The Lieutenant’s phone sounded again.
“Yes?” he blurted, his heart pounding.
“Lieutenant? That you?”
Chapter 96
Driscoll’s caller was Thomlinson. The sight of color returning to the Lieutenant’s face had Margaret somewhat relieved.
In his conversation with the detective, the perplexity involving the helicopter was quickly resolved as Driscoll was apprised of Angus’s demands to set it in motion this afternoon and of Shewster’s promise to comply. With that being said, Thomlinson offered a more precise version of what Shewster’s afternoon looked like. So far. “What I wanna know,” said Thomlinson, “is how Shewster, within fifteen…twenty minutes tops, had an automatic grenade-launcher set up within two blocks of the loft. Granted, the crowd of power players this guy’s got in his pocket would fill the Super Bowl, but a freakin’ military assault weapon and a cherry picker? C’mon! Merlin the Magician couldn’t pull that off.”
“Merlin didn’t have speed dial on his Rolodex. Where are you now?”
“Outside Shewster’s hotel.”
“He’s probably contemplating Plan B. Any further word from Danny?”
“Zip.”
“You don’t know it yet, Cedric, but I owe you a very personal debt of gratitude.” Before Driscoll could explain, their conversation was interrupted by the sound of gunfire.
It came from the loft.
Chapter 97
In kaleidoscope fashion, a slide show of images flooded Driscoll’s brain. Catapulted haphazardly through time, he witnessed blood washing over Colette’s hand, obscuring all but a glint of gold that was the curve of her wedding band; he watched his mother leap into the path of the oncoming commuter train; he listened to his daughter crying out to him while her mangled body was encased in the metal of their family van. Hearses materialized, only to vanish like the edges of a dream. As his family plot beckoned, he heard the sound of a woman’s voice.
With his sight suddenly returning, he discovered Margaret was holding his cell phone to her ear. Her voice, a faint whisper grew in intensity.
“Okay. Your brother made his point. It’s loaded and it works. Just bring her to the window so we know he didn’t shoot her, then hand Angus the phone.”
Driscoll glanced up to see the look of total bewilderment on his sister’s face. Retrieving the cell phone, he spoke to Angus calmly and clearly. “The chopper is sitting at the heliport, just south of us, at East Thirty-fourth Street. We’re waiting for Mr. Shewster to arrange clearance for the departure of a corporate jet from JFK.”
“What’s the hold-up?” Angus asked.
It was the first time the Lieutenant had heard him speak. His voice was not as Driscoll had imagined. “There’s no hold-up. Ever since 9/11 federal regulations requi-”
“We’re leaving the freakin’ country. Not coming in. He’s got twenty minutes.”
The line went dead and his sister disappeared from sight, as though she were on wheels.
“Any truth to that?” asked Margaret.
Driscoll’s expression didn’t make known Shewster’s attempt to lob a grenade, but Margaret clearly understood there’d be no plane. “We’ve got twenty minutes. Get on the horn to every utility that operates in Manhattan. Within the next five minutes, I want a team of eight men with jackhammers tearing into the asphalt under the highway, toward Fifty-ninth. The loft has no window facing south. I don’t want the twins to see them. Then dispatch a team from Special Operations Division. No slackers. Let’s move!”
“Yessir!”
Driscoll approached Lieutenant Ted McKeever, the SWAT team commander.
“How ya holdin’ up, John?” McKeever asked.
“I’ll feel a lot better when she’s sitting inside a patrol car. He’s given us twenty minutes. Any of your shooters get a bearing on him?”
“Once. Too much of a chance of the wrong person getting hit, though. You sure his sister’s with him? Nobody’s spotted her.”
“She was Margaret’s last caller. When I got on the line, she put me on with her brother.”
“He did a fair amount of pacing when he was on the phone. Any chance of getting him on the line again?”
Driscoll hit the return button, hoping he’d come up with a reason why he was calling by the time Angus answered the phone.
“Ready to roll?” said Angus.
He wasn’t standing.
“The Mayor’s on the line with Homeland Security. It won’t be long, now.”
