Rolling Thunder

13

Here’s what Ceepak didn’t tell me right away: Gail’s jeans and lower body are stuffed inside a suitcase with her decapitated head.

Her torso and arms are in a second suitcase.

We’re on Tangerine Street, a block and a half from where it dead-ends at the sand dunes.

My buddy Joey Thalken, who works with the Sea Haven Sanitation Department, is leaning against the back of his white garbage truck. Joey’s the one who found the two rolling suitcases. He unzipped one to see why it was so heavy. Then he hurled.

I did the same thing the first time I saw a dead body. And mine hadn’t been taken apart like a mannequin headed to storage.

“It’s horrible, man,” Joey says when Ceepak and I join him at the back of his truck. “I’ve never seen any … who could … what … did you see her, Danny?”

I nod.

“Sick.…” Joey barely spits out the word. “Some seriously sick dude did that, man.”

Two of our guys, Dominic Santucci and Dylan Murray, have already crime-scene-taped the sand-and-pea-pebble parking pad in front of 145 Tangerine Street. The two suitcases-both about three feet tall-are sitting close to where Joe found them: leaning against a pressure-treated lumber enclosure built to corral six thirty-gallon garbage cans.

“You can’t put out household items or bulk trash on Fridays,” says Joey. “Just regular trash. No construction debris, no old furniture, no suitcases …”

No dismembered bodies.

“When did you discover the body?” asks Ceepak.

“An hour ago. Eleven. Hey, Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“Is it Gail? From the Scupper?”

My turn to nod.

“Jeez-o, man,” says Joey.

Joe Thalken, being a male with a pulse, had, no doubt, spent a few lunch hours ogling Gail Baker’s hot bod while wrestling with a leathery hamburger. Now he’s seen it broken apart like a Barbie doll after a temper tantrum.

“Is there anyone we can call for you?” Ceepak asks.

“I’ll be okay. Just need another minute.”

“Should we contact the Sanitation Department, have them send someone over to relieve you?”

“No. I need to finish my route.”

“No you don’t, Joe,” says Ceepak. “Not today.”

“Yeah. I do.”

Ceepak nods. He and I have worked with Joey T. on a couple of things in the past. We know he is a creature of habit, a Virgo who doesn’t like varying his routine. The routine gives him comfort. Maybe today, the same-old same-old will help him cope with the most extraordinarily horrible thing he’s ever seen in his life.

“Before you go back to work,” says Ceepak, “we need you to swing by the house. Sit down with Officer Forbus. She’ll take your statement.”

“Should I do that now?”

“Probably smart,” I say. “While it’s, you know, fresh.”

Bad choice of words. Joey puts a fist over his mouth. If his stomach wasn’t already empty, he’d be tossing more cookies into the back of his truck.

“We’ll ask Officer Forbus to come out,” says Ceepak. “She’ll escort you back to headquarters. Get you some water. Maybe a soft drink. Coca-Cola is excellent for a queasy stomach.”

Joey looks up at Ceepak. “You ever …?”

“All the time. I’d be worried if something like this didn’t make me feel sick to my stomach.”

“Thanks.”

“Hang here.”

Ceepak quickly radios Jen Forbus, who’s on duty today and is probably our top cop for doing interviews. She used to run a blog or something. Anyway, she knows how to ask the right questions, get people to relax, put it all down on paper. She’ll be on the scene in five. He asks her to get Denise Diego, our resident techie, to call Verizon. We need Gail Baker’s cell phone records. They’ll tell us who she talked to and where she was before some lunatic sliced her up into easy-to-pack pieces.

We move away from the garbage truck, study the taped-off crime scene.

That’s when Sergeant Santucci struts over.

“Why are you here, Ceepak?”

“Chief Baines asked me to head up our end of the homicide investigation.”

“Why? Murray and I caught the call.”

“You’d have to ask Chief Baines.”

“You really don’t need to be here.”

“The chief disagrees.”

Santucci mutters. Two summers ago, Dominic Santucci was single-handedly responsible for about a hundred thousand dollars worth of damages when he shot up Mama Shucker’s, a seafood shop about four blocks north of where we are now. Ever since, he’s not really been one of the chief’s favorites.

Now he waves a plastic bag under our noses. Inside is the warning ticket we issued Gail for speeding.

“I’m all over this thing. Already checked her pockets for ID. Found a wallet and this. Guess what?” He cracks his gum, pauses. “Her jeans weren’t on her legs or her ass. They were stuffed in on top.”

Ceepak’s eye twitches. “How much of the crime scene did you disturb, Dom?”

Dominic Santucci and John Ceepak? Oil and water. Chalk and cheese. Mayonnaise and hot dogs. They just don’t mix well.

“I did not disturb the crime scene. I ID’ed the body. What the hell have you two done?”

“Where is the wallet?”

“I stuffed it back in the pants for the CSI guys.”

“And where are Ms. Baker’s pants located?”

“Where I found ’em. Back in the suitcase on top of her legs and head.”

Okay. I’m thinking about joining Joey T. over at the rolling puke wagon.

“It is absolutely critical that we keep this area clean,” says Ceepak.

“We know that. Jesus, Ceepak. You think me and Murray are idiots?”

Ceepak doesn’t answer. His eyes are focused on the gritty mix of sand and pebbles surrounding the suitcases. “The MCU unit will want to examine this area for tire treads, footprints.”

The MCU is the New Jersey State Police Major Crimes Unit-detectives and CSI pros who assist state, county, and local authorities. The MCU has the kind of homicide investigation firepower a sleepy summer resort town like Sea Haven should never need.

I can see four miniature wheel tracks where the suitcases were rolled across the sand.

“No footprints,” I mumble out loud.

