Bone Thief
( John Driscoll - 1 )
Thomas O`Callaghan
Thomas O`Callaghan
Bone Thief
She was sitting before him, duct tape sealing her mouth and binding her arms and legs to the chair. She reeked of fear, but Colm saw only the terror in her eyes.
“I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to finally meet you,” he said, pulling up a chair. “The personal touch is lost when corresponding over the Internet. It did permit me to gather volumes of information about you. But in exchange you learned nothing about me. That’s not fair. Wouldn’t you agree? I can’t tell you why, but it’s important to me that you go to your grave knowing who it was that sent you there.”
The woman’s eyes widened. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“My name is Colm Pierce. Although my birth name was O’Dwyer. My adoptive parents, the Pierces, thought my name should be changed. Wonderful parents, the Pierces.”
He stood up. Behind his head five meat hooks dangled from a stone ceiling. She moaned, biting into the plumbing tape and tasting its metallic resin.
He walked to the stove and opened the oven door. Rubbing his fingers on its blackened walls, he returned to his captive, streaked her cheeks from ear to ear and encircled her eyes with soot.
He left the room. When he returned, he was pushing a gurney. It held a tray of surgical instruments. Selecting the Bard-Parker scalpel, he turned to face his Deirdre.
She trembled as the skin of her neck welcomed the glimmering blade.
Chapter 1
It was an autumn day, brisk with the threat of a harsh winter. The air was filled with moisture. The weatherman had predicted rain.
A flock of laughing girls had braved the elements and had come to the park to see me play. Like a chorus of cheerleaders, they lined the sides of the playing field.
“Go get ’em, Colm!” their voices echoed as I took my position on the offensive line.
The play was called. The ball was snapped. I began to run, watching as the pigskin spiraled toward me. Just as I was about to catch it, I was tackled by an off-leash golden retriever intent on being part of the game. The collision with the dog leveled me.
“My God! Briosca knocked him out!”
“Give him room to breathe!”
“Someone call an ambulance!”
“Wake up! Wake up!”
My eyes opened to the dreariness of my tiny room. The dream evaporated, replaced by the nightmare of wakefulness.
Mother’s eyes, grim and remorseless, stared at me, and I felt a tinge of nostalgia for the dog that had assaulted me, wishing to return to the dream, where the perils were predictable.
“Get up,” she said. “Your father wants you.”
Mother prided herself on being the obedient wife, and in that capacity, was exercising her duty to execute Father’s wishes, no matter their eccentricities. She had been ordered to awaken my sister and me and to bring us down to the subcellar, where Father skinned his birds.
A chill came over me when I sat up. I knew it wasn’t the temperature of the room. My body was girding itself for the approaching horror.
My sister, Rebecca, came racing into my room, the remnants of sleep still fresh in her eyes.
“Colm, Colm, again?” she whimpered.
Mother returned and led Rebecca and me downstairs. We were prodded through the cellar, passing a gurney where a gutted heron, an egret, and a peregrine falcon waited to be skinned, stuffed, and mounted.
Down in the subcellar we were brought before Father. He sat at the blood-soaked worktable, crouched on his rickety stool, where he could coil and strike like a venomous snake. His pockmarked face, weathered by time and ravaged by overindulgence, surrounded deep-set eyes. Eyes that seemed lifeless, like those of a hooked fish. The glow at the end of his cigarette struggled to stay lit, gasping for oxygen, breathing the emanations of his alcohol-drenched sweat.
Mother, who always looked as though she were about to be thrown from a plane, rummaged through the pocket of her soiled apron and produced a vial. She unscrewed the cap and shook out two yellow tablets.
“Time for your chemo,” she said.
“To hell with the chemo! I wanna be buried with hair on my balls!” Father bellowed, swatting the pills out of Mother’s hand.
“Oh, Bugler,” Mother sighed.
“I don’t have much time, Evelyn. The children must learn this trade. Gather ’round the table, kids. Watch my every move.”
I looked at my sister, who had positioned herself across the table from me. Mother and Father acted as if we had been summoned to this dreadful place for the first time. We were not. We were part of the hellish ordeal nightly.
It was as though Father had read my thoughts, for he sneered at me as he reached for a large bird from a wooden shelf. “This here is a pheasant from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,” he grumbled. “A twelve-gauge Mossberg brought the sucker down. Now watch, I’m placing the bird on the worktable, spread eagle, breast up. I’m stuffing the beak with cotton to catch the blood.”
I closed my eyes and fought back the urge to vomit.
“Pay attention!” Mother barked, swatting me on the back of my head.
Father’s angry eyes found mine and rested there for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, withdrawing his glare, he picked up a lance and continued the lesson. “This here’s a lance, and I’m gonna use it to cut below the pheasant’s neck to its asshole. You wanna open the skin only. Stay away from the flesh. See how I peel away just the skin with my fingers?” Father stopped. He looked to Mother. “Evelyn, where’s the damn flour?”
“Rebecca, get the package of Pillsbury from the kitchen and bring it here,” Mother ordered.
Becky scurried up the stairs, her ponytail flopping behind her. When she returned, she was holding a sixteen-ounce bag of enriched confectionery flour.
