Thomas O`Callaghan - Bone Thief

Over the last two hours Driscoll had personally visited all of the neighborhood’s coffee shops but had failed to find Moira, and none of the shop’s employees remembered seeing a young girl that fit Moira’s description. He left his card with each store manager in case the girl stopped in. Seated behind the wheel of his idling automobile, he watched the rain collect on the Chevy’s windshield. He grabbed his cell phone and placed yet another call to the Tiernan household. When Seamus Tiernan’s answering machine kicked in, he disconnected the call. Disheartened, he returned to his office, where he discovered he had e-mail. Pulling up a chair, he focused his eyes on the computer’s amber screen and grew sick with worry as he read the following volley of electronic communications:

Catherine,

I’m mystified! I’m baffled! I’m stumped! I’m striking out on my search for candied-lipped Donny. What, has Don Juan mastered the cloak of invisibility, or had he never had an identity? I’d loathe to think that you made him up. That wouldn’t be fair play. Would it?

Godsend

Godsend,

You must be a joker. Made him up? That’s ludicrous! Could it be you’re not the magician you claim to be? I suggest you get a new wand. Donato Tesorio was! And I predict, is! I suggest you give it another shot. Your best shot!

Catherine

Catherine,

No. Your Donny was never spawned, except in your twisted imagination. I charge you with three counts of Cyber-fraud. First: Fabricating an identity. Second: Criminal trespass of the Internet highways, with intent to misrepresent. Third: Downright bad netiquette. I swear, by the power of the gods Ram and Pixel, I will drag you in chains to the ecumenic council of mighty Magellan On-Line. There you will be stripped of your hard drive, chained to your joystick, and burned. May they impound your modem for all eternity, you cyber-sinner, you.

Godsend

Godsend,

Let’s cut the doo-doo. I know who thou art. Nailing the bitch to the boardwalk was a coup. Nine Inch Nails wailed for you that night. What a romantic. You have such a way with women. Exalt, oh shadow of the night! It is I, and I alone, who knows your lair. And while New York’s Finest unravel the puzzle, I, the cybermole, will burrow close to your wormy heart. In the Internet inferno, Dante has programmed a new circle for the likes of you. Your gigabyte brain will fry for all eternity.

Catherine

Catherine,

A villain thou art. You’ve cost me much insomnia, you mite on the back of a giant tyrannosaurus. Demons of earth, awaken! I am forced now to hunt you in cyberspace, for all eternity. Tell me, oh Enlightened One, how did you find me? Answer that and I will make you rich like Croesus.

Godsend

Godsend,

I am the pathfinder, Shiva’s third eye. I scuba the currents of the Net like a Maui native on Hawaiian breakers. Tell me, do the bones make good bouillon, or do you bury them like feral dogs?

Catherine

Behind the Statue of Liberty, the setting sun was gilding the sky, igniting a conflagration of primary colors that painted the Manhattan skyline in scarlet and gold. But this vista was lost on the solitary figure seated on a wooden bench on the upper deck of the South Street Seaport, staring at the screen of his Lynksys wireless-powered laptop.

“Do you bury them like feral dogs?”

The words loomed on the screen, taunting him. Never had an insult cut so deep. Colm slammed closed the laptop, flung the computer into the water that bordered the Seaport, and marched toward the parking lot where he had left the van.

Her last message had dismantled him. He felt like tracked prey. He thought about his pursuer, this woman who had navigated the Internet in search of his bait. The fact that she had found it infuriated him, for her intrusion had now made it necessary for him to find another lure.

He stopped. A smile slowly emerged on his face. He had not been found. She had only found Godsend, who was now resting thirty feet below the surface of the East River. His only inconvenience would be having to find some other way to select and attract future collectibles. The realization consoled him, but when he finally reached home, he was tired and listless. Inside the house, he collapsed on the living-room sofa, where he soon began obsessing over the loss of his last quarry. The pleasure of the Benjamin woman had not alleviated the pain of losing the young girl at the mall.

There was solace under the house. With his trophies, he would find consolation. He made his way down to the cellar. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he heard his mother’s voice. “The young honey got away from you at the mall, didn’t she? And now ya got another filly onto ya. A computer-literate filly, no less. You cyberghoul, you! Can’t you do anything right?”

“Whatcha gonna do now?” nagged his father.

“You’ve made a mess of it for sure,” his mother scolded. “The police’ll be all over you soon.”

“And I’ll find a way to be all over them!” he screamed. “Now, shut up, both of you!”

The cellar became silent again. He eyed his parents’ skeletal jaws for any sign of movement. They didn’t budge.

After dismissing a young patient who had been nearly paralyzed as a result of a motor-vehicle accident, Doctor Colm Pierce picked up the next case from a pile of folders on his desk. It was that of a gerontological patient, an eighty-eight-year-old woman with an injured coccyx. Pierce felt sorry for the poor soul. She was without family and relied heavily on her city-appointed caretaker. What brought a smile to the woman’s face was that Pierce insisted he would personally escort her from the waiting room to his office every time she came in to see him.

Cheerfully, he stepped outside and walked down the narrow corridor. The hospital’s loud speaker crackled. “Trauma team, report to Pediatric ICU, Stat!” There was a shuffle of feet. A member of the trauma team rushed past him, heading for the bay of elevators. It was Doctor Stephen Astin.

“Steve, we gotta talk,” Pierce called out.

“Not now, Colm. I’m on my way to a Code Blue.” Astin stepped inside the elevator and hit the sixth-floor button.

Just as the elevator’s doors were closing, Pierce slipped inside. “Need I remind you you’re into me for nineteen grand?” he said to Astin.

“Like you’d let me forget.”

“Your third installment was due a month ago, so why haven’t you answered my e-mail?”

“Night Rider is running tomorrow night at Belmont. He’s got five grand of our cash running with him. It’s a sure thing. Money in the bank.”

“That’s what you said the last time.”

“C’mon, kid, you don’t need the money. Why ya houndin’ me?”

“Whether I need the money or not is none of your fucking business. It was a loan. Not a grant.”

“Don’t hand me that shit.”

“What shit? I did it to help you.”

“No, you didn’t. You did it to see me strung out. It gives you a charge. Admit it.”

The doors of the elevator opened, ushering the two angry men into the pediatric intensive care unit, where they were greeted by Doctor George Galina and Susan Dupree, the ICU nurse.

“It’s the Parsons girl,” Nurse Dupree announced. “It’s the damndest thing. She wakes up screaming her head off. You’d think those punctured lungs were down for the count, but no.”

“Wha’d she say?” asked Astin.

“I couldn’t understand a thing.”

The trauma team geared into action, and within seconds, Clarissa’s body was punctured, injected, and palpated, sending each of her monitoring units into an electronic frenzy.

“She’s flatlining!” Doctor Galina hollered.