Silent Kills (23 page)

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Authors: C.E. Lawrence

BOOK: Silent Kills
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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.
He knew all of this, and yet his righteous anger swallowed the reasonable part of his brain. All the rage in him gathered like a whirlwind, spiraling upward from his center.
“God, Chuck, will you listen to what you’re saying?” he shouted. “You’re talking like an idiot!”
Chuck’s anger matched his. “Yeah, I’m an idiot all right, for trusting someone like you!”
“Watch what you’re saying—”
“NO,
you
watch what you’re saying! Where do you get off accusing my wife of sabotaging our case?”
“I didn’t say that—”
“The hell you didn’t! Are you trying to break up our marriage so you can have her back to yourself again? Is that what this is all about?”
The tornado in Lee’s brain stopped twisting, and all he felt was sadness. “Jesus, Chuck, listen to yourself.”
But Chuck’s rage hadn’t even begun to crest. “I thought I could trust you—of all people, I thought you would never lie to me!”
“I won’t, Chuck,” Lee said quietly, but the hurt and mistrust in his friend’s eyes cut him.
He turned and walked out of the office.

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