Silent Screams (18 page)

They lingered over dinner until they were the last patrons in the restaurant. Lee pushed food around on his plate and managed to eat some, but his stomach felt as twisted as the jumbled heap of rice noodles in the house special dish.

Kathy had a healthy appetite, though, expertly plucking food from her plate with her chopsticks, placing it between her startlingly white teeth. She pierced a piece of pineapple with one chopstick and put it in her mouth.

“Mmm, I like it when they give you fruit for dessert.” She glanced at Lee’s plate. “You didn’t eat very much.”

“My appetite comes and goes.” What he wasn’t ready to tell her was that for six months after Laura’s disappearance, he had hardly eaten at all, living mostly on liquid protein drinks.

“Hmm,” Kathy said. “We need to put some weight on those bones.”

She thinks I’m too thin
. Still, he thought the use of “we” was promising.

“Oh, I can eat like a horse sometimes,” he said. “Don’t you worry.”

“You know better than to tell a woman you can eat a lot without gaining weight, right?”

“Yes, I think I know that much,” he said, laughing. He felt grateful for her presence—it lightened him and made his heart quicken.

Lee looked around the restaurant. The other customers had long since left, and the staff sat around one of the round tables, rolling wontons. He thought they were trying hard not to glance at him and Kathy.

“Well,” he said, “we’re keeping these poor folks up. We should pay and get out of here.”

He began to take out his wallet, but Kathy laid a hand on his wrist. “This one is on me.”

When her fingers touched his skin, he felt the heat exchange between them, and wondered if she felt it too. If she did, she gave no sign, pulling her own wallet out of a small black knapsack. She selected a credit card and waved it at the waitress, who nodded and returned with the bill.

“Thanks,” Lee said as they walked up the crooked narrow steps and into the nearly deserted street. Since September eleventh Chinatown had suffered. The formerly robust flow of tourist dollars slowed to a thin, anemic trickle. The mayor himself was making frequent pleas to people to go down to the struggling community and spend whatever they could afford.

They stepped out into a misty evening. The temperature had soared twenty degrees in the past twelve hours, bringing with it a soft dusting of rain. The droplets hung suspended in the air, as if not quite heavy enough to fall to the ground. The yellow neon lights of a teahouse across the street were surrounded by halos, round rings of layered light shimmering like ripples on a pond.

“It’s really so beautiful that it’s painful, isn’t it?” she said.

Oh, yes
, he wanted to say.
From where I’m standing, at least
. But he just said, “Yes, it is.”

They strolled in the direction of the subway. Parts of Chinatown still had the grim, gray look of a war zone. Shopkeepers were still dusting soot off their stacks of rice dishes, mahogany Buddhas, carved jade bulls, and brightly colored paper birds.

“I felt guilty, you know, not being here when it happened.”

“What could you have done?”

“As it turns out, nothing. My work is only just starting. I’m part of the body identification team.” Her sigh was a deep, ragged sound. “Complete remains are almost unheard of—mostly it’s bits and pieces. Most people just disintegrated.”

They both stared at the traffic on Canal Street for a moment. Lee glanced at his watch, surprised to see how late it was.

“Are you returning to Philly tonight?”

“Yeah. I’m seeing my dad tomorrow. He’s preparing a presentation for the Vidocq Society, and he wants my help.”

“Wow,” Lee said. “Your father is a member?”

“Yeah. Going on ten years now.”

The Vidocq Society, based in Philadelphia, was named after François Vidocq, the brilliant eighteenth century French criminal who became a detective later in his life. The society was devoted to solving cold cases that people from all over the world brought to them. Membership was by invitation only, and Lee thought there wasn’t a forensic professional alive who wouldn’t consider it an honor to join the group. All the members were prominent in their respective fields.

“How often do they meet?” Lee said.

