Free Fall

by Chris Grabenstein

  The tail end of a panicked mob is still stampeding down the boardwalk access ramps like cattle through a slaughterhouse chute. I hear screams and shouting. Freaked-out tourists and locals are pushing and shoving whoever’s not running away from the danger fast enough.

  Meanwhile, Ceepak and me have to run the other way.

  Up into the swirling chaos and confusion.

  The Murray brothers are already on the scene, trying to bring some semblance of order to the pandemonium.

  “Keep calm,” shouts Dylan through an amplified megaphone while his brother, Jeremy, stands in the middle of the swarm to do hand signals showing people which way to head so they don’t trample each other.

  “Evacuate to the far edges of the parking lot,” he says over and over and over.

  “Keep calm! Do not panic!” echoes his brother with the battery-powered bullhorn.

  “Move them out and lock it down,” Ceepak says to the two Murrays. “Who’s inside?”

  “Brooks Perry and Jack Getze,” says Dylan.

  Ceepak and I go swimming upstream; make our way to the boardwalk.

  Which is almost empty.

  Ceepak grabs the radio clipped to his belt.

  “This is Detective Ceepak. Detective Boyle and I are on the scene. What’s our situation?”

  “This is Officer Perry.”

  “What’s your twenty?”

  “We have taken up a position in the pizza stand west of the StratosFEAR ride. We have the ride operator, Mr. Shaun McKinnon with us.”

  I can see the Free Fall’s tower rising against the early evening sky maybe a hundred feet in front of us.

  “Is Mr. McKinnon injured?”

  “Negative. The old guy with the gun threw him out of the control booth and told him to run away. He didn’t. He found us instead.”

  “Maintain your position. Detective Boyle and I are on our way.”

  “Okay. Good. One question—the old guy with the gun. McKinnon tells us he is the day operator of the Free Fall and that his last name is Ceepak.”

  “Roger that. He is my father. He should be considered mentally unstable and lethally dangerous. There were reports of a gunshot. Can you clarify?”

  “Getze and I were on routine boardwalk patrol, up by Paintball Blasters. Heard the single round fired. Thought it was a kid with an early Fourth of July firecracker. Mr. McKinnon found us. Told us how, uh, your father threatened him with a weapon. Described it as best he could. From our observation post, it looks like it could be a Ruger nine-millimeter pistol. Seven plus one capacity.”

  That means Mr. Ceepak has seven bullets left before he has to reload.

  “And the hostage situation?” asks Ceepak as we crouch our way forward toward the pizza place, using the game booths and food stalls along the way for cover.

  “Your father has a middle-aged bald man with him. Fifty, fifty-five. Goatee.”

  “It is David Rosen,” says Ceepak.

  “What’re they doing here?” I ask.

  “Unclear at this juncture.”

  Yeah, if Mr. Ceepak was trying to help David Rosen “make a run for the border” he’s doing a lousy job, unless he’s also arranged for a submarine to come pick them up at the pier.

  “Hang on,” says Officer Perry. “There’s movement over at the base of the ride. Something’s going on …”

  Ceepak and I hustle faster.

  He hand chops to the left.

  We scoot up a narrow alleyway behind a row of booths and shops until we come to a service door, a rear entry into the pizzeria.

  “We’re coming in,” Ceepak announces into the radio so Perry and Getze don’t twirl around and blast us when we come sneaking up behind them.

  We push the door open, keep hunkered down, and duck-walk up to the open-air front of the pizza place to take up a position behind the counter with the two cops and Shaun McKinnon, the other factory-trained Free Fall operator from Ohio.

  “Does my father know you are over here?” asks Ceepak in a tight whisper.

  Getze shakes his head.

  All five of us are crouched behind the counter. Fortunately, the sun is setting behind us. The pizza parlor is cloaked in shadows.

  Unfortunately, what we see is terrifying.

  Mr. Ceepak has the snub nose of his small pistol jabbed into David Rosen’s back.

  He is marching Rosen up the steps to the ride.

  “Sit down.”

  He shoves David into a seat. Tucks something into the front pocket of David’s shirt.

  “Don’t hang up on me, Davey. If you do, you die.” He cackles a laugh and backs up; keeping his pistol trained on Rosen every step of the way to his control booth.

