“Wanna hear the Pakistani again?”
“Screw the Pakistani. They’re always in a rush.”
Chapter 22
Blue skies prevailed over the city as Driscoll stood at the end of the dock in Toliver’s Point. The wooden landing, some three hundred feet long, jutted out into Jamaica Bay. It was commonly referred to by the locals as Sullivan’s Pier, named after the tavern that sat at its entrance. It had been five days since the attack on the last tourist and Driscoll was growing restless. He’d often come back to the Point to escape his demons, and today he found diversion by watching the playful antics of a handful of teens.
The mixed gang, two boys and three girls, clad in bathing suits, were horsing around in the water. Driscoll watched as the tallest boy squatted down near the dock’s edge and clasped his hands together to form what appeared to be the launching pad. The three girls, their faces ripe with laughter, were lined up behind him. The girl they were calling Sally, stuffed into a skimpy one-piece, sashayed forward and placed her foot and trust into the hands of the squatting teen who swiftly catapulted the corpulent plum off the dock and into the air. She soon crashed into the water with a loud splash.
Larry, as everyone was calling him, now got into the game, posing as the announcer.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the judges give that sad excuse for a dive a three-point-nine.”
His makeshift microphone was a can of Diet Pepsi. Driscoll thought Larry sounded very much like W. C. Fields.
“Sally, your boobs hit the water before you did,” Larry hollered. “Next time keep ’em in your top.”
The embarrassed teen’s face turned beet red. She grabbed hold of her twisted bathing suit and disappeared under the water.
“Way to go!” cheered the catapulter, giving Larry a high five. “Okay, Peggy. Your turn.”
“No funny stuff, Billy,” the freckle-faced teen warned, slipping her foot into the teen’s grip and closing her eyes.
“Up we go!” Billy roared, launching Peggy into the air.
The girl tumbled head over heels before neatly slicing the surface of the water.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the goose has touched down,” Larry whined, still in W. C. Fields mode.
Driscoll reached into his linen jacket for a pack of all-organic additive-free American Spirit cigarettes. He lit one up and inhaled deeply. A Lucky Strike it wasn’t. It was a relief, though, to have his throat stroked by a feather rather than singed by a torch. He took another drag and glanced across the bay at the Manhattan skyline in the distance.
Such a contrast, he thought. Here, high-spirited teenagers were at play, while only five miles away a murderous spree was holding the city in a vise of fear.
He snuffed out the cigarette’s butt on the dock’s railing and watched dusk slowly blanket the metropolis. The neon sign of Sullivan’s tavern came to life in fluorescent blue, beckoning him. It was time for a drink. Maybe two.
He walked toward the portal and ducked inside. The familiar scent of draught beer and oak flooring welcomed him.
“Hey, John. Good to see ya,” a bright-eyed waitress said, scurrying toward the dining room, balancing a large tray of oysters on the half shell high above her head.
“Likewise, Kathy,” Driscoll replied, heading for the bar.
The walls of the barroom were made up of glass sliding doors. They offered a panoramic view of the bay and of the city that hugged its opposing shoreline. The bar itself was U-shaped and crowded. Casually dressed couples, awaiting tables in the dining room, sipped from their glasses of Chardonnay and absorbed the ambiance, while the bar’s regulars nursed Bass ale from frosty mugs, their eyes glued to the TV screen, where Mike Mussina of the New York Yankees was pitching a no-hitter against the division-leading Boston Red Sox.
Driscoll spotted an opening at the top of the U, next to the service bar, and made his way toward it, sidestepping another waitress on the run.
“Your girls should be on Rollerblades,” Driscoll said to Kevin Conlon, the tavern’s proprietor, at the bar.
“Now there’s a novel idea. Meals on wheels!” Kevin smiled broadly at the suggestion. “What’ll it be? Your usual?”
“That oughta do it.”
Kevin gestured to Chris, the bartender.
“A Harp for the Lieutenant.”
Kevin Conlon, with his grizzly white beard and gravelly voice, seemed more suited for a Gabby Hayes Western than as a restaurant owner here in suburban New York. A well-bred Irishman and true wine aficionado, he prided himself on offering gourmet meals and gracious service at an affordable price.
“The bad guys still one step ahead of the posse?” Conlon asked, offering Driscoll a Macanudo.
“And then some,” Driscoll frowned, stuffing the cigar in his shirt pocket.
“Any truth to the rumor?”
“Which one?”
“That the police have made a breakthrough in the case.”
“Ah, that Matt Lauer report. He should stick to the Thanksgiving Day parade.”
The bartender returned with a frosty mug of Irish brew and placed it on the bar in front of the Lieutenant. “Why can’t Monica Lewinsky make it as a surgeon?” he asked with a sardonic grin.
“I’ll bite,” said Driscoll.
“Because she sucked as an intern,” came the reply.
A whisper of a smile creased Driscoll’s face.
“You’ll have to excuse our staff’s highbrow sense of humor,” said Conlon. “It comes from cutting too many classes at Bartending 101.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of Driscoll’s cell phone purring inside his breast pocket. The Lieutenant answered it.
Criminalist Ernie Haverstraw’s voice echoed in his ear. “The DNA is back on the traces of skin and blood we found under the last victim’s fingernails.”
“And?”
“Are you sitting down?”
“That I am. At Sullivan’s.”
“You finished your drink?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You’d better order another. Make it a double.”
“Why? You don’t like me sober?”
“Okay. Have it your way. The DNA is a perfect match to the male’s blood on the torn fingernail we found entangled in the brake assembly of the bike.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Our male serial killer. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Like I said, Lieutenant, it’s a perfect match to the male’s blood. Only thing is, this DNA is female.”
Chapter 23
“Whaddya mean the DNA is female?” Driscoll asked as he stormed into Haverstraw’s lab.
“Tests don’t lie, Lieutenant.” The criminalist pointed to a collection of illuminated data on the monitor of a desktop computer.
“Break it down for me, will ya? Using layman’s terms.”
“The geneticists ran the usual chromosomal scanning, utilizing the Polymerase chain reaction-short tandem repeat methodology,” said Haverstraw.
Driscoll shot him a glare. “Layman’s terms,” he repeated.
Haverstraw shrugged and continued.
“They got an exact match to the DNA sample on file in the database.”
“You mean the blood on the fingernail of our male suspect.”
“That’d be the one.”
“But you’re telling me this specimen is female. That would be impossible.”
“Oh, it’s possible. Let’s have a cup of coffee and I’ll explain.”
Haverstraw sauntered over to an aluminum table that supported a Bunn double-burner coffee server, some Styrofoam cups, and a half-eaten Entenmann’s Danish ring.
“Still take yours black, Lieutenant?”
Driscoll nodded.
“Want some cake?”
“I’ll pass.”
The two men took a seat opposite each other at a wooden workbench next to a full-sized rolling blackboard. A chalk-scrawled formula for who-knows-what was strewn across the hardwood-encased slate. Haverstraw took a sip of his coffee and stared fixedly at Driscoll.
“Lieutenant, there is no mistake in the DNA. The killers you’re looking for are a set of twins.”