by William Baer
“Is it my daughter?”
He’s desperate. When she doesn’t respond, he repeats himself.
“Is it my daughter?!”
She can’t tell him.
“I’m sorry. You can’t be here.”
Linden walks back to the car, as the cops continue to restrain the struggling father.
He screams.
“Rosie!”
His wife, gradually comprehending what’s happening, sobs uncontrollably.
The father calls out again:
“That’s my baby girl!”
Linden, back at the car, looks at the dead body, no longer submerged. She stares, in a close-up, at the bindings on the girl’s hands and feet, her drowned face, and the little butterfly necklace around the girl’s throat.
Rosie’s necklace.
I was now back at Congress Hall, sitting in my room, watching the end of the pilot episode of The Killing on my laptop. I saw it years ago, when it first came out. It was exceptionally well written, well directed, and well acted, most powerfully by the lead, Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden.
The show’s tag was, “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?”
That was Linden’s problem. Mine was, “Who killed Nikki O’Brien?”
Yesterday, when Nikki’s father walked into my office and jarred my memory about the cold case, I wondered if there might be some possible connection with the television show.
Did the Nikki O’Brien killer imitate The Killing?
Impossible.
The show premiered in April 2011, six years after Nikki’s murder.
Did the TV series imitate the O’Brien killing?
Highly unlikely. It was based on a Danish television series from 2007, which, apparently, didn’t include a trunk murder.
Regardless, it was impossible not to think about the Cape May murder as “The Killing Killing,” a term that Dawson had used at the Lobster House.
Enough.
I was getting punchy, maybe stupid.
Maybe it was time to shut my eyes for a bit.
Then Dawson texted.
When EC left town, his phone pinged in Kinnelon, New Jersey. Ever hear of it?
Of course, I’ve heard of it. Kinnelon is up in my neck of the woods, not that far from Paterson. Which means that Edward Colt lied about going to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and he probably also lied about going to his mother’s funeral.
Since my cell was already out, I checked Roxs’s text-for-the-day, then reread her text from a month ago.
I’m standing at 51 W. 1st Street, Riverside, Iowa, the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, March 22, 2228.
I smiled and shut the thing off.
II
New Jersey invented fun: beaches, lakes, rivers, mountains, resorts, casinos, racetracks, even a rodeo, not to mention the greatest amusement park in the world: New York City.
— Thomas C. Colt
16
Shoreline Lanes
Friday, March 27th
43°
I’ve got nothing to say.”
I was afraid of that.
Actually, it was Mitchell Cain who should have been “afraid of that.”
I was standing at the counter of the dimly lit, mostly empty Shoreline Lanes. Off in the distance, a few of the alleys were active, with an intermittent smashing of pins, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was staring at the manager, a worthless endomorph in a food-stained Raiders t-shirt.
I hate the Raiders.
I took off my tie, wrapped it around his neck, and watched his eyes start to bulge with the pressure.
It was an improvisation.
I’d never done it before, but I liked it. Yeah, the tie was a Kooples, a somewhat expensive Kooples, but I had almost fifty more in my closet at home in Paterson. Besides, it was well crafted, well made, and would probably come away from its unexpected diversion relatively undamaged.
Suddenly, a cute little girl in a pretty blue dress, maybe eight years old, appeared at the counter, wanting to drop off her shoes.
“Is he all right?” she asked, which I thought was a pretty stupid question, even for an eight-year-old.
“He was rude to me,” I explained.
She thought it over, then fully accepted my explanation. Who likes rudeness? Right? She walked away, letting her little mind float back to whatever little girls think about.
As for Cain, he started gagging a bit, which I found unnecessary, rather disgusting, and a bit showy. Then he started bobbing his head up and down, desperately, as if he’d reconsidered and was now more than eager to talk. Being a reasonable man, I loosened my tie and put it back where it belonged, beneath the collar of my Brooks Brothers shirt, oddly complimenting my black Armani suit.
Today was “suspect day,” and I was starting things off with the eyewitness who had seen the yellow Mustang gliding over the beach before vanishing into the water near the Cove Beach jetty.
When the moron finally collected himself, he was definitely ready to talk. Actually, he was ready to do pretty much anything I wanted. The earlier lack of cooperation with its hyper-confident “nobody messes with me” belligerence was a thing of the past, almost as if it had never existed. I nodded at the far corner of the alley’s café, and we went over and sat down at a small table.
He said nothing, obviously concerned about setting me off again, so I initiated the grand inquisition.
“Tell me.”
He didn’t say, “But I already told the cops a million times back then,” or “I told that other investigator last week,” he told me.
“I was walking my dog—”
“What kind?”
He seemed surprised.
“Stabler’s a Doberman.”
You can tell a lot about a person, sometimes too much, by the kind of dog he or she owns.
Not to mention its name.