“Roger that,” says Ceepak, gesturing to the lines in the sand. “Note the parallel, striated furrows. Most likely the sand was raked.”

“But not with a leaf rake,” I add, because I think the grooves are too far apart, too deep.

“Good eye, Danny. Perhaps a gardening rake?”

Santucci snorts. “Jesus. You two. And what did they use to chop off her head? A Weed Whacker?”

I hear Dylan Murray’s radio crackle with an unintelligible burst of words. Poor Murray. He’s got the dubious distinction of being Dom Santucci’s partner this shift. He takes the mic off his shoulder board. “We’re at One forty-five Tangerine,” he says. “Continue south on Ocean Avenue. Take the left after Spruce. Ten-four.” He clips the mic back to his shoulder. “MCU. They’re about a mile away.”

“Thanks, Dylan,” says Ceepak.

“Why you tellin’ Ceepak about MCU?” snaps Santucci.

Dylan Murray shrugs. “I dunno.”

I do. Everybody on the job in Sea Haven, including Chief Buzz Baines, knows Ceepak is our best guy at this kind of stuff. Everybody except Santucci.

A third SHPD cruiser crunches around the corner.

“What are Forbus and Bonanni doing here?” Santucci’s seething now.

“I requested that they escort Mr. Thalken back to the house,” says Ceepak. “Take his statement.”

“Jen and Nikki? The girls?” Santucci sighs. Hikes up his pants. “This is a homicide, Ceepak.”

“I’m well aware of the magnitude of the crime to be investigated, sergeant.”

“But you call in Forbus and Bonanni, anyway? Jesus. I better bring ’em up to speed. Make sure they don’t blow this thing.”

He struts away.

“Jeez-o man,” I mumble. “What a douche.”

“Danny?”

“Yeah,” I say when I hear the reprimand in his voice. “Our energies are better spent studying the crime scene.”

“Correct. However, for what it’s worth, I concur.”

Wow. Ceepak just called Santucci a douche. Just took him more words than it took me.

Now he hunkers down and stares at the two suitcases.

“We’ll need to canvass the neighborhood for witnesses.”

“Yeah,” I say. “No telling when the bags were dumped.”

“Or why here.”

Good point.

I check out the block. It looks like all the others on this part of the island. Vinyl-sided colonial homes with dormers for upstairs bedrooms. Sun-faded shades of gray, blue, yellow. A few scruffylooking evergreen trees for barriers between lots. Not many cars parked in the street.

These are mostly rental properties. Three weeks from now, this place will be packed with minivans and SUVs loaded down with bicycle racks and luggage carriers. Today, all I see is a pickup truck way down the street near a house where they must be doing construction, because there’s a twenty-yard Roll-Off Dumpster sitting in the driveway.

“Huh,” I say.

“What?”

“See that long Dumpster? Why didn’t our doer toss his suitcases down there? The walls are high enough to hide everything inside. You do a gut job on a house, there’s all sorts of random junk that gets tossed in the Dumpster.”

“Like old luggage.”

“Exactly. We might not have found the body until somebody smelled it.”

“Fascinating,” says Ceepak.

I love it when he says that. Means I thought of something he hadn’t thought of yet. Not that I’m keeping score.

“In some ways,” says Ceepak, “it fits with what we see here. The wheel tracks clearly visible. But the footprints were obliterated with the garden rake.”

“You think whoever did this wanted us to find the body?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Why? Is he sending some kind of message? Do you think the mob did this?”

Ceepak answers my question with one of his own: “How well did you know the victim, Danny?”

“We, you know, talked.”

“Were you ever romantically involved?”

“With Gail Baker? Nah. She was way out of my league. Although …”

“What?”

“She used to go out with Skippy O’Malley. Maybe I had a shot and didn’t even know it.”

“Any known enemies?”

“Gail? No. More like broken hearts. She was a serial dater. She’d hang with a guy for a while, then move on.”

I remember the dentist.

“We should talk to Marvin Hausler.”

“Who is he?”

“Dentist. I think he and Gail were hot and heavy for a weekend he’ll never get over; she got over it by Monday. He’s been kind of stalking her.”

“Come again?”

“Last weekend at the gym, he threw this big fit. And, at Big Kahuna’s Saturday night, he called her a bitch because she stood him up.”

Ceepak’s been jotting down notes in the spiral pad he keeps in the left hip pocket of his cargo pants. “Definitely worth a go-see,” he says.

“She also seemed to be flirting with this dude at the gym.”

“Dude?”

“One of the trainers. Last weekend, they were teasing each other. Talking about hooking up. But that was four or five days ago. By now, he could want to kill her for dumping him. Gail Baker went through guys the way I go through potato chips.”

“We should compile a list of these young men.”

“We could check with Bud, the bartender at Big Kahuna’s. He knows all the local dirt.”

Ceepak keeps staring at the two suitcases.

“What do you see?” I ask.

“Two things. On the handle, the remnant of a luggage tag.”

I see it, too. One of those sticker deals they wrap on when you check your bag. The flappy part is torn off.

“If there is any scanable information on what’s left, we might be able to decipher what flight the bag was checked on.”

“And who was on that flight,” I add.

“Precisely.”

“Would the killer use his own suitcases?”

“If he or she acted in haste, hadn’t premeditated the mutilation, he or she might.”

“What’s the other thing?”

“Next to the torn tags.”

I see orange yarn pom-poms. One on each handle.

“That’s what my mom does,” I say. “So she can spot her suitcase on the baggage carousel.”

“Does your father do the same thing?”

“Nah. Only women do that.”

“Such has been my experience as well.”

So …

That’s why Ceepak was doing the “he or she” thing.

Maybe Gail didn’t run into a jealous old boyfriend. Maybe she bumped into somebody’s girlfriend who couldn’t stand the competition.