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Authors: C.E. Lawrence

BOOK: Silent Kills
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CHAPTER NINE
Lee pushed the door open to Chuck’s office. Resting on the desk was a pair of expensive black high heels. Attached to the shoes was a pair of equally expensive legs, and at the other end of the legs was Susan Beaumont Morton.
“Why, hello, sugar,” she said, putting down the fashion magazine she was reading and stretching her long, meticulously toned body. “Fancy meetin’ you here.”
There was nothing fancy about it. If he had to bet on it, Lee would have put money on her knowing he was due to arrive, and arranging to be there at the same time. Susan Beaumont Morton was not a woman who left things to chance. If something (or someone) couldn’t be controlled, she considered it worthless—or, in the case of people, dangerous. Her need to control the people in her life was ingrained, inescapable, and inexorable. She was a psychic whirlpool, pulling helpless sailors into her deep waters—and they were deep waters, as Lee knew from personal experience. He was reminded of Ulysses, who in his long voyage was forced to choose between a whirlpool and a six-headed monster called Scylla.
Lee decided to give Susan a wide berth, and turned to leave, mumbling some excuse about needing to make a phone call. But as he stepped into the hallway, he was met with Scylla—in the person of Hildegard Elena Krieger von Boehm. He tried to remember what Ulysses had done, and winced at the answer: he had chosen the monster, sacrificing six members of his crew to avoid losing his entire ship to the whirlpool.
Well,
he thought,
if it was good enough for Ulysses, it’s good enough for me.
He chose Scylla.
“Hello,” he said, giving Elena Krieger a wide smile, “what brings you here?”
To his relief, Scylla wasn’t snapping today.
“The same thing as you,” she said, looking bemused and a bit wounded. “I’m working on the case.”
“Oh, great,” he answered, hoping he sounded believable. “Terrific.”
Elena Krieger frowned and brushed back a strand of her thick red mane. “I don’t see what’s good about it. A young woman has been horribly murdered.”
“Uh, no—I meant I’m glad you’re on the case.” He looked back over his shoulder. Inside the office, Susan had gotten to her feet and was headed in his direction. “I’ve got to find Chuck,” he muttered, and tried to step around Krieger, but she placed her imposing body in his way.
“I’d like you to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind,” Krieger said, looking him up and down. Lee felt his face flushing, and looked away to avoid her stare.
She was built like an Amazon, almost six feet tall, with equally impressive hips and shoulders—powerful and undeniably sexual. If you were a man meeting Elena Krieger for the first time, it was hard not to imagine what she was like in bed—and equally hard not to imagine the bruises the next day. It was easy to see how she had earned the nickname the Valkyrie, as some of the cops called her behind her back.
Sexuality flowed from her like sap from a tree: uncal-culated, natural, and unforced. But Susan Morton was a different story. She was a concoction, a carefully measured blond confection made up of equal parts molasses and vinegar, syrupy and sharp. She sauntered up behind him and placed a cool hand on his shoulder. If Elena Krieger was all fire, Susan Morton was dry ice. He could feel the cold burn on his skin through the layer of fabric.
“What’s the hurry?” she said. “Chuck will be back soon, I’m sure.”
Krieger turned her gaze on Susan, the air between them crackling with the force of her contempt. “You are his—wife?” She said the word with the same inflection as if she had said “whore.”
Susan returned her stare before answering. “Yes. I’m Susan
Beaumont
Morton.”
Lee wasn’t sure why she emphasized the middle name—to challenge Krieger with the fact that it was French? Or to let her know that she had an identity of her own?
“You must be Elena Krieger,” Susan continued, rolling the
r
unnecessarily. “I’ve heard
so
much about you.” She managed to make the comment sound like a challenge at best, and at worst, an insult.
Elena Krieger was up to the challenge. “I’m sure you have,” she replied with a superior smile that was dangerously close to a smirk. She turned to Lee, dismissing Susan with a twist of her powerful shoulders. “Is there somewhere we can go to talk about the case?”
The implication was clear: the office was contaminated with the unwanted presence of Susan Morton.
But Susan was not about to be brushed aside by a redheaded Brunhilde. “I was just leaving,” she snapped. Grabbing her designer pocketbook in a single swipe, she swept from the room in a cloud of Chanel No. 19.
Lee had never liked Chanel No. 19.
“That’s better,” Krieger said loud enough so that Susan could hear. “Now we can get down to business.”
As he watched Susan’s retreating figure, Lee couldn’t help thinking this was not going to end well.
CHAPTER TEN
Samir Haddad was frightened. He was not a timid man, but lately he was frightened quite a lot of the time. Ever since that terrible day, when death rained down from the sky, everything had changed. Business was down, and people looked at him differently now. Not his regular customers—if anything, they were even kinder now—but the tourists and out of towners were skittish. When they heard his accent, sometimes they would look at him as if he were going to attack them, which was absurd.
