Mad Mouse

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

You ever race through traffic with a siren screaming and roof lights spinning?

Cars pull off to the side of the road to get out of your way. You fly across the causeway bridge. It's pretty cool. Until you remember why you're doing it: you're a cop on your way to Mainland Medical where one of your best friends lies unconscious after doctors dug a bullet out of her chest, a bullet that might've been meant for you.

You remember that, and it's not so cool.

My three other Marshmallow Crew friends are meeting us at the hospital. Ceepak thinks if we brainstorm about the summer of Nineteen ninety-six maybe one of us will remember who the hell Wheezer is and why the hell he might want to kill us.

Meanwhile, back on the island, surf shops have been added to the list of places to go ask questions. T. J. is right. Nobody wears rubber surf gloves in the middle of August except maybe some rifleman who thinks the neoprene will hide his fingerprints. And to make sure he can still squeeze a trigger? He goes and checks himself out at the paintball arcade.

Dr. McDaniels has called some folks over at the state Major Crimes Unit and requested a sketch artist to sit with T. J. A town the size of Sea Haven doesn't have a police sketch artist, so we need to borrow one from the state, unless, of course, we go grab one of those guys who draw caricatures down on the boardwalk. But if we do that, our suspect will have a big bubblehead, gigantic buck teeth, and wear some kind of dopey clown hat.

Our guys have already tracked down a couple of minivans with flat tires, but none with that green beach-pass bumper sticker. The search continues.

We'll find Wheezer.

Especially if any of us can remember who the hell he might be.

Mainland Medical operates what they call the Regional Trauma Center. If you get hurt real bad while you're on vacation, this is where they'll send you.

It's about 3:45. Fifteen minutes before we're supposed to meet with Becca, Olivia, and Jess.

“Can I go see Katie?” I ask the second we park outside the emergency room entrance in a no-parking zone.

Ceepak checks his wristwatch.

“That'll work.”

I hop out and notice we're parked under this covered entryway, a concrete canopy. I guess Ceepak doesn't want to make me an easy target while I dash for the door. Once I'm safely inside, I'm sure he'll go find someplace to park that's legal.

Katie has been moved to the Intensive Care Unit. They let me stand at a window and look in at her. Her red hair is tucked up underneath a pale green shower cap. A forest of metal poles with dangling drip bags surrounds her bed. A spaghetti tangle of tubes snakes down to her thin arm. I know Katie's heart is still beating because I can see her pulse playing on a TV set clamped to one of the poles. I watch the line move up and down and know she's still here even if she's gone.I wonder if Katie remembers Wheezer.I wonder if she'll ever wake up.

Ceepak has commandeered the visitors’ room at the far end of the first floor for our brainstorming session. It's clean and tidy, filled with chalk-colored furniture. Pink. Teal. Blue. Even the carpet is a soft, soothing gray. The sofa is done up in splotchy pinks and purples that sort of match the mass-produced abstract art hanging on all the walls. The kind they sell at those Giant Art Expos at the Holiday Inn.

It's the kind of art that's supposed to calm you down after you've seen a loved one lying unconscious with tubes stuck in her arms and up her nose.

It's not working.

Becca takes a seat in a chair underneath some speckled water lilies. She's wearing sunglasses, even though the room has no windows. She still has that shiner from where the paint ball walloped her in the eye. “Where's Ceepak?”

“He went to the cafeteria to score some coffees.”

Becca's chauffeur, Officer Big Jim Riggs, is guarding the door with two other cops-the guys from the Avondale PD who brought Jess and Olivia to the hospital.

“I could definitely use a coffee,” says Jess. He helps Olivia creak her way down onto the sofa.

“Thanks.” She moves stiffly.

“Guess I'm the only one who hasn't been shot at yet,” Jess says.

“Maybe because you're the one who's shooting at us!” Becca says in a blazing leap of logic.

“What?”

“You're a painter. We were hit with paintballs? Hello? I don't have to be a rocket scientist to put two and two together and get, you know, four or whatever.”

“Becca?” I say.

“What?”

“Jess was with us. On the beach. Remember? He got splattered by a paintball, too?”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”

Ceepak walks in balancing a cardboard tray jammed with six lidded cups of coffee. No doughnuts.

“Let me help.” Becca is up and arranges cups on the coffee table in front of us. She does the morning breakfast buffet at her folks’ motel. The girl knows how to set up a coffee service.

Everybody grabs a cup, and we all sip in silence for a second. We quickly discover it's cafeteria coffee. Thin and weak. It tastes more like warm Styrofoam soup than anything else.

Jess dumps his full cup into a plastic-lined trashcan.

“So, who's Wheezer?” he asks Ceepak.

“That,” says Ceepak, “is the million-dollar question. Does the name ring a bell with any of you?”

We all look at each other. “No” seems to be the unanimous answer, judging by the headshakes.

“Sorry,” says Olivia. She grimaces, holds her ribcage.

“I even checked all my old junior high and high school yearbooks,” adds Becca. “No Wheezer. I found a Grabber. He signed my book with these hearts and stuff. I forget who he was.”

“Was Wheezer a friend of Mook's?” asks Olivia.

“More likely an acquaintance.” Ceepak gives everybody the description T. J. gave us. Tall. Nerdy glasses. Wavy hair. Bushy goatee.

Becca scrunches up her nose like she just smelled boiled cabbage. “Still doesn't sound familiar.”

“Let's talk about the summer of nineteen ninety-six,” says Ceepak. “That's when you all met?”

We run down the who-knew-who-first stuff until Ceepak's up to speed. The girls retell the bathing suit fitting room story. I talk about Jess's lifeguard chair. “I used to hang out there, after I worked mornings at the Pancake Palace.”

“Is that the summer you were a busboy?” Olivia smiles, remembering.

