Silent Screams Read online

  He approached one of the techs from the ME’s office, the thin young Asian woman who had been taking the photographs earlier. Her skin was as uncreased and pristine as Marie’s—he thought she might be Korean, or possibly Chinese. Her shiny black hair was looped back in a ponytail, and her jumpsuit looked two sizes too big for her slender body.

  “Can you tell me if the wounds were postmortem or—” Lee began.

  She replied quickly, as if wanting to get this over with as soon as possible. “Most likely postmortem. There wasn’t much bleeding.”

  “Most likely? Is there any chance—?”

  She shook her head, her black ponytail slicing the air. “It can be difficult to tell, but here you can see where the blood trickle ends. I can’t say for sure, but my best guess is that these wounds were postmortem…I hope to God,” she added in a low voice. Lee thought he saw her shiver inside her oversized jumpsuit.

  “And the weapon?”

  She frowned. “Hard to say for sure, but nothing fancy—possibly an ordinary knife, the kind you could get anywhere.”

  “Thank you,” he said, turning away.

  As he left the chapel, a wicked wind whipped up around Lee’s ankles, flipping his coattails skyward, scattering a few wisps of dead leaves up into a spiral swirl, like a miniature tornado. The sharp, dry gust took his breath away. He shivered and shoved his hands into the pockets of his green tweed overcoat. A thin, pale dawn began to bloom in the eastern sky as he gazed down at the southern end of Manhattan, where a smoldering gash in the earth was all that was left of the once-proud towers. It was barely five months ago that the planes dropped from the sky like some mythic beasts, their tongues dripping with fire and destruction…and despair….

  He forced his mind back to the present.

  Hearing footsteps, he turned to see a man standing next to a blue van parked at the back of the church. He was dressed in a workman’s jumpsuit and carried a tool case.

  “Who’s that?” he asked Butts, who had stopped by the side exit to speak to one of the crime scene technicians.

  “I dunno,” the detective answered, walking over to converse with the man.

  “Locksmith,” he said, returning to where Lee stood. “Got a call from the college administration that there was a broken lock in the basement. I told him to come back tomorrow.”

  Lee turned to Father Michael, who had wandered out of the church. The priest looked lost, and had the glazed look of someone in shock. “Were you aware of a broken lock in the basement?”

  Father Michael shook his head. “No. But the maintenance staff might have put the call in. You’d have to ask them.”

  “Right,” Butts said, writing it in his notebook. “Do you think there’s a connection?” he asked Lee.

  “I don’t see one, really—I mean, the killer came right in through the unlocked side door, and presumably left the same way.”

  “I’ll check it out anyway,” Butts said.

  “He took something,” Lee murmured to himself, “but what?”

  “Whaddya mean, he took somethin’?” Butts asked.

  Lee gazed over the wounded landscape of the city, soaking in its stark and terrible beauty. “A souvenir, a memento.”

  “Jeez. What for?”

  Lee turned to face him. “What was the last trip you took?”

  Butts pushed back his battered fedora and scratched his head. He reminded Lee of a character out of a 1940s screwball comedy.

  “I dunno…The Adirondacks, I guess.”

  “And did you buy anything there?”

  “Uh, the wife bought some dish towels.”

  “Did she need dish towels?”

  Butts frowned. “Actually, come to think of it, she’s got dozens of ’em. She always buys one when we go somewhere.”

  “Right. So why buy what you don’t need?”

  Butts snorted. “Look, Doc, I learned a long time ago that when it comes to women, it’s better not to ask certain questions, know what I’m sayin’?”

  “But there is an answer to this one.”

  Butts jabbed the toe of his shoe into the dirt, kicking up the soft black soil.

  “She says it reminds her of the trip.”

  “Exactly. That’s why sexual murderers often take something from their victims: to remind them. It’s like hunting trophies—they serve no purpose, other than to bring the killer memories of the crime itself. The souvenirs help them relive the whole thing over and over.”

