“The motorcycle?”
“Right. It is possible,” Ceepak continues, spitballing an idea to see if it makes enough sense to stick, “that the doors opening and closing our witness heard were connected to the killer removing Mr. Braciole’s body from the car.”
“So you think he
was
murdered here?” says Wilson.
“We can’t be certain at this juncture.” Ceepak glances around the parking lot. “And, after a week, it’s doubtful that we’ll find any evidence suggesting this parking lot was, indeed, the murder scene. No shell casing, for instance.”
“The killer probably picked it up,” adds Wilson. “Just like they dug the bullet out of the door.”
“Okay,” I say, “the first opening and shutting was to drag Paulie’s body out the driver-side door. The second set was so they could gouge out the slug from the passenger-side door.”
“It’s a possibility,” says Ceepak, like he always does when my answer may not be the only one—or even close to the real one.
“You guys remember Mr. Braciole’s bullet wound?” asks Detective Wilson.
Ceepak taps his left temple. “In front and slightly above his left ear.”
“Correct. Then it exits somewhat lower on the right side of his skull.” She taps her right cheek, just above the jawbone. “If you imagine Paul Braciole sitting in the driver seat, line up that hole in his temple with the hole in the door panel.”
She stands about a foot away from the door. Holds up her right hand and turns it into a finger pistol aimed so it’s pointing down at a slight angle to the hole in the passenger-side panel.
“This was a very clean kill,” she continues. “One bullet to the brain. The shooter was good; knew precisely where to place their single bullet. An amateur would’ve probably blown through a whole magazine of shells.”
Ceepak nods.
“Here’s how I figure this thing plays out, wherever it took place,” says Detective Wilson. “Paulie parks somewhere or stops at a red light. Our killer is tailing him, probably on that motorcycle. When they see their chance, maybe at a stoplight, they stop, dismount, and stroll up beside the car. Very cool, very casual. Or, maybe they stumble a little—to pretend they’re drunk and weaving their way home, which would explain why they’re walking in the middle of the road, coming up on the driver side of the car.
“Paulie’s behind the wheel. Maybe fiddling with the radio. Adjusting mirrors, trying to figure out where everything is on this girl’s car. When our doer gets to the window, he or she whips up their pistol in two seconds flat. They aim and fire—one shot that goes clean through Paulie Braciole’s skull and embeds in the far door.”
“Your hypothetical killer is quite skilled,” says Ceepak.
Detective Wilson nods. “The best.”
“You’ve seen this sort of killing before?”
“Once or twice. It’s a quick and clean execution technique perfected by a rebel group in the Philippines called the National People’s Army. They used to target U.S. troops and diplomats. The assassin walks up to your car window while you’re waiting at a stoplight, whips out their rod, and bam. You’re dead before red changes to green.”
This makes no sense.
“So,” I say, “we’re looking for somebody from the Philippines?”
“Doubtful,” says Ceepak.
“Yeah,” adds the techie. “The NPA may have invented the move but, these days, the technique’s very popular with all sorts of professional hit men.”
A pro.
The kind of killer who would know precisely where to place a single shot to ensure a quick death. The kind of professional hit man a motorcycle gang like The Creed probably has on its roster.
“So,” I say, “if that’s what happened, then this has to be where Paulie was murdered, or else the car wouldn’t be parked here, right?”
Ceepak doesn’t answer right away. He just keeps staring through that open window. Detective Wilson does the same thing.
Finally, Ceepak speaks. “Such is our conundrum, Danny. The riddle we must answer.”
“Well,” I say, “what if the murder took place back here but
before
Becca went swimming, and all she heard was the motorcycle and the killer opening and closing car doors while he cleaned up any evidence and hauled Paulie’s body out of the car?”
“That is definitely one answer,” says Ceepak.
The way he says it? I know he doesn’t think it’s the right answer.
28
C
EEPAK
’
S STILL RACKING HIS BRAINS WHEN, ONCE AGAIN, WE
are called to the set of
Fun House
.
