Free Fall

64

Fifteen minutes later, when we scream into the municipal parking lot fronting Pier Two, we enter bedlam.

The tail end of a panicked mob is still stampeding down the boardwalk access ramps like cattle through a slaughterhouse chute. I hear screams and shouting. Freaked-out tourists and locals are pushing and shoving whoever’s not running away from the danger fast enough.

Meanwhile, Ceepak and me have to run the other way.

Up into the swirling chaos and confusion.

The Murray brothers are already on the scene, trying to bring some semblance of order to the pandemonium.

“Keep calm,” shouts Dylan through an amplified megaphone while his brother, Jeremy, stands in the middle of the swarm to do hand signals showing people which way to head so they don’t trample each other.

“Evacuate to the far edges of the parking lot,” he says over and over and over.

“Keep calm! Do not panic!” echoes his brother with the battery-powered bullhorn.

“Move them out and lock it down,” Ceepak says to the two Murrays. “Who’s inside?”

“Brooks Perry and Jack Getze,” says Dylan.

Ceepak and I go swimming upstream; make our way to the boardwalk.

Which is almost empty.

Ceepak grabs the radio clipped to his belt.

“This is Detective Ceepak. Detective Boyle and I are on the scene. What’s our situation?”

“This is Officer Perry.”

“What’s your twenty?”

“We have taken up a position in the pizza stand west of the StratosFEAR ride. We have the ride operator, Mr. Shaun McKinnon with us.”

I can see the Free Fall’s tower rising against the early evening sky maybe a hundred feet in front of us.

“Is Mr. McKinnon injured?”

“Negative. The old guy with the gun threw him out of the control booth and told him to run away. He didn’t. He found us instead.”

“Maintain your position. Detective Boyle and I are on our way.”

“Okay. Good. One question-the old guy with the gun. McKinnon tells us he is the day operator of the Free Fall and that his last name is Ceepak.”

“Roger that. He is my father. He should be considered mentally unstable and lethally dangerous. There were reports of a gunshot. Can you clarify?”

“Getze and I were on routine boardwalk patrol, up by Paintball Blasters. Heard the single round fired. Thought it was a kid with an early Fourth of July firecracker. Mr. McKinnon found us. Told us how, uh, your father threatened him with a weapon. Described it as best he could. From our observation post, it looks like it could be a Ruger nine-millimeter pistol. Seven plus one capacity.”

That means Mr. Ceepak has seven bullets left before he has to reload.

“And the hostage situation?” asks Ceepak as we crouch our way forward toward the pizza place, using the game booths and food stalls along the way for cover.

“Your father has a middle-aged bald man with him. Fifty, fifty-five. Goatee.”

“It is David Rosen,” says Ceepak.

“What’re they doing here?” I ask.

“Unclear at this juncture.”

Yeah, if Mr. Ceepak was trying to help David Rosen “make a run for the border” he’s doing a lousy job, unless he’s also arranged for a submarine to come pick them up at the pier.

“Hang on,” says Officer Perry. “There’s movement over at the base of the ride. Something’s going on …”

Ceepak and I hustle faster.

He hand chops to the left.

We scoot up a narrow alleyway behind a row of booths and shops until we come to a service door, a rear entry into the pizzeria.

“We’re coming in,” Ceepak announces into the radio so Perry and Getze don’t twirl around and blast us when we come sneaking up behind them.

We push the door open, keep hunkered down, and duck-walk up to the open-air front of the pizza place to take up a position behind the counter with the two cops and Shaun McKinnon, the other factory-trained Free Fall operator from Ohio.

“Does my father know you are over here?” asks Ceepak in a tight whisper.

Getze shakes his head.

All five of us are crouched behind the counter. Fortunately, the sun is setting behind us. The pizza parlor is cloaked in shadows.

Unfortunately, what we see is terrifying.

Mr. Ceepak has the snub nose of his small pistol jabbed into David Rosen’s back.

He is marching Rosen up the steps to the ride.

“Sit down.”

He shoves David into a seat. Tucks something into the front pocket of David’s shirt.

“Don’t hang up on me, Davey. If you do, you die.” He cackles a laugh and backs up; keeping his pistol trained on Rosen every step of the way to his control booth.

The front window is open so he can keep his Ruger up and aimed at David. With his free hand, he raises a crinkled brown bag of something to his lips. Takes a swig.

The bottle bag goes down.

“Now we just have to wait for my idiot son to show up.”

I hear a clunk and thud.

The Free Fall starts climbing up its 140-foot tower.

And the shoulder harness over David Rosen’s seat?

Mr. Ceepak never lowered it.