The Screaming Room Read online

  But now that chapter of his life had ended.

  Colette. It was she who had discovered Toliver’s Point. While she was a landscape painter at the New York Art Student’s League, a friend had invited her to spend a day at the beach. She found the Point’s natural setting in an urban environment enchanting. She returned often to sit at the water’s edge and paint. She fell in love with the locale to such a degree that five years later she put a down payment on her first piece of waterfront property: a summer bungalow in Toliver’s Point.

  The first night Sergeant John Driscoll was invited to the bayside community, he thought he had been transported to some distant island. After he and Colette married, the summer bungalow was renovated, winterized, and transformed into a comfortable residence they were proud to call home.

  Trying to keep feelings of abandonment in check, he cast one last glance at the walls of the bungalow, emptied now of their aquarelles and serigraphs, bolted shut the door, and headed for his parked cruiser, where he sprang the lock on the trunk and retrieved the for-sale sign, which he planted in the lawn. It was then he heard the sound of tires creeping on asphalt. Two shiny black Chryslers, bookending a Lincoln stretch limousine, pulled in at the curb. Driscoll watched as the limousine’s tinted window slid down.

  “If Mohammad doesn’t come to the mountain, well…then, the Mayor of New York must pay a visit to his top cop,” the Honorable William “Sully” Reirdon said as he stepped from his automobile.

  It annoyed the hell out of police brass, but the newly elected Reirdon prided himself on being a hands-on Mayor. Bypassing the police commissioner, borough commanders, and bureau chiefs was commonplace for the man. Hell, he once had a one on one with a beat cop because some alarmed Bronx resident complained of strangers in her neighborhood when she called his weekly Concerned Citizens radio forum. And here he was now, in Toliver’s Point.

  “You’re trespassing, Mr. Mayor. This is Democrat country.”

  “Well, will you look at that? You’ve got a million-dollar view of my city,” said the Mayor, casting his stare across the bay.

  “You could buy the place, Mr. Mayor. Keep a close eye on your city.”

  Sully Reirdon smiled at the suggestion.

  “But something tells me you didn’t travel out here to discuss beachfront real estate.”

  “You know why I’m here, John.”

  It was Driscoll’s turn to stare across the bay. “I’ll sure miss the view, but the efficiency I’ll be buying in Brooklyn Heights will cut my commute time in half,” he said.

  “John, I am very sorry about your wife. I know I should’ve been at the funeral, but I was in Albany arm-wrestling with the governor. He knows we need more cops, but he won’t release the sixty-three million he promised the city when he was elected.”

  “How about assigning some of those cops to a drunk-driving detail?”

  “I’ll give it every consideration,” the Mayor said with a nod, aware of the automobile accident that had robbed Driscoll of his wife and daughter. “John, despite what Katie Couric says, I’m not an insensitive man.”

  Driscoll stared at the politician.

  “I appreciate your not wanting to sign off on a case without crossing all the T’s. In fact, it’s admirable. I’ll make certain a competent commander does just that. Right now my city needs you. There’s a guy killing tourists, for Chrissake! And that makes him the department’s priority one. Do you know how much money visitors dropped in the Big Apple last year?”

  Driscoll obliged the Mayor with a shrug.

  “Twelve point six billion! I want you to focus on the here and now. There’ll be no time to waste on yesterday’s cases. Nobody gets to hold New York hostage on my watch. I want this tourist-scalping killer stopped dead in his tracks. And I want it done now!”

  “I wouldn’t be able to fully focus, Mr. Mayor. I’d be the wrong man for the job.” As soon as he heard himself say it, he knew he had pushed the envelope too far. But there was no way of retrieving what’d been said. “Besides, the fact that these two victims were tourists could be a coincidence. The twelve-plus billion speaks for itself. There’s a whole lotta tourists in New York.”

  “Coincidences don’t happen in my city.”

  Driscoll raised an eyebrow.

  “You know, John, you’re beginning to piss me off!” Reirdon stormed to his limousine and ducked inside. “As long as I run this town and you’re on my payroll, you’ll do as I say. Peter, get me outta here!”