Samir was a pacifist, and had fled Jordan to avoid the grinding politics of the Middle East; he had no allegiance with the eleven men who pledged themselves to destruction in the name of Allah. He wasn’t even a believer, though he went to mosque like a good Muslim. He knew a lot of observant Christians and Jews didn’t believe in God either, so he didn’t see anything strange in it, though he rarely admitted his lack of faith to anyone.
Samir raked a fork over the hot coals in his vendor cart and watched as the sparks sailed into the night sky, a thousand tiny red eyes scanning the darkness. He looked down Fifth Avenue at the dark line of pedestrians swarming up the sidewalk, their heads bobbing like apples in a sea of bodies, their faces wearing the protective New York expression he knew so well.
It wasn’t a shell, exactly; it was more like a persona, he thought as he opened a new package of pita bread. Except that eventually it reached all the way down inside of you and changed who you were. Maybe it was the accelerated pace of life—the constant stimulation, the unrelenting sights, sounds, smells, and noise—but it caused children to grow up faster, and adults to wither earlier. If you were up to it, Samir thought, it was hard to imagine living anywhere else; if you weren’t, it could crush you.
But lately the shell had grown thinner. People were wary, but they were also wearing their emotions more on the surface. Samir could tell when people approached him what their reaction was going to be from their body language. He had seen some stop and stare when they heard his accent—again, mostly tourists. Others actually walked away shaking their heads and glancing over their shoulder, as if he was going to lob a grenade at them from his food cart.
He sighed and chopped the onions and chicken on the grill into finer pieces, then sprinkled them with his own concoction of lemon juice, vinegar, and spices. It wasn’t good to look idle—it was better to appear busy, even with no customers at the cart. Americans liked people who always seemed to be working. They didn’t trust you if you stood around with your hands in your pockets, especially if you had a face and voice like his.
A young man approached his cart. He had a loping, loose stride, and was dressed very neatly in a conservative suit. There was even something old-fashioned about it, with the narrow lapels and thin pinstripes on the jacket and matching trousers. Samir was very good at sizing people up—in his job, he had to be. He looked at the young man’s face, but his eyes were hidden behind curiously heavy sunglasses. Samir peered at him more closely—no, they weren’t sunglasses; they were goggles. Just as he was asking himself why a young man in a suit would be wearing something like that, the fellow pushed the goggles up on top of his head, gave a big smile, and pointed to an uncooked beef kabob.
“Can I have that, please?”
“Certainly, sir,” Samir answered, sliding it onto the hot grill.
“Oh, no—I’ll take it just like that,” the boy said, licking his lips.
Samir stared at him. He was very well-groomed. His dark hair was neatly trimmed, and his starched white shirt was immaculate. He was extremely thin, and looked to be about nineteen, though he could certainly be older. The only really odd thing about him was those goggles—they were big and green, made of thick rubber. Maybe the lad had just come from chemistry class. Samir’s son was in college, and chemistry was one of his subjects—but would he dress like this for class?
“How much?” the boy asked.
“Uh, three dollars, please,” Samir replied, handing him the uncooked meat in a brown paper bag.
“Thanks,” he replied, and pulled three dollar bills from his pocket.
“Thank you, sir,” Samir replied politely—he always treated each customer with courtesy.
“Good day,” the boy said with a friendly smile, touching his forehead as if tipping his hat. Samir watched as he continued down the avenue, in his loose-limbed stride. There was something very odd about the young man, very odd indeed—and it was more than just the fact that he ordered his meat uncooked.
But he didn’t have long to ponder the encounter. A group of Catholic schoolchildren came bounding up the street in their blue and green plaid uniforms, dollar bills clutched in their hands, all clamoring for a soda or a bottle of water or an ice cream—and Samir had his hands full for a while.
But that night when he went home to Brooklyn he mentioned the odd fellow to his wife, Raina. “I just don’t know what it was,” he said over a plate of lamb stew and couscous in their cozy little kitchen. “But that boy was ... different.”
His wife plucked a piece of mint from the salad bowl and chewed on it thoughtfully. “How do you mean, different?”
“I don’t know,” Samir said, mopping up the rest of the stew in his bowl with a piece of pita bread. “Different. Odd. Maybe not right.”
Raina gave a little laugh and plucked a piece of lamb from between her teeth. “My dear, you are a man with such imagination. You should be a writer—you should write books about all the strange people you meet.”
Samir smiled. “It’s true—I do meet many odd people in my job. But this one sticks in my mind somehow. I can’t seem to forget him.”
Raina wiped her mouth with the pressed linen napkin and brushed crumbs from her long flowered skirt. “Come over here, you of the great imagination, and I will give you something that will make you forget about him.”
