Silent Screams (15 page)

“One of the reasons it’s important that we include Pamela Stavros as the first known victim is that most likely this is the borough where the killer lives.”

Butts frowned again. “Really? How do you figure?”

“Well, he’s most likely to live nearest to his first victim,” Nelson said. “It’s where he feels most comfortable—closest to home. After that, he’s more likely to branch out, but statistically, he will kill for the first time close to home.”

“He may have other attempts in his past, where he tried but failed to abduct a girl,” Lee pointed out. “You should send that to the media for possible leads.”

“Right,” said Chuck.

“Isn’t there usually a stressor of some kind that sets these guys off?” Florette asked.

“Usually, but not always,” Lee replied.

“Like what?” Butts asked.

“Oh, it could be anything—loss of a job, death of a parent, being dumped by a girlfriend. Something like that…an event that a normal person could handle, but which sends these guys over the edge.”

“Look, Annie O’Donnell’s funeral is day after tomorrow,” Chuck said. “I was thinking—”

“One of us should be there?” Nelson interrupted.

“Returning to the scene of the crime,” Florette murmured, running his elegant fingertips over the arm of his chair.

“Some criminals get a lot of pleasure from observing the results of their crimes,” Lee observed.

Butts frowned and kicked at the wastebasket. “That always really fries me, you know.”

“Detective Butts,” Nelson remarked, “I’m sure that we’re all equally upset by these events, but do you think it’s really necessary to express yourself constantly on the subject?”

Butts blinked twice, and his mouth moved like a fish gulping for air.

“All right, that’s enough,” said Chuck. “Let’s focus.”

“I’d like to cover the funeral,” said Lee.

“Do you believe the UNSUB is likely to make an appearance?” Florette asked, removing a pair of glasses from his breast pocket and cleaning them with a crisp white handkerchief.

“It’s not unusual for them to show up,” Nelson replied.

“Okay,” Chuck said. “You’ve got the funeral, Lee.”

“But if he already took a shot at Lee—” Nelson protested, but Lee cut him off.

“We don’t know whether the shot was even intended for me.”

“Right,” Chuck agreed. “And no one is likely pull out a gun at a daytime funeral in Westchester. It’s not the same thing as shooting at someone on Third Avenue at night. Detective Florette, I’d like you to start an investigation of the churches involved so far—find out what, if anything, they have in common.”

“Right,” Florette said, rising from his chair. “I’ll get right on it.”

Lee looked around the room at the others. The mood had visibly darkened. Butts slumped back in his chair, forgetting all about picking a fight with Nelson. Somehow, putting a name to Jane Doe Number Five didn’t help things. Now they had a name to go with a victim, but they still didn’t have a killer.

Annie O’Donnell’s funeral was held in Hastings, one of the quaint Westchester towns dotting the Hudson Valley like puffballs after a spring rain. Lee took Metro North from Grand Central, catching the 12:15 local train on the Harlem Line, arriving in Hastings in forty minutes flat. He had convinced Chuck to remove the plainclothes cops who had been tailing him, as their presence at the funeral would be too conspicuous. The train station was down by the water, but it wasn’t far to the church. He walked up the long road that curved inland from the river. Hastings was perched on the bluffs that rose from the banks of the Hudson, its waterfront buildings looking down over the moody currents of the great river. Clouds swung low over the sluggishly moving gray water, and seagulls swooped low over the river’s opaque surface, searching for fish.

The church was a modest white clapboard affair, not very grand by Catholic standards. Except for the sepia tones of the grass on the church lawn, black and gray dominated the landscape. The drab February sky hung low over the mourners, not even a suggestion of sunlight filtering through the flat gray cloud cover. The monochromatic setting, the dark suits of the mourners as they stood in a little clump outside the white wooden church, all reminded Lee of a scene from a black-and-white film. A shiny black hearse was parked in the driveway, waiting for the slow, stately crawl to the cemetery.

The ceremony was just ending as Lee arrived. As he walked up the flagstone path, one of the mourners emerged from the church carrying a bouquet of red carnations, bright as a splash of fresh blood against her black dress.

A solitary crow perched atop a low branch of a black oak, observing the scene with its head cocked to one side, its bright eyes sharp as pine needles. The tree’s trunk was darkened by the recent rain, the rough black bark still visibly damp, tiny droplets of water tucked into the deep crevices. The crow gave a low, hoarse caw and took off from its branch, ascending rapidly into the dun-colored sky in a flurry of flapping wings.

