“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.”
Chapter 18
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.