The Screaming Room (22 page)

It was nearing three in the morning. All Angus heard was the tapping of keys and his sister's snoring, which sounded, for the most part, like a muted motor with a rough idle. But her sudden guttural outbursts were annoying the hell out of him. Had he been in bed, he'd grind his heel into the fleshy part of her thigh. That shut her up in a hurry.

Right now, though, he wasn't in bed. He was pounding away on the notebook. He'd slept very little over the past week. His ass ached from its constant contact with the hard wooden stool he had placed next to the barrel that supported the laptop. His eyes hurt from peering into the dull luster of its twelve-inch screen. But he was on a mission, a tedious, time-consuming one that required intense concentration. Therefore, he would not, could not, tolerate her snoring. So he puckered his lips and let loose a high-pitched whistle every time his sister snorted like a wild boar that had its testicles shocked by a Taser.

It always prompted the same response: “What? What is it? What?” with his sister nearly leaping from her skin.

And it always worked, allowing him to return to the mundane and irksome task at hand. He had learned much about the Lieutenant over the course of the last seven days. But he was yet to find what he was looking for.

“Jesus H. Christ! There it is again! Where the hell is that high-pitched whistling coming from?” Cassie grunted, eyes half open, spotting Angus quietly pecking away at the keys. A pencil behind his ear. A pad of paper at the ready. His gaze riveted to the screen.

“Angus, didn't ya hear that?”

“What?”

“That freakin' whistle!”

“I ain't heard a thing. Go back to sleep, Lovee. You must be dreaming.”

She muttered something intelligible, dislodged a wedgie, and let her head hit the pillow.

Was I dreaming? Maybe.

 

“We're never gonna get back home,” Cassie whispered, huddled next to her brother in the last pew of the church. “Not to Carbondale. Not to the loft. They musta cloned that Driscoll guy. He shows up everywhere! The guy probably walks on water.”

She looked around the church. There were a handful of visitors, some lighting candles, some standing before one of many statues, the rest seated. They all looked the same. Same height, same clothing, same sinister look on their face, skeleton-like. They were humming. “We're running outta places, Angus. We're gonna hafta move to another planet!”

“If you'd like.”

Huh? Why was he so polite and agreeable? “We might need another country.”

“That's a can-do.”

“Yeah, right. Like we're gonna be able to hail a taxi, say ‘JFK, please.' You know what kinda security they got at airports these days? And the last time I looked, JFK was still in New York City! They probably got dogs there that look like Driscoll. We're screwed, Angus. Unless Scotty can beam us up to the Starship
Enterprise,
we're screwed.”

“Look on the bright side. We have each other.”

“Jesus, Angus, you're creepin' me out.”

“Ya know what I always wanted to do when I grew up?” he whispered.

“I got this one! Trade in your feathers and become a cowboy.”

“Cute. You're so adorable. I always wanted to become a millionaire, silly.”

“Go on! They laid off security at Fort Knox?”

“Lemme show ya. Hand me the phone.”

Sitting on the pew was a phone. Not a cell phone. A freaking landline phone. Cord and all! She was leaning over trying to figure out what it was connected to when she heard Angus speaking on it.

“1-800-854-4568.” She heard him say as though it were voice-activated.

“Hey, that number rings a bell,” she said.

“Cute, times two, Cass. Ooooo. I could just squeeze ya.” He gave her cheek a pinch.

She was stymied. Still wondering where the phone came from, she began to stare at Angus, who was now dressed in a suit, a bow tie, and a straw hat, the phone to his ear.

“Hello,” he said. “I'd like to speak to Mr. Shewster, please…Oh?…Well, I think he'll make an exception in my case and take the call…okay. If you insist. Ya got a pen? I wanna make sure you get the message down just right. Good! Here's the message. Tell him Abigail was still wearin' the strap-on when we propped her up on the pole…. That's right. Pole. Strap-on. S as in Sam, T as in Texas, R as in Roger—you got it? Strap-on. What's that? Sure. It's 858-734-6523…. Nah. He'll know who it is. Tell him it's a toll-free call. Not to worry. It won't cost him a cent.”

Angus hung up, put the phone on the pew, and said. “See, Cassie. Now I'm gonna be a millionaire. Actually a millionaire three times over! Boy, oh boy! I can't wait. Why I—

 

A high-pitched whistle sounded.

“What? What is it? What?” she screamed, bolting upright in the bed. Wiping beads of perspiration from her brow, she spied Angus, still seated at the computer. “Only a dream. Thank God. It was only a dream.”

Laying back down, she heard the pounding of her heart and the tap, tap, tapping of keys.

Malcolm Shewster was good at a lot of things. Through the years he had mastered the art of baiting a hook for deep-sea fishing. It is an art, he'd been told. Not merely a skill. He was also adept at setting steel traps for catching critters. And he took pride in the fact that he could take down quail with a twenty-eight-gauge shotgun without inflicting injury to anyone standing nearby. He even possessed the dexterity needed to lasso a calf.

Admittedly, he was a younger man when he acquired and honed these skills, but he had discovered he could capture just about anything, if he put his mind to it.

As Friedrich Gernsheim's Concerto in C minor, Op. 16, emanated in absolute clarity from the fifth-generation iPod, Shewster was scanning the PC Haven receipt onto his computer.

