Hell Hole Read online

  We follow the hieroglyphics and make our way into the little hut where you pay to play.

  It’s early, 10:00 AM. Not many golfers out on the links because all the kids are across the street inhaling pancakes.

  The guy behind the counter looks none too happy about coming to work every day in a goofy costume. He’s about my age but has to wear a fake bronze breastplate, striped skirt, and King Putt pharaoh hat so it looks like he’s wearing an inside-out undershirt where the collar got stuck around the ears before he could yank it all the way off his head.

  “Pick your balls,” the guy says in a dull monotone. He says it so often, he forgets how funny it sounds.

  “We’re here to meet someone,” says Ceepak. “Police business.”

  The guy looks up from the Sunday funnies.

  “Oh. Hey, Danny.”

  “Skippy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You workin’ here?”

  “Yeah. For the summer.”

  Skip O’Malley was a part-time summer cop back when I was one too. I think his father owns this miniature golf course. Must be why Skipper is manning the early-morning till in his pharaoh kilt: before he can inherit the family business, he has to learn it from the ground up. Either that, or his old man just loves to humiliate the poor guy.

  “How’s it going?” I ask, trying to keep my eyes off Skippy’s skirt and sandals.

  “You know.” He gestures with both arms to take in the entirety of his miserable existence. “Same old, same old.”

  “Yeah. Well, we gotta run. We’re meeting this guy out on the links”

  “Yeah. He’s already here. Didn’t pay either. Have a sunny, funderful day.” He mumbles Sea Haven’s official slogan in our general direction. It’s meant for the guests—not the poor schlubs who actually live and work here.

  We head out to the course.

  “The waterfall is the ninth hole.” Ceepak, of course, has been studying the little map printed on the back of the scorecard.

  “They call it Victoria Falls,” I say as I point at the concrete chute of blue water coursing beside us, “because that’s the mighty Nile.”

  “Educational entertainment,” says Ceepak. “Laudable.”

  Yeah. This is probably why American kids don’t know diddly about world geography. We pick it all up playing Putt-Put or going to the Rainforest Cafe.

  In truth, King Putt’s is a pretty awesome course. Skip’s dad spent about a million bucks landscaping its “Sahara Desert” sand traps, fake palm trees, and oasis putting greens. Kids love it here—especially when they’re bored with the beach, something that happens, typically, on day number four of your standard seven-day vacation. You can pretend you’re shooting your ball down a real crocodile’s throat over on Cleopatra’s Loop-the-Loop, do battle with a plastic python named Monty on hole four, and try to shoot through the spokes of the spinning chariot wheel on five.

  “Danny?” Ceepak must sense my mind drifting back to that summer I hit my first hole in one by going underneath the Mummy instead of around it.

  He’s pointing at this rope-lined set of steps leading up a hill to the cave underneath the waterfall. Inside the half-circle of light, I can see the shadow of a man with a bloated belly. Saul Slominsky.

  “Ceepak. Sure. John Ceepak. I remember you. We worked that Tilt-A-Whirl case together. Remember? Me, you, and Boyle. It was the forensics that cracked that baby wide open, am I right?”

  Slobbinsky’s doing it again. Acting like we’re all old chums and this is our annual CSI High reunion.

  “So, you’re pals with Art Insana? Great cop, Art. One of New Jersey’s finest.”

  I’m guessing Art Insana is one of Ceepak’s many friends working with the New Jersey state police. I’m also guessing Insana way outranks anybody from the Burlington County prosecutor’s office. If he’s Ceepak’s friend, he’s probably superintendent of something and has gold braids on his hat and a forest of medals on his chest.

  Slominsky is holding a rolled-up grocery sack.

  “So you guys think we missed some stuff, hunh?”

  “Maybe” is all Ceepak offers back.

  “Sure. It’s possible. In the summer, most of my top guys are off on vacation, you know what I mean? I was working with the B team. Hell, the D team! Bunch of morons. Couldn’t lift a fingerprint off a fried chicken bucket!”

  He’s chuckling. We’re not.

  “But you work with what they give you, not what you wish you had, you know what I’m saying? These days, anybody with an uncle in Trenton can take a civil service exam and call themselves a crime-scene investigator.”

