by William Baer
In the morning, you’d “done” the park, riding, it seemed, half of its seventy rides, excepting, of course, the roller coasters, which you, not your little niece, had chickened out of. After an hour or so at the zoo, you spent another hour or so at the Boardwalk Waterpark. In the afternoon, after lunch, it was time for Chocolate World: the Trolley Works, the Chocolate Tour, and the “Create-Your-Own Candy Bar” experience.
Surprisingly, Emily seemed to enjoy the afternoon even more than the morning, learning how chocolate was made, making her own chocolate bar, and hearing about the visionary life of the amazing Milton Hershey.
On the ten-mile drive back to Harrisburg, Emily fell asleep, in an obvious state of somnambulant bliss. Eventually, you carried the little angel from the front seat of your Equinox to her mother’s waiting arms. Then you went back to your perfect and perfectly empty townhouse condo, near Market Square, unable to sleep, wishing that you had an Emily.
A child.
Wishing also, at thirty-five, that you had a man.
A reliable one.
Wishing that you had someone.
Forbes Magazine had once described Harrisburg as the second best place in America to “raise a family.” Which was meaningful only if you actually had a family.
Or at least some prospects.
So you did what you’ve always done when you wanted to “think,” even if it would prove to be a perfectly useless and self-defeating kind of thinking. You quickly re-dressed, threw on your burgundy trench, and strolled down to the park. To the very same bench where you used to sit with him, watching the magnificent evening suns setting across the river, as lovers and others strolled the walkway over the Walnut Street Bridge from City Island.
Tonight, right now, you were doing your very best not to feel sorry for yourself. Doing your very best to think about little Emily and all her chocolate smiles and all the marvelous wonders of the day now past.
Then you “sense” something.
You look up.
You see the dark, imposing, unrecognizable figure standing above you, having appeared, it seems to you, from nowhere, from deep within the most mysterious darkness of the silent night. At first, you’re more surprised than frightened, although you’re not sure why, as you stare at the figure as it stares at you. It seems as though it’s trying to figure something out.
As if trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.
Spooked, you’re just about to say something when the gun rises in front of your face and fires, and you can remember nothing else.
Never again.
You slump.
You fall off the bench, down to the ground, fortuitously dead before the thirty-two ounces of Drano are slowly poured over your once-pretty face, seeping into your dead lifeless eyes, into your slightly open mouth, still slightly surprised.
9
Congress Hall
Wednesday, March 25th
36°
I was sitting on the dark empty beach behind Congress Hall. I’d already read today’s text, and I was rereading her text from a month ago.
Her second “detour”:
I’m now in South Bend, ignoring the Golden Dome, the stadium, the basilica, and the Grotto, standing in front of the Purcell Pavilion booing the naughty Irish girls.
I smiled.
Generally, I didn’t smile that much, but the California beach girl often made me smile. I tried to picture her, standing there, all alone, like a complete idiot, in front of the sports pavilion, booing the venue.
I knew why, of course. Three years ago when she was captain of the Pepperdine volleyball team, they’d traveled to Indiana, lost a close one, and then, after the game, a couple of the Irish girls were “rude.”
“They dissed us.”
Which is why they were “naughty,” a word not much used in the current twenty-first century.
I stared out at the ocean, dark and deadly. At its forty-one-million square miles, over the Gulf Stream, into the far dark Atlantic, into the North American Gyre, into the calm unfathomable depthlessness and blue-black mystery of the Sargasso Sea.
Thinking of Augustine:
Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the tremendous waves of the sea, the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.
I was trying not to pass myself by, but I wasn’t sure how well I was doing.
Earlier, after a pleasant drive down the parkway to Exit Zero (Cape May), I’d gone over to Colt’s office on Perry Street, which was mostly empty and worthless. There was a small, rather sad sign on the front door beneath his name that read:
Solving Crimes Is My Business.
Then I drove over to Congress Hall, went up to the “Grant Room” on the third floor, quickly changed into my black sweats and Nikes, and read over the files.
They weren’t much help either:
Some old newspaper articles about the cold case.
His notes on his two interviews (no tapes or videos).
Crime scene photos.
Suspect photos.
The forensic report on the car pulled from the ocean.
The autopsy report.
Photos of the dead body, her clothes, and the contents of her purse and wallet, containing the usual stuff—cash, credit cards, cosmetics, etc., as well as:
A B&B business card for the Gingerbread House.
A 4/8 service station receipt.
There was also a typed “suspect list” with the last two names added in pencil and the name “Sehorn” penciled in after “Rockingham”:
Ronnie Miller – victim’s best friend, age 18
Isabella (Izzy) Borelli – victim’s friend, age 16
Rita Rockingham Sehorn – victim’s friend, age 15
Billy ?? – Johns Hopkins student, age 18?
“Sonny” ?? – University of Maryland student, age 18?
Judge Richard O’Brien – victim’s father, age 42
Rikki (Erica) O’Brien – victim’s twin sister, age 16
Tommy Garrison – victim’s boyfriend, age 17
Kitty Walsh O’Brien – victim’s mother, age 34
Mitchell Kain – witness on the beach, age 48
I looked closely at the names, and I was surprised to see one that I knew. Rita Sehorn. A prosecutor at the Newton Courthouse in North Jersey. I’d met her once at some lawyer “thing” at the Brownstone in Paterson, and when she seemed interested, I mingled back into the crowd.
