “The hydration moves across the mall in a series of contiguous zones. Each zone is sprayed for an interval of ten to twelve minutes. The timers initiate the spraying cycle at five A.M., complete it at six-oh-two.”

  The wet cards were in place before 6:02 A.M. Mook must've pulled an all-nighter.

  And all of the Derek Jeter cards are from his first year with the New York Yankees, 1996.

  “This one's worth twenty-five, thirty bucks,” Mazzilli tells us when he sees the card the waiter found at The Chowder Pot. It shows Jeter, his eyes squinting in the Bronx sun, chasing some kind of pop fly. “That's a Select Certified Blue.”

  Bruno knows his “memorabilia.” In his shops up and down the boardwalk he peddles postcards, collectible foam beer Koozies, fake street signs that say stuff like “Parking For Italian Americans Only,” and T-shirts featuring “The Man,” with an arrow pointing up at your face, and “The Legend,” with another arrow pointing down at your pants.

  He also sells this one totally creepy tin sign I just now remembered. It's printed to look bullet-dinged, like a highway sign on some rural road where farmers take target practice. It says: “If you can read this, you're in range.”

  Sort of sums up my whole weekend.

  I'm thinking about this stuff so I'll stop thinking about Katie and the preliminary reports from the hospital.

  They say the bullet tore through her left lung, tumbled, then perforated some kind of pulmonary vein and broke a rib when it exited out the back of her chest. It might've nicked her spinal cord on the way out, too.

  They don't know if she'll make it.

  Katie might die.

  BB guns, my ass.

  We found her bullet buried in the shelf behind where she was standing when we kissed. It was the same kind of bullet as mine, like some kind of “his and her” matching ammo set. An M-118 7.62 millimeter special ball cartridge. The same as all of them. The kind of bullet the army gives its snipers, guys like Mook's pal Rick, guys who drive white minivans with ARMY stickers plastered on their bumpers.

  Ceepak puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “Denise thinks she'll have a credit card hit in under five.”

  Denise Diego is our top computer geek back at headquarters. She's awesome. Works in the dimly lit room next to Dispatch, hovers over her keyboard, fries her eyes staring at the flat screen until she finds what she's searching for. She's a super cybersleuth, an excellent indoor detective. She'll find Mook's motel.

  Ceepak goes back to the baseball cards.

  “What do you make of all the Jeters?” I ask.

  “The shooter is playing with us, Danny. Having fun. He knows we now know his M.O., so he placed the baseball cards in every conceivable sniper location prior to actually targeting you at eight twenty-six hours.”

  “Why Jeter? Why a baseball player? What about the Phantom and the Avenger? Why not more comic book stuff?”

  “I'm not certain at this juncture.”

  My sense is he's angry with himself for not knowing the answer.

  “I saw Mook real early this morning at the diner,” I say. “Two or two-thirty A.M.”

  “He could've placed the cards any time before six A.M. Even before you saw him at the diner.”

  “Yeah. And playing with us? Rubbing our noses in how brilliant he is?”

  “Yes?”

  “That's Mook. He's a first-class smart-ass.”

  “Folks?” Chief Baines wants everybody's attention. “I'm heading out front to talk to the tourists.” He exhales, st
raightens his jacket, and eyeballs the mayor. “You people hang back here. I don't want a big crowd. Don't want them seeing you, Mr. Mayor.”

  “I'm good in here,” Mayor Sinclair says. He's found the Jelly Bellys.

  Chief Baines tugs down on the brim of his dress-white hat. He looks like the skipper on Gilligan's Island. He slides outside to talk to the tourists.

  I walk over to the windows and stare at the grain pattern in the plywood. There's nothing to see, but I have to hear this.

  “Folks? How is everybody doing this morning? Another beautiful day, huh?” I can't see him, but I know Baines is flashing his shark-white teeth, probably blinding someone. “As you might've heard, we had an incident here this morning. Couple college kids with a BB gun thought it might be fun to shoot out some store windows. An employee was injured.”

  Her name is Katie!

  “She's been airlifted to the hospital. She's going to be fine. But say a prayer for her, okay? She'd appreciate it. So would I.”

  The crowd murmurs some. They'll all pray. Right after they finish eating their cinnamon buns and bear claws.

  “Folks, what we have here is a prime example of what can happen when we ignore the rampant problem of underage drinking-which, in my short tenure, I've already identified as Sea Haven's public enemy number one.”

  Unless, of course, you count the sniper.

  “Some intoxicated teens stumbled over here this morning on their way home from an all-night keg party and took a couple pot shots with their pellet pistols. Don't worry, we'll catch them, you have my word. Meanwhile, we're cracking down. I call on all beverage distributors to ID everyone under the age of thirty. If you won't do it, guess what? We will. We'll give any unlawful drinkers we catch a prize: a free ride in a police car!”

  The crowd chuckles.

  “This weekend, we are putting plainclothes officers in package stores up and down the island. We're patrolling the popular bars and nightclubs. We'll be working the beach. We can and must put an end to this problem and keep Sea Haven safe for wholesome family fun!”