“Another squirrel joke?”
“No, sir. But it’s sort of connected. Well, not connected, really. It’s just that I’m at a scene that maybe doesn’t warrant your attention, but it’s so weird, and to have something this weird happen the same day as that thing with the squirrels this morning, I thought maybe you’d like to—”
“Spit it out, Carlson.”
Officer Carlson told him where he was, and what he’d found.
“I’ll swing by,” Duckworth said.
Carlson met Duckworth at the Five Mountains admission gates and led him through the darkened park to the Ferris wheel, which reminded him of a monstrous, illuminated tambourine.
“This is what I thought you’d want to have a look at,” the officer said, pointing to the three mannequins with the words YOU’LL BE SORRY painted across them.
Duckworth walked around the scene, inspecting it from all angles.
“Could just be kids,” Carlson said.
“Could be,” the detective said, but it didn’t feel like kids to him. He could see kids wanting to fire up a mothballed Ferris wheel and take it for a joyride, as dumb a stunt as that might be, considering that it wasn’t exactly easy, if security showed up, to make a run for it when you were at the top of the wheel.
But there hadn’t been any kids on the wheel when it was found in operation. Just these three lifeless passengers. Whoever’d gotten the ride started had plenty of time to get away before anyone else got here.
Still...
“Search the park,” Duckworth said. “See if there’s anyone hanging around to watch the show. Maybe somebody left something behind. Dropped a backpack, something.” Some other uniformed Promise Falls police had arrived, and Carlson told them to fan out.
“Who’ll be sorry?” Duckworth asked aloud, although he wasn’t directing the question to anyone in particular. “And for what?”
“Sorry they’re going out of business?” Carlson offered. “The park’s gone under, you know.”
Duckworth knew. “Where’s the woman?”
Carlson said Gloria Fenwick was waiting in the admin offices for a detective to speak with her. Before going to find her, Duckworth told one of the other officers not to touch the mannequins. Not before they’d been fingerprinted.
“They’re not real fingers,” the office said, perplexed.
“The mannequins,” Duckworth said. “Have them dusted for fingerprints.”
“Oh, yeah,” the officer said.
A lifelong traffic cop, Duckworth thought.
He had to press an intercom buzzer at the door to the building where Fenwick worked. “Who is it?” she asked nervously. When he told her, she buzzed him in. She was waiting for him at the top of a flight of stairs, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She led him into the main office area filled with cubicles and computers.
Every overhead light was on.
“I’m freezing,” she said. “Ever since I saw those... those dummies, I can’t stop shivering.”
They found some comfortable couches to sit on in a lounge by reception.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Duckworth said.
Fenwick studied him. “I’m sorry. Have we met?”
“It was a few years ago. The woman who disappeared here at Five Mountains.”
“Oh!” she said. “I remember you. You’re the one who wanted to search every single car leaving the park.”
“Tell me what happened here tonight.”
She told him: seeing the light outside the office window, discovering the Ferris wheel in full rotation, the painted mannequins.
“You didn’t see anyone?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I’d like to have a look at your surveillance footage,” he said.
Another shake of the head. “There is none. The cameras are all off.” Fenwick shrugged. “This time of year, even if the park wasn’t closing for good, the cameras would be off. We wouldn’t normally open until next week. There’d be no one here to monitor them. We have a security guard sweep through a couple of times a day, but this was before his next scheduled stop.”
Duckworth asked, “How many people lost their jobs because of the park going under?”
“Everyone,” she said. “Me, too, eventually.”
“How many is that?”
“About two hundred people directly employed by Five Mountains. And then, some of the concessions, they hired their own people. The ripple effect. Plus, there were plenty of local businesses we patronized. Cleaning services, gardening, things like that.”
“Anyone seem particularly hostile about being let go?”
Fenwick leaned back into the couch and stared at the ceiling. “It happens. It’s business. People were upset. Some people cried. But it wasn’t like anyone said, ‘I’ll get you for this.’ No one who said anything like what was written on those dummies.” She paused. “I will never be alone here at night again.”
“That’s smart.”
She stopped looking at the ceiling. Fixing her eyes on his, she asked, “You think it’s a serious threat?”
“I don’t know,” Duckworth said. “But someone went to a lot of trouble to stage all that. Had to drag three dummies out here, paint them, get them into that car, start up that ride. How hard would it be for someone to do that? Get the ride going?”
“If you’ve got any experience with machinery or electronics, I mean, I guess anyone like that could figure it out.”
“Kids?”
She thought a moment. “I doubt it. Unless it was some kid we hired last summer.”
“Can you find me the names of the employees who ran that specific ride?”
“I could probably do that,” she said. “But not now. I don’t want to spend another minute here tonight.”
Duckworth smiled. “Tomorrow’s good.” He gave her one of his cards. “I can get one of the officers to escort you to your car.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Duckworth was going back down the stairs when his cell phone rang once again.
“Yeah.”
“This Detective Duckworth?”
“It is.”
“Yeah, well, it’s Clive Duncomb over at Thackeray.”
“You were supposed to send me the names of the women who’d been assaulted.”
“Yeah, well, about that,” Duncomb said. “There’s been a development.”
“It was a righteous shoot,” the Thackeray College security chief said, standing over the body of the man who had attacked Joyce Pilgrim. Their light sources were a half-moon, the stars, and five flashlights that were being wielded by Duncomb, the three male members of his team, and Duckworth.
“Well, I guess that settles it, then,” Duckworth said. He gazed down at what remained of the man’s head, then let his eye trail down the rest of the body. The man was in a fleecy dark blue or black hoodie — it wasn’t easy to tell in this light — with a large white 2 stitched onto the left of the zipper, and an equally large 3 to the right.
“I saw him with a gun in his hand, kneeling over Joyce. I was coming into the trees here, trying to find her, and that’s the situation I encountered.”
“You can make a full statement at the station,” Duckworth said.
“Come on. It’s all pretty cut-and-dried. Like I said, it was righteous.”
Duckworth shone his light directly into Duncomb’s face. “Don’t say that word again.”
“It’s justified, is all I’m saying. I saved Joyce’s life.”
“After putting her at risk. Right now this is a homicide. And I’m in charge. You’ll be coming in for a full statement. The whole lot of you.”
The only member of the security team not there was Joyce Pilgrim. She was at the athletic building, being babysat by a Promise Falls officer until Duckworth was finished here.
“Many of the students around here carry weapons?” Duckworth asked, shining the light back onto the body.