Silent Kills (28 page)

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Authors: C.E. Lawrence

BOOK: Silent Kills
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“Wow,” he said softly. “I didn’t know Melville ever lived in Troy.”
“All right,” Krieger said. “It looks like we’re going to the ball.”
“All of us?” Quinlan asked.
“Safety in numbers,” Krieger pointed out.
Butts frowned. “I’ll put in a call to my fairy godmother to have my coach waiting.”
Krieger smiled. “Now that is something I would pay money to see.”
“Me too,” said Quinlan. “Wonder what a steampunk coach looks like.”
His colleagues’ attempts at humor had a strained quality, Lee thought—their voices were tight and their eyes were wary. He had a bad feeling about the whole thing. So much could go wrong—but then, so much had already gone wrong he supposed it was foolish to worry. But Troy was far from their home base, unknown territory to all of them. He had only been there once before, just passing through. He just hoped if they did meet the killer there, he too would be out of his comfort zone. But it would be nighttime—when vampires were most in their element.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Francois Nugent logged off the chat room and closed his computer. It was a stupid moniker, he supposed, but he had chosen it to give himself confidence. He liked the archaic spelling:
VampyrHunter.
Offbeat enough to be singular, but totally within the steampunk world. He got up from his desk and slipped a CD into the player hooked up to his expensive sound system. The whole thing had set his parents back a couple of thousand, but they didn’t mind. Only the best would do for their precious boy. Except their time, of course; that was too much to ask of them. That was better spent rescuing scrawny orphans in godforsaken corners of Africa. Well, fine; if that’s the way it was, so be it. He blamed them more than himself for his sister’s death—he felt if they’d been around she wouldn’t have died. Maybe that was irrational, but he didn’t care.
He ran a finger over the shiny black case of the Bose amplifier, a bit of fine gray dust clinging to his skin. He hadn’t let Flossie into his room to clean for a while. He didn’t want anyone snooping around, poking into his business, not even Flossie. He had important things to do, and he couldn’t have her asking questions. He pressed the play button, flung himself onto his bed, and let the music wash over him.
The youth that time destroyed can live in me again
But I require blood—the time is coming when
I’ll come to you at night, as the owl hoots at the moon
I’ll be by your side to watch you as you swoon
It was quite a well-known song in the steampunk world, of course, but more particularly it was the song of a vampire. Francois needed it to get him in the mood for what he was about to do. He stared at the ceiling, watching as a small grey spider threaded its way toward an unlucky fly trapped in its sticky web. He wondered what it would be like to be that fly, watching helplessly as its killer inched closer and closer. He gazed at the insect as it struggled unsuccessfully to free itself ... did flies even have that kind of consciousness? He hoped not; otherwise a death like this would be agony. Or was the insect just struggling from a deep-seated survival instinct for self-preservation? He thought briefly about freeing the fly, but decided against it. After all, spiders have to eat too, and what might be helpful to the fly was hardly fair to the spider.
He looked away and thought about his next move. It was just a few days until the ball, and then he would act. He would slip away, telling no one where he was going, not even Flossie. No, especially not her—she was so concerned about him these days. He could see it in her eyes. It pained him to upset her—he felt she was the only person who had ever really loved him, truly given of herself in a way that mattered. But he had a job to do, and could share it with no one.
Up on the ceiling, the spider closed in on its captive, injecting it with venom. The fly ceased its struggling as the poison flooded its tiny body, and the spider prepared to enjoy another meal.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Chuck Morton stared at the surface of his desk, running his fingers over the glass butterfly paperweight his son had made. His face was rigid, his jaw set. He was intent on not showing any emotion—which usually meant he was feeling too much. He spoke quietly, without looking up.
“She really
isn’t
over you, is she?”
Lee Campbell raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. He was regretting the decision to step into Chuck’s office, but the rift between them was so painful, and possibly unnecessary. He knew that if he didn’t take the initiative to confront the situation, it was unlikely Morton would. He came from an even more repressed background than Lee, and his personality was naturally more reserved as well. Chuck was a classic avoider, something Lee understood only too well.
