The Screaming Room

by Thomas O'Callaghan

  “They’re the ones. I’m having a problem putting aside strong feelings of sympathy for the pair. We believe they’re killing their adult victims to avenge years of sexual abuse. There’s more to their motive, but the likelihood of them being sexually abused has stirred up not what I’d call a treasure trove. I’m rocketed right back to my bedroom as a child. Where I was abused! Where I was raped by my father! Their father apparently forced them into prostitution. I know I took an oath that calls for me to stop them. Arrest them. Shoot them, if it comes to that. The struggle I’m having is because I want to save them. I try to be objective. To focus on their crimes and not their dreadful life. But, if they walked in here right now and confessed, I’m more likely to take them home, secretly harbor them, and get them help, instead of slapping on the cuffs. I know my issue with men stems from my being abused. I’ve lived with that for a long time and I know it may take equally as long to resolve. But this is immediate. These twins are out there killing people and it’s my job to arrest them as soon as possible. You sure you don’t have a super-sized pill for a quick fix so I can to do that? The way things are going inside my head, I’m liable to put my job—hell, my life—in jeopardy by aiding and abetting this pair. The entire city sees them as demons. I see them as victims. I live with that every waking hour. John offered to discreetly arrange for a transfer. I got to tell you. I’m getting closer and closer to accepting one.”

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “I’d feel like I’d be running away from responsibility.”

  “What would your best friend suggest?”

  “My best friend? I’m not sure I have a best friend.”

  “Then you’ll need to become your own.”

  “Okay. And what would I tell myself?”

  “Think about it. Suppose for a minute that your brother or your sister, or anyone who might fit the bill as a best friend, was driving a car, quickly approaching a T-intersection where they had to decide to turn one way or the other to avoid colliding into a house and injuring themselves. They can’t stop. They must go one way or the other. Which way would you tell them to turn for their absolute safety?”

  “I don’t know if I could.”

  “Why not? Remember, they can’t stop. If they don’t turn, they’re very likely to injure themselves. Perhaps fatally.”

  “I wouldn’t be able to guarantee their safety because I don’t know what’s around each corner.”

  “Sort of like life.”

  “Right.”

  “And, although you’re not sure what’s around each corner, you would suggest that they turn, correct? Remember, there’s that big house. And it’s getting closer and closer.”

  “I’m not sure I’m getting this. Or how it relates.”

  “You’re not necessarily supposed to. Therapy is a process. That’s why we don’t recommend the big pill. You see, you would tell them to turn. Turning right could present new challenges. Likewise, turning left is likely to present new, but different, challenges.”

  Margaret looked and felt befuddled.

  “I’m afraid we need to stop now.”

  “Now?”

  “It’d be a good time. Trust me.” Fahey cast her a huge smile. “I would like to set up future appointments. Would you be open to that?”

  “I think I’d better.”

  “Good. Check your upcoming tour schedule and call me. I’m here Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until six. I’d like to meet once a week. Would that work for you?”

  Margaret nodded and stood.

  “We’re going to work at both issues together, Margaret. In the meantime, since you said you’re not sure if you have a best friend, I’d like to apply for the job.”

  “That’d be nice.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way.”

  Margaret headed for the door.

  “Oh, there’s one more thing. Between now and the next time we meet, think about the advice you’d give the driver. Don’t focus too much on which way you’d tell them to turn, but concentrate on why you’d instruct them to make the turn.”

  “I will.” I think.

  “Great! With today’s session we’re off to a good start.”

  Following an exchange of smiles, Margaret disappeared out the door.

  Chapter 58

  Driscoll was at his desk speaking on the phone with Susan Lenihan from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

  “There’re some details of the case I want to run by you. As a behavior analyst, you’re in a position to help.”

  “Be happy to.”

  “When I spoke to a young lady who claimed to be at one time our teen suspect’s girlfriend, she told me a couple of things, one of which I didn’t think fit.”

  “What was that?”

