Thomas O`Callaghan - The Screaming Room

“Look, Jack! Over there! That’s a Fighting Falcon! Let’s get a closer look,” the father urged, hoping to distract his son from the fracas.

“D-a-a-a-d. This is getting g-o-o-d.”

“We came to see the planes, remember?”

“But, D-a-a-a-d.”

The father steered his son to the steps that led to the exhibits featured below.

“Why was that lady hitting that man?” the boy asked, descending the steps ahead of his father.

“I don’t know, son. The man must have done something bad.”

“Was the policeman gonna take him to jail?”

“Sure looked that way to me.”

As the boy and his father were nearing the bottom of the steps, a prerecorded voice sounded from a loudspeaker: “Ladies and gentlemen, the USS Intrepid was used by NASA as the primary recovery vessel for the Mercury and Gemini space programs. Just imagine yourself returning to Earth and the first people you see are the sailors aboard this floating airport…”

Reaching the hangar deck, the man led his son to the exhibit marked “Aircrafts of the Pacific.” He pointed at the Grumman F6F Hellcat, which was painted in the navy’s tri-color camouflage: sea blue, intermediate blue, and insignia white. He then read aloud from the aircraft’s polished plaque: “The Hellcat’s most successful day in combat came on June 19, 1944, during operations in the Mariana Islands. During this air battle, which became known as ‘The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot,’ the Japanese lost over three hundred seventy-five planes. Eighty were lost by the United States… Wow! Pretty impressive, eh, Jack?”

“Sure is,” the wide-eyed youth said, stroking the underside of the plane’s sleek fuselage. “Look! Over there! What’s that one?”

A larger aircraft had caught the boy’s attention.

“Let’s go have a look,” said his dad.

They headed toward the next exhibit. The father depressed its red button, activating its tape.

A prerecorded voice began its narration: “The three-seat TBM 3-E Avenger, with a wingspan of over fifty-four feet and an overall length of forty feet, was the country’s primary torpedo bomber during World War II. Loaded with two thousand pounds of bombs and armed with three manually aimed fifty-caliber machine guns, the Avenger had a maximum speed of two hundred seventy-six miles per hour and could climb over one thousand feet per minute.”

“Wow! That’s almost as fast as Mommy when she’s out shopping, eh, Jack?…Jack?…Jack?”

“I’m under here, Dad.” The boy had made his way below the fuselage of the plane. “Looks like this one sprung a leak,” said the boy pointing to a puddle that had formed under the belly of the plane.

“That’s odd!” said the father. “These models have no engines…and that looks too dark to be fuel.” Bending down, he palpated the goo between his fingers, then brought the smear to his nose.

As his father stood in confusion, Jack climbed the steel staircase to the plane’s cockpit.

“What the hell is going on?” the man exclaimed, suddenly realizing what it was his son had found. “This plane is bleeding!”

“Daddy!” the boy cried out. “This one’s got a pilot!”

Larry Pearsol completed the postmortem on Tatsuya Inagaki, the tourist from Tokyo whose lifeless form had been removed from the cockpit of the American fighter plane.

“Examination of the cephalic region reveals sharp force trauma resulting in a massive head wound, measuring seven-point-six-four centimeters to right parietal, causing fracture to the skull and bone splinters to penetrate the brain. Thirteen-point-two-centimeter linear penetration to the skin of the forehead noted. Irregular tearing of scalp…” said the ME, removing his surgical gloves. “Sure looks like the same handiwork that felled the last three victims, Lieutenant. But how would the killer pull it off with a twenty-four-hour police presence?”

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

Bill Heisek, Manhattan’s borough commander, had been hauled into the Mayor’s office along with Police Commissioner Brandon to explain why the officers of Midtown North looked upon these killings as a “Task Force thing.” One universal shortcoming of the department was that almost everyone was territorial. Where the hell were they while the killer struck and posed his victim? the Mayor wanted to know. Heisek was at a loss for an answer, much to the chagrin of Sully Reirdon and the commissioner. He could only assure both men that it would never happen again. It was a sure bet he’d make good on that promise, for if he didn’t, he’d be demoted to the rank of duty captain.

The Mayor was particularly perturbed because the press had trampled all over the police department. The Daily News headline read: NYPD CAUGHT NAPPING, while the Post ran with COPS BLIND TO LATEST SLAYING.

Driscoll, standing next to the corpse of victim number four, reflected on Pearsol’s findings. What am I missing? he pondered. And what’s with the scalping?

“I do have some good news,” said the ME. “I found some scrapings under the vic’s fingernails. Looks like maybe some skin with traces of blood. Could belong to your suspect. I’ll have the lab boys run the DNA and blood profiles right away.”

Driscoll nodded. The skin tracings and the blood meant this victim had a chance to fight back. With any luck, the next one might survive.

“Larry, what kind of psycho straps a Japanese tourist into the cockpit of an American fighter plane?” asked Driscoll, eyes fixed on Jasper Eliot’s eight-by-ten glossy displaying the newly found cadaver.

“Could it have something to do with Pearl Harbor? Maybe your perp lost a loved one and is seeking revenge?”

“But the other three appear to be random.”

The two men exchanged a puzzled look.

“Let’s see what we’ve got so far,” said Driscoll. “First, the hit on the German woman at the museum. Then Yen Chan, a Chinese male at Coney Island. Number three is Guenther Rubeleit, also from Germany. And now our Japanese friend here. One woman and three men. He, she, or they have crossed gender. That’s something your textbook serial killer doesn’t do. They usually target one or the other.”

“Your whacko is killing tourists and tourism at the same time.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Three of the four victims were discovered by children, weren’t they?”

“Aligante picked up on that. Although his murder sites are places where you’re likely to find kids, we haven’t ruled out there being some sort of correlation. Right now we’re thankful children aren’t his victims.”

“I’ll bet Reirdon’s thankful. I’m sure, sincerely. But the media would go ballistic if a child were killed. Every parent in the city, too.”

The Lieutenant groaned, reaching for his cell phone that was sounding in his pocket. “Driscoll, here.”

A booming voice echoed through the unit’s tiny earphone, causing Driscoll to nod at Pearsol. “Him,” he silently mouthed.

“That’s number four, John. I’m running out of patience.”

“Mr. Mayor, we’re doing all we can.”

“I just got off the phone with the Japanese embassy. They’re screaming bloody murder. According to them, the New York City Police Department has its head up its ass. And the family of the latest victim is suing the city for three hundred million dollars! They’ve been disgraced. The guy’s grandfather survived the Battle of Midway, for chrissake! Now he’s ready to commit hari-kari on his futon! He says it is the greatest dishonor of his life to have his grandson dumped in the cockpit of an American fighter plane. That was the plane that sunk three Japanese aircraft carriers in the South Pacific! And there’s more! Germany’s ambassador called me last night. He wants to know why New York is such an unruly town and why I haven’t caught the killer. You got an answer for him?”