Silent Victim (6 page)

“What do you make of the notes?” Chuck asked Lee.

“Well,” he began, but Krieger intrrupted.

“Obviously the victims offended the killer in some way,” she said.

“Jawohl,”
Butts said.

Krieger glared at him, and then at Chuck, but he pretended not to notice.

Lee thought, not for the first time, that this was going to be a challenging investigation.

Lee arrived at his apartment a little after noon to find three messages on his answering machine. Unlike some of his friends, who were discarding their landlines, he kept his. He’d had the same number ever since he moved to the East Village, and he held on to it partly out of sentiment—but also because it was the coveted 212 area code, no longer available to newer residents of Manhattan. He was a little embarrassed that this meant something to him, but it did.

He pressed the button and listened to the first message. It was from Kathy, telling him she missed him. He missed her too, all the more so because he had been so preoccupied all weekend with Ana’s plight. He felt he hadn’t been truly present with Kathy. He was sure she noticed—but, true to form, she didn’t reproach him with it.

He put the kettle on while listening to the second message. Fiona Campbell’s voice was clear and cool as ever.

“Lee, it’s your mother. Don’t forget you’re expected for dinner to celebrate Kylie’s birthday on the weekend. She’s really looking forward to seeing you. See you then—bye.”

His niece Kylie would be turning seven in a week. She had lived with her father, George Callahan, ever since Laura’s disappearance, but spent weekends with her grandmother. There was the usual subtle playing of the guilt card in his mother’s message. If you don’t come, you’ll disappoint your niece. Not her, Fiona; no, never her. She had renounced her own claim on personal emotions the day his father walked out.

It was also typical of her to remind him of social engagements, as if he were incapable of remembering them himself. His father’s desertion left her with the overwhelming opinion that men were erratic, unreliable creatures who could not be counted on. And, of course, his father’s abandonment had left its mark on Lee, and was probably the reason for his decision to become a therapist. If he couldn’t mend his own family, at least he could help other people come to terms with theirs.

But when his sister disappeared, his need to help people traveled a darker road, driven by his need to
know.
And if he couldn’t know who had killed his sister (unlike his mother, he was certain Laura was dead), then he would help other people find out who had killed their loved ones.

The kettle began its long, slow climb to a piercing whistle, and he ducked into the kitchen just as the third message began to play. He heard it as he was pouring the tea water into the cup, and what he heard stopped him cold, so that the hot water splashed all over the countertop.

The voice was cold, hard, and flat, almost reptilian.

“What about the red dress? You think no one knows anything, but I do. I know about the red dress.”

There was a click as the line went dead, then a whirring sound as the answering machine began to automatically rewind. But Lee didn’t hear any of that—all he heard, over and over in his head, was that reptilian monotone: “I know about the red dress.” His sister Laura had been wearing a red dress the day she disappeared—a detail that had not been released to the press or the public. Stunned, he ignored the spilled water dripping from the counter onto the kitchen floor, and stumbled into the living room to look at the caller ID on his phone. He knew it was useless, but he had to look. To his surprise, there was a number there with a 212 area code—Manhattan! And the first three numbers were 533—which he recognized as an East Village exchange. His hand trembled as he picked up the receiver and dialed the number. It rang four times, then a man answered.

“Hello?” The voice was nothing like the one on his machine. This one had a thick Brooklyn accent, and was an octave lower.

“Hi—excuse me, but can you tell me what number I just dialed?”

“Well, there’s no number on it, but you reached a pay phone on Third Avenue and Fifth Street. Who are you lookin’ for, buddy?” The man sounded happily inebriated, eager to help.

“I’m sorry—I must have dialed wrong,” Lee said, certain that he had dialed correctly.

“Hey, no problem, buddy—take it easy.”

Lee hung up and sat down in the overstuffed armchair next to the phone. So the man had called from around the corner—from a pay phone, no less.
Who uses pay phones anymore, except to avoid being identified?
The questions swirled around his head. Did the caller pick a booth nearby on purpose, or does he live in the neighborhood? Or was it purely coincidence? Or was there an even darker explanation—what if he was stalking Lee, watching him? His number was unlisted—how did the man manage to get it? Would there be any point in dusting for prints? No crime had been committed—would Lee be able to convince anyone that it was even necessary?

