Silent Kills Page 18

  “We don’t know for sure what happened to her because she has never been found.”

  “So she disappeared?”

  “Yeah. She just disappeared. And we’ve never been able to find her.”

  “Maybe she ran away from home,” Kylie said hopefully. “Janice Collins did that once.”

  Lee’s cell phone rang. The caller ID said UNAVAILABLE. He almost didn’t answer, but curiosity got the better of him. As soon as he said hello, he wished he hadn’t picked up. The flat, reptilian voice, familiar by now, was taunting as always.

  “Are you having fun?”

  Lee didn’t respond.

  “It’s quite a festive place for children, isn’t it? Your niece must be having a ball.”

  Cold terror shot through his veins. He felt his neck muscles tightening. He took a deep breath and spoke softly into the phone.

  “Look, you dirty little coward, if you want to talk to me, why don’t you show me your ugly face sometime?”

  The man on the other end chuckled. “Oh, what would be the fun in that? Bye for now.”

  Lee shoved the phone into his pocket and wiped his sweating palms on his napkin. When the waiter arrived for their drink order, he ordered a double scotch. He looked over at the blond family at the next table. They were laughing at something Count Veracula had said. Their rosy, trusting faces looked as if they had never been troubled by thoughts of killers who trawled the streets looking for young women to murder.

  He hoped they would never have to think about such people. After all, that was his job.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Kylie slept in the backseat all the way back out to Stockton. There was no traffic in the Holland Tunnel, and he swept through the industrial waste section of the Meadowlands, breathing in the toxic fumes from factories through the open car windows. He thought about the poor suckers who would report to work in just a few hours, to their jobs driving forklifts in the long, flat warehouses, or bending over what he imagined were endless, boring assembly lines. He wasn’t even sure what kind of factories existed in this unfortunate part of New Jersey, only that they smelled terrible.

  As he rattled up the ramp to the Kosciuszko Bridge, trying to steer clear of the potholes, he thought about what this part of the state must have been like before the invasion of the white man and industrial pollution. The long, low marshes, surrounded by banks of tawny grassland, probably teemed with fish and wildlife, more than enough to feed the local population of Native Americans, tribes from the Abenaki and Wappinger nations. Sometimes late at night Lee imagined the spirits of long-departed tribes, wandering in bewilderment through lands that once belonged to them. It was well known to any student of New York history that Manhattan was bought by Peter Minuit for a few trinkets.

  Before long he reached the cutoff to Route 202, barreling southwest through the darkened countryside as his niece slept on peacefully in the backseat. He remembered long car trips as a child with his parents, remembered leaning forward to talk to his mother while she drove, his sister sleeping beside him, his father asleep in the front seat. He loved those times—being alone with his mother, and the sensation of being awake while the rest of the world slept around him. He still liked that feeling, and enjoyed wandering the streets of Manhattan late at night while most of his fellow New Yorkers were asleep in their beds. Night offered things that daylight didn’t, he thought as he passed Somerville and Flemington, driving deep into New Jersey farmland. In that he and this Van Cortlandt Vampire were alike, he mused—though he doubted that would help him catch his elusive prey.

  When he arrived at the house Fiona was asleep, so he carried Kylie up to her room and tucked her in, then tiptoed up to the rambling third-floor bedroom he had shared on so many summer nights with his cousins. The attic had been converted to a bedroom before his family moved into the house, and though he and Laura each had their own bedrooms on the second floor, they loved giving up their own bedrooms to their aunts and uncles and moving up to the third floor to share it with their cousins. The boys slept in the bunk beds in the smaller room to the right of the stairs, with its low angled ceiling, while the girls took the other side with the two twin beds.

  Life seemed so innocent then. Summers were spent in the swimming pool, picking berries in the woods, and eating as much watermelon as you could hold. Lee knew that the colored lens of nostalgia softens memory into the texture of a watercolor painting, but the secrets of his adolescence, like the Playboy magazines his cousin Billy hid under the covers, had a soft, appealing innocence, quite unlike the secrets of the young killer he was attempting to catch.

  He was fairly certain this Van Cortlandt Vampire, as they were calling him, was young. Not just because the usual profile of serial killers was of a white male between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five (though certainly some were much older), but because there was a gruesome whimsy to his crimes. They were not, Lee thought, the work of an older man—they were the work of someone stretching his imagination into places reserved for the young. This was nothing more than a gut feeling, but Lee was learning to trust his intuition, even without concrete evidence to back it up.

  As he crept up the stairs, memories of his childhood swirling in his head, he inhaled the familiar musty, sweet smell of the attic room, the faint aroma of cobwebs and cedar chips, of stored bedding and discarded dreams.

  He stripped to his underwear, slipped into the bottom bunk, and fell into a dead sleep as the old house quivered and settled around him, holding him close in its ancient embrace.

  He awoke to the smell of coffee and bacon. He stumbled downstairs to find Fiona at the stove, sipping from a chipped blue coffee mug as she turned strips of bacon in the heavy cast-iron skillet she had used ever since he could remember. He recognized the mug as one he had given her when he was ten—he had picked it out one Christmas because the plaid pattern on it was similar to her family tartan. He thought it was touching that she still used it. Was that for his benefit? he wondered.