“Once a month, in the Public Ledger Building. It’s an interesting place, very old-world, with thick Oriental rugs and big, heavy drapes—sort of Edwardian, really. The kind of place Sherlock Holmes’s brother Mycroft would have liked. When I first saw it, I imagined that’s what Mycroft’s club would look like.”

“You’re a Conan Doyle fan?”

She gave a lopsided little smile. “Isn’t everyone?”

“So your father’s a member of Vidocq—that’s impressive. Is he an anthropologist too?”

“He’s a forensic toxicologist.”

“Is that what got you interested in forensics?”

“Sort of.”

“I’m sure he’s proud of you.”

“I guess. You know how fathers are, though.”

No
, Lee thought,
I don’t
, but he said nothing.

He walked her down the subway stairs and stood with her by the turnstiles as she waited for the train. On Sunday evenings they didn’t run very often, and Lee found himself wishing the train would never come.

They stood next to each other, their bodies at an angle, half facing the tracks, half facing each other.

He glanced at Kathy. What was it she’d said?
Bones are heroic
. Kind of a mystical notion—though there was nothing mystical about her. With her brisk, short haircut, black leather knapsack, and firm, determined chin, Kathy Azarian was not an ethereal person. In a world where planes drop out of the sky, towers crumble and fall, and young woman are snatched abruptly from their lives, Kathy had a solid, three-dimensional presence that was reassuring.

Standing close to her, he could feel a connection between them like a current. He looked around the subway station, which was practically deserted. Contentment settled over him like a blanket, and he could have stood there all night, next to her, waiting for a train that never came.

But soon the number-nine local train came clattering into the station, its headlights snaking around the corner like the yellow eyes of a mythic beast.

“Okay,” Kathy said, feeding a token into the slot. “I’ll see you soon—you have my number.”

At the last second, before sliding through the turnstile, she turned and planted a kiss on his neck. She seemed to be aiming for his cheek, but she was so much shorter than he was that, in her haste, she missed and caught his neck instead. Her lips were soft and warm, and caught Lee by surprise.

He turned his head to reciprocate, but just then the train rattled to a halt, the doors slid open, and she slipped through the turnstile and made a dash for the nearest car, stepping inside just as the warning bell sounded. The doors closed, the train rumbled out of the station, and Lee was left alone, staring at an empty platform. But his heart felt full, and his head was light. For the first time since his sister’s death, since 9/11, since all the horrors of the past weeks, he could imagine what it was like to feel whole again. He headed toward the stairs leading up to the street. It was such a beautiful night he had decided to walk the mile or so back to East Seventh Street.

His attackers seemed to come out of nowhere.

He never saw the first blow coming. It was a sucker punch—a karate chop to the base of his neck—and it sent him stumbling forward. He turned to face his assailant, but another blow caught him from behind, this time to the kidneys. He went down on his knees, hard, only to find he was being lifted to his feet by strong hands, to be hit again—and again. Most of the punches were body blows, for which he was oddly grateful—he hated being hit in the face. But they hurt just the same. The jabs were hard and short and quick, the work of professionals. He never got a chance to throw so much as a single punch.

The two men made quick work of him, hitting him swiftly and soundlessly. It was all over in less than two minutes. They left him crumpled on the subway platform, leaning against the wall, dazed and bruised.

The only thing he could be sure of later was that they were both stocky, both wearing ski masks covering their faces, and he was pretty sure they were both white. Other than that, they could have been anyone.

He heard the sound of rapidly retreating footsteps, and then sank into darkness.

Evelyn Woo was tired. Her feet ached, and her back was stiff. The only thing on her mind was a hot bath and a glass of warm plum wine before dropping gratefully into bed.

At first glance she thought the man lying on the subway platform was one of the drunks she had seen dozens of times after her late-night shift. She was a good worker, and her boss liked her, but Evelyn was always among the last to leave the Happy Luck Restaurant, and she hated the late-night subway rides to the small Chelsea apartment where she lived with her boyfriend, a medical student at NYU. She would start medical school next year, but meanwhile she was holding down two jobs to save money. Her father’s cousin owned the Happy Luck, and she got to take home lots of free food every night, so that made the job worthwhile.