  Present company included.

  “Anyways, here’s how I figure we should work this thing. Since, like I said, I’m more or less short-staffed, I hand this evidence over to you, just like Superintendent Insana suggested, so you can crack that ring of car thieves or whatever you’re chasing down. Art has a point. You guys have more free time than I do. You find anything that suggests maybe this thing wasn’t a suicide, that maybe this kid Smith got himself murdered, hey, I got no problem. We just tell anybody who’s interested how we cracked the case together.”

  It’s quiet in the cave. Outside, you can hear the roaring thunder of chlorinated water tumbling over a fake cliff. In here, all you’ve got is the occasional plink of a drip losing its grip on the ceiling and hitting the concrete floor.

  “So whataya say, Ceepak? We got a deal here or what?”

  “What you’re suggesting,” he says, “constitutes a lie.”

  “Nah. Not really.”

  “Yes. Really.”

  “It’s just a slight spin on the situation.”

  “It’s not the truth.”

  “It’s close enough. Jesus, what’re we doing here? Debating semantics?”

  “This is not an academic debate, Mr. Slominsky.”

  “Then what is your goddamn problem?”

  “I will not tolerate those who lie, cheat, or steal.”

  “Good for you. I respect that. We should all, you know, obey the Bible, do our duty, and sing ‘Kumbaya.’ But my job’s on the line, here, okay? Art Insana is not my close, personal fucking friend, okay? So I need for you to tell people that I helped you on this thing or I’m not giving you boys jack shit. Capice?”

  “We can’t do that,” I say.

  “Jesus! You too? Why not? I give you this bagful of evidence, I’m helping, am I not?”

  Ceepak nods.

  “So where’s the lie? Just tell the people upstairs I helped out is all I’m asking.”

  Actually, it sounds more like he’s begging.

  “What’s in the bag?” asks Ceepak.

  Slominsky smiles, clutches it to his chest like the guy in the bleachers who just caught the home run ball everybody else wants.

  “We got a deal?”

  “I will inform anyone who asks that you helped us in our investigaton.”

  “That’s all I’m saying.” Slominsky hands Ceepak the bag.

  “Do you have the evidence inventoried?”

  “You mean like a list? Nah. List could fall into the wrong hands, you know what I mean.”

  “What’s on the disc?”

  “Digital crime-scene photos. I gotta warn you: some are what we call graphic. Rated G for ‘gory’ on account of all the blood and brains splattered everywhere.”

  Ceepak has already slipped on his evidence gloves. He pulls a sheet of paper out of the rumpled Acme bag.

  “Oh,” says Slominsky. “That’s a memorandum-type deal. One of the young kids in my department, this Stella Boonshoft chick, wasted all day yesterday tracking down what buses might’ve been on their way to and from Atlantic City Friday night when Shareef shot himself, or, you know, got himself shot. Either way, maybe one of those buses listed there stopped at exit fifty-two.”

  Ceepak taps the paper. “Yes. Academy bus lines.”

  “She found one that was there?” Guess Slominsky forgot to read Ms. Boonshoft’s memo. “You
should look into that. Maybe some of those old farts on the bus heard or saw something.”

  Ceepak nods. “This is excellent work. Ms. Boonshoft is to be commended for her thoroughness.”

  “Yeah. I told her to ask around. She followed through pretty good.” Slominsky takes back the shopping bag. Rifles through it like it’s a sack of dirty socks. Ceepak cringes. “What else we got in here? Oh yeah. Digital tape. From the indoor security camera. You guys got a digital player?”

  “Roger that.”

  “Good. This tape won’t play in a standard VCR or a DVD.”

  Why do I think Slobbinsky tried both?

  “Oh yeah. Here we go. The dead guy’s drug works. We found these in the stall next to his. The handicapped crapper. Anyways, on the floor we found a syringe, spoon, Bic lighter and a ‘Hot Stuff’ heroin bag.”

  “Hot Stuff?”

  “Yeah, you know—the cartoon devil from the old comic books. Looks like a pointy-headed baby in diapers? Red skin? Curly tail?”

  “I’ve seen the character before,” says Ceepak. “Just didn’t realize he had a name.”

