“I thought police used baggies for evidence,” I say, trying to talk about anything other than the dead guy in front of us riddled with holes where his life leaked out.
“Plastic sweats, and the moisture could contaminate the evidence. Paper is better.”
“Unh-hunh.”
“The perpetrator didn't take the credit cards, but he thought about it.”
Ceepak points to a scruffy bush across from the footpath, about six feet from where he found the wallet. I think it must have been some shade of evergreen before the sun bleached out all the color. There's an Amex and two Visas stuck in the branches.
“We can speculate, from the discarded driver's license and credit cards, that the perpetrator discovered his victim's identity.”
Yeah. Reggie Hart. One of the richest men in the world.
Ceepak tells me to tape off the area around the Tilt-A-Whirl.
“We want to keep it clean for the State Boys.”
The “State Boys” are the guys from the State Police Major Crime Unit. A town like Sea Haven, which I don't think has ever hosted a murder before, doesn't have all the people necessary to run a proper crime-scene investigation, so the state police send in the MCU when something major goes down.
I try to figure out how to unroll and string the yellow tape without ruining evidence. I keep my eyes down on the dirt but look up now and then to see if Ceepak's watching, see if he's okay with my crime-scene tape-rolling technique.
“Make sure you seal off down there.”
Ceepak points to the chain-link fence where Playland meets the beach. Some kids and an old dude with a metal detector are up in the dune grass watching us. It's about 8 A.M. The kids carry bright red buckets and were probably looking for seashells. The old guy? Hunting for nickels, dimes, and Rolexes.
“We'll want to canvass the beach,” Ceepak says. “Check for witnesses.”
“Right.”
I can see a little tunnel burrowed out of the sand under the fence. Must be where the Harts snuck in. I find it kind of funny.
I mean, if Reginald Hart liked having early morning chitchats with his daughter in a Tilt-A-Whirl car shaped like a giant sea turtle, why didn't he just buy the damn ride and set it up in his back yard, like Michael Jackson?
But I guess Hart got a buzz out of breaking the rules, doing things people said he shouldn't do.
I step across the hole, sideways. It's pretty deep. I can see rocks and pebbles in the manmade gulley. On the other side of the fence, the hole ends under a sand-covered square of plywood. About two feet by two feet. It's a tunnel door-like in one of those prison escape movies.
I turn to tell Ceepak what I see.
He's on the pathway, holding a bright red beach bag with that big-mouthed monkey on the front like they sell at the fancy-schmancy shops on Ocean Avenue. I think the monkey's name is Julius. Anyway, the beach bag doesn't match Ceepak's shoes, so I figure it must be Ashley's.
“It's Ashley's,” Ceepak says, confirming my hunch and holding up the bag's straps with a ballpoint pen. “She must've dropped it.”
Can you blame the kid?
Your father starts spewing blood like a berserk lawn sprinkler, you'd drop your beach bag too.
Ceepak puts the bag back where he found it and looks toward the ocean.
“Did they rake the beach this morning?”
I turn to check the sand on the other side of the fence. It's all smooth, with furrows running in parallel lines.
“Yeah. Looks like.”
Sea Haven is very proud of its pristine beaches. That's how I know they call them “pristine”-it's the word they use on the back of every postcard.
A few years ago, the town fathers bought a Surf Rake 600, a tractor-towed contraption that actually vacuums up the trash people dump on the beach and leaves the sand behind it smooth and silky. I know all this because my buddy Joe Thalken drives the tractor. Poor guy has to crawl out of bed around 5:30 so the early-morning joggers will have pristine sand to run on as advertised. I don't know when Joey T. sweeps this particular section of the beach, but I'm sure we'll find out. I see Ceepak making a note, and I know it says something like “Possible Witness: Beach Sweeper.”
He looks down at the asphalt walkway ringing the ride and spots something. He gets down on his hands and knees and pulls out his magnifying glass. I don't think he's going to torture ants.
Meanwhile, I need to find a place to pee.
I'm not proud of this, but I need to take a leak.
Now.
I had grabbed a big tub of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts on my way to the police station to pick up the car this morning. Then I poured myself a thick half-cup from the stale pot the late shift must have brewed twelve hours earlier-it had been sitting so long, the glass bottom was kind of glued to the warmer plate. Plus, I had that coffee at The Pancake Palace.
Like I said, I need to pee.
I check Ceepak one more time.
He's still on all fours, moving away, heading toward the Tilt-A-Whirl.
Lucky for me, Sunnyside Clyde put up this big plywood portrait of himself behind the bushes across from the ride. I think it's there so you don't see whatever's hiding behind it.
I crouch low and find a hole through the hedges.
If I'm quick about it, I can relieve myself and Ceepak will never know.
Now I see why they put the cartoon wall up: to block the dumpster. It's one of those rolling trapezoidal trash bins. You know-it's not square. Got that slanty part up front for tipping the load, like the big Rubbermaid tubs hotels use for rolling around dirty towels. This one's filled with black plastic trash bags, but the park porters must've been short on twist-ties: the bags are all hanging open.
Flies are buzzing everywhere, dive-bombing the Hefties, searching for half-squeezed ketchup packs and sticky cotton-candy cones. I'm too busy swatting flies to unzip my shorts. I'm fanning the air around my head and looking down at the ground.
I see boot prints.
They look like the prints I make when I go to the mountains every winter.
When I'm wearing my Timberlands.
Who wears Timberlands in July? On the beach?
“Ceepak?”
There are broken syringes near the boot prints.
I think I might've found something for Ceepak to look at with his magnifying glass.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dr. Sandra McDaniels is the Chief Crime Scene Investigator for the state's Major Crimes Unit. She's also a genius. At least that's what Ceepak says.
“The lady wrote the book.”
He means it.
Ceepak studied her textbooks in criminology college and keeps one of her field manuals tucked into the little map pocket on his side of the Ford. Sandra McDaniels solved the famous Ocean Town Slasher case that almost closed down the casinos eight years back. She figured it all out with carpet fibers and fruit flies.
“Forensic entomology,” Ceepak told me.
McDaniels studied temperature readings to calculate the hatch time for fruit fly eggs found on a corpse, and that helped her pinpoint the time of death, and that sealed the Slasher's fate by blowing his alibi.
Don't ask me how. McDaniels is the one who wrote the book, not me.
Unfortunately, Dr. McDaniels is at her annual family reunion in Arizona, which is like three or four thousand miles away on the wrong side of the country to do us any good.
So we pull somebody else.
Somebody we can hear stomping around on the Tilt-A-Whirl platform.
“Hello?” a voice hollers. “Hello?” Then the guy hocks a loogie. “Where the fuck are you guys?”
We're busy back in the bushes, examining the needles and boot prints. You know how pine trees drop a carpet of brown needles in the fall? There's a tree back here that sheds hypodermics. They're everywhere.
Ceepak told me the Timberland imprints I found back here match some muddy prints he noticed up on the platform. It hasn't rained in a couple days, but there's a puddle where they roll the trash bin in and out. The water comes from a broken lawn-sprinkler head that doesn't flick around like it's supposed to (otherwise the bushes ringing the walkway wouldn't look so dead): It just dribbles and makes a nice big puddle for mosquito eggs and bootprints.