Free Fall (2 page)

“Mrs. Oppenheimer,” I say, “I need you to wait in another room.”

“Why?”

“He's separating the parties involved in the altercation,” snaps Santucci, who, I guess, paid attention in cop class that day. “It's what we do when attempting to ascertain what happened in a dispute such as this one you two got goin' on here.”

“You're going to take
her
statement before mine?” Mrs. Oppenheimer flaps a well-toned arm toward Christine.

“No, ma'am.” I nod toward the boy. “We need to talk to your son first.”

“I'm his mother. I should be there.”

“No, ma'am. You should not.”

“He's not well. I'm going to call my lawyer.”

I give her a confused look. “Why?”

“To make sure everything is …” I can tell she's struggling to find the right word. “Legal!”

Found it.

“Don't worry, it will be,” says Sal. “Officer Boyle here was trained by John Ceepak.”

“Who?” says Mrs. Oppenheimer as she and Santucci finally move out of the living room.

“Biggest overgrown Boy Scout you could ever meet. Come on, I'll tell you all about him …”

I grin. Santucci actually handled that pretty well.

“Christine?” I say when they're out of the room.

“Yes, Danny?”

“Your neck okay?”

“It hurts.”

“Do you want an ambulance?”

“No. I don't think it will swell up any more.”

“How 'bout you wait in the kitchen? Maybe put some ice on it?”

“Good idea.”

She leaves and I move into the upper living room. Take a seat in a very comfy, very white chair. The boy in the wheelchair is staring at the phone in his lap. Turning it over and over.

“You're Samuel Oppenheimer?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You feeling good enough to talk?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Great. So, you're the one who called nine-one-one?”

“Yeah.”

“Good for you. Smart move.”

Samuel looks up. We make eye contact. “Thanks,” he says.

“So,” I say with a shrug. “What happened?”

“They got into a fight, I guess. My mom's been sort of stressed lately.”

“What do you mean?”

“She and my nurse, Christine, have been getting on each other's nerves. They used to be friendly. Not anymore.”

“Christine, Ms. Lemonopolous, she's here a lot?”

“Yes, sir. She lives here.”

Oh-kay. A live-in nurse? Not sure where this is going. Christine is curvy and cute. Don't know if she's, you know, dating anybody or even whose team she's playing on. So I just nod a little. Hope Samuel will give me more to work with. He does.

“Christine is just my home health aide. She doesn't really have a place of her own, I guess, and can't afford to find one because she quit her real job, so Mom let her stay here rent-free in exchange for helping me with my feeding tube and, you know, the seizures. She also does housecleaning, the laundry, and I guess you'd call it babysitting if Mom stays out late on a date. Stuff like that.”

“So, how long has Christine been living here with you guys?”

“About a year, maybe. I had somebody else before, but I like Christine better.”

I press on.

“So, what happened tonight?”

“I dunno. They both went totally ballistic. I was in my room. All of a sudden, I heard shouting. Then something crashed and glass shattered.”

I look to the floor. See shards of clear and green glass, not to mention a broken-off wine goblet stem.

“I rolled out here as fast as I could,” says Samuel, “and saw the two of them going at it. Christine was kicking at Mom. Mom was grabbing Christine's throat. I told Mom to stop. She told me to, you know, ‘eff-off.'”

“That when you called nine-one-one?”

“Yeah. You guys got here fast.”

“We caught a break. We were in the neighborhood. You okay staying here tonight?”

He gives me a look. “What do you mean?”

“You sure you'll be safe? If not, we've got places you could go …”

“Don't worry. My mom isn't going to strangle me, if that's what you mean.”

“Okay. If you feel different, just call nine-one-one. Or, here.” I hand him one of my business cards. “Call me. I'll come pick you up.”

Samuel cracks a grin.

“Will you turn on those sirens again?”

I grin back. “Roger that.”

Next up is Christine in the Kitchen with the Ice Pack.

We're not playing “Clue.” She's administering first aid to her neck wounds.

A pair of purple bruises—what Ceepak would call ligature marks—have blossomed where Mrs. Oppenheimer's two hands used to be.