  The Lincoln’s tires charred the asphalt. With the two security autos in tow, the Mayor’s limo disappeared along Point Breeze Boulevard.

  John Driscoll sat on the steps of his porch. Despite his obstinacy, he knew the assignment was unavoidable. It would become his job to formulate a strategy to catch this villain.

  Why make waves? You’re not the only cop in town, John. Reirdon said he’d have a competent person nail the case shut. It’s not like its outcome rests on the type of hammer he uses.

  Unpocketing his cell phone, he rang the Mayor on his car phone. Driscoll detected arrogance as Sully Reirdon’s voice echoed in his ear.

  “So, you’ve decided to come around, have you?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “This city doesn’t need a bout of mass hysteria, John.”

  “If these murders lead to a rash of killings, I’ll need to establish a task force. And it would be a big help if the FBI is kept at bay.”

  “You’ll wrap this up before it causes an international stir?”

  “God willing.”

  “What else will you need?”

  “Please. No female detectives assigned to this one.”

  “I’d have never guessed you were a chauvinist.”

  “I support affirmative action and the advancement of all working women. But I just buried my wife. Call it superstition. Nothing more.”

  “You have my promise. No women.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, and John, there’s one thing more.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’d better lighten up or you’ll never unload that house.”

  Driscoll could detect Reirdon’s smirk right through the phone line.

  “Then I’ll just bulldoze the place down to the sea,” he said.

  “You do that and I’ll nail you for pollution of the Atlantic shoreline. What are you asking for the place, anyway?”

  “It’s out of your price range, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I could get an insider’s deal on, say, a thirty-year mortgage.”

  “Better shop for a five. You may not be in office that long.”

  Chapter 9

  “No, the Atlantic Ocean isn’t gonna wash the house away. It’s been sitting three hundred yards from the water for the past forty years, for Chrissake!” Driscoll bellowed into the phone to his realtor. “Tell you what. I’ll throw in a couple of life vests just in case.” Driscoll wasn’t having a good day. “Maybe these folks would prefer the USS Nautilus! Hell, if they’re left wing, I could get them a good deal on a mothballed Russian sub. Whiskey class!” Driscoll slammed down the receiver, jarring Socrates, his electronic cockatiel, who, faithful to his programming, squawked. The battery-operated bird had been a gift from members of a former command. Though he’d like to, Driscoll felt it would be ill-mannered to dispose of it.

  “Lock ’em up! Aawkk! Aawkk!”

  The door to Driscoll’s office opened. Detective Thomlinson poked his head inside.

  “Lieutenant, there’s a sergeant here to see you.”

  “Throw away the key! Aawkk! Aawkk!”

  “Turn that damn bird off, will you?”

  Thomlinson walked over to the bird and clicked off its miniature toggle switch.

  “A sergeant? What’s he want?” Driscoll asked.

  “Something about the Mayor keeping his promise,” Thomlinson answered with a shrug of his shoulders. But the look on Thomlinson’s face said to Driscoll that something was up.
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  “Well, then, show him in,” Driscoll said, warily.

  With the hint of a smile, Thomlinson reached for the door and invited Driscoll’s newly assigned assistant to enter.

  The Lieutenant’s eyes widened. Standing before him was Sergeant Margaret Marie Aligante. A dazzler. At five-foot-seven she had a figure that would rival any of Veronese’s models. Her anthracite hair was long and cascaded onto her shoulders like a mane. Her dark eyes sparkled. Her nose was regal, and her jaw delicate. They created a face that was riveting and inviting. Too inviting for Lieutenant John W. Driscoll. There was history between the pair. They had recently worked together on a major homicide and during that investigation had realized they had feelings for each other and had expressed those feelings. Despite the fact his wife was in a permanent coma, Driscoll considered himself a married man and had spent many a sleepless night feeling guilty about his attraction to Margaret. But the attraction, a mutual one, was unmistakably there and so they had started seeing each other socially. At what most considered the close of the case, she and Driscoll agreed it wouldn’t be a good idea for the two of them to work together. Margaret willingly took a transfer to another homicide squad and they continued dating. When Driscoll’s wife died, the emotionally distraught Lieutenant asked for a time out, a request that Margaret granted.

