Thomas O`Callaghan - The Screaming Room

“And a store receipt’s gonna tell you all that.”

“I’m a resourceful man. Placed in the right hands, the receipt’s SKU and barcode will help reveal the computer’s path from assembly line, to packing, to shipping, to-hell, you know where I’m going with this. If the damn thing was dusty when our young predator carried it to the cashier, I’ll know about it.”

All this from a store receipt? “Frankly, Shewster, I’d say that’s a stretch.” What Driscoll didn’t tell him was that he thought he’d had gone off the deep end.

“He killed my daughter, Lieutenant. The word stretch doesn’t exist in my dictionary.”

Yup. He’s lost it.

“Once I know that computer better than Hewlett-Packard, the rest is child’s play. Are you familiar with the word cookie in a purely computer sense?”

“If you’re talking about a means for, say, a retailer to tag onto a Web site visitor, I’m familiar.”

“Were you aware that if used properly, a cookie can establish the visitor’s Internet Protocol address and gather sufficient personally identifying information to uniquely ID and locate a particular person, or in this case a pair of twins?” It appeared to Shewster as if Driscoll was weighing the possibilities. “If the police academy is using a twenty-first-century syllabus, it may not be such a stretch.”

“Some view such activity as illegal or at least deceitful. I’d hate to see some liberal lawyer convince a similarly slanted jury that it’s actually entrapment. That could lead to an acquittal.”

“There’ll be no acquittal.”

There’ll be no trial is what you mean. “When were you going to share this with me?”

“I no longer see the need. Do you?”

“Am I to interpret that to mean I’ve been informed through this conversation?”

“You got it.”

“The launch of this new Web site? When’s that happening?”

“That depends.”

Cagey bastard. “On what?”

“Any big-game hunter studies all aspects of an expedition before turning the key in the caravan’s lead vehicle. No?”

“I’m sure he does. I’m just hoping the twins are the only ones who view this savagery as part of a game, Shewster. Not the game hunter himself.”

Shewster stood, signaling the conversation was over. “I have a suspicion we have more in common than one would imagine, Lieutenant.”

“How’s that?”

“I sense neither of us likes to being threatened. Veiled or otherwise.”

“Your suspicions are just shy of the mark. I never use a veil.”

Driscoll checked his watch as he exited the plush hotel and headed for his cruiser. When he opened the door, the vehicle’s dome light illuminated Margaret’s face.

“The GPS get planted?” he asked, sliding behind the steering wheel.

“And then some,” came a voice from the backseat. “Now, how ’bout that cigar?”

Driscoll, Aligante, and Thomlinson were sitting inside the Lieutenant’s cruiser, parked a hundred feet from the hotel. They had no reason to go anywhere. The electronic shadow was keeping track of Shewster’s limo, which was moving, but hadn’t gone very far. The GPS configuration on TARU’s laptop featured a map, currently displayed as a grid of the local streets surrounding the hotel as well as the area where their subject was now circling.

“What the hell is he doing?” said Margaret. “This is his third trip through Central Park!”

“Maybe he’s a nature fanatic,” Thomlinson said from the backseat.

“Then he’d be sitting in his hotel room watching National Geographic,” said Margaret.

“Don’t encourage the man, Margaret. Cedric’s prone to wit.”

“He’s leaving the park.”

Driscoll started the car. There was no need to tailgate Shewster. The GPS was doing a good job of that. The Lieutenant would simply tag behind at a safe distance.

“Whaddya suppose he was doing circling the park?” Margaret asked.

“I’m bettin’ he was talking to someone on his car phone.”

“Aren’t we tapped into that?”

“No. TARU determined he was using a hard-wired line. They’d have to get inside the car to properly tap it. We’re only on the hotel landline and his cell.”

“Any guess as to who he might have been talking with?”

“Don’t know. But if we keep our eyes fixed on the laptop, he may lead us to him.”

“I’m glad he’s on the move,” Margaret griped. “I was getting dizzy watching him circle.”

When Cassie opened her eyes, she found she was alone in the bed. It didn’t surprise her. It was like Angus gave up sleeping. For the past week and a half, she had fallen asleep while her brother labored on the notebook. At first, the constant tapping was annoying. It was an effort to fall asleep. Last Tuesday, she had wrapped herself in bedding and headed down the stairs to stretch out in the old recliner. She had escaped the tapping sound, but the coils in the recliner stabbed her, and after a few minutes the noxious horse smell forced her back up the stairs to the loft.

“We’re gettin’ the hell outta here,” she had griped, only to have Angus tell her, “We’ll start looking tomorrow. Can you hold out ’til tomorrow?” She said she could. But goddamn it! They were still in the freaking loft!

She eventually grew accustomed to the tapping. As a matter of fact, it had become soothing. Like those audio-tapes of babbling brooks or waves hitting the shoreline.

Cassie had also become accustomed to waking up to the sound. How the hell Angus could spend night after freaking night pounding away on the laptop was beyond her. And why? When she asked him, he’d wave the gun and shout

“Bang! Bang!” She thought he had lost it. What could be so interesting on the goddamn computer?

But when she awoke this morning, she thought they had finally moved. There was no tapping of keys. Angus wasn’t sitting on his stool. And the place smelled like eggs and bacon.

“What the…?”

Swinging her legs over the side, she pressed her fists into the mattress and got up.

That’s when she spotted him.

Angus was standing at the stove and flipping eggs.

“How come you’re not typing, and what’s with the cookin’? You never eat breakfast.”

Something isn’t right. What the hell is going on? Is this a dream?

She covered her ears, certain the whistle would sound. It didn’t.

“Angus? What gives?”

“Found her,” he mouthed.

“What? Speak up for Chrissake!”

“I found her!” he hollered.

That she heard. “Found who?”

He lowered the flame under the pan and headed for the laptop. Only he didn’t just walk there. He crouched down and slithered toward the unit. When he got there, he bolted upright, pouncing, like the laptop was prey. Grinning, he pointed at the screen and said, “Her.”

Cassie hurried over. What she saw was the black-and-white image of a woman’s face. “Who is she?” she asked, studying the image like it was a specimen in a cage. “She looks familiar. Do we know her?”

“Not yet.”

“Whaddya mean ‘not yet’? Why does she look so familiar?”

Angus depressed the laptop’s down arrow, raising the photo. The woman’s name appeared below it.

Cassie’s eyes widened. “Wow! Way to go, Angus!”

Driscoll was heading down Ninth Avenue. The laptop Margaret was monitoring had placed the Shewster vehicle a safe distance ahead, traveling south. Ten minutes ago it had passed the cutoff for the Lincoln Tunnel and its driver had headed for West Street, where he made a left and continued south.

“A man on a mission,” Thomlinson remarked.