“Good. Here’s how this is gonna play out. I count six shooters perched across the street. They come down. Mount your car on the sidewalk, rear door open and butted against the door to the stable. One driver. Not you. We get clearance on the plane. Cassie, me, and your sister will get into the car. Head directly to the helicopter. Make sure we hit no traffic. If I see so much as a skateboarder that looks like a cop, you’ll be calling a funeral director to arrange your sister’s wake.”
The line went dead. Not once did Angus stand.
“How many shooters up there?” he asked McKeever.
“Six.”
“Well, he tagged them all.”
Ten minutes later, Driscoll’s cruiser was on the sidewalk, its left rear door open and butted. The six sharpshooters were not only down from their perches, they were lined up in the middle of the street, weapons at their feet. To the onlooker, it appeared the Lieutenant and his idling team were waiting for clearance from JFK. But while Con Edison’s air-compressed hammers ripped into asphalt, coupled with the noise of hovering helicopters, a team of Special Operations technicians were using a Sawzall to cut through the rear wall of the stable.
Chapter 98
Angus, suspicious of the racket, tried calling Driscoll on his cell phone, but he couldn’t hear himself over all the noise. He was in the bathroom, door closed, hoping to hear more clearly, when the noise abruptly stopped.
Stepping back into the room, he heard the sound of feet storming up the stairs. He dove for Mary’s ankles, grabbing hold just as Driscoll and Margaret appeared with guns drawn. On his knees, his pistol jabbed into Mary’s rib cage, Angus smirked as he stared down the barrel of the Lieutenant’s semiautomatic.
Cassie had managed to position herself behind Driscoll’s sister, but Margaret’s weapon was bearing down on her. As the twisted twins scoped the fashionably dressed Driscoll and the casually clad Margaret, the two officers witnessed, for the first time, the cruelty that indelibly marked the pair. Cassie’s face looked as though it had been carved with a blowtorch. Beady eyes peered through jagged slits, surrounded by twisted shards of flesh, the color of burning charcoal. Layers of blubber-like flesh draped her narrow neck. She stood no more than four-foot-five. Her ears sat unusually low on either side of her head. A flat, shieldlike chest threatened to burst through the tapered blouse that clung to an anorexic body. In stark contrast, Angus displayed boyish good looks and wavy blond hair. Driscoll wondered what lay hidden behind his shirt, buttoned from waist to neckline. Hadn’t he labeled himself an odd-i-twin?
“Here! Feast your eyes,” Angus said, as if reading the Lieutenant’s mind, ripping off the garment, exposing horrific scarifications. A collection of gargoyles, a distorted unicorn, irregularly shaped tombstones, several primitive amphibian and ophidian creatures surrounded an odd figure, its upper half, Goth, its lower, paranormal. Hues of bistre, raw umber, taupe, indigo, and Prussian blue bled haphazardly, producing the ominous and all-encompassing imagery that was his body.
“Enjoying the freak show, Lieutenant?”
“This is the end of the line, Angus. I’d prefer to see everyone walk out of here alive.”
“But we’re not alive,” said Cassie. “We have no souls. They were stolen from us.”
“You’re the thieves,” said Margaret. “You took away life.”
“Depraved life,” said Angus.
“What’d you do with your father?” Driscoll asked.
Angus looked to his sister and chuckled. “
He’s fertilizer.”
Driscoll caught Mary’s perplexed gaze. He offered a prayer for her and all present, before beginning what he believed to be their only way out of the stalemate. “You’re vicious, Angus. Subhuman. You know why I say that?”
Angus didn’t appear to care.
“Evil people kill. And there’s no doubt you’re evil.”
Angus squinted, looking as though he were trying to decipher a riddle.
“But vicious people are menacing. They take pleasure in watching their victim suffer. They’ll take a stick to a stray cat. String up a dog. You know why you fit, Angus?”
“The next victim I’m gonna kill is your sister if you don’t stop badgering me.”
“Vicious people kill because they’re callous.”
“Don’t press your luck, Lieutenant.”
