Tilt-a-Whirl (The John Ceepak Mysteries)

  “Is the boyfriend here?”

  “Negative,” Ceepak says. “We heard his story, then his father hauled him home.”

  “Mayor Sinclair?”

  “Roger that. The boy will be available for further questioning, should we need to talk to him later.”

  “So what's his story?” Ceepak pulls out his little notebook.

  “Ben Sinclair says Ashley Hart called him from her cell phone and stated she needed to see him right away. She was so ’totally freaked by everything that happened today, she asked him—no, he said she ‘begged him’—to meet her back here by the pool. He hopped on his motorcycle, left town around 2045. They waved him through at the guardhouse gate….”

  Figures. Guess being the mayor's son gives you an E-Z Pass through life.

  “Sinclair arrived here at approximately 2100 hours. The state police officer guarding the northern perimeter let him pass when he explained who he was.” He does a two-finger point to the south. “I was patrolling the far perimeter. Wasn't alerted to his arrival. The young man waited approximately fifteen minutes. Sat there.”

  Ceepak points to a chaise longue on the patio surrounding the kidney-shaped pool. I see one empty and one half-empty Heineken sitting on a small round table next to the chair.

  “How old's this boyfriend?” I ask, looking at his beer bottles.

  “Sixteen. Maybe seventeen. Apparently, he knows where they stow the alcoholic beverages.”

  Ceepak nods at a refrigerator tucked into the brickwork of a massive backyard barbeque. I'm not talking Weber grill and sack of charcoal here. This is one of those stainless-steel professional jobs built into a garden wall.

  “So the kid sat sipping beer for five, ten minutes,” I say, picking up the narrative.

  “Right,” Ceepak says, piecing it all together for me so it becomes clearer for him. “Then, when Ashley still doesn't show, he starts ‘getting pissed.’ He walks over here … to the pergola—”

  “The what?”

  “The arbor. The trellis.”

  “This thing? With the vines?”

  “Right. He comes over here and tries calling up to Ashley's room … tosses a pea pebble or two at her bedroom window….”

  “And he realizes her balcony door is open.”

  “Exactly,” Ceepak says. “That's when young Mr. Sinclair starts, as he puts it, ‘to shit a brick.’ He runs back up to the road, yells at the state police officer, says, ‘Ashley's gone! Ashley's gone!’ Her mother hears the boy, comes running out the front door. She proceeds to scream as well. At 2125 hours, I call for reinforcements, initiate a hard target search.”

  That would be 9:25 P.M.

  It's almost ten now. Took me fifteen minutes to drive down from The Sand Bar. I drove slow because, well, I'd been drinking.

  “Ceepak?”

  It's the chief.

  “What the hell happened?”

  The chief is wearing a big mesh T-shirt, like a football jersey if they played football in July instead of the fall. He's got on gray sweat-pant shorts and flip-flops and looks like he was home in his comfy chair, ready to kick back, pop the top on a cold one, and watch some ball when this new thing started going down.

  “Nothing definite yet, chief.”

  “Well, find something definite, okay? Find it fast.”

  “I'm all over it, sir.”

  The chief does one of those quick looks around, like he wants to make sure nobody is eavesdropping.

  “This thing? It could … you know … it could get messy. State police. FBI. I need, you know … I need your best, John.”

  “It's all I'll ever give you, sir.”

  “Great. Okay. Great. Thanks.”

  Something about the way Ceepak says stuff, like he truly means it, always puts people at ease.

  “Where's the mother?”

  “Inside. Jane is sitting with her.”

  “Okay. Good. Smart. I'm going up to the road,” the chief says. “Reconnoiter with the troops. Work out a search grid. You coming?”

  “In a minute. I want to nose around down here first.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holler if you find something … anything.”

  “Roger.”

  “I'm putting out an Amber Alert.”

  Ceepak nods. This means the TV and radio will urge anybody who thinks they see Ashley, or has any information about her at all, to call the police.

  The chief lugs his bulk around the side of the house and starts screaming at our guys assembled up at the top of the driveway. When we can't hear him yelling any more, Ceepak motions for me to follow him—away from the pool, down to the beach.

  The back yard of the beach house sort of flows right into the sand, making it look like whoever owns the house also owns this piece of the ocean too.

  “Where we going?” I ask.

  “Down to the beach. They've got the road covered. Sending out search teams. But—we had the front and sides of the house under surveillance when Ashley went missing. There's also the gatehouse at the entrance to the subdivision. The guard only granted admittance to the mayor's son because he knew him. So….”

  “So whoever did this came up the beach?” I catch on fast.

  “He or she. But at this juncture, we don't even know if there was someone.”

  “What? You think Ashley went for a moonlit stroll on the beach? Without her boyfriend?”

  “Like I said, at this point, anything is possible.” Ceepak is walking with his head down, studying the ground in front of his feet. “And everything will remain possible until we find evidence that eliminates certain of those possibilities.”

  “Like what?”

  “This.”

  Ceepak pulls out his Maglite and twists the lens.

  He saw the bootprint without the light. I see it now.

  “Timberland?” I ask.

