Thomas O`Callaghan - The Screaming Room

“I’d say you slaughtered her,” Driscoll continued. “What’d you use to carve her up?”

“Shut up!”

“A honing blade?”

“Shut up!”

“A chain saw?”

Angus looked to Margaret, disbelief in his eyes.

“Did you kill her first? Then cut her up? I’ll bet that got you off.”

Angus turned frustrated eyes on Driscoll.

“I’m betting you kept a piece of her? A trophy. You like trophies, don’t you, boy?”

“Just shut up!”

“Did you bury it here? No, you wouldn’t do that. You’d want to touch it. To-”

“Shut the fuck up!” he screamed, turning his weapon on his tormentor.

Driscoll fired first, then Margaret. Without getting off a round, Angus collapsed on the floor, blood gushing from a gaping hole above his left eye, and from another in his chest.

Cassie lunged for Angus’s gun. Margaret tackled her. She and the girl nearly rolled down the stairs. As her back crashed against the banister, causing her to lose her weapon, Margaret felt the barrel of Angus’s pistol against her stomach.

“Drop your gun!” Cassie shouted at Driscoll, as she untangled herself from Margaret. Raising the pistol, she pressed it hard against Margaret’s temple. “Now!” she ordered.

As Cassie attempted to stand, Margaret shoved an elbow into the girl’s ribcage, causing Cassie to fall into the lap of Mary Driscoll, who howled. But the gun had remained in Cassie’s hand. She thrust it into Mary’s mouth.

“Don’t-”

“Don’t what?” Cassie sneered at Driscoll. “You shot my brother.” Her gaze drifted toward Angus, while the muzzle of the Beretta pressed against Mary’s palate.

“Cassie, you can still walk out of here,” said Margaret. “Why don’t you put the gun down?”

“So you can shoot me, too?”

Driscoll was certain it was Angus who had fired the gun. Its safety was engaged. His gut told him Cassie wouldn’t know anything about such things, so, he took a step forward. She did as he’d hoped. She squeezed the trigger. The gun didn’t fire, and while Margaret moved in to cuff her, Driscoll retrieved the Beretta, pressing a forearm against Cassie’s throat.

“Please, let me go to my brother,” she pleaded.

The two officers released their hold. Though cuffed behind her back, she threw herself on top of Angus and sobbed uncontrollably.

Driscoll rushed to his sister, kissed the top of her head, and caressed her.

“How’d I do?” asked Mary.

“What?”

“Did I get the part? Boy, these actors are good, aren’t they? Good-O! Will ya’ listen to her? She sounds like she’s really crying. Boy, oh boy! What a day!”

Driscoll didn’t know what to think. “Mary, you just-”

“Ssshh. I don’t think she’s done.”

Margaret smiled at the sight of Driscoll gently rocking his sister in his arms, fully in touch with both her detestation and her sympathy for the twins. Doing an about-face, she descended the stairs, leaving the pair of siblings to experience their own multiplicity of emotions.

It had been two weeks since the apprehension of the killer twins. Most of New York’s citizenry had turned their attention to a rash of fires that had spanned the last ten days. It was believed a serial arsonist was torching Catholic churches. In Queens, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Rita’s had been targeted, as was Saint Margaret Mary’s in Brooklyn. NYPD’s Arson/Explosion Squad was on high alert and had joined forces with the Bureau of Fire Investigation. Their probe, or lack of it, according to the Brooklyn Archdiocese, filled the headlines of both the Post and the Daily News.

But Janet Huff didn’t have the luxury of kicking back and reading either paper. She was too busy with her own. Hers was not like the Post in any way. Nor was it even remotely similar to the News. Although there would be a legion of people who would challenge her, every word, every sentence, every paragraph that went into any one of her articles was thoroughly researched and its validity substantiated.

When time allowed.

More often than one would imagine, an exclusive was handed to her gratuitously. Often anonymously. Although what she now held in her hand appeared to be gifted from such a person, her instincts told her the offering would end up in the trash. The flash memory card had arrived this morning by mail. There was no letter attached. No note. Not even a Post-it. The manufacturer’s label had been partially removed. There was no return address on the small envelope, but the postmark said it’d been mailed from New York. The sender had managed to correctly spell the name of the paper, in red pencil no less, but that was not the case with her name. “Too Miss Jane Huffer” it read. Her donor was no rocket scientist.

Sensing either a grade-schooler or a prankster was involved, she declared it trash and had her arm cocked to toss it. But from the corner of her eye she spotted what she believed to be the manufacturer’s logo on what remained of the label. If indeed it was, this had come from no elementary school digital. Whoever had purchased this one-inch square of blue plastic was into some very serious picture-taking.

Rummaging through her drawer, she produced a plug-and-play, set it up on her computer, inserted the memory card, and took a peek.

Margaret Aligante was with Driscoll inside the Lieutenant’s office. They were eagerly awaiting the results of a mission Thomlinson had taken on.

The Lieutenant was aggravated. He was certain Malcolm Shewster orchestrated the attempt to kill the twins, which, had Thomlinson not intervened, would have likely killed them along with his sister, several NYPD officers, and a host of innocent citizens. Perhaps, him and Margaret as well. He’d been informed a grenade could be lobbed from three hundred feet; the range of the launcher exceeded a mile.

His frustration involved the fact that Shewster would never be held accountable. Thankfully, because it had been interrupted, but exasperatingly because there was no irrefutable evidence to link the man to the crime. Crime Scene came up with nothing that placed the shooter, the utility transport vehicle, or Shewster on that rooftop or anywhere near it. Even if they had a tape of the probable phone conversation that set the assault in motion, Driscoll could produce no warrant to support the unauthorized tap.

He also knew that Shewster had Angus believe he and Cassie, the pair with a list of felony murder and kidnapping charges pending, would be airlifted out of the country. Probably with his own sister in tow. Their phone conversation surely pointed that way. But that surveillance was also unauthorized and the event never took place!

But the day wasn’t over.

The only good news was that his sister thought she had been cast in a play throughout the entire ordeal. She was so intent on a good performance that she wet herself rather than asking Angus, the director, to take five. Thank you, Lord!

The eight-by-ten photos of the frolicking Angus and the young Shewster woman shared the front pages of the Daily News, the Post, and (in an edited version) the New York Times and were spread across Driscoll’s desk.

His attention was diverted toward them.

“Angus’s tattoos don’t look so menacing in print,” Margaret said.

“His eyes do. And they tell all. In contrast, look at the expression on Shewster. She looks to be having a hell of a time.”

“It’s a syndicated story. My money says Shewster’s already hit every newsstand in a twenty-mile radius of his residence to purchase as many copies of the Los Angeles Times as the trunk of his Lincoln could hold.”

“He’s in for a challenge with the other eight hundred and fifty thousand subscribers hailing from Grand Forks, North Dakota, on down into San Diego,” said Driscoll, eyeing six other graphic images that filled pages two and three of the Post.