“Vicious people kill the helpless. You know what that says about scum like you?”
Margaret was now anxious. She redirected her weapon on Angus.
“Scum like you-”
“Shut up!” said Angus. “Shut up or I’ll kill her.”
“Scum like you aren’t seeking revenge. They’re-”
“Shut up!” he hollered.
“They kill purely for selfish reasons. For the thrill of it. What’d you do with the horse, Angus?”
“Yo’, lady cop, tell your boss here to shut his mouth up.”
“Teener. That was her name. She too, was defenseless. Innocent. The perfect prey. How’d you kill her?”
Rage filled the teen.
“Poison? Starvation?”
“Lady, I’m talking to you. Do something. Or I swear, his sister’s gonna die.”
“That’d make you next,” said Margaret.
“I’d say you slaughtered her,” Driscoll continued. “What’d you use to carve her up?”
“Shut up!”
“A honing blade?”
“Shut up!”
“A chain saw?”
Angus looked to Margaret, disbelief in his eyes.
“Did you kill her first? Then cut her up? I’ll bet that got you off.”
Angus turned frustrated eyes on Driscoll.
“I’m betting you kept a piece of her? A trophy. You like trophies, don’t you, boy?”
“Just shut up!”
“Did you bury it here? No, you wouldn’t do that. You’d want to touch it. To-”
“Shut the fuck up!” he screamed, turning his weapon on his tormentor.
Driscoll fired first, then Margaret. Without getting off a round, Angus collapsed on the floor, blood gushing from a gaping hole above his left eye, and from another in his chest.
Cassie lunged for Angus’s gun. Margaret tackled her. She and the girl nearly rolled down the stairs. As her back crashed against the banister, causing her to lose her weapon, Margaret felt the barrel of Angus’s pistol against her stomach.
“Drop your gun!” Cassie shouted at Driscoll, as she untangled herself from Margaret. Raising the pistol, she pressed it hard against Margaret’s temple. “Now!” she ordered.
As Cassie attempted to stand, Margaret shoved an elbow into the girl’s ribcage, causing Cassie to fall into the lap of Mary Driscoll, who howled. But the gun had remained in Cassie’s hand. She thrust it into Mary’s mouth.
“Don’t-”
“Don’t what?” Cassie sneered at Driscoll. “You shot my brother.” Her gaze drifted toward Angus, while the muzzle of the Beretta pressed against Mary’s palate.
“Cassie, you can still walk out of here,” said Margaret. “Why don’t you put the gun down?”
“So you can shoot me, too?”
Driscoll was certain it was Angus who had fired the gun. Its safety was engaged. His gut told him Cassie wouldn’t know anything about such things, so, he took a step forward. She did as he’d hoped. She squeezed the trigger. The gun didn’t fire, and while Margaret moved in to cuff her, Driscoll retrieved the Beretta, pressing a forearm against Cassie’s throat.
“Please, let me go to my brother,” she pleaded.
The two officers released their hold. Though cuffed behind her back, she threw herself on top of Angus and sobbed uncontrollably.
Driscoll rushed to his sister, kissed the top of her head, and caressed her.
“How’d I do?” asked Mary.
“What?”
“Did I get the part? Boy, these actors are good, aren’t they? Good-O! Will ya’ listen to her? She sounds like she’s really crying. Boy, oh boy! What a day!”
Driscoll didn’t know what to think. “Mary, you just-”
“Ssshh. I don’t think she’s done.”
Margaret smiled at the sight of Driscoll gently rocking his sister in his arms, fully in touch with both her detestation and her sympathy for the twins. Doing an about-face, she descended the stairs, leaving the pair of siblings to experience their own multiplicity of emotions.
Chapter 99
It had been two weeks since the apprehension of the killer twins. Most of New York’s citizenry had turned their attention to a rash of fires that had spanned the last ten days. It was believed a serial arsonist was torching Catholic churches. In Queens, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Rita’s had been targeted, as was Saint Margaret Mary’s in Brooklyn. NYPD’s Arson/Explosion Squad was on high alert and had joined forces with the Bureau of Fire Investigation. Their probe, or lack of it, according to the Brooklyn Archdiocese, filled the headlines of both the Post and the Daily News.
