Silent Kills Page 21

  “Why, hello,” said Susan Morton, all smiles and sweetness. Sugar and spice and everything nice ... except that she was much more snakes and snails and puppy-dog tails.

  “Didn’t you hear me knock?” he asked, not even trying to hide his irritation.

  “Sorry, sugar, I was on the phone,” she said, pointing to a pink cell phone on the desk in front of her. He didn’t even know they made pink cell phones. “But come on in—the water’s fine,” she purred, rising from her chair.

  She was exquisite, as always. At college they called her The Face That Launched a Thousand Hips, because of her promiscuity. But there wasn’t a man on campus who would kick her out of bed, as Chuck would say—and he still considered himself lucky for ending up with her. Lee considered him cursed. Whatever Susan Morton brought with her, it wasn’t good luck. Excitement, maybe, and sex—oh, she liked plenty of that. Her vigorous libido was probably the only thing about her that wasn’t phony.

  She rounded the edge of the desk and planted herself in front of him. “So, what brings you here, handsome? Another one of your meetings?”

  “Did you see Detective Krieger? She was supposed to meet me here.”

  “Oh, the giantess with the German accent? She was here, but she went out.” Susan gave a disdainful laugh, which came out a little forced, but it conveyed what she intended. “She’s quite a piece of work.”

  “Really,” he said, trying not to engage her.

  “Don’t be shocked if I tell you that women judge each other far more brutally than men,” she said, bending down so that her breasts bunched up and nearly popped out of her expensive, low-cut silk blouse.

  “Nothing coming from you would shock me.”

  She smiled. “Oh, well played—snap. It’s good to know that your struggle with depression hasn’t robbed you of your wit entirely.”

  Lee felt the heat rise to his cheeks. He had to hand it to her—she knew where to stick the needles. Her comment was utterly inappropriate, but accomplished what she intended, a warning shot across his bow. She was letting him know she could go there—and would, if necessary, in a heartbeat. He had to stand his ground, or she would rip him to shreds. He could see the predatory gleam in her green eyes. He had to show her that he wasn’t afraid of her. The only problem was that he was.

  She licked her lips and watched him, leaning back in the chair with feline grace. If she had had a tail, she would have flicked it.

  He decided to quit playing around. “You know,” he said slowly, “it must be hard for you to try to compete with a woman like Elena Krieger.”

  A cloud passed over her lovely face, her brow hardened, and she twitched. He could see her trying to ignore the comment, but it was too much for her. She responded in spite of her best instincts to steer away from the topic. She just couldn’t help herself.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she’s quite a woman, isn’t she? Successful, brave, brilliant—and beautiful, of course. That must be hard for you.”

  Her mouth flattened into a hard line. “What are you talking about?” she said, squeezing the words out between clenched teeth. “Are you implying there’s something between that—that Teutonic freak and my husband?”

  “Oh, no,” he said, but he could see her brain working as she turned the idea over in her head. “Chuck isn’t that kind of guy. He would never do anything like that.”

  She must know better than anyone what a doggedly faithful husband Chuck was, but her narcissism was wounded—he had sown a tiny seed of self-doubt in her exquisitely tuned self-regard. It was a dirty trick, and he felt low for using it, but she deserved it. He hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite him—or Chuck, for that matter. He almost wished he could take it back, but it was too late now. She had pushed him, and he had responded in her language, the language of threats and innuendos and emotional blackmail. It was why he ran from her all those years ago—and yet somehow Chuck was so blinded by her beauty that he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) see her for what she was.

  The door opened and in walked Detective Leonard Butts.

  “Hey,” he said, holding out a bag of pistachios, “anybody want some nuts?”

  Lee was so glad to see the little detective he felt like hugging him.

  Butts tossed the bag of nuts on Morton’s desk and sank down in one of the captain’s chairs. He leaned over and rubbed his left knee. “Think I overdid it at the gym yesterday,” he said in response to Lee’s glance. “Squats with weights—it’s a real killer on the cartilage. I’ve lost five pounds this month, though,” he continued, patting his stomach, which did look a bit trimmer, Lee thought.