Good Lord, Campbell, get a grip.
His sister’s disappearance was continual torture, a piece of unfinished business that would haunt him until the day he solved it—if he ever did. Maybe his mother was right about men after all….

The swirling sensation began to transform into something darkly familiar and sinister, as he felt the evil fog of depression envelop him. The walls of the room seemed to close in around him, and his thoughts swarmed like angry bees in his head. He was losing focus, and knew he had to stop the fog before it could take hold. He had told Kathy and everyone else that he was feeling much better lately, and to an extent that was true. But depression was its own kind of minefield. Sometimes, if he stepped carefully enough, he could stay aboveground and keep from landing on the hidden entrances, secret traps covering gaping holes in the ground. But other times the ground gave way when he least expected it, and he sank down and was swallowed up before he knew it.

“No, goddamn it,” he muttered. Staggering up from the chair, he reached for the phone again. Kathy was in Philadelphia, Chuck was still on duty, and his mother was useless, but there was one person he could turn to now—he just hoped she was available. He dialed the number and got a recording.

“You’ve reached the voice mail of Dr. Georgina Williams. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. If this is an emergency, please call my beeper at 917-555-4368. Thank you.”

Lee hesitated. Was this an emergency? He wasn’t feeling suicidal—not yet, anyway. He decided to leave a message on her voice mail. If she was in the office, she would call him back soon.

“Hi, Dr. Williams, this is Lee Campbell. I wonder if you have any time at all today? I—I’m having sort of a bad day, so if you could give me a call I’d appreciate it—thanks.”

He hung up the phone and looked around the apartment. This place, which he had worked so hard to make cozy and inviting, suddenly felt like a prison cell from which there was no escape. The familiar objects around him held no comfort—the carefully arranged bouquet of flowers on the piano might have been shards of straw stuck in a vase. He looked at the green Persian rug he loved so much, with the swirling patterns of light and dark that always reminded him of a forest at sunset. It might just as well have been cracked and dirty linoleum. He sat on the couch and put his head in his hands.
No,
he thought,
not today—please not now.

The phone rang, and he jumped, his overstrung nerves rattled by the sound. He picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Lee, it’s Chuck.”

He hesitated—should he tell his friend that this was not a good time, that he was having an episode? Or should he just tough out the phone call, jot down what Chuck said, and deal with it later? He could barely focus—his mind was being rapidly overtaken by the swiftly descending fog. He decided to tough it out.

“Hi, Chuck,” he said, wondering if his voice sounded odd. “What’s up?”

“There’s been a development.” “What do you mean?”

“Looks like we have another victim. Can you come back up here?”

No,
Lee wanted to scream,
no, I can’t.
Instead he said, “Sure. Can you give me a little time?” “As soon as you can make it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Thanks.”

Lee hung up, his hand now shaking so hard that the receiver rattled as he replaced it. He headed for the bathroom and fumbled in the cupboard for the bottle of Xanax. It was going to be a long day.

By the time Lee reached the subway he was sweating and trembling almost uncontrollably. The darkness had closed in around him, and he was moving automatically, as if in a trance—sliding his Metro card through the slot at the entrance, going through the metal turnstile, walking down the concrete stairs to the train with the other passengers. The fog and confusion were bad enough, but today it felt as if his soul were on fire—a burning, searing pain that blotted out all memories of the past, any pleasures of the present, and any hope of the future. The only reality was the unrelenting pain. It had no beginning and no end, covering him like a thick blanket of concrete, crushing him.

He walked unsteadily to the far end of the platform and stared down at the subway tracks. A large gray rat poked its head out from under the near rail and scuttled across the wooden ties to a tiny hole in the subway wall, vanishing inside it. Lee wondered why the rats weren’t electrocuted on the third rail—or, for all he knew, maybe some of them were. He wondered how much it would hurt and for how long, to be electrocuted. His stomach lurched and twisted as he contemplated the sensation of thousands of volts coursing through his body.

He wrenched his mind away from these thoughts and forced himself to take a deep breath. He tried to think of Kathy, to imagine her smiling face, but it only made him want to cry. This attack had taken him by surprise. In the past few months there had been a gradual improvement in his mental state. He was still having nightmares, but they had begun to subside recently.