Lee watched it rise and disappear over a copse of trees as a light mist fell on the already soggy ground. The small clump of journalists looked miserable, huddled under their huge black umbrellas, cameras tucked under their raincoats. He studied them. Most were young, probably greenhorns still on probation with their cranky, overstressed bosses. None of them had the look of established stars or even up-and-comers—this was hardly a plum assignment, covering the funeral of the unfortunate victim. The real stars would get to cover the discovery of the body, police press briefings, that kind of thing.

Lee watched the mourners leaving the church, searching for any unusual aspect of appearance or behavior that stuck out—anything that didn’t quite fit. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but hoped he would recognize it when he saw it.

He scanned the crowd of mourners. Their faces were suitably solemn, some swollen and red-eyed from grief, most of them pale and pasty in the feeble sun. A tall, sandy-haired man with handsome Irish features emerged from the church, supporting a slight, black-haired woman on his arm. She wore a long black veil, but the devastation on her face was clear even through the gauzy material. Obviously they were Annie’s parents. The daughter took after her mother, with her wavy black hair—the so-called Black Irish, whose curly dark hair was a remnant of their Italian conquerors of centuries past. Annie’s mother had the same delicate white skin as her daughter, though, bespeaking her Northern European ancestry.

Her father had the kind of Irish good looks Lee saw all over New York City: square, broad forehead, deep-set blue eyes, his prominent jaw jutting out beneath a thin, determined mouth. His ruddy, wind-burned skin was the complexion of someone who spent his time out herding sheep on the moors instead of working at an accounting firm. He had the big, blunt hands of a shepherd, not an accountant.

The rest of the crowd was varied—friends and family, as well as neighbors and schoolmates. A dozen or so young people of college age gathered in a little group to one side. As the O’Donnells made their way down the church steps, the crowd parted for them, people stepping respectfully aside as the couple moved slowly toward the waiting cavalcade of automobiles. When Mrs. O’Donnell saw the hearse, she stumbled and lost her footing, collapsing forward. Half a dozen hands came up to steady her, and she continued on her slow pilgrimage. Her husband tightened his grip on her arm, his face a tight mask of grief and anger.

The family climbed into the limousines the funeral home had provided, as everyone else dispersed toward their own cars, leaving the journalists alone on the wet sidewalk in front of the church. Lee studied the mourners, but he couldn’t see anything unusual about them. They all looked grief stricken, and everyone seemed to be there with at least one other person. Lee was quite certain that the killer, if he came, would be alone. There were a few young men who fit the age and physical profile, but they were with girlfriends or families, or were part of the group of Queens College students. Lee looked over the students, but it was highly unlikely that the Slasher was a college student, let alone one of Annie’s classmates.

The television journalists stood around delivering their spiels into the cameras. Others were scribbling earnestly in notebooks, while a few more lit up cigarettes, hunched under raincoats pulled over their heads, shielding their matches from the rain. Lee turned to go—and then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure standing apart from the rest of the press corps.

A thin young man in a dark blue raincoat stood leaning against a Douglas fir. Even under the bulky coat Lee could see that he had narrow shoulders, and his protruding wrists suggested a scrawny, underfed physique. He had long, thin neck and a prominent Adam’s apple, but his head was bent over a notebook, so Lee couldn’t see his face. There was something unsettling about him, the hunch of his shoulders perhaps, that reminded Lee of a vulture perched on a tree limb.

The man lifted his face to look at the column of departing cars, and Lee saw the delicate, almost feminine features—on a girl they would have been considered pretty. His face had a haunted quality, with sunken hollows beneath his cheeks and dark circles under his eyes, as though it had been a while since he’d had a good night’s sleep. He looked about nineteen, but was probably twenty-five or so, Lee guessed. His most striking feature were his golden eyes, yellow as lamplight—wolf’s eyes. Watchful and wary, they gleamed like gemstones in his pale face. Lee couldn’t make out the name on the press pass hanging from the lapel of the blue raincoat, and he didn’t want to stare. So far the young man hadn’t noticed him. As he was watching, the man pulled something white from his pocket and put it to his mouth. At first Lee had the impression it was a pack of cigarettes, but then he realized the object was an inhaler. His stomach tightened as the stranger gave the plunger a single, well-practiced push, inhaled deeply, held his breath, then exhaled.