  The front window is open so he can keep his Ruger up and aimed at David. With his free hand, he raises a crinkled brown bag of something to his lips. Takes a swig.

  The bottle bag goes down.

  “Now we just have to wait for my idiot son to show up.”

  I hear a clunk and thud.

  The Free Fall starts climbing up its 140-foot tower.

  And the shoulder harness over David Rosen’s seat?

  Mr. Ceepak never lowered it.

  65

  THE STRATOSFEAR CONTINUES ITS EXCRUCIATINGLY SLOW ascent up its 140-foot tower.

  All the foam-padded shoulder restraints are locked in their upright positions like multiple pairs of raised arms. It’s almost as if the ride is surrendering.

  “Okay, this is bad, man,” whispers Shaun McKinnon. “Way bad.”

  The rest of us stay silent. Watch the Free Fall’s only rider, David Rosen, climb higher and higher. It looks like he’s gripping the sides of his seat with both hands. I know I would be. Imagine sitting in a chair, without a seat belt or any other kind of restraint, and being hoisted half a football field high in the sky.

  “When the chairs reach the top, it’ll stop,” says McKinnon. “But if Joe punches the launch button, that sucker’s going to plunge, man. Speeds will exceed forty-five miles per hour. No way that dude up there doesn’t fly out of his seat. No way he survives a 140-foot drop.”

  Ceepak whips out his radio. Clicks over to the Chief’s channel.

  “Chief Rossi, this is Detective Ceepak,” he whispers into the radio. “My partner, Detective Boyle, and I are on the scene, twenty feet away from the StratosFEAR Free Fall, with officers Perry and Getze as well as a licensed ride operator, Mr. Shaun McKinnon. We need to contact the state police. Scramble the T.E.A.M.S. emergency response unit.”

  The T.E.A.M.S. guys are, basically, the Navy SEALS of the NJ State Police. A full-time emergency response unit, with special weapons and tactics teams, they are prepared to handle extraordinary events, like, for instance, a screwy old drunk hauling a murder suspect up to the top of the world’s tallest dunking machine.

  “What’s our situation, John?” asks Chief Rossi.

  “My father, Joseph Ceepak, is holding David Rosen hostage on the StratosFEAR ride.”

  “Your father?”

  “10-4. He is also a licensed Free Fall operator currently in the employ of Sinclair Enterprises.”

  “Your father?”

  Ceepak closes his eyes for half a second. “Yes, sir. He has hoisted Dr. Rosen, without seat restraints, up to the peak of the 140-foot tower.”

  “What does he want? Has your father made any demands?”

  “We have not yet made contact.”

  “Can you do so safely?” asks the Chief.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do it. Buy me some time. It’ll take a while for the tactical intervention team to arrive on scene—even if they chopper down.”

  “Roger that. Sir?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You may also want to grab the M-24 SWS out of the armory.”

  The SWS is a “Sniper Weapon System” rifle that Ceepak’s first boss in Sea Haven, his old Army buddy, Chief Cosgrove, obtained for the SHPD.

  I think Ceepak is contemplating using it on his old man.

 
; “What’re we doing with that kind of firepower in our arsenal?” asks Chief Rossi.

  “Long story,” says Ceepak. “However, it might be of use if we enter a worst-case scenario. Over.”

  Ceepak clips his radio back on his belt.

  “Cover me, Danny.”

  I rip up the Velcro flap on my holster and pull out my Glock. It’s a 31.357, the official SHPD service weapon. Catalog copy says the semi-automatic has “extremely high muzzle velocity and superior precision, even at medium range.”

  Twenty feet to where Mr. Ceepak’s sitting in his control booth with the viewing window wide open? That’s medium range.

  I rise up out of my crouch and lean across the countertop to brace myself in a two-handed firing stance. Sighting down the barrel, I have a clean shot at Crazy Joe.

  To my right, Ceepak takes off his sport coat, folds it neatly in half, and tucks it into the cleanest tomato-sauce-can shelf he can find.

  He moves to the pass-through section of the counter, flips it up, and strides out of the shadows into the soft glow of what’s probably another spectacular Sea Haven sunset.

