The Screaming Room (6 page)

Driscoll pulled the rain-battered Chevy to a complete stop as the Long Island Railroad's red and white crossing gates descended up ahead. He narrowed his eyes, focusing them on the rearview mirror, hoping to sidestep a haunting recollection from his past. But the thunderous sound of the passing commuter train catapulted the nightmarish memory to consciousness. On a sunny morning in August, when Driscoll was eight years old, he had been standing curbside, watching his mother climb the steps of the LIRR's Jamaica station. Ten minutes later, as the Manhattan-bound 10:39 came rumbling in, the woman launched herself into its path, ending her life and indelibly scarring John Driscoll. He never forgave his mother for her selfish act and never forgave himself for that notion.

His heart was still racing when a car horn sounded. The train had passed, the gates were up, and a motorist behind him was politely asking Driscoll to proceed. Guilt ridden, he put the cruiser in drive and stepped on the gas.

Thirty minutes later, with the rain still playing havoc with the cruiser's windshield wipers, Driscoll guided the Chevy past the limestone pillars that marked the entrance to Saint Charles Cemetery. Although his mother was interred there, it wasn't her grave he had come to visit. After giving the security guard a nod, he followed the curves in the road until he came to within fifty feet of the section where his wife and daughter were buried. Pulling the Chevy to the curb, he turned off the engine and sat motionless, lost to reflection. Lightning filled the luminous sky, followed by a slow rumble of thunder that echoed through the graveyard. Driscoll thought it sounded like the drumroll that preceded an execution.

Silence filled the cruiser's cabin as the rain subsided. Driscoll opened the car door and was engulfed by cold and damp air. Heading for the gravesite, he noticed green moss had begun to obscure the headstone's carved lettering. He used his handkerchief to scrape away the uninvited decay.

“
Bonjour, ma cherie,
” he whispered to his bride, standing somberly before the mute stone. “Nicole, Daddy is here,” he added.

Was it merely the wind that rustled the nearby willow or was his salutation being answered?

He marveled at the sweeping motion of the tree, smiled, and returned his focus on the grave.

“I miss you,” he said. “Both of you.” He leaned over and placed his hand on the damp granite stone as serendipitous thoughts whirled into a kaleidoscope of memories. He saw himself and Colette lounging on the open porch outside their Toliver's Point bungalow; a wooden glider providing a view of an ocean varnished in moonlight. The liquid sounds of Debussy serenaded them, as notes from Nicole's flute wafted through an open window.

Without warning, the intrusive peal of a cell phone interrupted his reverie. He reached inside his breast pocket and turned the unit off. But it was too late. His daughter's concert had ended and the vision had ceased.

“Gotta go,” he grumbled.

Forcing a smile, he climbed behind the steering wheel of the Chevy and guided it along the winding road that led to the cemetery's exit, taking note of the tombstones that stood like sentinels on either side. Too many lives lost, he thought, reaching the limestone pillars, where the security guard gave him his customary salute. Odd, even the dead need guarding, he said to himself as he veered the cruiser onto Saint Philip's Drive.

On the entrance ramp to the Meadowbrook Parkway, he remembered he had turned off his cell phone. He reached in his pocket and turned it back on. It rang almost immediately. He flipped it open.

“Driscoll.”

“Lieutenant, I've been trying to reach you. Something wrong with your phone?” It was Thomlinson. He sounded anxious.

“I was elsewhere. Whaddya got?”

“The DNA results are in on the nail.”

“It's about time. Meet me in my office in forty-five minutes.”

“Will do.”

 

When Driscoll arrived at his desk, he found Thomlinson seated beside it. Driscoll slid into his seat and unpocketed a pack of Lucky Strikes and lit one up.

“Thought you were off those things.”

“I am,” he said, shooting Thomlinson a glare. “Let's see what Forensics has to offer, shall we?”

He reached for the secured file, broke its seal, and leafed through a score of typed pages.

