“Probably. Yes. I remember seeing the time when I checked the caller ID.”
“Was it Patrick O’Malley?” asks Ceepak.
“No. Whoever it was, they had their number blocked. The screen said ‘Private Caller.’ I think. I was half asleep. Truth be told, I had forgotten all about it.”
“What did you and the unidentified caller talk about?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Right.”
“Then why did he call?”
“Beats me. All I remember is crawling over to the phone. Picking it up. Saying ‘hello’ about a hundred times. No one on the other end said a word. My wife told me to be quiet, she was trying to sleep. I figured it was a prank caller. Anyway, I checked the caller ID, said ‘hello’ one last time, my wife kicked me in the shin, and I hung up.”
“Interesting,” says Ceepak.
“Annoying,” says the mayor.
“Thank you, sir. We have no further questions at this time.”
“Whoa. Wait a sec. What exactly do you mean by that?”
“Excuse me?”
“That ‘at this time’ bit.”
“Ah. Yes. We will most likely question you later about the activities taking place at number One Tangerine Street.”
“The what?”
“The parties,” I say. “With the girls. Up in the hot tub?”
The mayor slips into a catatonic coma.
“Danny?” Ceepak is shaking his head.
Perhaps I said too much.
Or perhaps Ceepak wants the mayor to stress about how much we know on the subject of his dalliances with the sugar daddies and how much his wife may soon want to kick him someplace besides his shin. I hope Mr. Sinclair uses extra-strength deodorant. I have a feeling the man is going to be perspiring like the inside of a sweat lodge today.
“We’ll contact you later,” says Ceepak.
“Wait a minute!” Sinclair wiggles a finger at me. “You can’t slander my good name like that, young man. I’m the mayor! You work for me! I can have you fired!”
“Actually,” says Ceepak, “Officer Boyle and I work for Sea Haven Township. Unless you can prove we have engaged in conduct unbecoming a public employee or have violated certain departmental rules and regulations, I think-”
The mayor misses the rest of Ceepak’s front porch dissertation. He yanks open the front door, runs inside (probably to see if son will let him borrow the motorcycle for a speedy getaway), and slams the door in our faces.
That’s when the cell phone starts chirruping on Ceepak’s belt.
27
“This is Ceepak. Go.”
He always says that when it’s a business call.
We amble away from the porch, head toward our car.
“Hang on. I’m putting you on speaker so my partner can listen in.”
The next voice I hear belongs to Dr. Rebecca Kurth, the county medical examiner.
“I called in some new autopsy findings to Bill Botzong and the State MCU team. He requested that I relay the information on to you.”
“Standing by,” says Ceepak handing me the phone so he can take notes.
“Upon further examination of the remains,” Dr. Kurth continues, “two things struck me as peculiar. Number one: Although we found the residue of soap underneath Ms. Baker’s fingernails, we found no traces of it on any other part of her body. This seemed extremely odd-unless, of course, she was attacked as soon as she reached for the bar, before she had a chance to lather up. However, we found no shampoo residue on her skin, either.”
Ceepak nods. So I say, “Interesting” to the phone like he would.
“Sure is. If shampoo was in her hair, some foam should have trickled down to her shoulders, her torso. There should even be a trace amount on her hands. There is none anywhere. Perhaps our killer rinsed the body parts clean after severing them.”
This time, I just nod.
“This next part is even stranger,” says Dr. Kurth. “When we opened her up and examined her organs …”
I do a silent
“… we found that a dark blue substance had stained her esophagus and lungs. I’m having a hard time explaining how it got there. If she drank something, say, with a heavy amount of blue food coloring in it, it might explain the discoloration on the interior of her throat but not the lungs.”
“Any idea what sort of dye it is?” asks Ceepak.
“No. Not yet. We’re still analyzing its composition, running it through the database. First guess-and it is only a guess-I’d say it’s some kind of heavily dyed automatic toilet bowl cleaner. Toilet Duck and Tidy Bowl are both the same intensely blue color.”
Yep. There’s even a Tidy Bowl cocktail: vodka and Blue Curaçao liqueur. Bud makes them at Big Kahuna’s for frat boys. Sure, they suck ’em down, but not into their lungs.
“This new evidence would seem to suggest,” says Dr. Kurth, “that Ms. Baker was killed somewhere besides the outdoor shower stall. The CSI crew did not find a similar discoloration on the walls or floor.”
So maybe Mr. O’Malley drowned Gail in a toilet bowl.
In the bathroom.
In the house at number One Tangerine.
“Thank you, Dr. Kurth,” says Ceepak.
“I’ll keep you guys in the loop when we find out what kind of dye we’re dealing with.”
“Appreciate that.”
Ceepak clips his phone back to his belt.
“We need to get inside that damn house!” I overstate the obvious because it’s what I do best.
“We also need to reexamine the shower stall.”
“How come?”
“If Ms. Baker was drowned and, therefore, killed somewhere else, why was there so much blood splattered on the walls?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” says Bill Botzong when we contact him at nine A.M. “We need to be inside. Now.”
Botzong and the entire State Police MCU crew spent the night in their van at number One Tangerine Street. I can hear the crick in his neck over the radio.
“Your warrant will be signed within the hour,” Ceepak assures him.
“Good. We’ll hit the bathrooms first. Look for discolored toilet water.”
“We’ll see you at nine thirty,” Ceepak says to the radio.
“Bring some coffee,” says Botzong.