  Butts tore off a piece of a jagged fingernail with his teeth and spit it out. “Man, this is twisted stuff. Mostly I just handle homicides, you know? Drug deals gone bad, abusive boyfriends, family fights that escalate—run-of-the-mill stuff. This is a whole new kinda weird.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Butts looked at Lee suspiciously. “Doesn’t this stuff keep you up at night?”

  “Sometimes. But knowing those people are still out there keeps me up even more.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Doc, but you don’t seem like the type…. I mean, how did you get into this kind of thing?”

  “It’s kind of personal.”

  “Sure, sure,” the detective answered, his homely face crinkled in sympathy. “No problem—I get it. Didn’t mean to pry.”

  Lee looked away—he didn’t trust his reactions around other people. He wasn’t entirely in control of himself yet, not quite recovered from his breakdown.

  The two men stood side by side, looking southward, watching the thin gray mist of smoke snaking upward from the ruined earth.

  Butts shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well, then, I’m gonna move along now. I’ll, uh, catch you later. I’ll call you when we find the boyfriend.”

  “Sure. See you later.”

  He watched as the detective trundled off after the forensic team, his rumpled gray trench coat flapping in the wind.

  Lee closed his eyes and let his head fall back. He could hear bagpipes, faraway and sad—their thin, plaintive tones carrying across the East River to where he stood on this melancholy bluff. He often imagined he heard bagpipes in times of stress and sorrow, and he had come to welcome the sound rather than taking it as a sign of deepening mental illness. It comforted him, bringing him back to the hills of his Celtic ancestors, where mountains rose sharp and bare from rushing riverbeds below, a mysterious and stark landscape that ran through his veins as strongly as his own blood.

  He gazed up at the sky, where a lone crow scraped its way north, black and solitary against the creeping dawn.

  Chapter Two

  As it turned out, the boyfriend wasn’t difficult to locate. Within an hour Lee was standing outside a grimy interrogation room inside a Bronx precinct house, watching through the one-way mirror as he waited for Butts to question the young man. The interrogation room was small and stuffy, its pale green walls scarred with stains and scuff marks. Lee imagined the scenes that had taken place in this room—the outbursts of rage, poundings by fists or boots or both. Some of the black smudge marks on the walls did appear to come from kicks—they were the right height and size. But others—coffee splotches, the occasional streak of blue ink, even a few ominous red patches, dried to a dark rust color—were more mysterious.

  The young man inside the room sat quietly, hands folded on his lap. He was slight of build, with narrow, bony shoulders—a boy who wouldn’t stand out in any crowd. Lee took an inventory of his regular but unremarkable features: straight brown hair over a thin, sensitive mouth and sad brown eyes. Under the harsh fluorescent lights his face had an unhealthy gray pallor, the circles under his eyes pronounced. He looked young—even younger than poor Marie—and very, very frightened. Not in a guilty way, Lee thought, just plain scared. He would bet that this boy had never seen the inside of a police station before, and certainly never as a suspect.

  Ever since he could remember, Lee had an unusual ability to “read” people. He used to think that everyone could do this, and it wasn’t until after his training in psycho
logy that he had realized how uncommon his gift was. He studied aspects of human behavior in textbooks explaining things he had always known instinctively. He could see into people—into their souls, so to speak.

  Now, looking at the scared young man sitting in front of him, Lee was quite certain that the boy was not guilty of his girlfriend’s murder.

  Detective Butts entered the room with two paper cups of coffee and slid one across the scarred Formica table to the boy.

  “Thought maybe you could use one too,” he said, sitting down across from him. “Hope you take it regular.”

  In western New Jersey, where Lee grew up, “regular” meant milk, no sugar, but in New York City, regular coffee always included a liberal amount of sugar.

  “Thank you,” the boy replied in a small voice, but he didn’t touch the coffee. Butts flipped back the plastic lid of his own cup with a well-practiced gesture and slurped it noisily.

