The Screaming Room (9 page)

Angus was in the shed. The game board, originally designed for Monopoly, now had a New York City tourist map affixed to it, with a cellophane grid of squares overlaying it. One of the sound chips embedded under the surface of the map wasn't working. The chip, designed for use inside talking or musical greeting cards, and activated when the card was opened, resembled a shiny new dime. Angus studied it closely under the magnifying glass. He'd have to go online, order a new one, download the singing voice of Old Blue Eyes, and slip it back into its sleeve under the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Of course, he'd lay out the extra bucks for an overnight delivery. What good was the game if it didn't sing?

“Angus!”

His sister was a screamer. It usually meant she saw a spider.

“What is it this time?” he hollered back.

“It's got a zillion legs! Come quick.”

He put down the chip and headed inside to deal with the skittering demon. En route, he remembered the last time he heard those lungs in high-pitch mode. It wasn't that long ago.

 

“Angus!” It sounded more like the shriek of a wounded hawk than a human scream, and it awakened him. It was nearing four in the morning, and the small house was otherwise quiet. Where was his sister? And, more important, where was Father?

“Angus!”

He followed the anguish-filled scream to the cellar, finding his sister, stripped naked and bound to the porcelain enamel-topped table in the room behind the furnace. Father lay sprawled in the corner, his arms and face covered in sweat; his pants at his knees; a honing blade at his side. He was breathing heavily and reeking of alcohol. Had he succumbed to its anesthetizing effects? Angus hoped so. He shook him. Father made no sound or movement.

He approached Cassie. Tears trickled down her face, where eruptions of exposed tissue oozed blood.

“He raped me after butchering my face,” she whimpered.

“Why didn't you call out before…?”

“He said he'd kill me if I made any noise. I waited until I figured he'd passed out.”

“Shsss. It's okay. I'm here.”

“Please. Help me.”

Angus unfastened leather straps, took Cassie into his arms, and carried her up to their cramped sleeping quarters, his eyes coming to rest on the corner of the glass face of a Pachinko machine that they had ceased to play with. It served now as a catchall for soiled clothing. Shoving the laundry aside, he used his fist to shatter the glass and collected the ball bearings contained inside. Running to his dresser, he retrieved a sock and poured in the half-inch spheres. Thus armed, he returned to the room and beat his father to death.

Thomlinson, Aligante, and Driscoll were seated around the Lieutenant's desk in what had become a war room. A detailed map of the city was displayed on an upright particle-board behind them, red thumb tacks denoting where the bodies had been found. Driscoll was discouraged. To date, there had been no calls to the Tip Line from anyone seeing anything suspicious in the two restrooms, on the bridge, or onboard the USS
Intrepid.
These sons of bitches were good, he thought.

He glanced over to the corner of his desk where the two-inch letters of the
New York Post
's headline stared back at him:
DOUBLE
TROUBLE
!! He had alerted the media that the string of killings may have been committed by a set of male and female identical twins. The populace at large was urged to report any sightings of such look-alikes.

Thomlinson was already in the loop, so the Lieutenant took the time to explain the significance of Turner syndrome in twin births to Margaret.

When he had completed his X and Y summation, it was Thomlinson's turn to speak.

“Our search produced four sets of twins that fit the profile. The oldest pair is in their early fifties, the youngest is sixteen.”

“Four sets from all that newsprint? Some rare condition,” said Margaret.

“Turner syndrome itself isn't so rare,” Driscoll said. “It hits one in two thousand females. It's when you factor in the possibility of it affecting identical twins that the numbers get infinitesimal. In any case, it's their DNA that'll be their downfall, rare or not.”

Thomlinson continued with his report.

“I kept the initial search inside the United States. Leticia is checking on similar articles abroad. She'll let me know what she comes up with so we can prepare our protocol for Interpol and any other foreign agencies. Back to the land of the free. I placed a call to Ohio…to the Dayton Police, there. I filled them in on the details of our investigation. They accommodated me by paying a visit to a local address I had come up with for John Matthews, the first twin on the list. Turns out he lives in a camper just outside of town. Neighbors report he spends most of his time hoisting bottles of Rolling Rock and yelling at the TV. And while our last tourist was being murdered here in the Big Apple, Matthews was drinking himself into a stupor at one of Dayton's bars. This according to Dayton PD, who were able to substantiate his alibi. On to his twin sister, Kathleen. The woman succumbed to Alzheimer's at an early age. Six months before the killing spree began in New York she had wandered off the grounds of her Florida nursing home and was hit and killed by a rented Jeep driven by two college preppies on spring break.”

“Puts the Matthewses off the list,” said Margaret.

