It's over. We got him.
I turn to Ceepak. Check out the paintball weapon he tore off the counter.
“Rifle number three?”
“Roger that,” he says with the hint of a smile. “T. J's right. It's definitely the best.”
CHAPTER FORTY
We watch Santucci stuff George Weese into the back seat of a police cruiser parked on the boardwalk. I never knew you could drive down the boards in anything bigger than a golf cart–style trash hauler. I've seen those scoot up and down the boardwalk before, never a cop car. Guess there's an on-ramp somewhere.
Anyhow, Weese's hands are tied behind his back with flex-cuffs and Santucci has his hand on top of Weese's head, smooshing down that country music comb-back, trying to cram him into the back seat without banging his head against the doorjamb.
“Fucking line jumper!” someone shouts. I think it might be that same girl. Everybody here thinks Weese is being hauled away because he wouldn't wait his turn to ride the Mad Mouse. We're the Courtesy Cops, the Etiquette Enforcers.
“Good work, guys.” Chief Baines is standing next to us. “Damn good work!” He claps Ceepak on the back. “Fantastic.”
Weese is in the back seat staring at me.
It's an unpleasant sensation. The thick lenses in his glasses magnify his eyeballs so they look swollen, bloated with anger. I can see that, just as I had feared, just as Ceepak hypothesized, our suspect hates me.
Man, he hates me a lot.
“Why don't you guys take the rest of the weekend off?” Baines now says. “Enjoy yourselves. Come back tomorrow and grab some barbecue. Heck, you're the two working stiffs who just saved Labor Day!”
“We'd like to tie up a few loose ends,” Ceepak says, sounding like he won't even think about taking time off until he's convinced this thing is completely over. He told me they had a lot of ceasefires back in Iraq. The only problem? People kept firing.
“We need to interrogate the suspect, ASAP.”
“Sure. Sure. We'll call his folks. See if they want a lawyer present. See you back at the house.”
On the drive back to headquarters, I tell Ceepak the whole story of what happened that day on the beach. What we did to George Weese. How we humiliated the Wheezer.
He nods. He understands.
Ripple effects.
When we walk in the front door of the house, everybody starts clapping.
“Way to go, guys!”
“Congratulations.”
It's pretty awesome to walk into a police station as the cops who just cracked the big case and busted the bad guy. Everybody pats us on the back, shakes our hands. Most of the “way-to-go's” go to Ceepak, but I pick up the occasional “attaboy-Danny.”
We head down the hall and see Santucci.
“Where is George Weese?” Ceepak asks.
“We put him in the interrogation room,” says Santucci. Then, he pops a gumball in his mouth, turns to me. “You did okay today, kid.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Thanks, Dom.”
He crunches his gumball a couple of chomps. Waits.
I try again: “Thanks, Sergeant Santucci.”
He winks to let me know I got it right that time.
“We can't talk to him yet,” he says. “His parents want a lawyer in the room before they let the kid answer any questions.”
Ceepak understands. “How much longer until the lawyer arrives?”
“Mr. Weese said it might take a couple of hours. Apparently, their attorney is somewhere out in the bay on his sailboat looking for the wind.”
“Where's the duffel bag?”
“In the back. Dr. McDaniels and her crew set up shop in the empty office.”
“Was it an M-24?” Ceepak asks.
“Yep. Loaded with those special ball cartridges you told us about. Five of them. We saved some lives out there today.”
“Roger that.”
They both smile. Their adrenaline drains. They're coming down off the high you get when you're ripping paintball rifles off plywood counters or chasing bad guys up a Mad Mouse.
It's all good.
“Yeah, that's him.”
Young T. J. Lapczynski is with us in the viewing room. There's a one-way mirror between us and the interrogation room. We can see George Weese, but he can't see us. A cop is in the room with him, sitting in a folding chair near the door.