I waited for more.
“It was late, very late, almost 4:00 in the morning, and I was walking Stabler along the promenade next to the beach. The truth is, I don’t sleep that well.”
“Boohoo, moron.”
Yeah, I know, that sounds really stupid, but I’ve learned over the years that bozos like Cain get really creeped out when someone like me—big, intimidating, and potentially violent—makes fun of them like a child. It’s very unnerving, and Cain was unnerved. He glanced at my shades, glanced at my tie, looked away, and continued his narrative.
“I was approaching the south end of the beach, when I saw, in the moonlight, a yellow Mustang gliding over the sand towards the ocean. I was astonished. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was like a dream, and I stopped in my tracks. So did Stabler. Only later did I remember about the reclamation.”
No standard-issue vehicle could “glide” over the sand, not even in early April when the sand is cold and harder. The reason that Nikki’s yellow Mustang glided over the sand was because it wasn’t moving on the sand. It was driving over a temporary mat-road that the Army Corps guys had laid down for access to the jetty.
Back in 2003, Hurricane Isabel had battered both the Outer Banks in North Carolina and Hampton Roads in Virginia. When it moved north, it created a state of emergency in five different states—Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, New Jersey, and Delaware—killing fifty-six along the way. In Wildwood, nine miles north of Cape May, a surfer was killed, and the blast of the winds and the ocean surges severely eroded the Cape May beaches and pounded the Cove Beach jetty. Two years later, the town managed to get a grant from the feds to help pay for the restitution of the jetty, and several of the remaining armor stones were replaced and supplemental core stones were added.
The project initiated at the beginning of April, the month that Nikki was murdered.
“Then I dialed 911.”
“Who was driving the ca
r?”
“I couldn’t tell. It was too far away.”
As Helen Pavese, the lead detective back then, had told me on her front porch yesterday afternoon, “Either someone rigged the gas pedal somehow—although we never found any signs of tampering—or someone got out of the car in the ocean and made it to shore behind the jetty. Which is why the dope with the dog never saw the driver.”
I looked at the dope with the dog.
“You saw the kids the previous day. In the early evening.”
“Yeah, they came in and bowled a few games.”
“I don’t like coincidences.”
Meaning that I didn’t like the fact that he’d seen them here at the bowling alley and then seen the Mustang thirty-three hours later.
“Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence, right?”
Yeah, he was right, but I wasn’t about to agree with him.
“Tell me about Thursday night.”
He shrugged.
“They seemed like nice kids. Having a good time. I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“How many?”
“Four girls and two boys.”
I looked at him, fixedly, intently, the way a peregrine looks at a rabbit before the descent.
“I’m sure there’s more, Cain. I know there’s more.”
I was bluffing, of course.
He squirmed a bit.
“Some woman showed up and talked to one of the girls for a few minutes.”
“Describe her.”
“Pretty, youngish, maybe early thirties. Dressed country. Sloppy. She had a Piney look about her.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Why didn’t you tell the cops ten years ago?”
“I forgot about it.”
I let him stare at the black sheen off the lenses of my Ray-Bans. Then he looked down at my tie again and elaborated.
“That’s exactly what happened. When I remembered it later, I decided that I was already too involved, so I never said anything to that woman cop. She thought I was a suspect.”
“So do I.”
Which made him nervous.
So I made him even more nervous.
“If I find out that you’re holding anything back, I’ll toss your fat ass in jail and cut Stabler’s head off.”
“Look, I promise, there’s nothing more.”
The guy’s promise was as worthless as he was.
I looked at him hard.
“Go away and rent some shoes.”
17
Gingerbread House
Friday, March 27th
45°
We were full that night.”
“Let me see.”
The kid working the desk turned the screen in my direction, and I quickly checked the names on the B&B’s register for April 8, ten years ago, the night of Nikki’s “lost” day.
Nothing of interest.
“Thanks, kid.”
He smiled a friendly smile that wasn’t just a “work” smile. He was probably a local kid who actually enjoyed working at the Gingerbread House.
Why not?
I went outside on Gurney Street, a block from the ocean. Why shouldn’t a young kid be content to live and work in a town like Cape May? I don’t often use the words “lovely” and “pretty” for anything but the female of the species, but Cape May was an undeniably lovely and pretty town.
I might even risk “enchanting.”
With its tree-lined streets.
Its beaches.
Its assemblage of beautiful Victorian houses that looked like the workshop of some giant dollhouse maker.
With gingerbread lace, stained-glass windows, fretwork, feather boarding, cupolas, captain’s walks, porches, verandahs, and storybook gardens.
The Gingerbread House, Nikki and Rikki’s favorite, was no exception, built in 1869 and designed by Stephen Decatur Button, who’d designed over forty of the town’s oversized dollhouses.
I went from one to another to another. . . .
