Silent Screams Page 3
Ralph raised his head and looked up at the detective through tearstained eyes.
“You don’t have any more questions?” He sounded disappointed.
“Not right now. We know where to find you if we do.” Butts spat out a piece of cigar into the trash can and handed Ralph a business card. “Give me a call if you think of anything else. Especially if you have any ideas about who this other guy might be. Sorry you had to go through this.”
“That’s okay,” said Ralph, clutching the coffee cup as he stood up unsteadily.
“Officer Lambert here will take you home,” said Butts, indicating a thin, sallow-faced policeman standing just outside the room.
“Can you make it okay?” asked Lee.
“Yes, thank you—I’ll be all right,” Ralph replied, and followed Officer Lambert meekly down the hall.
“I know what he took,” Lee said as soon as the boy had gone.
“Who took what?”
“The killer. I know what he took as a souvenir.”
“Oh yeah? What?”
“The gold cross—the one she never took off.”
“But there was no cross on her when we found her.”
“Exactly.”
Butts rolled his eyes. “Okay. So all’s we have to do is find some pervert wearing this girl’s cross.”
“No, he wouldn’t wear it himself. He would either put it away in a drawer or give it to a woman in his life—someone important to him, someone he wants to impress.”
Butts shuddered. “Kinda like my cat bringing in a mouse head and dropping it on my pillow.”
“That’s a good analogy, actually.”
“Do creeps like this have girlfriends?”
“Some of them do. I doubt this guy does, though.”
“A sister, maybe?”
“Maybe. He’s an introvert, though, and my guess is that if he gives his trophy away to anyone, it’ll be to his mother.”
Butts shivered again. “Oh, man, that’s just too weird.”
Lee felt his own spine tingle as a thin finger of dread wound its way up his back. “Yes. We’re dealing with someone who is profoundly disturbed.”
“You can call it what you want, Doc,” Butts replied. “I call it creepy.”
Chapter Three
An hour later Lee entered his empty, darkened apartment on East Seventh Street, savoring the stillness before turning on the hall light. He removed his coat, hanging it on the Victorian bentwood coatrack, a gift from his mother. She loved all things Victorian: burgundy velvet drapes, satin-lined Chinese scarves with fat laughing cherubs, lace curtains, painted china tea sets, opera capes. Men were unreliable, and would come and go, but the Victorian era had a solid, carved-oak heaviness that she seemed to find comforting.
“Well, it’s a theory, anyway,” Lee muttered as he walked to the kitchen.
His piano sat in the corner under the window, waiting for him. But right now he wanted a cup of coffee, strong and bitter and hot, with a dollop of milk and a teaspoon of sugar. His insides ached from the strain of digging around among the demons that continued to plague him. There was something in the back of his mind, something he couldn’t quite grasp. He had a feeling that it related to Marie’s death in some way. As he put the water on to boil, the phone rang. The sound was jarring, cutting through the stillness of the air like a summons. He picked up the receiver and held his breath.
“Hello?”
“Hello, dear.” It was his mother, brisk and cheerful as usual. Her voice was a shield, with a veneer of warmth and optimism, but he could sense the fear and sadness underneath.
“So how are things?” His mother’s cheeriness was resolute, implacable—an immovable object.
“Fine, Mom.” There was only one answer to this question in the Campbell family. Nothing else was acceptable. Fine, Mom. Everything’s just fine. Laura’s murderer is still out there, and there’s a college girl in the city morgue with her chest carved up, but everything’s fine.
“Isn’t this weather just awful? It’s hard to believe there are only six weeks until spring.”
Weather—a safe topic. Weather, food, home improvement, gardening—all safe topics for Fiona Campbell.
“I just can hardly wait to get my roses in. I’ve got three different colors of tea roses this year.” She was always planting things: roses, begonias, petunias.
“Oh, good.”
“Stan thinks it’s too early. He says we’ll have another frost, but I don’t believe him.”
