I forgot: Amy Decosimo doesn't deal with crisis situations all that well. Her first instinct is to panic and say, “Ohmygod”-a lot.
“Ohmygod, Danny! It's horrible….”
There she goes.
“Ohmygod!”
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Her frozen doe eyes become gigantic.
“Have you locked down the area?” Ceepak asks Kiger.
“We left everything just the way Ms. Decosimo found it.”
“I … I … “ Amy sputters a little more.
“Ms. Decosimo?” says Ceepak.
“Hmmm?”
“Were you alone in the store when you made your discovery?”
“Hmmm?”
“Were you alone?”
“When?”
“When you found the jar.”
“Oh. Yes. Ohmygod. I was all alone!”
“Was the front door locked?”
“Yes. I always lock it at eight. Maybe five past, if we have a straggler … none tonight … no stragglers.”
“Did you notice any unusual customers?”
“No.”
“Do you have security cameras in the store?”
“Uhm-hmmm. Yeah.”
“Good. That might help us find whoever….”
“They don't work.”
“Come again?”
“The video cameras don't work. Mr. Mazzilli just put up these fake ones to scare off shoplifters. The actual cameras and recorders and stuff cost way too much money….”
Mr. Mazzilli is Bruno “The Boardwalk King” Mazzilli. He owns The Treasure Chest and half the junk shops and lemonade stands up and down the boardwalk. He is also notoriously cheap, even though he charges six bucks for a twenty-cent corked glass bottle filled with free seashells and equally free sand.
Now Ceepak turns to me.
“Danny?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do you have the digital camera?”
“Yeah.”
“We're going in.”
We make our way up the center aisle of the store. Usually, the place is packed with families in flip-flops and shorts milling about, mesmerized by brightly colored plastic bathed in fluorescent light. Usually, this place gives me a splitting headache.
We pass the cardboard displays for Party Poppers and Pinwheels.
We squeeze through a maze of circular clothes racks jammed with Sea Haven sweatshirts, most of which have the same SH logo silk-screened on the front. It's like we're telling the rest of the world to be quiet.
“There it is.” Ceepak uses his Maglite flashlight like a laser pointer. “Next to the snow globes.”
I see it, too.
Another small jar. Glass with a metal screw-on lid.
It's on the top shelf. On either side of it are dozens of “snow” globes all depicting the same diorama: an open pirate chest, a skull, and two palm trees stranded on a plastic desert island. If you grab one and give it a good shake, the water becomes filled with a swirling flurry of gold sparkle flakes and the skull's jawbone yaps up and down. I know this because The Treasure Chest has been selling their signature Pirate Globe to boys like me for nearly twenty years.
“Danny? Focus.”
Ceepak can usually tell when my mind is drifting off to someplace other than where it should be.
“Take a picture before I spray the jar.”
“Right.”
I power up the Canon and press off a few images. The one with the flash is a mistake: the jar's glass reflects back and my picture looks like a big white blob. I trash that one. Check the others.
“We're good.”
“Zoom in tight. Use the macro lens.”
“Okay.”
I do. I also make the mistake of checking out the viewfinder as the lens pushes in.
First I see a pinkish triangle suspended in somewhat murky fluid. As the image becomes sharper, I know it's a nose. I can see the two smooth nostrils devoid of any nasal hair. A strand of flesh flops out of one naked hole and just hangs there. Poor girl. I know for certain it belonged to a girl because it's one of those cute buttons of a nose-the kind that would look ridiculously out of place on any guy unless he was a pixie.
“Note the cut marks. Along the edges,” says Ceepak.
I do. I also take another picture-close along the sides of the nose. I sidle around to frame up a reverse angle. I've never been behind the inside of a nose before. I hope I never am again.
“Very clean incisions,” says Ceepak. “Whoever did this was quite skillful, their blade quite sharp.”
“You think they did this with a knife?”
“Or a scalpel,” says Ceepak. “Perhaps a razor-although that would present a problem once they reached the cartilage-the tough elastic tissue connecting the flesh of the nose to the nasal bone of the skull. One would need a saw of some sort to cut through that.”
I feel all those free crackers from the Morgan's basket creeping up my windpipe to protest.
“Photograph the label,” he says.
“Right.”
I move a step to the left and zoom in again.
MIRIAM. 1980.
“Odd name,” says Ceepak.
“Even for 1980?” I ask-making the ’80s sound like prehistoric times, which, to me, they are. That's when Springsteen used to wear a sweatband on his head and people drank Crystal Light while they did aerobics with the blonde from
“I don't believe Miriam has ever been one of the most popular names for girls in America, except, of course, in Jewish families.” Ceepak now produces a spray can. “This is ninhydrin,” he says. “A chemical substance that reveals latent fingerprints in porous surfaces such as paper.”
He aims the spray nozzle toward the paper label affixed to the jar and spritzes it.
I snap my head back. “Oh, man.” It stinks.
Ceepak starts fanning his hand near the jar. “It's best to do this in a well-ventilated area….”
Now he tells me. I think they shut down the A/C inside The Treasure Chest when they lock the front door. The air in aisle four isn't ventilating at all except for Ceepak fanning it in my face. It smells like the Turnpike up near Rahway.
“We need to wait for the ninhydrin to dry,” he says. “I wish I had my steam iron….”
I cough. “Maybe they sell them here.”
“Doubtful.”
“I could go look….”
Ceepak stops fanning the fumes. “No need. Whoever placed the jar on this shelf was most likely wearing gloves.”
