We reach the car and Ceepak places Barkley in the back seat.
“You drive,” he says. “I'll work the radio, call it all in.”
“Right. Where to?”
“Home.”
The Bagel Lagoon is a straight shot down Gardenia Street to Ocean Avenue.
Ceepak lives only three cross-town blocks from Cap'n Pete's Pier. I think about the THANK YOU note we received. The J. C. typed on the front envelope flap. I'm wondering if maybe our resident psycho has been baiting Ceepak all along. Maybe after a fifteen-year hiatus he wasn't just trolling for his next victim, some runaway girl nobody would care about. Maybe he crawled out of his mole hole seeking the thrill of a true challenge: taking on John Ceepak, Sea Haven's one and-only supercop. Maybe Pete planted that high-school ring on Oak Beach where he knew Ceepak was sure to find it just to get the game started.
Ceepak uses the radio and the short hop up Gardenia Street to put out the APB. I expect to see the French Foreign Legion and a couple aircraft carriers show up any second now.
“Secure the dog,” Ceepak says, leaping out before I've technically brought the car to a complete stop. He bounds up the steps to his apartment.
“C'mon boy,” I say to Barkley.
He won't budge. Who knew the back seat of a police vehicle could be so comfy? I tug on his leash. I tug some more.
“Barkley! Come!” It's Ceepak. Apparently, he's swept the apartment. Now he's up on the landing, calling his dog.
Barkley's ears perk up. He snaps to attention and leaps out of the car. When he hits the ground, he barks three short, sharp blasts up to Ceepak. I believe the pooch just gave Ceepak a “Roger that,” in response to his “Come” command.
Anyway, Barkley scampers up the steps. Ceepak ushers him through the door. Locks it.
“Stay!”
Ceepak comes pounding down the stairs.
“Rita is not here. There's no note.”
The emotion or fear I detected earlier is long gone. He's set to Search and Rescue.
“Did you try her cell again?
“Affirmative. No answer. Voice mail.”
“Did you leave a message?”
I don't know why I asked it, but Ceepak answers: “Roger that. I told Rita we were on our way.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Do you know what freaking time it is?”
Ceepak glances at his watch. “Twenty-two forty-five.”
Our old desk sergeant, Gus Davis, shakes his head, pulls on his I’M RETIRED, DO IT YOURSELF baseball cap.
“Let's roll,” he says.
The three of us hustle down the front steps of Gus's tidy little house and hit the concrete pathway out to the driveway and our car. Our light bar's still spinning, streaking the front of Gus's house with flares of red light.
“You guys woke up my wife with your freaking cherry top.”
“Sorry about that,” I say.
“Yeah, well. Whatever.” Gus turns to Ceepak. “I take it I'm no longer a suspect?”
Ceepak stands near the Ford's rear door.
“Gus. I'm sorry. I truly am. I made a mistake….”
“Yeah, yeah. Isn't that why your pencil has that freaking eraser sticking out its ass?”
For the first time in about an hour, I see Ceepak almost smile.
“Roger that,” he says.
“Yeah, well, don't worry about it,” says Gus, pulling open a passenger door and sliding in. “I would've done the same thing. Hell, Ceepak-I probably would've arrested me. Come on, you two. Enough with the yakking. Let's go nail this nut.”
Gus Davis keeps his boat, Lady Fran, docked at the public pier.
I help him haul in the lines, run the pumps, get the engines going. Ceepak hails from Ohio. They don't have oceans in Ohio. Just that river. Maybe a lake. He's not much help on deck, so he's up in what we sometimes call the “tuna tower”-the canopied cockpit situated atop the main cabin. He's up there in the command and control center, working the ship's radio, checking up on the air and sea assets currently being deployed up and down the Jersey coastline. Off in the distance, over the ocean, I hear a helicopter. I hope it's one of ours.
“When did Cap'n Pete shove off?” Gus yells up to Ceepak as the motors start to thrum under our feet.
Ceepak leans over the bridge's aft safety rail to answer.
“Uncertain. However, we know he abducted the girl on the boardwalk soon after our own encounter with her in the same general vicinity.”
“Okay. So when were you two knuckleheads chasing after this girl?”
“Right before you dropped by the house.”
Ceepak omits the detail about Gus telling us both to go fuck ourselves.
“Jesus,” says Gus. “That was what? Seven? Maybe seven-thirty?”
Ceepak nods. “Giving him a three-hour head start.”
Gus hauls in the last line.
“He could be anywhere. It's a huge freaking ocean. Come on, Danny. Take us out.”
“Right.”
I scale the ladder up to the flying bridge and take the helm. Gus climbs behind me.
“The Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla over in Avalon is sending out their swiftest boat,” says Ceepak. “It can do thirty-five knots.”
“That'll work,” I say, and start manipulating the port and starboard throttles, working the wheel.
“Cap'n Pete can only do about twenty-five knots in the Reel Fun,” says Gus.
“That's like thirty miles per hour,” I say as we back out of the berth, reverse engines, and make for the channel.
“Given his head start,” says Ceepak, “our search area therefore becomes a one-hundred-mile circle radiating out from this point.”
One hundred miles. He could be far enough out to open a casino. Maybe start up his own country.
We come out of the inlet, parallel to the jetty, and head out of the bay into the ocean. Waves crash against the seawall rocks, the white foam visible in the moonlight. We're in a narrow lane marked by blinking buoys to the right and left. The Lady Fran is in fine shape. I figure this is because Gus spends his days tweaking the engine, lubing and oiling the shafts-having himself a whale of a time.
“You're familiar with Mullen's vessel?” Ceepak asks Gus over the roar of the engines.
“Yeah. We're old fishing buddies.”
“How so?”
“We share information. Good fishing spots. Dead zones. We swap coordinates.”
Gus flicks a switch on a screen mounted atop the control console. The color pixels zip to life, revealing a split image. On one side is a real-time ocean chart showing our current position with a blinking triangle. On the other side is a sonar image detailing ocean floor depth and filling with colorful streaks whenever fish pass under our hull.
“That's the Matrix 97 Fish Finder GPS Combo,” says Gus. “Gave it to myself for Christmas last year.”
“And how fast can we travel?” asks Ceepak.
“If you push her?” Gus affectionately pats the compass globe bumping up on the control panel. “She'll give you thirty knots before she starts rocking and rolling.”
“Should I push her?” I ask.
“Hell yeah, Danny. See if she can do thirty-five. See if she can join the freaking Coast Guard.”
I jam both throttles all the way up. The good lady responds nicely. Sure, there's some shudder, but we're speeding up, bumping across waves, bobbing over swells and moguls, churning up a foamy wake. We're out of the channel. Heading due east.
I look out toward the horizon. The ocean is jet black. So's the sky. It's hard to find the line where one begins and the other ends. Higher up, the night sky is filled with stars and just enough moon to give a sheen to the rippling water, to make it look like an ocean of rolling trash bags, the black ones they use on construction sites.
“You think Pete took Rita with him?” Gus asks Ceepak.
Ceepak stares out at the black ocean.
“It's a possibility,” he says. “Perhaps as a hostage to facilitate his escape.”