Weese is at one end of a long table. He stares straight ahead, his eyes fixed on the wall. I don't think he knows we're over here on the other side of the mirror studying him like he's some sort of firefly we trapped in our mayonnaise jar. Maybe he does. If so, he sure doesn't seem to care. There's a cup of coffee and a bottle of Poland Spring water sitting on the table in front of him. So far he hasn't touched either.
“That's definitely the dude who kept hogging number three.”
“You're sure?”
“Totally.”
“Okay. Thanks, T. J. And thanks again for the heads-up.”
T. J. shrugs it off, like it was no big deal.
“I just wanted to, you know, get a shot at my favorite rifle again.”
Ceepak smiles.
“So, you call my mom yet?”
“We've been rather busy.”
“Call her. You guys could get, like, a ten percent discount on any dinner at Morgan's.”
“Ten percent? That'll work.”
“Cool.”
T. J. steps aside and Dan Bloomfield, the guy who owns Aquaman's Comix & Collectibles, takes his turn at the window.
“Oh, yes. That's him.”
“You're certain?”
“Definitely. It's not every day some young man strolls in and purchases seven Derek Jeters. He was belligerent about it, too. ‘I only want 1996. Don't try to hustle me into buying shit I don't want.’ That's exactly what he said. And so, obviously, I sold him his cards. However, I did not appreciate the way he talked to me. Sure, the customer is always right, but that doesn't give him the right to be rude and disrespectful!”
We thank him for coming in. He's the last one.
Now we wait for the lawyer.
It's seven P.M. Sunday.
Mr. and Mrs. Weese are in the lobby up front waiting for their lawyer.
Their son is in the IR, not saying a word, barely breathing.
Ceepak and I are in the empty office with Dr. McDaniels.
“We took the van to the municipal garage,” she says. “Hauled it over on the back of a flatbed truck.”
“To keep any tire and undercarriage evidence intact,” Ceepak says.
“Give that man a gold star.” She says it without her usual zip or zing.
“Something bothering you?” Ceepak asks.
“Yeah. We checked the tires. They're all the same make and age.”
“No flat?”
“Exactly.”
“Curious, given the path of footprints you discovered … .”
“Yep. So why the hell did he walk around the van to the passenger-side rear wheel well?”
“Good question.”
“It's gnawing at me.”
“We could ask him,” I suggest.
They both look at me.
McDaniels glares.
Ceepak is gentler. “We might do that, Danny. We sure might.”
We also probably won't.
“What about the weapon?” Ceepak asks.
“It's probably our gun. M-24. Been fired recently. I sent it down to our firearms identification people. They'll shoot it into the water tank, check out the striation marks and rifling. I figure it'll all match up.”
McDaniels walks to the desk and picks up a card.
“We rolled Mr. Weese's prints when he came in. And, of course, we dusted the M-24 before sending it out for the ballistics work.”
“Find anything?”
“Yep.” Dr. McDaniels rubs her eyes. “Too much.”
“How do you mean.”
“Tell me, Ceepak. You ever put your palm print all over the schoo
l bus window when you were a kid?”
“No, ma'am.”
“Of course not. You were a Boy Scout the minute you popped out of your mother's womb and asked the doctor if he required any assistance.”
Ceepak smiles. He knows he can be something of a goody-goody. McDaniels is one of the few people he lets make fun of him for it.
“Well,” she says, “I used to do it all the time. Used to breathe on the glass to fog it up and then plaster my paw prints all over the place. Wanted folks to know I'd been there.”
“And Weese's prints are all over the M-24?”
“Everywhere. Stock. Telescopic sight. The barrel. Muzzle. I picked up two dozen clean prints.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah. Particularly when you remember two things. One: he never fired the rifle today. As far as we know, he never even took it out of the duffel bag.”
“And two?”
“I didn't find a single print on the paintball rifle.”
Ceepak nods. “Because he wore the neoprene gloves.”
“Precisely. If he's going through all that rigamarole to keep the paintball rifle clean, how come his prints are all over the M-24?”
