“No flat?”
“Exactly.”
“Curious, given the path of footprints you discovered ….”
“Yep. So why the hell
“Good question.”
“It's gnawing at me.”
“We could ask him,” I suggest.
They both look at me.
McDaniels glares.
Ceepak is gentler. “We might do that, Danny. We sure might.”
We also probably won't.
“What about the weapon?” Ceepak asks.
“It's probably our gun. M-24. Been fired recently. I sent it down to our firearms identification people. They'll shoot it into the water tank, check out the striation marks and rifling. I figure it'll all match up.”
McDaniels walks to the desk and picks up a card.
“We rolled Mr. Weese's prints when he came in. And, of course, we dusted the M-24 before sending it out for the ballistics work.”
“Find anything?”
“Yep.” Dr. McDaniels rubs her eyes. “Too much.”
“How do you mean.”
“Tell me, Ceepak. You ever put your palm print all over the school bus window when you were a kid?”
“No, ma'am.”
“Of course not. You were a Boy Scout the minute you popped out of your mother's womb and asked the doctor if he required any assistance.”
Ceepak smiles. He knows he can be something of a goody-goody. McDaniels is one of the few people he lets make fun of him for it.
“Well,” she says, “I used to do it all the time. Used to breathe on the glass to fog it up and then plaster my paw prints all over the place. Wanted folks to know I'd been there.”
“And Weese's prints are all over the M-24?”
“Everywhere. Stock. Telescopic sight. The barrel. Muzzle. I picked up two dozen clean prints.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah. Particularly when you remember two things. One: he never fired the rifle today. As far as we know, he never even took it out of the duffel bag.”
“And two?”
“I didn't find a single print on the paintball rifle.”
Ceepak nods. “Because he wore the neoprene gloves.”
“Precisely. If he's going through all that rigamarole to keep the paintball rifle clean, how come his prints are all over the M-24?”
“Well, don't forget,” I say, “we found his surfer gloves in the back of the van. Maybe he forgot them when he, you know, packed his bag.”
Ceepak and McDaniels both look at me again like I'm the slow kid in class.
“It's a possibility, Danny,” says Ceepak.
“Yeah. It's possible,” McDaniels adds. “And I could be the next Miss America. I guess that's possible, too.”
Ceepak and McDaniels seem real worried.
And I don't think it has anything to do with beauty pageants.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The lawyer finally arrived around eight P.M.
We talked to Weese for about two hours and he didn't say a word. Nothing. Nada. We asked him about his wife, the kids, Derek Jeter, the Yankees’ chances his year, everything. We got nothing but silence.
He didn't even tell us his name. His parents did it for him.
“George Washington Weese,” his mother said when George just sat there like he couldn't remember his name.
“We wanted him to grow up and become somebody,” Mr. Weese said. “But, apparently, he had other plans.”
Even his old man's ragging on him didn't snap George out of his trance. He kept quiet, kept staring at the wall.
“What's wrong?” Mrs. Weese asked when her son sat there like a spud. “Did you people torture him?” She shot that one straight at Ceepak. “Did you try any of that Abu Ghraib prison crap? I know you were in Iraq, Mr. Ceepak. You were one of those military police, like in those pictures with the naked prisoners.”
Ceepak didn't take the bait.
• • •
Around ten P.M., the lawyer, who had on this white polo shirt that showed off his incredibly bronzed tan, suggested we resume our “attempted interrogation” first thing in the morning.
“Oh-seven-hundred?” Ceepak said.
The lawyer frowned. “I'm no good before ten. Besides, tomorrow's a holiday.”
“Maybe for lawyers,” Mr. Weese huffed. “Some of us have to pay our bills-the bills our lawyers send us.”
“Does ten work for you?” the lawyer asked Chief Baines.
“Fine. We'll be busy earlier, securing the party site. John? You okay with ten?”
“Ten hundred hours will work.”
We trooped out of the room. George was escorted back to a jail cell. Ceepak suggested I head for home.
“Big day tomorrow,” he said.
“Yeah. I'm scheduled to work security at the sound stage. Stop the girls from jumping on 3 Doors Down.”
3 Doors Down, the rock band that does that “Kryptonite” song, is scheduled to kick off the big show on the boardwalk at noon tomorrow.
“I want you here,” Ceepak said. “I'll address the issue of your deployment with the duty sergeant.”
I said okay and headed across the bay to Mainland Medical. Katie was sleeping. I kissed her on her forehead; she smiled slightly, snuggled into her pillow, and slept some more.
“Go home, Danny,” Christine, my nurse friend, said. “You look wiped.”
She was right.
I drove back across the bridge and called my friends. Jess, Olivia, and Becca. They freaked when I told them about George Weese.
“Oh,
“Yeah.”
“Does his nose still whistle?”
I had to admit I hadn't been paying attention.
“Fry his ass,” Jess suggested. “Hang him from the highest tree.”
Jess kind of forgets which branch of the criminal justice system I'm working in. Cops don't get to fry anybody, and there'd be hell to pay if we started decorating trees with dead guys, like the Surfing Santas they string up along Ocean Avenue during Christmas.
“Good work,” Olivia, the sensible one, said. “But it's sad how we messed up his mind.”
