Silent Victim (23 page)

Hildegard Elena Krieger von Boehm leaned over and scrutinized her makeup in the beveled mirror over the antique mahogany vanity. The dressing table, imported from Hamburg, was a birthday gift from her father. Squinting, she rubbed a stray smear of mascara from her smooth pink cheekbone and brushed on some rouge (“Afterglow” by Max Factor, a good Polish Jew, as her Vati would say). Turning her head this way and that, she flipped her thick red hair from her muscular shoulders and shook her head to make it appear fuller and a bit disheveled. She knew that men liked the tousled, just-from-the-bedroom look. Though she hated having a single hair out of place, she was willing to do whatever the job required. That was one of the secrets to her rapid rise within the ranks of the NYPD.

Hildegard Elena Krieger von Boehm—or Elena Krieger, as she was known—was not as hard as she appeared on the outside. For instance, she had made the decision upon entering the New York City police force to use her middle name instead of her Wagnerian-sounding first name. She also dropped the “von Boehm,” an indication in Germany of her family’s noble blood (Beethoven, for instance, hoped the

“van” in his name would give the appearance of nobility). It was all well and fine to have a “von” in front of your name when you were in Düsseldorf, but in America, she feared, it would simply conjure up images of Nazi storm troopers. Krieger was her mother’s maiden name, whereas “von Boehm"—her paternal family name—meant “from Bohemia.”

She regarded most Americans as pitifully unaware of their heritage. Germanic blood still ranked as their most common ancestral lineage—more ubiquitous than English or Dutch. A large number of Hessian mercenaries settled in states such as Pennsylvania after the Revolution and were given land in exchange for their promise to never take up arms against the United States again. This fact troubled Hildegard Krieger not a bit. She regarded practicality—which might manifest on occasion as discreet opportunism—as a virtue. Though the irony of the situation was not lost on her, she thought her ancestral cousins had made a good investment. Why travel back across a treacherous sea to a crowded, contentious continent scarred by centuries of squabbling when you could start afresh in a new, relatively unsettled land of unrivaled abundance and beauty?

She lifted the crimson feather boa from its box, peeling away layers of crumbling tissue paper, and wound it around her neck. She had worn it only once before, in a cabaret show back in Germany, where her talent and taste for acting were already apparent. She wasn’t sure why she had saved it, but now she thought it was the perfect touch to her costume: over the top but classy, made of the finest peacock feathers Deutsche Marks could buy.

She puckered her lips and swiveled her hips back and forth, tilting her chin forward in a come-hither look. She opened her mouth in a wide smile, trying to imitate the famous portrait of Marilyn Monroe in which the actress looks as if she is about to gobble up the camera in one ravenous bite. Regarding her reflection in the mirror, Hildegard heaved a sigh and plopped down on the green satin cushioned chair. There was no denying it—she was more Dietrich than Monroe, with an aggressive masculine edge no amount of makeup or feather boas could disguise. Maybe that accounted for her talent at undercover work. She seemed to be born with an urge to slip into another persona, something more socially acceptable.

Not that Elena Krieger felt any shame or guilt over her heritage—she was proud of her background, and identified closely with her Germanic forefathers, who included (on her mother’s side) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great poet and playwright.

She plucked a tissue from the box on her vanity and dabbed at her lips, blotting the thick layer of lipstick. Why, she had even read Goethe—in German, of course—at school, and rather enjoyed his play
Faust.
What a great story, what an archetypal struggle! She certainly possessed the Germanic passion for heroic stories—she also admired the Ring cycle, even though she found operatic singing distasteful. She loved the staging and was always thrilled by the entrance of the Rhinemaidens and their
Ho-jo-to-hos.

Hildegard Krieger was a something of a Rhinemaiden herself. A woman with energy, flair, and ambition in a world still largely populated and controlled by men, she sometimes had the urge to mount a white steed and soar over the wild, mountainous landscape of her ancestors—all the while quite conscious of the ridiculousness of her taste for self-dramatization.