“Well, don't forget,” I say, “we found his surfer gloves in the back of the van. Maybe he forgot them when he, you know, packed his bag.”
Ceepak and McDaniels both look at me again like I'm the slow kid in class.
“It's a possibility, Danny,” says Ceepak.
“Yeah. It's possible,” McDaniels adds. “And I could be the next Miss America. I guess that's possible, too.”
Ceepak and McDaniels seem real worried.
And I don't think it has anything to do with beauty pageants.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The lawyer finally arrived around eight P.M.
We talked to Weese for about two hours and he didn't say a word. Nothing. Nada. We asked him about his wife, the kids, Derek Jeter, the Yankees’ chances his year, everything. We got nothing but silence.
He didn't even tell us his name. His parents did it for him.
“George Washington Weese,” his mother said when George just sat there like he couldn't remember his name.
“We wanted him to grow up and become somebody,” Mr. Weese said. “But, apparently, he had other plans.”
Even his old man's ragging on him didn't snap George out of his trance. He kept quiet, kept staring at the wall.
“What's wrong?” Mrs. Weese asked when her son sat there like a spud. “Did you people torture him?” She shot that one straight at Ceepak. “Did you try any of that Abu Ghraib prison crap? I know you were in Iraq, Mr. Ceepak. You were one of those military police, like in those pictures with the naked prisoners.”
Ceepak didn't take the bait.
• • •
Around ten P.M., the lawyer, who had on this white polo shirt that showed off his incredibly bronzed tan, suggested we resume our “attempted interrogation” first thing in the morning.
“Oh-seven-hundred?” Ceepak said.
The lawyer frowned. “I'm no good before ten. Besides, tomorrow's a holiday.”
“Maybe for lawyers,” Mr. Weese huffed. “Some of us have to pay our bills—the bills our lawyers send us.”
“Does ten work for you?” the lawyer asked Chief Baines.
“Fine. We'll be busy earlier, securing the party site. John? You okay with ten?”
“Ten hundred hours will work.”
We trooped out of the room. George was escorted back to a jail cell. Ceepak suggested I head for home.
“Big day tomorrow,” he said.
“Yeah. I'm scheduled to work security at the sound stage. Stop the girls from jumping on 3 Doors Down.”
3 Doors Down, the rock band that does that “Kryptonite” song, is scheduled to kick off the big show on the boardwalk at noon tomorrow.
“I want you here,” Ceepak said. “I'll address the issue of your deployment with the duty sergeant.”
I said okay and headed across the bay to Mainland Medical. Katie was sleeping. I kissed her on her forehead; she smiled slightly, snuggled into her pillow, and slept some more.
“Go home, Danny,” Christine, my nurse friend, said. “You look wiped.”
She was right.
I drove back across the bridge and called my friends. Jess, Olivia, and Becca. They freaked when I told them about George Weese.
“Oh, that guy.” Becca said, light dawning.
“Yeah.”
“Does his nose still whistle?”
I had to admit I hadn't been paying attention.
“Fry his ass,” Jess suggested. “Hang him from the highest tree.”
Jess kind of forgets which branch of the criminal justice system I'm working in. Cops don't get to fry anybody, and there'd be hell to pay if we started decorating trees with dead guys, like the Surfing Santas they string up along Ocean Avenue during Christmas.
“Good work,” Olivia, the sensible one, said. “But it's sad how we messed up his mind.”
Olivia, of course, got it right. Like I said, she's the smart one.
I climb into my rack. Tomorrow's the big day. Labor Day.
I have a feeling, one way or another, I'll be laboring my butt off.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Happy Labor Day!”
It's eight A.M.
This is one of those days when I wish I didn't have a clock radio. Mike and Larry, the local morning team on WAVY, are just too damn chipper. They've both apparently guzzled a couple of those forty-eight-ounce tumblers of coffee from the Qwick Pick.
“Big day on the beach.”
“Bo yeah!”
“3 Doors Down.”
“Ribs. Chicken. Pulled pork sandwiches.”
