Bone Thief (22 page)

Driscoll was pleased that Seamus Tiernan had succeeded in transferring Moira to her own room at home. He saw it as a sign of hope. Attended by a registered nurse, the young girl lay without her cocoon, surrounded by stuffed polar bears, Beanie Babies and a Britney Spears poster with five darts radiating out from the center of the pop star's face. Inert in her own bed, her bruised body was connected to a cluster of instruments that included a pulse oximeter, a suction machine, and a home-care ventilator. Her vital signs were being recorded around the clock as zigzagging lines on amber screens, attesting to the vibrancy of her organs. But the Lieutenant was anxious because her brain still showed as a flat line.

Driscoll, who visited the young girl regularly, stood at Moira's bedside, listening to the thud of an artificial respirator and the purr of a dialysis machine. The sounds were all too familiar. That realization saddened him. He gazed at the machinery. All the monitors were working properly, keeping his star witness alive, though mute. He had the impulse to shake the girl, provoke her with a well-turned phrase, irritate her, deride her to get some reaction, and in so doing, reignite her adolescent fury, which had so attracted him.

He scanned the room. The shelves were overcrowded with books and mementos, decorative boxes, and a huge collection of teddy bears. Nicole had been a collector too. She had collected miniature dollhouses from around the world. She had played with those houses like an anthropologist would, learning how certain architecture fit a particular type of terrain, like how terra-cotta roofing was favored in hot and sultry climates. She was amazed to discover how the Tuaregs in the Sahara lived in clay houses and kept their living space cool with damp mud.

On a trip to Dublin, Driscoll had happened upon a store that flaunted an Irish village in its window: twenty-one houses, one church, one firehouse, one movie theater, and six pubs. He had purchased the entire ensemble and brought it back to Nicole.

“My God!” she said. “What do you have in the box? Is it a life-sized teddy bear?”

“No. Something much better.”

His daughter had been breathless after she opened her gift: she realized she owned her own town. She had arranged all the houses on her hook rug, with the church in the center, and then stood up triumphantly and told her father he'd been elected mayor.

Driscoll had bowed from the waist, accepting the distinction. “My first directive as mayor,” he had said, “is to impose a curfew of 9:00
P.M
. for the entire town. And that includes you, little girl.”

The memory saddened him. He closed his eyes and envisioned Nicole's face: her rosy red cheeks in winter, the way her little round chin protruded, the softness of her blue eyes, the way his heart would melt when she smiled that crooked little smile at him, her gentle laughter. He missed his daughter. He missed his wife. And now he missed Moira.

A gurgling sound from the dialysis machine brought Driscoll back to the present, to a present where he could find no forgiveness for his part in Moira's fate. He should have cut her off from the word go. How could he have been so blind to the danger she was putting herself in? This young girl whose body had been inhumanely brutalized had him to thank for it. It was as though he wielded the weaponry himself. Guilt haunted him day and night. Were he Seamus or Eileen Tiernan, he would have come gunning for Driscoll, armed with a bazooka. Driscoll, to this day, couldn't understand their passivity. He was guilt ridden for them as well. The suffering his mismanagement brought about was inexcusable. As he stared down at Moira's fractured body he made a silent and solemn vow. He would track down this killer and stop at nothing until he is dead or captured. The killer had now made it very personal. Driscoll was after him with a vengeance.

Overcome with the same feeling of helplessness he had when he sat beside Colette, Driscoll's gaze fell away from Moira and drifted to row after row of hardcover and paperback books that filled the shelves on the far wall. There were titles like
Visual Basic Web Data Base, C++ Builder,
and
Intermediate MFC.
There were also boxes of diskettes, CD-ROMs, electronic gadgets, and PC peripherals.

Were his eyes deceiving him or was that an IBM Thinkpad laptop wedged between two hardcover dictionaries of Delphi Components and Cobal II? My God! She said she worked better under open skies. Of course. She'd need a laptop. And here it was! The police had been scouring the wrong computer. It wouldn't be her desktop she'd be using—it'd be the laptop. Why hadn't that registered before?

He retrieved the computer and switched it on.

