Chris Grabenstein
Rolling Thunder

1

The day starts like so many others with John Ceepak: We bust an eight-year-old girl for wearing high heels.

“She wants to ride the ride!” says the kid’s mother, who, I’m assuming, was her accomplice in the beat-the-roller-coaster-height-requirement scam. The ponytail piled up on top of the short girl’s head (which makes her look like one of the Whos from Whoville) was, no doubt, another part of the plan.

“The rules regarding the minimum height requirement are in place to protect your daughter,” says Ceepak.

“I wanna ride the ride!” The little girl stamps her foot so hard she snaps off a heel.

“This way,” says Ceepak, indicating how mother and daughter should exit the line snaking about a mile up the boardwalk from the entrance to Big Paddy’s Rolling Thunder, the brand-new, all-wood roller coaster rising up behind us like a humongous humpbacked whale made out of two-by-fours.

It’s the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. The unofficial start of another Fun-in-the-Sun season down the shore in Sea Haven, New Jersey. Opening day for Big Paddy O’Malley’s Rolling Thunder roller coaster.

Ceepak and I are working crowd control with half the Sea Haven PD. The other half is inside on security duty for the dignitaries about to take the first ride around the heaving mountains propped up on wooden stilts. You step far enough away, the Rolling Thunder looks like a K’NEX construction kit sculpture. Or one of those summer camp Popsicle stick deals on steroids.

Ceepak and I walk up the line. He’s staring at short people’s feet.

“Young man?”

This is directed at a boy, maybe seven and very ingenious: He’s duct-taped a pair of flip-flops to the soles of his sneakers.

“Please step out of the line.”

“What?” says a very hairy man in a sleeveless AC-DC Rolling Thunder T-shirt, the one with the monkey skeletons banging Hell’s bell. AC-DC’s munching on fried zeppole wads, showering so much powdered sugar down the front of his black tee it looks like his curly chest has dandruff. “What’s your freaking problem, officer?”

“Your son’s shoes,” says Ceepak. “Clearly you are attempting to circumvent the ride’s forty-eight-inch height requirement.”

“Huh?” father and son say at the same time, because I don’t think “circumvent” is a vocabulary word either one of them has learned yet.

“It appears,” Ceepak clarifies, “that you are encouraging your son to cheat.”

That settles that.

No way is John Ceepak cutting Shorty a break because, as annoying as it sometimes is, my partner-an ex-military man who looks like he could still jump out of a helicopter with a Humvee strapped to his back-lives his life in strict compliance with the West Point Cadet Honor Code: He will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.

“Please step out of the line, sir.”

“We’re not steppin’ nowheres,” says the boy’s father. “Is it our fault the rules are so freaking stupid?”

“Actually,” I chime in, “the rules are there for a reason.”

AC-DC Man sizes me up. He’s bigger than me. Heck, his beer gut is bigger than me. But I’ve got a badge on my chest and a gun on my belt. He doesn’t. Well, not that I can see. Like I said, he has a laundry bag belly sagging all the way down to the tip of his zipper.

“Come on. Don’t youse two have something better to do than ruin a kid’s day?”

“The roller coaster isn’t going anywhere,” says Ceepak. “Perhaps you and your son can come back and ride it later in the summer after he’s reached the required height.”

“He’s riding it today!”

“No, sir. He is not.”

“What? You gonna arrest him?”

“Of course not. If you wish to remain in line, that is your prerogative. However, rest assured, an hour from now, when you finally reach the front, your son will not be allowed to enter the ride. Danny?”

We move on.

The crowd is amazing. I know Memorial Day is considered the unofficial start of summer, but here in Sea Haven things don’t usually get this crowded until after the schools let out near the end of June. Then the population of our eighteen-mile-long barrier island swells from twenty thousand to a quarter million, and we have to hire all sorts of part-time cops just to deal with the traffic and crosswalk congestion-especially near the Rita’s Water Ice stands.

So it’s incredible to see how many people have shown up on the last weekend in May to ride the new roller coaster erected on the recently refurbished Pier Four. Big Paddy O’Malley, the father of this kid Skip I knew in high school, and his partners bought the whole pier late last summer after a boarded-up ride called the Hell Hole burned down, almost taking Ceepak and me with it.

It’s a long story. Remind me. I’ll tell you about it sometime.

Anyway, Big Paddy O’Malley and company gutted the old pier down to its pilings, tore out the rusty old rides, hauled away what was left of the Whacky Wheel and the Chair-O-Planes, and built this 100-foot tall, 3,458-foot-long wooden roller coaster with an eighty-foot drop and a top speed of fifty miles per hour.

“I’m afraid that father and son will have a long wait,” says Ceepak. “With two thirty-seat trains, the ride has a maximum capacity of only one thousand passengers per hour.”

I think Ceepak is a member of the American Coaster Enthusiasts, just so he can memorize stats like that from their bimonthly newsletter.