  The detective’s entrance had broken the mood. Susan obviously realized her confrontation with Lee was over—at least for now. She rose from her chair, smoothed out her expensive skirt, and sauntered to the door. As she passed Lee, she flicked out her hand as if to wave good-bye. The gesture was too close to his face, though, and one of her long fingernails grazed his cheek, drawing blood. Startled, he drew back, his cheek stinging.

  “Oo, how careless of me,” she said. Holding his gaze, she put the finger in her mouth and sucked on it, slowly and sensually.

  Chuck Morton chose that moment to enter the room. Seeing him, Lee took a step away from Susan, but she held her ground. She removed her finger from her mouth and smiled sweetly at her husband.

  “Hello, sugar. What took you so long?”

  Chuck’s eyes narrowed. He looked back and forth between his wife and his best friend as if he were checking to see if they were indeed standing before him, and not apparitions. Then he smiled, though Lee saw the strain lines around his mouth.

  “Sorry, honey, but this isn’t a good time. Can we talk later?”

  “No problem, sugar. I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by to see if you wanted to have lunch. But I’ll see you tonight—I’m cookin’ up something special.”

  I’ll just bet you are, Lee thought.

  Chuck gave a nervous little cough. “I’ll walk you out.”

  “See you boys later,” she called over her shoulder, and left the room with a swing of her perfect hips.

  When she and Chuck had gone, Butts shook his head. “Man, she is trouble with a capital T. If I was you and I saw her comin’ toward me on the street, I would cross to the other side. She is one dangerous female.”

  Once again Detective Butts had hit the nail on the head.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  The others arrived soon after, and Chuck had to leave for another meeting, so he put Lee in charge. Now that the first anniversary of 9/11 had passed, the restless tabloid press had seized on the Van Cortlandt Vampire slayings as juicy front-page stories. Even the Times had joined in, albeit in not quite as blatantly exploitative a style. The latest victim appeared on their front page, but below the fold.

  “Okay,” Lee said when everyone had gathered in the conference room, which had now become their case headquarters. “Do we have any physical evidence from the blood-bank crime scene?”

  Sergeant Quinlan shook his head. “Plenty of prints at the scene, but none of anyone already in the system.” He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. “Allergies,” he said in response to a glare from Krieger.

  “So if we pick up a suspect, we can compare prints,” Butts said. “Other wise, we’re screwed. What have you got so far, Doc?”

  “Here are some things we can reasonably assume about this UNSUB,” Lee said. He picked up a marker and wrote on the board.

  • Extremely Organized

  • Fantasy-Driven Sexual Homicides

  • White Male, Twenties to Early Thirties

  • Chooses High-Risk Victims of Opportunity, Possibly Some Stalking

  • Educated

  • Obsessed with Blood

  • Probable Link to Childhood Trauma

  • Will Not Appear Threatening to Victims at First

  • Charming/Well-Dressed/Articulate

  • Some Medical Expertise/
Knowledge—Medical Professional?

  • Sophisticated Knowledge of Forensics

  • Likely to Follow Investigation

  “Wow,” said Quinlan, placing a toothpick between his lips. “That’s a lot of stuff. You sure about all that?”

  “The safest conclusions are that he is a white male,” Lee said, “probably in his twenties, well educated, of fairly high socioeconomic status—”

  “Wait a second,” Quinlan said, interrupting his chewing on the toothpick. “How do you get all that?”

  “Well, it’s obvious that he’s organized. The very nature of his crimes require a high degree of—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get that,” the sergeant said. “But how do you know his socioeconomic—”

  “Since he doesn’t appear threatening to his victims, and he doesn’t stand out in their milieu, it is logical to conclude that they perceive him as ‘one of them,’ at least at first. The first two victims were well-educated and from wealthy families. The likelihood is that he has roughly the same profile they do.” “I get that he’s male,” Quinlan said, “but why white?”