“Look, kids, I’m sprinkling the flour on the bird’s skin. It sops up the scum.”
A second wave of nausea hit me. I looked at Becky. Her face was ashen, her eyes half closed.
“Now, I’m using a surgeon’s curved scissor to snip the critter’s legs. There. No more legs. That’ll make it easier to skin the rest of him. See. Wha’d I tell ya? Just look how nicely this skin slides off. OK, who can tell me what comes next?”
“Off with its head,” I muttered.
“That’s right. I’m using a boning knife to lop off its head. We’ll put the head aside and work on it in a minute. First, I’ve got to ream a hole at the base of the neck with these here wire cutters. Like that. OK, now, it’s time for the head. Damn it, Evelyn, where’s the borax?”
“Rebecca, look under the sink.”
Becky rushed up the stairs again, returned with the carton of borax, and handed it to Father.
“On second thought, hold the borax. These are coming out nicely. Why ruin tomorrow’s breakfast?”
He had palmed the pheasant’s head and was using a spoon to scoop out the bird’s brains, which he plopped into a Tupperware bowl.
“These are for my scrambled eggs,” he said, handing the bowl to Mother.
“Colm, these go in the fridge upstairs,” said Mother.
I flew up the stairs and placed the bowl in the fridge. A third wave of nausea seized me. I headed for the toilet near the back of the house.
“What’s taking you so long?” Father bellowed, stopping me in midstride.
“Right away, Dad,” I stammered as I rushed down the stairs and sidled up to the table. Risking another swat from Mother, Becky and I closed our eyes, for we knew what came next.
Thankfully, Mother stood mute as Father reached for the melon scoop and, staring into the pheasant’s dark pupils, plucked out both eyes.
“Colm, line up two number twelves. Make sure they’re brown.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
My assignment was to retrieve the cardboard box that held the glass eyes, select the ordered pair, and bring them to Father. I marched toward the metal shelving that lined the rear wall of the subcellar, pulled down the corrugated box, and lifted its lid. A multitude of artificial eyes glared up at me. As always, I shuddered.
“What’s keeping those eyes, Colm?”
A shriek came from atop the basement’s shelving, shooting splinters of fear up my spine. A skittering sound followed.
“Bugler, what was that?” cried Mother.
“Daddy, we got rats!” Becky whimpered, her brown eyes pooling with tears.
“That ain’t no rat,” Father grinned.
A second shriek, more bone piercing than the first, discombobulated me. The box leaped out of my hands, launching the agate eyes into their own frenzied trajectories. My father’s face went through a transformation. The muscles of his jaw knotted. A furrow cut deep into his forehead.
“Now look what you’ve done!”
He stood up. My heart burst.
His face became warlike. He let loose a cry, unfathomable and archaic, like the howl of a Celtic warrior.
My sister and I watched in horror. I knew my life hung on his very breath. He could choke me with his brute hands or spare my life.
He ground the strewn eyes under the heel of his hiking boot, leaned his distorted face into mine, and said, “I could snuff you out, son. And it wouldn’t matter much to the sun or the moon or the stars.”
The sound of a blaring siren jarred Colm’s consciousness to the present. A homeless woman pushing a Key Food shopping cart had collided with a Volvo, activating its alarm.
In a flash, he refocused on the task at hand. That afternoon he had followed the housewife as she drove that Volvo from the Kings Plaza Shopping Mall to this dimly lit parking lot outside Ralph Avenue’s retail strip.
Her sole purpose for going to the mall was to meet with him for the first time. Colm took pleasure in knowing he had stood her up. But what thrilled him more was that she had now become his quarry.
Seated behind the wheel of his van, he watched as she dashed out of the video store toward the Volvo. She got to her car and depressed the panic button, killing the siren.
Colm stared at the stiletto heels she had donned for their first encounter, at her meaty fingers clutching the rented tape. Inside his parka, he touched the rag soaked in Halothane. The homeless woman drifted from sight. His target was now alone in the deserted parking lot.
He struck.
As he dragged the housewife’s body to the sliding door of his van, his gaze fell upon the videotape she had dropped on the parking lot’s asphalt. He picked it up.
It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed.
That was a flick she’d never see again.
He’d watch it for her.
Chapter 2
Colm spilled a tube of Max Factor Burnt Umber lipstick, a Lancome compact, and a Tampax tampon from her pocketbook onto the meat-cutting block in his basement’s kitchen, in what Colm liked to call the operatory. The room was fitted with all the gadgetry needed for his murderous spree, and was dingy in comparison to the grandeur of the rest of the mansion.
He sniffed the tube of lipstick and the compact, and lingered on the virgin tampon. Her scent enveloped them all.
She was sitting before him, duct tape sealing her mouth and binding her arms and legs to the chair. She reeked of fear, but Colm saw only the terror in her eyes.
“I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to finally meet you,” he said, pulling up a chair. “The personal touch is lost when corresponding over the Internet. It did permit me to gather volumes of information about you, but in exchange you learned nothing about me. That’s not fair. Wouldn’t you agree? I can’t tell you why, but it’s important to me that you go to your grave knowing who it was that sent you there.”