  While he walks away from the pizza place, I watch his Glock sway back and forth in that small-of-the-back crossdraw holster.

  “Johnny boy!” cries his father. “There you are. What took you so long?”

  Ceepak ignores the question. “What do you want?”

  “What, you’re not even going to thank me?”

  “Come again?”

  Mr. Ceepak nudges his head skyward. “David Rosen. He confessed. Isn’t that right, David?”

  Mr. Ceepak places a cell phone on the windowsill of his booth.

  “David?” he shouts at the phone. “Tell my son what you did. David? Don’t be an idiot. Spill your guts. Unless you want me to spill ’em for you.”

  “I killed my father!” I hear David’s voice leak out of Mr. Ceepak’s speakerphone.

  “Little louder,” coaches Mr. Ceepak.

  “I killed my father. I put the poison in his pillbox. I had to do it …”

  Mr. Ceepak smirks and points mockingly at the phone as if to say, “Can you believe this guy?”

  “Michael was blackmailing us. My wife said we couldn’t let him ruin Little Arnie’s future. My dad should’ve died when he had that fall. He was ninety-four. I probably did him a favor. Kept him out of the old folks home …”

  “Okay, David,” says Mr. Ceepak. “That’s enough.” He taps the mute button on his phone.

  “A coerced confession won’t stand up in court,” says Ceepak.

  “Sure it will. Isn’t that what you boys did over in Iraq all the time? Jammed the muzzle of your rifle right up against some sand monkey’s skull and hollered, ‘Talk!’ Am I right?”

  “No, sir. You are wrong.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’re such a namby-pamby pansy. You probably just asked nice. Me? I know how to get results. That boy sitting up there on top of the tower? He reminds me of you, Johnny. He broke God’s holy edict. He defied the fifth commandment …”

  Oh, boy. Here we go again. Preacher Joe is back.

  “‘Honor thy father and mother, that thy days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving thee.’”

  “If David Rosen murdered his father, he will be punished,” says Ceepak.

  “No, he won’t. They’ll say, well, his father was ninety-four, he was going to die soon anyway. I guarantee you they won’t give him the death penalty like I sure as hell will.”

  Mr. Ceepak glances at his watch.

  “Hey, Johnny, remember that thing last summer at the Rolling Thunder roller coaster? How that crazy kid held us all hostage?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, did you know that during that whole deal, I was paying very close attention to everything that went down? It took the New Jersey State Police S.W.A.T. team a full hour to show up. Sixty freaking minutes.”

  “I was not clocking them. I was busy, attempting to save lives, including yours.”

  “Yeah, well, I clocked ’em. But hell, maybe they’ve been training in the off-season. Working on their speed drills. So, you and me? We’ve got thirty minutes.”

  “For what?”

  “Hey, I gave you your killer and his confession. But if you want him alive enough to stand trial, you have to give me something, too.”

  “And what is that?”

  “My one million dollars. Call your mother, tell her to grab her checkbook, and drag her wrinkled ass on over here. Now. The clock is ticking. You have twenty-nine minutes.”

  66

  YES, JOE CEEPAK REALLY HAS A SERIOUS THING ABOUT BEING a millionaire.

  He’s like a dog with a knotted sock filled with bacon. He just won’t let it go.

  He leans out of the window a little.

  Shouts past his son.

  “You know where to find Adele, right, Boyle? That old folks condo complex. The Oceanaire with the pissant guard shack. Have one your buddies pick her up and hot-rod her over here, pronto, Tonto.”

  I don’t take my eyes off Mr. Ceepak.

  But I hear the two uniforms relaying the information about Mrs. Ceepak to Chief Rossi.

  “You on it, Boyle?”

  “Yeah,” I shout back because, face it—he knows I’m over here, hiding in the shadows of the pizza place, covering my partner’s back.

  “Good. Because we’re down to twenty-eight minutes till Dr. Rosen up there becomes just another greasy stain on the boardwalk. And while Adele and I work out the details on the wire transfer, you boys need to find me a helicopter. Or a boat. A speed boat. Something that’ll take me and David out to international waters fast.”

  “You and David?” says Ceepak, taking a step toward his crazy dad.

  “Yeah. He’s my hostage.”

