“We think the shooter positioned himself over there.” Ceepak gestures with a quick nod to the house across the street. He's not pointing, not chopping the air with his arm, because he knows several dozen civilians are currently watching our every move.
“We need to secure the scene,” McDaniels says to her crew. “Come on, guys. Let's lock it down.”
The CSI team trots across the street.
Dr. McDaniels points at the corners of the lot, and her two guys start stringing POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape all around the house.
Kiger and Malloy hustle up Oak Street to knock on doors, canvass for witnesses.
Ceepak moves around the car, searching for clues. He peers into the cockpit of the convertible. I try not to look at Mook, who's frozen in place like he's leaning back to snore through a real long nap but kept his eyes wide open.
Ceepak freezes. He just saw something, I can tell.
“Dr. McDaniels?” He shouts across the street.
She looks over.
Ceepak waves for her to come back over to our side of the street. She steps into the street. He digs into his cargo pockets to pull out a pair of forceps.
“What is it?” McDaniels is a little winded. I think she never usually moves that quickly.
“Not sure.”
Ceepak leans into the car. The center console seems to be his target. There are two air-conditioning vents up top, the climate-control knobs below those, a CD slot under that.
“It's cardboard.”
I see it now. A straight edge of gray sticking out like somebody jammed in a card where the CDs usually go.
“Gentle,” McDaniels says.
“Roger that.”
Ceepak clips the edge with his forceps and slowly, carefully tugs out the piece of cardboard.
It's another trading card. The man in purple. Another still frame from that movie. The Phantom.
“Guess they're cheaper by the dozen,” McDaniels cracks.
Ceepak turns the card over.
“Fascinating.”
“Something on the back?” McDaniels reaches into her cargo shorts, pulls out her reading glasses.
“Yes, ma'am. He left us a note.”
“What's it say?”
“‘You'll never remember. I'll never forget.’ ”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Square one.
I figure that's where we basically are. Back at the starting line, inside one of those tiny wooden boxes they squeeze the horses into at the Kentucky Derby.
We're nowhere.
Maybe Mook's ARMY buddy turned on him. Maybe he was done having fun when they wounded Katie, but maybe his ARMY buddy couldn't stop. Maybe Rick, I remember that was his name, maybe Rick is a killing machine without an “off” switch.
“Richard Westerfield,” Ceepak says. His friends in the army just faxed us a list of discharged snipers known to have recently returned to college. “Pfc. Westerfield never saw action. He was honorably discharged before the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
So Mook's college buddy learned all this sniper stuff but never got to use it, never hunted a human. Maybe, after shooting at us a couple of times and missing, he wanted more, wanted to see the pink mist when his bullet made a skull explode. Wanted to go for the kill when Mook wanted to move on to the next joke. Maybe Richard Wester-field took out party pooper Harley Mook.
That's my best guess right now.
Ceepak and I sit in the front seats of the Explorer.
He's on his cell phone to someone back at the house.
“You have Westerfield's plate number?”
Ceepak nods so I guess they do.
“Able Baker four-nine-four Charlie seven. Got it.” Ceepak writes the number in his little spiral notebook. “Excellent. Thanks, Denise.” It's Diego. The woman puts in a full day. “This will help. Have Gus issue an APB. Suspect has been seen in the area but could be mobile, could be …” he looks at his watch, does some mental math, “anywhere in a radius of a hundred and fifty miles from our current position. Right. Thanks.”
Ceepak closes up his cell and clips it back on his utility belt. He has so much gear dangling off that thing he could pass as a plumber.
“You think it's Mook's new buddy?”
“It's one possibility.”
“Right.”
When we're working a case, all things are possible with Ceepak until they have been proven otherwise. Or something like that. I forget sometimes, especially when people are shooting at my friends and me.
“This drug dealer Wheezer? What do we know about him?”
“Not much. Just what Mook told me.”
Ceepak waits.
“Focus, Danny.”
I try. But my eyes and mind drift over to the small crowd of civilians clustered around Chief Buzz Baines and Mayor Sinclair. The bosses have arrived on Oak Street and are giving the curious citizens some sort of impromptu press conference. They're quite the dynamic duo: the tall, handsome police chief and the sandy-haired, boyish mayor. They're smiling, then frowning, then smiling again, then shaking their heads in dismay, telling everybody that Mook's murder was “the tragic consequence” of a “drug deal gone bad.” The chief says the good people of Sea Haven have nothing to fear, unless, of course, they have plans to purchase illegal narcotics in the near future.
The crowd chuckles.
I hear Baines wind up: “Unfortunately, this is where underage drinking ultimately leads. There's an express lane that takes teenagers from beer blasts on the beach to marijuana binges to crack houses and heroin addiction. That express lane dead-ends right here.” He hangs his head like a graveside preacher, and everybody knows what he means: Harley Mook got shot in a carport by drug thugs because he bought beer with a fake ID when he was fifteen.
Buzz Baines has done it again. He's linked Mook's murder to his favorite boogeyman-underage drinking.
“Danny?” Ceepak must sense that I'm floating along like a stringy clump of seaweed. “Wheezer?”
I need to focus. Work the evidence. Chief Baines can tell the people out in the street anything he wants. It's up to us to find out the truth.
“Yeah. Okay. What Mook said was that Wheezer was a guy ‘from back in the day.’ ”
“A school friend?”
“I don't know. He wasn't specific. Just ‘back in the day.’ ”
“Go on.”
“Mook said he never really liked the guy but that Wheezer had this primo ganga. That's-”
“Marijuana. Was Wheezer Mook's usual dealer?”
“I doubt it. But I really don't know. Mook was just in town for a week or two. Summer break from grad school. He was here having fun, seeing old friends. Wheezer sounded like someone Mook accidentally reconnected with, or bumped into at a bar. Not like a guy he went looking for. He also said he never ‘pictured the dude for a dealer.’ ”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. Said Wheezer was more like a loser.”
“Interesting. Do you remember this Wheezer?”
“No.”
Ceepak nods. “He didn't think you would.”
“What do you mean?”
“The note.”
You'll never remember, I'll never forget.
If only I hadn't done so much underage drinking. All that beer, Boone's Farm and those Icees laced with Bacardi, which is how we used to enjoy rum and Coke without buying cocktail glasses or ice.
“You think he left that note for me?”
“Yes, Danny, I do.” Ceepak fixes me with an odd look. “I think he intended the note to be read by you and your friends from, as you say, ‘back in the day.’ The beach crew from nineteen ninety-six.”