Samir chuckled and rose from the table. She was such a sly one, this wife of his, and he loved her for it. He bent over her and covered her neck with kisses, his fear fading away like late summer roses. She laughed and squirmed, and they both laughed and kissed with the dirty dishes still on the table. After a while they went up to the bedroom arm in arm, the aroma of lamb heavy in the air around them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Elena Krieger smiled triumphantly, perching her curvaceous body on the front of Chuck Morton’s desk, arms folded over her impressive bosom. Chuck wasn’t going to like seeing her in his “spot,” Lee thought. He liked to lean against the front of his desk during sessions in his office. Lee wondered if she was taking the pose deliberately.
“So,” she said, “another interesting case. Difficult, but interesting.”
“Yes,” he said, running a hand through his curly black hair. His hair was getting shaggy again; he made a mental note to have it trimmed.
Krieger sucked in her cheeks and chewed on the inside of her mouth. On anyone else, it would look odd. On her, it was sexy. Her lips were large and symmetrical and painted red. He tried to think of something to say completely unrelated to sex.
“Do you know where Chuck is?” he said, sounding like a little boy waiting for teacher to return.
“I believe he is late from a meeting,” she said, studying her long red nails, which were exactly the same color as her lipstick. He wondered how she found the time to think about matching cosmetics.
He heard the sound of voices coming from the hall outside—loud, argumentative voices.
“We just got off a plane, for Christ’s sake!” a man’s voice said. There was an accent—European, he thought, but he wasn’t sure.
“Please tell us what’s going on,” a woman’s voice pleaded, with an edge of desperation just this side of panic.
The third voice was familiar. “Now, if you’ll both just calm down a minute, we’ll fill you in on everything, okay?” said Detective Leonard Butts. Lee could tell he was making an effort to be polite, but it was a strain. The detective hated dealing with the families of victims. Nobody enjoyed it, but Butts found it especially onerous.
The door to the office swung open and the detective stood there flanked by two very sunburned white people. The man was in the prime of vigorous middle age, with salty brown hair, a leathery neck creased from sun exposure, and a long, handsome Gallic face. He was only average height, but projected authority and intelligence—which was helped by the fact that he looked like a cross between François Truffaut and Charles Boyer. The woman was petite, elegant, and very pretty, her blond hair so sun-bleached it was almost white.
Skulking miserably along behind them, looking as if he longed to disappear, was Francois Nugent.
“Hello,” Lee said, offering his hand. “You must be Mr. and Mrs. Nugent.”
“The Doctors Nugent, yes,” the man said, gripping Lee’s hand with unnecessary firmness. His skin was the texture of alligator hide.
“Well,
Doctors
Nugent,” Butts said, brushing past them into the office, “this here is
Doctor
Lee Campbell, and—” He stopped, seeing Elena Krieger.
“Detective Elena Krieger,” she said, extending her hand first to Mrs. Nugent, who shook it, looking at Krieger in some amazement. She towered over the tiny Nugent, but there was no hint of condescension in the detective’s voice. She shook each of their hands in turn; when she got to Francois Nugent, the poor kid couldn’t stop staring at her. He swallowed hard and plopped down in one of the battered captain’s chairs in the corner of the small office.
“Nice to see you again, Detective Butts,” Krieger said smoothly, shaking his hand too.
“Likewise, I’m sure,” Butts replied. “When did you come on board?”
“Just today,” she said. “I got—”
“I’m sorry, but could you please tell us what’s going on here?” Mrs. Nugent broke in.
Lee and Butts exchanged glances. Butts’s expression was clear:
You go ahead.
“I’m terribly sorry to have to tell you this, Mrs. Nugent,” Lee began, “but—”
“Call me Bridget,” she said, her voice shaking. “We already know that—that something happened to Candace, but—” She faltered and looked to her husband for help.
“We don’t have any details,” he said. “All we know is that she was—found.”
Francois shifted in his seat and stared at his shoelaces.
His mother glared at him. “She died in that—that
place
you took her to, didn’t she?”
He continued staring at his shoes.
“Mrs. Nugent,” Lee said, “her death may have been completely unrelated to the steampunk club she was last seen in.”
“Anyways, they closed it down today for safety violations,” Butts said.
“How did she die?” Mrs. Nugent cried, her voice almost a wail. “Was she—was she—?”
“There was no sign of sexual assault, ma’am,” Butts said gently.
“Then how did she—who would have—” She looked around the room as if the murderer were somehow lurking there.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Lee said.
Mr. Nugent’s square jaw was rigid with tension. Lee noticed he did not put his arm around his wife. “What was the, uh—the cause of death?”
“I’m very sorry, but that’s something we are not releasing to the public at this time,” Butts said.
“Is that what we are—the
public
?” Mrs. Nugent bleated, her voice on the edge of hysteria.
Butts looked to Lee for help, but it was Elena Krieger who stepped in.
“You must both be exhausted from your journey—I believe you were in Africa?”
“Y-yes,” said Mrs. Nugent.
“A magical continent,” Krieger said. “I have spent some time there myself.”
This digression served to throw both of them off track. Fortunately, just then Chuck Morton arrived from his meeting.
“Well,” he said, gazing at all of them crowded together in the cramped office, “what’s going on here?”

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