Saturday, and all the strain is starting to show. He might rip somebody's head off today.
“I think you were the brains, Ms. Stone,” he says, raising his thumb, like he's going to start counting stuff down. “You set the whole thing up because you realized Mr. Hart would never marry you. So you worked out this other way to get at his money. His real estate. Ten million dollars in ransom money-”
“Mr. Hart was my employer. That is as far as our relationship went. As such-”
“I'm not asking you questions, so you don't have to say anything. Deal?” Now the chief's first finger pops up; the countdown continues. “You partnered with Mendez here, who was tired of doing nickel-and-dime work for Hart. Wanted a bigger slice of the pie.”
Mendez drops his jaw. The chief stares him down.
“Mr. Mendez proceeded to hire Squeegee. What'd you pay him? A free condo in your time-share hotel? A dime bag of dope? The same shit you sell to kids up and down the beach?”
“You're out of your fucking mind … out to fucking lunch….”
“Me? No, Mr. Mendez-I checked your record. Your rap sheet. You sell drugs to little children.”
He slides a folder across the table. Mendez refuses to open it or even look at it.
“I done my time for that.”
“You sell drugs to children!”
“Only them that wants it.”
Wrong thing to say in front of John Ceepak.
I look over and Ceepak's squinting again, like he's lining up Mendez in his sniper sights.
“Did you know Squeegee was a sexual predator?” The chief sends another manila folder across the table. “Pulled
“I don't know shit about this Squeegee.”
“Did you promise Squeegee he could have his fun with Ashley? Is that how you got him interested in the trigger job?”
“I told you I don't know this Squeegee. Maybe I run into him once or twice up at The Palace Hotel, but….”
“Where is Ashley Hart? Where did your gang take her, Mr. Mendez?”
“Hey! I don't do no kidnappin’-”
“Where the hell did you take her?”
“I don't do that kind of shit!”
And they keep going around and around-just like those kiddiecar rides over at Playland.
In the back room, Morgan turns from the window when Mendez says he “ain't no kidnapper” for the umpteenth time.
“Neither is our ransom note writer,” the FBI guy says.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, there's some indication he may want us to think he's more experienced at this than he actually is.”
Ceepak twists down the volume knob in the wall so the ranting in the other room becomes soft Muzak in ours.
“What do you mean?”
“The ransom note?”
“Yeah?”
“Something about it. It sounded familiar. So I had my guys do a quick check.”
“And?”
“Jon Benet Ramsey.”
“Colorado? The six-year-old beauty queen?”
“Right. After she disappeared, the Ramsey family received a ransom note. Lot of people think it was a fake. Just a way for the killer to cover some tracks, misdirect the investigation.”
Ceepak nods. He's obviously familiar with the case.
“Anyhow, I always remembered the phrasing. Sort of stuck in my head because I thought some of it sounded odd, you know? Ridiculous, even.”
“And?”
“I think our kidnapper cribbed it.”
“Our ransom note is a copy?”
Morgan nods.
“I think so. Some key phrases are lifted verbatim. ‘Listen carefully!’ ‘You stand a 99 per cent chance of killing your daughter.’ And that corny thing at the end? ‘Victory!’ Give me a break.”
“So whoever wrote the ransom note….”
“They cheated,” Morgan says. “Had their eyes on their neighbor's paper, like teacher always told us not to. They wanted to make sure they sounded like they knew what they were doing, even though they did not.”
“I never did no damn kidnapping, man!”
I can hear Mendez up in the ceiling speaker, faintly repeating himself.
“Check my sheet,” he says. “My record's clean on that one. I never did no damn kidnappin’ before!”
Apparently, neither did the guy who grabbed Ashley.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“I want this over! Tonight!”
Ten minutes after the interrogation of Mendez and Ms. Stone, the chief's mood hasn't improved much. Ceepak and I are in his office.
“You guys hear me? Fucking FBI … looking over my fucking shoulder….”
The chief hasn't enjoyed working with Mr. Morgan as much as Ceepak and I, even though the ransom note being a rip-off sort of supports the chief's whole “Mendez Did It” theory.
“I want this thing over … the mayor wants it over….”
“Yes, sir,” Ceepak says. “Couple things.”
“What now?”
The chief is downright testy.
“I'd like to search the mother's car.”
“What? Why?”
“To see if we can find anything that might indicate that she frequents Cap'n Scrubby's Car Wash.”
“What? Now you think
“It's a-”
Before he can say “possibility,” the chief is punching numbers on his telephone.
“Goddammit. You should've asked her your goddamn questions while we were down there.”
“Didn't think of it until-”
“Hello? This is Chief Cosgrove. I want you to answer a question and I want you to tell me the goddamn truth because we can search your car and you know it!”
Ceepak raises his palm to make a “wait-whoa-slow-down” gesture.
The chief does none of the above.
“Where the hell do you get your car washed? Where? Sharky's Suds?”
Ceepak reaches across the desk and pushes down the speaker-phone button so we can listen in.
“They're on the other side of the causeway,” Betty says in her smooth, honey-dipped voice. “In that mall with the Home Depot? I usually stop on my way back to the city, before I get on the parkway. I like to be away from the beach and all the sand before I pay to have my car cleaned. So I usually stop at Sharky's.”
Ceepak sits down.
“You ever go to Cap'n Scrubby's?” the chief asks.
