Raffi Yessayan - 2 in the Hat

“What happened when you got back to the tailgate?” Alves asked.

“Like I said before, this is my favorite spot. At the top of the bleachers. You get all this extra seating, and sometimes you get entertained by a baseball game. Anyway, I’m starving so I just want to spark up the grill and get some sausages going. I love sausages. We had those Chinese ones with, like, the Ah-So sauce built right into them. Those are awesome. We had the hot Italian ones, too. I couldn’t figure out which kind I wanted so I decided to grill a bunch.”

Alves wanted to strangle the guy. “After you got the sausages going, you said you saw something.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sorry, officer. I saw a white van.”

“What kind of van?”

“Ford. Chevy. It was American.”

“Anything unusual about it? Old model, new, dents, bumper stickers, modifications?”

“An older model, in good condition. Not beat-up or rusty. Roof rack. One of those homemade jobs, built with welded pipe and a white PVC pipe attached with caps on the ends.”

“Any company name on the van?”

“Just a white van. The kind you see the Irish plasterers and painters riding around Brighton in.”

“How about a plate number?”

“No.”

“If it was a nondescript white van, why do you remember it?”

“Because it was bouncing around.”

“Did you hear any noise coming from the van?”

“No.”

“Gunshots?”

“Jesus, no.” His eyes widened at the suggestion.

“How close did you get?”

“Pretty close.”

“How close?” Mooney asked.

“I got right up next to it. I’m no Peeping Tom. I just wanted to find out what was going on in there. See if I could hear some moans or something. That guy must have had the thing soundproofed, because it was hopping all over the place, but I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t go any farther than that. I didn’t try to peek in the windows or anything. You know what they say, ‘if you see this van a rockin’, don’t come a knockin’.’ I’m no Peeping Tom.”

“What happened next?” Alves asked.

“The fat from the sausages made the grill flare up. I had a massive grease fire on my hands. The grill was too close to my truck, so I had to get over there and get everything under control. By the time I got it squared away, the van was gone. Too bad, because I wanted to see what they looked like, maybe give them a standing-O.”

“Yeah,” Alves said, “too bad. We’ll be in touch.” He and Mooney turned toward the next group of tailgaters.

“You get all his info?” Mooney asked.

Alves nodded. “I don’t know what good it’ll do us.”

“We can pay him a visit at his house some time. He might remember more when he’s sober.”

“Maybe a good candidate for hypnosis,” Alves said.

“We can take him to have his palm read while we’re at it.”

“I’m serious, Sarge.”

“It’s a waste of time, Angel. If he does remember something, we won’t be able to use him at trial. Any good defense attorney will tear him apart. He’ll say that the testimony was fabricated by false memories suggested by the hypnotist at the request of the police.”

“Right now he isn’t a witness to anything,” Alves said. “He saw a white van rocking. For all we know it could have been two guys having a Greco-Roman wrestling match. If hypnosis helps him remember a plate number, maybe we’ll have something. A tainted witness is better than no witness.”

Connie rang the doorbell and waited to be buzzed in. Once inside, he jogged up the stairs, two at a time, to the second floor. The door at the end of the hall was open a crack, a big striped cat paw hooked around it, trying to pull it open. Connie nudged the escaping cat back into the apartment and closed the door.

Mooney and Alves were sitting in the living room set up like a command center. A card table was stationed in the middle of the room. The walls were lined with giant colored Post-it notes.

Connie set a Box-of-Joe and half a dozen bagels from Dunkies on a ratty coffee table. “Sunday brunch is served,” he said. “I appreciate you letting me in on this, Sarge.”

“What’s so important that it couldn’t wait till tomorrow?” Alves asked, irritation in his voice. “I thought you were getting ready for a trial.”

“Garden variety gun case,” Connie said, easing into a folding chair. It wasn’t worth getting into with Angel. Something was wrong with the detective, and Connie didn’t feel like playing junior psychiatrist. “I have some ideas on the Prom Night case. Angel said you’re trying to find a link between the fortunes and the victims.”

“You got something that will help us?” Mooney asked.

“What were the fortunes again?”

“They’re all up here on the wall,” Mooney pointed. “Color-coded for each set of murders. First one, Adams and Flowers, fortune was ‘STOP SEARCHING FOREVER, HAPPINESS IS RIGHT NEXT TO YOU.’ With Markis and Riley he left us, ‘LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE, FEAR AND WORRY ONLY SPOIL IT.’ Then Picarelli and Weston, ‘EVERY EXIT IS AN ENTRANCE TO NEW HORIZONS.’”

“Now, with Steadman and Kipping,” Alves said, “‘DEPART NOT FROM THE PATH WHICH FATE HAS YOU ASSIGNED.’ Odd thing is the fortune looks like the ones from ten years ago.”

“All came from a company called Kookie King,” Mooney said. “Company’s still around. One of the largest suppliers in the area. Haven’t changed the format over the years. The fortunes left with the original victims were printed in black ink, all capital letters. They gave a fortune and nothing else. More recently, a lot of the other companies switched to colored ink, blues and reds. They have a fortune, a lucky number and a translation of a phrase in Chinese. And they don’t use all caps. The fortunes aren’t as good as the ones Kookie King uses.”

“So our guy is old school, a purist, like you,” Connie said. “He sticks with these cookies because they give him his true fortunes.”

“Interesting.” Mooney said. “Whenever Leslie and I ordered Chinese, before we broke into our fortune cookies she would ask if I thought this would be her one true fortune.”

“And?” Alves asked.

“Let’s say he has these twisted thoughts bouncing around and he’s trying to give some legitimacy to the urges he’s feeling,” Mooney said. “Maybe he’s having homicidal thoughts about the girl he rides the bus with every morning. Then he gets this fortune telling him that happiness is right next to him. Basically telling him his feelings are right.”

“His one true fortune,” Connie said.

“I went through every inch of Kelly Adams’s life,” Mooney said. “She was the first female victim. I didn’t find anything.”

“What if it was the boy next door that he was interested in?” Connie asked. “Did you look into Eric Flowers’s life?”

“I didn’t find anything.” Mooney stood up and moved toward the window, looking out onto Gallivan Boulevard. Maybe he wasn’t looking at anything outside, just focused on his own reflection.

“Second victims, Daria Markis and David Riley, used to go parking up on Chickatawbut Road, a known cruising spot,” Alves said.

“It all fits,” Connie said. “He gets that first fortune, realizes that Eric Flowers is the one and kills him and Kelly Adams. Then one night, after he’s read his second true fortune, he’s out cruising. He runs into David and Daria parked on Chickatawbut and decides to take a risk by killing them.”

“Because, ‘LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE, FEAR AND WORRY ONLY SPOIL IT,’” Mooney finished.

“That all works out pretty neatly,” Alves said. “But what if that first fortune wasn’t meant for the victim but someone else?”