  “Looks like.” He follows the prints down to the tide line, where the waves wash everything away.

  “It's our same guy,” I say.

  “That is one possibility. Remember, Danny—don't jump to conclusions;

  there may not be anything solid for you to land on.”

  That line is so corny, it must be something Ceepak's father told him. My own dad always said, “Never assume: It makes an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’” I think they must go to night school to learn the corny stuff they're supposed to say to their sons in certain situations.

  “So,” I ask, “how did this boot-wearing person sneak in?”

  “Good question.”

  Ceepak swings his flashlight around.

  “You think he was, I don't know—some kind of Navy SEAL or something? Scuba-dived up to the beach? Dragged Ashley away….”

  “It's a possibility,” Ceepak says, only half-listening. Maybe he knows I stole my idea from this Steven Seagal movie I rented once.

  “How about a boat?” I say. “Maybe the guy or girl … the doer … maybe they had a boat.”

  “More probable than a car or ATV. However, I suspect we might have heard the approach of any motorized craft. So if it was a boat….”

  “It was a rowboat … or a kayak … or a rubber raft….”

  “Or, our perp might have simply walked along the shoreline, using the waves to wash away any trace of his or her movements.”

  He swings his flashlight up and down the beach. Left, then right, then left again.

  He stops on a patch of beach grass just beyond the high-tide line.

  There's this one trampled section. Ceepak walks over to it. I'm right behind him.

  “Careful where you step.”

  “Right,” I say, remembering my morning lesson, walking only where Ceepak has already walked.

  “Interesting,” he says.

  The coarse grass is spread open, matted flat, and reaches a V-shaped point like a wedge was dragged across the weeds. A wedge or an aluminum fishing boat.

  Ceepak hunkers down and holds his flashlight near his he
ad. He looks like a coal miner digging for sand crabs. I see him snap open a pants pocket and pull out his magnifying glass.

  “Danny, do you have the digital camera?”

  “Sorry. It's in the Ford and I drove my own vehicle, because….”

  “Roger.”

  Ceepak examines something caught in the grass.

  “Surfer bracelet,” he says.

  “Purple and green?”

  “Check.”

  I remember it. “It's Ashley's.”

  “You had no one back here?”

  The chief is yelling at the state police, but Ceepak is the one hanging his head and staring at his shoes. He's taking this hard, like it's entirely his fault. Like he broke his promise and let Ashley down because he should have anticipated a sea-based attack.

  I wouldn't have thought about it.

  Who'd ever expect an angry junkie to be smart (and sober) enough to launch some kind of amphibious assault?

  And why didn't Squeegee just kill the girl?

  Or maybe he did and we just don't know it yet. Maybe he hid her body somewhere, buried it in the sand, dumped it in the ocean.

  But if he was trying to get rid of the one witness who could place him at the scene of his earlier murder, why didn't he just shoot her the minute she dropped into the back yard? We know she was alone. The boyfriend didn't show until she was already gone.

  So why aren't we doing another crime-scene analysis of Ashley Hart's bullet-riddled body?

  Maybe somebody else grabbed the girl, not Squeegee. Somebody else wearing Timberland boots in July? Doubtful. But like Ceepak says, “it's a possibility.”

  “We need to contact the FBI,” the chief says. “This guy's going to ask for money. It's a goddamn kidnapping.”

  “That's one possibility.”

  “You got a better theory?” the chief snaps.

  “No, sir. Not yet.”

  The chief sounds and looks pissed because, basically, he is. The last two things a tourist town like Sea Haven needs is a murderer and a child-snatcher running up and down the beach, because that sort of thing can really scare folks away, make them want to stay at home in their crime-stricken cities where they feel safe.

  “I suspect,” the chief says, “that once our guy realized whom he shot this morning, he also realized he could ring the cash register a second time by grabbing the girl and scoring an even bigger payday.”

  “That would explain why he didn't shoot Ashley this morning,” Ceepak says, helping the chief flesh out his theory.

  “Right. Exactly. Good.” The chief seems happy that Ceepak is back on board. “He figured the girl was more valuable to him as a hostage held for ransom.”

  “It's a possibility,” Ceepak says again, and the chief flashes him a look that makes my shoulders hunch up, like somebody's going to smack me. “A very distinct possibility.”

  “Yeah.” The chief stares out at the sea. “Okay. Makes sense. I tell you one thing—this guy, Squeegee? He must be doing some very serious drugs. The kind that make you smart. Real smart.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It's all over the eleven-o'clock news.

  “Authorities in Sea Haven have issued an Amber Alert for Harriet Ashley Hart, the twelve-year-old daughter of murdered billionaire Reginald Hart….”

  They flash her picture. And her first name is Harriet? No wonder she calls herself Ashley.

  “The young girl apparently witnessed her father's brutal murder earlier today. Now it appears she may have become the victim of foul play herself….”

  Yep, folks—been a busy day down in beautiful Sea Haven. Murder. Abduction. Foul play aplenty. And you thought people came here to relax.

  Up pops the police sketch of Squeegee. He looks plenty scary, with big blank eyes that don't give you any clue what the hell his whacked mind might be thinking. He looks like a skinnier version of Charles Manson, only without the swastika scratched into his forehead with a safety pin. Squeegee's scowl will probably give the folks watching at home all sorts of raw material for their nightmares tonight.

