We're almost there. Couple more blocks.
The operator added a note to the transcript: While the line remained open, I heard a faint pop in the background. Possible gunshot.
Makes me think somebody “fucking shot” Mook twice.
We swing off Ocean Avenue and head down Oak Street. No sirens, no lights. Mook called us so he's not going to run away-especially if he's wounded. If the shooter is still in the vicinity, we don't want him to know we're coming.
The state CSI crew is close behind us. Malloy and Kiger will come up Beach Lane to provide backup. An ambulance is on the way, too, because we figure Mook is going to need one. Now all we need to do is find exactly where on Oak Street near Beach Lane he is.
I squinch my eyes and look for a little red sports car. It's not parked in the street, and, for the first time since this thing started, I don't see any white minivans, either. The people on Oak prefer SUVs. Range Rovers. Expeditions. GMCs. Even one of those civilian Hummers. This single block would suck a gas station dry if they all hit empty at the same time.
“There,” Ceepak says.
He does his three-finger point to a million-dollar reconstruction job. The rich people who own the houses closest to the beach are always tearing them down and starting over. That's what we see at number 2 Oak Street. A huge, three-story beach house with Tyvek-wrapped walls ready for the vinyl siding neatly stacked in the gutted front yard. Some of the windows upstairs aren't in yet; the ones that are have Anderson stickers covering the panes. The house is sort of built on stilts-concrete piers that form a shaded carport underneath.
That's where Mook parked his Miata.
Ceepak coasts up to the curb. I check my bulletproof vest to make sure it's snug in case the shooter is still in the neighborhood, waiting for me to make my big entrance.
“Hang back,” Ceepak says.
This is an order.
He won't let me out of the car until he determines whether or not it's a sniper trap. He's probably thinking what I'm thinking: this Wheezer character lured Mook here with the promise of primo weed, then took a potshot at him. He might want to do the same to me. Mook could be the bait the sniper's using to pull me into his trap.
McDaniels and her crew park behind us. Ceepak hops out, stays low, and hugs the side of our car for cover. He flips up the palm of his hand at the CSI guys. Nobody is allowed out except him. I check the rearview mirror. McDaniels nods her head. She's okay to wait until Ceepak says it's safe to come out and do her job.
Ceepak pulls his pistol out of its holster, lets the gun hang loose at his side, does this crouching dash to the carport. He moves in a zigzag pattern, ducks behind piles of cinder blocks, then a cement-mixing drum. No straight lines, nothing to give anybody an easy shot. If you want to take down John Ceepak this afternoon, he's going to make you work for it.
He reaches the Miata. Squats. Duck walks around to the driver side. Looks inside.
He reholsters his weapon. Shakes his head. He's not in a hurry anymore.
Poor Mook. He must be dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It's one P.M.
Malloy and Kiger and about six other cops have swept the surrounding area, searching for possible perps. They must all think the shooter fled the scene, because Ceepak finally gestures that it's okay for me to crawl out of our car. I feel like a little kid, like the adults had to make sure it was safe before I was allowed to go outside and play. I'm also extremely glad they did so.
I start the long walk up the newly poured driveway. Dr. McDaniels and her crew run yellow yarn through a hole in the sports car's windshield. One CSI guy has a plastic protractor, like we had in seventh grade geometry class, even though I can't remember what we did with them. Something about angles. Triangles. Now he's pointing across the street and McDaniels is nodding her head. I look over my shoulder. There's another huge house on the other side of Oak Street with a Realtor's “For Rent” sign posted in the front yard beyond the white PVC picket fence. That house also has three stories, and a garage underneath. There are decks on all three floors and another one of those widow's walks up on the roof.
Deer stands.
It's like the architects design these beach houses for hunters and snipers. Give them lots of levels to work with. You can prop your rifle on any of the porch railings and nail your neighbor across the way if his dog barks too much.
Some kids hang out in the street to watch the crime scene action. Junior looky-lous. There's a crowd of them in bathing suits, wrapped up in beach towels. All ages, six to twenty-six. They dragged their boogie boards up from the beach and bumped into cop cars and an ambulance and wondered what all the excitement was about.
Word must be spreading. Behind the kids, I start seeing adults in swimsuits, moms with gauzy flowered sarongs wrapped around their bottoms. The grownups came up to rubberneck because this is better than anything down on the beach or over at the boardwalk; this is something to talk about when people at the office ask you what you did on your summer vacation.
“He's dead,” Ceepak whispers when I reach the carport.
I look into the driver seat.
Mook's head has fallen backwards. There's a bloody bullet hole in his right shoulder. Another in the center of his forehead. His cell phone lies open in his lap, like he dropped it when the second shot hit him in the skull. He had his convertible top down, made himself an easier target. Behind Mook, there are gray spongy chunks spattered across folded roof fabric, blood is splashed on the roll bar. I think the second shot made his brain explode.
My stomach lurches. I've never seen a dead person my own age before, never someone I used to hang out with, someone who used to be my friend back when we spent all day on the beach doing nothing. Even if I wanted to kill him, myself, yesterday.
“You okay, Danny?”
I swallow hard. I haven't eaten much today. There's nothing in my stomach so maybe nothing will come up. I let the wave of nausea roll over me and wash away. This job is teaching me a whole new kind of surfing.
I look at Mook's face. His lips are purple.
“Jesus. How long has he been dead?”
“Approximately fifty-two minutes,” McDaniels says. “The call came in at twelve-oh-eight. He had already sustained the shoulder shot at that time, precipitating his call.”
These professional people who poke around dead bodies all day long? They use words like “sustained” and “precipitating” to give them what they call “emotional distance.” I need to learn how to do that trick. Need to learn it quick.
“He was able to speed dial nine-one-one with his thumb,” she continues. “When he brought the phone up to his ear, he alerted the shooter that the first shot wasn't fatal. ‘He fucking shot me,’ the victim stated, and the shooter fired a second round. Given the nature of the second shot, the cranial impact, the bullet path entering the frontal cortex, exiting the striate, I suspect death was instantaneous.”
He fucking shot me. The famous last words of Harley Mook, the class clown who always had to get in the last word. He fucking shot me. Not your best line, Mook. In fact, it's not funny at all. Nobody here is laughing.
“Why are his lips so purple?” I am totally fixated on the purple lips. Maybe it's my own emotional distancing technique, dwell on the weirdest thing in the scene. Don't look at the whole bloody picture, just the lips. I know lips turn blue when you die from lack of oxygen. But purple?
“Grape soda,” Ceepak says and points to the car's cup holder.
Mook has a twenty-four-ounce bottle of Fanta grape squeezed into it. Grape soda. Purple lips. Purple tongue. Mook must've been sitting here, sipping his favorite summertime soda, waiting for Wheezer to show up. Now that I see the bottle, I realize the whole car reeks of gumball grape, the mouth-puckering kind of grape you only taste in grape soda and grape gum, never in any real grapes they sell at the grocery store. Mook loved his artificially flavored grape soda. Fanta. Nehi. Welch's. Some summers, he was the only one on the whole beach drinking the stuff.