“Chuck, it has nothing to do with—”
“Tell me something, no bullshit,” Morton said, still staring at his desk.
“Anything.”
Chuck got up and looked out the window, still avoiding eye contact. “Back at Princeton, when you two were ... who dumped who?”
“I told you—”
Chuck spun around and thumped the desk with his fist. “I said
no bullshit
!”
Lee swallowed. The walls of the room closed in. He spread his hands in surrender. “Look, Chuck, it’s complicated.” The words were hollow, an attempt to smooth over something that couldn’t be fixed.
Chuck sat down heavily. “Right,” he said softly. “She’s getting back at you. She
wanted
me to walk in on you and see that. She’s screwing with both of us!”
“She loves you—you have to know that she does.”
Chuck gave a little laugh, a bitter puff of air. “Like the song says, what’s love got to do with it?”
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Chuck—”
Chuck shook his head and laughed again—a hard, desperate sound. “Oh, I’m not, don’t worry. All these years I tried to believe, wanted to believe—
had
to believe—that she loved me as much as I loved her. And God knows, I did—do—love her. I wish I didn’t, but that’s not how it works, is it?”
“No, I guess not.”
“It’s funny, but it’s like that old cliché about the straw and the camel’s back. You can carry a burden for so long, not even realizing it��and then all of a sudden,
wham
, you’re on your knees, like that goddamn camel.”
“Chuck, I—”
“No, it’s okay—really. About time I saw the truth for what it is. I’ve been ignoring signs for years—little flirtations, odd glances from men, angry looks from other women, all kinds of things. But I was a fool in love, and you know what they say about that.”
“Look, Chuck, I don’t—”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Christ, Lee, it’s one of the ways she controls me. I was so jealous I was about to rip your throat out because I thought you—well, I thought you were the one carrying the torch. What an idiot, huh?”
Lee hated seeing his friend like this. It was embarrassing, and he knew that tomorrow Chuck would hate both of them for witnessing this. Hell, he might even change his mind about Susan—there was too much at stake if he ditched her, what with his career and two kids and a house in Glen Ridge. He was strapped into his lifestyle like a passenger strapped into a doomed aircraft. He was going down, helpless to do anything about it.
Chuck rubbed his temples as if he had the mother of all migraines.
“I always thought that even if she didn’t feel the same way about me, I had enough love for both of us. But now I’m not so sure.”
“Don’t make any rash decisions tonight, okay? Sleep on it and see how you feel tomorrow.” The words felt empty, hollow as the place in his chest where his heart used to be. A kind of dull numbness had overtaken him in the past few days. He actually welcomed it as better than the alternative—crippling depression and anxiety. He had wanted to talk to Chuck about what was happening with him and Kathy, but now that avenue was closed. Morton had his own burden to bear. It felt as if everything Lee had been counting on these past few months was crashing down around him, the foundation of his life cracking under his feet.
“Christ, maybe it’s me, Lee. Maybe I’m just attracted to the wrong kind of woman.”
Lee refrained from answering. It was damned if you do, damned if you don’t, he thought—any response would sound like the wrong one. But Chuck sounded so miserable that he felt impelled to say something.
“Jesus, Chuck, these things aren’t anyone’s fault.”
“Am I wrong about her? Is she as bad as all that, or is it just my jealousy talking? I’ve tried so hard not to be possessive, but sometimes it feels like the more I try, the more I just ... I don’t know. I just want to kill any damn creep who so much as touches her elbow.” He slumped in his chair, head in his hands. “But how do you stop needing someone just—overnight?”
He had the answer to that one. “You don’t.”
There was no purity, there was no salvation. It was all a big, sticky mess, this business of human relationships and emotions—a stew comprised of the best and worst of our nature. Love and hate, forever bound together, inseparable. The closer we get to another person, the more we love them, the more chance we give hate the opportunity to dig its claws into our back when we aren’t looking. The well was always poisoned. It was just a question of what concentration we could bear. The definition of poison, after all, was a question of dosage, as Ivana Jankovic had said.