I pulled out her “suspect” photo. It was definitely Rita, ten years younger.
Isabella’s last name “Borelli” also seemed vaguely familiar, with, it seemed to me, some kind of Paterson connection. But Izzy’s picture set off no alarms, so maybe her last name was just a coincidence. But it was hard to ignore that stupid little dog, a Yorkshire terrier, she was holding in her photo. I looked closely at the little handwritten note attached to her picture. It said, “missing,” so I immediately texted Nonna, who was sleeping in her warm bed in Paterson, and told her to find out where Izzy Borelli was living these day, using the dog. People often get addicted to breeds, and I was betting that Izzy, wherever the hell she was, had a terrier sleeping at the foot of her bed.
There were also a bunch of happy photos of the four girls who were together that afternoon and evening before one of them went missing. Pretty young high school girls, full of life and dreams and girly smiles, having fun in their hometown, near their beautiful beach, until one of them ended up dead in the trunk of her submerged car.
The prettiest one.
I now knew the basics of the case. What the cops knew back then, and what Edward Colt knew two days ago before he was shot in the head:
It was ten years ago, on a Thursday, on an unseasonably warm Apr
il day (4/7). Nikki Nicole O’Brien (the vic) and three of her closest girlfriends (Ronnie Miller, Rita Rockingham, and Isabella Morelli) met two young college boys (Billy and Shawn, last names unknown) on the Cape May promenade. The boys had stopped in Cape May on the way home from Maryland, heading for North Jersey (specifics unknown). Earlier, the girls had attended an afternoon baseball game at a local Cape May high school. They met the boys around 3:30, went bowling at Shoreline Lanes, picked up some take-out food, then hung out near the Cape May Lighthouse, on the nearby “Hawk Watch.” They did a little light drinking, no drugs, and had a good time. Around seven o’clock, Nikki got a text, and she asked Ronnie (who was driving the girls) to drop her off at her home. Then the two guys decided to leave for North Jersey.
The victim’s identical twin sister, Rikki O’Brien, wasn’t there that day or evening since she’d had EMT training at 5:00. After her training session, she went home, did some homework, and spent the evening with her father.
Late that Thursday night, Nikki called her sister and told her that she (along with Ronnie) would be spending the next two nights at the home of the twin’s aunt (Kathleen O’Brien, now deceased) in Diamond Beach, north of Cape May. This raised no alarms, as the twins often helped out their elderly aunt. Two nights later, at approximately 3:55 a.m., an astonished dog-walker on the Cape May promenade saw a yellow Mustang inexplicably gliding across the beach toward the jetty near the Sunset Pavilion. Then disappear into the ocean. He called 911.
When the car was pulled on the beach, the drowned body of Nikki O’Brien was found inside the trunk of her car.
Four pretty high school girls having some innocent fun with a couple of “traveling through” college boys. For some reason, something about it reeked of jealousy. Not the “green-eyed monster” of Othello, but the pathological sexual jealousy of Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale.
Maybe I was getting way ahead of myself.
Maybe not.
I looked at the ocean again.
I was sitting on my windbreaker, on top of the cool March-hardened sand.
Yeah, I’m a city boy, but the ocean’s like a car crash or a fistfight or a fire or a parade—you can’t take your eyes off it. You stand there, or you sit there, and you just stare into its mesmerizing depthless black infinity, which somehow makes you comfortable with death, with termination, with your own insignificance.
Enough of that.
I was facing a long day tomorrow, and I knew that I should get up off my ass and go back to my room, but I was enjoying the night and the solitude. Earlier, when I checked in at Congress Hall, the concierge told me that something called the Travel Channel, whatever that is, had once decided that Cape May was one of America’s “top ten” beaches. Not just in New Jersey, which has countless great beaches, but in all of the US.
Of course, the Travel Channel people meant during the daytime, but I was never a lie-in-the-sun type of guy, and I preferred my beaches in the dead of night, preferably in the dead of winter.
March would do nicely.
Cape May sat at the extreme southern end of the state, at the southern end of 141 miles of beautiful New Jersey beaches known collectively as the Jersey Shore. The town was ridiculously “pretty,” chock full of quaint Victorian homes, many of them now serving as B&Bs. As a matter of fact, little Cape May had more old Vic homes than any other place in the United States, except for San Francisco, which was a hell of a lot bigger. Our dearly beloved federal government, rather than go through the interminable hassle of designating all of the old homes as National Historical Landmarks, made the entire damn town a National Historical Landmark, making it the only town so designated in the entire country.
I have to admit that I’m a Jersey tough guy, but I can also appreciate “pretty” stuff like beaches and houses, but I’m much more interested in the history, and Cape May was overloaded with that. It was the first seaside resort in America (disputed sometimes by Long Beach, NJ), and the first resort to have a boardwalk. Back in the nineteenth century, it was flush with famous visitors. Presidents Pierce, Buchanan, Grant, and Arthur all stayed at Congress Hall, and Benjamin Harrison made it his official Summer White House. Even Lincoln’s supposed visit back in 1849 was followed by all kinds of various celebrities like Stephen Decatur, George Meade, General Sherman, Lily Langtry, John Philip Sousa, Clara Barton, and Oscar Wilde.
