Thomas O`Callaghan - Bone Thief

“Feed me another.”

“I’d hafta open a new box.”

“Please do. I’ll pay for it.”

With trembling hands, she unwrapped the box’s cellophane and exposed row after row of glazed cookies. Reluctantly, she brought a second one to his lips.

This time, desire emboldened him. He slid his tongue into the hollow of her hand. She didn’t budge, frozen now in fear.

“You could win a statue of the Blessed Virgin,” she whimpered. “If you buy two boxes, your name goes into the raffle. Please let me go home.”

As the clock struck, sounding the hour, the buzzer at the front gate interrupted his rapture. Colm had another visitor. He gave the girl a puzzled look.

“Goody, goody,” said the girl. “That must be Mommy.”

All things considered, it wasn’t a bad day. Goulee had gleaned enough copper and brass pipes for two quarts of Thunderbird. It pissed him off, though, that he had to split the loot with the sanitation foreman. After all, he was the one crawling around in all the filth.

“C’mon down, Goulee, today’s my lucky day, and you gotta leave,” hollered the foreman from the bottom of the trash heap.

“What’re ya talking about, Henshaw, it can’t be three-thirty yet,” Goulee yelled back, tugging on what looked like the narrow end of a fishing pole.

“Never mind watchin’ the clock, ya prick. Get down here. Now!”

Goulee gave one last yank on the fiberglass rod and threw up both hands in frustration. “Give me a minute.” He took out a spray paint canister and marked a circle where the fishing pole was embedded so he could resume his search on his next visit. That is, if the trucks didn’t offload more trash on top of his find. The dump was huge. The odds were in his favor.

“C’mon, numnuts. Put a move on!” Henshaw’s lucky day meant his waitressing girlfriend was getting off early, and he could steal away to her house for some horizontal mambo before her husband came home.

“I’m comin’. I’m comin’. Keep your fucking pants on!” Goulee hollered as he stepped grumpily over the mounds of refuge.

That he was endowed with only five toes, all of them attached to his left foot, made his stepping precarious. What he sought was solid footing. He balanced himself on a thin fragment of discarded plasterboard. It didn’t hold his weight, and his body cartwheeled. An avalanche of garbage cascaded down, smothering Henshaw. Goulee was lucky, though. He had landed on something soft and gelatinous that had spilled out of a plastic trash bag.

The stench from Goulee’s find gagged both the Medical Examiner and Driscoll.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Driscoll exclaimed.

The abomination stared at them under the flash of the camera manned by Jasper Eliot, the coroner’s assistant. Illuminated was boneless membrane and tissue, along with blood-drenched cartilage that was full of maggots.

“This one looks like it’s been in a blender. It’s hard to tell if it’s human,” said Pearsol.

“What’s that mound?” Driscoll asked, gesturing toward a protrusion in the middle of the bloody mush.

“An air bubble. Fermentation does that.”

Driscoll took a pair of surgical tongs and reached for the blood-soaked bulge. Steel teeth clenched a spongy mass.

“Mother of God! It’s a fetus!” Driscoll cried out. “And what’s that thing in its middle?”

With surgical pliers, the medical examiner freed a plastic card.

Driscoll wiped it clean and read its inscription:

COURTESY OF SAKS FIFTH AVENUE TO OUR PREFERRED CUSTOMER, AMELIA STOCKARD, ACCOUNT NUMBER 2476-3876-1204

A flurry of flashes radiated as Jasper Eliot followed the find with his high-speed camera.

“Amelia Stockard? That name sounds familiar,” said Larry Pearsol.

“It should,” said Driscoll. “She’s the Magnolia tea heiress. Worth more than fifty million dollars.”

“She was pregnant. There’s a man involved. Could be your elusive assailant.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll need to track him down to find out. But one thing’s for certain.”

“What’s that?”

“Move over, New York Post and Daily News. This particular murder will make international headlines.”

“That’s sure to put the heat on.”

“In a hell of a hurry.”

Driscoll pulled out his cellular and punched in a number. Cedric Thomlinson answered the call and spoke quickly. “Lieutenant, the scene down here is like a madhouse. Newspaper reporters and TV crews are camped outside the building. Santangelo’s been on the horn four times. He wants to know what progress we’ve made in the case.”

“Well, he’s not gonna like the latest development. Amelia Stockard is our latest victim.”

“Holy shit! That was the Magnolia tea heiress they found at the dump?”

“That’s right. Now listen carefully. I want you to get hold of Butler and Vittaggio. Fill them in on the latest development, then send them to Saks Fifth Avenue. Have them get the rundown on Miss Stockard’s charge card, number 2476-3876-1204. They’re to see the security manager and keep it on the QT. I want a list of purchases for the last year, and I want to know if anyone else was authorized to use the card. They’re to get me her current address as well.”

“I’ll get on it right away.”

Detective First Grade Liz Butler was part of the Task Force. She was a top-notch police officer, with a keen investigative mind and tenaciousness. Her partner, Luigi Vittaggio, stood on equal ground. Driscoll knew they would both do a thorough job. Now if only he could keep the press and the newscasters at bay. But this was New York City, the capital of the world, and as far as news was concerned, the death of the tea heiress would rival the sojourns of Patty Hearst.

Driscoll turned his attention back to Larry Pearsol. “Can you take a DNA sample from the fetus and run it against the known sex offenders list?” It was a long shot, but Driscoll wanted to cover all possibilities.

“Sure, but it may take a couple of days.”

“Larry, I may not have a couple of days.”

Colm had been at it since 6:00 A.M. when his shift had begun, and it had proved to be another grueling day. The workday’s end seemed out of reach, and he was in the grip of despondency, finding no immediate escape or relief. His vocation offered some insulation from his demons, but everyone else he was forced to work with annoyed him, and his mood was growing increasingly bleaker. He glanced at his watch. It would be another forty-five minutes before he could put the day behind him and meet his date. Time seemed endless.

He leaned back in his swivel chair and closed his eyes. For some reason, the memory of his first visit to a hospital floated to consciousness.

It was to the Williston Medical Center in South Burlington, Vermont. He remembered the shushing sound his gurney made as it zigzagged through the hospital’s bleach-scented corridors on its way to a cloistered ward on the third floor. His wrists and ankles were restrained, held fast to the metal transport by leather straps. In a dreamlike state, brought on by a potent dose of diazepam, he had difficulty remembering the events that had led up to his arrival at the hospital. And where were his parents? Why weren’t they at his side? He sensed something ominous had happened to them. And what was that smell? It wasn’t coming from the winding corridors of the hospital. No. It was coming from his own tattered clothing. In his drug-induced stupor he had difficulty affixing a name to the scent, until it suddenly dawned on him: it was the smell of smoke. Had he been in a fire? He looked up at the orderly that was guiding his gurney. He tried to speak but had difficulty forming words. It was as though someone had put a stranglehold on his vocal cords. Drool was all that escaped his mouth. He tried to communicate through tear-soaked eyes, but all the orderly saw was Colm’s glassy-eyed doelike gaze.