Still, life at the NYPD had never been easy for her, so she donned a hard, brittle shell that was only part acting. As a woman, a German, and a lesbian, she knew what it was to be an outsider. To her delight—if hardly her surprise—she found the ranks of lesbians within the force were strong.

Some of them were mannish like her, while others were softer and more “femme.” She had a certain cachet and popularity among the other dykes, because of her exotic looks and accent. Some women found that alluring, especially if they were into sadomasochistic role playing.

But Hildegard had no wish to squander her time and energy on sexual peccadilloes. There would be time for that later. What she wanted more than anything was to rise within the ranks—she longed someday to be a station commander. She watched very carefully every move Chuck Morton made. She knew that as head of the Bronx Major Case Unit he was one of the most respected and successful members of the NYPD brass.

She looked into the mirror, drew the wine-colored feather boa across her bare shoulders, and shivered. Captain Morton was quite attractive, too, she had to admit—those bluer-than-blue eyes and tight, muscular body. A smile crept across her face as she thought about what it would be like to throw him across that big oak desk and …
What was she thinking?
First of all, he was her boss. Second, he was married, and third, she was a lesbian.

Actually, her sexual identity was not that clear cut. The truth was that sometimes she liked women, and sometimes she liked men. She had had both, and was aware of the advantages of each. Men were exciting, primal, commanding—and, like a lot of strong women, Hildegard Krieger enjoyed being dominated sexually. She liked the way they smelled, of aftershave and cigars and saltwater. On the other hand, women were beautiful and soft and took their time. In general she found them to be more considerate lovers. She was attracted to quite feminine lesbians, women whose “secret” was not readily apparent—that was part of their allure. Men could undress them with their eyes as they walked across a room, but she was the one they went home with at the end of the night.

She picked up her tiny leather purse and took one final look in the mirror. She liked what she saw. Her lanky body was clad in a short black leather miniskirt that hugged her narrow hips. Over that she wore a red silk bodice drawn tightly in to slim her waist, which she thought was too thick. Over it she wore a short black leather jacket, and around her neck she had flung the red boa. Her heels were at least three inches high, and her slender legs looked even longer in black fishnet stockings.

Still, it wasn’t quite right—something was missing. On impulse, she jabbed a long red fingernail at the fabric and tugged, ripping a small, ragged hole in the diamond-patterned weave. She surveyed the results with satisfaction. That was it, she thought: now she looked like a proper slut. She felt the familiar shiver of pleasure in her intestines in the presence of danger. The fact that she had told no one about her plan heightened the excitement.

The hunt was on, and she was the bait. It was time to go trap a murderer.

The scene at the Jack Hammer was just starting to heat up on this steamy Friday night. It was early yet—not even nine o’clock—and most of the action usually took place after midnight. But the heat had brought people out into the night to escape the confines of their stuffy apartments. Like cockroaches skittering out from beneath the refrigerator, they ventured in swarms into the darkness in search of adventure and sex.

The bar scene around Christopher Street had never fully recovered from the AIDS crisis, but widespread use of condoms and the advent of more effective antiretroviral medication had revived the scene in the last few years. Although still not what it used to be, it was the place to go if you wanted a drink, a dance, and a date with some husky young stranger who would go to bed with you and disappear the next morning, no questions asked. The Jack Hammer was not an upscale place like The Townhouse, a piano bar on East Fifty-eighth Street where older gentlemen of means went to meet younger men. It catered to rough trade, and the atmosphere of danger added to the thrill of the chase for many of the customers.

At the Jack Hammer, gym rats mingled with bikers, and cross-dressers of all races and ages rubbed shoulders with trannies and personal trainers. Beer was sold behind the bar, but sex was the main entrée on the menu. Testosterone swirled in the air along with the cigarette smoke that curled in blue clouds under the hot colored lights on the dance floor—red, pink, and blue, just enough light to illuminate the sweating bodies, but not quite enough to make out the faces.

