Thomas O`Callaghan - The Screaming Room

“Why’d you leave the bike behind?”

“It was beyond repair. It wasn’t until I reached home that I remembered the bike’s serial number and that it might be traceable. I was gonna head back to retrieve it, but by that time the bridge was filled with police cars. I made a mistake in leaving it, huh?”

“Let’s get back to the guy you hit. Wha’d he look like?”

“I never saw his face.”

“He was a foot in front of you!”

“It all happened in a flash. I think he had a hood on. Maybe a baseball cap under that. But I didn’t see his face. That’s all I can tell ya. Honest.”

Margaret glanced around the crowded club. The music was still blaring and the crowd was still jostling to the beat. An odd smile creased her face. She turned her attention back to Kyle Ramsey.

“All guys, huh?”

Ramsey returned her gaze. “Like a little piece of heaven. Wouldn’t you say?”

Driscoll pulled the rain-battered Chevy to a complete stop as the Long Island Railroad’s red and white crossing gates descended up ahead. He narrowed his eyes, focusing them on the rearview mirror, hoping to sidestep a haunting recollection from his past. But the thunderous sound of the passing commuter train catapulted the nightmarish memory to consciousness. On a sunny morning in August, when Driscoll was eight years old, he had been standing curbside, watching his mother climb the steps of the LIRR’s Jamaica station. Ten minutes later, as the Manhattan-bound 10:39 came rumbling in, the woman launched herself into its path, ending her life and indelibly scarring John Driscoll. He never forgave his mother for her selfish act and never forgave himself for that notion.

His heart was still racing when a car horn sounded. The train had passed, the gates were up, and a motorist behind him was politely asking Driscoll to proceed. Guilt ridden, he put the cruiser in drive and stepped on the gas.

Thirty minutes later, with the rain still playing havoc with the cruiser’s windshield wipers, Driscoll guided the Chevy past the limestone pillars that marked the entrance to Saint Charles Cemetery. Although his mother was interred there, it wasn’t her grave he had come to visit. After giving the security guard a nod, he followed the curves in the road until he came to within fifty feet of the section where his wife and daughter were buried. Pulling the Chevy to the curb, he turned off the engine and sat motionless, lost to reflection. Lightning filled the luminous sky, followed by a slow rumble of thunder that echoed through the graveyard. Driscoll thought it sounded like the drumroll that preceded an execution.

Silence filled the cruiser’s cabin as the rain subsided. Driscoll opened the car door and was engulfed by cold and damp air. Heading for the gravesite, he noticed green moss had begun to obscure the headstone’s carved lettering. He used his handkerchief to scrape away the uninvited decay.

“Bonjour, ma cherie,” he whispered to his bride, standing somberly before the mute stone. “Nicole, Daddy is here,” he added.

Was it merely the wind that rustled the nearby willow or was his salutation being answered?

He marveled at the sweeping motion of the tree, smiled, and returned his focus on the grave.

“I miss you,” he said. “Both of you.” He leaned over and placed his hand on the damp granite stone as serendipitous thoughts whirled into a kaleidoscope of memories. He saw himself and Colette lounging on the open porch outside their Toliver’s Point bungalow; a wooden glider providing a view of an ocean varnished in moonlight. The liquid sounds of Debussy serenaded them, as notes from Nicole’s flute wafted through an open window.

Without warning, the intrusive peal of a cell phone interrupted his reverie. He reached inside his breast pocket and turned the unit off. But it was too late. His daughter’s concert had ended and the vision had ceased.

“Gotta go,” he grumbled.

Forcing a smile, he climbed behind the steering wheel of the Chevy and guided it along the winding road that led to the cemetery’s exit, taking note of the tombstones that stood like sentinels on either side. Too many lives lost, he thought, reaching the limestone pillars, where the security guard gave him his customary salute. Odd, even the dead need guarding, he said to himself as he veered the cruiser onto Saint Philip’s Drive.

On the entrance ramp to the Meadowbrook Parkway, he remembered he had turned off his cell phone. He reached in his pocket and turned it back on. It rang almost immediately. He flipped it open.

“Driscoll.”

“Lieutenant, I’ve been trying to reach you. Something wrong with your phone?” It was Thomlinson. He sounded anxious.

“I was elsewhere. Whaddya got?”

“The DNA results are in on the nail.”

“It’s about time. Meet me in my office in forty-five minutes.”

“Will do.”

When Driscoll arrived at his desk, he found Thomlinson seated beside it. Driscoll slid into his seat and unpocketed a pack of Lucky Strikes and lit one up.

“Thought you were off those things.”

“I am,” he said, shooting Thomlinson a glare. “Let’s see what Forensics has to offer, shall we?”

He reached for the secured file, broke its seal, and leafed through a score of typed pages.

…Complete search of the national DNA database produced no match.

…subject unidentified. “Now, that’s a surprise,” he quipped and read on.

…In conclusion, chromosomal scanning, utilizing standard Bayesian interpretation, suggests the subject to be Caucasian…Polymerase chain reaction-short tandem repeat methodology, reveals the subject to be male.

“Male?” He lowered his brows and shot Thomlinson a puzzled look. “Why would he have used a ladies’ room at the museum? A place where he’d run the risk of being seen?” Driscoll stared long and hard at the italicized printing as if expecting it to change gender. When it didn’t, he used an index finger to circle the word. “Cedric, could we be we looking for some sort of cross-dresser?”

“It worked for Hadden Clark.” Thomlinson was referring to a notorious cross-dressing serial killer who had a penchant for wearing ladies’ clothing while perpetrating his madness.

“Well, my friend, we either have a crafty one on our hands, or our two-killers-acting-in-tandem theory is looking better.”

Detective Cedric Thomlinson was running late. Traffic had come to a complete standstill on Brooklyn’s Belt Parkway. Flashing lights in the distance and the trickling of cars in the opposing lanes indicated an accident up ahead. There was nothing he could do but wait out the efforts of the EMS and other emergency personnel. It wouldn’t be long before uniforms from Highway Patrol 2 would reopen the three-lane thoroughfare.

After fifteen minutes, Thomlinson was rolling again. He hastened over the Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, hugged Beach Channel Drive as it curved left, and made it to his destination: Saint Rose of Lima’s Church on Beach Eighty-fourth Street in Rockaway Beach. He squeezed his Dodge Intrepid into a tight parking space, got out of the car, and headed toward the heavy oak door that led to the parish community room.

Father Liam O’Connor’s eyes narrowed as he watched Thomlinson enter the room and take his assigned seat. O’Connor, a titan of a man, was a Jesuit priest with a strip of white hair surrounded by gray. As a certified alcohol and substance abuse counselor, he had run the NYPD’s Confidential Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program for the last thirty-one years. Most of the inductees who filled the room had been ordered into the program by their commanding officer. For Thomlinson, this was his second go-round. A rarity for the department, but not a precedent. He had Driscoll to thank for the exception. The Lieutenant, who had become a good friend, was a master at calling in favors.