And now this. He felt as if he were being dragged back to the first days of his affliction, which began five years ago after his sister disappeared and worsened after 9/11. Most New Yorkers were deeply affected by that terrible day, some of them so frightened that they couldn’t sleep at night. Some left the city altogether. Others were angry, filled with a rage they had never felt. Lee didn’t feel fear, or even anger—only a wrenching, leaden sadness that swept him up for weeks afterward.

He heard the rumble of the F train in the distance as it hurtled down the dark, musty corridors toward them. He imagined jumping onto the track just as it reached the station, the slamming of metal against skin. Would he be killed instantly, or just horribly maimed for life? There was no question of killing himself that way, though. In his darkest days, he had given it some thought, and concluded that he was unwilling to put the train conductor through the trauma and guilt of feeling responsible.

The train slid into the station and the doors opened. Lee composed his face into what he hoped was a mask of New York indifference and sat down, waiting for the Xanax to take effect. It wouldn’t stop the pain entirely, but at least it would blunt the anxiety.

He changed for the uptown A train at West Fourth Street, and by the time the train reached Penn Station and Thirty-fourth Street, the Xanax had begun to work. He felt blurry and light-headed, but at least the churning in his stomach had dissipated, and his hands were no longer shaking. Not for the first time, he silently blessed pharmaceuticals in general and benzodiazepines in particular.

When the train arrived at the Bronx station, he stood up, shook off a momentary spell of dizziness, and followed the rest of the passengers out into the burnished afternoon light of late August. Everyone had predicted an early fall this year, and the trees had a brittle, dusty look, their leaves beginning to dry out already in the soft air of the dying summer.

Chuck was in his office when Lee arrived, along with Detective Butts. There was no sign of Elena Krieger.

When Chuck saw Lee’s questioning look, he said, “We tried to reach Detective Krieger, but without success.”

Butts snickered. “We didn’t try very hard.”

“All right,” said Chuck, ignoring him, “here’s what’s going on.” He pulled a fresh stack of crime-scene photos from his desk and handed them to Lee. “This came in a couple of hours ago.”

Lee took the photos and looked at the top picture. When he saw the face of the dead girl, his head began to spin, and the room swirled around him. He tried to speak, but before he could utter a word, blackness closed in around him and he lost consciousness.

He awoke to see Chuck and Butts standing over him, looking worried. He felt guilty when he saw the frightened expression on Chuck’s face, his friend’s pale skin even chalkier than usual. He struggled to get up, but Morton put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, hey—take it easy. There’s no hurry. Take your time.”

Butts’s homely face crinkled with concern. “You just fainted,” he said.

“I’m fine,” Lee said, trying again to stand. He was sitting on the floor of the office. They had propped him up against the wall by the radiator.

“Here,” said Chuck, rolling over his own chair, an old but comfortable wooden captain’s chair.

“Thanks,” said Lee, lifting himself into it shakily. “How long was I out?”

“A couple of minutes,” Chuck said. “What happened?”

Lee suddenly remembered he had eaten nothing all day—black coffee in the morning, followed by the trip to the Bronx, and then once the depression seized hold of him, the thought of food was sickening. And then there was the Xanax—usually he took half of a one-milligram tablet, but today he had taken a whole one, spooked by the ferocity of the pain.

“It’s stupid, really,” he said sheepishly. “I haven’t eaten, and I—” He hesitated, unsure whether or not to mention the Xanax. He decided against it. He picked up the photo from Chuck’s desk and held it aloft.

There, her face washed of all color and life, was Ana Watkins.

“I know this girl,” he said. “Her name is Ana Watkins, and she was my patient.” He took a deep breath against the emotion rising in his throat, and continued. “She came to me a few days ago and said she thought she was in danger. I’ve been trying to reach her ever since, so when I saw this—” He clamped his jaw closed, determined not to surrender to his feelings. There would be time to mourn her later, but now what mattered was finding who did this to her.

“Jesus, Lee,” Chuck said. “No wonder it was a shock for you.”

“That’s rough,” Butts agreed. “What kind of danger?”

“She thought someone was following her.”

“Looks like she was right,” Chuck said.

“But what makes you think her death is connected with the first two victims?” Lee asked.

