Mad Mouse

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It's one P.M.

Malloy and Kiger and about six other cops have swept the surrounding area, searching for possible perps. They must all think the shooter fled the scene, because Ceepak finally gestures that it's okay for me to crawl out of our car. I feel like a little kid, like the adults had to make sure it was safe before I was allowed to go outside and play. I'm also extremely glad they did so.

I start the long walk up the newly poured driveway. Dr. McDaniels and her crew run yellow yarn through a hole in the sports car's windshield. One CSI guy has a plastic protractor, like we had in seventh grade geometry class, even though I can't remember what we did with them. Something about angles. Triangles. Now he's pointing across the street and McDaniels is nodding her head. I look over my shoulder. There's another huge house on the other side of Oak Street with a Realtor's “For Rent” sign posted in the front yard beyond the white PVC picket fence. That house also has three stories, and a garage underneath. There are decks on all three floors and another one of those widow's walks up on the roof.

Deer stands.

It's like the architects design these beach houses for hunters and snipers. Give them lots of levels to work with. You can prop your rifle on any of the porch railings and nail your neighbor across the way if his dog barks too much.

Some kids hang out in the street to watch the crime scene action. Junior looky-lous. There's a crowd of them in bathing suits, wrapped up in beach towels. All ages, six to twenty-six. They dragged their boogie boards up from the beach and bumped into cop cars and an ambulance and wondered what all the excitement was about.

Word must be spreading. Behind the kids, I start seeing adults in swimsuits, moms with gauzy flowered sarongs wrapped around their bottoms. The grownups came up to rubberneck because this is better than anything down on the beach or over at the boardwalk; this is something to talk about when people at the office ask you what you did on your summer vacation.

“He's dead,” Ceepak whispers when I reach the carport.

I look into the driver seat.

Mook's head has fallen backwards. There's a bloody bullet hole in his right shoulder. Another in the center of his forehead. His cell phone lies open in his lap, like he dropped it when the second shot hit him in the skull. He had his convertible top down, made himself an easier target. Behind Mook, there are gray spongy chunks spattered across folded roof fabric, blood is splashed on the roll bar. I think the second shot made his brain explode.

My stomach lurches. I've never seen a dead person my own age before, never someone I used to hang out with, someone who used to be my friend back when we spent all day on the beach doing nothing. Even if I wanted to kill him, myself, yesterday.

“You okay, Danny?”

I swallow hard. I haven't eaten much today. There's nothing in my stomach so maybe nothing will come up. I let the wave of nausea roll over me and wash away. This job is teaching me a whole new kind of surfing.

I look at Mook's face. His lips are purple.

“Jesus. How long has he been dead?”

“Approximately fifty-two minutes,” McDaniels says. “The call came in at twelve-oh-eight. He had already sustained the shoulder shot at that time, precipitating his call.”

These professional people who poke around dead bodies all day long? They use words like “sustained” and “precipitating” to give them what they call “emotional distance.” I need to learn how to do that trick. Need to learn it quick.

“He was able to speed dial nine-one-one with his thumb,” she continues. “When he brought the phone up to his ear, he alerted the shooter that the first shot wasn't fatal. ‘He fucking shot me,’ the victim stated, and the shooter fired a second round. Given the nature of the second shot, the cranial impact, the bullet path entering the frontal cortex, exiting the striate, I suspect death was instantaneous.”

He fucking shot me. The famous last words of Harley Mook, the class clown who always had to get in the last word. He fucking shot me. Not your best line, Mook. In fact, it's not funny at all. Nobody here is laughing.

“Why are his lips so purple?” I am totally fixated on the purple lips. Maybe it's my own emotional distancing technique, dwell on the weirdest thing in the scene. Don't look at the whole bloody picture, just the lips. I know lips turn blue when you die from lack of oxygen. But purple?

“Grape soda,” Ceepak says and points to the car's cup holder.

Mook has a twenty-four-ounce bottle of Fanta grape squeezed into it. Grape soda. Purple lips. Purple tongue. Mook must've been sitting here, sipping his favorite summertime soda, waiting for Wheezer to show up. Now that I see the bottle, I realize the whole car reeks of gumball grape, the mouth-puckering kind of grape you only taste in grape soda and grape gum, never in any real grapes they sell at the grocery store. Mook loved his artificially flavored grape soda. Fanta. Nehi. Welch's. Some summers, he was the only one on the whole beach drinking the stuff.

“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.’ ”