Inside the baggie? Two neoprene surfer gloves.
“No,” Mr. Weese answers, not quite getting that McDaniels's question was basically what they call rhetorical. “I golf. Helen gardens.”
“Where's your son's toothbrush?” McDaniels asks.
“His toothbrush?”
“I need to collect some DNA. Lift his prints off the handle. Maybe his bathroom cup. Pretty fertile forensic fields, bathrooms. Find all sorts of human detritus. Unless, of course, your son wore gloves while he brushed his teeth, too.”
Somehow, Dr. McDaniels entrance has made Mr. and Mrs. Weese realize we mean business.
“His bathroom's on the second floor.” Mr. Weese suddenly sounds defeated.
“Go get what you need,” Chief Baines says to McDaniels.
She winks at Ceepak and ambles up the staircase.
“Franklin?” Mrs. Weese put her hand on her chest and sighs. “I feel faint.”
“Then sit down.” Which he promptly does himself. She follows suit.
“We need a recent photograph,” Ceepak says.
“Of George?” Mrs. Weese looks ready to cry. Instead, she lights another cigarette.
“Yes, ma'am.”
“This will work,” I say, reaching for a framed wedding photo on an end table.
“No. Not that one.” Mrs. Weese takes it from my hands. “He looks terrible there. His mouth hanging open like that. Let me get you a better one. From my bedroom …”
“Adam?” Ceepak cocks his head to send Officer Kiger wherever Mrs. Weese goes.
“Ma'am?” Kiger steps forward to let George's mother know she now has an official police escort.
“What? You think I'm going to call George?”
“Yes, ma'am,” Ceepak says because he always tells the truth. “That photograph? We need it immediately if not sooner.”
“Oh, take whatever you want. It doesn't matter.”
I hang on to the wedding shot.
Ceepak's cell phone rings. He rips it off his belt, flips it open.
“This is Ceepak. Go ahead.”
We all stare while he nods, then nods again.
“Right. Thank you.”
He snaps the cell phone shut.
“What?” demands Chief Baines.
“Friend of ours down on the boardwalk.”
“Who?”
“T. J. Lapczynski.” Ceepak turns from the chief to face Mr. Weese. “He's played paintball with your son.”
“So?”
“George is on the boardwalk right now, heading for the Tower of Terror.”
“Let's go,” Baines says.
“Possible ten-eighty-eight.”
“Jesus, he has a gun?”
“Not certain. However, T. J. says our suspect is carrying a duffel bag.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The Tower of Terror is that 250-foot-tall ride in the middle of the boardwalk.
It looks like the Seattle Space Needle-a steeple of steel girders and diagonal tie beams stretching up to the sky. On all four sides are these chairs you pay good money to sit in to be scared out of your wits. There are six chairs on each side with seat belts and padded shoulder harnesses. Twenty-four folks get hauled up to the top. Twenty-four folks get dropped about 240 feet before the brakes come on. It's like paying five bucks to ride an open-air elevator and have somebody snip the cable.
I only rode the Tower of Terror once, and I think my stomach is still somewhere up there, about halfway down.
From the top, before they drop you like a rock, you do, momentarily, get this incredible view-all the way up and down the beach. You can see the boardwalk below, the ocean off to the side. On a clear day, you can see all the way out to the Ship John lighthouse on the north end of the island. If George Weese makes it to the top of the Tower with an M-24 Sniper Weapon System, he could definitely rain down all sorts of terror.
“Shut it down!” Chief Baines issues the command into his radio microphone. We run down the sweeping staircase outside the Weese house. “Shut the Tower down, now!”
Fortunately, we have plenty of guys patrolling the boardwalk on account of the big holiday crowds. Dominic Santucci, the hardass of all hardass cops, the guy who constantly busts my chops, is in charge down there. He'll get the job done. In fact, I'm sure the Tower of Terror is already frozen in mid-hoist, stranding confused thrillseekers in their seats with nothing to do but dangle their feet and check out that view.
“Lights and sirens?” Ceepak asks the chief as we slide into our vehicle and the chief jumps into his.
“No. No noise. Just haul ass. Flashers only.”
“Ten-four.” Ceepak slams his door shut and snaps on the roofbar. The lights swirl their reds and blues to request that anyone driving in front of us kindly get the hell out of our way.
Malloy and Kiger will stay here with the Weeses. McDaniels and her techs will swab George's bathroom. Ceepak, the chief, and I?
We shall proceed to haul ass.
“The ride is shut down,” our radio cackles. “Repeat. Tower of Terror is shut down.”
“Good work, Dom,” we hear the chief reply.
We're doing about 75 mph up Ocean Avenue. Ceepak grabs the radio mic. Now he's doing 75 one-handed. “Any sign of Weese?”
“Not here,” Santucci comes back. “Not at Tower of Terror.”
“Do you know what he looks like?” the chief asks over the radio.
“Sort of.”
On the radio, we hear the chief's curt reply. “Not good enough, Sergeant Santucci!”
Ceepak gestures for me to take the George Weese wedding photo we grabbed out of its frame.
“Dom, do you have your computer up?” he says into his hand mic.
“Ten-four. Up and operational.”
“Danny's going to e-mail you an image.”
I use our in-car digital video camera to grab a still frame of the wedding photo. It shows an open-mouthed George wearing the same glasses he wore when he was fifteen-at least the same style. His bride, Natalia, at his side looks impassive. Kind of glum. George's own expression is difficult to read.
I squeeze off a freeze frame, punch a few keys, and zap the image off to Santucci.
“Brace yourself,” Ceepak says.
I brace my hand against the dash. Inertia thrusts me forward. It'll do that when your partner goes from 75 to zero in ten seconds.
Another sloppy parking job for Ceepak. We're right near a flight of steps leading up to the boardwalk. We hop out and start running.
“Excuse me. Pardon me.”
Ceepak is polite even as we shove our way through the crowd. It is a total teeming mob scene. Thousands of kids. Teenagers. College girls. Bare skin and bikinis everywhere. The place is packed. There's so much coconut oil on the breeze you can't even smell the Italian sausage sandwiches.
“This is Two,” a voice crackles off our walkie-talkies. “Suspect spotted. Headed south. He is carrying a black