“Ceepak?”
It’s Gus Davis on the radio, sounding grumpier than the dwarf in the Disney movie after Sneezy blows boogers in his beard. Guess he’s back on the unarmed-security detail.
“Get your butt over here. There’s this jerk harassing the girl what got the death threat. Soozy K.”
“Where are Reed and Malloy?”
I’m guessing those were the two full-time cops on security duty today.
“Mayor Sinclair yanked them away for some kind of press conference down at Borough Hall. Mandrake went too.”
I’m betting Gus can hear Ceepak crushing the radio microphone in his hand. He’s that ticked off.
The mayor thinks he and Mandrake need the armed security guards more than Soozy? I don’t care what Ceepak says, the next time Mr. Adkinson pulls out that petition, I’m signing it.
“Settle down, son,” we hear Gus say to somebody, probably the jerk. “Ceepak?”
“10-4,” says Ceepak. “We’re on our way.”
“He might be the nincompoop you’re looking for.”
“Come again?”
“The idiot drove here on his freaking motor scooter.”
Sirens wailing, we fly up Shore Drive, even though there are these cute signs that say stuff like “
IF YOU
’
RE IN A HURRY
,
YOU
’
RE ON THE WRONG ROAD
” and “
DRIVE SLOW
,
SEE OUR SIGHTS
—
DRIVE FAST
,
SEE OUR JUDGE
.”
The signs were Chief Baines’s idea. Good Public Relations, which seems to be why we do all sorts of stupid stuff in Sea Haven these days, like let a bunch of drunks puke all over us on national TV and haul security details to Borough Hall when the primary threat is on Halibut Street.
We whip around the corner to the TV house. I see Gus and his partner, another retired cop named Andrew Stout. They’re double-teaming this big dude in a fringed leather vest that shows off his arm muscles. Behind the guy is, of course, his motorcycle: a Harley-Davidson with high handlebars and a banana seat.
Gus and Stout are unarmed. However, Gus Davis is scrappy and, like he always says, he won’t take “no guff from nobody.” He stands his ground with both fists up and his feet firmly set, aping the Fighting Irish boxer pose from Notre Dame. Stout, who looks like he still runs three miles every morning, has both hands up, the way blocking linemen do in football. The two of them may be retired, but they still know how to keep a bad guy at bay.
I slam on the brakes. Tires squeal. Our rear end fishtails a little to the left.
This gets the lumbering lunatic’s attention.
He turns his thick neck around, looks in our direction.
Ceepak’s up and out of his door before the car stops sliding sideways.
“Come on kid,” I hear Gus shout. “Give me a reason to knock your block off!”
“I just want to talk to Soozy!” the guy pleads.
“So buy a baby doll and name it Susan!” counters Gus, moving his fists around in a circle under his chin.
Ceepak pulls his Glock up from his hip. Locks it into a two-handed grip. “We’ve got this, Gus,” he shouts, aiming his weapon at the big bruiser’s left thigh. “On the ground!” he shouts.
Motorcycle man hesitates. You can see the “Huh?” etched on his face.
So Ceepak repeats himself: “On the ground! Now!”
I think the guy is slow—as in stupid. He puts his hands over his head.
This is not what Simon said.
“On! The! Ground!” I’m shouting it too, as I come around the nose of the car, my hands going for the plastic FlexiCuffs hooked to my belt.
“Kiss the dirt, douchebag!” shouts Gus. The guy finally comprehends. He drops to his knees.
“Down!” shouts Ceepak.
The lunkhead lies on his stomach. It takes him a while. Finally, he puts his face in the pea-pebble lawn.
“Hands behind your back!” barks Ceepak.
The horizontal dude obeys.
“Danny?”
Ceepak keeps his weapon trained on the ox while I work my way behind him, slip the plastic loops over his hands, and tug up on the zip straps like I’m bundling monster cables behind my high-def TV.