  “‘Hot Stuff.’ Funny little fuck. When I was a kid, they used to sell his comic books at the drug store on the same rack with Casper and Baby Huey.”

  Now he holds up a small plastic bag with an even smaller paper envelope inside it. The red devil in diapers is ink-stamped on the front flap.

  “You’ve seen this Hot Stuff smack before, am I right?”

  “Yes,” says Ceepak.

  I’ve seen the little devil before too.

  It’s our local brand.

  Hot Stuff doesn’t come from Iraq or Iran. It’s processed and packaged by unknown criminals in Sea Haven. So where did Shareef Smith buy it?

  I’m starting to wonder whether Osvaldo Vargas, the young janitor and newest Feenyville Pirate, has a side job as their drug rep down at the exit 52 rest area.

  19

  We dash across the street, hop into our Ford Explorer, and head up Ocean Avenue to the station house.

  We’ve got a digital tape player back at police headquarters and that’s the piece of evidence Ceepak says we should examine first. I drive, Ceepak works his cell phone. Calls Grace back at the Pig’s Commitment.

  “Still no answer? You’re trying both numbers? Thank you, Grace. Appreciate it.”

  He snaps the clamshell shut.

  “She thinks the Smith sisters might be at church,” he says. “We should swing by the rental house and advise Sergeant Dixon that we’re making progress. We might convince him to extend our deadline past seventeen-hundred hours.”

  That’s 5:00 PM. Six hours to go before Dixon and his crew go ballistic and turn into vigilantes like Charles Bronson in that movie on late-night cable: Death Wish. Guess taking the law into your own hands was pretty popular back in the seventies. Bronson made like a dozen Death Wishes.

  “You want to go talk to Dixon first?” I ask as we cruise down Ocean Avenue. Kipper is back in the other direction, north of King Putt Golf.

  “Let’s hit the house. Study the surveillance tape. See if we are telling the truth when we say we’re making progress.”

  “They were being economical,” says Ceepak.

  Yeah. I guess they were saving digits. Or tape. Or runs out to Wal-Mart for fresh cassettes. Whoever set the frame rate on the surveillance camera went with the lowest one possible: one-third of a frame per second. About a hundred times choppier than real life. It’s like watching the world jitter past on fast-forward. In the top right corner of the screen, there’s a spinning time stamp. When we hit the hours we’re most interested in, Ceepak asks me to switch to slow motion. I thumb the remote. Now the freeze-frames strobe and blink at us in a stuttering slide show. Snapshots of hungry motorists bopping down the line at Burger King. Popping up to the counter at Starbucks. Bending over in front of vending machines to fish out bags of M&M’s. One second a whole group is seated at a table in the food court, the next they’re up, and out, and gone. Guess that’s what rest areas are all about. In and out. Out and in. All day. Every day.

  “I wish we had the exterior tapes,” I say, already frustrated by the shoddy footage available from the single interior camera. “The parking lot view could really help us.”

  “Superintendent Insana is working on it. Apparently, one of the exterior cameras was damaged this weekend and that has caused the delay. However, we should have whatever might be available soon. Maybe today. Perhaps tomorrow. There!”

  He jabs his finger at the screen. I hit the pause button.

  “Might I have the remote?”

  I hand it to him. Ceepak rocks the video back a frame. The digital display reads 21:05:08. Ceepak taps the lower left corner of the screen.

  “Do you see him, Danny?”

  I lean in. Squint. I see a short, fuzzy blob near another even shorter fuzzy blob.

  “Is that a janitor?”

  “I believe so. Note the outline of a baseball cap here. And this, we can assume, would be his supplies cart.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Twenty-one-oh-five. Nine-oh-five PM. That would be Osvaldo Vargas.”

  Ceepak nods. “He signed the clipboard at nine-oh-five.”

  So he lied. Cheated a little. Didn’t actually hit the men’s room until, let’s say, 9:07.

  We skip-frame through the next hour a little more slowly. It’s amazing how many people visit the candy shop between 9:00 and 10:00 PM. Everybody’s buying something to munch on down the road. This is why they sell snack food in containers that fit in cup holders. Makes it easier to eat and drive.