  “These types don’t tend to kill interracially,” Butts

  said. “They target their own kind, so to speak.” “But there are always exceptions,” said Krieger.

  “Of course,” Lee agreed. “But the vast majority will kill within their own race. So, as I said, we can reasonably assume he’s white.”

  Quinlan grunted and shifted the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. Lee hoped he wasn’t going to be trouble.

  “It’s also a fairly safe assumption that he has transportation—a car, maybe even something larger, like a van.”

  “Right,” Butts agreed. “He transports the victims after killing them.”

  Elena Krieger pointed to the red stickpins marking the locations where each victim was found. “Last night I ran these locations along with our other data through the Criminal Geographic Targeting computer program—”

  “You mean the one developed by that Vancouver detective?” Butts asked. “I hear it’s really cool.” He looked impressed in spite of himself.

  “Yes. The most likely area for our killer to live is here,” she said, drawing a circle around an area of the Bronx that included Woodlawn and the Botanical Garden to the east, and Riverdale to the west.

  “I get that,” said Quinlan. “Two of the vics were dumped up there. But what about the one found in Midtown?”

  “Ms. Rosario didn’t fit the victim profiles in other ways,” Lee pointed out. “She was a different race from the other victims, as well as being outside their age range.”

  “Plus, he left her the same place he killed her, which wasn’t true of the others,” said Butts. “With the first vic—Candy—he met her way downtown, but the dump site was way uptown.”

  “Which is why I think it’s fairly certain he owns a vehicle,” Lee said, writing it on the board. Under it he wrote Physical Strength. “The other thing I think we should reasonably assume is that he’s fairly strong.”

  “Because he managed to haul a body over the wall at Woodlawn?” Krieger asked.

  “Right. Unless—” He stopped, his hand with the marker poised in midair. In a flash, the meaning of his dream the previous night was clear to him.

  “What?” said Krieger.

  “We’re assuming that’s how he got in. But what if we’re wrong?”

  “He didn’t go through the front gate,” Quinlan said.

  “How else?”

  “I think I know another way in,” Lee said.

  “What’s that?” asked Butts.

  “Through the Botanical Garden. They share a border, separated only by a fence and a shallow stream.”

  “You say there’s a fence?” Butts asked.

  “Yeah, but it’s not always secure. Sometimes there are holes in it.”

  Krieger’s icy blue eyes narrowed. “How do you know?” “Because I once found a hole in it myself and snuck into the garden from the cemetery.”

  Butts grinned. “See, there’s a lotta stuff I still don’t know about you, Doc.”

  “When was this?” asked Krieger.

  “Why, are you gonna arrest him for trespassing?” Butts snapped.

  “Okay, okay!” said Quinlan. “We should send a team out there to collect evidence, don’t you think?”

  “Definitely,” Lee agreed. “I’m just sorry I didn’t think of it before.” What he didn’t tell them was that he found the hole in the weeks following his sister’s death. He was wandering all over the five boroughs, desperate to find out something—anything—about her disappearance. One day he took it into his head to search Woodlawn’s outer edges, which is when he found the break in the chain-link fence. Even at the time he knew he was acting irrationally, but he didn’t care. He just had to do something, no matter how foolish. That was probably why the fence showed up in his dream—luckily, as it turned out. Some of those days were so foggy in his memory that without the dream he might never have thought of it.

  “We should also interview the staff at the Gardens,” Krieger pointed out. “Maybe the killer is someone who works there.”

  “Or maybe one of them saw him,” Butts agreed.

  “I’ll get right on that,” Quinlan said. “That’s near my precinct.”

  “There’s another thing we should consider,” Lee said. He turned and wrote on the board.

  • Stressor??

  “You mean what happened in his life to get him started on this killin’ spree?” Butts said.

  “Right. Assuming these are his first victims, the stressor would have been fairly recent.”

  Krieger crossed her long, muscular arms. “What kind of event are we talking about with this offender, do you think?”

