money at very reasonable rates, or so he constantly claims in his annoying advertisements. The other merchants will surely chip in because-let's face it. If Natalia starts shooting, this town will never recover. Never. Two incidents in one summer? ‘Welcome to Sea Haven. Have a Sunny, Funderful Day-Unless You Get Shot First.’ Not a very catchy slogan. I fear it would make a dreadful bumper sticker.”
“Your wife is setting you up,” Ceepak says. “She's working for the Russians. The mobsters.”
Weese ignores him.
“Mr. Ceepak, you have heard our demands. Ten million dollars. If the transfer is not completed by two P.M., Natalia will start taking out targets. Scores of them. Hundreds! Why, she might even break Lyudmila Pavlichenko's world record. Trust me. My little wife packed a great deal of ammunition.”
The lawyer looks like he's lost all his tan, like it all drained down to his underpants. His face is pale and white.
“Ten million dollars?”
Weese shrugs again.
“It's what the D.C. snipers asked for. Who knows-perhaps we should ask for more. The town fathers can certainly afford it. Besides, Natalia and I? We're much more lethal than those two Negroes down in D.C. Much smarter, too.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Natalia Shevlyakova Weese rented another white minivan from the Avis in Avondale.
Makes sense. It's the vehicle they practiced with. Guess they'll dance with the one who brought them to the party. George Weese was right about one thing: he and his wife are pretty smart. They keep us looking for needles in haystacks-a boring white minivan in a town full of boring white minivans.
Natalia rented the white Plymouth Voyager with burgundy interior from Avis last Tuesday. Almost a week ago. So she's had ample time to find herself a prime parking space and stow her rental vehicle down by the boardwalk. She beat the crowds. Smart again.
“Will she shoot from the van?” I ask Ceepak as we drive down the block from headquarters to the municipal garage.
“Don't know. She's probably handpicked her ideal sniper post. Could be anywhere. A motel balcony. A water tank. Some other elevated spot on the boardwalk, maybe even another roller coaster. There's no way of knowing.” Ceepak shakes his head. I can tell he's mad at himself. “We should have kept her under surveillance. I let her drop off my radar.”
“Weese did his job,” I say. “He wasted our time, didn't say a word until he knew it was too late for us to do anything, too late to shut down the beach party. He did his job.”
“Roger that. Now it's time for us to do ours.”
We park beside a garbage truck and hustle inside the municipal garage to see if the first minivan has anything more to tell us.
“The wife, huh?” Dr. McDaniels rolls out from under the van on a mechanic's trolley. “That would explain that.” She nods toward one of her guys who's holding a plastic Baggie with a single strand of curly black hair. “Found it in the rear cargo bay. There's more on the passenger side headrest, but that only proves that Mrs. Weese was in the car with her husband.”
“Find anything else?”
“Just some Cheerios and Cheez-Its ground into the carpet. Under the seat cushions, too. Kids.”
Ceepak nods.
I notice two child safety seats. Guess George's son and daughter won't be throwing food at each other in this van again anytime soon.
“We need to focus,” Ceepak says, checking his watch. “We have less than two hours.”
I wonder if he sensed my mind wandering off to the land of crumbled Cheerios and Cheez-Its.
“It's the same old story, same old act. One step up and two steps back.”
Ceepak's quoting Springsteen again. Forcing himself to concentrate.
Dr. McDaniels hauls herself up, dusts off her shorts.
“Okay,” she says, like a professor rallying a drifting class discussion, “we know Who. We know Why. Now all we need to determine is How and, most important, Where Next.”
“The van,” Ceepak says, staring at the bland white automobile, trying to will the sheet metal to surrender its secrets.
“Just your typical kidmobile,” McDaniels says. “Did I mention the half-empty juice boxes I found in the back seat? The chewed crayons? Doesn't matter. They don't give us diddly.”
“Mrs. Weese purchased the vehicle for her son. Mr. Weese provided the resident beach pass bumper sticker to encourage frequent visits from his grandchildren …”
He trails off.
“How firm are your trajectory numbers?” Ceepak suddenly asks Dr. McDaniels.
“Firmer than your butt. We reworked them. Ten times. Our best projection comes from the parking lot outside Saltwater Tammy's because we had those two definitive points to work with. The entry hole in the plate glass window, the second hole in the bin of Red-Hots hearts.”
“We have our straight line,” Ceepak says.
“And our angle of impact.”
“Right.”
“The line took us straight out to that empty parking space. The angle took us up to an elevation of six feet, eight inches at the front end of the rectangular parking space and climbed up to six-nine-point-five at the rear.”
“Suggesting the minivan had been parked there prior to the shooting.”
“Only empty space in the whole damn lot,” Dr. McDaniels says. “And it wasn't there earlier when Officer Boyle went hunting for a spot.”
“We can surmise the shots were fired from this vehicle. The perpetrator then drove away while Danny and I tended to Ms. Landry's wounds.”
“I'm certain of it,” McDaniels says. “The shot came from this goddamn minivan. There's a little bit of an oil leak underneath. We could go back to Schooner's Landing, take samples of any fluids pooled in that parking space.”
“No time. Won't help.”
“Yeah. I know. Got my shorts dirty for nothing.”
“What about the roof?” Ceepak suggests.
“The van is six-six.”
“The bipod would add another two inches.”
“Six-eight.”
“She could have stood on the rear bumper,” Ceepak says. “Rested her rifle on the rooftop.”
McDaniels nods. “Steadied her shot.”
We all walk around to the back of the van.
“Maybe,” McDaniels says, shaking her head, disappointed at what she sees. “Maybe not. Be damn difficult.”
There's a bulky bike rack rigged to the rear of the minivan. Maybe the older kid brought his tricycle with him down the shore. Maybe George and Natalia have his-and-hers trail bikes. The rack's arms poke out at least two or three feet and spread sideways. They'd get in your way if you wanted to stand on the rear bumper and squeeze off a few rounds from a rifle resting on the roof.
I think about those two screaming kids back at the Weese house. They're going to have a lot more to scream about if they wind up being raised by their grandparents when mom and dad are locked up in the state pen, that's for sure. Not only that, they'll grow up knowing their parents were cold-blooded killers.
“Poor kids,” I mumble aloud. “That's a lot of crap to carry around.”