Lee’s pulse raced as the man shoved the inhaler back into his pocket.
He’s asthmatic!
Lee’s palms began to sweat, and he tried not to stare at the man as he formulated a way to get closer to him without arousing his suspicion. He would approach and ask for a cigarette—no, that wouldn’t do, when there were several journalists puffing away just a few yards from him. Something that wouldn’t arouse suspicion, something. But as he was trying desperately to think of something, the man folded the notebook and put it into his coat pocket.

He looked around, until his eyes met Lee’s, and a look passed between them. Lee couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was a look of recognition on the other’s part. The man’s eyes locked with his, and—was it his imagination?—he gave a slight nod, as if to say,
Yes, it’s me
. The ghost of a smile flickered on the pallid face.
He knows who I am
, Lee realized. The man pulled his coat around his lean body and strode rapidly around the side of the church.

Lee took off after him, but he was forced to go around a group of elderly mourners coming out of the church. Then, as he approached the gaggle of journalists, a short, balding man stepped forward.

“Excuse me, but aren’t you with the NYPD?”

Taken off guard, Lee stared at him.

“Well, I—”

“Yeah, you’re the profiler, right? The one who lost his sister?” the man said. “My buddy wrote the story about you a couple of years ago. I recognize you from your picture.”

Lee groaned. He had been the unwilling subject of a “human interest” story when he started working with the police department; someone at the city desk had gotten wind of his appointment, remembered his sister’s disappearance, and decided it would make a good story. It did make a good story, but Lee did not enjoy the attention and publicity that followed.

“Are you working on this case?” the man continued, and then, without waiting for an answer, “Do you have any comments?”

The others, smelling blood, crowded around him, shouting out questions:

“How’s it going?”

“Any leads?”

“What have you figured out about the Slasher?”

“Will he keep killing until you stop him?”

“I’m sorry,” Lee said, “but I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.” Standard fare, and he didn’t suppose they would swallow it.

They didn’t.

He struggled to push through them, murmuring apologies, but they trailed after him, sticking to him like so many leeches in black raincoats. He hurried around to the back of the church, turning the corner of the building just in time to see an old, dark-colored car peel around the bend in the road. He couldn’t read the license plate, and he didn’t know cars well enough to place the make of this one. It wasn’t a late model, and he thought it was American—but he couldn’t even be sure about that. Black or dark blue, dented left rear fender—that was all he could see.

The reporters crowded around him, barking out their questions.

“Do you think he’ll strike again?”

“Are you any closer to solving it than you were?”

“Who else is on the special task force?”

“Are you going to bring in the FBI?”

When they saw that Lee wasn’t going to give them anything, they broke up, peeling away one by one, tucking their notebooks into raincoat pockets before heading off to expense account lunches at local restaurants.

Well, if it is him, at least now I’m sure he owns a car
, Lee thought. But he had been fairly certain of that already. Everything about this guy fit the profile—right down to the inhaler. Lee pulled his coat collar up to his ears and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. The rain was coming down harder now, cold little needles stinging his bare skin. He walked briskly toward the train station as the heavens let loose a torrent intense enough to wash clean the transgressions of an entire generation of sinners.

Later, back home in his apartment, Lee looked out the window at the softly falling rain. He thought about his earlier conversation on the phone with Chuck, who had been less than thrilled with his report of his visit to the funeral.

“Damn reporters—they’re like goddamn locusts! I can’t believe you couldn’t even get a license plate number.”

Lee had no good reply. He didn’t feel comfortable vilifying the press, but he had to admit that they had gotten in his way.

“How do you suppose he got a press pass? Just forged one, I guess?”

“Probably.”

Chuck was exasperated when Lee admitted that he didn’t manage to read the name on his press pass.

“It was probably a pseudonym anyway,” Lee pointed out.