“Do you mind if I take a photo?” I say, gesturing toward her neck.

“No.”

I pull out a small digital camera.

“Can you hold your chin up a little?” I say.

Christine does.

I snap some very unflattering photos of her bloated and bruised neck.

“So, what happened?”

“We had … a disagreement.” Her voice sounds like she spent the night screaming at a Bon Jovi concert.

“About what?”

“Some issues. So, I tried to defuse the situation by walking out of the room. That's when
she
attacked me.”

I don't react to that. “So, you live here? Take care of Samuel?”

“Yes. Part-time. He needs help with his G-I tube. And seizures. I'm basically on call all night long. Sleep in the guest room closest to Samuel's bedroom with a baby monitor. On weekends I clean the house and do the laundry. Stuff like that.”

“You still do weekdays at Mainland Medical?”

Mainland Medical is the hospital on the far side of the causeway that operates our Regional Trauma Center. It's where the Medevac helicopter took Katie Landry when a sniper who was gunning for me shot her instead. Christine was one of Katie's emergency room nurses.

“No,” says Christine, kind of softly. “I left Mainland a while ago.”

“Really? What happened?”

“I'd rather not talk about it, Danny. Not right now. Okay?”

“Sure,” I say. “Stay here. I need to talk to Mrs. Oppenheimer.”

“She'll lie, Danny.”

I nod and grin. “Thanks for the tip.”

Mrs. Shona Oppenheimer and Officer Santucci are waiting for me out on one of the decks hanging off the back of the house.

“Mrs. Oppenheimer?” I say. “What happened here tonight?”

“I wanted to print out a new diet I'd found on line for my sister, but Christine was hogging the printer with paperwork related to her position with Dr. Rosen.”

“Dr. Rosen?”

“Arnold Rosen, DDS. The retired dentist who lives in that big house up in Cedar Knoll Heights. It's still the nicest piece of shorefront property on the island. It sits atop a bit of a bluff above the dunes, so Sandy's storm surge didn't swamp it.”

I nod. The folks in Cedar Knoll Heights were lucky.

“Dr. Rosen is ninety-four,” Mrs. Oppenheimer continues. “Not drilling too many teeth these days.”

Santucci chuckles. Guess these two had hit if off in my absence.

“Christine works at the dentist's home during the day, seven to seven. She works here nights.”

“So,” I say, “you two were fighting over the printer?”

“Hardly,” says Mrs. Oppenheimer. “Apparently, some paper became jammed in the feeder, and Christine started using the most foul language imaginable in front of my very impressionable young son.”

“Your son was in the room with the printer?” I say because that's not where the son said he was.

“No. He was in his room. But Christine was shouting so loudly, I'm sure he heard every word. That's when I calmly asked Christine to leave.”

“But as I understand it, she lives here. Takes care of Samuel.”

“That was always a temporary arrangement. I can find other pediatric home health aides. In fact, I already have.”

“I can verify that,” says Santucci. “She called the, uh …”

“AtlantiCare Agency. They're sending someone over right away.”

“So, you're evicting Christine?” I say.

“You bet I am,” says Mrs. Oppenheimer. “She was like a wild animal. Charged at me. Kicked me in the shin.”

She rubs her leg so I know which one got whacked.

“I grabbed her by the neck to keep her at bay. But she kept swinging and trying to kick at me. I had to exert a great deal of effort to protect myself. I wouldn't be surprised if I bruised her neck something fierce.”

I rub my face a little. “You know, Mrs. Oppenheimer, Ms. Lemonopolous told me a very different story …”

“Oh, I'm sure she did. But don't let those big brown eyes fool you, officer. That woman is a crazed monster.”

3

S
O
,
BASICALLY
,
WE
'
RE IN A
“
SHE SAID
/
SHE SAID
”
SITUATION
.

Both sides give completely different versions of what happened and the one semi-independent witness, Mrs. Oppenheimer's son, can only tell us that he saw the two women whaling on each other in his living room.

So I ask all three parties to write up their statements—in separate rooms. Santucci and I will head back to the house (that's what we call the SHPD headquarters) and fill out a “review only” Case Report. In other words, there isn't enough evidence to request an arrest warrant or to charge anybody with anything. Just enough for me to hunt and peck through the paperwork.