But Janet Huff didn’t have the luxury of kicking back and reading either paper. She was too busy with her own. Hers was not like the Post in any way. Nor was it even remotely similar to the News. Although there would be a legion of people who would challenge her, every word, every sentence, every paragraph that went into any one of her articles was thoroughly researched and its validity substantiated.
When time allowed.
More often than one would imagine, an exclusive was handed to her gratuitously. Often anonymously. Although what she now held in her hand appeared to be gifted from such a person, her instincts told her the offering would end up in the trash. The flash memory card had arrived this morning by mail. There was no letter attached. No note. Not even a Post-it. The manufacturer’s label had been partially removed. There was no return address on the small envelope, but the postmark said it’d been mailed from New York. The sender had managed to correctly spell the name of the paper, in red pencil no less, but that was not the case with her name. “Too Miss Jane Huffer” it read. Her donor was no rocket scientist.
Sensing either a grade-schooler or a prankster was involved, she declared it trash and had her arm cocked to toss it. But from the corner of her eye she spotted what she believed to be the manufacturer’s logo on what remained of the label. If indeed it was, this had come from no elementary school digital. Whoever had purchased this one-inch square of blue plastic was into some very serious picture-taking.
Rummaging through her drawer, she produced a plug-and-play, set it up on her computer, inserted the memory card, and took a peek.
Chapter 100
Margaret Aligante was with Driscoll inside the Lieutenant’s office. They were eagerly awaiting the results of a mission Thomlinson had taken on.
The Lieutenant was aggravated. He was certain Malcolm Shewster orchestrated the attempt to kill the twins, which, had Thomlinson not intervened, would have likely killed them along with his sister, several NYPD officers, and a host of innocent citizens. Perhaps, him and Margaret as well. He’d been informed a grenade could be lobbed from three hundred feet; the range of the launcher exceeded a mile.
His frustration involved the fact that Shewster would never be held accountable. Thankfully, because it had been interrupted, but exasperatingly because there was no irrefutable evidence to link the man to the crime. Crime Scene came up with nothing that placed the shooter, the utility transport vehicle, or Shewster on that rooftop or anywhere near it. Even if they had a tape of the probable phone conversation that set the assault in
motion, Driscoll could produce no warrant to support the unauthorized tap.
He also knew that Shewster had Angus believe he and Cassie, the pair with a list of felony murder and kidnapping charges pending, would be airlifted out of the country. Probably with his own sister in tow. Their phone conversation surely pointed that way. But that surveillance was also unauthorized and the event never took place!
But the day wasn’t over.
The only good news was that his sister thought she had been cast in a play throughout the entire ordeal. She was so intent on a good performance that she wet herself rather than asking Angus, the director, to take five. Thank you, Lord!
The eight-by-ten photos of the frolicking Angus and the young Shewster woman shared the front pages of the Daily News, the Post, and (in an edited version) the New York Times and were spread across Driscoll’s desk.
His attention was diverted toward them.
“Angus’s tattoos don’t look so menacing in print,” Margaret said.
“His eyes do. And they tell all. In contrast, look at the expression on Shewster. She looks to be having a hell of a time.”
“It’s a syndicated story. My money says Shewster’s already hit every newsstand in a twenty-mile radius of his residence to purchase as many copies of the Los Angeles Times as the trunk of his Lincoln could hold.”
“He’s in for a challenge with the other eight hundred and fifty thousand subscribers hailing from Grand Forks, North Dakota, on down into San Diego,” said Driscoll, eyeing six other graphic images that filled pages two and three of the Post.
“If he put the phone on mute, turned off the intercom at the front gate, and slept in, he may have missed it.”
“He’s in California, where anything’s possible. Maybe CNN will send a beach plane with a roaring engine over his compound with Angus and Gwennypoo lagging behind, their vivid copulation boldly displayed on one of those tacky streamers.”
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