  “Margaret, what gives?” It appeared to Driscoll that Margaret was trembling.

  “I come bearing a message. Believe me, it wasn’t my idea.”

  “Message? What message?”

  “Reirdon told me to tell you, and I quote: ‘I’m best suited for the job because no team delivers closure faster than we do. And as far as City Hall is concerned, police officers come in only one color. Blue. And as to gender. They surrender that each and every time they pin on their shield.’”

  Was this the man’s idea of a joke? Reirdon had promised not to send a female assistant. And of all people, Margaret! Goddamn him! Goddamn that son of a bitch!

  Margaret sat down in a swivel chair. She looked dazed. “I swear, John. I had Lieutenant Troy try to convince Reirdon to leave me be. No such luck. The Mayor was hell-bent on having me work with you.”

  Driscoll shook his head. That bastard! And look at me. I’m the fool who placed his trust in the word of a politician. He caught Margaret’s doleful gaze. She must feel terrible for her unwilling role in this deceitful maneuver. He softened. “I was glad to see you at the funeral,” he said. “That meant a lot to me. But I guess you know that.”

  “How’s Mary?”

  “She’s hanging in there. Thanks for asking.”

  Margaret smiled.

  “Well,” said Driscoll begrudgingly, “I guess if we’re going to work together again, now would be a good time to bring you up to speed.” He stuck his head out the door to his office and gestured for Thomlinson to come inside. Once the three were settled, he began. “We have two bodies, and the medical examiner coincides their approximate time of death. That gives us a four-hour window. We know the vics weren’t killed where they were found. Crime Scene reports two massive head wounds but no hair, brain matter, or blood splatter where the bodies were discovered. And since the media has been all over it, I’m sure you know both victims were scalped. We could be looking at two perps, but we can’t rule out the possibility of one guy doing both murders.”

  “The American Museum of Natural History and Coney Island are less than an hour apart. One guy coulda easily done the two,” said Thomlinson.

  “I think it’s best to consider this the work of one person until the evidence tells us otherwise,” Driscoll continued. “We’ve got the perp posing the bodies at both sites and concurrent causes of death. And, judging from what the autopsies revealed…” His voice trailed off, his mind wandering to the cold and sterile environs of the medical examiner’s mortuary he had visited earlier in the day. He envisioned himself marching down the long corridor toward the double-glass doors marked “City Morgue.”

  Behind those doors Driscoll came upon a spacious room with white tiled walls and a high ceiling. High-wattage halogen bulbs illuminated an array of cadavers positioned atop stainless steel gurneys. Those corpses, their chests and abdominal sections gaping, were attended by three coroner’s assistants, who were dissecting and weighing lifeless organs.

  On one such gurney, near the center of the room, one of the two tourists was being examined by Larry Pearsol, the city’s chief medical examiner, and Jasper Eliot, his assistant.

  “Item D214B67. Arrival Date, June 4, 2006.” Pearsol’s voice boomed into the Uher recorder. “Deceased is Helga Swenson, tentatively identified by International Passport. Remains are that of a well-developed, well-nourished female. Weight sixty-eight-point-six kilos. Height one-hundred-sixty-seven-point-six centimeters. No remarkable scars, moles, or tattoos noted. Initial examination of decedent’s fingernails reveals no evidentiary properties. Inspection of genitalia reveals no indication of rape or assault. There is no semen present. Examination of the cephalic region reveals sharp force trauma resulting in a massive head wound, measuring seven-point-six-two centimeters to right parietal, causing fracture to the skull and bone splinters to penetrate the brain. Twelve-point-seven-centimeter linear penetration to the skin of the forehead noted. Irregular tearing of scalp—”

  Pearsol hit the OFF button on the recorder to tell Driscoll that the same cranial wound pattern and evidence of scalping appeared on tourist number two, Yen Chan.