  “That’s better,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He appeared to be enjoying himself. “I hate to start the day without it, y’know?”

  The young man stared at Butts, his face still frozen in fear. He reminded Lee of a fox he had once seen cornered—the animal had the same expression of wariness and creeping panic. This interrogation was going to be a waste of time; he knew Butts was showing off for him, trying to impress him with interrogative skills. First soften him up, become his friend, then close in for the kill. This technique seemed so obvious to Lee that he couldn’t imagine any criminal—even the simplest shoplifter—not seeing right through it. This kid was no criminal, though, and he figured that Butts knew this—but procedure was procedure. You had to jump through the right hoops.

  “Okay,” the detective said, setting his coffee down and glancing at a file on the table, “Mr…. Winters. Rough luck, by the way—sorry about what happened to your girlfriend.”

  “Yeah,” Winters responded softly.

  “Can I call you Ralph?”

  “Okay,” the boy answered, his voice still barely above a whisper. Lee had the impulse to intervene, but that was out of the question. This was Butts’s investigation, and the last thing he wanted was to alienate the burly detective.

  Ralph sat staring at the untouched coffee in front of him, as a thin ribbon of steam spiraled upward through a tiny hole in the lid.

  “Okay, Ralph,” Butts said, “why don’t you tell me anything you can think of that might help?”

  Ralph gulped twice, his Adam’s apple rising and falling sharply in his thin throat. He appeared to be on the verge of tears.

  “Says here you’re a chem major,” Butts continued, maybe to save Ralph the embarrassment of tears. Whatever his motive was, it apparently worked. The boy leaned forward, and his eyes seemed to focus on Butts for the first time. He reached for the coffee, his hand trembling.

  “Yeah. Organic chemistry. I’m studying to be a pathologist.” He took a sip of coffee.

  “Oh, really?” Butts’s tone was friendly, jocular. “You interested in forensics?”

  “Uh, I want to specialize in diseases, actually.”

  “Well, well,” Butts replied, smiling. “How ’bout that? You gotta be real smart to do that kinda stuff, I know that much. Me, I was no good in science. I envy guys like you.”

  Ralph seemed suspicious of this attempt to butter him up. He sat looking at Butts, his hands wrapped around the paper coffee cup.

  “So, Ralph, what can you tell me?” Butts said, his tone indicating it was time to get down to business. “How long have you known Marie?”

  “Since last semester. We, uh—we were in the same comparative lit class.”

  Butts frowned. “But you’re a science major.”

  “It’s a required course. I need it to graduate.”

  Butts cocked his head to one side. “I get it. And Marie was a religion major?”

  “Comparative religion, yeah. She wanted to teach eventually.”

  “I see. So you guys just sorta hit it off?”

  Ralph winced. “Yeah. I mean, at first I didn’t believe a girl like her would be interested in me. I mean, she’s so pretty and lively and everything, and I’m…well, a science geek, you know?”

  Butts gulped down some more coffee. “Yeah. I know what you mean—never could figure out what the wife sees in me. Women are a mystery.”

  This admission seemed to put Ralph more at ease, and he sipped at his coffee, though without taking his eyes off the detective.

  “Tell you what, Ralph,” Butts said. “I’m not gonna keep you here very long, but can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt Marie? Anyone at all?”

  “Well, she was really sweet and trusting. I can’t think of anyone who didn’t like her. I mean, she didn’t try to be popular or anything, but there was just something about her, you know?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Ralph shifted in his chair. “There was one thing….”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Well, I had the feeling she was seeing someone—someone else, I mean. I don’t really have any evidence of it. It was more of a feeling, I guess.”

  “Okay. Any idea who it was?”

  Ralph looked down at his hands, which were clasped tightly in his lap. “No. I was meaning to ask her about it, but…I guess I didn’t want to pry. It’s not like we were engaged or anything, you know?”

