Tick Tock - James Patterson [33]
“What’s this?” I said, whipping away the blanket like a magician.
What I saw wasn’t a rabbit, though it was still quite cute.
“AHHHHH!” Chrissy and Shawna screamed in unison, lying on their bellies in front of a laptop computer.
“A computer?” I said, clapping a hand against my head in mock outrage. “You smuggled in a computer on our vacation? Don’t tell me that’s Phineas and Ferb on that screen. No electronic toys, remember? No video games. Sound familiar?”
“It was Ricky,” Shawna said, pointing toward the boys’ room frantically.
“It’s true. It’s Ricky’s. We’re just borrowing it,” Chrissy said.
“What’s going on?” Mary Catherine whispered suddenly there, yawning in the doorway.
Uh-oh. I knew I should have gotten out while I could. The girls weren’t the only ones who were busted.
“We’re sorry, Mary,” Chrissy said.
“Yes. We’re so sorry,” Shawna added quickly. “So sorry that Ricky brought a computer when he wasn’t supposed to.”
“We’ll deal with this later,” Mary said as she confiscated the computer and tucked the girls back in.
“You’re up early,” she said, glancing suspiciously at the shoes in my hand as we left the room. “Come to the kitchen. I’ll make you coffee before you go.”
“I’d love to, but I don’t have time. Early briefing,” I said.
“It’s five-thirty,” Mary Catherine said, peering at me.
“Duty calls,” I said with a hopefully convincing smile and a wave as I headed toward the front door.
I stopped as I came out onto the porch. Even in the predawn murk, I could see it. Somebody had spray-painted the wall behind the porch swing.
GO HOME STUPID BASTERDS!
I stood there holding my hungover head in my hands. The sons of bitches had come onto my porch in the middle of the night? I guess my scare tactic over at the Flaherty compound hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped. This was really getting nuts now.
“Seems like Flaherty gets his spelling lessons from Quentin Tarantino,” Seamus said in his bathrobe from the doorway.
I shook my head. Like it or not, I really did need to get to work. I couldn’t stay to sort through this latest outrage. I glanced at Seamus.
“Seamus, I’m swamped at work. Do you think you could take care of this for me before the kids see it?”
Seamus gave me a hard glare.
“Oh, don’t worry, Michael Sean Aloysius. I’ll be cleaning up all the latest shenanigans going on around here before the kids see them,” Seamus said.
I winced at his emphasis on the word. I guess I was getting a fresh, un-asked-for heaping of Catholic guilt to go this morning.
“And I’ll tell you another thing, jail time or no jail time, I’ll blast the first Flaherty I see back to Hell’s Kitchen and straight down to Hell, where they belong,” he called as I walked down the steps. “This old codger will make Clint Eastwood from Gran Torino seem like Santa Claus.”
“You already do,” I whispered as I hurried for the safety of my police car.
Chapter 37
INSTEAD OF HEADING into the city to my crowded, frantic squad room, I skirted Manhattan altogether and took the Triborough Bridge north to the New York State Thruway. An hour and a half later, I was upstate in Sullivan County near Monticello, sipping a rest-stop Dunkin’ Donuts java as I rolled past misty pine forests, lakes, and dairy farms.
The bucolic area was close to where Woodstock had taken place. It had also been home to the “Borscht Belt” vacation resorts, where Jewish comedians like Milton Berle and Don Rickles and Woody Allen had gotten their start.
Unfortunately, my visit had nothing to do with music and even less to do with laughter. This morning I was heading to Fallsburg, home of the Sullivan Correctional Facility.
My boss and I had decided it was time to have a chat with its most infamous resident, David Berkowitz, the .44 Caliber Killer. The Son of Sam himself.
There were several reasons why. One of the most compelling was that the Monday night double murder in Queens wasn’t the only recent Son of Sam copycat