Wave (18 page)

Their eyes were locked together, King’s wild with rage, Houghton’s wide with fear and a long measure of morbid fascination. She had always been intrigued by forceful, gutsy people, the way they didn’t seem to care what anyone thought about them, how they tore through the usual barriers in life like tissue paper. For a moment she was unable to pull away, mesmerized in the same way one was when passing the scene of a car accident.

“I’ll…I’ll get him right now.”

“Hurry!”

She scrambled out of her seat, King watching her every step of the way. When she returned, she was scurrying behind Officer Mitchell, who was considerably taller. A human shield.

There was a buzzing sound, and Mitchell opened the door that separated the lobby from the hallway. He was slender and lean, with wispy brown hair combed in a one-stroke sweep across the top. Although he was born and raised in Forked River, he had an easy, Midwestern look about him. His mother was, in fact, from Cheyenne, Wyoming, where her family had lived since 1824.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” he said with a smile. His voice was deep and manly, resonating like a cello note. No doubt Houghton had warned him that crazy Mrs. King was out there and in a ripe mood.

“Yes, officer, you can. My daughter, Jennifer, is missing.” She took her cell phone from her pocketbook and shook it in the air. “I’ve tried to reach her on this thing for the last half hour, but there’s no answer.”

“Do you know where she might be?”

“The last time I talked to her, she said she was in her boss’s car on her way to find her boyfriend.”

“May I ask where she works?”

“She works at the Acme on the Boulevard.”

“Terri? Would you kindly call the Acme and see—”

“I’ve already done that,” King said impatiently. The words that were left out at the end but were there nonetheless were, “you idiot.”

“And?”

“And there was no answer.”

Terri watched this exchange from the safety of her little booth, and marveled at Jeff’s calm. It wasn’t an act, either—she hadn’t seen him lose his temper once in the four years he’d been here.

“Okay, where do you suppose they were going?”

“I told you, to find her boyfriend.”

“I know, but where?”

King paused, studying the man carefully, probing for a sign of weakness. She didn’t like having questions put to her that she couldn’t answer. She’d been on a roll, and now she’d hit a bump in the road. Usually when she found herself in this situation all she had to do was bear into someone with those piercing gray eyes (she knew as well as anyone else how unnerving they could be; she had fully assessed her own strengths and weaknesses before she was out of her teens), and they’d back down. But that approach didn’t seem to have any effect on this man, and it irked her.

“I don’t know.”

“She didn’t say anything to you about seeing him earlier today? Yesterday?”

“No.”

“What can you tell me about him? Do you know his name?”

“Mark. Mark White.”

Mitchell knew the name from somewhere, he was instantly sure of that. But where?

“Do you know where he lives?”

“On the island.”

“Do you know the town? The street?”

“No…not really.”

Now Mitchell paused to evaluate her. King had some idea what was going through his mind: What a great mother—her daughter has a boyfriend and she doesn’t know the first thing about him. Just one more ignorant bitch with too much money that the rest of us have to put up with.

“He’s a photographer,” she added quickly. “I know because he—”

Mitchell snapped his fingers and pointed. “The
SandPaper
. That’s where I’ve seen his name.”

“What?”

“The local free paper. Here, I’ll show you.”

Terri buzzed them back in and he escorted Carolyn King down the hall to his office—a tiny, brightly lit space with an old wooden desk that had been donated to the department by the elementary school during a major renovation almost ten years ago. There was a tall filing cabinet in one corner, and a modest array of framed citations on the walls. Everything was neat and orderly, but not to the point where Mitchell seemed anal.

He took a folded newspaper from his desk and held it up.

“This thing,” he said.

King nodded. “I’ve seen it around.”

He laid it flat and started paging through it.

“Officer, we don’t have—”

“Here, right here.”

He held it up again, folded awkwardly so only one photograph was showing. It was a shot of two children, one boy and one girl, standing on the beach with an older man—possibly their father. A group of sea gulls had gathered nearby, and the father was helping the kids feed them something from a paper bag. Underneath the photo at the lower right, in italics, was the line
Photograph by Mark White.

“Is this her Mark White, Mrs. King?”

“Jennifer has talked about him taking pictures for a newspaper, so I suppose it is.”

Mitchell took the paper back and turned to the inside front page. He found the masthead, saw Mark’s name listed as a staff member, and called the main number. Someone picked up on the first ring.

“SandPaper,”
came a woman’s voice.

“Hi, this is Officer Jeff Mitchell of the Harvey Cedars Police Department. Very quick question for you—would you happen to know where Mark White is today?”

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, Officer Mitchell,” the woman said. He quickly gauged her as late twenties, early thirties. “He was supposed to be taking pictures over at the Forsythe Wildlife Refuge, but he hasn’t answered his cell phone. We’ve called a number of times.”

“Could I have that number, please?”

“Sure, it’s 609-555-6771.”

Mitchell was sitting now. He scribbled the number on a little pad that had his name printed in tiny type at the top, underneath a watermark of the department’s logo.

“And would you happen to know his home number as well?”

“Yes, it’s 555-4309.”

“Brant Beach?”

“Yes, but he’s rarely there.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“He and his stepfather don’t get along. He doesn’t get along too well with his mother, for that matter. He’s here all the time.”

“I see. Okay, thank you. Look, I’m sure you’re busy over there—”

“We’ll all be out of here in about fifteen minutes.”

“I don’t blame you. But please, take down this number—it’s my cell phone, which may or may not work, but it’s worth trying—and let me know if you connect with Mark. His girlfriend’s mother is here with me, and we can’t seem to find either one of them.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“609-555-2177.”