“That’s what we were hoping you would help with,” Butts replied. “We found the same kind of phony suicide note on her. Same thing as before—carefully wrapped so the water wouldn’t ruin it.” He fished around in the stack of photos, pulled one out, and handed it to Lee. It was neatly typed, on eight and a half by eleven paper, and it read,
I have been a very bad girl. Bad things happen to bad girls. I should have taken the advice to get thee to a nunnery. Please forgive me.

Lee handed the photo back to Butts. “It’s him, all right,” he said, although up until this moment it had occurred to him that the killer might be a woman. But at the sight of that note, he felt with certainty that the perpetrator was a man.

“It doesn’t make sense, though, does it?” said Butts. “I mean, don’t these guys usually stick to one gender or another?”

“Usually,” said Lee, “but not always. There have been cases of serial killers who killed both men and women—David Berkowitz, for example.”

“Yes, but he killed couples,” Chuck pointed out. “This is a different kind of thing.”

“That’s true,” said Lee. “But he’s just one example—there are others. I think one of the worst mistakes we can make is to try to categorize this offender as fitting one rigid type or another, rather than looking at the specifics of his crimes to see what they tell us about him.”

Chuck rested his trim body against the windowsill and folded his arms, his taut muscles straining against the white cotton of his starched shirt. “Okay, so what do we know about him?”

“Where did they find … Ana?” Lee asked. Her name felt awkward, and he said it reluctantly.

“Up around Spuyten Duyvil,” Chuck said. Spuyten Duyvil (Dutch for “Whirlpool of the Devil,” named when New York was New Amsterdam, and under Dutch rule) was the thin slice of water between the mainland of the South Bronx and the island of Manhattan. The churning currents were notoriously treacherous there, as the waters of the Harlem River rushed to join the Hudson, already flowing south toward New York harbor.

“Who found her?” asked Butts, scratching his chin, where there was evidence of a five o’clock stubble, accentuating his already rumpled appearance.

“A couple of guys on the Columbia rowing crew,” said

Chuck. “They were out practicing when they saw her floating in the water, snagged on some rocks.”

The Columbia boathouse was perched on the bank of the slip of land jutting out into the eddies and fast-running currents of Spuyten Duyvil, clinging to the last thin strip of Manhattan Island before the river claimed it. Lee always thought it must be a hell of a place to row, but it was a beautiful setting for a boathouse. The view was spectacular—across the channel the Bronx mainland stretched out to the north as far as the eye could see, and to the west, the Palisades rose majestically along the Hudson. Lee thought of poor Ana, floating alone in those cold waters—it was never warm up there, not even in August.

“Well, at least they found her before she was swept out into the Hudson and out to sea,” Lee said sadly.

“Yeah,” Chuck agreed. “Not much comfort, but at least there’s that.”

“What do you know about the currents around there? Any idea where she might have been put in?”

Chuck shook his head. “I really don’t know much—it seems to me she could have been put in as far south as the East River, and floated all the way up there.”

“Allow me,” Butts said, producing a nautical chart from his battered briefcase. “It just so happens my oldest kid is a sailor, and he lent me this.”

Chuck raised an eyebrow and exchanged a look with Lee, but Butts continued, unperturbed. “I figured since we’re dealing with floaters, this could come in handy, so I brought it along. Of course, we may need to consult with an expert in the field of currents and tides, but this should help for now.”

He spread the map out on the desk. “Now, these arrows here,” he said, pointing to little green arrows along the shoreline, “indicate the direction of the current at this spot.”

“Okay,” said Chuck. “So what does that tell us?”

Butts leaned over the chart, squinting, his face almost touching it. “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think what it tells us is that she had to have been put in somewhere between here, where we found the original floater,” he said, pointing to a spot in the East River, “and here, where she was found.” He placed a second stubby finger on the spot marked
SPUYTEN DUYVIL.

“And Baldy was found here,” he continued, poking his middle finger at the area of the South Bronx where Mr. Malette was found in his bathtub.

Lee and Chuck stared at the stretch of land that encompassed both the Upper East Side and, across the East River from it, Queens.

“So in all likelihood, he lives—or works—somewhere near here,” Lee said.

“So that should narrow our search,” Butts said triumphantly.

“Yeah,” Chuck agreed, but none of them said what they were all thinking: Would it be enough to catch him before someone else died?