  “She claimed he was sleeping with his sister. I’m no analyst, but I can’t see a guy forced to prostitute himself for six years wanting to have sex.”

  “That would seem logical, but I’m afraid trauma victims don’t always follow the dictates of what might be considered predictable behavior.”

  Driscoll was startled. “You mean he might be having sex with her?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Please, make me a believer.”

  “Without having him on a couch, this is pure conjecture. Children forced to prostitute themselves sometimes feel excessively guilty. They forget who the victim is. If they lean on themselves heavily enough, it could lead to raucous promiscuity and extreme hypersexuality, which may include incest.”

  “So, she may have it right. Interesting. She also said he had exhibited intense mood swings. One minute he’d be flying high as a kite, the next minute he’s talking suicide.”

  “Mood swings that concurrent could point to a number of things. Bipolar affective and interictal dysphoric disorders immediately come to mind. With his forced lifestyle, he’d be at a higher risk for either than, say, your average high school student furtively exploring sex under the bleachers. Not only are you chasing after a pair of homicidal maniacs. They could also be two very sick puppies, both physically and emotionally.”

  “Thank you, Susan. This crash course in Behavior 101 was enlightening.”

  “We only covered two paragraphs of the first chapter. But you’re welcome, just the same. If you want to fast-forward to chapter six, all you need to do is call.”

  Driscoll thanked her again and hung up. He thought he detected flirtation in her last remark. Not in what she said, but in how she said it. Or was he imagining things? He was newly single, out of the game for years.

  Aligante entered his office and sat.

  “Uh-oh. That look on your face says you’d like to sit down with the twins and smoke their pipe,” Driscoll said. “I’m praying the gold shield in your pocket says otherwise.”

  “These kids have been traumatized, John. Far worse than me. They probably killed their father believing it was the only way out of their nightmare. Hell! I thought of killing my father. Often.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No, but a voice inside me cheered at his funeral and suggested I set off fireworks.”

  “You call Elizabeth yet?”

  “She sends her best.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear. Tap Cedric on the shoulder and ask him to join us. I’ll let him tell you firsthand about the nugget of gold he and his contacts in LA found in a closet.”

  “One Detective Thomlinson coming up.”

  When Margaret reappeared, Thomlinson was at her side. After they took their seats, Driscoll spoke. “From the top, Cedric.”

  “My pleasure!” Thomlinson leaned back in his chair. Having an eager audience encouraged the man. He smiled at Driscoll, gestured to Margaret as though he were tipping his hat, and began. “The tracking of sex offenders in California falls to the responsibility of the state’s Department of Justice.”

  “Why do I get the feeling I know where he’s going with this?”

  “Listen and learn,”
said Driscoll.

  Thomlinson, amused by the chatter, continued. “Not only does the DOJ maintain the database but they also post most of it on the Internet.”

  “Most of it?” Margaret griped.

  “The crimes that some of these sleazebags have been convicted of aren’t considered abominable enough to warrant Web posting. They get to see their names in the registry but are spared the embarrassment of Internet stardom. Ah, California! Ya gotta love that state! Once a year, within five days of their birthday, the entire cast of misfits is required to renew their registration. A belated birthday greeting from Arnie the Governator, no doubt. As you’d expect, the offender must update his info pronto, if he moves, or, God forbid, becomes homeless. My favorite requirement is listed as penal code section two-nine-zero, subdivision f-three. It requires the degenerates to update the registry with any name change. They’ve got five days to do it or get a nastygram from the authorities.” A grin formed on Thomlinson’s smug face.

  “I know that look,” said Margaret.

  “June 1998. A UCLA grad student gets nailed for oral copulation with a minor. It seems the poli-sci enthusiast lured a fourteen-year-old male back to her apartment to give him an up close and personal lesson on what she had learned in the Art of Good Fellatio 101. The recipient’s name was purged from the record but our doer’s was not. Does the name Shewster ring a bell?”

  “I knew it. Abigail Shewster.”

  A broader grin formed on Thomlinson’s face.