He had seen the department sketch artist, just in case. Lee had made a vow to himself that he would not forget the lean, ascetic-looking face with the striking yellow eyes and high cheekbones, the Cupid’s-bow curve of his mouth. He had looked like a lost little boy, until he smiled—and then he looked like a hungry wolf. The resulting sketch was pretty good, though it failed to convey the feeling Lee had of the twisted personality behind that smile. Butts had already shown the sketch to the victims’ families, but none of them recognized him. That didn’t surprise Lee—the killer wouldn’t be anyone they knew. There was no one who resembled him in the VICAP files, either—again, not surprising. Although Lee still couldn’t help feeling he had seen him before…but where? Try as he might, the memory remained shadowy in his mind.

Lee watched as raindrops gathered in rows on the windowsill, silent silver sentinels standing briefly shoulder to shoulder before sliding to the ground.
Why do we bother?
he thought. Why fight the same wars over and over, make the same mistakes, slaughter and enslave our fellow human beings? What was the point, really, if we weren’t going to evolve as a species? Why should each generation drag themselves through the same tired territory as the one before, if mankind as a whole was not getting wiser, kinder, more enlightened? The mind-numbing repetitiveness of human history was exhausting.

He felt the old darkness descending, and stood up, forcing his mind away from this train of thought. He needed to monitor thoughts like these before they gained momentum. Depression was like an underground fault line in his emotional life, and he tried hard not fall into that long, slippery slide to the bottom. The wrong thought, a sudden flash of insight, morning sunlight coming in the window in a certain way—anything could set off an episode.

He forced himself to concentrate on the case files awaiting him on his desk. Just as he sat down at his desk, his cell phone beeped. He picked it up and looked at the screen:
NEW TEXT MESSAGE.
He forced himself to breathe more slowly as he scrolled down to see the message:

He put the cell phone down.
Better luck next time
. Now he was certain that not only had the Slasher posed as a journalist at Annie’s funeral, but he had also sent Lee the messages about his sister. But how could he know details that were never released to the press? It was troubling…very troubling.

Lee started to dial Chuck, but as he did, his phone rang. He picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Heya, Boss. Whaddya know—I finally reached you!”

“Hi, Eddie.”

“So what’s up?”

Lee hesitated. He wasn’t sure how much he should tell Eddie. After all, he wasn’t part of the official investigative team. But ever since those dark nights at St. Vincent’s, Eddie had been a confidant, confessor, and therapist all rolled into one.

“I think I saw him today.”

“Jeez. Really?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

“How d’you know?”

“I don’t really want to go into detail over the phone.”

“’Fraid someone might be listening in?”

“No, not that.” The truth was that Lee wanted to get back to work.

“Hey, you eat yet?”

“Uh, no.”

“Okay, listen—meet me at the Taj in ten minutes, huh? I’ll tell you what Diesel and Rhino have turned up.”

The Taj Mahal was Eddie’s favorite Indian restaurant on East Sixth Street, and it was exactly a block and a half from Lee’s apartment.

Lee glanced at the clock above his desk. Six-thirty. He would have to eat sooner or later.

“Okay.”

“Right. Ten minutes. See you then.”

Lee left a message for Nelson on his home phone (Nelson didn’t own a cell phone—he considered them a sign of the Apocalypse), and called Chuck on his cell. Chuck didn’t answer, so Lee left a message for him too, threw on a coat, and left for the Taj Mahal.

When Lee arrived, Eddie was already seated, tucking into a basket of pappadam—paper-thin, crispy Indian bread studded with peppercorns. Like most of the other restaurants on Sixth Street, the Taj Mahal was small—long and narrow. Its walls were festooned with a dizzying assortment of decorative lights: colored fairy lights, red-hot chili pepper lanterns, and strings of Christmas lights. All of the Sixth Street restaurant owners seemed to have the same notion of interior decoration. It was always Christmas on Sixth Street. You could see the street from blocks away, flashing, sparkling, glittering, glowing. Lee had tried to come up with a theory to explain the phenomena—some kind of relationship between excessive lighting and spicy food, perhaps. He often imagined the money flowing into the coffers of Con Edison as a result of all of this unbridled luminatory enthusiasm.

Eddie was seated at his favorite table in the far corner, underneath a billowing canopy of purple cotton fabric. He waved to Lee as he entered.

“How’s it goin’, Boss?” he said, popping a piece of golden, crispy pappadam into his mouth. Eddie was in a good mood. But then, Eddie was always in a good mood in public—or pretending to be.

“Okay,” Lee said, taking a seat across from him. “How are you doing?”

“Oh, just great. You know me—I always land on my feet.”

