Rolling Thunder

33

Ceepak moves like a man possessed to the nearest computer terminal.

I ask no questions. I never do when he switches into his totally focused mode.

He clacks keys. I read over his shoulder.

In the Google search box he is typing “animal euthanasia potassium chloride.”

The first entry is for a PDF from the American Veterinary Medical Association.

He clicks to it.

“AVMA Guidelines on Euthanasia. June 2007.” He scrolls down the table of contents, past inhalant agents to noninhalant pharmaceutical agents. There it is on page 12: “Potassium Chloride in Conjunction With Prior General Anesthesia.”

He moves the pointer to the chapter heading. Clicks again. A new page pops up. Ceepak scrolls down until he sees the paragraph about potassium chloride: “Although unacceptable and condemned when used in unanesthetized animals, the use of a supersaturated solution of potassium chloride injected intravenously or intracardially in an animal under general anesthesia is an acceptable method to produce cardiac arrest and death.”

There’s another paragraph listing the advantages: “(1) Potassium chloride is not a controlled substance. It is easily acquired, transported, and mixed in the field. (2) Potassium chloride, when used with appropriate methods to render an animal unconscious, results in a carcass that is potentially less toxic for scavengers and predators in cases where carcass disposal is impossible or impractical.”

Guess that means you could use it on your pet elephant and not worry about poisoning all the buzzards circling overhead.

Ceepak swivels in the desk chair, grabs for a phone. I glance at the next paragraph: “Disadvantage-rippling of muscle tissue and clonic spasms may occur on or shortly after injection.”

Ceepak presses 411. Puts the call on speakerphone.

The chirpy recording says, “Verizon four-one-one. What city?”

“Avondale, New Jersey,” says Ceepak.

“Okay. Business or residence?”

“Business!” says Ceepak, kind of tersely. Seems the perky prerecorded woman asks too many questions for a cop in a hurry.

“Thank you.” The voice fakes hesitation, like she’s really listening to us. “Um, which business?”

“South Shore Animal Shelter.”

“Hang on while I look that up.”

When she tells us she found the number, Ceepak tells her, even though she isn’t really a person (well, she was a person when she recorded this crap but she’s not one now), that she can go ahead and place the call for an additional charge. Hey, we’re in a hurry. Whatever Ceepak’s just figured out has to be huge or he wouldn’t waste fifty cents of the taxpayers’ money.

The call rings through. Someone answers. A real person this time.

“South Shore Animal Shelter, how may I direct your call?”

“Dr. Cathy Langston, please.”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Officer John Ceepak. Sea Haven Police.”

“Oh. Um. Okay. Just a moment.”

Police get that kind of response all the time when we call folks.

While we’re on hold, I’m tempted to say, “So, what’s up?” But I don’t. Ceepak’s eyes are riveted on the speaker box like he expects a miniature Dr. Langston to pop out of it.

“This is Dr. Langston.”

“John Ceepak.”

“Well, good morning, John. How’s Barkley?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“Good to hear. Rita called. Said you folks just adopted a cat, too.”

“Yes, ma’am. Gizmo. He used to belong to Mrs. Jacqueline O’Malley. With her passing, the family decided they were no longer able to keep the animal in their home. Allergy issues.”

“Mrs. O’Malley was a wonderful woman,” says Dr. Langston. “She was one of our top volunteers. Helped us socialize the feral kittens, get them ready for adoption.”

“Did her son often accompany Mrs. O’Malley to the shelter?”

“Skippy? Yep, he sure did. I’m hoping he’ll carry on his mother’s good works. Maybe he can come out here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday like she used to do. He did come out this week by himself. Said it’s what his mom would’ve wanted.”

Uh-oh. Not if he came out to grab some potassium chloride.

“Tell me, Dr. Langston, have several vials of potassium chloride gone missing from your pharmacy recently?”

“Wow. You’re good, Officer Ceepak. We just discovered it last night. An equestrian client called about a horse to be put down at his stables. He, of course, didn’t want to bring the sick animal in. We were going to go out there to euthanize the horse in its stall.”