She passed by the man, the bag full of takeout cartons swinging at her side. He moaned and tried to sit up, and she glanced down at his face. It was a handsome face—for a Round Eyes (the derogatory term her uncle used for Caucasians)—and there was something about his eyes that made her look twice. She stopped walking and stared at him. Clearly, he was not a drunk—he was well dressed and well groomed. His mouth was bleeding, though, and she could see dark bruises on his cheeks.

“Are you okay?” she said, keeping a safe distance.

The man raised his head and gestured to her. She stepped closer.

“Please,” he said. “Can you help me?”

Later, she would recall that she thought it was odd he refused to go to a hospital; instead he asked her to help him to a cab. She didn’t hear the address he gave the cabbie, but she remembered those eyes—the wounded look in them stayed with her for a long time afterward. It also occurred to her later that before 9/11 she might not have helped him, but now—well, things were different now, she told her mother and all her cousins. Now we all have to look out for each other.

“For God’s sake, Lee, will you stop this nonsense and go see a doctor?” Chuck Morton said as they walked through the labyrinth of hallways in the building housing the medical examiner’s office. Their heels rapped sharply on the shiny polished floors, echoing down the tiled basement corridors.

“I’m all right,” Lee said as they rounded a corner on the way to the lobby. Overhead fluorescent lamps cast a sickly yellow glow on his face, and Chuck wondered if he looked as bad as his friend under these lights.

“Well, you don’t
look
all right,” Chuck replied, casting a sideways glance at him. He had just about had it with Lee Campbell’s bullheadedness. Underneath his anger was worry, of course—but he was damned if he was going to show it.

“You could at least take a day or two off,” he muttered.

“Not right now. I need to see these people. I need to get a sense of whether they’re on the level or not. You know as well as I do that I should be here at this meeting.”

Chuck clenched his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms. Lee was right, but he really didn’t feel good about seeing his friend up on his feet after the attack of the previous night. The two mysterious assailants, obviously professionals, had worked quickly and efficiently, Lee had said—and they had taken nothing, not even bothering to stage the attack as a robbery. They had even worn gloves, minimizing the possibility of gathering DNA evidence. It was obviously a message—but from whom? The whole thing gave him the creeps.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “That’s the last time you go anywhere without a tail. From now on counter-surveillance is twenty-four-seven.”

They rounded another corner and pushed open the door to the foyer, where Pamela Stavros’s parents were waiting for them. They were the only people in the dingy waiting room, with its collection of mismatched plastic yellow chairs and dying spider plants crowded together on the dusty windowsill, thin and straggly in their cracked green pots. The only other living creature in the room was a fly trying vainly crawl up the dirty windowpane, buzzing feebly as it slid back down. Some places give the impression of having gone downhill, while others look as if they gave up before ever trying. The waiting room in the ME’s office was one of those places.

The Stavroses were blunt, plain people who were obviously in shock. Theodore Stavros was a square, stolid man with meaty arms and legs, and sported the buzz-cut, flattop hairstyle he had probably worn since he was a boy. It looked like you could bounce a quarter off the meticulously mowed top of his head. He held his wife protectively to his side. Her face had sunk into a doughy middle age, though Lee could see that the delicate features must have once been pretty.

“I know this is very hard for you,” Chuck said to the couple as he led them back through the corridors toward the exam room that held their daughter.

It was the second time Lee had been there in a week, and he still couldn’t bear the smell of formaldehyde seeping into the halls from behind the closed and bolted metal doors lining the corridor. His head ached, and his ribs hurt with every breath, but he clenched his jaw and tried to keep his face impassive. After reporting the attack on him to the Chinatown precinct commander, he had fallen asleep, slept eleven hours, and woke up feeling like hell. But he had insisted on being here today, and here he was.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Chuck told Mrs. Stavros. She looked at her husband and pressed her trembling lips together.