Of course, all thirty seats in the first train to hurl (pun intended) around the track will be filled with members of the O’Malley family plus assorted state and local dignitaries-not to mention my buddy Cliff Skeete, a disc jockey at WAVY who will be doing a live remote broadcast so we can all listen to him scream like a terrified two-year-old into his cordless microphone.

“One minute to blastoff!” Cliff’s voice booms out of the giant speakers they’ve set up near the ride’s entrance so everybody on the boardwalk (or anywhere else in a hundred-mile radius) can hear. Over the entryway, there’s this cool neon sign with retro red letters spelling out R-O-L–L-I-N-G, then T-H-U-N-D-E-R, with jagged blue lightning bolts flashing on both sides.

“Let me tell you, folks,” croons Cliff, who calls himself the Skeeter when he’s on the air and plays this annoying mosquito buzz every time he mentions his name, “this job has its ups and downs. And today, its gonna have it’s ups and downs and ups and downs-not to mention a few twists and turns. Riding in the front car we have Mrs. and Mr. O’Malley-Big Paddy himself. Their sons, Kevin, Skip, and Sean. Daughter Mary-who’s sitting right in front of me. You ready to roll, Mary?”

Dead air.

Now I remember what the mean kids used to say about Mary O’Malley: She rode the short bus to school. I believe she is mentally challenged. Slashed her wrists in the bathtub a couple times.

“Oh-kay. Thanks, Mary,” says Cliff, because that’s what good deejays do: They keep calm and blather on, no matter what. “Thirty seconds until blastoff.”

Ceepak and I are up near the front of the line now. I can see the “You Must Be This Tall to Ride This Ride” sign. It’s a leprechaun holding out his hand. The O’Malleys are major-league Irish.

Ceepak motions to the kid in a green polo shirt checking heights.

“Be aware that some people in this line are attempting to cheat your height requirement.”

“For real?”

“Totally,” I say, because Ceepak is over thirty-five and wouldn’t know how to say it.

The guy returns to his measuring stick task with renewed zeal.

There are other warning signs posted near the entrance. My favorites are the graphics suggesting that this attraction is not recommended for guests with broken bones, heart trouble, high blood pressure, pregnancy, or “recent surgery.”

Sure. The day after my appendectomy, the first thing I’m gonna do is climb on a roller coaster.

“Ten, nine, eight …” D.J. Cliff is swinging into his Apollo 13 impression. The thing is-roller coasters don’t really blast off; they more or less lurch forward, then chug up a hill.

“… three, two, one … here we go, folks!”

The crowd crammed into the Disney World-style switchbacks cheers because, as the first train crammed with dignitaries pulls out, the second one finally slides forward. Thirty non-VIPs scamper onto the loading dock and jump into the next train’s seats. The impossibly long line is actually moving.

Ceepak and I step back, gaze up.

From underneath the latticework of planks, we can see the first train rumbling forward, clicking and clacking on the steel tracks.

“We’re on our way,” Cliff commentates. “Here comes the first hill! It’s a big one!”

Now comes the clatter of the chain running down the center of the track as it grabs hold of the coaster cars and hauls them skyward. This is the part of a roller coaster ride that always scares me the most. The anticipation of what’s to come when you finally reach the top. The thought that you could so easily climb out, walk back down, call it quits. And, near the top, it always sounds as if the chain is getting tired, that it’s stuttering, that it may not be able to hoist the train all … the … way … up.

But, of course, it always does.

The clacking stops. The first car has reached the summit.

“This is it!” booms Cliff. “Here we go!”

There is no sound for a long empty second.

And then the screams start.

“Oh my gawd!” cries Cliff, momentarily forgetting that he is on the air. “Whoo-hoo! Yeaaaaaah! Whoo-hoo!”

The train rattles down that first hill in a flash.

Now everyone is screaming. The mayor, the O’Malley family, the chamber of commerce, Cliff the D.J.-plus all the people on the ground waiting for their turn to scare themselves to death. It’s a screechfest.

They’re rolling through the first banked curve. The initial screams subside-just long enough for everyone to catch their breath for the second hill-not as steep but just as exciting.

“Whoo-hoo!” Cliff has 86’d any scripted commentary. He’s barely using words anymore. “Boo-yeaaaaaah!”

The train rattles up and down a series of knolls, shoots into a wooden tunnel, zooms out the other side.

“Oh my God!” somebody shouts. “Stop the train!”

“Huh?” Cliff. Confused.

“Stop the train!” It sounds like Skippy. “Stop it!”

Some kind of alarm buzzer goes off.

“Stop it!” That was Skip’s dad. Big Paddy. “Stop the damn train!”

In the distance I hear the screech of brakes. Steel wheels scraping against steel rails. Cars bumpering into each other.

Then an awful quiet.

“Oh my god!” Mr. O’Malley again. “Hang on, honey. Oh my god! It’s her heart!”

