The club was called the Wet Spot, and it was ladies’ night. k. d. lang’s sultry voice flooded the dance floor as a crowd of drag queen revelers responded rapturously to the balladeer. Sweat glistened. Tongues explored. Limbs intertwined. Flesh clung.
At the bar, a ponytailed lass dipped her pinkie in her mimosa and tickled the cherry. Her pristine white blouse, her parochial-school jumper, and her bleached cotton knee-highs made her look like a Catholic schoolgirl.
“I could drink Veuve Clicquot all night,” her bar companion singsonged as she ran a teasing finger under the small of the schoolgirl’s foot. “They call me Gretchen,” she added with a wry little smile that accented a Betty Boop face.
“Dance! Dance! Dance to the music! Grind! Grind! Grind to the beat!” The DJ’s rhythmic incantations exhorted the excitement seekers to heightened realms of rapture spurred now by Janet’s Jackson’s “Nasty.”
Circumnavigating the bar, waiters, costumed as mermaids, scurried in stiletto heels to deliver drinks.
“I just love ladies’ night. Don’t you?” Gretchen crooned.
“That I do,” said the schoolgirl. “But I’m inhaling enough noxious perfume to hatch a pulmonary tumor.”
“Oooooo, pulmonary! Sounds raunchy. Sure like the sound of that. You a nurse or an obstetrician?”
“Silly,” the girl giggled.
“Why don’t you lead me to your examination table? I just love stirrups.”
“All right, then. Hi-ho, Silver!”
Gretchen signaled the bar’s mermaid for the check.
The Catholic schoolgirl rummaged through her over-stuffed bra and produced a crisp $50 bill.
“The libations are on me,” she said, grabbing hold of Gretchen’s hand, before heading for the exit.
“You Kyle Ramsey?” The voice cropped up out of nowhere. It stopped the Catholic schoolgirl dead in her tracks. When she turned around, the glow of a woman’s face stared back at her.
“Sorry, honey. The name’s Celeste. And who might I ask are you?”
“We’ve got your bike,” Sergeant Aligante said flatly, producing her shield.
Gretchen quickly disappeared, swallowed up by the throng of gyrating dancers.
“Do I look like I’d be riding a bike in this getup, darling?”
“Your bike. The Brooklyn Bridge. Am I ringing any bells?”
The etchings of fear began to form on Ramsey’s face. He climbed back onto his barstool and invited Margaret to join him.
“It was just supposed to be an early-morning jaunt. That’s all. The guy’s dead. Right?”
“What guy is that?”
“The guy whose head was bleeding.”
“The man’s dead, all right. What can you tell me about him?”
“What’s to tell? He was lying there when I found him. I’m the one who called 911.”
“Been to Coney Island recently, Mr. Ramsey? Or to the Museum of Natural History?”
A look of panic seized Kyle Ramsey.
“Wait a minute. Does this have something to do with those two tourists who were killed?”
“This’ll go a lot easier if I ask the questions.”
“I’m sorry. But that’s gotta be it. Why else would you be here asking questions?”
“Which you haven’t answered.”
“I’ve never been to Coney Island. It’s a dreadful place. And the last time I was to a museum I was six years old. Honest!”
It appeared to Margaret that the man was about to cry.
“We think there may have been someone else on that bridge, Mr. Ramsey.”
“You’re damn right there was. There was this guy. At least I think it was a guy. Anyway, he darted out in front of me. I swerved the bike to avoid him and hit the goddamn bridge.” Ramsey leaned in conspiratorially. “I think I may have hit the bastard.”
“We do too.”
Margaret eyed the man dressed in Catholic schoolgirl attire. Could she have found her serial killer hiding behind lipstick, mascara, and a padded bra? Every instinct said no. His story too closely paralleled the evidence. And why would a killer leave a traceable ten-speed racer at the scene of a murder?
“Let me buy you a drink,” said Margaret. “What’ll it be?”
“I’ll have another mimosa.”
“Make that two,” said Margaret to the bar’s mermaid.
“You look more like the Cosmopolitan type, if you don’t mind me saying,” said Ramsey. “And don’t you feel just a tad out of place in this meat emporium?”