  He planted a kiss on his mother’s still-firm cheek and shuffled to the far end of the kitchen to pour himself some coffee from the French press.

  “Sleep well?” she asked, plucking a strip of bacon from the skillet with a fork and deftly flipping it onto the other side.

  “Like the dead,” he said, which was true. He normally awoke with his head swarming with images, but today he couldn’t remember a single dream—couldn’t remember even having any.

  “Good,” she said, spearing another slice of bacon.

  “Where’s Kylie?” he asked, pouring himself a large mug of coffee. His head was full of cobwebs; he felt as though he had slept for days instead of seven hours.

  “She went over to Meredith’s house to play.”

  Fiona Campbell refused to use terms like “playdate” or “time-out,” though that’s exactly what Lee remembered her using as punishment when he was a child. She called it Sitting in a Chair, the theory being that you were supposed to contemplate the nature of your transgressions while you sat quietly with your hands folded in your lap. The Chair was the most dreaded punishment, worse than losing TV privileges or being grounded. They had teased her about it when they were older—one thing about Fiona was that she could take a ribbing and maintain her sense of humor. If you could make her laugh, you could usually get her to back down.

  But this morning she didn’t look like she was in the mood to laugh. She placed a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him in stony silence, then went back into the kitchen. Lee heard the sounds of a more vigorous cleanup than usual. She was going at it with a vengeance. He looked down at his plate, the egg yolks congealing next to glistening strips of bacon. She knew he liked the yolks runny, but she was afraid of salmonella, so she always overcooked them. He wasn’t feeling hungry anyway. He took his coffee into the kitchen and watched her scrub the stovetop, lifting the skillet with one hand and digging long fingers into the scouring pad, her lips tight.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

/>   To his surprise, she let go of the frying pan and put a hand to her mouth.

  Alarmed, he took a step forward. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  She looked at him, and it was obvious she had been crying. “Don’t you know what today is?”

  Then he remembered. He had deliberately tried to forget, but now that she said it, of course he knew.

  “Oh, right. Sorry—I forgot.”

  “It was six years ago today. I only wish I could forget.” Her voice had a bitter edge that was unlike her.

  “I’m sorry, Mom—”

  “No, it’s all right. I envy you, I really do.” She turned back to the sink and picked up the skillet again, but he grasped her arm.

  “Come on, Mom, don’t do that now.”

  She pulled away from him. “It has to get done.”

  “Not right now, it doesn’t. We should talk.”

  “There’s nothing to say. She’s gone, and we just have to accept that.”

  “But we don’t know for sure—what if she’s not gone forever?”

  She looked at him, accusation brimming in her eyes.

  “You don’t believe that for one minute.”

  “But you do.”

  She turned away. Fiona Campbell hated to have anyone see her cry. He could hear her trying to stifle her sobs. When she spoke, her voice was ragged, defeated.

  “Not really. Not anymore.”

  He was stunned. Had her faith, her certainty, been a pose all these years? When did she stop believing? Was it his fault? Had he finally convinced her? He thought he would be glad when this day came, when she finally accepted reality, but all he felt was a cavernous emptiness. It was as though she had been holding on to hope for both of them. He was surprised to realize that the thought of Fiona losing her faith was unbearably bleak.

  “Come into the living room,” he said, gently tugging on her elbow. She followed him, meek as a child, sobs coming from so deep within her he felt as if they would rip her apart.

  They sat on the couch, and he took her face in his hands. “When did you stop believing she might still be alive?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—gradually, as the years wore on, maybe.... I don’t know anymore.” She looked out the window at the brown withered leaves on the patio as a gust of wind sent them scattering into the woods. “You think you’ll ever find him?”

  He knew who she meant. “I don’t know. But I’ll never stop trying.”

  “Why do people do things like that, Lee? What sort of parent raises a child who turns out that way?”

  They were on shaky ground now. He wasn’t going to go there.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, Mom.”

  That was true enough, he thought. There were mysteries as to why one person turned into a sociopath, and yet another one with an equally terrible childhood didn’t. So many variables, so many unknowns—so many questions. He knew he would spend the rest of his life in search of the answers.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Joselin Rosario was puzzled. The inventory of supplies at the blood bank was off, and she didn’t know why. Though there was a number of volunteers in and out during the week, she didn’t think any of them were thieves—or at least she didn’t want to think of them that way. She was fond of them all, and had worked with some for years, mostly ladies from the Upper East Side who had lost their husbands, and with them, their purpose in life. Comfortably well off and living in rent-stabilized apartments—some since World War II—they turned from flipping omelets and folding socks to volunteer work. And the Blood Center, God bless it, was always happy to have volunteers.

  There was little old Mrs. Levinson, with her bad wig and white toy poodle, Zsa Zsa, who curled up quietly next to her while her mistress gave out forms to prospective blood donors, sharpened pencils, and helped people find the restroom. And Mrs. Orinsky, whose makeup was always flawlessly applied, no matter the temperature outside. She had danced with the Rock-ettes in her youth, and was proud of her still-striking “gams”—that’s what she called them, like someone out of a 1930s gangster movie.