It was into this atmosphere Hildegard Elena Krieger stepped, clad in her red bustier, boa, and torn fishnet stockings. This was where Joe had gone with his friend the night before he died, she knew, so this is where she must be.

She had played many roles in her time, but had never impersonated a man dressed as a woman. Excitement and fear wormed their way through her gut as she pranced down the narrow steps to the entrance, balancing precariously on her three-inch heels. She felt like she was going to be sick, she was terrified, and she had never felt so alive. Like many people who take up careers in law enforcement, Elena Krieger was addicted to danger, and her adrenal gland was working overtime tonight.

She had ignored Chuck Morton’s advice—she didn’t really think of it as an order—to have backup. She felt it would interfere with her cover identity; she knew from experience that an undercover role was only effective if the mark, or target, couldn’t smell a rat—and some of them had a very well-developed sense of smell. If the killer came to this bar, she would find him—before he found her.

The pounding of percussion made her head vibrate as she tossed her boa over her shoulder and stepped into the darkened room. She was instantly swallowed up by the crush of bodies twisting in a fog of swirling blue smoke.

Lee sat at the cafe at the Eighty-second Street Barnes & Noble, playing the table upgrade game. Customers perched on the edges of their chairs, waiting for someone to vacate a better table than the one they occupied. Downstairs, people glided dreamily between shelves of books, roving planets in a shifting constellation of bodies.

He and Kathy were meeting there, but he had come early to be alone for a while, to think about the case somewhere outside his apartment or Chuck’s office. Sometimes a change scenery helped him think about things in a new way, and he liked bookstores. He inhaled the musty, comforting aroma of paper, book bindings, and steaming espresso. It was the smell of thought, of learning, of culture and commerce coming together in a calming cacophony of cookbooks and coffee. The voices all blended into one, a smooth overlay of sound soothing as raindrops.

We seek each other,
he thought, looking around. These people weren’t here for the coffee or the books or the pastries—they were there for the nearness of other human bodies.

And now he was seeking someone in a different kind of way. He yearned for this man’s capture almost as one might yearn for a lover—as his killer might yearn for the victims he killed seemingly so heartlessly. These crimes were anything but heartless, of course. Some murders were heartless—people who killed for money or property—but not this murderer. He was full of repressed rage, and though his choice of victims might seem impersonal to the untrained observer, they were very personal to him.

Lee sensed something else behind the brutality, a motif running like an underground stream beneath the carnage: loss, longing, and disappointment.

The bearded man next to him was playing with his PalmPilot. Lee wondered whether all these gadgets were really useful time-saving devices or merely sophisticated toys. And did it even matter? Toy or time-saver, what was the difference as long as people were enjoying themselves? His killer was enjoying himself—that was for certain. Or, at least, in whatever way a tortured soul like him could be said to be enjoying anything. Was a compulsive act an enjoyment, or merely the scratching of an unbearable itch?

He looked up to see Kathy headed his way, slipping in between the rows of tables, cheeks flushed, her dark hair tousled. The sight of her made his stomach do a little flip.

“Hi—am I late?” she said, seeing his half-empty coffee cup.

“No, I got here early,” he said, pulling up a chair for her. “The train was a nightmare,” she said, setting her cloth briefcase next to her. “What are you drinking?” “Just coffee.”

She frowned and twisted around in her chair to squint at the menu over the counter.

“Hmm. I think I’ll go for something stronger. Be right back.”

She slipped between the crowded tables to the coffee bar and returned balancing a cup of espresso and a piece of carrot cake.

“Help yourself,” she said, putting out two forks.

“Thanks.”

Kathy took a sip of espresso, a little bit of foam clinging to her upper lip. He wanted to lean forward and lick it off. She flicked her little pink tongue over it and it was gone.

“Working on the case?” she asked, seeing his notes spread out on the table.

“Yeah.”