Stan Paloggia was her next-door neighbor who hovered around her like an eager beagle. Actually, he was a lot like beagles Lee had known: short and stocky, with a voracious appetite, thick around the middle. His voice, too, was a kind of a bray, like the hoarse baying of a hound on the hunt. He followed Fiona Campbell around like a one-man posse, being helpful in any way he could, whether it was gardening advice or plumbing repairs. Lee had often wished he could tell the man he was wasting his time—his mother was only attracted to remote, elegant men like his father. Tall, glamorous, and handsome, Duncan Campbell was Stan’s opposite in every way—but Stan seemed to enjoy the quest, and panted happily along whenever he could. His mother tolerated his attention, and treated him about as well as she treated anyone.
“Well, if Stan says so, maybe you’d better listen,” Lee said, pouring coffee beans into the white Krups grinder.
“I don’t know; I just hate waiting,” his mother replied.
Lee turned the grinder on and took the phone into the living room as the machine whirred into action, screeching harshly as the beans tumbled over each other.
“How’s Kylie?” he asked.
“Oh, she’s just fine—growing like a weed, you know. It’s hard to believe she’s almost seven!”
Lee looked at one of the snapshots of Laura on the door of his refrigerator. It was taken in front of his mother’s house, and she was squinting into the sun, her hand raised to push back a few stray strands of long brown hair. He remembered the day well—he had taken the picture shortly before her graduation from college.
But his niece would have no memories of her—she would know her mother only through photographs like this one, or in the stories people told about her. Kylie lived with her father, but she spent Saturdays and Sundays with her grandmother, as he worked the ER shift at the local hospital most weekends. George Callahan was a big, bluff man without an evil thought in his head. Lee always wished Laura had married him, but he wasn’t her type. Steady, unexciting, and kind to a fault, George was nothing like the vain, high-strung father Laura had never stopped searching for in the men she dated. Even after Kylie was born, Laura refused to marry George, even though he had begged her.
“You’re still planning on spending Saturday with her, aren’t you?” His mother sounded wary—lately Lee had been less than reliable.
“Uh, sure.”
“Do you want to say hello to her? She’s right here.”
“Sure.”
In the background, Lee could hear his niece talking to his mother’s cat, Groucho. He pictured the scene: Fiona in the kitchen, cooking breakfast, her portable phone cradled on her shoulder as she stirred the potatoes, Kylie sitting in the corner kitchen nook with Groucho on her lap, trying to dress him in baby clothes.
There was a pause, and he could hear his mother in the background. “Put the cat down now—no, he doesn’t like being held like that.”
He smiled. Kylie was just like his sister, ferociously independent and stubborn. At six and a half, she already displayed Laura’s ironic wit. There was the sound of the cat hissing in the background, then a sharp “Ow!” and the sound of a chair falling. Moments later, his niece came to the phone.
“Hello, Uncle Lee.”
“Hi, Kylie. What were you doing with the kitty just now?”
“Playing.” Her voice carried a note of gleeful guilt.
“Really? What sort of game were you playing?”
“Um…dress up.”
“You
were dressing up Groucho?”
“Um…yeah.”
“Did he enjoy that?”
“Not really. He tried to run away.”
“But you stopped him?”
“Yeah—until he bit my hand.”
“That must have hurt.”
“Uh-huh…Grandmom is putting a Band-Aid on it.”
Kylie’s relationship with Groucho was one of hunter and hunted—and, when she managed to corner him, it was torturer and victim. Her favorite game was dress up, and she clothed the cat in a dazzling array of humiliating outfits. The aging and dyspeptic tabby was far from child friendly, but Fiona Campbell had had him for years and wasn’t about to give him up now.
“My Band-Aid has Winnie the Pooh on it,” Kylie said.
“Oh, that’s nice. Did your grandmom buy them for you?”
“Uh-huh. I picked it out, though.”
Lee heard the whistle of the teakettle and went into the kitchen. “That’s good. I’ll bet it feels better already.”
