Mad Mouse

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Thirty minutes later, the municipal brain trust from the Sea Haven Chamber of Commerce and the mayor's office is assembled inside Saltwater Tammy's.

Good thing the candy shop has bright fluorescent bulbs. Because the plywood walls the police crew propped against the windows have totally blocked out any natural light. Two cops are posted in front of the makeshift door-a sheet of plywood that wasn't screw-gunned into place with all the others. Tammy won't be very happy when she sees what we've done with her place.

Mazzilli is behind the counter. He helps himself to free malted milk balls. Mayor Sinclair is next to him nibbling nervously on a foot-long gummi worm, taking it in a centimeter at a time, like Bugs Bunny working his way down a carrot. I'd write them both up for shoplifting, but we're kind of busy.

“I still feel we can safely assume no immediate threat to the general population,” Baines says, mostly to hear himself say it.

“You're right,” Mazzilli says and pops another malted milk ball in his mouth. “It's some kind of vendetta against one young man and his friends.” He points at me. There's melted chocolate smeared all over his fingers.

“He's right,” says Mr. Weese, the mortgage broker. “We can't risk everything we've worked for all year long to protect one individual. Sorry, son.”

Yeah, as long as your kids and grandkids are safe, who cares about everybody else?

“Boyle here is a professional,” Chief Baines says. “He understands that this town cannot and will not be held hostage by terrorists.”

Baines is strutting again. His flop sweat is gone. Somebody must've brought him a fresh shirt from the office. It also looks like he nipped into Tammy's washroom and slicked down his hair after a refreshing head dunk in the sink.

“Officer Ceepak and his team will continue their investigation. Right, John?” Baines doesn't give Ceepak time to answer. “Meanwhile, we'll tell anybody who asks that what happened here this morning was the work of intoxicated college students armed with BB guns.”

BB guns, my ass.

We found another one of those special ball cartridges buried in the cinnamon-hearts tub. It had been meant for me, but I'd just happened to duck down to open a crate of candy when it whizzed past. The good news? Ceepak says the hole in the window coupled with the hole in the Plexiglas Red Hots tub will enable us to calculate a pretty precise trajectory. Two points make a straight line, he reminded me.

Dr. McDaniels is also on her way. She'll probably point out something we don't see, probably something that's right under our noses.

Ceepak has been working his phone. I told him what Mook told me this morning: that he'd been paying for his Sea Haven stay with a credit card. Ceepak just asked our computer people back at the house to track Mook's recent transactions and tell us which motel.

Other calls are also going out from headquarters to sporting goods stores and eBay on account of all the Derek Jeter baseball cards. So far, we have seven, one Jeter taped in almost every possible sniper location. Upstairs at the coffee shop and The Chowder Pot, across the street at the water slide, on top of the schooner mast-the Derek Jeters were everywhere. The ones near any kind of shrubbery were wet, spritzed by sprinklers.

“Our doer placed them prior to six A.M.,” Ceepak concludes. He's talked to some maintenance people and found out when Schooner's Landing automatically flips on the waterworks every morning. “The hydration moves across the mall in a series of contiguous zones. Each zone is sprayed for an interval of ten to twelve minutes. The timers initiate the spraying cycle at five A.M., complete it at six-oh-two.”

The wet cards were in place before 6:02 A.M. Mook must've pulled an all-nighter.

And all of the Derek Jeter cards are from his first year with the New York Yankees, 1996.

“This one's worth twenty-five, thirty bucks,” Mazzilli tells us when he sees the card the waiter found at The Chowder Pot. It shows Jeter, his eyes squinting in the Bronx sun, chasing some kind of pop fly. “That's a Select Certified Blue.”

Bruno knows his “memorabilia.” In his shops up and down the boardwalk he peddles postcards, collectible foam beer Koozies, fake street signs that say stuff like “Parking For Italian Americans Only,” and T-shirts featuring “The Man,” with an arrow pointing up at your face, and “The Legend,” with another arrow pointing down at your pants.

He also sells this one totally creepy tin sign I just now remembered. It's printed to look bullet-dinged, like a highway sign on some rural road where farmers take target practice. It says: “If you can read this, you're in range.”

Sort of sums up my whole weekend.

I'm thinking about this stuff so I'll stop thinking about Katie and the preliminary reports from the hospital.

They say the bullet tore through her left lung, tumbled, then perforated some kind of pulmonary vein and broke a rib when it exited out the back of her chest. It might've nicked her spinal cord on the way out, too.

They don't know if she'll make it.

Katie might die.

BB guns, my ass.

We found her bullet buried in the shelf behind where she was standing when we kissed. It was the same kind of bullet as mine, like some kind of “his and her” matching ammo set. An M-118 7.62 millimeter special ball cartridge. The same as all of them. The kind of bullet the army gives its snipers, guys like Mook's pal Rick, guys who drive white minivans with ARMY stickers plastered on their bumpers.

Ceepak puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Denise thinks she'll have a credit card hit in under five.”

