Bonner’s back to guide her down the hall. “It still as bad as I remember, Boyle?”
“Worse,” I say. “Now we’re burning hazelnut-flavored beans.”
Miller chuckles a little and leads the disappointed suits away from the Interview Room.
Ceepak head-gestures to the left. We take a side door that opens into the parking lot.
“Let’s head over to the municipal garage,” says Ceepak, “check in with Bill Botzong and the CSI team.”
“They’re going to cut Mandrake a deal, aren’t they?”
“Perhaps, Danny. However, that does not give us permission to abandon our investigation before we have gathered all the evidence we can.”
And the MCU people have some for us.
Ceepak and I leave the sunshine for the darkness of the municipal garage where, once my eyes adjust, I see Marty Mandrake’s sporty convertible parked next to the Sanitation Department’s sand sweeper. Bill Botzong is with Detective Wilson over at a workbench, where they look like lab partners huddled around a microscope.
“What have we learned, Bill?” asks Ceepak.
“Plenty. Jeanne?”
The ballistics expert looks up from the microscope’s eyepiece. The rubber ring at the top of the tube has given her a red circle around her eye.
“We found a casing in the street and pulled a.45 ACP slug out of the interior panel,” she says, “right above the door handle, suggesting, as we said earlier, that our shooter took approximately the same downward firing angle as that used to take out your first victim, Mr. Braciole.”
“But wait,” says Botzong, in his best late-night TV voice, “there’s more.”
Detective Wilson nods toward her laptop. “I did a preliminary match with our ballistic fingerprinting database. Now, I can’t give you the serial number of the weapon we’re looking for …”
“But?” I say.
“… but it looks pretty consistent with what we’ve seen on ammunition fired from the Heckler amp; Koch USP Compact Tactical.”
Suddenly, Ceepak looks kind of green around the gills.
42
“As you know,” Botzong says to Ceepak, “H amp;K developed the Universale Selbstlade Pistole, or ‘universal self-loading pistol,’ as a semi-automatic sidearm for the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Offensive Handgun Weapon System program.”
Ceepak nods. “The hired hit man may be former military.”
“Yeah,” says Botzong. “Special Forces. Navy SEALS. Delta Force. Green Berets.”
Great. We’re up against every character ever played by Steven Seagal.
“Plus,” says Botzong, “the Compact Tactical gives the shooter the features of the full-size USP USP45.”
“Such as the mechanical recoil reduction system,” adds Wilson. “But in a smaller, more concealable package.”
“Facilitating the assassination technique you described to us earlier,” Ceepak says to Wilson.
“Yeah. Your bad guy could hide this thing in a zippered pocket of his racing suit.”
At four, Gus Davis and the SHPD officers running security up on Pier Two start letting lucky locals pass through the metal detectors to be the “live audience” for tonight’s “Fun House Finale.”
Around six-thirty, we pick up another piece of evidence.
Gladys has found a motorcycle parked behind her restaurant when she dragged a bushel of rotting bok choy out the back door: a Harley, up on its kickstand and blocking the sliding door to her compost bin.
When nobody in her dining room claimed the motorcycle, Gladys called 9-1-1 so we’d come tow it away. Bill Botzong and his CSI crew borrowed a flatbed wrecker from my buddy George Hansen over at Undertow Towing and hauled the hog back to the municipal garage.
Every VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) on it has been filed down, even the hidden ones.
“We are dealing with dedicated professionals,” says Ceepak. “They, obviously, tracked Mr. Mandrake’s movements. Knew he frequented Veggin’ On The Beach. It would not surprise me if the shooter-tipped off by his accomplice surveilling activity up at the boardwalk-knew that Mandrake had exited the Green Zone. The gunman then parked behind the restaurant. While Mandrake was inside eating, the shooter strolled over to Shore Drive and took up his position at the intersection with the stop sign.”
“He went for a walk in his helmet and flight suit?” I say.
“Doubtful. However, I suspect, if we search the homes near the intersection, several will have backyard shower stalls.”
“No,” I say. “A Port-A-Potty.”
“Come again?”
“All summer they’ve been doing major renovations at that mansion on Shore Drive between Hickory and Gardenia. But they must’ve had problems with the permits, because I haven’t seen any workers there for weeks. Just their Port-A-Potty in the carport.”
“Which our shooter borrowed and used as a changing booth. Well done, Danny.”
Hey, if your routine patrol includes cruising up and down that street at 15 MPH after guzzling a gallon of coffee, you’re always looking for a potential pit stop.
At 7:30, the lawyer finally arrives.
“I need a minute with my client,” Rambowski brusquely announces. Ceepak and I usher him and his three- thousand-dollar suit into the interview room.
“We’ll be back in fifteen,” Ceepak announces before relocking the door.
We head into the chief’s office. Hey, it’s close and it’s empty. The rest of the station is crawling with Fibbies and U.S. Attorneys and who knows who else.
“Nice office,” I say, and gesture at the chief’s very comfy, very padded, high-back rolling chair. “Nice chair.”
“You can take it, Danny. I prefer to stand.”
“Nah. Come on. You could lean back, prop your feet up on the desk-”
Ceepak’s personal cell phone interrupts me. I recognize the ringtone.
“Hello? No, Mom. We are not watching TV.”
Hey, the chief has a flat-screen TV in his bookcase. It’s tucked between a few Kiwanis Club plaques and a Hummel figurine of a cop shadowed by a guardian angel, the two of them helping a schoolkid cross a street. I snap on the TV. It’s tuned to the network that runs
“Danny has found the program,” Ceepak says to his mom. “Yes, that’s Sea Haven. Our beach.”
The show is running a feature about “Brave Soozy K.” They show her strolling along the pristine sandy beach at daybreak, looking very thoughtful in her dove-gray tracksuit as a pink dawn breaks in the east and foamy waves crash hypnotically behind her.
“Are you sure?” Ceepak says. “No, Mom, it’s just that Rita and I-”
His mom talks some more.
“Well, then, it’s all good. I’ll tell Rita. She’ll be thrilled to hear your decision. Don’t worry, Mom. We will. Love you, too.”
He folds up his phone.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“My mother tells me she is tired of eating walleye and shoveling snow.” He indicates the TV screen. “She has been watching the show ever since a few of her church friends told her I was the star.”
Now I’m grinning.
“Anyway, having seen Sea Haven in all its ‘sunny, funderful’ glory, she wants to move here. Provided, of