2

“We need someone to call nine-one-one! Now! Omigod! She’s in bad shape! I think she’s having a heart attack! Call nine-one-one. We need an ambulance!”

Cliff Skeete sounds panicky. His remote roller coaster broadcast has suddenly turned into a breaking news bulletin.

“Go to music! Go to music!”

Bruce Springsteen’s “Lucky Town” starts rocking out of the giant loudspeakers. Not the best choice.

“Danny?” Ceepak hops up and over the metal railings penning in the crowd. I hop over after him.

We’re in full uniform-radios, batons, guns, handcuffs rattling on our utility belts. People scoot out of our way.

“Ticket booth,” Ceepak shouts.

“AED?” I shout back.

“Roger that.”

Ceepak’s hoping Big Paddy was smart enough to equip his thrill ride with an Automated External Defibrillator, a portable electronic device that can revive cardiac-arrest victims-if you jolt them soon enough.

Ceepak barrels over the final barricade, scopes out the small hut where the ticket seller sits.

“AED!” he shouts to the girl sitting stunned behind the window. She doesn’t flinch so Ceepak shouts again: “AED!”

Meanwhile, on WAVY, Bruce is singing, “When it comes to luck you make your own.” Springsteen. The soundtrack of my life.

“On the wall!” I shout. I have a lucky angle and can see the bulldozer-yellow box mounted on the wall behind the petrified teenage ticket taker.

Ceepak dashes in, yanks the defibrillator off the wall, then darts out of the booth, AED in one hand, radio unit in the other.

“This is Ceepak,” he barks as he dashes up the empty exit ramp. I dash after him. “Request ambulance. Pier Four. Possible cardiac arrest. Alert fire department. Potential roller coaster rescue scenario.”

“Ten-four” squawks out of his radio as he clips it back to his belt.

“Danny? You know the family?”

“Yeah.”

I guess I know just about everybody in Sea Haven. I grew up here. Ceepak? He grew up in Ohio, where they don’t build roller coasters jutting out over the Atlantic Ocean. He only came to Jersey after slogging through the first wave of hellfire over in Iraq as an MP with the 101st Airborne. Saw and did some pretty ugly stuff. Then an old army buddy offered him a job down the Jersey shore in “sunny, funderful Sea Haven,” where nothing bad ever happens.

Yeah, right. Tell it to whoever’s having the heart attack.

“When we reach the roller coaster cars, keep everybody calm and seated,” Ceepak shouts over his shoulder as we race up the steep ramp. “I’ll administer CPR. Wire up the AED. Time is of the essence.”

“Okay,” I say.

We reach the unloading platform, between the control room and the train tracks.

Ceepak scans the horizon.

“There!” He spots the stranded roller coaster train-on top of a curved hill about a quarter mile up the track. He hops off the platform. “Keep to the walkboard!”

There’s a wooden plank paralleling the train tracks. A handrail, too. This must be how the maintenance workers inspect the tracks every morning.

“Use the cleats, Danny.”

I notice wood slats secured to the walkboard.

“They act as a nonslip device.”

Good. Nonslipping off a giant wooden scaffold eighty feet above the ocean is an excellent idea.

“Short, choppy steps, Danny. Short, choppy steps.”

Ceepak takes off, looking like a linebacker doing the tire drill at training camp. I hop down to the narrow walkway plank and, like always, try to do what Ceepak is doing.

Except, I grab the handrail, too.

We’re going to have to run down a slight hill, the straightaway where the roller coaster slows down before coming to its final, complete stop in the loading shed. After that comes an uphill bump and a downhill run to a steeply banked inclined turn sloping up to the crest of another much higher hill where the roller coaster train is stuck.

“They should’ve brought the car down to the finish,” I shout, the words coming out in huffs and puffs as I chug up what is basically a 2-by-12 board.

“Roger that,” says Ceepak. “I suspect they panicked.” He’s not even winded. Cool and calm as a cucumber on Xanax.

I’m not surprised.

When he was over in Iraq, Ceepak won all sorts of medals for bravery, valor, heroism-all those things I only know from movies.

Of course, Ceepak never brags about the brave things he’s done. I guess the really brave people never do. In fact, I only learned about the Distinguished Service Cross he won for “displaying extraordinary courage” last summer when Ceepak, his wife, Rita, Samantha Starky, and I went swimming at our friend Becca’s motel pool. In his swim trunks, I could see that Ceepak has a huge honking scar on the back of each of his legs-just below his butt cheeks.

“I took a few rounds,” was all he said.

Then I went online, looked up his citation. It happened during the evacuation of casualties from a home in Mosul “under intense enemy fire.” Although shot in the leg, “Lieutenant John Ceepak continued to engage the enemy while escorting wounded soldiers from the house.”

When the last soldier leaving the house was nailed in the neck, Ceepak began performing CPR. That’s when the “insurgents” shot him in the other leg, gave him his matching set of butt wounds.