  “Yeah, sure. Will you excuse me for a moment?”

  He got up and lumbered out of the room, closing the door behind him. He came over to Lee and slumped his stocky body against the wall.

  “That kid’s clean as my mother-in-law’s kitchen. No way he did it—and I don’t think he has any idea who did.” Butts pulled a cigar stub from his breast pocket. Placing it between his sturdy teeth, he bit down on it hard.

  “Do you ever actually smoke those things?” Lee asked.

  “Not anymore. Used to, wife hated the smell, said it got into everything. So I gave it up. This is the closest thing I have now to a vice…. I miss it, but I’ll tell you, this is a helluva lot cheaper. I used to buy the good ones—you know, the Cubans—when I could get ’em, and they set you back a buck or two.”

  Butts shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “This other guy he mentioned—that could be a lead. That is, if she really was seeing anyone else.”

  “Maybe,” Lee replied. “I wonder if you’d just let me ask him one thing?”

  Butts shrugged. “Go ahead—knock yourself out. Then we should let the poor bastard go home.”

  “Thanks.”

  Lee entered the interrogation room and felt the oppressiveness of its windowless silence. The one-way mirror behind which Butts now stood watching only added to the sense of isolation and paranoia the suspects must feel.

  Ralph Winters looked up at him apprehensively when he entered the room. Lee tried to dispel his fear with a friendly smile, but the boy’s body didn’t relax as Lee sat down opposite him.

  “Hi, I’m Lee Campbell. I’m helping with this investigation.”

  Ralph responded with a twitch of his head and wrapped his hands tighter around his coffee cup.

  “Look, Ralph,” Lee said gently, “we’re going to let you go soon. I just want to see if there’s anything else you can tell us about Marie that might help us catch her killer.”

  The boy’s face reddened, and his eyes welled up with tears. “You—you don’t think I did it, then?”

  “No, we don’t. But we hope you can help us by telling us about Marie—anything you can think of.”

  Ralph swallowed hard. “Well, like I told the other detective, she was really sweet, and everyone liked her.”

  “Yes,” Lee replied. “I know.” On the last day of her life Fate swooped down upon her, a slap out of nowhere, a sudden shock as she rounded the corner of her life. It was a line from a poem he had written about his sister, and he shook it out of his head. “Why don’t you just tell me what you can about Marie?”

  “Well, she was kinda religious—Catholic, you kn
ow.”

  “So she went to church how often?”

  “Oh, not more than twice a week. She went Sundays, and then sometimes to Wednesday night mass. But she didn’t like people who swore and took the Lord’s name in vain, you know? And she had a crucifix over her bed—kind of creepy, if you ask me, but I wasn’t raised religious.” His lower lip trembled. “Have they called her parents yet?”

  “We’re taking care of that. They live in Jersey somewhere, I think?”

  “Yeah—Nutley.” He swallowed again and took another sip of coffee.

  “Did she have any special friends at church?”

  “Not that I can think of. A couple of girlfriends. She didn’t really socialize all that much. She did volunteer to feed the homeless at the church once a month.”

  “Did you go with her?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You mentioned her girlfriends—are they religious?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But Marie was?”

  “Yeah. She wore a cross around her neck all the time.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  “Uh, yeah…it was plain gold—oh, with a tiny little pearl in the center.”

  “A white pearl?”

  “Yeah. She never took it off.”

  Lee felt his heart quicken. He carried a clear image of Marie as she was in death, and he could swear that when they found her there was no cross around her neck.

  “Never?”

  “No. She kept it on even in the shower—said it was like keeping Jesus with her all the time. I remember it scratched me one time when we were…” His face crumpled, and his thin shoulders sagged under the weight of his grief. “Oh, God, oh, God!” He collapsed sobbing, burying his head in his arms. Lee laid a hand on his shoulder just as Butts reentered the room.

  “Come on, kid, we got a car to take you home.”