  “Lieutenant, whaddya make of the head wound?” It was Sergeant Aligante’s voice. The question rocketed Driscoll back to the present.

  “Maybe an ax,” Thomlinson suggested as Driscoll reexamined the eight-by-ten glossies in the open file on his desk.

  “More likely a tomahawk. Our boy’s into scalping.” Driscoll was becoming more comfortable with Margaret’s presence.

  “Someone piss off the Navaho and we don’t know about it?” Thomlinson ran a finger across his forehead and grabbed hold of his hair.

  “The posing says the guy’s into showcasing his work,” said Margaret. “New York might be his new exhibition hall.”

  “Say it ain’t so,” groaned Thomlinson,

  “I agree with Margaret.” Driscoll smiled at her. “This guy likes to show off his work. Right now he’s probably fantasizing over his kills. But after awhile his recollection of the murders will fade. And so will the power those fantasies have had in keeping him satiated. Once that happens, he’ll need to kill again. He’s like anyone with a compulsion. He gets high on the first kill, but in order to keep the high going, he’ll need to do it again. I’d say our guy’ll want to expand. Artists have a whale of an ego. He’s gonna want a bigger and bigger audience, a standing ovation from eight million, nine hundred thousand New Yorkers. These two murders may just be the warm-up.”

  Thomlinson had a puzzled look on his face.

  “Whaddya thinking, Cedric?”

  “How the hell does he know his targets are tourists?”

  “He’s gotta get close enough to hear them speak. That’d be my guess,” said Margaret. “I say he stalks them, waits until they’re alone, whacks them, and then drags them off to hide them in some burrow for the night until morning, when it’s showtime.”

  “Coney Island and a museum. We’re talking crowded crime scenes. How come no one saw anything?” asked Driscoll. “And the posing? No one sees that goin’ on?”

  “The guy’s gotta be one strong son of a bitch,” said Thomlinson. “He carried a two-hundred-pound man up the side of the Wonder Wheel, for Chrissake.”

  “How’s this?” said Margaret. “He selects a number of random targets that he thinks talk funny. Strikes up a conversation with one or more of them, where he learns who’s from out of town. Then he lurks in the shadows waiting for one of the poor suckers to stroll into his lair. And, whack! And you’re gonna love this. A public toilet! That could be the lair. One of the stalls would serve as a safe place to hide his victim until closing time.”

  “And nobod
y notices the vic’s missing?”

  “The guy goes after loners.”

  “Possible,” said Thomlinson. “But that says two doers. One guy can’t spend all that time setting up his targets, kill one of them, wait ’til the middle of the night to showcase his work, and be able to do it in two places at the same time. Remember, the ME coincides their approximate time of death.”

  “Okay,” said Driscoll. “We may be looking for a pair of killers. Cedric, get on the horn to the press and the media. We want to hear from anyone, and I mean anyone, at either location who may have been approached by a stranger. Margaret, call the Bureau of Indian Affairs. See if they’ve got any take on this. Then get a hold of Crime Scene. I want every toilet, every storage area, and any other stand-alone structure at the museum and on the boardwalk swept. They’re to look for blood and any other trace evidence that may be related to the crimes. But, Cedric, you have a point. How does our boy drag a two-hundred-pounder up the side of a Ferris wheel?”

  “We’re lookin’ for one helluva bench-presser. Maybe two.”

  Chapter 10

  HEUREUX QUI COMME ULYSSE A CONQUI LA TOISON

  That was the inscription etched on the stainless-steel back of Driscoll’s pocket watch. Colette had presented Driscoll with the watch on their wedding night.

  “Happy, he, who like Ulysses, had conquered the Golden Fleece,” was the translation. She had chosen the verse from Dubellay, the Renaissance poet.

  And hadn’t John Driscoll discovered in Colette the magical Golden Fleece, the object of his heart’s desire? Hadn’t he been an urban Ulysses, seeking that other, the woman he would love forever? And hadn’t their love produced a kindhearted child, Nicole? Sadly, though, he had gained the fleece only to see it wrenched from him by a driver plastered on Cuervo Gold.