“Right.”
He heads to the eighteenth hole.
A family foursome is clomping down the hill to play the final hole, where if you can run your ball up the ramp so it flies into the crocodile’s snout instead of his wide-open mouth, you win a free game.
“Sir? Ma’am?” says Ceepak. “You and your children need to head into the office. Immediately.”
They give him no guff. People seldom do when you’re wearing what they’d call a bulletproof vest and have your semiautomatic weapon out and up.
The mom’s good. She calmly ushers everybody down the winding concrete path before they have time to panic. While Ceepak clears the back nine, I make my way up to the front. It’s a little after noon so King Putt isn’t very crowded. In fact, it’s almost deserted. Must be why T.J. and his pals opted for an early tee time: They’d have the course to themselves.
I cross a sand trap (more like a kidney-shaped sandbox, but it goes with the whole Sahara Desert theme) and come to the Python Pit. Hole number six. Three high school girls are giggling every time the cobra head pops up out of his basket.
“Girls?” I say.
They shriek. I came up behind them.
“You need to head back to the office. Now.”
They squeal and scamper away.
“In here, girls!” Jeremy Murray screams from the office doorway. “Now! Move!”
Guy could be a lacrosse coach.
I swing around holes seven and eight, remembering when I came here as a kid how much fun I had. Hoping I don’t see it all again when my life flashes in front of my eyes two seconds after Skippy pops out of the cave with one of his tactical shotguns. Or his Beretta. Or whatever else he’s got.
A towering mountain sculpted out of plaster on chicken wire looms at the center of the course, linking holes nine and ten. Up top is the fake Victoria Falls, with tons of water the color of windshield washer fluid fountaining up through its crater top, then tumbling down over craggy outcroppings until it splashes into the mighty blue Nile snaking through the labyrinth of holes.
There is a tunnel cutting through the fake mountain. It’s dark and dank.
It’s where I’d hide if I were Skippy.
The civilians on my side are all safe. I see Ceepak gesturing at an elderly couple at the eleventh hole. Both seem to need new hearing aid batteries.
Meaning I need to take the cave alone.
I suck down a deep breath and grab the Maglite off my utility belt. I use what some guys call the Arnold Technique when juggling a flashlight and a Glock: Maglite coming out of the bottom of my left hand, fist held to my collar bone, gun pointed at the ground when searching, at the target as needed.
I’m pretty fast on the upswing.
I creep forward, shine the light into the darkness. I see nothing but slick walls. I step into the mouth of the mountain.
“Skippy?” I shout.
My voice rings off the sculpted rock.
No answer.
I swing the flashlight left, to where I know there’s a recessed nook, a ledge where you can sit and make-out with your date in the dark.
Nothing.
I swing it right.
The blinding beam bounces back at me.
Reflected off the POLICE letters on Ceepak’s chest.
This is why I like to keep my gun pointed at the ground in the flashlight searching situations. You shoot fewer partners.
Ceepak radios in a BOLO APB.
That’s a “be on the lookout” all points bulletin. We assume Skippy hightailed it off the golf course two minutes after his dad called him up to ask who had the magic cell phone on Thursday night. He knows we’re onto him.
“Request all available assistance, local and state, police, fire department, sanitation workers: anyone with eyes on the street. We need to locate Skip ‘Skippy’ O’Malley. Male Caucasian. Sandy hair. Freckled face. Approximately six feet tall, hundred and thirty pounds. Slight build. Stooped shoulders. No known distinguishing tattoos or scars.”
I check out the parking lot on the other side of the fence penning in the golf course.
“He might be in the King Putt pickup truck,” I say because it isn’t parked where it was parked the last time we came by to stop Mr. Ceepak from harassing folks picking out their tiny pencils and score pads. “It’s got the logo painted on the doors.”
Ceepak nods. “Suspect could be driving a Dodge Ram pickup truck with King Putt Mini Golf signage painted on the doors.”
Ceepak is, of course, one step ahead of me. I say pickup truck, he says Dodge Ram, because he remembers those tire treads Carolyn Miller found over on Tangerine Street.
“Please be advised, suspect is thought to be heavily armed and mentally unstable.”
Wow. Dr. Ceepak. Much tougher than Dr. Phil.
We listen in as Mrs. Rence broadcasts the bulletin.
“Should we hit the road?” I ask when she’s done.
“Not just yet,” says Ceepak. “I want to investigate that tool shed.”
We head over to the smaller pyramid in the stand of artificial Egyptian trees.
I reach for the handles.
“Danny?”
I look over. Ceepak has assumed a firing stance, weapon aimed at the split between the twin doors.
“Do you think?”
“It’s a possibility. Jump clear as you open.”
I nod. Damn. Would Skippy really hide in the shed?
“On three,” says Ceepak. “One, two, three …”
I pull the door open, fly to the right.
But nobody discharges their weapon.
“Suitcase,” says Ceepak who, in the time it took me to wince, already has his flashlight up and is working it around the storage hut’s clumpy shadows. “Matches the color and style of those found at the crime scene.”
Now his beam hits a sand pit rake.
Then a hacksaw hanging on a hook. The blade is too clean. It’s brand-new.
“He did it here.” He turns around. Surveys the bright blue river. “He crept up behind her, whacked her in the head with a blunt metal object-”
“A putter,” I suggest.
“Yes. A putter. Similar impact pattern to that of a hammer. Good going, Danny.”
I’d say thanks but we are talking about a creep bashing out a bathing beauty’s brains here.
“Realizing she was dead, he most likely dismembered her body in the river, knowing that the water would wash away most of the evidence, that the blue dye would cover up the blood.”
“Especially if he dumped more in when he was done.”
“We should check the filtration system. We may find traces of Ms. Baker’s blood and bone matter trapped inside.”
“Wait a second,” I say. “If Skippy killed Gail here, how come we found blood splattered all over the shower walls?”
“Because he wanted us to. I suspect, Danny, that Skippy took some of Ms. Baker’s body parts out of the suitcases when he arrived at number One Tangerine. That he pressed the bar of soap up under her fingernails.
