The Screaming Room jd-2

by Thomas O`Callaghan

  “And a store receipt’s gonna tell you all that.”

  “I’m a resourceful man. Placed in the right hands, the receipt’s SKU and barcode will help reveal the computer’s path from assembly line, to packing, to shipping, to-hell, you know where I’m going with this. If the damn thing was dusty when our young predator carried it to the cashier, I’ll know about it.”

  All this from a store receipt? “Frankly, Shewster, I’d say that’s a stretch.” What Driscoll didn’t tell him was that he thought he’d had gone off the deep end.

  “He killed my daughter, Lieutenant. The word stretch doesn’t exist in my dictionary.”

  Yup. He’s lost it.

  “Once I know that computer better than Hewlett-Packard, the rest is child’s play. Are you familiar with the word cookie in a purely computer sense?”

  “If you’re talking about a means for, say, a retailer to tag onto a Web site visitor, I’m familiar.”

  “Were you aware that if used properly, a cookie can establish the visitor’s Internet Protocol address and gather sufficient personally identifying information to uniquely ID and locate a particular person, or in this case a pair of twins?” It appeared to Shewster as if Driscoll was weighing the possibilities. “If the police academy is using a twenty-first-century syllabus, it may not be such a stretch.”

  “Some view such activity as illegal or at least deceitful. I’d hate to see some liberal lawyer convince a similarly slanted jury that it’s actually entrapment. That could lead to an acquittal.”

  “There’ll be no acquittal.”

  There’ll be no trial is what you mean. “When were you going to share this with me?”

  “I no longer see the need. Do you?”

  “Am I to interpret that to mean I’ve been informed through this conversation?”

  “You got it.”

  “The launch of this new Web site? When’s that happening?”

  “That depends.”

  Cagey bastard. “On what?”

  “Any big-game hunter studies all aspects of an expedition before turning the key in the caravan’s lead vehicle. No?”

  “I’m sure he does. I’m just hoping the twins are the only ones who view this savagery as part of a game, Shewster. Not the game hunter himself.”

  Shewster stood, signaling the conversation was over. “I have a suspicion we have more in common than one would imagine, Lieutenant.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I sense neither of us likes to being threatened. Veiled or otherwise.”

  “Your suspicions are just shy of the mark. I never use a veil.”

  Driscoll checked his watch as he exited the plush hotel and headed for his cruiser. When he opened the door, the vehicle’s dome light illuminated Margaret’s face.

  “The GPS get planted?” he asked, sliding behind the steering wheel.

  “And then some,” came a voice from the backseat. “Now, how ’bout that cigar?”

  Chapter 81

  Driscoll, Aligante, and Thomlinson were sitting inside the Lieutenant’s cruiser, parked a hundred feet from the hotel. They had no reason to go anywhere. The electronic shadow was keeping track of Shewster’s limo, which was moving, but hadn’t gone very far. The GPS configuration on TARU’s laptop featured a map, currently displayed as a grid of the local streets surrounding the hotel as well as the area where their subject was now circling.

  “What the hell is he doing?” said Margaret. “This is his third trip through Central Park!”

  “Maybe he’s a nature fanatic,” Thomlinson said from the backseat.

  “Then he’d be sitting in his hotel room watching National Geographic,” said Margaret.

  “Don’t encourage the man, Margaret. Cedric’s prone to wit.”

  “He’s leaving the park.”

  Driscoll started the car. There was no need to tailgate Shewster. The GPS was doing a good job of that. The Lieutenant would simply tag behind at a safe distance.

  “Whaddya suppose he was doing circling the park?” Margaret asked.

  “I’m bettin’ he was talking to someone on his car phone.”

  “Aren’t we tapped into that?”

  “No. TARU determined he was using a hard-wired line. They’d have to get inside the car to properly tap it. We’re only on the hotel landline and his cell.”

  “Any guess as to who he might have been talking with?”

  “Don’t know. But if we keep our eyes fixed on the laptop, he may lead us to him.”

  “I’m glad he’s on the move,” Margaret griped. “I was getting dizzy watching him circle.”

  Chapter 82

  When Cassie opened her eyes, she found she was alone in the bed. It didn’t surprise her. It was like Angus gave up sleeping. For the past week and a half, she had fallen asleep while her brother labored on the notebook. At first, the constant tapping was annoying. It was an effort to fall asleep. Last Tuesday, she had wrapped herself in bedding and headed down the stairs to stretch out in the old recliner. She had escaped the tapping sound, but the coils in the recliner stabbed her, and after a few minutes the noxious horse smell forced her back up the stairs to the loft.

  “We’re gettin’ the hell outta here,” she had griped, only to have Angus tell her, “We’ll start looking tomorrow. Can you hold out ’til tomorrow?” She said she could. But goddamn it! They were still in the freaking loft!

  She eventually grew accustomed to the tapping. As a matter of fact, it had become soothing. Like those audio-tapes of babbling brooks or waves hitting the shoreline.

