Then there’s this big explosion.
Our car speakers rattle with high-pitched wails. Shrieks. Squeals of terror.
We hear nothing more from Sergeant Santucci.
Ceepak slams on the brakes.
We yank open our doors and hit the asphalt on the run.
This time, we’re close enough to hear the shotgun blast in person.
37
One hour later, the State Police SWAT guys dot the roller coaster scaffolding like black crows scoping out a cornfield with high-powered rifles.
Skippy O’Malley has about three dozen hostages inside the loading shed-the place where you climb into the coaster cars on one side, exit on the other. The shed has walls and an angled roof that completely covers the final waiting line switchbacks and the train tracks. It also shades the control room, about the size of a boxy camper, on the far side of the rails.
In other words, none of New Jersey’s best snipers, even the guy at the peak of the highest hill, has a clean shot at wacko O’Malley. They might’ve put on their black Kevlar, camouflage clothes, and battle helmets for nothing. A couple of the guys even rappelled down ropes out of helicopters so they could be at the peak of that first hill and have a clean shot at everything below.
But all they can shoot at right now is a metal roof.
Fortunately, Skippy’s last shotgun blast was fired as a warning shot and did its job: He dispersed the several thousand people waiting in a line snaking from the ramp up to the loading platform all the way back to the boardwalk and Pier Two, half a mile south. When Ceepak and I came charging up the access steps to the boardwalk, we were met with a thundering herd of panic.
On the radio, Cliff Skeete haltingly confirmed that “a man working roller coaster security has been shot and killed.”
Skippy helped out by letting the folks at home know
He said it like he was still a cop. Who knows. Maybe in his mind, up there in Skippy Dippy Land, he still is.
After that newsflash, Elyssa the producer, or the program director, or maybe even Mayor Hugh Sinclair, decided it was time to take the live remote off the air. They played “Love Roller Coaster” because it was all cued up and then moved on to non-theme-park themed tunes.
Ceepak and I are in the improvised Situation Response Command Center where local and state authorities, tactical and support teams are trying to figure out what the hell we do next. We’re borrowing the food stand where they deep-fry the Oreos and Snickers bars. Nobody’s nibbling or noshing. We’re all too pumped up. You get around this many special-tactics guys and you feel like you’re in a marauding army of black-clad ninja warriors, only with better weaponry than curved swords and nunchucks. In fact, every weapon in the arsenal has been called up. Sniper rifles, submachine guns, flashboom and tear gas grenades, battering rams, ARVs (Armored Rescue Vehicles), not to mention our own stockpile of tactical shotguns like the one (or two) Skippy is toting.
“There’s a camera on the loading platform,” says Big Paddy O’Malley, whom Officers Forbus and Bonanni hauled down here from headquarters. We need his technical expertise and inside knowledge about the Rolling Thunder. We don’t need his bad attitude. “What the hell does my idiot son think he’s doing?”
“Mr. O’Malley?” says Ceepak, trying to get the man to focus. “How can we access that video?”
“Kevin?”
Kevin O’Malley plops a briefcase up on the counter of the food stand. “We swung by the office. Grabbed the plans.”
When he snaps open the briefcase, the first thing I see is a wadded-up T-shirt stuffed into a plastic bag. It’s stained with blood.
“Whoa,” I say. “What’s that?”
“Something you people probably need. A Sea Haven police officer who moonlights as a security guard for Mr. Mazzilli brought it by our offices earlier in the week.”
Ceepak’s turn: “What?”
“He claimed to have removed it from your initial crime scene-the suitcases with Ms. Baker’s dismembered body parts. He expected us to pay him for it.”
“We did,” says Mr. O’Malley. “But not as much as he wanted.”
Santucci. That slimy weasel. He did snatch Gail’s Sugar Babies T-shirt. We’d crawl up his butt about it, only he’s already dead.
“Why are you just now turning this over to us?” asks Detective Botzong. He sounds pissed.
“Because,” says Big Paddy, “it-”
“Dad?” advised Kevin. “Don’t. You’re without legal representation.”
True. We didn’t ask Forbus and Bonanni to bring Louis Rambowski along for the ride. He didn’t figure to be much help.
“I don’t need a goddamn lawyer, Kevin! Why didn’t we turn this bloody T-shirt over to the police? Because it would have mistakenly linked the dead girl to me and further misled you gentlemen in your efforts to track down the real killer-my goddamn son Skippy.”
Detective Botzong is still furious. “Where is this goddamn patrol cop you got that boosts evidence from a murder scene? What’s his goddamn name?”
“Dominic Santucci,” says Ceepak solemnly. “The off-duty police officer whom Mr. O’Malley’s son just murdered.”
That stops Botzong like a canon blast to the chest.
“Oh.” He stammers a little. “My condolences on your loss.”
Ceepak nods, turns to Kevin O’Malley.
“The video cameras?”
“Right.” Kevin unrolls a schematic. “The feeds go directly to the control room.”
“The small building directly across from where Skippy is currently holding his hostages,” says Ceepak, just so he’s clear.
“Yeah. That’s right. So, obviously, we can’t go over there. However, if I remember correctly-yes, there’s a junction box right there.” He points to the flashy neon sign over the entryway. “The lightning bolts on either side of the lettering are practically pointing to it. Behind the illuminated Entrance sign.”
“On it,” says the head of the T.E.A.M.S. crew. That’s what New Jersey calls the unit of the Technical Response Bureau that’s prepared to deal with what they call “extraordinary police emergencies” such as a psycho putt-putt ball washer holding three dozen innocent civilians hostage on a roller coaster loading dock. The T.E.A.M.S. unit is “a multifaceted entity” that maintains an “all-threats, all-hazards” methodology.
In other words, these guys know how to steal cable TV.