“How many ampoules were missing?”

“All of them. We had a half dozen doses. But, we don’t use it that often. Just when we’re called on to do livestock euthanizations in the field. Of course, we always anesthetize the animal first.”

“Yes, ma’am. When was it stolen?”

“You think somebody stole it?”

“Yes, Dr. Langston.”

“Well, like I said, we noticed that it was missing last night. But, we use it so infrequently it could have been removed any time in the last month or so. We did inventory at the end of April. All six ampoules were here then.”

“Thank you,” says Ceepak.

“Sure. Hey, pet Barkley for me. And rub Gizmo’s butt. He likes that.”

“Roger. Will do.”

Ceepak is in total military automaton mode now. He would not typically say “roger” to an order to rub a cat’s hiney.

He punches off the speakerphone.

“Skippy?” I say.

Ceepak nods.

“Did he kill his mom, too?”

“Doubtful. He most likely stole the potassium chloride when he went to South Shore this week. I suspect his sister gave him the idea to frame his father, make Mr. O’Malley look guilty for both murders.”

“Crazy Mary told Skippy what to do?”

“In a roundabout way. His mother suffered a massive heart attack on the Rolling Thunder due to her underlying health issues. While the family was stranded on that roller coaster hill, Mary started chanting ‘Daddy did it.’”

“And Skippy decided to make it look like he really did do it!”

“Exactly. He knew about the potassium chloride because, as Dr. Langston just confirmed, he often accompanied his mother on her visits to South Shore Animal Shelter. After what he considered a lucky lightning strike on Saturday, Skippy formulated a plan to frame his father.”

“Why?”

“Because, as he told us, he and his father weren’t very close. In fact, I sensed a great deal of animosity between the two men. As you might recall, Skippy felt that I would be sympathetic to his anger, given my own strained relationship with my father.”

Yeah. Ceepak’s dad’s an a-hole, too. But, I don’t think Johnny C would ever try to frame the dirty bastard for murder.

“Skip must’ve felt totally humiliated,” I say, “when he learned that his dad was dating his ex-girlfriend.”

Ceepak nods. “I am quite confident his obnoxious younger brother Sean, who is in the employ of Mr. Mazzilli and privy to everything that goes on at number One Tangerine, teased Skip mercilessly about his father having relations with Ms. Baker. Lightning struck a second time late Thursday when she texted Skippy.”

“You mean when she texted Mr. O’Malley.”

“Danny, I am quite confident that, last Thursday, Skippy was the one with the cell phone usually assigned to his father. Remember when we were there last Sunday?”

“The battery on Mr. O’Malley’s cell died and he asked Skippy to toss him a fresh phone.”

“Exactly. I should’ve realized sooner that Mr. O’Malley and his businesses would employ numerous cell phones. I should’ve also paid closer attention to the fact that Skippy was the one in charge of maintaining the phones, handing them out.”

“Hey, I should’ve seen it, too,” I say so Ceepak will quit should-ing all over himself, something he always advises against.

“We are where we are,” Ceepak says with a sigh.

“But why would Skippy kill his old girlfriend? Jealousy? Revenge?”

Ceepak shakes his head. “Patricide.”

“Huh?”

“It means killing your father. Skippy was hoping to trick us into doing what he himself could not: Make the father he hates go away.”

Okay, I’ve heard of suicide by cop, where a whacko deliberately does something so outrageously hostile it provokes a lethal response from law enforcement officers, gets them to kill him because he can’t pull the trigger on himself. This is something new: patricide by cop. Getting the police to haul away your old man when you’re too chicken to deal with him yourself.

“We need to talk to Mr. O’Malley,” says Ceepak, who’s up and out of his seat so fast, the chair goes rolling backward and knocks over a wastepaper basket.

Yeah. Big Paddy needs to know his third son has the worst Oedipus complex since, well, Oedipus, the Greek dude who killed his father and married his mother and became his own stepdad. Hey-it was on Jeopardy once.