  Cassie had also become accustomed to waking up to the sound. How the hell Angus could spend night after freaking night pounding away on the laptop was beyond her. And why? When she asked him, he’d wave the gun and shout

  “Bang! Bang!” She thought he had lost it. What could be so interesting on the goddamn computer?

  But when she awoke this morning, she thought they had finally moved. There was no tapping of keys. Angus wasn’t sitting on his stool. And the place smelled like eggs and bacon.

  “What the…?”

  Swinging her legs over the side, she pressed her fists into the mattress and got up.

  That’s when she spotted him.

  Angus was standing at the stove and flipping eggs.

  “How come you’re not typing, and what’s with the cookin’? You never eat breakfast.”

  Something isn’t right. What the hell is going on? Is this a dream?

  She covered her ears, certain the whistle would sound. It didn’t.

  “Angus? What gives?”

  “Found her,” he mouthed.

  “What? Speak up for Chrissake!”

  “I found her!” he hollered.

  That she heard. “Found who?”

  He lowered the flame under the pan and headed for the laptop. Only he didn’t just walk there. He crouched down and slithered toward the unit. When he got there, he bolted upright, pouncing, like the laptop was prey. Grinning, he pointed at the screen and said, “Her.”

  Cassie hurried over. What she saw was the black-and-white image of a woman’s face. “Who is she?” she asked, studying the image like it was a specimen in a cage. “She looks familiar. Do we know her?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Whaddya mean ‘not yet’? Why does she look so familiar?”

  Angus depressed the laptop’s down arrow, raising the photo. The woman’s name appeared below it.

  Cassie’s eyes widened. “Wow! Way to go, Angus!”

  Chapter 83

  Driscoll was heading down Ninth Avenue. The laptop Margaret was monitoring had placed the Shewster vehicle a safe distance ahead, traveling south. Ten minutes ago it had passed the cutoff for the Lincoln Tunnel and its driver had headed for West Street, where he made a left and continued south.

  “A man on a mission,” Thomlinson remarked.

  “What kind of mission?” asked Driscoll.

  “He’s passing Ground Zero. Still heading south.” Margaret rai
sed her head and looked to Driscoll. “I hope you’re up to date on your E-ZPass account. He just went under the overpass, which will take him into the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.”

  “Call Dispatch. Have them alert Highway Two.” The Lieutenant applied pressure to the gas pedal, glancing at the fuel level gauge.

  “You want Highway to assist?”

  “No. Just let them know we’re tailing him through their borough. We don’t want him stopped.”

  Chapter 84

  The F train twisted hard to the left after exiting the underground station at Carroll Street, just east of Red Hook in Brooklyn. The screech of metal resonated throughout the subway car, as lights flickered within. Daylight then greeted the train as it climbed toward an encasement of steel girders supported by massive concrete columns that formed a bridge over the Gowanus Canal.

  The woman was having an exceptionally good day. Now, if she could only discover how to string them into a week, a month, a year. She adjusted the leather strap of her shoulder bag, preparing to exit the train three stops ahead at Ninth Street in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. She had resided in the upscale neighborhood most of her life, occupying the third floor of a four-story brownstone on Sixth Street. Thanks to urban gentrification, the rent for the one-bedroom apartment had quadrupled over the years, but so had her income. A tradeoff. It allowed her to remain in the neighborhood, where she had amassed a trove of wonderful memories. If she closed her eyes, she could still experience the feeling, the very smell, of her first-grade classroom at Saint Saviour’s Elementary. Just last week she marveled at the panorama of pure visual delight at Brooklyn’s Botanical Garden. The Slope, as it had come to be called, featured a host of fine restaurants to accommodate everyone’s palate, an expansive array of boutiques, and a number of cozy coffee shops along its main thoroughfare, Seventh Avenue.

  After a brief interlude of sunshine, the train descended underground again, delivering her to the Slope at Ninth Street, where brilliant early evening sunshine greeted her. Her brownstone sat a mere three blocks away.

  After her trek, which included a quick stop to purchase a small bouquet of fresh-cut irises, she turned the corner and headed south, hoping to be home in time to catch her favorite show on Food Network.

  But because someone had other plans, she never got to see what went into the shepherd’s pie.

  Chapter 85

  Police chatter continued to emanate from the cruiser’s radio as Driscoll and company continued tailing Shewster. After sailing through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, the limo continued east. When it buzzed past Kennedy Airport, Margaret looked up from the laptop. “In another five minutes, he’ll be crossing into Nassau County. You want me to let the chief of detectives know we’re heading out of the city?”

  Their crime prevention effort wasn’t exactly in sync with department regulations. “We’d better run silent,” said Driscoll.

  “You got it.”

  “How’s a guy from California know his way around New York? We haven’t hit one traffic tie-up or construction bottleneck yet!” said Thomlinson.

  “The day is young, my friend.”

  At the five-mile marker on the Southern State Parkway, Driscoll brought the Chevy to a complete stop behind a procession of red brake lights.

  Margaret believed that if anyone, passenger or driver, raved about the good fortune of hitting no traffic, an immediate tie-up would materialize. “You had to make a remark about no traffic problems, didn’t you?” She shot Thomlinson a glare.