“Making any progress?” “Hard to say … it’s a tough one.” “Do you ever think what that would be like?” she said in a low voice.

“What?”

“To totally lack compassion or remorse.”

“I’ve tried—it’s nearly impossible. It’s like trying to imagine being an alcoholic if you’re not one.”

She leaned over the table, her breasts brushing the tabletop.

“And if these people really are lacking these qualities, is it their fault?”

“Probably not. But does that matter? They have to be stopped, they have to be caught, and they have to be imprisoned. There’s no other solution.”

He had been through all this in his head, many times—but he wasn’t going to tell Kathy that. He wondered if she was aware that the woman sitting at the next table was listening to them. Her untouched tea sat in front of her, and she had been staring at the same page in her book for the past five minutes. She was doughy and middle-aged, with heavily mascaraed eyes and a bad dye job, her hair the color of a shiny new penny. An oversized leather bag lay at her feet, and when Lee and Kathy paused in their conversation, she pretended to fumble around in it, but she never pulled anything out. Lee put her down as a fan of mystery novels, the kind where the heroine has lots of cats and solves crimes while holding down a job as the local librarian.

“What kind of creatures
are
we?” Kathy said, running her fingers lightly over the lip of her coffee cup.

“Creatures of extremes,” Lee replied. “We seem to be capable of the worst and the best that Nature has to offer.”

“Or is that just our egocentric view of things?” Kathy mused. “Are we really all that—from Auschwitz to the Sistine Chapel? And is it all because we happen to have opposable thumbs?”

Lee smiled. “You’re the scientist. Don’t forget our enormous brain … and the capacity for speech. I suppose orangutans would build cities if they could.”

“Do you think they’d also build concentration camps?”

“Even dolphins engage in ‘criminal activity'—according to the Science Channel.”

“Wise guy, eh?” she said, imitating a thirties movie mobster. “Bringing dolphins into it?”

He did his best to imitate her accent.

“Yeah, sure—you gonna do something about it?”

She made a fist. “Why, I oughta—”

Lee glanced at the eavesdropping woman, who quickly pretended to be reading. He looked back at Kathy. “You know, I keep feeling I failed Ana.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m afraid that if she had been any other patient—any other person—I might have taken it more seriously and she might not have died.”

As he said this he could feel the lady at the next table leaning in to listen.

Kathy frowned. “What do you mean ‘any other patient'?”

Suddenly he felt an impulse to tell her everything—he hated having secrets from her.

“What is it?” she asked, seeing the look on his face.

He rubbed his eyes and looked away. “There’s more to it than I told you before.” He proceeded to tell her about the way Ana tried to seduce him. He left out nothing, including the fact that she almost succeeded—partially succeeded, actually. By way of explanation, he talked about the seductive nature of the therapeutic relationship, but as he did he saw Kathy stiffen.

The lady at the next table continued to pretend to read, not taking her eyes from the print, but she didn’t turn the page once.

When he had finished, Kathy was silent.

“Well,” she said after a painfully long pause, “maybe you’re right. Maybe you would have reacted differently. But I don’t know what you could have done.”

She looked away, clearly uncomfortable. Her voice lacked its normal warmth, though she was obviously trying to hide her reaction.

“Kathy?” he said. “Do you view my past with Ana as a threat to—to us?”

“No, of course not,” she answered too quickly.

“It was my first year in practice. I was naïve and unprepared—”

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” she said, still not looking at him.

He thought the lady at the next table was going to fall out of her chair if she leaned in toward them any more.

“I want to explain,” he said. “I feel I owe you—”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Kathy replied, studying her untouched cake.

“Please, Kathy, I really need you to understand.”

“Look, can we just move on?” she said. “Can we talk about something else?”

“But I want to—”

“You don’t get it, do you?” she said, looking directly at him. “It’s in your past, and there’s nothing either of us can do to change it—or my reaction to it. I think it’s childish and petty, and I’m not proud of the way I feel, but for now I’m stuck with it. So let’s just move on, okay?”