…Complete search of the national DNA database produced no match.

…subject unidentified.
“Now, that's a surprise,” he quipped and read on.

…In conclusion, chromosomal scanning, utilizing standard Bayesian interpretation, suggests the subject to be Caucasian…Polymerase chain reaction-short tandem repeat methodology, reveals the subject to be male
.

“Male?” He lowered his brows and shot Thomlinson a puzzled look. “Why would he have used a ladies' room at the museum? A place where he'd run the risk of being seen?” Driscoll stared long and hard at the italicized printing as if expecting it to change gender. When it didn't, he used an index finger to circle the word. “Cedric, could we be we looking for some sort of cross-dresser?”

“It worked for Hadden Clark.” Thomlinson was referring to a notorious cross-dressing serial killer who had a penchant for wearing ladies' clothing while perpetrating his madness.

“Well, my friend, we either have a crafty one on our hands, or our two-killers-acting-in-tandem theory is looking better.”

Detective Cedric Thomlinson was running late. Traffic had come to a complete standstill on Brooklyn's Belt Parkway. Flashing lights in the distance and the trickling of cars in the opposing lanes indicated an accident up ahead. There was nothing he could do but wait out the efforts of the EMS and other emergency personnel. It wouldn't be long before uniforms from Highway Patrol 2 would reopen the three-lane thoroughfare.

After fifteen minutes, Thomlinson was rolling again. He hastened over the Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, hugged Beach Channel Drive as it curved left, and made it to his destination: Saint Rose of Lima's Church on Beach Eighty-fourth Street in Rockaway Beach. He squeezed his Dodge Intrepid into a tight parking space, got out of the car, and headed toward the heavy oak door that led to the parish community room.

Father Liam O'Connor's eyes narrowed as he watched Thomlinson enter the room and take his assigned seat. O'Connor, a titan of a man, was a Jesuit priest with a strip of white hair surrounded by gray. As a certified alcohol and substance abuse counselor, he had run the NYPD's Confidential Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program for the last thirty-one years. Most of the inductees who filled the room had been ordered into the program by their commanding officer. For Thomlinson, this was his second go-round. A rarity for the department, but not a precedent. He had Driscoll to thank for the exception. The Lieutenant, who had become a good friend, was a master at calling in favors.

The crowd that surrounded Thomlinson tonight was a mix of men and women, all of them police personnel, and all with the same purpose: to gather the strength to keep from drinking. Thomlinson scanned the room, where faces displayed hope or despair. Most in the crowd were young rookie cops ensnared by the lure of local bars that neighbored their precinct, where they could revel the night away with other cops. Always with other cops.

Some of Father O'Connor's fledglings recovered, regained their lives, and went on to become productive police officers. Some didn't. For them, often fighting off the inclination to put the barrel of their service revolver in their mouth and pull the trigger, another career awaited. Thomlinson, at age forty-three, with twenty years under his belt, felt he leaned more toward the whiskey-faced veterans who made up the rest of the crowd, many of whom were barely holding on until retirement.

“Hello, Cedric. Glad you could make it.” O'Connor placed a warm hand on Thomlinson's shoulder before making his way toward the front of room. A young officer, with a wife and two kids, had just finished speaking about the struggle he was having with alcohol. A struggle that threatened both his marriage and his career.

“Would anyone else like to speak?” Father O'Connor asked.

Thomlinson cast his eyes to the floor. He had plenty to say but chose to keep it to himself. He knew he was not well respected by his fellow officers, present company included. The resentment stemmed from an incident that occurred while he and his partner, Harold Young, were undercover working Narcotics. A controlled buy was all that was to go down that afternoon. Nothing more.

It began with a drug dealer stepping out of the shadows of a darkened hallway and asking Thomlinson if everything was cool.