“She’ll get through it,” Mr. Stavros replied. “Let’s get this over with.” His accent was as flat as the Maine coastline. He glided over his
r
’s like a seagull swooping over the frigid coastal waters of New England.

As they entered the room with the wall-to-wall compartment containing all the unidentified corpses, they found a young technician waiting for them. He was Asian, with thick black hair and a delicate pair of wire-rimmed glasses. Lee was reminded of the sweet-faced Asian girl who had helped him the night before. He didn’t even know her name. The technician nodded at Chuck and Lee, waiting as the little group assembled themselves in the room.

Mrs. Stavros made a gurgling sound that was like a stifled sob. Lee glanced at Chuck, who looked embarrassed and miserable. Chuck had never been relaxed in social situations where the rules of conduct were not clearly spelled out. As a policeman, he had entered a society full of rules, regulations, and prescribed behavior. In college, it had been Lee’s job to smooth over social situations with a joke or a witty remark—he had been the charmer, while Chuck was the serious one.

The Stavroses stood still as stone, their faces rigid and swollen with unshed tears, as the medical technician pulled out the tray with their daughter’s body. Once again Lee was struck by the spotless, shining metal and the pristine whiteness of the sheet covering Pamela’s body. Chuck nodded, and the technician lifted the sheet, exposing the girl’s face. It was untouched, white as chalk, but dark purple strangulation marks were visible on her neck.

Mrs. Stavros gasped and buried her face in the crook of her husband’s thick arm. Chuck gave another brief nod to the attendant, who replaced the sheet and slipped the body back into the freezer unit. Mr. Stavros hid his wife’s face from the terrible sight.

“It’s her,” he said brusquely, as if he was angry with Chuck for bringing him here. Lee had seen this displaced anger before, and he felt sorry for his friend. These people were so filled with grief and rage, and they vented their frustration on the only person available: Chuck Morton. Lee knew it was hard on his friend. As precinct captain, Chuck was used to giving orders and being obeyed, but to Pamela’s parents he was simply the bearer of bad news.

The four of them walked in silence back through the hallways toward the building entrance. Lee knew that the Stavroses’ anger would make it harder for him to do his job. They would resist his questions, and maybe even refuse to answer them. As they entered the lobby of the building, he decided to take a stab at a pretty obvious sales tactic.

“Would you mind answering a few questions that will help us catch your daughter’s killer?” he said, leading them to a row of scuffed yellow plastic chairs in the corner of the room.

Mr. Stavros turned around to face him. “Catch him?
Catch him?
I’ll help you fillet, boil or fry him,” he said, spitting the words out. “Better yet, you lead me to him, and just leave the rest to me, huh?”

Theodore Stavros was a big man, solid as a slab of granite, and Lee felt the physical threat as Stavros hovered over him, his small blue eyes shot through with burst blood vessels and rage. He had an abrupt realization: Ted Stavros was an alcoholic. He wondered that he hadn’t noticed it before—the ruddy cheeks, the bloodshot eyes, the slight tremor in his powerful hands. Probably at his wife’s insistence, he hadn’t had a drink today, but he sure as hell looked like he needed one.

Lee looked at the timid, frightened expression on Mrs. Stavros’s face, and he suddenly realized what Pamela had been running from. This was not a happy family. Ted Stavros was a man who could get nasty. Violence leaked from his pores like sweat; barely concealed rage was evident in the way he held himself, in the tightness of his mouth, the deliberate flatness of his voice. For a teenage daughter, it was probably terrifying.

“Wh-what do you want to know?” Mrs. Stavros asked, sitting in one of the chairs.

“Do you have any idea who Pamela’s friends were, who she saw here in New York?” Chuck asked.