Fortunately, Christine agrees to leave the Oppenheimer residence.

“Permanently,” sneers Mrs. Oppenheimer before I separate the parties again.

“Do you have someplace safe you can go?” I ask Christine when her former employer is out of the room.

“Yes. I also work for Dr. Rosen. I'll be fine.”

Santucci and I head back to the house and do our duty.

I type up our report with one finger on the computer. If I could text it with my thumbs, it would take a lot less time.

A little after eleven, I climb into my Jeep and head for home. On the way, I stop at Pizza My Heart and pick up a slice. With sausage and peppers.

I blame my heartburn on Santucci.

I'm sacked out and dreaming about driving a jumbo jet down the New Jersey Turnpike, looking for a rest stop with a parking lot big enough for a 747, when my cell starts singing Bruce Springsteen's “Land Of Hope And Dreams.” That's not part of the dream. That's my ringtone for John Ceepak.

“Hey,” I mumble.

“Sorry to wake you.”

I squint. The blurry red digits tell me it's 2:57
A
.
M
.

“That's okay. I had to get up to answer the phone anyway.”

“We have a situation.”

“Is everything okay with Rita? Your mom?”

“Affirmative. However, I was having difficulty falling asleep this evening so I went into the other room to monitor my police scanner.”

Yes, some people drink a glass of warm milk or pop an Ambien. Ceepak? He chills with cop chatter.

“Do you remember Katie Landry's emergency room nurse friend Christine Lemonopolous?” he asks.

“Sure. In fact, she was involved in an incident a couple hours ago down in Beach Crest Heights. Santucci and I took statements.”

“I heard her name come across the radio. Cam Boyce and Brad Hartman were working the night shift when nine-one-one received a complaint of a woman sleeping in her car outside a residential property in Cedar Knoll Heights. They investigated and identified the ‘vagrant' as Christine Lemonopolous.”

“Where are you now?”

“Eighteen-eighteen Beach Lane in the Heights.”

“I'm on my way.”

You may think it odd that Ceepak would run out of his house at two-thirty in the morning to make sure a woman he barely knows is okay.

Not me.

I've been working with the guy for a while now. This is what he does. He jumps in and helps first, asks questions later.

Before he came to Sea Haven, Ceepak was an MP over in Iraq, where he won just about every medal the Army gives out including several for rushing in and saving the lives of guys he didn't know—even when common sense (and my intestines) would've said run the other way.

Cedar Knoll Heights is, as the name suggests, a slightly elevated stretch of land overlooking the beach. That elevation? It saved the million-dollar homes lining Beach Lane in The Heights from Super Storm Sandy's full wrath and fury.

When I reach 1818, I see Ceepak's six-two silhouette standing ramrod straight beside a dinged-up VW bug. It's not Ceepak's ride. He drives a dinged-up Toyota.

The VW is parked in a crackled asphalt driveway leading up to a three-story mansion. The lawn is a tangle of sand, weeds, and sea grass.

“Thanks for joining me,” says Ceepak.

I know I must look like crap, having crawled out of the rack with chin drool and bed hair, a problem Ceepak will never know. He's thirty-seven, been out of the Army for a few years, but still goes with the high-and-tight military cut.

Christine waves to me from behind the wheel of her VW.

I wave back.

I haven't seen Christine Lemonopolous in years. Now, we bump into each other twice in one night.

Ceepak motions for me to step out to the street with him.

He wants to discuss something “in private.”

“So, you and Santucci sent Ms. Lemonopolous up here to Dr. Rosen's home?”

“Right. She told me Dr. Rosen would let her spend the night.”

Ceepak cocks an eyebrow. “In the driveway?”

“No. She's one of his home health aides. I figured he had a spare room for her.”

“Perhaps. But Ms. Lemonopolous never requested accommodations from Dr. Rosen. Not wishing to disturb his rest, she chose, instead, to spend the night in her vehicle. Neighbors complained. Boyce and Hartman swung by to arrest her for vagrancy.”