“Okay, officer, I will.”

Mitchell thanked the woman and ended the call.

“Well?” Carolyn King demanded.

“They think he’s at the Forsythe Wildlife Refuge. That’s where they sent him on assignment today. I’ll radio one of the officers in the area and—”

“No, I’m not leaving this in the hands of someone else. I’ll go there myself.”

“Mrs. King, there’ll be so much congestion by the bridge it’ll be impossible to cut through it.”

“I don’t care. I’m not going to stand around here waiting.”

They watched each other for a few seconds. King had no intention of negotiating this point, and Mitchell had no doubts about that. He also had no doubts that this woman not only would indeed try to cut through the traffic that was most assuredly thickening at the base of the Causeway right now, she might even find a way to do it. Whether she did or not, one thing was certain—it wouldn’t be a pretty sight.

He sighed, got up, and took his jacket from the back of the chair.

“I’ll take you, Mrs. King. It’ll be a lot easier to get through in my squad car.”

“That’s fine,” she replied, victorious yet again.

“And I’m radioing ahead in case someone’s already there.”

“That’s fine, too.”

Oooh, thank God I have your approval
, Mitchell thought.

He set his hat in place and gestured toward the door.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We probably don’t have much more than an hour.”

Just before exiting, he yelled to the back—“Terri, if I’m not back in time….”

Terri stuck her head out the door of the dispatcher’s room. She didn’t speak, but then she didn’t have to—her pained expression said it all.

“You and the others get the hell out of here,” Mitchell completed the sentence flatly.

“What we need to do is get you in the action,” Wilson was saying, rummaging through the closet. He’d occupied this office for almost six months now, yet the smell of new carpet was still prominent. “I know there’s a sweater in here somewhere. That blazer makes you look too much like a banker. You’ve got to go for a more casual look. Try mussing your hair up just a little bit. Not too much.”

Davis, sitting in one of the two chairs that faced Wilson’s desk, was nodding and grunting without digesting a single word. He checked his watch, then the clock on the wall, then looked out the window. Above a row of houses he could see the Atlantic, blue and beautiful beneath the clear spring sky. And so peaceful at the moment. Downright picturesque. Yet somewhere out there, hundreds of miles away, death was rolling toward them. What would it look like when it appeared on the horizon? Would the waves be curled over like the one that opens and closes every episode of
Hawaii Five-O
? He didn’t know, and he wasn’t eager to find out.

“Ah, here it is.”

Wilson came back with an over-sized maroon V-neck that was obviously the property—or at least the prop—of his former employer. In fact, Davis thought he recognized it from one or two of Harper’s public appearances.
How symbolic is this?

“Try it on,” Wilson said, tossing it to him. He picked up the remote and turned on the TV set in the far corner. NJN’s Debbie Phillips was reporting from the western base of the Causeway, a line of traffic moving slowly but steadily behind her. In the background, unnoticed by most viewers, Karen Thompson sat in her car on the side of the road.

Wilson switched around, starting with the major networks. All commercials. Then he went to cable. CNN was on a break and FOX was giving an update on a bank-robbery-turned-deadly-shooting in North Carolina.

When he landed on MSNBC, his heart stopped. The screen was divided into three sections—a thin strip along the bottom, a slightly wider strip running up the left side, and then the largest part in the remaining area. The headline at the bottom read, BREAKING NEWS and, underneath it, “Major Tidal Wave Expected to Strike Southern New Jersey Coast.” In the left sector, near the top, was a small, smiling photo of Donald Harper. Underneath it were the words, “On the Phone With: Donald Harper, Mayor of Long Beach Township, New Jersey.” Adela Callendar occupied the rest of the screen.

“What…the hell is this?” Wilson said, mostly to himself. Davis, who had gotten the sweater over his head but was still struggling with it, stopped to look, too.

“…and do you think you’ll be able to evacuate the island completely, Mr. Mayor?” Callendar asked.

“Well, we’re doing our best, Adela, that’s all I can tell you at this point.” Harper’s voice was distorted by static and other interference. “We have over ten thousand residents, and we estimate that at least half of them are on the island at the moment, along with an unknown number of tourists. We’ve got all lanes on the Causeway going out except one, reserved for large military transports, buses, and other vehicles coming in to evacuate large groups of people. We’ve got several helicopters on the way, and every boat on Barnegat Bay has been deputized with orders to go back and forth between the island and the mainland.”

“It sounds like the island is in good hands,” Callendar said.

Wilson’s blood boiled.

“Well, we’re trying. Just say a prayer for us, please.”

“We certainly will, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for your time.”

“Thank you, Adela.”

The left-hand sidebar slid away, returning the screen exclusively to Callendar.

“We’ll go to a commercial break right now, and will be right back with Dr. Daniel Kennard, a tsunami expert who is Director of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. We’ll check back again with Mayor Donald Harper, in charge of the evacuation effort on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Again, if you’re just joining us, the headline today—a massive tidal wave, more accurately known as a tsunami, believed to be the result of a terrorist bomb plot gone awry, has formed in the Atlantic Ocean and is at this hour moving on a direct course…”

“This is bullshit,” Wilson said, his eyes glazing over. “Harper shouldn’t be talking to anybody. He effectively resigned this morning.” He turned to Davis. “That should be you on MSNBC.”

Davis’s jaw pumped a few times, but nothing came out.

“I’ll be damned if the media lets him come out of this looking like a savior,” Wilson said. He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. “Come on,” he said to Davis.