Mrs. Stavros shook her head. “No. She, uh, didn’t tell us where she was going. We didn’t even know she was in New York until we…” She tried bravely to master her emotions, but her voice gave out.

Her husband finished for her. “Until we saw your Web site. She had a ‘boyfriend,’” he continued, pronouncing it as though he had said “cockroach.” “He was a creep, a two-timing junkie, but she was hooked on him.”

Garbage in, garbage out
, Lee thought.
We all follow patterns we’re familiar with
, he wanted to say,
and your daughter is no exception
. But he said nothing, and arranged his face in a mask of sympathy and concern.

“So you think she came here with him?” Chuck asked.

“I dunno,” Stavros replied. “He wasn’t from around here—and he turned up back in town a couple of weeks ago, saying he had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

“Did you believe him?” said Chuck.

Ted Stavros looked away, a slight smile prying the corners of his mouth upward. Lee could picture the scene: Stavros threatening the young man, or worse.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “I gave him every chance to change his story.” Lee silently translated his comment. He had given the boyfriend a severe beating, and when the terrified kid stuck to his story, even under torture, Stavros believed him. However bad the boyfriend was, Lee thought, he wasn’t as bad as the father. Stavros seemed pleased with himself.

He looked at Mrs. Stavros. What he had taken before as behavior caused by severe grief he now saw as telltale signs of a battered spouse. Her shoulders rolled inward, as if she was afraid of taking up too much space. She looked at her husband constantly, checking with him before she said or did anything, as if she feared incurring his displeasure.
Classic submissive behavior
, Lee thought, and he felt sorry for this once-pretty woman who was shackled to this oafish bully, bonded by their shared history—and now, their shared grief.

“One other question,” he said. “Was your daughter religious?”

Ted Stavros frowned. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“No, not especially,” his wife answered. “We’re Greek Orthodox, but she wasn’t exactly fervent or anything.”

“Did she wear a cross around her neck?”

Mrs. Stavros seemed surprised by the question. “Yes, as a matter of fact, she did. Remember?” she said to her husband, who was still frowning. “The jade one Nana gave her for Christmas one year?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Right. She liked it a lot—always wore it.” His face softened as if he was about to cry.

“Jade?” Lee said. “So it was green?”

“Yes. I don’t suppose we could have it back?” Mrs. Stavros asked timidly. “It was a gift from her grandmother.”

Lee exchanged a glance with Chuck and then looked at the woman sympathetically. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Stavros. We’d be glad to return it to you, but we don’t have it.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t? Then who…?” She left the question dangling.

“I hope someday we can give you the answer to that question,” Lee said as Chuck escorted them out into a leaden February twilight.

Lee’s real question had been answered, however: Pamela Stavros was, without doubt, the first known victim of the killer everyone now knew as the Slasher.

As they stood at the curb waiting for a cab, Mrs. Stavros stared down at the tips of her sensible brown Hush Puppies. There was nothing flamboyant or vivid about her, as if anything colorful about her had been extinguished long ago.

“So, um, did she suffer much?” she asked quietly.

“No,” Lee replied gently. “The attack would have been sudden—it all happened before she realized what was going on.”

“So she didn’t fight back, get in a few swings at the bastard?” Mr. Stavros hissed, his bulldog face reddening.

“There wasn’t time for that,” Lee answered. What he didn’t add was that there was time for her to realize she was being strangled, to look up into the last face she would ever see—the face of her killer.

Mrs. Stavros let out a sigh—a thin, hopeless sound, like air escaping from a balloon. Lee felt sorry for this quiet woman whose one source of comfort had been snatched from her.

“So if she didn’t fight back, that means the killer’s got no marks on him either,” Ted Stavros remarked, displaying more intelligence than Lee would have credited him with.

“Right,” said Chuck.

Had she fought back—scratching, biting, maybe—there might be DNA samples of his skin under her fingernails. But they had no such forensic evidence. In fact, they had zip—nothing at all. They might as well be chasing a ghost.