He swayed his hands in maestro fashion, waiting for the image to appear on his own notebook, a Pegasus 330.

“Voilà!” he said, pleased with the transfer, which he quickly minimized so as not to interfere with his online conversation with Kyle Rogers, an associate of sorts, and CEO of Bengal Enterprises in Los Angeles, California. He, like Shewster, was an ambitious industrialist. He was also a man in demand. It was only last year that he'd been asked to chair the board of trustees for a nationally based corporation. He accepted the designation graciously, promising to comply with the record-keeping and disclosure requirements of federal law. The corporation he was asked to help govern wasn't going to turn into another Enron or Tyco International. No sir. As long as he was in at the helm, no stockholder or employee of PC Haven, Inc., need worry. He was a man of conviction. A man of character. A man who knew the intricacies of corporate America.

One of those intricacies involved favors.

“Ready when you are, Malcolm.”

By simply tapping on a touchpad, Shewster placed the image of Angus's purchase on the WiFi expressway. Before the pharmaceutical mogul powered off, Rogers was viewing it.

“Lieutenant, we're all at the mercy of physics,” said Danny O'Brien, leaning against metal shelving inside TARU as Driscoll examined what the tech had placed in his hand.

“You think this has a better chance of staying onboard?” Driscoll examined the black device that looked like a cigarette holder Hitler might have used. “It feels so light.” “Cedric tagged the Lincoln with a Qicktrack. It's a good GPS, but maybe too heavy for a chauffeur who likes to ride the rumble strips. What you've got in your hand is a Protrack. Granted, it's lighter. Thinner too. But those are pluses. Cedric will need more time and a ratchet, but I think he'll be able to wedge it between the limo's fuel tank and its support straps.”

The technician disappeared. When he returned, he handed Driscoll a three-eighths-inch drive ratchet set and a laptop.

“What's with the laptop?”

“It's configured to work with the Protrack.”

“You mean I can follow him myself?”

“If you want to.”

Driscoll looked pleased.

“One more thing, Lieutenant.”

“What's that?”

“You might want to hold on to Cedric's cigars when he tags the vehicle. He's gonna be working under twenty gallons of gasoline.”

A knock sounded at the door to Shewster's suite. Muttering something unintelligible, he went to answer it.

“Hmm…showdown time, huh?” he said to Driscoll, who looked like he'd come to conduct a hanging. “I'd figured you'd drop by sooner or later. Come in. Come in. We're not going to air our grievances in the hall.”

Driscoll barreled past the man and entered the room. “You're crowding me, Shewster. I'm an inch away from arresting you for interfering with a police investigation.”

“C'mon. We both know that's not about to happen.”

“No?”

“You reach for a set of cuffs, Lieutenant, and you'll be back to pressing a uniform.”

“You threatening me?” Driscoll asked, looking like he was about to put Shewster through the wall.

“Sit down.”

“I don't know who the hell you think you're talking to. I'm not some goddamn—”

“Please, Lieutenant. Have a seat,” Shewster said, motioning toward the sofa. “It hasn't been my best day either. You can put away the sword. I'll tell you what you came to hear.”

Driscoll didn't move.

“Please. No more threats. Miss Crenshaw wasn't as big a help as I thought she'd be.”

“What's with the store receipt?” Driscoll asked.

Shewster sat down. “Do you like cookies, Lieutenant?”

Driscoll thought he'd stepped into an episode of
The Twilight Zone
. “Suppose we cut to the chase,” he said.

Shewster gestured like he was telling a child it was okay to cross the street and offered a smile.

The Lieutenant straddled a wooden chair, facing him.

“Good. Good. See, we're making progress.”

“I didn't come here to be toyed with, Shewster.”

“What we're both seeking, Lieutenant, is one and the same.”

Yeah, right. “What's with the store receipt?”

The business man used the palms of his hands to massage his face, his fingers to rub his eyes. He then looked squarely at Driscoll. “You know as well as I do anonymity isn't always as Webster defines it. Thanks to the Internet and to the resourcefulness of tech-literate people, privacy is another word that has an asterisk next to it.”

“PC Haven. Rita Crenshaw. The store receipt. You wanna tie those into where you're heading?”

“My plan to help the police apprehend these killer twins is to include a Web site, for use by folks who prefer the Internet for communicating. Not everybody trusts Ma Bell anymore. The site will enable the net-only enthusiasts to stake their claim to the bounty. There will be a blog to keep visitors up to date on the latest developments in the chase. If I were the target of that chase, I'd be checking that blog every hour. That's where the PC Haven receipt comes in. Sure, any owner's manual would give me the specifications and capabilities of the notebook this killer purchased. But I'm a businessman who deals in products. A variety of products. Pills, syrups, inhalers, vaccines. Each one designed for a specific purpose, but each one unique. I'm the type of adversary, Lieutenant, who needs to know everything about his opponent. Right down to the dates on the coins he's carrying in his pocket. Like I said, an owner's manual would give me the notebook's capabilities. What it's not going to tell me is how vulnerable it is to privacy invasion. More to the point, that generic manual is not going to tell me how vulnerable
his
notebook is. I need to know every miniscule detail of the workings of that particular computer. Right down to whether the guy who installed its hard drive had a hangover at the time!”

“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?”