Didn’t stop him.

According to the official report, he kept working on the wounded man’s chest with one hand while returning enemy fire with the other. He brought the guy back-even though he was “nearly incapacitated by his own loss of blood.”

Yeah. The O’Malleys don’t know how lucky they are John Ceepak was on roller coaster duty today.

3

We’re almost to the stranded train.

A forest of wooden trestles and trusses rises around us: a maze of slashing horizontal, vertical, and diagonal pine lines.

“Ceepak!” It’s Skippy. “Help!”

“Who’s in cardiac arrest?” Ceepak asks as he crests the hill. I’m twenty paces behind him.

“My wife!” shouts Mr. O’Malley from the first car. “Help her!”

He struggles to right Mrs. O’Malley, who has slumped forward. Her long hair is dangling over the front panel of the coaster, blocking out half the Rolling Thunder lightning-bolt logo. Mrs. O’Malley’s plump body is locked in place by the roller coaster safety bar.

Behind Mr. O’Malley, I see Skippy and his older brother, Kevin. In the second car, sister Mary and Sean-the youngest son. The fourth O’Malley boy, Peter, isn’t in any of the cars. Skippy told me once that Peter is gay. His father and mother don’t approve. Hell, they don’t even invite him to roller coaster openings.

Behind Sean and Mary, I see my D.J. buddy Cliff Skeete, who sticks out like a sore thumb because, one, he’s wearing big honking headphones and holding a microphone, and two, he’s the only black dude on this ride. Next to Cliff is our mayor, Hugh Sinclair. Behind them: all sorts of big shots I didn’t go to high school with.

“Quick!” Mr. O’Malley cries. “Help her. Do something!”

“I need to access her chest!” says Ceepak, hopping off the walkboard, landing on the track.

“Do it!” says Mr. O’Malley.

Ceepak braces his feet on the tie beam in front of the stalled coaster car.

“Help me lean her back,” he says to Mr. O’Malley.

Mr. O’Malley, who is a big man with a ruddy face, grabs hold of his wife’s shoulders and, with Ceepak’s help, heaves her up into a seated position.

Now Ceepak props the mustard-yellow AED box in her lap. Lifts a wrist to check her pulse.

“She’s not breathing!” screams Mr. O’Malley.

“No pulse,” adds Ceepak, matter-of-factly. He tears open her blouse and slaps the two adhesive pads where they’re supposed to go: negative pad on the right upper chest; positive electrode on the left, just below the pectoral muscle.

The AED will automatically determine Mrs. O’Malley’s heart rhythm, and if she’s in ventricular fibrillation-which means that even though there isn’t a pulse, the heart is still receiving signals from the brain but they’re so chaotic the muscle can’t figure out how to bang out a steady beat-it’ll shock the heart in an attempt to restore its rhythm to normal.

You work with Ceepak, you learn this stuff.

He switches on the machine.

“Clear!” he shouts.

Mr. O’Malley lets go of his wife’s shoulders.

Ceepak pushes the “Analyze” button.

Waits.

If she’s in v-fib, it’ll tell him to shock her.

I glance over his shoulder, read the LED display.

No Shock.

That means Mrs. O’Malley not only has no pulse, she is not in a “shockable” v-fib rhythm.

“Initiating CPR,” says Ceepak.

“You should step out of the car, Mr. O’Malley,” I say, extending my hand. “We need to put your wife in a supine position.”

He climbs out.

Ceepak finds the roller coaster’s safety bar release and slams it open with his foot. All the bars in all the cars pop up. Now he can maneuver Mrs. O’Malley across the two seats so he can more easily administer CPR.

“Time me, Danny!”

“On it.”

After one minute of CPR, he’ll use the AED to reanalyze Mrs. O’Malley’s cardiac status.

While he thumps on her chest, I glance at my watch and wonder why nobody in the roller coaster car started doing CPR while they waited for us to charge up the hill. Skippy should have known how to do it. We learned it when we were part-time cops. Well, we were supposed to. Maybe Skippy thought he could skate by without doing his homework.

“One minute!” I shout.

Ceepak goes to the AED machine. “No shock indicated. Time me!”

He pumps his fists on Mrs. O’Malley’s chest again. She’s a large woman. Very fleshy.

It’s so eerily quiet up here on the wooden train track. Just the wet, flabby sound of Ceepak’s fists pumping down on Mrs. O’Malley’s chest. Nobody’s talking. Hell, they’re barely breathing. There’s nothing up here but the wind whistling through the squared-off beams. They surround us like crosses on Calvary.

And then Cliff Skeete starts yammering into his microphone.

“This is the Skeeter with a live WAVY news update. Officers John Ceepak and Danny Boyle, two of Sea Haven’s finest, are currently on the scene administering CPR to Mrs. O’Malley.”