“I just need to talk to Soozy,” the guy grunts into the gravel, so it comes out kind of mumbled.
“You ever hear of a telephone?” says Gus. “Next time, drop a dime!”
The guy isn’t struggling as I fasten his hands behind his back, so I glance up. Ceepak is actually chuckling. Gus will do that to you.
Up on the sundeck, over Ceepak’s shoulder, I can see Layla with Soozy K. The other three contestants are behind them: Mike Tomasino, Vinnie Martin, and Jenny Mortadella.
I hear feet crunching across gravel. Someone coming up behind Ceepak.
He hears it too.
Quick as a cat hunting Coke caps, he spins to his right, bringing his weapon around with him.
It’s the freaking camera crew.
Geeze-o, man. Looks like we’re going to be on TV again.
About ten, fifteen minutes later, Eric Hunley is so accommodating and apologetic that Ceepak tells me to cut him out of the plastic restraints.
Yep, the guy who tooled over to the Fun House on his Harley is the “very hot local stud” that Mandy Keenan told us about, the one who dumped her roommate Coco so he could hook up with a reality TV star, Soozy K.
“She broke my heart, man,” Hunley says to Ceepak as he rubs his wrists. Guess I tugged a little too hard on those plastic zip strips. “I thought we could take our relationship to the next level.”
I roll my eyes. Ceepak closes his.
Does everybody in town have to talk like they’re being interviewed for this week’s episode of
Fun House
?
“She got what she wanted,” Hunley goes on. “She used me.”
“How so?” says Ceepak.
“It’s all a game to her,” he head gestures up toward the house. Soozy K and the cameras have gone inside. I believe Gus Davis saying “get that freaking camera lens out of my freaking face or I’ll jam it where the freaking sun don’t shine” prompted Layla and Rutger Reinhertz, the director, to “wrap” filming in the front yard, move the shoot to a new location. Indoors.
Gus and Andrew Stout went inside with the cast and crew. “I need to hit the head anyways,” Gus said as he galumphed away.
“Me too,” said Stout.
From what I hear on TV, if you’re a guy, when you get old, you spend a lot of time in the bathroom.
“Mr. Hunley,” says Ceepak, “what exactly did Ms. Kemppainen want from you?”
“Who?”
“Soozy K,” I translate for Eric.
“Oh. Sex, mostly. She’s half nympho.” He says it like it’s an ethnic group on the census form. “And she wanted me to help her get rid of her competition.”
Ceepak arches an eyebrow. “Paul Braciole?”
“Nah. She was using her new TV boyfriend, Tomasino, to take care of Braciole. They had an alliance or a strategy or something. She needed me to deal with the last girl standing in her way, the Mortadella chick. Wanted me to Tonya Harding her.”
“Come again?”
“You know—the ice-skating chick whose ex kneecapped that other ice-skating chick with a nightstick.”
“Nancy Kerrigan,” I say, since obscure sports trivia is another one of my pop culture specialties.
“Yeah,” says Hunley. “So, anyways, Soozy says I should do something like that on the only other hot chick left in the house, because she figures the producers have got this show rigged so it ends up being one hot guy and one hot girl in the big finale; they make it two hot guys, it comes off a little too homo, you know what I’m saying?”
Now Ceepak and I both close our eyes, just to give ourselves a half-second to cringe in privacy.
“She suggested I use my aluminum softball bat.”
“On Ms. Morgan?” says Ceepak.
“Who?” says Hunley.
Time to translate again. “Jenny Mortadella. Her real name is Morgan.”
“Really? Like the pirate captain? The one with the rum?”
“Yeah,” I say, just so we can move on. It’s 95 degrees out today. No shade. No trees. Just a lawn full of hot pea pebbles.
“But despite Ms. Kemppainen’s suggestion, you two did nothing?” says Ceepak.
Eric tugs up on his belt. “I wouldn’t say we didn’t do nothing. But once Paulie got whacked, she didn’t seem so interested in me busting up Jenny.”