  “Here comes the best part,” said Driscoll.

  “Gweneth Shewster,” said Thomlinson.

  “Who the hell is Gweneth Shewster?” Margaret searched his eyes for an answer.

  “Gweneth Shewster. Date of birth August 12, 1976. Daughter to Malcolm and Penny Shewster of Holmby Hills.”

  “Whoa!”

  “That’s an excerpt from her obituary,” said Thomlinson. “Made all the noteworthy papers. Even the New York Times. Sunday edition! Very modest funeral, though. Attended only by family. Gave daddy an immediate excuse to have the little darling’s name deleted from the sex offenders registry. No sir. There was no further need to renew this lady’s subscription.”

  “May I take it from here?” Driscoll asked.

  “By all means.”

  “Malcolm Shewster slipped. I’m sure he isn’t even aware of it. When I first met him in Sully Reirdon’s office, he boasted that he was prepared to offer a large sum of money to the man who delivered the psychopath that killed his daughter, an only daughter. And he was correct. He only had one daughter. But no man buries an only daughter twice.”

  “Unless you’re Malcolm Shewster,” said Margaret.

  “Precisely. He was powerless to force Gweneth’s crime to go unpunished. Part of that punishment included her name appearing on the sexual offenders registry. I’m sure he fought that armed with a bazooka. I’m guessing neither his money nor influence could sway the courts. But he’s Malcolm Shewster. Orchestrating a fabricated death was not beneath him.”

  “Shortly after the burial, the Shewster clan, diminished though they were in number, relocated to San Luis Obispo,” said Thomlinson. “Got themselves a new house, new surroundings, new neighbors.”

  “And gave birth to a twenty-two-year-old daughter. They called the newborn Abigail.”

  “Shewster was good at the game,” added Thomlinson. “He had Abigail visit a plastic surgeon, pick out a new look, do something with her hair. Hell, he even threw in a boob job! The birth records were made to appear like any run-of-the-mill adoption. He might not have been able to stop the authorities from posting Gweneth’s nom de famille.”

  “But he’d be damned if he couldn’t remove it,” said Driscoll.

  “That’s why California’s penal code, section two-nine-zero, subdivision f-three is my favorite. It’s the one that mandates the Department of Justice be informed of any name change.” Thomlinson smiled and unpocketed a cigar.

  Chapter 59

  Margaret hurried into Driscoll’s office to bring him up to speed on her ongoing investigation involving the duplicitous, somewhat clonelike, Shewster woman.

  “Your boy Shewster shoulda been a bricklayer,” said Margaret, using a dampened finger to blot out a stain on her skirt.

  “Why’s that?” said Driscoll, distracted by the flash of thigh her action produced.

  “Because the son of a bitch who managed to have his daughter’s dental records, from when she was six, mind you, come back with Abigail’s name on them is also good at building walls. No problem getting at Abigail’s, excuse me, Gweneth’s cell phone. It was retrieved at the zoo. A tad banged up. The overgrown chimps must have played Frisbee with it. But her computer? That’s a story unto itself. Despite the fact that the detective we flew to California was armed with enough paper to warrant the seizure of Michael Jackson’s Neverland Valley Ranch, his efforts to retrieve the computer were stymied by a wall of high-priced lawyers. At one point, he toyed with the idea of getting Tom Cruise to do his Mission: Impossible dangling-from-the-ceiling trick to get his hands on it.”

  “You catch Mission: Impossible III?”

  “Nope.” Jesus! Is he about to ask me out?

  “Me neither. Tell me he got the computer.”

  “Yep. It’s on its way to Technical Support.”

  “And the phone?”

  “Ah, the phone. Appears this West Coast socialite wasn’t much of a chatterbox. A few numbers led back to California. Never more than two minutes. We’re tracking them down. But the interesting calls, three actually, were made to and received from an eight-five-eight exchange. One outgoing six days before her body was found, followed by an incoming, three and a half hours later. The third call, outgoing, was placed the day before they found her in the cave.”