“Danny?” This from Ceepak who doesn’t even look up from his chest compressions.

“Cliff?” I slice my hand across my neck, give my buddy the cut sign.

“And now back to more sizzling sounds of the Jersey shore. Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. ‘I Don’t Want To Go Home.’”

I do. But I’m busy staring at my wrist, timing Ceepak’s CPR. “One minute!”

Ceepak goes back to the yellow box. “Reanalyzing cardiac status.”

He doesn’t bother to report what the LED on the AED unit says.

He simply swings back to Mrs. O’Malley’s chest, starts thumping it again. Off in the distance, I can hear the approaching whoop-whoop of a siren. The rescue squad ambulance. The whoop-whoop is shattered by the blast of an air horn. The fire department.

All the first responders are racing to the scene.

But it’s too late.

Mrs. O’Malley’s brain isn’t sending signals of any kind to her heart any more. It isn’t beating.

We ran up here as fast as we could.

But it took us too long to reach her.

Ceepak keeps pounding on Mrs. O’Malley’s chest.

“Dammit,” he mutters.

He has to keep administering CPR until the paramedics or a doctor shows up. Those are the rules.

But I can tell we’re not winning any life-saving merit badges today.

4

A team of paramedics climbs up the telescoping ladder off the back of a fire truck.

They administer some drugs to see if they can get Mrs. O’Malley’s heart to quiver a little, stimulate some kind of shockable rhythm.

It doesn’t work.

One of the guys takes over for Ceepak. The other one radios the hospital.

The doctor at the other end calls it.

Mrs. O’Malley is officially dead.

The paramedics climb back down the steep aluminum ladder to the fire engine below.

We don’t want the civilians trying to do that, so Ceepak and I will stay up here with the stranded roller coaster train until it starts rolling again.

Why’d they throw the emergency brakes?

This is what I’m thinking as Mr. O’Malley, with Ceepak’s assistance, slowly climbs back into the first roller coaster car so he can cradle his dead wife’s head in his lap.

They should’ve let the damn train keep going till it reached the end of the line. It would’ve saved us five minutes.

It could’ve saved Mrs. O’Malley’s life.

“Mommy’s dead?” This from Mary O’Malley, squirming in the first row of the second car. She’s the oldest of the five O’Malley children, maybe thirty-five, but she sounds like she’s six.

I nod because I’m closer to her than Ceepak. “Yeah.”

Believe it or not, Mary giggles.

“What are you gonna do now, Momma’s Boy?” she leans forward to tease Skip in the car in front of hers.

Skip glares over his shoulder. Hard. I see tears in his eyes.

“She didn’t want to ride this stupid ride! Kevin made her!”

“Shut up, Skippy,” says big brother.

“She was afraid of roller coasters.”

“I said shut up.”

Skippy sniffles. Poor guy. He has a hard time hiding his emotions. Doesn’t make you prime police cadet material, something I know Skippy still wanted to do, even though his summer as an auxiliary cop didn’t end with a job offer. Friends tell me he signed up for one of the New Jersey police academies, paid his own tuition. I guess that didn’t pan out, either. He never graduated. Still works at his dad’s miniature golf course.

“Momma’s Boy, Momma’s Boy!”

“Okay, you guys,” I say as I work my way up the walkboard. I need to be closer to Mary, who’s rocking back and forth in her seat. A side effect of her meds, I’m guessing. “We should probably lower those safety bars.”

“Good idea,” says Mayor Hugh Sinclair, who’s seated beside Cliff Skeete in the second row of car number two. They lower their safety bar. So does just about everybody else. I hear the crickety-clink-clicks all around me.

Except in Mary’s row.

“What can I tell ya, Danny Boy?” says her snotty brother Sean seated beside her. “Me and Mare be lunchin’, livin’ on the edge.” From six feet away, I can smell his breath. It reeks of booze. And it’s ten o’clock in the morning.

“Lower your damn safety bar, Sean!” This from Kevin O’Malley. He’s the oldest boy. Sean’s the youngest.

“Yo, bizzle. Chill.”

“Lower it!”

Meanwhile, up front, Mr. O’Malley is still sobbing and stroking his dead wife’s hair.

“Officer?” Uh-oh. The mayor. Talking to me.

“Yes, sir?” I say.

“Is it possible for us to ride this thing down to the finish line? Now?”

“Hang tight,” I say. “We’re working on getting everybody down safely.”

“For rizzle?” says Sean, who, I’m remembering, is a major-league butt wipe. “From over here it looks like you popos be doing shiznit.” He pulls out his cell phone. Starts thumb-texting someone.

I turn to face Ceepak who has climbed off the track and is back up on the narrow-gauge walkboard.

“What’s our play?” I ask.

And that’s when I hear Mary stumble up and out of the roller coaster.

“Whoa!” says her drunken brother as their car rocks like a canoe.

“I’m a little birdy,” says Mary, flapping her arms.

