Rolling Thunder Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.”
    â€œYeah.” 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.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œIs there some way Sean could’ve killed her and made her death look like a heart attack?”
    â€œIt’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.
    â€œIf memory serves,” Ceepak continues, “only four Americans die each year in roller coaster–related incidents.”
    â€œHeart attacks?”
    â€œOften. 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.
    â€œâ€¦ 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.
    â€œHowever, it wasn’t the speed that caused irregular heart beats; it was the fear and stress of the ride.”
    â€œSo Mrs. O’Malley scared herself to death?”
    â€œShe 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.”
    â€œHuh,” 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.
    â€œInterestingly,” 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