Lee knew that wasn’t true; a suicide attempt had put Eddie in the bed next to his at St. Vincent’s. Eddie had slashed both wrists and lay on his bed in an SRO hotel, waiting to die. He hadn’t bled out, though, when his neighbor at the Windermere Hotel found him. When Lee met him, his wrists were still heavily bandaged, and he was on daily doses of Haldol.

Lee must have glanced down at Eddie’s wrists involuntarily, because Eddie looked at him sharply.

“Somethin’ wrong, Boss?”

“No, I was just thinking.”

“Yeah? About what?”

“About how circumstances bring people together. I mean, if you hadn’t been my roommate at St. Vincent’s, we wouldn’t both be sitting here.”

It was only after Lee played his words back in his head that he realized the implication of what he had just said: one or both of them might be dead.

“Coupla nut cases, that’s what we are. I’ll have the vindaloo, extra spicy,” Eddie said to the approaching waiter without missing a beat.

The waiter wrote on his notepad and turned to Lee. “And you, sir?” He was a slim, handsome Indian man with very dark skin and a thatch of glistening black hair.

“I can never resist a good chicken kurma,” Lee said, closing the menu. “Thanks.”

“Very good, sir,” the waiter replied. He picked up the menus and withdrew into the kitchen. Indian waiters were always so courteous they made Lee think of the days of the British Raj, when exaggerated manners and politeness covered a desire to murder the occupying white regime.

After the waiter had gone, Eddie leaned into Lee, his voice quieter.

“You, uh, been having them again?”

“What?”

“You know—urges.” Eddie meant suicidal thoughts, but he never used those words, as if saying them would make it too real.

“No, not lately—thank God,” Lee answered. He looked at Eddie. “How about you?”

“Naw…I’m fit as a fiddle!” Eddie responded a little too vigorously. “Strong as an ox, this boy.”

As if to prove it, he gave a sharp smack to his stomach with his open hand. His belly, while thick, did look hard. Lee didn’t believe him, though, and sensed an even greater restlessness in Eddie today—a disquieting, reckless energy.

“Are you taking your lithium?”

“Sure I am!” Eddie shot back, a little too fast. Lee was concerned, but didn’t want to press his luck. Something told him that if he lingered on Eddie’s mental health, his friend would shut down completely. Eddie was a great listener, and they had shared many things during that bleak week in St. Vincent’s. Eddie was comfortable playing the role of confidant, but getting him to talk about his own problems was another thing. He liked being in control—in fact, he had let his bipolar disorder deteriorate because he enjoyed the manic phases too much. During that week in St. Vincent’s, Eddie had talked about the feeling of freedom, energy, and power, the sweet illusion of omnipotence. It was seductive, and it wasn’t hard to see how someone like Eddie could get used to weathering the depressive phases of his disease just so he could get back to the heady whirlwind of the manic state.

“Look, I think I got somethin’ for you,” Eddie said as he wolfed down the last of the pappadam.

“So you said.”

“Oh, not that thing I called about the other day—that turned out to be nothin’. But this I think is really something.”

“What is it?”

“A guy. A guy who may have seen somethin’.”

“Yeah? This guy—who is he?”

Eddie looked around the restaurant as though checking for spies, but the only other customers at this hour were a young couple holding hands at the far side of the room. They whispered in the low, intimate tones of lovers, heads bent over the table, their hair shiny in the reflected glow of a thousand tiny lightbulbs.

“This guy is homeless, okay? Hangs out mostly in Prospect Park. Wouldn’t make a great witness in court, but—well, you talk to him. See what you think.”

“How did you find him?”

Eddie leaned forward. “Remember Diesel and Rhino?”

Lee laughed. “
Remember
them? You’re kidding, right?”

Eddie grinned, displaying his crooked, yellowing teeth. “Okay, I guess you don’t forget them too easily.”

“No, you don’t. They found him?”

Eddie shoved an entire samosa into his mouth. He chewed once, then swallowed. Lee was reminded of a crocodile—a smiling, yellow-toothed crocodile. “Yeah. They been sort of stakin’ out the church, you know? Watchin’ it to see who comes, who goes. And this guy’s been there a couple a nights in a row. Goes to the soup kitchen on weekends.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let me know when and where.” Eddie’s homely face spread into another broad grin. “Okay, Boss—you got it.”