“Yeah.”

“And they fired you for dropping too many trays?”

“They hired me back, like, two days later.”

“They were desperate,” says Jess.

“Yeah.” He's right. They were. I was pretty lame busing tables. Kept breaking milk glasses when I jammed dirty silverware inside them.

“No retreat, no surrender,” Jess says.

“Springsteen?” Ceepak recognizes the quote.

“Yeah. That was our motto that summer, remember?”

We all nod and have to laugh as we remember how cool we thought we were. We actually had A Motto: No retreat, no surrender. It's off Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. album. In fact, it's the same song John Kerry used during his presidential campaign. I always loved the first couple of lines:

We busted out of class

Had to get away from those fools,

We learned more from a three-minute record

Than we ever learned in school.

It's all about friends hanging out, probably in the summer, probably on the Jersey Shore, and they promise to always remember each other, swear to stick up for one another, no matter what, to be “blood brothers against the wind.”

No retreat, no surrender.

“What did you guys do that summer?” Ceepak asks.

“You know, the usual,” Becca says.

Olivia nods. “Work. Then hit the beach.”

“Chase boys.”

“Let the boys chase us.”

“Sometimes we'd just cruise the boardwalk. Check out the arcades. Ride the rides.”

“I ate way too much candy,” Olivia says, “because Katie had this job at …”

She pauses, realizes it's the same place Katie was working this morning.

“… Tammy's.”

Jess shoots me a look. I nod, hoping to encourage him to say whatever is on his mind.

“Can we be like totally honest?”

Ceepak will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do. Total honesty? He's down with that.

“Of course.”

“You're not going to, like, retroactively arrest us or anything?”

Nervous laughter titters around the room.

Ceepak raises his right hand. “On my honor.”

“Well,” Olivia says, “we were only fifteen and sixteen.”

“But,” Becca adds, “sometimes, at night, you know, we liked to party … drink beer.”

“And Boone's Farm.”

“Nuh-uh, Olivia. You were the only one who liked Boone's Farm.”

Olivia shrugs. “At the time, I thought it was wine.”

“It's basically soda pop that they mix with malt liquor,” Jess says, speculating on the secret Boone's Farm recipe. “And, it had that handy screw-off top.”

“So,” I say, “we spent our days working, hanging out on the beach. At night, we'd find somebody to help us buy a six-pack or two. Some wino who didn't mind aiding and abetting our underage drinking, especially if we gave him a few extra bucks, bought him a quart of Colt 45.”

“Then, we'd just, you know, chill,” Jess says. “Maybe build a little driftwood fire. Check out the stars. Listen to music.”

“Make out,” says Olivia. “A lot of cute boys drift through town during the summer.”

Becca sighs. “Every week was like a new summer camp full of ’em.”

“Other people would join us,” Olivia adds. “Kids we knew from school or people we met at our jobs. Kids on vacation with their folks. And Mook? He was always our evening's entertainment. The cruise director. He always had something stupid up his sleeve. Some joke or wild idea.”

The room gets quiet again. Everybody remembers Harley Mook. Before we grew up and began to change. Before he was murdered.

“I miss Mook,” Becca says. A tear trickles out from behind the sunglasses. “He was funny back then, you know?”

Olivia sinks deeper into the sofa. “Yeah. He was.”

“Wheezer.” Jess hisses the name. “Wheezer.” He's trying hard to remember. Me, too. Was Wheezer one of those guys who used to join us sometimes? Maybe just a summer renter's kid? Somebody from the Pancake Palace? Maybe a lifeguard?

“What's his real name?” Olivia asks.

“We don't know,” answers Ceepak.

“Well, Mook was always giving everybody names. He called me Liver Oil.”

Becca grins. “I was Betcha-Can't-Eat-Just-One. Like the potato chips. I think it was supposed to be dirty.”

“I was Jess. Dude never hung a handle on me.”

“Whom might he have called Wheezer?” Ceepak paces around the room. “A schoolmate? Someone he worked with? Someone he met that summer? We suspect Wheezer is a local.”

On account of the bumper sticker.

“But someone who has probably since moved away.”

How'd he come up with that?

“We know his complexion is currently pale. Even a local using SPF 50 would show a slight skin coloration.”

Okay. I'm with him again.

“We also know Wheezer felt insignificant in your presence. In his last communication, the shooter suggested that you'd never remember him. I suspect he was something of a loner, not one of the ‘cool kids.’ In fact, Mook told Danny that Wheezer was a loser.”

“A loser?” Becca seems surprised.

“I always thought we were the losers,” jokes Olivia.

“We were,” Becca says. “Except Jess. Jess was always cool.”

“I was not.”

“Dude, you were a lifeguard.”

Jess shrugs, and we all rack our brains trying to remember ten summers ago and some loner or loser who drifted into our lives.

I've got nothing. I look around the room.

Nobody has anything except lost and unhappy expressions on their faces.

“Keep thinking about it,” Ceepak says. He checks the time. Four thirty. I don't think he's concerned about the chief's deadline. I think he's worried about the forty-eight-hour rule. Ceepak once told me that if you don't solve your case in the first two days, chances are you never will.

The clock is ticking.

“I think it would be wise for all of you to remain in protective custody for the remainder of the weekend,” Ceepak says. “We'll post police officers outside your residences. It would be best if you stayed indoors.”

“Me, too?”

“Yes, Danny. I'm pulling you out of the field. I need you to focus on Wheezer. It's how you can best aid the investigation.”

I nod. He's right.

A speaker up in the ceiling bongs a series of chimes.

“Code Blue. ICU. Code Blue.”

The voice is incredibly calm, but I know Code Blue means there's some kind of medical emergency in the ICU. I hear people run up the hall outside our door.

They're running to the ICU.

Where Katie is.