The woman’s eyes widened. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Colm continued.
“My name is Colm Pierce. Although my birth name was O’Dwyer. My adoptive parents, the Pierces, thought my name should be changed. Wonderful parents, the Pierces.
“Please forgive me if I’m boring you. I just thought you should know my name. Oh, and by the way, although I’ve been toying with the idea for the past few years, you’re my first.”
He stood up. Behind his head five meat hooks dangled from a stone ceiling.
Gastric juices tumbled in the pit of her stomach. He imagined the taste of bile that surely coated her throat. Her breasts were swollen from the terror. Were her nipples sore?
He reached inside her purse and withdrew a leather wallet. In it were four plastic sleeves, suitable for photographs. Three of those sleeves contained snapshots of a little girl.
“I don’t rob cradles,” he muttered.
He slouched toward her.
She braced herself, expecting an assault.
There was none. Instead, he caressed her face and whispered her name.
“Deirdre.”
He walked to the stove and opened the oven door. Rubbing his fingers on its blackened walls, he returned to his captive, streaked her cheeks from ear to ear and encircled her eyes with soot.
“Don ghrian agus don ghealach agus do na realtoga,” he chanted in Old Irish. To the sun and the moon and the stars.
He left the room. When he returned, he was pushing a gurney. It held a tray of surgical instruments. Selecting the Bard-Parker scalpel, he turned to face his Deirdre.
She trembled as the skin of her neck welcomed the glimmering blade.
Chapter 3
The ambient air that hung above the cemetery was as cold as the bodies the graveyard encased. The sparrows that usually trumpeted their presence were elsewhere, seeking shelter from the rain that was about to fall. Only the lonesome cry of a cricket pierced the stillness.
Police Lieutenant John W. Driscoll, his face etched in grief, reached out his hand and let it fall on the grainy texture of his daughter’s granite tombstone. Tears moistened his eyelids.
“Good morning, my little one,” he breathed, eyeing the stone’s epitaph: “A Ray of Sunshine,” words that spoke the language of his heart.
He envisioned his daughter’s smile, and his lips responded in kind. “Daddy’s here,” he whispered.
In life, she had always known how to lighten his heart when all else failed him. And in return, he made sure that she was never darkened by memories like those of his own childhood at the hands of an alcoholic father and a despondently depressed mother. No, Nicole had never felt what he’d felt: like an orphan, shipwrecked.
It was six years since the accident that took the life of his daughter and nearly killed his wife. And in those six years, he had visited his daughter’s grave site religiously.
“I brought you a present,” he murmured, reaching inside his jacket pocket, from which he produced an Egyptian alabaster music box. He placed it on the cold stone and lifted its lid. The first few notes of Vivaldi’s Concerto in D Major rang in the stillness of the graveyard.
“This is for your collection,” he said.
His cellular purred. “Driscoll here. When? Where? I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
He genuflected on the lawn and leaned the music box against the tombstone.
“They need me,” he sighed, and kissed the stone.
Chapter 4
Driscoll guided his rain-swept Chevy along the meandering roadway that sliced through Prospect Park, then parked his cruiser alongside the yellow-and-black police tape that cordoned off the crime scene. He hated rain. He had promised his wife, Colette, that someday they would settle on an island with no clouds, discard his shield, collect his retirement pay, and never drift far from shore. His dream remained on hold.
He swept back his sandy hair and approached the abandoned boathouse where the remains of a woman had been discovered. He win
ced at the expression of dread on the face of the rookie cop who greeted him. The bottom of the officer’s trousers was stained, and the stench of vomit hung in the air.
“You first on the scene?” Driscoll asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“First homicide?”
The officer nodded. “I feel like I’m caught in a nightmare staged at a slaughterhouse.”
Inside the boathouse, the scent of fresh blood was dizzying. Its acidity assaulted Driscoll’s sinuses. He approached Larry Pearsol, the city’s Chief Medical Examiner, who was hunched over what was left of the victim. Jasper Eliot, Pearsol’s assistant, was busy photographing the remains.
“What do we have, Larry?” asked Driscoll
“Our guy is vicious. She’s gutted like a fish. I can’t find a bone in her, and the head, hands, and feet are missing.”
The eviscerated remains lay sprawled on the rotting wooden floor. The boneless flesh vaguely resembled something human. Its breasts said female.
The sight of the corpse disgusted Driscoll. This crime was particularly heinous, its perpetrator barbaric. What would drive someone to commit such an atrocity? And why take the head, hands, and feet? What was that all about?
As he stared down at the mutilated remains, he was reminded of his mother’s mangled corpse after the New York City Fire Department cut her dismembered body out of the entangling steel of a Long Island Railroad passenger train. His mother had ended her life in the summer of 1969 by hurling herself in front of the oncoming train. Driscoll had been eight years old. He had accompanied his mother to the station that day. She had made him wait at the bottom of the stairs, telling him she had to meet the 10:39 from Penn Station. As the train had screeched into the station above, a river of what he believed to be fruit punch cascaded down, splattering the asphalt and the windshields of passing motorists. A woman had jumped out from behind the wheel of her car, screaming, “My God, that’s blood!”
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