Denise Diego is our top computer geek back at headquarters. She's awesome. Works in the dimly lit room next to Dispatch, hovers over her keyboard, fries her eyes staring at the flat screen until she finds what she's searching for. She's a super cybersleuth, an excellent indoor detective. She'll find Mook's motel.

Ceepak goes back to the baseball cards.

“What do you make of all the Jeters?” I ask.

“The shooter is playing with us, Danny. Having fun. He knows we now know his M.O., so he placed the baseball cards in every conceivable sniper location prior to actually targeting you at eight twenty-six hours.”

“Why Jeter? Why a baseball player? What about the Phantom and the Avenger? Why not more comic book stuff?”

“I'm not certain at this juncture.”

My sense is he's angry with himself for not knowing the answer.

“I saw Mook real early this morning at the diner,” I say. “Two or two-thirty A.M.”

“He could've placed the cards any time before six A.M. Even before you saw him at the diner.”

“Yeah. And playing with us? Rubbing our noses in how brilliant he is?”

“Yes?”

“That's Mook. He's a first-class smart-ass.”

“Folks?” Chief Baines wants everybody's attention. “I'm heading out front to talk to the tourists.” He exhales, straightens his jacket, and eyeballs the mayor. “You people hang back here. I don't want a big crowd. Don't want them seeing you, Mr. Mayor.”

“I'm good in here,” Mayor Sinclair says. He's found the Jelly Bellys.

Chief Baines tugs down on the brim of his dress-white hat. He looks like the skipper on Gilligan's Island. He slides outside to talk to the tourists.

I walk over to the windows and stare at the grain pattern in the plywood. There's nothing to see, but I have to hear this.

“Folks? How is everybody doing this morning? Another beautiful day, huh?” I can't see him, but I know Baines is flashing his shark-white teeth, probably blinding someone. “As you might've heard, we had an incident here this morning. Couple college kids with a BB gun thought it might be fun to shoot out some store windows. An employee was injured.”

Her name is Katie!

“She's been airlifted to the hospital. She's going to be fine. But say a prayer for her, okay? She'd appreciate it. So would I.”

The crowd murmurs some. They'll all pray. Right after they finish eating their cinnamon buns and bear claws.

“Folks, what we have here is a prime example of what can happen when we ignore the rampant problem of underage drinking-which, in my short tenure, I've already identified as Sea Haven's public enemy number one.”

Unless, of course, you count the sniper.

“Some intoxicated teens stumbled over here this morning on their way home from an all-night keg party and took a couple pot shots with their pellet pistols. Don't worry, we'll catch them, you have my word. Meanwhile, we're cracking down. I call on all beverage distributors to ID everyone under the age of thirty. If you won't do it, guess what? We will. We'll give any unlawful drinkers we catch a prize: a free ride in a police car!”

The crowd chuckles.

“This weekend, we are putting plainclothes officers in package stores up and down the island. We're patrolling the popular bars and nightclubs. We'll be working the beach. We can and must put an end to this problem and keep Sea Haven safe for wholesome family fun!”

The crowd applauds.

Buzz Baines is good. He has turned my near-death experience and Katie's critical-condition chest wound into a pep rally against the evils of teen drinking. He does it so well, I almost believe him, even though I know he's lying every time his mustache wiggles up and down. That's the thing about a lie-you make it big enough, say it loud enough, repeat it over and over, it starts sounding like the truth. Hell, by now, Baines probably even believes it. He may really think some freshman with a six-pack also scored M118 special ball cartridges with his fake ID at Fritzie's Package Store and jammed them into his BB gun. Undoubtedly Fritzie's sells the bullets right next to the Slim Jims, or maybe over in the racks with the pork rinds, beer nuts, and rocket-propelled grenades.

Baines can get away with this because his bosses, the Concerned Citizens who run Sea Haven, are mostly concerned with their bottom lines, about making enough money this summer to make it through to another one next year. The one reporter who knows the truth, our resident journalist, won't tell anybody what she knows because her newspaper sold a ton of ads for its special Labor Day Weekend Edition. Huge ads. Some restaurants even bought two and three full pages to run their entire menus, to lure Labor Day visitors with the promise of Early Bird Specials and two dozen choices starting at $7.99.

I guess I wouldn't be so upset by all this chicanery and skullduggery-two words I learned from Ceepak-except that I just found the gift Katie planned to surprise me with so we could celebrate my new job.

It's in a square white box tucked on the shelf right underneath the cash register. I see my name written with pink marker on the outside. Katie's loopy handwriting. She drew a cartoon cop car on one side of the box, a sheriff's star on another.

I open the box.

She had somebody in the candy kitchen mold me a chocolate baseball cap and write POLICE on front with curly white icing.

My cop cap. Wow.

Katie was so proud I got the job, that I was becoming a cop, that I was willing to put my life on the line to protect people like wheelchair Jimmy from the bullies, that I'd be out there every day trying to do what was right.

“Danny?”

Ceepak taps me on the shoulder.

“What's up?” I ask.

Ceepak smiles.

“Denise got him. Smuggler's Cove Motel. Mr. Mook used his MasterCard.”