She’s teetering on the walkboard. Three feet in front of me. Fifty feet above the pier below.

“Danny?” This from Ceepak. Behind me.

“Give me your hand, Mary.”

“I’m a little birdy.” More arm flaps.

“Mary?” Mr. O’Malley shouts. “Sit down! Now!”

“Sit,” echoes Kevin.

She doesn’t. She skips backward. Doesn’t hold on to the handrail. She’s too busy fluttering her arms up and down.

“Okay, Mary,” I say with a smile. “Time to fly back to the nest.”

We’re about four cars up the coaster now. Everybody who isn’t staring at crazy Mary is staring at me, the crazy cop about to plummet with her off a rickety track propped up by knotty pine chopsticks.

We clear the train completely. Keep climbing up the steep incline.

I glance over my shoulder.

Ceepak is maybe twenty yards away, now. He needs to stay with the others. Stop anybody else from going for a stroll. I glance down at the fire truck. Fortunately, they’re not sending up the ladder again because it would probably just freak Mary out.

I’m on my own.

But maybe the fire guys have one of those trampoline-type nets from the circus to catch us when we fall.

“Careful!” I say because Mary is about to bang her head on a crossbeam because she’d have to turn around to see it.

She stops. Glares at me. I can see white flecks of dried spittle in the corners of her crooked smile. Her glasses are so thick they’re magnifying lenses that turn her brown eyes into giant hamburger patties.

“I can fly!” She looks over the edge. We’re way high up. Down below, there’s nothing but a crazy crisscross of wood.

Mary grabs one of the chaser-lightbulbs that line the railing. Squeezes it. Crushes the glass globe like it’s an eggshell.

She giggles when it shatters. I see blood in her palm.

She reaches for the next lightbulb down the line.

“Hey,” I say, “remember Ken Erb?”

Mary tilts her head sideways like a sparrow contemplating sunflower seeds. “Ken Erb?”

“He always had those bird kites. Remember? He’d bring ’em to Oak Beach. You were there. I remember. With your brothers. Watching Ken fly his kites.”

Mary smiles. “Pretty colors.”

“Yeah. And the white dove. Remember the white dove? How about the eagle? Oh, man, the eagle was awesome!”

Mary nods.

“You wanna go see ’em? You wanna go see Ken’s kites?”

Another nod.

“Okay. Here. Take hold of my hand.”

She takes it. Smiles.

“We’re going down to Oak Beach to see Ken’s kites, okay?”

“Okay.”

“But first we have to get back in the roller coaster.”

“Can we get ice cream, too?”

“Sure.” I grip her hand. It’s sticky where it’s bloody. “What’s your favorite ice cream, Mary?”

“Chocolate. With sprinkles.”

Now I’m the one walking backward. “Cool. I like sprinkles, too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, you’re a fucking pussy.” Her voice is straight out of The Exorcist.

Okay. That caught me off guard. But Mary is still holding my hand, we’re almost back to the roller coaster car, and neither one of us is dead.

She can call me anything she wants.

The controller at his computer console down in the operations trailer was able to manipulate the track brakes in such a way that he can safely roll the coaster down to the unloading shed.

It’s like a funeral train now. Carrying the corpse of Mrs. Jackie O’Malley and twenty-nine mourners. Since there were no empty seats, Ceepak and I decide to walk down the tracks.

Okay, we could’ve climbed down that fifty-foot-long ladder to the fire truck, but I kind of voted against that option. I hate climbing a ladder to clean leaves out of a gutter.

“You handled that quite well, Danny,” Ceepak says over his shoulder as we tiptoe down a hill on the walkboard.

“Thanks. I was scared.”

“You didn’t show it.”

“Well, inside, I was freaking out.”

“Me, too.”

I laugh. “No way.”

“Trust me,” he says. “My adrenaline was pumping when Ms. O’Malley headed up that hill. I was afraid we might have two deaths to deal with this morning.”

Wow. Who knew? The big guy is human. He just knows how to hide it.

By the time we make it down to the bottom, the medics are already zipping up Mrs. O’Malley’s body bag.

A nurse of some sort-she’s dressed in those cartoon cat-and-dog scrubs pediatric nurses wear so kids don’t bawl their eyes out when they see a needle-is bracing Mary O’Malley by the elbow. Must be her full-time caregiver except for when Mary is asked to pose in happy family portraits for PR purposes.

“Well done, men,” says Mayor Sinclair, striding over to me and Ceepak. “You two handled a very difficult situation extraordinarily well. I’ll be sure to put in a good word with Chief Baines.”

He winks. Ceepak nods.

The mayor folds a stick of gum into his mouth. “We’ll close down the ride for a week. Have the grand reopening next weekend when all this is behind us.”

He flips a hand toward the roller coaster cars.

By “all this” I guess he means Mrs. O’Malley dying.

