Chris Grabenstein - Mad Mouse

“If you're set up to do so. If you're good.”

“You could do it? Couldn't you?”

He nods.

I look at the tiny hole the bullet ripped through the trash can, see how it splayed jagged sheet metal edges inward. It's no wonder we didn't see it before. You could fit six on top of a quarter. I can only imagine what would have happened if that same small hole was in my chest. My ribs would probably hurt even worse, but I wouldn't need Extra Strength Advil because I'd also be dead.

“Now what?”

“Tomorrow, we'll have Dr. McDaniels work her magic, confirm the two bullets were fired from the same weapon. I need to call some old friends. Request all potentially useful information regarding sniper training-including known sharpshooters discharged in this area, with a special focus on those who washed out.”

That's pretty heavy-duty, I think, but I don't say anything.

“We also need to talk to young T. J. See if he'll confess to the incident at The Pig.”

“You don't think he did this?”

“No. I think the paintballing of Grace Porter's sign was a random act of juvenile vandalism.”

I just listen. He's not done yet.

“Here and at the restaurant we see a pattern.” Ceepak starts enumerating: “Night attacks. Glow-in-the-dark paint balls, the sniper bullets.”

“Yeah.” I scrape up a chuckle. It's one of those nervous little ones you only produce when you're starting to get totally freaked out with fear. Why do I have a hunch I know where Ceepak's going? I'm not in any hurry to go there with him.

“I believe our shooter fired the glow balls to light up his targets. Make them easier to spot. Then he switched weapons or his accomplice opened fire.”

“Yeah.”

Ceepak looks at me. His lips are a straight line, his eyes narrow. I'm pretty sure I know what he's going to say next.

“There's one more thing,” he says.

“Yeah?” I try to sound like I'm surprised even though I'm not. “Another link? Besides the trading cards?”

“Yes, Danny.” He pauses again.

Oh, let's get it over with.

“The target in both episodes,” he says. “That's what we're talking about.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

Me and my friends.

Remember how I said the Mad Mouse roller coaster on the boardwalk is so much fun because it makes you feel like you're gonna die every time the little car zips around one of those tight curves?

I take that back.

Thinking you're going to die, thinking it could happen any second, having your life become an out-of-control Mad Mouse isn't that much fun, especially when some of your best friends are crammed into the roller-coaster car with you and you don't know who's manning the controls.

The shooter wants me. Or my friends. Or both.

Why?

You tell me.

“We need to discern motive,” Ceepak says as we trudge through the sand and make our way back to Tangerine Street.

“We sure as hell do,” I say, not sounding nearly as professional as maybe I should.

“You know, Danny …” Ceepak stops walking and looks at me with sincere concern. “I'd understand if you asked to be relieved of this duty. To be temporarily reassigned. Even if you went out on disability with PTSD. Posttraumatic stress disorder.”

“You mean it?”

“Certainly.”

“You wouldn't think I was a coward if I went home and hid under my bed?”

“Of course not.”

“Would you do it?”

He doesn't need to answer. I know he wouldn't run away from danger because he didn't, especially not when his buddies needed him most.

I've heard stories about some of the stuff Ceepak did over in Iraq. How he risked his own life to run up an alley under heavy fire and drag a guy to safety-some artillery gunner he didn't even know. That was back in Sadr City, the slummy section of Baghdad where they still liked Saddam. Ceepak saved that soldier's life because to him his duty is about doing more than his duty, if you catch my drift. The army gave Ceepak one of its biggest medals for that one. The Bronze Star, awarded for “heroic service” in combat.

Ceepak never wears any of his medals, of course. He never even talks about them. When he first joined the force here back in the spring, the guys all thought he was kind of a joke on account of his Code. I heard Sergeant Santucci even called Ceepak a special kind of MP-not Military Police, but a “Missy Prissy.”

Then some of the guys called their buddies in the army and National Guard. Asked around. They heard the stories. About that rescue in the alley. And the time Ceepak single-handedly held off this ambush outside Fallujah. Or the one about the unconscious, dehydrated Iraqi kid on a stretcher Ceepak saved with IV fluids because he was the only one who could tell the boy was suffering from heat stroke.

When the guys at the house heard all this stuff, they quit calling Ceepak “Dudley Do-Right” and “Goody Two-Shoes,” which is one of those expressions I never understood, since everybody I know, good or bad, usually wears two shoes.

Anyhow, I know what Ceepak does when his buddies are in danger. He does not run away. He does not hide under his bed.

“What I might do in your situation is irrelevant, Danny,” Ceepak now says, offering me some wiggle room.

As you may have already guessed, I've never won any medals. Not even at camp. Not even for Popsicle-stick hot-plate making-and I was pretty good at it. I don't have much practice being heroic, acting brave. Bravery for me used to mean chugging a yard of beer on a stomach full of chicken wings while my buddies chanted, “Go, go, go!”

I have to admit, the thought of someone out there who has my pals and me in his sights makes me think maybe I was too quick to dismiss that telemarketing gig with the mortgage broker. But then I'd have to call people during dinnertime, and I guess you have to be pretty brave to do that, too.

I look at Ceepak.

“I might know something that'll help us catch this guy,” I say. “And I might be the only one who could possibly know it.”

“You might also get yourself killed.” He says it grimly. “You're putting yourself in harm's way.”

“Hey, that kind of comes with the job, right?”

Ceepak nods.

“Do I get a little sermon about my life being on the line Tuesday during orientation?”

Ceepak smiles.

“Probably not,” he says. “Mostly, it's W-2s and medical forms.”

“Does our insurance cover bullet wounds?”

“Definitely.”

“Then, I'm good to go. Besides, I can't hide under my bed. It's a mess down there. Dust bunnies. Dirty underwear. Dirty magazines.”

Ceepak doesn't blink. So I do.

“Come on,” I say, leading the way. “We need to get busy.”

I figure there's no better way to start my new career. Someone wants to hurt my friends, they have to answer to me.

When we reach the street, a guy is standing near our cop car.

It's the same one who came out when the ambulance arrived Wednesday night-the potential witness we never interviewed because it was so late. Well, it's almost one A.M. now, here he is, up and walking around.

“More trouble?” he asks.

“No, sir,” Ceepak answers. “You live around here?”

The guy gestures over his shoulder to the three-story house on the corner, the one closest to the beach and, therefore, probably the most expensive rental on the block.

“We rent. Two weeks every summer. Always the same place. We have four kids. There's satellite TV.”

I can't quite make the connection between the number of kids and the number of digital channels at his disposal.

“I'm a night owl,” he says. “When the kids call it quits and the wife sacks out, I watch old movies.”