  And Mrs. Henrietta Walmette. She always introduced herself that way, first and last name, as though she were a contestant on a TV quiz show. She wore such garish splotches of rouge on her cheeks that Joselin wondered about her eyesight. She powdered the rest of her face dead white, so that she resembled a badly made-up corpse. But she was sweet and kindly and had the most adorable Southern accent. She liked to go on about being related to the Dukes of Durham—that’s what she called them, only with her accent it came out, “the Dooks of Durm.” She claimed to be Doris Duke’s second cousin, and when she told her stories, Joselin just smiled and nodded. She had been brought up to respect her elders, and so even if these ladies were a bit ridiculous, and wore enough makeup for a whole troupe of circus clowns, they were kindly and well meaning and Joselin felt it was her job to look out for them.

  Today she felt uneasy. She had had a sinking feeling in her stomach ever since she woke up this morning, and that usually meant something unpleasant was going to happen. She had had “the gift” ever since childhood—premoniciones ran in her family. Her grandmother had them, and Joselin looked just like her, everyone said—so she imagined she had inherited her grandmother’s ability as well.

  Just to be sure, she counted the needles in the supply cabinet for the third time. There were still half a dozen missing. And a package of blood bags was unaccounted for, as well as a box of gauze and a thermometer. Why would someone steal a thermometer? Come to think of it, why would someone steal any of these things? Could it be a med student had come in to donate blood and then grabbed a few items to take home to practice with? But practice on whom, and why? Instead of answers, each question engendered another question.

  She sat at the receptionist’s desk in the lobby sipping her café con leche while nibbling a piece of dolce des tres leches (“cake with three milks”), her favorite. She had a weakness for Dominican delicacies, which half explained her generous rump and thighs—the other half of the explanation being genetics. (Her mother, Mari-alis, had a backside like a baby elephant.) No worries, though—men in her culture didn’t like their women built skinny like the reeds that grew along the parking-lot fence near her apartment in Washington Heights.

  She took another bite of cake and leaned back in the chair, stretching her legs out underneath the desk. Her husband Luis liked her just the way she was, gracias a Dios. He liked to come up behind her when she was cooking pollo a la brasa, place his big, meaty hands on her bottom, and squeeze like he was testing a melon for ripeness. Her sister rolled her eyes and said Joselin shouldn’t put up with such behavior, but she liked it when he did that—it made her feel womanly and sexy. Even though she always slapped his hands away, it made her laugh, and she would let him kiss her neck and ears later on, after dinner. Sometimes they slipped away into the bedroom for a hasty fumble, even when her aunts were sitting in the parlor sipping café con leche with their cakes and lemon cookies.

  But now Joselin was worried that a thief was at large, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. The front-door buzzer rang. She left her half-eaten cake in its paper bag on the desk and went to answer it.

  Standing outside in the rain, soaked to the skin, was the new boy—Danny? Donny? No, Davey—that was it. She opened the door to him, clucking her tongue like a disapproving mother hen. She and Luis had waited a few years before having kids, but if she had had a son when they were first married, he would be about the same age as this young man.

  His dark hair was plastered to his head, and rain dripped from the tip of his nose.

  “Mira, ven aqui!” she said, shaking her head. “You look like a drowned rat. Where’s your umbrella? Come in, before you die of pneumonia!”

  He slipped into the room and closed the door behind him. Joselin turned to get him a towel.

  It was the last thing she ever did.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  There were very few misfor
tunes that a piña colada at Waikiki Wally’s did not alleviate. The restaurant was Lee’s favorite hangout—Kathy called it his home away from home. With its tropical waterfall, hula-dancing waitresses, and superb food, it had everything.

  Friday evening found Lee sitting at the bar nursing his second drink of the night, Hibiscus Heaven, a wickedly effective concoction involving at least two types of rum. He knew he was self-medicating, but he didn’t care. Kathy wasn’t coming to New York this weekend. She said that work was piling up, but he didn’t believe her. Something was going on—he just didn’t know what. She had given him the “we need to talk” line, but there had been no time for it, with his case heating up and her workload getting heavier.

  A lanky Asian transvestite from Lucky Cheng’s flounced through the room in four-inch heels and leather miniskirt, long black hair flowing. The two restaurants were owned by the same people and shared a kitchen as well as a basement tunnel connecting them. Surprisingly, they attracted much the same customers—bachelorette parties, the bridge-and-tunnel crowd out for a night on the town, and tourists who had read the countless articles about the famous drag queen acts at Cheng’s, which boasted “Asian queens from Singapore, Japan, India, China, Indonesia, Hawaii, and the Philippines.”

  But Wally’s had its locals too, and Lee was one of them.

  “How are you doing tonight?”

  Lee turned to see Malaya, Wally’s Filipina hostess, who danced a mean hula on Saturday nights. She was seated at the other end of the bar sipping a Zombie from a frosted green highball glass. Her black hair cascaded down her back like a waterfall, and a single white orchid perched behind her right ear. He couldn’t tell if it was fake or real. Kathy was good at that kind of thing, he thought, wishing she were there.