  “It’s hard to say for sure, but I’d be looking at loss of a job, death of someone close to him, breakup of a relationship, something like that—or even more than one combined. Whatever it was, it sent him over the top.”

  “You mention a childhood trauma,” said Butts. “So he’s been thinkin’ about doing this stuff for a long time, then?” said Butts.

  “Oh, yes,” Lee replied. “A very long time.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  “You wanted to see me?” Chuck asked without looking up. He was digging through his desk in search of something.

  “Yeah,” Lee said. Standing in the doorway felt awkward, but he didn’t want to come in and sit down either. After the meeting, he had come straight to Morton’s office—he couldn’t put off talking to Chuck any longer.

  Chuck stopped searching and glanced at his watch. “I got a meeting in half an hour.” He walked to the door and called into the hall. “Ruggles!” He looked back at Lee. “Can it wait?”

  “Not really.”

  The sergeant appeared, his face even ruddier then usual. He looked as if he had been in the sun recently. “Yes, sir?”

  “Have you seen my—”

  “Glasses, sir?” Ruggles said, producing them from his pocket. “You left them on my desk, sir.”

  Chuck took them. “Thanks, Ruggles.”

  “Don’t mention it, sir,” he said, withdrawing.

  Chuck put on his glasses and leafed through a few documents on his desk. “Damn paperwork,” he muttered. “We’re goddamn drowning in it.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair, then seemed to take in Lee for the first time. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. No. Hell, I don’t know, Chuck. I don’t really want to talk about this.”

  “Is it about the case or something else?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, spit it out. The buildup is making it worse.”

  “It’s about ... Susan.”

  Chuck’s face darkened. “What about her?”

  Uh-oh, here it comes.

  Lee saw the breakup of their long friendship looming ahead. But if he didn’t speak up, something worse could happen—much worse.

  “God, I feel awful for asking you this,
but—”

  “Get it over with, will you?”

  “You don’t ... talk to her about the details of cases, do you?”

  Chuck’s face turned the color of cooked beets. “Jesus Christ, Lee! Where are you going with this? Of course I don’t!”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “Well, you figured right!”

  Lee couldn’t bear to look at him. “I ... I don’t know if it’s a good idea to give her access to the office when you’re not around.”

  Chuck glowered at him. “What?”

  “She’s been in here a lot recently, and—oh, forget it. I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s just that—”

  Chuck stood up, jaw rigid, his hands clenched into fists.

  “Are you suggesting she’s responsible for the leak?”

  “No, no,” Lee said, but he could hear the lack of conviction in his own voice. Christ, you’re a lousy actor, Campbell.

  Chuck wasn’t buying it either. His pale eyes widened and his face went slack. “Jesus. That is what you think, isn’t it? Why the hell would you believe something like that?”

  “I didn’t say that, Chuck.”

  “Christ, Lee, it’s bad enough that you think it. How could you—why would you—”

  “Well, it fits, doesn’t it? Right after she was in here, leafing through all the photos, the whole thing came out.”

  “But why would she—” He squinted at Lee, his eyes suspicious. “What I saw today—”

  “That was nothing, Chuck. You know Susan. She’s a compulsive flirt, always has been.” The minute he said the words, he regretted them.

  Chuck sat up straight, as though a thought had suddenly come to him.

  “Wait a minute. I’ve had a cold, and then you get a cold—”

  “What are you implying? Do you honestly think—”

  “That’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “It’s a summer cold, that’s all!”

  “Is it, Lee? Is it?”

  Lee knew his friend had snapped, that he was talking crazy. The pressure of the job had gotten to him. Chuck was on duty all during the attack on the World Trade and its long, ugly aftermath, which still wasn’t over. He loved Susan more than anything, and would do anything to maintain his image of her. And the pressure within the department to solve this case was intense. He knew Chuck always did what he could to protect the people under him, but you could only bear so many burdens without snapping like a twig under them. This must have been a hell of a year for him.