“Yeah, mon. Everything's cool,” Thomlinson had assured him. But that wasn't the case. Thomlinson had spent the night before tossing back shots of tequila at Cassidy's Hide-away and was hungover. So when a gun materialized in the dealer's hand, followed by shots, the ill-prepared Thomlinson caught one above the right shoulder blade and was knocked to the floor. In the cross fire that followed, undercover police officer Harold Young was killed.

As Thomlinson was lying on a rescue vehicle's stretcher, he caught the look of astonishment on the face of the sergeant who had helped him climb in. He was staring at Thomlinson's gun. A gun that was still in its holster.

In the official report it was indicated that Thomlinson was situated behind Detective Young and could not fire without the risk of hitting his partner. But Cedric Thomlinson knew his drinking was a major factor that helped deliver the officer to an early grave. That reality would follow him for life.

The NYPD is like a small town where news travels at lightning speed. Thomlinson soon became known as the cop who didn't pull his gun in a shootout. Not a good handle to be saddled with. The resultant ostracism brought on more guilt, which led to heavier drinking. The heavier drinking spawned depression and with it, thoughts of suicide.

A compassionate borough commander, Todd Emerson, now retired, had a sense of what was going on. He arranged for Thomlinson to be transferred from Narcotics to Homicide. New surroundings would do him good, Emerson reasoned. There, Thomlinson would report to Lieutenant John Driscoll, a man with a reputation for fairness. But Driscoll was a keen observer as well. It wasn't long before the Lieutenant recognized Thomlinson for what he was. A drunk. He tried reasoning with Thomlinson but couldn't promote change in a man unwilling to own up to his addiction. Driscoll was faced with a dilemma: What to do with this newly assigned detective, a liability to both the job and to himself? Thomlinson was heading for a serious breakdown, the consequences of which could directly affect not only the new homicide detective but the Homicide squad itself.

Driscoll was forced to make a move that might have ruined Thomlinson's career but that may have saved his life. He placed a call to the representative at the Detectives Union and had the detective “farmed.” Thomlinson was stripped of his gun and shield and spent the next six weeks in a recovery program at a retreat house in the secluded woods of Delaware County—“The Farm.” Thomlinson had little choice. If he refused to complete the program conducted by a group of certified alcohol and substance abuse counselors, he'd be fired.

Thomlinson acquiesced and was eventually returned to active duty.

Yet, here he was, back in the program. Again.

Father O'Connor took a seat next to Thomlinson. “You stayin' out of trouble?” he asked.

Thomlinson nodded.

“How's she doing?”

The priest was asking about a teenager, the reason the detective was back.

“She's a fighter,” said Thomlinson.

“You're a fighter, too,” said the priest. “It takes stamina to keep the sleeping tiger at bay.”

In the course of a prior investigation, the detective had been ordered to drive to the young lady's house, pick her up, and bring her to Driscoll's office, where she was to provide a helpful statement. It was a routine assignment. On his way, though, he stopped to buy a Lotto ticket. While he was standing in line, waiting to purchase what he hoped would be a ticket back to the islands, the young girl was abducted. In an attempt to silence the voices of condemnation that riddled his brain, Thomlinson turned, again, to alcohol.

In this man's police department, very few get a second chance. He had Driscoll to thank for that, and he silently voiced his appreciation during the communal Lord's Prayer that ended the meeting. After that, Thomlinson walked out into the brisk night air, made his way to his cruiser, slipped in behind the steering wheel, and repeated the prayer. This was, after all, his second go-round.

Another hot and steamy Sunday morning in July greeted the first visitors to the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum. Among them was a wiry-haired man with his six-year-old son.

“Permission for me and my son to come aboard, sir?” The man was addressing the sailor who was guarding the gang-way to the museum's main attraction: the
Intrepid
's flight deck.

“Permission granted,” the sailor replied, firing a rigid salute to the little freckled-faced boy flaunting a white ensign's cap inscribed
USS IOWA
.

“Let's go, Daddy!” the boy said.

Scurrying up the steel-studded steps, they reached the carrier's upper deck. It was immense. Gutted warplanes stood silent under a blistering sun. A semicircle of onlookers had formed around the exhibit's newest acquisition: a Russian MiG-21.