“Yes.” There was a pause. Talking to a young child on the phone was a job. You had to constantly initiate topics, keep the conversation moving. As Lee poured hot water over the coffee grounds, he was aware of something in the back of his mind trying to press its way to the front, but he couldn’t quite grasp what it was—a thought, an idea, an image of some kind.
“Are you having fun in school?” he said into the phone.
“Um, yes.”
“What do you like best?”
“Art class. I drew pictures of Mommy today.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. We were apposed to bring a picture in and draw from that, so I brought one of Mommy from the scrapbook.” Kylie had trouble with “sp” sounds, and pronounced “supposed” as “apposed.” She also said “Francanscisco” for “San Francisco” and “pissghetti” for “spaghetti.” Lee found all of these childhood speech patterns charming, and was sorry the day would come—as he knew it would—when his niece would outgrow them.
A silence hung in the air, and Lee couldn’t think of anything to say. He knew his mother kept a scrapbook filled with pictures of Laura, but he didn’t know Kylie had seen it.
“And then when she comes back I can show it to her.”
Lee bit his lip. It was bad enough that his mother had never accepted Laura’s death, but it made him furious that she insisted on sharing her unreasonable hopes with her granddaughter.
“Okay, well, I’ll see you tomorrow. Can I talk to your grandmom now?”
“Okay. Grandmom!”
His mother came and took the phone.
“Yes, dear?”
Lee wanted to tear into her for what he considered her irresponsible behavior, but he didn’t have the energy. All he wanted to do was lie down, pull the blankets over his head and shut out everything.
“Was there something you wanted to tell me?”
“No—I just wanted to say good-bye.”
“Fine. Take care of yourself—and remember to eat!” His mother often ended conversations that way. He had lost so much weight during his depression that she became worried.
“Okay, I will. ’Bye.”
Lee hung up and lifted the filter from his coffee mug. The liquid inside was hot and strong and black—opaque and impenetrable, like his mother. Again the thought in the back of his mind struggled to make its way forward. He added a drop of milk to his coffee and took it over to the window seat. It was something about Marie, and yet not about her. Something related to her death…but what? He stared out at the gray February morning. A thin rain was falling, and he noticed the lights were on in the Ukrainian church across the street. In a flash, he remembered what had been bothering him all morning.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number for the Bronx Major Case Unit.
Chapter Four
The campus is quiet, still as a tomb. The thought came to Samuel as he tiptoed across the quad, toward the dormitory building with the one light burning in the first-floor corner room. The light cast a blurry yellow halo around the window, a protective aura surrounding the room’s inhabitants. He shivered as he drew closer. He could hear music playing—something classical, with flutes and violins. A couple of other rooms on the third floor had their lights blazing—late-night studying, he supposed.
He stood beneath the windows and looked up at the occupants of the rooms. Three coeds, as far as he could make out, sat around a low table, talking and laughing. He watched the girls moving through the windows, the outline of their bodies blurred through the white lace curtains, their faces muted and indistinct, as if in a dream. Why didn’t they want him? Why couldn’t they see his specialness? He could hardly dare to desire them, but as he sat gazing at their soft forms, lit from behind by yellow lamplight, translucent and misty mermaids, the gentle glow of the room, the light breath of breeze on his cheeks induced a trancelike state in which he floated, caught in a sweet web of longing.
Then one of the girls threw back her head, laughing at something (he couldn’t make out the words), exposing her throat. He watched as the light fell upon the sudden curve of her neck, so open, so vulnerable. He imagined his hands wrapped around that white neck, pressing, squeezing, tighter and tighter, until the life within seeped into his fingers. He imagined his hands growing stronger as the life force drained away from the girl’s body and into his own.
It was a thrilling thought—and it seized him with a force that shook him to his bones. He trembled, he sweated, he burned with a fierce flame from deep within him, from a place he had not known existed until now, a place his mother could not see, could not even imagine. This was his secret, his delicious fantasy. He trembled at the idea of keeping something from his mother—it made him swell with a sense of his own manhood. He turned and walked away from the window, putting his hand on the key ring that hung from his belt to stop the keys from jangling.
For the first time in his life that he could remember, he felt powerful.