He looked at Chuck’s stricken face.
One man’s meat ...
speaking of poison, he could think of one that would be very welcome right now.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere and get drunk.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
They managed to find the most down-and-dirty dive in the whole borough, a place where roaches wouldn’t go for fear of what they might contract there. It wasn’t a watering hole for cops, and didn’t seem to be a hangout for anyone except gin-soaked locals down on their luck. A few sad barflies perched on ratty plastic-covered stools and sipped discount booze under the watchful eye of the sullen bartender, a thick woman with unconvincing blond hair and cheap dangly earrings who Lee thought might be the owner. The fake wood-paneled walls reeked of cigarettes, and the floor was sticky underfoot.
He and Chuck didn’t just get drunk, they got plastered. Tears were shed, pints were emptied, filled, and refilled, and at the end of three hours they had solved nothing, but felt better for it. Their friendship survived more or less intact, though Lee didn’t know if the same was true of Chuck’s marriage. His friend was like a hapless fly caught in a spider’s web—the more he struggled, the more tightly he became entwined.
They emerged into the soft autumn night swaying uncertainly side by side, just like in the old days after a night of pub crawling on Nassau Street—though now they were more weighed down by age and responsibility. Still, in spite of everything that had happened or was about to happen, Lee felt the pull of nostalgia when he looked at his friend’s blurry-eyed face. There was something singular about those college years, that time of life, so fleeting and intense and irreplaceable. He was glad Susan hadn’t managed to put a rift so deep between him and Chuck that it couldn’t be healed, though he suspected she wasn’t about to stop trying.
He packed Chuck off in a cab to catch a bus back to Jersey, and stumbled onto the subway for the long ride downtown. He dozed off toward the end of the trip and awoke to hear the announcer proclaiming the next stop: Canal Street. He had missed Astor Place, and was two stops beyond it. Rather than get on an uptown train, he decided to get off and walk back. It would give him a chance to sober up, as well as indulge in one of his favorite pastimes, wandering through the darkened streets of the city at night.
He began walking uptown, then on impulse headed toward the East River. He took John Street as far as Front, turned north, and walked through the South Street Seaport, with its renovated Federal style buildings and cobblestone passageways, past the Fulton Fish Market. It would be opening in just a few hours, the sharp cries of seagulls and fish vendors competing with the rumble of trucks as they delivered the morning catch from the docks. There was another smell in the air—the thin, lingering scent of devastation. The fires had long ago been put out at Ground Zero, but the odor persisted, a reminder of that terrible day. Curiously, rather than splintering the fellowship of the city’s residents, the attack had pulled them closer. The sense of camaraderie and kindness among New Yorkers remained, a year afterward, a realization that they were all in this together.
The dark ribbon of concrete that was the Brooklyn Bridge looming above him, he saw ahead tiny Peck Slip, only two blocks long. Even at this hour, he could hear the incessant rush of traffic along the FDR Drive. He stopped and breathed in the salty aroma of the river, and imagined Ishmael standing on this spot at the beginning of
Moby-Dick
. It was too dark to see the engraved passages from the novel over the door of 214 Front Street, but he liked knowing it was there.
Call me Ishmael.
Though Melville’s protagonist journeyed into far and wide seas, he thought, it all started here, on this little slip of land in what must have been, even then, the greatest city in the world. He continued north along South Street, with the river on one side of him and the city on the other. In some ways, he thought, everything is a journey, like life itself. He never felt so alive as when in motion. Time seemed to slow down when he was strolling along these streets late at night, alone with his thoughts, seeing but unseen.
He wondered if the killer he sought also liked to be out abroad late at night. Was he perhaps wandering around even now in search of his next victim? If Lee were to see him, would he know it was the man he sought? This UNSUB was playing a bold game, grabbing low-risk victims and leaving them in places where he was in danger of being seen. Was this part of the fun for him? How long before he slipped up? And when he did, would they be ready for him? These questions swirled through his mind as a thin rain began to fall and fog slid in from the river, shrouding the landscape in its grainy mist. He trudged through the thickening air as hazy halos formed around the street lamps above him.
