Thomas O`Callaghan - The Screaming Room

As far as CyberCentral was concerned, the six were as clean as the winds of winter.

Angus was in the shed. The game board, originally designed for Monopoly, now had a New York City tourist map affixed to it, with a cellophane grid of squares overlaying it. One of the sound chips embedded under the surface of the map wasn’t working. The chip, designed for use inside talking or musical greeting cards, and activated when the card was opened, resembled a shiny new dime. Angus studied it closely under the magnifying glass. He’d have to go online, order a new one, download the singing voice of Old Blue Eyes, and slip it back into its sleeve under the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Of course, he’d lay out the extra bucks for an overnight delivery. What good was the game if it didn’t sing?

“Angus!”

His sister was a screamer. It usually meant she saw a spider.

“What is it this time?” he hollered back.

“It’s got a zillion legs! Come quick.”

He put down the chip and headed inside to deal with the skittering demon. En route, he remembered the last time he heard those lungs in high-pitch mode. It wasn’t that long ago.

“Angus!” It sounded more like the shriek of a wounded hawk than a human scream, and it awakened him. It was nearing four in the morning, and the small house was otherwise quiet. Where was his sister? And, more important, where was Father?

“Angus!”

He followed the anguish-filled scream to the cellar, finding his sister, stripped naked and bound to the porcelain enamel-topped table in the room behind the furnace. Father lay sprawled in the corner, his arms and face covered in sweat; his pants at his knees; a honing blade at his side. He was breathing heavily and reeking of alcohol. Had he succumbed to its anesthetizing effects? Angus hoped so. He shook him. Father made no sound or movement.

He approached Cassie. Tears trickled down her face, where eruptions of exposed tissue oozed blood.

“He raped me after butchering my face,” she whimpered.

“Why didn’t you call out before…?”

“He said he’d kill me if I made any noise. I waited until I figured he’d passed out.”

“Shsss. It’s okay. I’m here.”

“Please. Help me.”

Angus unfastened leather straps, took Cassie into his arms, and carried her up to their cramped sleeping quarters, his eyes coming to rest on the corner of the glass face of a Pachinko machine that they had ceased to play with. It served now as a catchall for soiled clothing. Shoving the laundry aside, he used his fist to shatter the glass and collected the ball bearings contained inside. Running to his dresser, he retrieved a sock and poured in the half-inch spheres. Thus armed, he returned to the room and beat his father to death.

Thomlinson, Aligante, and Driscoll were seated around the Lieutenant’s desk in what had become a war room. A detailed map of the city was displayed on an upright particle-board behind them, red thumb tacks denoting where the bodies had been found. Driscoll was discouraged. To date, there had been no calls to the Tip Line from anyone seeing anything suspicious in the two restrooms, on the bridge, or onboard the USS Intrepid. These sons of bitches were good, he thought.

He glanced over to the corner of his desk where the two-inch letters of the New York Post’s headline stared back at him: DOUBLE

TROUBLE!! He had alerted the media that the string of killings may have been committed by a set of male and female identical twins. The populace at large was urged to report any sightings of such look-alikes.

Thomlinson was already in the loop, so the Lieutenant took the time to explain the significance of Turner syndrome in twin births to Margaret.

When he had completed his X and Y summation, it was Thomlinson’s turn to speak.

“Our search produced four sets of twins that fit the profile. The oldest pair is in their early fifties, the youngest is sixteen.”

“Four sets from all that newsprint? Some rare condition,” said Margaret.

“Turner syndrome itself isn’t so rare,” Driscoll said. “It hits one in two thousand females. It’s when you factor in the possibility of it affecting identical twins that the numbers get infinitesimal. In any case, it’s their DNA that’ll be their downfall, rare or not.”

Thomlinson continued with his report.

“I kept the initial search inside the United States. Leticia is checking on similar articles abroad. She’ll let me know what she comes up with so we can prepare our protocol for Interpol and any other foreign agencies. Back to the land of the free. I placed a call to Ohio…to the Dayton Police, there. I filled them in on the details of our investigation. They accommodated me by paying a visit to a local address I had come up with for John Matthews, the first twin on the list. Turns out he lives in a camper just outside of town. Neighbors report he spends most of his time hoisting bottles of Rolling Rock and yelling at the TV. And while our last tourist was being murdered here in the Big Apple, Matthews was drinking himself into a stupor at one of Dayton’s bars. This according to Dayton PD, who were able to substantiate his alibi. On to his twin sister, Kathleen. The woman succumbed to Alzheimer’s at an early age. Six months before the killing spree began in New York she had wandered off the grounds of her Florida nursing home and was hit and killed by a rented Jeep driven by two college preppies on spring break.”

“Puts the Matthewses off the list,” said Margaret.

“Fate had other plans for the Gibbons twins,” Thomlinson continued. “I located a discreet Web site for Tulia Gibbons who, three years ago, opened ‘The Best Little Whore House in Savannah, Georgia.’ She has no criminal record. Probably because Elijah McCormack, a state senator, was a frequent visitor. So the tabloids report. Somehow, I couldn’t see a madam who makes a living offa tourism leave her emporium to knock off tourists in New York. Besides, our little entrepreneur was busy setting up Tulia’s Too, a second den of iniquity, while the city was under siege.”

“What became of her brother?”

“Ah, government records tell all. The guy’s a nuclear engineer working for the navy. He’s currently stationed at a submarine base in New London, Connecticut.”

“That puts him pretty close to the crime scene. No?” said Margaret.

“According to his commanding officer, he’s working on a nondiscretionary project to update the computer technology onboard the USS John Marshall and the USS Triton. His work record is clean. And his log provides a perfect alibi.”

“What about the teen twins?”

“On them I’ve got something interesting. About where they were born.”

“Oak Flat?” said Driscoll.

“Mining country,” said Thomlinson. “In Pendleton County, West Virginia. At the base of the Allegheny Mountains. Almost uninhabited. But here’s the good part. Closest cluster of residents would be on an Indian reservation, three miles outside of town, and according to the news article a Raven’s Breath was listed as the twins’ foster mom.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” said Margaret making a scalping motion with her hand.

“We could be getting lucky,” said Driscoll with a grin.

The late afternoon skies were overcast above the lush flora of the Bronx Zoo. Earlier, a sudden summer thunderstorm had sent the zoo’s visitors and most of its predators in search of shelter. With the pavement still wet, one of the zoo’s hot dog vendors pushed his aluminum cart to its customary spot on the path that led to the Ethiopian Baboon Reserve. It would be a few minutes before the crowds ventured outside again to resume their gawking.