“Greased pole climbing contest.”
“More ribs.”
“I think that's how they grease the pole.”
“With barbecue sauce?”
“No. Pork lard.”
“You can really pig out on the beach today, that's for sure.”
My fumbling fingers finally find the off switch. If I were more than half awake, I would have found it sooner.
Time to shower and head to Qwick Pick.
Time for my own forty-eight-ounce tumbler of coffee.
• • •
10:02 A.M.
George Weese is talking.
“I want them both out of here,” is the first thing he says. “Their very presence offends me.”
His parents look stunned.
“Your mother and father?” Ceepak says for the video camera. He doesn't want to spare anybody's feelings, he just wants to make certain the official record reflects whom the accused is tossing out of the interrogation room.
“I have a lawyer,” Weese says. “I see no need for my parents to remain.”
“Son, you don't know—”
Weese glares at his dad.
“Be quiet. I am twenty-seven years old. You no longer need tell me what to do.”
Mrs. Weese reaches across the table to touch her son's hand.
He snaps it back, hissing at her.
She gasps.
“Perhaps it would be best …”
It's all the tanned lawyer needs to say. Mr. and Mrs. Weese push back their chairs. The chair legs screech as they do.
“Fine,” Mr. Weese shakes his head, looking at his son. “You are such a goddam disappointment.”
George smiles. “As are you, father.”
Families. Freak shows without the circus tent.
Mr. Weese motions to his wife: “Helen?”
Mrs. Weese remains seated.
“Helen?” He repeats.
She finally picks up her purse, fumbles around inside to make certain she has her cigarettes, and trails her husband out the door.
When it closes, George leans back in his chair, studies Ceepak and me. He shakes his head and smirks.
“You two. What a pair of incompetents. The Two Stooges.”
“Why do you
say that?” Ceepak asks, showing no emotion.
“I had to hand you seven Derek Jeters before you could piece together my ingenious little puzzle? Maybe I should have spelled it out in braille, you're both so blind.”
Now I sort of wish we were back to the bit where George Weese wasn't saying anything.
“The Jeters?” I say. “You dropped those the day you shot Katie, am I right?”
“Danny?” Ceepak shoots me one of his looks.
“You.” Weese waggles a finger at me. “You ruined my life. You and your five little friends!”
“George?” The lawyer guy puts a gentle hand on Weese's shoulder.
Weese smiles. Leans back.
“Tell us about it,” Ceepak says.
“About what?” Weese wants to call all the shots. For the moment, Ceepak's playing along.
“Tell us how Danny and his friends ruined your life.”
“With pleasure. August twenty-eighth, nineteen ninety-six,” he says, deliberately drawing out each syllable of the date, like he's relived that particular day a billion times. “Unbeknownst to me, my father had come home early from work that day. He was in the kitchen cleaning out his golf cleats with a house key. When I came in the back door, he stopped what he was doing to stare at me. As you might recall, Daniel, the front of my white swimsuit was stained purple with grape soda. The wet cloth was clinging to my skin. I know my father could see my penis. I could feel his cold stare.”
He lets that hang there for dramatic effect.
“‘Jesus,’ my father said. Not ‘What happened to you, son?’ Not ‘Did somebody hurt you, my boy?’ No. He invoked the holy name of his lord and savior—in disgust. Because he was examining my penis through the dampened cloth and was disappointed by what he saw. ‘Go change your damn pants,’ he said. Then, he shook his head. He was disgusted. He started digging out more dirt, concentrating on the cleats. He didn't wish to see how minuscule a man his son had grown to be.”
Okay. This is weird.
“I wanted to say something. That my member was momentarily shrunken because it was wet and cold. That it grew substantially when I achieved an erection. But I couldn't say a word. My insufficient size only confirmed what my father already suspected: I could never become the kind of man he wanted me to be. No, sir. Not with my mouse. Yes, I believe someone once called my penis a mouse. I believe it was the little girl with the red hair. Katie. Katie the Cunt.”