  “If the ME’s right about the time of death, that last one was placed the day she was murdered. Let me guess. The eight-five-eight exchange is a disposable.”

  “You got it. The number-one choice of drug dealers from coast to coast. Who knows? These crazies may have one of those World GSM phones with an International Sim card. They are hooking up with globe-trotters.”

  “We’re a long way from rotary dialing.”

  “Mr. San Antonio? Aka the guy who got whacked at the aquarium? Communications says he also called the eight-five-eight number. Once.”

  “They couldn’t have both picked the number out of thin air. I’m thinking Web site.”

  “Me, too. But I’m be willing to bet when we get our hands on his hard drive, it’s gonna show a lot of shopping at Disney.com. Remember, he was caught surfing rent-a-ho sites and got fired for it. And according to his résumé he took up designing Web sites for a living. He’d know how to cover his tracks.”

  “Probably used a laptop that’s buried deeper than he is.”

  “Have Tech Support use industrial-sized crowbars on Miss Shewster’s computer. We need to know her cyber secrets yesterday!”

  Chapter 60

  Cassie’s body looked like the letter C. With her ass pressed against the worn couch in their new lodgings, she was digging at an ingrown toenail with a corkscrew. She had watched as Angus’s inner demons took hold of him. The malaise could last a few minutes. Or upward of an hour. She would always try to keep him engaged. “We both knew the chance of them backing off was at minus-a-zillion. Even making it seem like you were a retard in the e-mail didn’t help. To them we’re still the bad guys. It’s not like we were asking for a goddamn medal-pinning ceremony. But we did rid the world of a lot of degenerates.”

  “And we ain’t done yet.”

  Angus felt as though he’d been swallowed whole; the walls of their refuge, becoming the hollow of the creature that had consumed him, making him feel trapped and vulnerable. He imagined he was under the scrutiny of an unseen snake, coiled and ready to strike. The predicament put the killing spree on hold. Others would likely resign themselves to their fate, praying that a mask of anonymity would shield them from further peril. But not
Angus. Every fiber of his body demanded he exorcise himself, reclaim his weapon, and continue his righteous undertaking. His vengeance had become insatiable.

  “Our game board. We shouldn’t’a left it. Now we’re gonna need a new one,” said Cassie.

  “Gaming is over.”

  “We’re gonna stop?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Jeeez! I thought ya really lost it. We’ll hafta forget about the Web site. They’ll be all over that. TwoNaughtyFreaks is officially shut down. Outta business. It’s gotta show up on one of the stiffs’ Favorites Lists. I’m thinkin’ chat rooms.”

  Angus stood. That was a sign he was coming out of it. Hang on, Angus. Fight it!

  “No chat rooms!” he said. “They’re crawlin’ with monitors. Ya think you’re talkin’ to a deserving target and it turns out to be J. Edgar Hoover.”

  “He died.”

  “Whatever.”

  “We can still use the phone, right?”

  “Yeah, but we can’t go out and hire one of those freakin’ planes to write the number in the sky. That means another Web site. New name. New menu. No twins. You can bet your ass they’re swarmin’ around every twin site on the planet. I’ll get ours routed through Nigeria. Driscoll tries to trace the IP address, he’ll end up on Mars.”

  “Nigeria will cost a shitload of money, Angus. There’s like sixty zillion sites. They can’t monitor all of ’em.”

  “Oh yeah? Last month the freakin’ NASA headquarters in D.C. was raided. They caught some high-ranking dude, right outta Mission Control, dealing in kiddie porn over the Internet. If they can trace a guy who knows how to disappear into outer space, they can locate anybody.”

  “You’re watchin’ too much CNN.”

  “And this new pope. Benenick—”

  “Benedict, you idiot.”

  “Whatever. There’s this old priest—”

  “Don’t even go there.”

  “He’s like eighty-somethin’. Marsh or Marshall something. Outta Mexico. A big shot. A bishop, I think. Anyway, he gets called in by the pope for some nasty they say he did sixty years ago.”