“And,” says the mayor, lowering his voice, “let’s not talk to the media today. Fortunately, most of the folks in line were locals. This thing will blow over pretty quickly. Shouldn’t impact our summer season.”

The mayor smiles. Waiting for Ceepak and me to say, “Sir, yes, sir,” or lick his boots or something.

We just stand there. Kind of grim-faced.

Somebody died this morning.

“Okay. Glad we had this chat.” The mayor surveys the small crowd clustered near the exit ramp. “Cliff? Skeeter? Hey, buddy, got a second?”

He rushes over to the DJ, who twirls around and jabs a microphone in his face.

“Mayor Sinclair. You were up there with me on the roller coaster. How did it feel to be stranded like that?”

The mayor swats at the mic as if it were an annoying little gnat.

“Turn that goddamn thing off!”

Five seconds later, on the big outdoor speakers, I hear an echo of the mayor’s words, only the “goddamn” is gone. Thank goodness for the five-second delay. Something Cliff and I could’ve used back in high school when we ran our DJ business and I dropped an F-bomb at a birthday party when an amplifier unexpectedly shocked me. It was the kid’s sixth. We were supposed to be spinning discs so he and his buddies could dance the Hokey Pokey and play musical chairs. We had not been hired to give adult vocabulary lessons.

“We should head back to the house,” says Ceepak. “Write this up.”

He’s right. There’s no longer any need for crowd control. That long line? It’s gone. The ride is shut down. Those kids wore high heels and duct-taped sandals to their shoes in vain.

We wait for the paramedics to carry Mrs. O’Malley’s body down the exit ramp to the waiting ambulance. It looks like Mr. O’Malley will ride in the back with his wife.

I see Skippy take Mary’s other elbow as he helps the nurse escort her to a parked SUV for the ride home.

“Don’t worry-I’ll handle things here,” I hear Kevin O’Malley tell his dad as the paramedics close up the barn doors on the back of their vehicle.

Ceepak and I march down the exit ramp.

“Hola, babe!”

When we hit the boardwalk, we see Sean O’Malley swilling a beer out of a brown paper bag as a hot Hispanic chick in a skimpy black bikini sashays over to join him. Sean, who has the tightly bloated look of somebody who drinks beer for breakfast, tosses his empty can into a trash barrel and wraps his arm around his hot date so he can goose her booty.

“I got your text!” says the girl.

“Cool.”

The girl swirls her tongue around inside Sean’s ear.

He grins. Maybe belches.

Bikini Babe clutches Sean’s shirt with two greedy hands. “Ding dong, the witch is dead,” she purrs.

Sean’s grin grows wider.

“Totally.”

5

I’m figuring young Sean O’Malley has major mommy issues.

He and his date stroll across the boardwalk, hand on butt cheek instead of the more traditional hand in hand. They’re heading for a Fried Everything stand. Fried Twinkies, Fried Snickers, Fried Oreos. I think they’ll even batter and fry your flip-flops if you ask ’em to.

To my surprise, Ceepak is following the sashaying couple-and it’s not because he enjoys watching bikini bottom grip-and-gropes.

“Excuse me? Mr. O’Malley? Miss?”

Sean and his hot date turn around. He’s wearing a Donegal Tweed flat cap that he must think makes him look cool. I think it makes him look like a cab driver. Maybe a newspaper boy from 1932.

“Yo, po-po. What up?” says Sean.

“My name is Ceepak. Officer John Ceepak.”

“I remember you, dude. From up on the roller coaster of death!”

“I’d like to have a word with you and your lady friend.”

“’Bout what?”

“Disrespecting the dead.”

“Huh?”

I jump in and help out: “Ding dong, the witch is dead?”

“Whoa. You dudes have us under surveillance or sumptin’?

“Mr. O’Malley,” says Ceepak, “your mother just died.”

He shrugs. Stuffs a cigarette in his mug. “So?”

His girlfriend shifts her weight to her left hip. “Yo-I’m the one who said it. You got some kind of issue with it, talk to me. Fo real. I’m serious.”

Now she pouts. She has the lips for it: glossy, puffy ones.

Meanwhile, Ceepak’s jaw joint is popping in and out under his ear. It does this from time to time, usually whenever he’d like to rip someone’s head off. You see people die like Ceepak did over in Iraq, or like I’ve seen on the job, it does something to you. They aren’t just bonus points on a game screen anymore.

“Ma’am,” says Ceepak, “it might be best for all concerned if you were to refrain from making any more derogatory comments regarding Mrs. O’Malley in public.”

Sean blows cigarette smoke out his nose holes like a cartoon bull.

“Why? Why can’t she say that? Hell, I’ll say it too. Ding dong, the witch is dead. How’s that?”

“Great,” I say. “Makes you sound like a total a-hole, Sean.”

Ceepak cocks an eyebrow.