“What? You don’t like my Versace blouse?”
“On the contrary, I like it too much.”
Whoa! Was this guy a switch-hitter? Margaret couldn’t remember ever being hit on by a man dressed in drag. Oddly enough, she found it amusing. Life’s just full of surprises, she thought.
“Kyle, tell me about the guy you think you hit.”
“From the top?”
“From the top.”
“Okay. I’m racing across the bridge. I do it every morning. That particular morning I was trying to better my time from the day before. As I’m closing in on the second piling, I check my stopwatch. I’m doing okay. Then out of nowhere this guy…or girl. Whatever! Let’s call him a guy. This guy pops out in front of me. Smack! I hit him. At least I think I did. It all happened so fast. Anyway, the guy does a cartwheel and I hit the floorboards. Man, did that hurt! When I get to my feet the guy is bolting and my bike looks like an accordion. That’s when I spotted the man with the head wound. I checked for a heartbeat. There didn’t appear to be any. So I called 911.”
“Why didn’t you identify yourself?”
“I should have. I know. The whole thing was just too scary. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.”
“Why’d you leave the bike behind?”
“It was beyond repair. It wasn’t until I reached home that I remembered the bike’s serial number and that it might be traceable. I was gonna head back to retrieve it, but by that time the bridge was filled with police cars. I made a mistake in leaving it, huh?”
“Let’s get back to the guy you hit. Wha’d he look like?”
“I never saw his face.”
“He was a foot in front of you!”
“It all happened in a flash. I think he had a hood on. Maybe a baseball cap under that. But I didn’t see his face. That’s all I can tell ya. Honest.”
Margaret glanced around the crowded club. The music was still blaring and the crowd was still jostling to the beat. An odd smile creased her face. She turned her attention back to Kyle Ramsey.
“All guys, huh?”
Ramsey returned her gaze. “Like a little piece of heaven. Wouldn’t you say?”
Chapter 17
Driscoll pulled the rain-battered Chevy to a complete stop as the Long Island Railroad’s red and white crossing gates descended up ahead. He narrowed his eyes, focusing them on the rearview mirror, hoping to sidestep a haunting recollection from his past. But the thunderous sound of the passing commuter train catapulted the nightmarish memory to consciousness. On a sunny morning in August, when Driscoll was eight years old, he had been standing curbside, watching his mother climb the steps of the LIRR’s Jamaica station. Ten minutes later, as the Manhattan-bound 10:39 came rumbling in, the woman launched herself into its path, ending her life and indelibly scarring John Driscoll. He never forgave his mother for her selfish act and never forgave himself for that notion.
His heart was still racing when a car horn sounded. The train had passed, the gates were up, and a motorist behind him was politely asking Driscoll to proceed. Guilt ridden, he put the cruiser in drive and stepped on the gas.
Thirty minutes later, with the rain still playing havoc with the cruiser’s windshield wipers, Driscoll guided the Chevy past the limestone pillars that marked the entrance to Saint Charles Cemetery. Although his mother was interred there, it wasn’t her grave he had come to visit. After giving the security guard a nod, he followed the curves in the road until he cam
e to within fifty feet of the section where his wife and daughter were buried. Pulling the Chevy to the curb, he turned off the engine and sat motionless, lost to reflection. Lightning filled the luminous sky, followed by a slow rumble of thunder that echoed through the graveyard. Driscoll thought it sounded like the drumroll that preceded an execution.
Silence filled the cruiser’s cabin as the rain subsided. Driscoll opened the car door and was engulfed by cold and damp air. Heading for the gravesite, he noticed green moss had begun to obscure the headstone’s carved lettering. He used his handkerchief to scrape away the uninvited decay.
“Bonjour, ma cherie,” he whispered to his bride, standing somberly before the mute stone. “Nicole, Daddy is here,” he added.
Was it merely the wind that rustled the nearby willow or was his salutation being answered?
He marveled at the sweeping motion of the tree, smiled, and returned his focus on the grave.
