of the girl's body by a few stringy tendons. Her eyes are wide and wild with terror. The neck looks like a bloody stump someone tore through with a chain saw.
The chief is burping again. Trying to force down whatever it is that wants to sneak up.
Ceepak looks away from the Polaroid.
“Her name is Mary Guarneri.”
“Jesus, Ceepak,” Santucci scoffs. “What? You can't fucking read? Her name is
The chief finds his voice. “Stand down, Santucci. Ceepak? Do you know something about this girl? Why the hell do you keep calling her Mary?”
“Mary Guarneri changed her name to Ruth when she was baptized by the Reverend Billy Trumble.”
Santucci whips off his shades. “Says who?”
“Is this the girl who had the church charm on her bracelet?” the chief asks. “The girl from the milk carton?”
“Roger that.”
“I see. Okay. You should've said so. Okay. We're making connections. Filling in the missing pieces. When was she murdered?”
“Well, sir,” says Santucci, hiking up his belt, “my best guesstimate is sometime on or about July 3, 1985.” He points to the newspaper he found the skull bone wrapped up in. “Lots of Fourth of July ads and whatnot in the newspaper there. So, we figure, she had to be, you know, dead before the Fourth.”
Malloy muscles in with his two cents. “Also, sir-we picked up a pretty solid clue right here.” He holds up the other Polaroid. The Before.
Ceepak cringes. Not because the picture is gruesome. It isn't. It just shows a young girl in a lacy black bustier with a big crucifix dangling down between her breasts-the kind of stuff Madonna used to wear back in the ’80s when she was still singing on MTV about being a virgin.
No, Ceepak's cringing, I think, because our esteemed colleague is holding the evidence with his greasy, just-ate-a-melty-Snickers-bar fingers. No gloves. No evidence bag. Just his chocolate-covered thumb and forefinger.
“See there, Chief?” Malloy says. “The killer wrote a date on the Polaroid! July 3, 1985.”
Ceepak shakes his head.
“You got some problem with our detective work here, Officer Ceepak?” Santucci snarls.
“Yes, Sergeant Santucci. You've taken us out of sequence.”
“Come again?” says the chief.
“Danny and I were proceeding in an orderly, chronological fashion. The bowl containing the skull labeled DELILAH was, apparently, the killer's first. It was dated 1979. The map uncovered in that hole led us to another skull, dated 1980.”
Santucci sniggers. “Wait a second, Ceepak. How do you know there ain't a 1978 head buried someplace else? Hunh? How can you be certain this Delilah was the first?”
“We can't,” Ceepak admits.
“See? Jesus. I don't know why everybody says you're such hot shit.”
“All right, Santucci,” the chief says. “Enough. We're all on the same team here.”
“Yes, sir. But Malloy and I want to follow up this lead.”
Santucci waves what looks like another Resort Map in our collective face. Malloy pulls a second map out of his back pocket. It's the hand-drawn sketch, the one with the X marking the spot, and it's also smeared with chocolate from whatever he had for his mid-morning power snack.
“According to these maps,” says Santucci, “we'll find something buried up north near the lighthouse. Request permission to go dig it up, sir. Tray can handle things here.”
The chief looks confused. “Who the hell is Tray?”
“Summer cop. Tray can maintain security. Keep the looky-lous away from the skull holes. Maybe Officer Boyle can assist. He was pretty good helping old ladies cross the street last summer-before he hooked up with Ceepak.” Santucci shoots me a look that says I should still be working crossguard duty.
“I need Officer Boyle,” says Ceepak. “He knows the beaches on the South End.”
The chief shakes his head. “North End. South End. This guy is sending half the department off on a scavenger hunt….”
“One team will wind up back here,” says Ceepak. “Most likely Danny and I. We are following clues that predate the 1985 slaying of Mary a.k.a. Ruth. Of more importance, however, will be any evidence pertaining to killings which took place post-1985….”
Santucci jumps in. “Those are ours!”
Ceepak shakes his head. I know what he's thinking: we're trying to track down a serial killer. Santucci wants to play “first dibs.”
The chief plucks at his mustache. That's what he does whenever he's stressed.
“Ceepak?”
“Sir?”
“You and Boyle head south.”
Ceepak was in the military for fourteen years. He knows how to follow orders.
“Yes, sir.”
“Sergeant Santucci?”
“Sir?” He says it louder than Ceepak did. Wants to look like an even better soldier.
“You and Malloy head north. Have your auxiliary officer maintain security here. Did you show the backhoe people what you found?”
Santucci blinks. Tries to think. Come up with the right answer.
“They, uh, unearthed it, so to speak. So, naturally, they were somewhat curious as to its contents.”
“So you showed them?”
“I wouldn't say we ‘showed’ them, sir.”
Malloy tries to help out. “It was more like they watched us, you know, pull the skull out of the bowl and all.”
The chief presses his clenched fist against his gassy gut again.
“Okay. I'll call in more personnel. Cancel vacations. We can't have rumors running up and down the beach. We need to lock this down. Fast. Swear everybody inside the tent to secrecy. If they don't cooperate, we'll react accordingly. Jesus. Today's what?”
Santucci answers fast because he wants more brownie points. “July 17, sir.”
The chief shakes his head some more.
“Well, at least we had half a summer of peace and quiet.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
We spent the next two hours racing up and down the island like we're one of the treasure-hunting tribes on
Down south, we found our sixth skull. We did it without attracting any attention. The rich people whose beach we dug up weren't home. It's only Tuesday, so I figure they're up in the city working to pay the mortgage on their mansion.
The skull was labeled ZEBUDAH. Probably not the name her parents gave her. Her decomposed head came complete with the whole kit. The Bible quote, the date, the Before and After headshots, the maps to guide us to the next location.
And so we took off for Cherry Street, back up toward the center of the island. Our next X marked a spot near the public pier, close to The Rusty Scupper, where Aubrey Hamilton-the girl I might date sometime this century, when work slows down-waitresses.
When we arrived on scene and marked off the paces indicated, we realized something: this seventh chest