Jesus! She's got more programs here than the National Security Agency
, thought Driscoll. He kissed the girl's forehead, placed the laptop under his arm, said goodbye to Moira's nurse, and proceeded down the stairs. While the team at Technical Services worked on Moira's desktop, he and Margaret would have a go at the laptop.

“God, what I wouldn't give for her password!” said Driscoll.

“Gotta be a doozy.”

Driscoll and Margaret had been sitting at his desk for what seemed like hours, fixed on the translucent surface of the laptop's screen. They had tried, unsuccessfully, every probable and wildly improbable password gleaned from Moira's biography. Her date of birth. The date in reverse. Kate Leone, her first grade teacher, followed by every other teacher she had ever had. Her favorite Baskin-Robbins flavor, Muddy Road. Her loyalty to her favorite Jell-O, Raspberry. Citre-Shine, her preferred shampoo. Lafeber's, the only brand of seed her bird, Chester, would peck at. Vassarette, her brand of panties. And 34B, her bra size. And to frustrate them even further, each time Driscoll typed in a password, the image of Moira's face flashed on the screen with a finger to her lips, while the teen's recorded voice jeered through the laptop's tiny speakers: “Not that one, silly. Read my lips!”

“If I hear that little voice or see that smirking face one more time, I'm gonna scream,” said Margaret.

“She ever mention a boyfriend?” Driscoll asked.

“Just type D-R-I-S-C-O-L-L.”

“Cute.”

“I mean it. Give it a try.”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“Here…let me do it.” She typed in the Lieutenant's name.

“Not that one, silly. Read my lips!”

“What's your middle name?”

“Give me a break!”

“I know…William.”

“Not that one, silly. Read my lips!”

“I think it's time for a break,” Margaret grumbled, rummaging through her purse, searching for her compact. Finding it, she applied a fresh layer of lipstick.

“Margaret, I could kiss you! That's gotta be it. She wasn't shushing me then, and she's not shushing us now. Don't you get it? She's
pointing
to her lips! Get Eileen Tiernan on the phone. I gotta have the name of Moira's lipstick.”

Driscoll palmed the open tube of lipstick.

“It smells fruity,” he said as he sniffed it.

He turned the cylinder bottom side up only to find an illegible fingerworn product label.

“According to Product Marketing Research there are 2,691 different lipsticks being sold nationally,” said Margaret. “In New York City alone there are over 1,300 labels.”

“You have any idea where your daughter shopped for her makeup?” Driscoll asked Eileen Tiernan who was sitting rigidly in the chair next to Driscoll's desk.

“Probably at the Queens Mall. That's where Moira bought everything.”

“Worth a trip,” said Margaret.

 

Their trek to the mall led them in and out of CVS, Revco, Bath & Body Works, Essentials Plus, Nature's Element, J.C. Penney, Claire's, and Rite Aid. None of the retailers could identify the lipstick.

“Teenagers are like pack animals,” said Driscoll as he stood with Margaret in the center of the mall. “They hang out in specific spots, shop the same stores, and buy the same stuff. Maybe we missed a store.”

An outburst of laughter erupted from a group of adolescents spilling out of Candyland, a sweets boutique. Driscoll and Margaret looked at each other. “Gimme the tube,” said Margaret. “They'll think you're a dirty old man.” With tube in hand, she headed toward the teens.

“Can any of you girls help me? There's twenty bucks in it for anyone who can ID this lipstick.”

“Twenty bucks! Give it here,” said an acned brunette.

Margaret complied.

“Yeah! I know this one. It's one of those fruit smears.” She handed the tube back to Margaret. “Go ahead. Taste it.”

“You mean it's edible?”

“That's why they call 'em Fruit Licks.”

“Where can I buy it?”

“Cute Cuts. It's a hair boutique right here in the mall.”

“Point the way, and the twenty is yours.”

“It's on level two. Right next to the Gap. Ya can't miss it.”

Driscoll and Margaret made their way up the escalator and into the haircutting salon.

“Do you have an appointment?” a bleached-blond receptionist asked.

“Do I need one?” said Driscoll, flashing his shield.

“What's this?” Margaret asked, handing the woman the lipstick.

The woman eyed the cosmetic and gave it back to Margaret. “That's a Fruit Lick. That one's called Mango Madness. They're mostly for teens. With your complexion, I recommend Summer's Dawn—”

“We can't thank you enough,” said Driscoll as he and Margaret headed for the door.