“I miss you,” he said. “Both of you.” He leaned over and placed his hand on the damp granite stone as serendipitous thoughts whirled into a kaleidoscope of memories. He saw himself and Colette lounging on the open porch outside their Toliver’s Point bungalow; a wooden glider providing a view of an ocean varnished in moonlight. The liquid sounds of Debussy serenaded them, as notes from Nicole’s flute wafted through an open window.
Without warning, the intrusive peal of a cell phone interrupted his reverie. He reached inside his breast pocket and turned the unit off. But it was too late. His daughter’s concert had ended and the vision had ceased.
“Gotta go,” he grumbled.
Forcing a smile, he climbed behind the steering wheel of the Chevy and guided it along the winding road that led to the cemetery’s exit, taking note of the tombstones that stood like sentinels on either side. Too many lives lost, he thought, reaching the limestone pillars, where the security guard gave him his customary salute. Odd, even the dead need guarding, he said to himself as he veered the cruiser onto Saint Philip’s Drive.
On the entrance ramp to the Meadowbrook Parkway, he remembered he had turned off his cell phone. He reached in his pocket and turned it back on. It rang almost immediately. He flipped it open.
“Driscoll.”
“Lieutenant, I’ve been trying to reach you. Something wrong with your phone?” It was Thomlinson. He sounded anxious.
“I was elsewhere. Whaddya got?”
“The DNA results are in on the nail.”
“It’s about time. Meet me in my office in forty-five minutes.”
“Will do.”
When Driscoll arrived at his desk, he found Thomlinson seated beside it. Driscoll slid into his seat and unpocketed a pack of Lucky Strikes and lit one up.
“Thought you were off those things.”
“I am,” he said, shooting Thomlinson a glare. “Let’s see what Forensics has to offer, shall we?”
He reached for the secured file, broke its seal, and leafed through a score of typed pages.
…Complete search of the national DNA database produced no match.
…subject unidentified. “Now, that’s a surprise,” he quipped and read on.
…In conclusion, chromosomal scanning, utilizing standard Bayesian interpretation, suggests the subject to be Caucasian…Polymerase chain reaction-short tandem repeat methodology, reveals the subject to be male.
“Male?” He lowered his brows and shot Thomlinson a puzzled look. “Why would he have used a ladies’ room at the museum? A place where he’d run the risk of being seen?” Driscoll stared long and hard at the italicized printing as if expecting it to change gender. When it didn’t, he used an index finger to circle the word. “Cedric, could we be we looking for some sort of cross-dresser?”
“It worked for Hadden Clark.” Thomlinson was referring to a notorious cross-dressing serial killer who had a penchant for wearing ladies’ clothing while perpetrating his madness.
“Well, my friend, we either have a crafty one on our hands, or our two-killers-acting-in-tandem theory is looking better.”
Chapter 18
Detective Cedric Thomlinson was running late. Traffic had come to a complete standstill on Brooklyn’s Belt Parkway. Flashing lights in the distance and the trickling of cars in the opposing lanes indicated an accident up ahead. There was nothing he could do but wait out the efforts of the EMS and other emergency personnel. It wouldn’t be long before uniforms from Highway Patrol 2 would reopen the three-lane thoroughfare.
After fifteen minutes, Thomlinson was rolling again. He hastened over the Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, hugged Beach Channel Drive as it curved left, and made it to his destination: Saint Rose of Lima’s Church on Beach Eighty-fourth Street in Rockaway Beach. He squeezed his Dodge Intrepid into a tight parking space, got out of the car, and headed toward the heavy oak door that led to the parish community room.
Father Liam O’Connor’s eyes narrowed as he watched Thomlinson enter the room and take his assigned seat. O’Connor, a titan of a man, was a Jesuit priest with a strip of white hair surrounded by gray. As a certified alcohol and substance abuse counselor, he had run the NYPD’s Confidential Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program for the last thirty-one years. Most of the inductees who filled the room had been ordered into the program by their commanding officer. For Thomlinson, this was his second go-round. A rarity for the department, but not a precedent. He had Driscoll to thank for the exception. The Lieutenant, who had become a good friend, was a master at calling in favors.