It was a pleasant afternoon, and everyone was exceedingly helpful, especially when I told them that I’d been hired by Judge O’Brien and that I was looking into his daughter’s murder, which might have happened ten years ago, but which no one in this town had ever forgotten.
After checking out the John Wesley Inn, right next door, I turned left on Columbia Avenue, which was really more of a “street.” Then I turned left on Ocean Street and checked out the Humphrey Hughes House and the Columbia House.
Nothing.
I’m not much of a techie, although it helps a lot in my line of work, but one extremely useful thing about the web is the fact that so many businesses still have easy access to their business records, even from ten years ago.
Then I tried Queen Victoria, one of the most famous B&B’s in Cape May, located at 102 Ocean Street, with a pleasingly odd color, some kind of light blue-green-gray, and an orange roof.
A well-kept, helpful woman in her fifties, showed me the screen and the registry. Just like the Gingerbread, they were full that night, and as I scanned the names, I spotted what I was looking for:
William Kelly
He’d paid in cash, and he’d signed his hometown as:
Georgetown, Delaware!
With an exclamation mark.
I thanked the lady, went outside, and called my gal Friday.
“Colt’s badass detective agency.”
I had no idea that she was answering the phone like that, but I didn’t mind.
“I’m looking for Luca Salerno’s ugly grandmother.”
“You’ve got the wrong number. His ugly grandmother lives in Elmwood Park, a pretentious euphemism for East Paterson.”
I paid no attention.
“Tell her that her boss wants her to check out the name ‘William Kelly’ from ten years ago. Check him in Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, and Johns Hopkins.”
“I don’t have a boss.”
I hung up.
Whenever you talked to Luca’s Nonna, you always had the feeling that you’d gotten the worse of the exchange.
18
The Cape May-Lewes Ferry
Friday, March 27th
45°
I’m not much for boats.
I’m not really afraid of them, they just give me the creeps. I’m not afraid of snakes either, but they also give me the creeps.
I guess I’m a land-animal.
I was sitting at a little table on the upper third-deck of MV New Jersey, one of three huge ferries that crisscrossed the Delaware Bay from Cape May to Lewes, Delaware. Seventeen miles over and seventeen miles back. It was a pleasant March afternoon, with maybe a bit too much sun, so I was glad, as always, that I was wearing my polarized shades.
I was thinking about what Samuel Johnson, who was one of my all-time favorites, once said:
Being in a ship is like being in jail, with the chance of being drowned.
She walked on the deck and wiped away my negatives.
Ronnie Miller was now twenty-eight years old, but she was looking closer to eighteen. Back in the year of the murder, she was Nikki and Rikki’s closest friend. An all-American beach-type, trim, tanned, and very pretty. Something along the lines of a Jennifer Lawrence, but her hair was a pretty red, affirmatively red.
She walked over to my table wearing a cute little sailor’s uniform, and I stood up before we sat down.
She smiled a redhead’s smile.
“Ask me anything, tough guy.”
I liked her. Who wouldn’t?
At least with suspect number two, I wouldn’t have to take off my tie.
I started easily, with a few throwaway questions, and she answered them just as easily. She admitted that she wasn�
�t much of student back then, or ever, and had never bothered with college. Her father was the captain of the boat we were sitting on, the MV New Jersey, and she’d been working with him ever since she was in high school.
“I’m all for nepotism,” she assured me.
She smiled easily. She was easy to be with. One might even use the silly word “fun.”
Eventually, I got to the boys.
“Did Sonny take an interest in you?”
“Not really.”
“What was he like?”
“Sweet, kind of goofy, looking forward to getting back home.”
“Which was where?”
“Some place in North Jersey.”
“Did he show any interest in either Rita or Izzy?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“I wonder why?”
She shrugged.
“Was he jealous of Billy?”
“I never saw any of that. They seemed like real close pals. Typical boys.”
“What did Billy look like?”
“Exactly what any young girl would like to look at. I’d guess he was about five ten, lean and perfect, with soft brown hair and soft brown eyes. He wore black jeans, deck shoes, and a red windbreaker like the one James Dean wore in Rebel Without a Cause. He was very easy to look at.”
“So are you.”
She smiled. She seemed to enjoy the impertinence.
“Why aren’t you married?”
Sure, it was rude, but she didn’t seem to mind. She looked down at her ringless finger.
“I was for a bit. I lasted a few more months than Rikki did.”
She was very good-natured, even about her personal tragedies.
“Why don’t you try it again?”
She shrugged.
“You know the Pam Tillis song, ‘All the Good Ones are Gone’?”
“Yeah.”
I did know the song, something about a thirty-four-year-old woman, who’s out with her gal pals for a few margaritas, and she thinks about guys, and flirting, and getting “hit on,” and she decides that there’s no “good ones” left.