“Well, Lieutenant, are you ready to do a little dancing with me?” asked Margaret.

Driscoll gave her a curious look.

“On the keyboard, John. On the keyboard.”

“Cute,” Driscoll said with a grin as he began to type the name of the lipstick into Moira's laptop computer. A chime sounded. MANGOMADNE was as far as he got.

“Too many letters,” Margaret muttered.

“I'll try breaking it down.”

He typed. MANGO.

“Not that one, silly. Read my lips!”

He tried MANGOMAD.

“Not that one, silly. Read my lips!”

MADMANGO.

“Not that one, silly. Read my lips!”

MADMAN

“Not that one, silly. Read my lips!”

Margaret seized the computer and brought her face eye to eye with Moira's. “The game's over, sister. Talk to me.” When she didn't get a response, she sighed and tried, MANMADE.

“Not that one, silly. Read my lips!”

MANMAD, she typed. “That's just what you are, Moira.”

The sound of a muted trumpet emanated through the laptop's tiny speakers. “Aha! You found the lipstick. No keeping you out now. Kudos to you.”

Margaret smiled triumphantly as Moira's digital face quickly faded into oblivion. “We're in!”

It took Driscoll and Margaret a little more than thirty minutes to deduce how Godsend had spun his webs on the bulletin boards of every online service on the Internet. Moira's Received Mail and Outgoing Mail folders contained every correspondence between herself and her abductor, as well as all the correspondence she had hacked from each of the victims. It all supported her theory about how the madman had lured his prey.

“That son of a bitch,” Driscoll seethed. “Moira had him dead in his tracks from the start.”

“And since she unmasked him, you can bet Godsend has vanished into cyberspace.”

“No wonder the killings have stopped. But who's to say everyone he lured got snuffed?” Driscoll picked up the desk phone and punched in Thomlinson's extension.

“Thomlinson here.”

“Cedric, you online?”

“Can be in a minute. What's up?”

“I want you to post a message on every online service's bulletin board.”

“Will do. Whad'll I say?”

“Anyone having had bad karma with Godsend is to contact me. Include my e-mail address.”

Driscoll and Margaret stared at the laptop's luminous screen. Their eyes focused on the two words Godsend had used to sign off with on his last correspondence with Moira:
Leigheas Duine
.

“It's Old Irish,” said Driscoll.

“What does it mean?”

“Medicine Man.”

It had only been twenty-four hours since Thomlinson placed Driscoll's message in cyberspace. It was yet to prompt a response, but the Lieutenant remained hopeful. He picked up his desk phone and summoned Margaret and Thomlinson to his office. Within thirty seconds the two officers came in and took their seats. The Lieutenant was all business.

“Margaret, your friend has a record.”

“My friend?”

“Doctor Pierce. They caught him trying to take out a bulldozer.”

Driscoll handed Margaret the rap sheet. It read:

“What the hell is that all about?” Margaret asked.

“He called the DEP to complain about the bulldozer making too much noise. They've got him on tape.”

Driscoll handed Thomlinson the DEP report.

“There's more to his story.” Driscoll was filled with excitement. He felt he was closing in. When he spoke, it was with conviction. “I don't think it's a coincidence that he works in the hospital where the Parsons girl died. I checked the logs. He called it quits at three o'clock the day Clarissa was hit by the car, and failed to respond to his medical beeper all afternoon.” Driscoll paused and took note of Thomlinson's reaction. He'd seen that look before. It was the look a good cop gets when he was on the tail of the right suspect. “Again, why does he, a radiologist, show up later at her bedside? With defibrillator paddles, no less?” Driscoll believed Pierce had his own agenda. The defibrillator paddles were somehow part of that agenda, and Driscoll was determined to find out what the connection was. “I'm convinced the guy needs a thorough background check, and that's what I intend to give him. Cedric, while I'm at it, I want you to keep an eye on that Internet mail. Margaret, you're to keep a close leash on the doctor.” Driscoll said a silent prayer. This was Margaret now, dancing with the devil. “Continue to date the man as though nothing was up. Remember, the killings have stopped since you started seeing him. Let's see if there's a correlation. But be on your guard. He just might be our Medicine Man.”