“Fate had other plans for the Gibbons twins,” Thomlinson continued. “I located a discreet Web site for Tulia Gibbons who, three years ago, opened ‘The Best Little Whore House in Savannah, Georgia.' She has no criminal record. Probably because Elijah McCormack, a state senator, was a frequent visitor. So the tabloids report. Somehow, I couldn't see a madam who makes a living offa tourism leave her emporium to knock off tourists in New York. Besides, our little entrepreneur was busy setting up Tulia's Too, a second den of iniquity, while the city was under siege.”

“What became of her brother?”

“Ah, government records tell all. The guy's a nuclear engineer working for the navy. He's currently stationed at a submarine base in New London, Connecticut.”

“That puts him pretty close to the crime scene. No?” said Margaret.

“According to his commanding officer, he's working on a nondiscretionary project to update the computer technology onboard the USS
John Marshall
and the USS
Triton.
His work record is clean. And his log provides a perfect alibi.”

“What about the teen twins?”

“On them I've got something interesting. About where they were born.”

“Oak Flat?” said Driscoll.

“Mining country,” said Thomlinson. “In Pendleton County, West Virginia. At the base of the Allegheny Mountains. Almost uninhabited. But here's the good part. Closest cluster of residents would be on an Indian reservation, three miles outside of town, and according to the news article a Raven's Breath was listed as the twins' foster mom.”

“You thinking what I'm thinking?” said Margaret making a scalping motion with her hand.

“We could be getting lucky,” said Driscoll with a grin.

The late afternoon skies were overcast above the lush flora of the Bronx Zoo. Earlier, a sudden summer thunderstorm had sent the zoo's visitors and most of its predators in search of shelter. With the pavement still wet, one of the zoo's hot dog vendors pushed his aluminum cart to its customary spot on the path that led to the Ethiopian Baboon Reserve. It would be a few minutes before the crowds ventured outside again to resume their gawking.

Adjusting the flames on the gas canisters beneath tubs of simmering frankfurters, the vendor hadn't noticed he had customers. A high-pitched voice startled him.

“Say, ma man, how much you charge for yo hot dogs?” It was the voice of a gruff-looking wiry-haired youth. Another slovenly teen crowded his cart.

“Two dollars,” the Pakistani merchant stammered.

“Man, that be highway robbery,” said the youth, flashing a sardonic grin. “Freddie, don't you think ma man here is dissin' us?”

“I don't set the prices. I just sell the stuff,” said the vendor.

The tormentor's smile, conveying its veiled threat, froze. The youth's switchblade was pressing hard against the vendor's waist.

“Please, please. I want no trouble,” pleaded the vendor.

“Yo, ma man,” the second youth taunted. “Leroy here is a mean mother and there'd be no stoppin' him if he gets pissed. Tell ya what we're gonna do. I'll tell Leroy to lose the blade while you hand over yo cash. You catchin' my drift?”

With unsteady hands, the Pakistani rummaged through his pockets and produced a handful of singles.

“That's all you got?” squawked Leroy, grabbing hold of the loot.

“My shift just started.”

“You shittin' me?”

“I am a truthful man. My shift just started. Those singles are mine.”

“Not any more,” said Leroy, jamming the fistful of dollars into the pocket of his oversized trousers.

“Yo, Leroy. It be time to split,” said the second culprit, his ears detecting the distinctive sound of an approaching moped.

As the pair of petty thieves strutted away from the shaken merchant, the hot dog vendor flagged down the scooter-mounted security guard.

“I've been held up!” he cried, pointing his finger in the direction of the fleeing thieves.

The guard revved up his scooter and took off after the pair. When the two robbers caught sight of their pursuer, they sprinted up a grassy knoll that was bordered by a ten-foot-high steel fence.

“C'mon, Freddie, we gotta get outta the park,” hollered Leroy, climbing to the top of the fence and hurling himself over, dropping twenty-five feet on the other side, where the fence was supported by fifteen feet of standing concrete.

“Wait for me,” Freddie shouted, hurrying up behind him.

Midway up the fence, Freddie glanced over his shoulder. The security guard had parked his scooter at the bottom of the knoll and was marching up the hill, nightstick in hand. Eyeballing the guard, the fleeing thief climbed higher. He froze when he reached the top. On the expanse below, he saw four black baboons baring saber teeth and advancing toward Leroy, who had hit the ground hard and was now scrambling on all fours. As Freddie watched in horror, the largest primate pounced on his doomed friend. The animal's canines tore into Leroy's flesh, lacerating both tendon and bone. Leroy let out a bloodcurdling scream as fluid from his punctured lungs filled his trachea. In the seconds that followed, the baboons tore Leroy's body to shreds.