  Though tempted, Thomlinson figured now wouldn’t be the best time to light a cigar, certain Margaret would have some superstition about that as well.

  “Where’s our friend?” Driscoll asked.

  “About a half-mile up. He appears to be moving slowly. Let’s hope that means we’ll also be rolling soon.”

  It didn’t.

  As Driscoll’s cruiser crept along at a snail’s pace, Margaret charted the course of the now free-rolling limo.

  “How’d he get through?” asked Thomlinson, taking note of flickering red and yellow lights in the distance.

  “He probably passed the crash site before the emergency vehicles arrived to restrict access to lanes.”

  Twenty frustrating minutes later they, too, were rolling. What Driscoll had lost in distance, he hoped to make up for in speed. With siren blaring and emergency lights ablaze, he rocketed past cars clearing the middle lane.

  “The limo stopped,” said Aligante.

  “Where?”

  “He exited the parkway a mile into Suffolk County near the intersection of Bosley Road and Anderson.”

  “Anderson what?”

  She tilted the laptop, seeking a better view. “It just says Anderson.”

  “Get Suffolk PD on the line. Find out what’s there.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Driscoll, Aligante, and Thomlinson exited a garden supply center at 2276 Anderson Drive. None of them looked happy. After a brief conversation with the owner, it had been determined that a man matching Shewster’s description had pulled up in a stretch limo, came into the center, and had purchased a cemetery blanket. The owner, Carl Phillips, had helped him with his selection, which was intended for the grave of his sister, Muriel, who, according to Shewster, had died three years ago while a resident at a nearby assisted-living center. All indications were that Shewster was headed for Saint Thomas’s Cemetery, four miles east. The laptop had him coming to a stop at Withers Road and Degraw Place in Sayville.

  “That’d be the cemetery,” Phillips told them.

  That prompted Margaret to use the laptop to access the Web site Interment. net, where the burial of one Muriel R. Shewster was recorded. It indicated she had been interred precisely three years ago today. Driscoll asked Thomlinson to call Saint Thomas’s. When he did, the gentlemen who answered said, “That’s odd. You’re the second person inside of twenty minutes to ask about Muriel Shewster.” It came as no surprise when Thomlinson was informed that the other inquirer said he was the deceased’s brother, Malcolm, and was seeking directions to her grave. His description matched that of Shewster’s.

  The three climbed back into Driscoll’s Chevy.

  Quiet prevailed during their trip back to the city.

  Chapter 86

  Driscoll was annoyed. Jesus Christ! What was I thinking? Three officers? I used three officers chasing the goddamn pied piper? Next time, if there is a next time, one of us will trail the limo. How hard could it be to monitor a laptop while driving a car, for Chrissake? And this Malcolm Shewster. The man was full of surprises. He had a heart. Or so it seemed.

  A knock sounded, dispelling the Lieutenant’s self-deprecation. Looking up, he found Thomlinson shadowing the door to his office, sporting a huge smile.

  “Cedric, you hit it big at Keno?”

  “Better. You’re gonna love this,” he said, stepping inside. “Department of Corrections called. One Mr. Oliver Novak, a resident of Cell Block B in Sing Sing, says he recognizes the faces in the photo.”

  “Faces? Our photo shows only Angus.”

  “Ready?”

  “Okay. Out with it before your face shatters from that grin.”

  “He recognized Angus and Cassie from their photo as kids on the reservation. Claims to have met them. Now…are you really ready?”

  Driscoll looked like he was getting annoyed again. Cedric sensed it, so he ended the suspense with a whisper, “Says he knows the father.”

  Chapter 87

  Driscoll, northbound on the Henry Hudson Parkway, was heading for the Ossining Correctional Facility in Westchester County. Considering the traffic flow, he’d likely be there in forty-five minutes. The fifty-five-acre fortress known as Sing Sing, a name derived from the Indian words Sint Sinks, meaning “stone upon stone,” sat on a rocky hillside overlooking the Hudson River. Oddly enough, it was part of a residential town where neighboring homes sold for upward of $500,000. So close, yet so far, he thought-probably in sync with the thoughts of the nearly two t
housand inmates.

  Oliver Novak was doing a stretch of twenty years to life for attempted murder. Driscoll was certain the three-time convicted felon would be looking for something in return for the information he claimed to have on the twins’ father. There wasn’t much he could offer though to a three-time loser, outside of a softer pillow.

  It was nearing two o’clock when he pulled the Chevy into the prison’s administration building’s parking lot, where he flashed his shield to the gatekeeper before heading for the six-story tan brick structure. Was it his imagination or was he actually hearing the wails of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who had been convicted of espionage and executed on the site? Or the faint voices of President Abraham Lincoln, Mayor Jimmy Walker, or the actor James Cagney? They, too, had visited the maximum-security prison. Amusement ebbing, he put his flight of fancy aside and checked his phone to see if his sister or anyone else had tried to reach him. He was a distance up. There may have been trouble getting to him live. With his world in order, he got on with the reason he had come.