The Screaming Room

by Thomas O'Callaghan

  His cell phone dispelled his rapture.

  “Two of your key players just hooked up by phone,” said an excited Danny O’Brien from inside TARU. “We put Angus on East Sixtieth near the FDR when he got through to Shewster. Their conversation was not what I’d call G-rated. You want me to play it back?”

  “I’ll have to settle for the gist,” said Thomlinson starting up the Yukon. “Shewster just flew out of his hotel.”

  By the time Shewster’s limo crossed Park Avenue, heading east on Fifty-ninth, Thomlinson had been brought up to speed on Angus’s demand for an airlift out of the country and Shewster’s assurance that he’d arrange it with Driscoll. But both he and O’Brien had a question. Thomlinson wanted to know what Shewster meant when he told Angus not to do anything rash. He’d personally see to it that Angus and his sister were long gone before day’s end. Not to worry. They’d never see Driscoll again. O’Brien’s inquiry involved whether Thomlinson and the Lieutenant were aware of what Abigail Shewster had hidden up her sleeve. Her pink sleeve. He also asked who Gwennypoo was.

  Thomlinson’s response was succinct. “Don’t lose the tape.”

  Chapter 93

  Angus had rummaged through Mary Humphrey’s bag, securing what he’d hope to find: a ladies’ compact. He’d snapped it apart and had the mirrored portion affixed to the end of a wooden stick that measured approximately eighteen inches. It was grooved at one end. Cassie had supplied it.

  “Where’d this come from?” he asked her.

  “You don’t wanna know.”

  Although the mirror was small, when Angus planted himself below the window and held it over his head, he could survey the area outside, which was littered with an assortment of police vehicles and a bevy of police officers apparently in position. For what? he wasn’t sure. He adjusted the view. “Will ya look at that? They’ve got shooters on the rooftops across the street and I doubt they’re hunting geese, unless there’s a flock perched above us. Their rifles are all pointed this way.”

  Angus watched as a dark blue automobile came to a stop several yards from the loft. A smile lit his face when a man in a dark suit got out. He summoned Cassie.

  “Driscoll?”

  “That’s him. He’s even bigger in person.”

  Cassie watched through the mirror as a woman joined him and pointed to the loft. “That lady cop is with him now. They’re making some hand gestures to the other policemen. Another glance up here. Now they’re talking.”

  What Cassie didn’t know was that Margaret was filling Driscoll in on Liz Butler’s conversation with Timothy Alfreds. Margaret reported that Butler couldn’t swear to know if Sanderson was dead or not. Though she wished he was. But she was certain Sanderson had been serving up some real treats for his riders since the twins were ten. Margaret closed by telling Driscoll that the Carbondale sheriff’s office didn’t know there was anyone living in the house but the twins.

  Cassie thought the conversation between Driscoll and the Sergeant looked innocuous. She turned and faced Angus. “You think Shewster had a chance to speak with Lieutenant Bulldog about our travel plans?”

  “We’ll soon find out. She awake?”

  “Oh, yeah! You don’t hear that whimpering?”

  “I hit the off switch an hour ago. Pull the rag out and hold the phone to her mouth.”

  “What’s the number?”

  “She’ll know it.”

  “She’d better,” said Cassie, dislodging the gag, Beretta firmly in hand. “No funny stuff, lady, or the next time your brother gets to see you you’ll be in a box. Start punchin’ numbers!”

  “Driscoll has a bullhorn in his hand,” reported Angus. “Whaddya think’ll happen next? Horn to mouth?”

  “Nope. Phone to ear.”

  Chapter 94

  Thomlinson had a pretty good idea where Shewster was headed. What he wished he knew was whether he had called anyone on the way. And if he had, what’d they talk about?

  The laptop had him turning right at the FDR. He had apparently come to a stop a half block south. That’d put him between East Sixty-first and East Sixty-second. Why two blocks from the loft?

  Thomlinson turned at the FDR, spotting the limo behind one of those trucks similar to the ones the city sends out to repair faulty streetlights. They were parked on the right side of the street approximately one hundred feet from the corner, in front of a single-story commercial structure, its security gate down, as was the case for the row of similar structures on either side of the street. The limo’s engine was idling. It didn’t appear anyone had gotten out. Thomlinson pulled in on the left, put the vehicle in park, and watched. Could Shewster be on the phone? He wasn’t driving. If he needed to place a call, that wouldn’t require him to pull over. Why had he? And why two blocks away?

  Shewster’s car continued to idle. Thomlinson continued to watch. He unpocketed his phone, intent on calling Driscoll, but the cherry picker atop the utility truck made him look up. Standing on the roof of the single-story structure was a man in dark clothing. Sharpshooter? From this distance? Thomlinson doubted it. He wasn’t holding a rifle. In fact, he wasn’t holding anything. That’s when he spotted the tripod to the man’s right. What appeared to be mounted on it caused Thomlinson to draw his weapon, bolt from the Yukon, and charge down the street hollering like a madman. This action prompted three reactions: the driver of the utility vehicle bolted away from the curb, Shewster’s chauffeur did the same, and the man on the roof disappeared.

  When Thomlinson rounded the corner on East Sixty-first, the only person he happened upon was a locksmith who was closing his shop, toolbox in hand. Despite the fact that Thomlinson was breathing heavily, wearing a disheveled suit, and had appeared out of nowhere brandishing a gun, the locksmith was quite accommodating—after he’d recovered from a rapid pulse, a surge of adrenaline, and a thunderous heartbeat. When color finally returned to the locksmith’s face, the detective gained access to the shopkeeper’s roof. A bit of high-stepping from roof to roof brought him to within inches of what had caused the ruckus.

  Thomlinson had come across a variety of weapons during the course of his crime-fighting career. But there were always surprises. And not having served in the military, today was the first time he’d ever seen an Mk19 automatic grenade launcher.

  Chapter 95

  Margaret and Driscoll had helped each other shoulder a fair amount of stress over the years. Both on the job and off. Here was a man who had only now buried his wife after losing her six years ago. Margaret was heartbroken when he confided to her that sitting beside his comatose wife was tantamount to kneeling before her open casket. My God, a six-year wake! How he managed to get out of bed in the morning was beyond her. She realized she wasn’t helping matters by dragging her own demons into their on-again, off-again relationship. Through it all, they had discovered their connection was similar to that reportedly experienced by twins, where unexplainable and extraordinary bonds exist. Ironic, considering their current case.

  That’s why the second he said hello to whomever had just called, she knew he’d been invited into a nightmare.

  “You okay?” she asked as he ended the call. “You look like you’re about to be hanged. Who was on the phone?”

  “My sister.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “She’s been abducted.”

  “Abducted? By whom?”

  Driscoll pointed to the loft.

  “The twins?”

  “They’re holding her hostage.”

  “Jesus Christ! What’d she say to you on the phone?”

  “That he’s holding a gun to her head.” His eyes targeted the second-story window, then sought Margaret’s. “She asked me the oddest question, even for her. She wanted to know if I would be the one getting them to the airport.”

  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!”