  Mr. Ceepak raises that brown bag to his lips again. Takes a long gulp.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll let David go once we reach the Bahamas or the Cayman Islands.”

  He’s starting to slur his words.

  “Maybe Cuba. Hijackers used to go to Cuba all the time. Do they have banks in Cuba, Johnny?”

  “Don’t know. I’ve never been.”

  “You want to come with me? We could do a father-son fishing trip along the way.”

  “Fine. I’d much rather you take me as your hostage than David Rosen.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Because you’re a big dumb hero. Always risking your life for schmucks like David up there, even though he deserves to die. But I’m not stupid, Johnny. The minute we boarded the boat, you’d try to jump me. Karate kick me in the nuts. Not gonna happen. Get me my speedboat. And put some food in it. Sandwiches and stuff. I like those salt and vinegar potato chips …”

  Okay, this is why they say you shouldn’t drink and try to think.

  No way is any of Mr. Ceepak’s fantasy escape plan going to play out the way he sees it in his booze-fogged brain. The guy probably doesn’t even have a bank account. And how’s he going to pilot a speedboat to Cuba? Demand that it be equipped with a GPS that’ll give him turn-by-turn directions for the Atlantic Ocean?

  This situation is not going to end any way but badly. The man’s plans are preposterous. The scrambled brain farts of a pickled old drunk.

  “Can you safely lower Dr. Rosen if mother gives you your one million dollars?” asks Ceepak.

  “Yeah, yeah. The factory trained me real good. I’m pretty sure I can work him down nice and slow. But you better have a fresh pair of underpants handy because, I guarantee you, he’s going to piss his pants on the slide down if he didn’t already do it on the ride up.”

  Mr. Ceepak breaks into one of his phlegm-filled laughing jags.

  As he hacks up the chuckles, Ceepak reaches behind his back for his Glock.

  “Don’t even think about it, Johnny,” snaps his dad.

  He sensed Ceepak shifting his weight, going for his gun.

  Ceepak freezes. Raises both his hands to show his father that he remains unarmed.

  “Good.
You’ve got twenty-six minutes. Go find your mommy.”

  “Danny’s on it,” says Ceepak. “I think I’ll stay out here. Keep my eye on you.”

  “What? You don’t trust me to uphold my end of the deal?”

  “No, sir. I do not. And if you make any sudden move toward that launch button, let me remind you that I am a very quick draw.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Just get me my money and my boat. Or a helicopter that’ll take me to a private jet with enough fuel to fly me down to Mexico. Or like I said, Cuba. Cuba would be good. Forget the boat. I want a helicopter.”

  He belches.

  “Any word on the SWAT team?” I whisper to the uniforms without looking over at them. I’m keeping my eye on my target. That bit Ceepak said about being a quick draw? Nobody’s that quick. That was his way of telling me to take the shot if his dad makes a move for the big green button I see blinking near his gut in the center of the control panel.

  “They’re scrambling out of their barracks, getting their tactical gear together,” says Jack Getze, who’s in radio contact with the Staties. “E.T.A. thirty-five minutes.”

  Geeze-o, man.

  “The Chief and the mayor are also on their way,” Getze reports. “Officer Jen Forbus has Mrs. Ceepak and a friend. Young woman named Christine Lemonopolous.”

  Guess we interrupted Christine’s Buckeye candy delivery plans.

  “The ladies should be here in under five. By the way, the Chief says he’s bringing that sniper weapon Ceepak requested. Can you handle it, Danny?”

  “I don’t know. Never tried. It’s a military weapon with a scope. You have to set it up on a tripod. I’m better off with my Glock.”

  “You dudes gonna shoot Joe?” asks Shaun McKinnon.

  “I hope not.”

  “Me, too. Dude’s totally toasted. Doesn’t know what he’s saying or doing. That crap about flying to Cuba in a helicopter? Chopper would run out of gas, man. I think he and his son just have, you know, major issues.”

  Yeah. Tell me about it.

  “Was Joe Ceepak telling the truth?” I ask McKinnon, keeping my focus on the control booth. “Can you bring the ride down safely and slowly?”

  “Theoretically,” says McKinnon. “I mean it’s in the manual. But, dude, it’s like you and that sniper rifle. I’ve never actually tried to do it.”