  Now they're showing video footage taped earlier in the day. We see the mob of people in T-shirts and shorts, some licking ice-cream cones, outside the fence at Sunnyside Playland. Guess this was the thing to do on vacation today: Grab the kids, head on down to the closed-off crime scene, prop your boy up on your shoulders, and see if he can sneak a peek at the Tilt-A-Whirl where, as the TV reporter on the scene so colorfully puts it, “Reginald Hart's whirlwind life came spinning to a stop.”

  “Danny?”

  Ceepak motions for me to join him at what I guess is the wet bar.

  We've set up a mobile command center inside the rec room, a big space right off the pool through sliding glass doors about twenty feet tall.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Does this look like the bootprint we found behind the bushes this A.M.?” Ceepak shows me what looks like a smooshed dinner plate somebody stomped on while the clay was still wet, like the plaster handprint I made for my mom one Christmas that still hangs above the cabinets in her kitchen.

  “Did this come from the beach?”

  “Check. The State boys took a plaster cast of the bootprints we found in the sand.”

  “It's a Timberland,” I try out. “Just like we found this morning.”

  “Check. But remember—it's a very popular, very fashionable brand of boot. Lots of people wear them.”

  Ceepak refuses to eliminate too many possibilities.

  “Still,” he admits, “it's a link. A strong connector….”

  Ashley's mother comes into the room. She looks like hell on toast. She sees all the police putting pins in maps and talking into hand-held radios. Then she sees Ceepak.

  “Why aren't you out searching for her?”

  Ceepak puts down the bootprint plaster. I hope Betty doesn't use it for an ashtray. She's smoking again and there are gray ash flecks dusting the front of her black sweater. Her face looks ashen too, like it's been gray and drizzling all day and there's more precipitation in the forecast for tomorrow.

  “You said you'd protect her. When you raised your hand and made that vow? Ashley believed you. So did I.”

  The chief comes up behind her and places his big beefy hand on her shoulder. She turns to look up at him. He towers about two feet above her blond head, but he's a gentle giant and his touch seems to comfort her.

  “Ma’am, believe me—Officer Ceepak and all the other officers, in here and out in the field, will do everything they can to find your daughter. We're sorting through clues and organizing a massive search-and-rescue operation. We've called in the Coast Guard, the Rescue Dogs. We're setting up roadblocks, sending out a call for volunteers to assist in the search….”

  The woman nods her head. She understands.

  “Thank you. It's just that….” She takes a deep breath. “I'm afraid.”

  “Just let us do our jobs? Please?”

  She hesitates, then pulls herself together. “Of course, Chief. Of course.”

  They both nod their heads. The chief steps away. She turns to Ceepak.

  “Ashley really liked you.”

  “Don't worry. We'll find her.”

  She turns to go back to her bedroom and cry some more, when one of the State Crime Scene Investigators comes over carrying a small Dell computer.

  “Excuse me, ma'am?”

  She slowly turns around.

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry to bother you with this….”

  “Will it find my daughter?”

  “It could.”

  “All right.”

  “We've been working on your ex-husband's laptop. Trying to access his calendar, address book. See who he might have had recent contact with….”

  Betty closes her eyes for a second, like she needs to collect her thoughts to keep from screaming at this cop for worrying about a computer when he should be outside, finding her little girl.

  “You really think this will help you locate
Ashley?”

  “Like I said, it could.”

  The chief now marches back to her side, looking every bit the big-hearted commander.

  “We think the murder and the disappearance are linked,” he says, using his confident coach voice—the one that tells you he knows exactly what play to call to win the game in the final five seconds. “So we really need your help.”

  “Of course.” She gives him a tense smile.

  “Any idea what his security code might be?” the crime scene guy asks. “It might help us crack into his database faster….”

  “BUSTER,” she says.

  “Ma'am?”

  “Buster was his dog when he was a boy. B-U-S-T-E-R is his security code for everything. ATM card, E-mail … everything.”

  “Thanks.” The guy with the laptop plops down on a sofa and starts tapping keys.

  “Thank you,” the chief echoes softly.

  “You're welcome. I think I'm going to lie down now. The doctor gave me some pills … I'm starting to feel a little groggy….”

  “Good. Sleep is good.”

  “Officer Ceepak?”

  “Yes, ma'am?”

  She steadies herself, wanting to say whatever it is she needs to say before her brain closes up shop for the day.

  “You made a very special connection with my daughter today. Somehow, I think she needs you more than all these others. She put her trust in you … told me you were her protector, her special champion.”

  Poor Ceepak. He's being pegged as Ashley's only hope, her knight in shining armor.

  He nods. I guess he sees himself the same way. The Code? It'll do that to you.

  “I'll find her,” Ceepak whispers. No “we” any more. This is personal. “I give you my word.”

  “Thank you.”

  Betty leaves the room, her five-day forecast looking extremely gloomy, indeed.

  “Ceepak?” It's the chief.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I want you and Danny on the morning shift.”