Rolling Thunder

“Okay.”

“Have fun with your friends.”

“Say hi to Ceepak.”

“Yeah.”

I fold up the phone.

“Problems?” says Ceepak as he slides the transmission into park.

“Sam. She wants me to go hang out with her college pals, ride the new roller coaster, and then have a deep meaningful discussion so she can dump me with a clean conscience.”

“Sorry, Danny.”

I grab my door handle. “I’ll deal with it later. Right now, we need to focus on figuring out who killed Gail Baker and Mrs. O’Malley.”

“Roger that.”

As we climb out of the cop car it hits me: Damn. I’ve turned into Ceepak junior. The guy’s contagious.

30

Andrew Meyer, one of the young guys at wavy, escorts Ceepak and me into an audio studio.

“This is where we cut commercials and promos,” he says. “You can use the computer there, call up the digital archives.”

The walls are covered with gray foam rubber shaped like egg cartons. Soundproofing panels. Out in the hall, we can hear Cliff Skeete at the Rolling Thunder.

“There they go! Whoo-hoo. Listen to that rumble! Like thunder rolling across the clouds!”

Poor guy. He’s already running out of material and the ride’s only been open for fifteen minutes. Cliff promises to be right back with more “fun in the thundering sun” and segues into Springsteen’s biggest radio hit: “Hungry Heart,” the one about the wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack. Makes me think about Sam. And boardwalk nachos smothered in jack cheese. Guess we should’ve grabbed those eggs at The Rusty Scupper. I’m starving.

Meyer closes the door to cut off Cliff while Ceepak sits down in front of the microphone and mixer board.

“Can you call up last weekend’s live remote?” he says to Andrew Meyer.

“Sure.” Meyer leans in. Clacks some keys on the keyboard. Scoots the mouse around. Clicks it.

“Whoo-hoo!” The Skeeter from last Saturday is back.

“Can we fast forward to the point in time where the disc jockey was taken off the air?” asks Ceepak.

“Yeah. Hang on.” Meyer slips on a pair of headphones. Skitters the mouse around. I see sound waves scroll across the screen like a rapid-fire lie detector test.

“Here we go.” Meyer flicks a switch to put the sound back up in the speakers.

“We need someone to call nine-one-one! Now! Omigod! She’s in bad shape! Call nine-one-one. We need an ambulance. Go to music! Go to music!”

A second or two of jumbled screams and shouts.

“What the hell happened?”

“Oh, Jesus Jackie. Jesus.”

“We need to go back down!”

“No! She’s having a heart attack! Unbutton her blouse.”

Ceepak raises a hand. Meyer pauses the playback.

“Any idea who said, ‘no,’ Danny?”

“I’m not one hundred percent sure, but it might be Kevin. Skippy’s definitely the one who said they should go back down.”

Ceepak nods. That was his pick, too.

“Please continue,” he says to Meyer.

More commotion. Screams. Cliff taps his microphone a couple of times.

“Elyssa?” he says to whomever must’ve been his engineer/ producer last Saturday. “Listen, sister, we need a goddamn ambulance and we need it fast! She looks bad, man. Bad. Call nine-one-one.”

And then a new voice is heard-closer to the microphone.

“Daddy killed Mommy!”

“That’s Mary,” I say. “The sister. She was sitting right in front of Cliff.”

Ceepak leans in. Me, too. We’re straining to isolate Mary’s voice from the general hubbub.

“Daddy did it! I saw him! Daddy killed Mommy!”

“Shut the fuck up, Mary.” Sean. The sensitive son.

“Daddy did it, Daddy did it.”

“Shut! Up!”

“I’m a little birdy and I’m gonna tell-”

“Okay, lady. You’re freaking me out.” Cliff. “Just sit down and chill, all right?”

“Does anybody know CPR?” Kevin.

“Please, God, someone help!” Mr. O’Malley.

“Skip? Help Mom.” Kevin again.

“I … I …”

“You were a fucking cop, for Christ’s sake! Help her!”

“I can’t.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Jesus!”

“They never taught me.”

Um, yes they did.

“I’m a little birdy and I’m gonna tell everybody!”

“Sit down, lady. You’re rockin’ the damn car.”

It goes on like that for nearly ten minutes.

Skippy starts crying.

Kevin calls him a worthless sack of shit.

Sean tells Kevin to “cut Skipperdoodle some fucking slack, man.”

Mr. O’Malley tells them all to “be quiet, the whole damn lot of you!”

Mary giggles like a maniac and softly chants, “I saw Daddy do it,” over and over and over.

Cliff keeps talking to his producer, telling her it’s getting ugly up here and he sees the cop cars and the ambulances and maybe a fire truck and two guys running up the roller coaster track.

“Wait-it’s Danny … Danny Boyle … and … Ceepak. We’re gonna be okay. Hey, Danny? Yo!”

Ceepak motions for Andrew Meyer to stop the playback.

We know what happens next.

Mrs. O’Malley dies.

31