Chapter Five
Captain Chuck Morton leaned back in his chair and studied the man sitting on the other side of his desk. He looked thin, even leaner than when Chuck had last seen him two months ago, and definitely thinner than he had been when the two of them shared a suite of rooms at Princeton all those years ago. His friend’s angular, handsome face was pale and drawn, and his long body was slumped forward, his elbows braced on the chair’s armrests. Chuck knew Lee had been up since well before dawn. Morton leaned forward in his chair and fingered the glass paperweight next to his phone. It was a butterfly spread out beneath a glistening prism, and it gave him the creeps, but it was a gift from his son, so he kept it on his desk. The butterfly’s multicolored wings gleamed like tiny rainbows under the fluorescent light.
He sighed and looked at Lee Campbell. Even sitting there studying crime photos, his friend gave the impression of restlessness. It had been a long time since their carefree days at Nassau Hall, days when all that seemed to matter were rugby, girls, and grades—in that order. Now Lee looked anything but carefree—Chuck could see his long fingers twitching as they gripped the photos. Chuck felt sorry for his old friend; this was not the Lee Campbell he had known at Princeton.
Mental. That’s what some of the beat cops called him behind his back, but Chuck felt a fierce loyalty to this intense, earnest man with the haunted eyes and nervous hands, a loyalty that extended beyond their days together romping the ivy-drenched quadrangles of Princeton. On the rugby field, Lee was the team captain, with quick hands and an even quicker mind, playing the key position of fly half, while Chuck, with his speed, played wing or outside center. Maybe it was their opposite temperaments that made their friendship possible: Lee was always keyed up, charismatic, intense, while Chuck’s own flame burned lower, with a steady blue glow. Lee was a born leader, and he was a born sidekick. The two of them bonded as roommates their freshman year in Blair Hall. Not even women could come between them, though Chuck still wondered occasionally if Susan ever regretted marrying h
im instead of Lee.
“You know,” Chuck said, “maybe I shouldn’t have called you in on this. Maybe it was—”
“A mistake?” Lee interrupted. “Cut it out, Chuck—it’s obvious that this case needs a profiler.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I was just thinking that because of…” Chuck paused, not wanting to say the words. He felt like a coward.
“Christ, Chuck, you can’t second-guess every case I’m on because it might bring up memories of my sister’s disappearance.”
Five years ago, Lee Campbell’s younger sister Laura had disappeared without a trace from her Greenwich Village apartment, and everything had changed. He had never been the same since then. It was as though a dark chord had been struck in his soul and the reverberations still had not stopped. He’d had a thriving private practice as a psychologist, and Chuck was surprised when Lee called a few months after his sister’s disappearance to say he was attending John Jay College for an advanced degree in forensic psychology. Later he came to realize that the disappearance of Lee’s sister had affected his friend in ways he couldn’t quantify. Once Lee graduated, Chuck had been instrumental in getting him his present position as the only full-time profiler in the NYPD. Lately, though, he had been wondering if he had made a mistake—emotionally, his friend didn’t seem up to it.
Chuck looked out the grimy window of his office, absentmindedly fingering the butterfly paperweight on his desk.
“So no signs of sexual assault, right?” Lee muttered, still studying the photos.
“Right,” Chuck said. “The lab report just came in. But how did you—”
“I’m telling you, Chuck, the same guy who did Jane Doe also killed Marie Kelleher last night!”
Chuck looked back at him.
“You really think they’re connected?”
“Yes, I do.”
Morton shook his head. “I dunno, Lee. Seems like a stretch to me.”
Lee ran a hand through his curly black hair, something he did when he was upset. His friend’s hair was longer, too, Chuck thought—even shaggy, by his own standards. He wore his own sandy blond hair short—like the bristles of a hairbrush, his wife said. He had left her soft warm body with particular reluctance this morning. When he rose from bed, the house still so dark and quiet, Susan had flung an arm out after him and moaned a little, and he had wanted nothing more than to climb back under the covers next to her and plant kisses everywhere his lips could reach.