The boy's attention was diverted to a loud commotion erupting behind an F-14 Tomcat. Filled with curiosity, he bolted behind the aircraft. A bare-chested youth, his wrists in handcuffs, was yelling at his girlfriend. Provoked, the girl lunged forward, striking her restrained Romeo on the side of his head with the heel of her shoe.

“See that? See that? Why ain't ya handcuffing her?” the youth screamed. “Ain't that assault with a deadly weapon?”

“Any more out of you, young lady, and you'll be riding in the wagon, too,” the military guard warned. He barked orders into his handheld radio. “Reilly, here! We got ourselves a situation on the flight deck. Get a transport ready.”

“What exactly we lookin' at?” the dispatcher's voice crackled back.

“A domestic quarrel…with injuries. I cuffed the agitator after he slapped his girlfriend in the face. While I had him immobilized, she hauls off and tattoos him on the side of the head with her shoe.”

The guard positioned himself between the two combatants to block another blow from the irate girlfriend.

“Look, Jack! Over there! That's a Fighting Falcon! Let's get a closer look,” the father urged, hoping to distract his son from the fracas.

“D-a-a-a-d. This is getting g-o-o-d.”

“We came to see the planes, remember?”

“But, D-a-a-a-d.”

The father steered his son to the steps that led to the exhibits featured below.

“Why was that lady hitting that man?” the boy asked, descending the steps ahead of his father.

“I don't know, son. The man must have done something bad.”

“Was the policeman gonna take him to jail?”

“Sure looked that way to me.”

As the boy and his father were nearing the bottom of the steps, a prerecorded voice sounded from a loudspeaker: “Ladies and gentlemen, the USS
Intrepid
was used by NASA as the primary recovery vessel for the Mercury and Gemini space programs. Just imagine yourself returning to Earth and the first people you see are the sailors aboard this floating airport…”

Reaching the hangar deck, the man led his son to the exhibit marked “Aircrafts of the Pacific.” He pointed at the Grumman F6F Hellcat, which was painted in the navy's tri-color camouflage: sea blue, intermediate blue, and insignia white. He then read aloud from the aircraft's polished plaque: “The Hellcat's most successful day in combat came on June 19, 1944, during operations in the Mariana Islands. During this air battle, which became known as ‘The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot,' the Japanese lost over three hundred seventy-five planes. Eighty were lost by the United States…. Wow! Pretty impressive, eh, Jack?”

“Sure is,” the wide-eyed youth said, stroking the underside of the plane's sleek fuselage. “Look! Over there! What's that one?”

A larger aircraft had caught the boy's attention.

“Let's go have a look,” said his dad.

They headed toward the next exhibit. The father depressed its red button, activating its tape.

A prerecorded voice began its narration: “The three-seat TBM 3-E Avenger, with a wingspan of over fifty-four feet and an overall length of forty feet, was the country's primary torpedo bomber during World War II. Loaded with two thousand pounds of bombs and armed with three manually aimed fifty-caliber machine guns, the Avenger had a maximum speed of two hundred seventy-six miles per hour and could climb over one thousand feet per minute.”

“Wow! That's almost as fast as Mommy when she's out shopping, eh, Jack?…Jack?…
Jack
?”

“I'm under here, Dad.” The boy had made his way below the fuselage of the plane. “Looks like this one sprung a leak,” said the boy pointing to a puddle that had formed under the belly of the plane.

“That's odd!” said the father. “These models have no engines…and that looks too dark to be fuel.” Bending down, he palpated the goo between his fingers, then brought the smear to his nose.

As his father stood in confusion, Jack climbed the steel staircase to the plane's cockpit.

“What the hell is going on?” the man exclaimed, suddenly realizing what it was his son had found. “This plane is bleeding!”

“Daddy!” the boy cried out. “This one's got a pilot!”