He does not, however, chastise me for my poor word choice while in uniform. If the a-hole fits …

“Aw-ite, Danny Boy, ease up, foo. Is it against the law for us to speak true?”

“Of course not,” says Ceepak. “You are both well within your First Amendment rights to say anything, no matter how offensive I and others might find it. I am simply suggesting that, as a matter of respect, you both should exert some semblance of self-control.”

“Then, let me school ya, Officer John Ceepak: My moms was one fat, cold-hearted witch. Hell, I’m surprised she could even have a heart attack because that would mean she had a heart instead of a chunk of black ice rattlin’ around underneath all that whale blubber.”

Sean, thinking he was just pretty damn clever, gives his cigarette a self-satisfied smack.

“She never did like me,” says the girl with a head toss. “Didn’t think I was the right kind of people for her boy, you know?”

“It’s true,” says Sean. “My mom did not dig Daisy-because she’s from Puerto Rico and smokin’ hot.”

“Mrs. O’Malley?” says Daisy. “She was a racist. A bigot.”

“Homophobic, too,” adds Sean. Just ask my brother Peter, who was officially disinvited from this morning’s festivities. How twisted is that?”

Daisy zips her manicured hand back and forth in a flying Z formation. “You think about that, officers, aw-ite? We done here. I’m hungry, Sean. You said you were gonna buy me a Snickers bar, baby.”

“Yeah.” Sean winks at us. “Laters, po-po. Laters.”

They saunter up to the food stand.

I can hear a rush of bubbles popping around a candy bar recently dunked into a vat of boiling oil.

Or maybe that’s Ceepak.

I know he tries to keep a lid on his rage at all times but sometimes he’s a lot like that Springsteen song “The Promised Land”: He just wants to explode.

We head back to the house, which is what we call police headquarters over in the municipal complex on Cherry Street.

All the east-west streets in Sea Haven are named after trees, even though, with all the sun and sand and salt water, we don’t really have that many trees-just a few scrubby evergreens and rows of telephone poles that used to be trees in their youth.

“You think Sean had anything to do with his mother’s death?” I ask Ceepak as our Crown Vic Police Interceptor cruises south on Ocean Avenue.

We just passed Pizza My Heart, one of at least three dozen Italian restaurants in Sea Haven. The parmigiana, manicotti, and fried calamari on their menus probably cause more heart attacks than all our boardwalk rides combined, but the menus don’t come with any warning signs and there’s no minimum height requirement; they’ll even give the kids a booster seat.

“Is there some way Sean could’ve killed her and made her death look like a heart attack?”

“It’s a possibility,” says Ceepak. “However, we’ll soon know if foul play is indicated. By New Jersey state law, the medical examiner is required to investigate all cases of human death that occur under suspicious or unusual circumstances.”

I guess death by roller coaster is pretty unusual.

“If memory serves,” Ceepak continues, “only four Americans die each year in roller coaster-related incidents.”

“Heart attacks?”

“Often. The rides are designed to send heart rates soaring. In a recent study …”

Did I mention that Ceepak reads recent studies on just about everything? Last week, it was oysters and water pollution.

“… German researchers noted that the heart rates of test participants climbed from ninety-one to one-fifty-three while riding a coaster with a maximum speed of seventy-five mph.”

I nod and hope none of this is on the final.

“However, it wasn’t the speed that caused irregular heart beats; it was the fear and stress of the ride.”

“So Mrs. O’Malley scared herself to death?”

“She may have had a preexisting, undiagnosed heart condition. Perhaps high blood pressure. Or she may have been under some form of stress brought on by a life-altering event.”

“Huh,” I say. I guess Mrs. O’Malley could’ve been stressed about her daughter, Mary (who almost gave me a heart attack this morning), and her sons Sean and Peter. I think sons Kevin and Skip are pretty stress-free: hard-working, level-headed boys who don’t drink Bacardi for breakfast, date San Juan hotties or, you know, other boys.

“Interestingly,” says Professor Ceepak, “the 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles resulted in a four-fold increase in sudden deaths due to heart attacks. In 1991, when Iraq launched scud missiles at Israel, heart attacks doubled. A widow grieving the loss of her husband will see a fifty percent increase in her chances of sudden death due to a heart attack.”

Stress. It’s why I still surf, boogie board, and drink beer on a regular basis. It’s all part of my heart-healthy lifestyle.

But I remember what Skippy said: His mother didn’t want to ride the Rolling Thunder. She was afraid of roller coasters.

But Kevin probably convinced her she needed to be there for PR purposes, the same way political wives have to be there when their husbands call a press conference to confess that they’ve just had an affair with a hooker they met on the Appalachian Trail.

But what if Kevin O’Malley, for whatever reason, wanted to scare his mother to death?

Pretty easy way to get away with murder.

You don’t need a gun or knife or poison or any kind of weapon at all.

You just need to build a big, honking roller coaster.

6

We pull into the parking lot behind the house. ...