 

It took nearly an hour for three animal handlers, armed with stun guns, to corral the baboons and force them back into their cave.

By now, a handful of uniformed policemen, EMTs, and a plainclothes detective had arrived. They joined three coroner's assistants who were busy scooping up Leroy's remains and stuffing them into a body bag. The curious baboons watched the activity through a thick metal grid that sealed the mouth of their sanctuary.

Detective Luis Raios, dispatched from the Fifty-second Precinct, had never entered a wild animal's den before. He felt jittery at the sight of the four baboons, their faces pressed hard against the steel grid, examining his every move. He knew he was an intruder, trespassing on their limited kingdom. He walked toward a cluster of boulders in the center of the expanse, aware of the anxious primate eyes of the baboons. In that instant, Detective Raios felt what he had never felt before in his metropolitan life. Like prey. He saw in those sets of sienna brown eyes the impulse to kill, and he knew he was the target of that impulse.

“And what do we have here?” he muttered, slipping on a latex glove before reaching in, behind the boulders.

He had come upon an odd item for the baboons' lair: a ladies' brown high-heel shoe. Rotating the shoe in his hand, he deciphered remnants of letters on its inner side: G cc. S ze 6 ½. Gucci? Size 6 ½? He examined a dark stain on the shoe's heel. Baboon shit…or human blood? he wondered.

And where was the other shoe? He scanned the immediate area. Nothing. Cautiously, he approached a second cluster of rocks that adjoined the baboons' quarters. A putrid stench assailed him.

“Don't they ever hose out that cave?” he yelled to the trio of animal handlers.

“A crew goes in there once a month,” said one, moseying on over to where the detective was standing.

“Don't you smell that?” Raios winced, popping a handful of tic tacs into his mouth.

“Whoa!” the handler gasped.

“I'd better check out that cave,” said Raios. “Any chance of moving those overgrown monkeys and raising the gate?”

“But we just got them in there!”

“Then I suggest you get them out.”

 

The overlook, west of the grassy knoll, was now congested with spectators. When the immediate area was cleared, the animal handler approached a small metal box embedded in a concrete wall near the baboons' cave. Using a brass key, he unlocked the box and depressed a button inside. The gate on the mouth of the cave went up.

“Detective, you may want to stand behind me,” the handler suggested.

“You got that right,” said Raios.

Though the gate had been lifted, the baboons remained inside.

“They waiting for some sort of invitation?”

“C'mon, Whiskers…c'mon, Plato…come on out, Joe…Figaro, c'mon. It's time to play,” coaxed the handler.

“Are they always this shy?”

“Never.”

“Keep tryin'.”

“Hey guys, the rain's over. C'mon now, I got a handful of Good 'n' Plenty. They're your favorite.” He shook his hand, rattling the sugar-coated candies. “Come and get them.”

The baboons stood defiantly inside.

“Maybe they lost their sweet tooth,” said Raios.

The handler approached their hollow and sprinkled the pink and white confections on the ground just outside the mouth of the cave.

Nothing happened.

“They're not goin' for it,” said Raios.

“These things always work. There's something really wrong here.” The handler stepped back. “Okay, have it your way, guys.”

With Raios in tow, the handler sauntered over to the metal box and depressed a red button.

“I'm setting off an ultrasonic sound inside their cave. It's a frequency we won't hear. But it's like fingernails on a blackboard to them. It'll get 'em outta there in a hurry!”

“In what kind of mood?” Raios grumbled as the pack of baboons let out a ferocious growl. “That howling doesn't make me feel too comfortable.”

The four primates lumbered out of the cave and scrambled for the Good 'n' Plenty.

“These the same guys that ripped apart that kid an hour ago?” Raios asked, eyes fixed on the docile foursome.

“The very same.”

“Then I'm glad I'm in here with you.”

The two other handlers netted the baboons.

“Detective, the cave's all yours,” the lead handler announced.

“I hope ya got some of those candies left. That smell is only gonna get worse inside and I'm fresh outa tic tacs.”

The handler tossed Raios the near-empty box.

Armed with a Parks Department flashlight, a mouthful of licorice, and a hunch, Raios approached the cave. Was it merely the stench of the baboons' habitat that assaulted his sinuses, restricted his breathing, and filled him with nausea? Or was it something else?

He crouched down and ventured inside the cave, his eardrums reverberating with the throbbing of his heart. Ten feet in, he heard a buzzing sound. Following it, he found a frenzy of flies disturbed by his flashlight.

Beyond the flies, the beam of light exposed a rib cage. It appeared to be human. And still fastened to the end of one elongated fleshy bone Raios found what he was looking for: the matching Gucci shoe.