Some claim that Cape May was discovered by Henry Hudson in 1609, but all the rest of us, including every single New Jersey Italian, believe that it was discovered by the Florentine, Giovanni da Verrazzano, in 1524, when he was sailing La Dauphine up the East Coast under the French flag. When he spotted a lovely cape and called it Bonvietto, which was certainly Cape May.
I took a last look at the ocean.
It was time to solve a murder.
Two of them.
10
The Lobster House
Thursday, March 26th
48°
I wondered if you’d show up.”
Which was one of the benefits (or detriments) of being famous.
Being recognized.
Dawson was sitting in the far corner table of the Raw Bar at the Lobster House on Fisherman’s Wharf, sitting beneath a mounted helmsman’s wheel, behind a graveyard of crustacean limbs and two glass-mugs of a dark brown beer.
One mostly empty, one full.
He seemed as happy as a man could be happy.
Nick Dawson was the detective lead on the Edward Colt murder. He wore jeans, a cheap black blazer, and no tie. He looked like a rough-around-the-edges Irishman, approaching forty or so, and he didn’t seem at all irritated that I’d popped up from nowhere.
“You related?” he wondered.
“I’ve never heard of the guy.”
Dawson was surprised, maybe even disappointed, but nothing was about to interfere with or undermine the ecstasy of his culinary engagements.
“Grab a seat, and get some grub. It’s right from the sea this morning. The best seafood in the universe, and the beer’s just as good.”
He thought things over, with an almost profound musing.
“I love beer,” he assured me.
I had no reason to disbelieve him, but I hated beer, seldom drank at all, and found seafood, particularly arthropods, absolutely revolting. Especially the smell. Yeah, I know, I guess I’m in the minority, but I eat nothing from the sea, limiting my carnivorous activities to cattle, lambs, hogs, and a few chickens.
My uncle believed that the reason for my revulsion was the open-air fish markets in Paterson when I was a kid. You could smell them a mile away, and they were anything but appetizing.
Maybe he was right.
I sat down and watched Dawson eat. It was a courtesy call. I didn’t want him to hear that I was in town snooping around in his case, and I wanted to assure him that I’d keep out of his way.
I also wanted to see what he knew.
Which was next to nothing.
“The guy was a ghost,” he assured me.
“What about Harrisburg?”
“He only lived there a short time, did a few nothing-much cases, and seems to have made no friends.”
“What about before that?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“What about his mother? Didn’t he go to her funeral a few weeks ago?”
“Supposedly. He definitely left town, but no one seems to know where he went. I’ve got somebody pinging his cell right now, maybe we can get a location.”
“Can you let me know?”
“Sure.”
He took an Irish swig, more of a gulp, of the dark-dark beer, and tried to explain himself.
“I’m not the proprietary type. I’m glad you’re down here, Colt, and I’m ready to share.”
“I appreciate it.”
/> Which was true.
“What about the old case?”
“The Killing killing?”
“Yeah.”
“I was a beat cop back in those days. You need to talk to Helen Pavese.”
“I’m planning on it.”
I was also hoping that the stink of the place wouldn’t cling to my Armani suit. Otherwise, I’d have to burn it on the beach tonight.
“Any rumors?” I wondered.
He knew exactly what I meant.
“Not really. Most of the suspicion came down on the college kids, especially Billy.”
“Why Billy?”
“Because he and Nikki were apparently eyeing each other. Flirting around, like kids do. But he’s long long gone, and so’s the other one.”
“You think it was a rationalization back then? The easy way out?”
He seemed confused, so I clarified.
“It’s pretty easy to drop the rap on a kid who’s gone. Who’s completely out of the picture. Who’s a mystery.”
“Yeah, could be. Maybe.”
We swapped cards, and I stood up, quickly escaping from the old boat house. I went outside and sat at a table on the wharf overlooking the Cape May harbor, checking Nonna’s report.
Roxanne Faulkner was the best researcher I’d ever known, but she was now in sunny California. But Mrs. S. had been a librarian most of her life, and she also enjoyed snooping around for info:
Richard O’Brien (age 52, judge):
He’s quite the big deal in Cape May’s divorce court, with a reputation as an effective “arbiter,” with a reputation for “fairness.” He went to Rutgers undergrad, then Rutgers-Camden Law. He seems the bookish thoughtful scholarly type, apparently quite pleasant (just as he was when he came to the office) and easy to get along with. Twenty-seven years ago, he married a pretty young girl (Kitty Walsh) from the Pine Barrens when she was barely seventeen. A year later, almost immediately after the twins (Rikki and Nikki) were born, she left and returned to the Pines. They divorced two years later, and she seems to have had nothing to do with raising the girls. As the tenth anniversary of his daughter’s death was approaching, O’Brien hired Edward Colt to look into the ten-year-old cold case. You know what happened then.