He thought about vampires, such a potent metaphor, pondering why we are simultaneously so repulsed and attracted by them. It had, he thought, something to do with the nature of lust and desire, and a subtle interplay of masochism. Susan Morton was an emotional vampire, of course—but more and more he was beginning to think that was one of the reasons Chuck found her so intoxicating. Could it be that his friend’s desire for punishment was so deep that he
needed
to be under her spell? Maybe his “helplessness” was something he relied on, a counterbalance to his professional life, where he was required to be constantly in control. Perhaps his marriage to Susan allowed him a place where he could let go and be led. And her compulsive flirtations might feed into a masochistic drive for punishment. That was an itch he was all too familiar with—and he knew all the different ways of scratching it.
Across the water, the lights of the Brooklyn shipyards twinkled and sputtered in the gathering rain. He pulled the collar of his summer jacket up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and continued onward. A lone yellow cab cruised toward him, looking for late-night fares. Seeing him, the driver slowed down, but he waved off the taxi. He was enjoying his solitude—there was a magic to this night he was loath to interrupt. This wasn’t masochism, he told himself. He just liked to walk in the rain.
He didn’t really believe Chuck was going to leave Susan. Lee’s training taught him that there are no accidents, no casual choices. If you are with a particular person, there is a reason for it. Exceptions existed for every rule, of course, but Chuck and Susan were together because they fed something in each other ... what exactly he wasn’t sure, but something.
As for him and Kathy, what did they feed in each other? Thinking about her was like trying to see a blurry photograph. He couldn’t bring it into focus, and it made his head hurt. He just didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to tackle that right now, with everything else going on. If she needed to move on, he might have to let her go. He had never been comfortable being the supplicant, the needy one. He needed to at least be on equal footing in a relationship, so if she needed to fly away, then so be it. He cared about her, but he kept a part of himself from diving too deeply into another person’s gravitational pull. It was a lesson he had learned early, the kind that might never be unlearned.
He followed the curve of the river as far as Grand Street, turning inland. It was all landfill from here on. Back in Melville’s day there was no East Village, because it was a swamp. The street he was walking on belonged to the river once, and he supposed it would again someday, but for now he was content to enjoy the view.
He trudged through the darkened streets, watching the raindrops glisten in the yellow glow of streetlamps, reveling in the sensation of being alone amid thousands of souls, most of them asleep. The great hive had ceased its buzzing, the workers retired to their separate compartments until the return of daylight. Lee was by nature nocturnal, and these were the hours he most loved in the city he had made his home.
The death of a beautiful woman ...
Creepy, he thought, and yet Poe was onto something. Who could forget those haunting lines?
Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’
Poe had lost his beautiful wife, and lost her young. He was probably manic-depressive—or just depressive. Bipolar, that’s what they called it now. A serious mental illness, one they were ill-equipped to handle back in Poe’s day. But then, Lee thought, without his disease would he have been Edgar Allan Poe? And if you had given him a choice, sanity or greatness, which would he have chosen? Come of think of it, what would any of them have chosen, all the great, troubled geniuses—van Gogh, Schumann, Poe? Lee wondered as he pulled his collar up against the rain, pelting him harder now, tiny hard droplets coming at his face like bullets.
All the greatness, and all the suffering. Of course, he didn’t believe in the “tortured genius” myth: Bach was a comfortable middle-class burgher who fathered scads of children and cranked out great music as though it were pasta. But who could doubt that Van Gogh’s art arose in part from his disease? Or say that Poe’s poetry wasn’t a product of his gloomy, tortured spirit?
A fat droplet hit him in the eye and he stopped to wipe it away. Standing under a streetlamp, in a pool of light, he thought about the man they sought. Tortured, yes—but he had adapted not by writing poetry, but by learning to become the tormentor as well as the tormented. And now, more than anything, he needed to be stopped.

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