The crowd that surrounded Thomlinson tonight was a mix of men and women, all of them police personnel, and all with the same purpose: to gather the strength to keep from drinking. Thomlinson scanned the room, where faces displayed hope or despair. Most in the crowd were young rookie cops ensnared by the lure of local bars that neighbored their precinct, where they could revel the night away with other cops. Always with other cops.
Some of Father O’Connor’s fledglings recovered, regained their lives, and went on to become productive police officers. Some didn’t. For them, often fighting off the inclination to put the barrel of their service revolver in their mouth and pull the trigger, another career awaited. Thomlinson, at age forty-three, with twenty years under his belt, felt he leaned more toward the whiskey-faced veterans who made up the rest of the crowd, many of whom were barely holding on until retirement.
“Hello, Cedric. Glad you could make it.” O’Connor placed a warm hand on Thomlinson’s shoulder before making his way toward the front of room. A young officer, with a wife and two kids, had just finished speaking about the struggle he was having with alcohol. A struggle that threatened both his marriage and his career.
“Would anyone else like to speak?” Father O’Connor asked.
Thomlinson cast his eyes to the floor. He had plenty to say but chose to keep it to himself. He knew he was not well respected by his fellow officers, present company included. The resentment stemmed from an incident that occurred while he and his partner, Harold Young, were undercover working Narcotics. A controlled buy was all that was to go down that afternoon. Nothing more.
It began with a drug dealer stepping out of the shadows of a darkened hallway and asking Thomlinson if everything was cool.
“Yeah, mon. Everything’s cool,” Thomlinson had assured him. But that wasn’t the case. Thomlinson had spent the night before tossing back shots of tequila at Cassidy’s Hide-away and was hungover. So when a gun materialized in the dealer’s hand, followed by shots, the ill-prepared Thomlinson caught one above the right shoulder blade and was knocked to the floor. In the cross fire that followed, undercover police officer Harold Young was killed.
As Thomlinson was lying on a rescue vehicle’s stretcher, he caught the look of astonishment on the face of the sergeant who had helped him climb in. He was staring at Thomlinson’s gun. A gun that was still in its holster.
In the official report it was indicated that Thomlinson was situated behind Detective Young and could not fire without the risk of hitting his partner. B
ut Cedric Thomlinson knew his drinking was a major factor that helped deliver the officer to an early grave. That reality would follow him for life.
The NYPD is like a small town where news travels at lightning speed. Thomlinson soon became known as the cop who didn’t pull his gun in a shootout. Not a good handle to be saddled with. The resultant ostracism brought on more guilt, which led to heavier drinking. The heavier drinking spawned depression and with it, thoughts of suicide.
A compassionate borough commander, Todd Emerson, now retired, had a sense of what was going on. He arranged for Thomlinson to be transferred from Narcotics to Homicide. New surroundings would do him good, Emerson reasoned. There, Thomlinson would report to Lieutenant John Driscoll, a man with a reputation for fairness. But Driscoll was a keen observer as well. It wasn’t long before the Lieutenant recognized Thomlinson for what he was. A drunk. He tried reasoning with Thomlinson but couldn’t promote change in a man unwilling to own up to his addiction. Driscoll was faced with a dilemma: What to do with this newly assigned detective, a liability to both the job and to himself? Thomlinson was heading for a serious breakdown, the consequences of which could directly affect not only the new homicide detective but the Homicide squad itself.
Driscoll was forced to make a move that might have ruined Thomlinson’s career but that may have saved his life. He placed a call to the representative at the Detectives Union and had the detective “farmed.” Thomlinson was stripped of his gun and shield and spent the next six weeks in a recovery program at a retreat house in the secluded woods of Delaware County-“The Farm.” Thomlinson had little choice. If he refused to complete the program conducted by a group of certified alcohol and substance abuse counselors, he’d be fired.
Thomlinson acquiesced and was eventually returned to active duty.
Yet, here he was, back in the program. Again.
Father O’Connor took a seat next to Thomlinson. “You stayin’ out of trouble?” he asked.
Thomlinson nodded.
“How’s she doing?”
The priest was asking about a teenager, the reason the detective was back.
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