  “There he is again.”

  Ceepak freezes the frame time-stamped 22:03:47.

  “He’s a little earlier this hour.”

  “Indeed,” says Ceepak. “We know he will go into the men’s room at ten-oh-five.”

  Ceepak nods. “Let’s see if anybody else rolls a mop bucket through this zone prior to Mr. Delgado coming to work at eleven.”

  Yeah. Because, if they do, it’s our guy.

  We move through the tape even slower. Minute by minute. Second by second.

  “What’s that?” I say.

  “Mother with baby carriage,” says Ceepak.

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Similar configuration. Easy mistake.”

  We plod on.

  Ceepak pauses the tape. Thinks he sees something. No. He was wrong. Shakes his head. “Burger King employee. Emptying trash barrels.”

  He’s right. The BK kid has a different-shaped baseball cap and is pushing a bigger blob.

  22:10. Nothing.

  22:15. Nothing.

  This could be the dullest video ever released—worse than those straight-to-DVD movies they try to flog off at Blockbuster.

  “Maybe the killer brought in his own mop bucket,” I say, hoping it might tear us away from this very poorly paced movie. This is worse than a black-and-white chick flick in French.

  “It’s a possibility,” says Ceepak. “Definitely a possibility.” He’s not really listening to me. He’s focused, his eyes in a laser lock on the grainy screen.

  My eyes drift. I see that Denise Diego, the tech officer who usually works in this room, has a brand new Lord of the Rings figurine glued to the top of her computer monitor. Gandalf, I think. The guy with the long white beard. Of course, there were a lot of guys with long white beards in that particular trilogy. Could’ve called it Lord of the Whiskers. Bilbo’s Bearded Buddies …

  “There!” says Ceepak. “Twenty-two-thirty-five and twelve seconds.”

  My eyes return to the fuzzy screen.

  “Unfortunately, the image is quite compressed,” says Ceepak. “Limited number of pixels. I can attempt to blow it up … .”

  The blobs zoom into an assortment of gray squares piled on top of each other like a stack of oddly shaped pizza boxes.

  “It’s him!” I say. “Osvaldo! The janitor. See? It’s the same guy. The same height. There’s the baseball cap. The mop handle. That’s probabl
y the bucket! You can kind of make out the wheels …” I’m tapping the screen in so many places I’m smudging it with fingerprints even Saul Slobbinsky could read. “Is it Vargas?” I ask.

  “It’s a possibility, Danny.”

  “He’s our guy! I knew it. He’s probably running drugs for the Feenyville pirates and sold Smith the Hot Stuff heroin and then went back in to shoot him after he shot up and then, when he saw what a mess he made, he had to go get the mop!”

  “Why?”

  “Because, like I said, he made a mess.”

  “Why did he kill Smith?”

  “Hunh?”

  “Means, opportunity, motive, Danny.”

  Okay. So far all I’ve got is opportunity. I think. Maybe. Could just be that other category: coincidence.

  “Why would Osvaldo Vargas want Shareef Smith, a visitor from Baltimore, dead?”

  “Maybe Smith shorted him on the drug deal. Maybe Vargas and Smith were friends, like his sister said. Maybe Smith made fun of Vargas’s mother. I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I. And, until we do, we keep digging.”

  “Means, opportunity, motive,” I mumble. “Mom.”

  “Hmm?”

  “M.O.M. It’s how I memorized it for the test at the academy.”

  “Oh. Interesting. Clever mnemonic device.”

  Yeah. Now I just have to find all three.

  We secure the rest of the evidence. Pack it up properly. We use an official evidence storage carton and toss Slominsky’s grocery sack. We also take a quick glance at the crime-scene photos when Ceepak inserts the disk into a computer to make a backup copy of the contents.

  The CSI photographer does a much better job of capturing what I sort of caught with my cell phone camera: you can clearly see where somebody slopped a mop across the back wall to cut off the trail of blood trickling down toward the floor. It’s three tiles up—right where the stall panel is anchored to its aluminum wall bracket. On the floor, I can see a swirled smudge, most likely the result of a dirty mop head.

  Ceepak hits eject.

  “Let’s go visit Sergeant Dixon. Make our report.”