He saw a pained expression he had never seen before in her face. It cut him to know that he was the cause of it.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll move on.”

They tried to talk about other things, but the air between them was strained now, her discontent hanging over them like a fog. After a few desultory attempts at conversation, she finished her coffee in one swallow and stood up.

“I’m tired—it’s been a long week.”

His heart gave a single quick thump. “You want to go back to my place?”

“I think I’ll stay at Arlene’s place tonight, if you don’t mind.”

Arlene was her friend in Murray Hill who traveled constantly and was rarely home. They had gone to school together, and Kathy had keys to her apartment.

“Okay,” he said.

She bit her lip. “I just need some time.” “Sure,” he said. “Whatever.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said. Shouldering her bag, she snaked her way through the tables and down the stairs to the main floor. Her watched her black curls bounce as she walked through the stacks of books, hoping she would look back at him before leaving the store, but she didn’t.

He stared out the window for a while, watching people stroll west along Eighty-second Street on their way to Riverside Park. A thin boy of about nine rode his bike next to his mother, who carried shopping bags in either hand, laughing at something her son was saying. He thought of his own mother and wondered if she had ever taken that kind of delight in him. He wished he could hear what the boy was saying, wished he had the secret to making women happy. He had no luck on the genetic front there, he thought bitterly. His father had done nothing but break his mother’s heart—all their hearts, for that matter.

He was about to get up from his table when he felt a hand touch his shoulder, and turned to see the lady with the cloth bag standing next to him.

“She loves you, you know,” she said. Her accent was British, refined and educated.

“What?” he replied, taken off guard.

“I know it’s none of my business, of course, but you can see it in every move she makes. She’s in love with you. She didn’t leave because she doesn’t care about you—she left because she cares too much.”

“Oh,” was all he could say.

“You’ll see I’m right,” the woman continued. “I know about these things. I can always read strangers. It’s a gift, I suppose—and a curse. My Henry used to say that I should be a psychologist or something like that, but it’s not something you can study.” She shrugged. “It’s—”

“A gift, I know.”

“You do?”

He hesitated. This was surely the oddest conversation he had ever had with a stranger.

“I’m just saying that I understand what you’re saying—” he said, but she interrupted him.

“I
knew
it!” she crowed, her face breaking into a broad smile. “You have it, too. I had a feeling about you, but I wasn’t sure.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Use it well—that’s the only advice I can give you.”

“Look—” he began, but she shook her head.

“No need to say anything more. I understand perfectly. But mark my words, will you? She loves you. She’ll come around, but you have to be patient. Don’t try to understand her reaction, because she doesn’t even understand it herself. She just has to work her way out of it over time, but it will happen.” She smiled at him fondly, like an indulgent aunt. “I hope the two of you are very happy together. I have a feeling you will be.”

“That’s very kind of you, but—” he started, but once again she cut him off.

“I know, I know—I’m being terribly pushy, and terribly forward. My dear Henry would always tell me to keep my nose out of other’s people’s affairs. ‘Beryl,’ he would say, ‘people have better things to do than to listen to you go on about your gift.’ But, you see, sometimes people need to hear these things—sometimes all that’s needed is to know someone cares about you. And I’m telling you, young man, that girl cares about you. What you do with that information is your business.”

And with that, she bent down and picked up her bag, slung it over her shoulder, and downed the rest of her coffee in one gulp.

“Nice meeting you,” she said, with a final pat on his shoulder. “Best of luck to you.” And she lumbered out of the café, moving between the tables with surprising agility for someone of her girth.

Lee wanted to say something, but he had no idea what it might be. He was too astonished to speak, and just watched as she made her way down the stairs and out the front door of the bookstore.

Her words echoed in his head.
Sometimes all that’s needed is to know someone cares about you.
He wondered who, if anyone, cared about the man they were pursuing.