Silent Victim

by C. E. Lawrence

  “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?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When Lee got back to his apartment he found two messages from Dr. Williams: one on his landline and the other on his cell. He had neglected to take his cell phone with him uptown. It was all he could do to concentrate enough to lock the door behind him.

  He called her back, and this time she picked up.

  “Yes, Lee—you need to come in today?” Her voice was composed, but he heard the concern in it.

  “Do you have any open time slots?”

  “I can see you after my last patient—six o’clock okay?”

  “Great. Thank you so much.”

  He hung up. Just hearing her voice—low, calm, and comforting—made him breathe easier. It was like the murmur of water over stones, a smooth, soothing sound.

  He looked at the kitchen clock, a sunburst of bronzed Mexican pottery he had found at a yard sale upstate. It was just after six. He gazed at the piano, its polished wood gleaming in the slanting rays of the sun in the western sky. He looked down at his hands—they were shaking again.

  He went to the kitchen, opened a can of chocolate protein shake, and forced himself to drink it. It tasted like chalk. He chased it down with a glass of tap water, then went back to the living room. The piano waited for him—silent, watchful, the evening light lingering on the keyboard as the sun slipped northward and out of view behind the crowded buildings of Manhattan.

  He sat down and dove into a Bach partita. No scales, no warm-up to get him in the mood—just Bach, straight up, no chaser. The sound washed over him, as primal and powerful as the first time he heard it. The notes twisted and danced on the page, in his fingers, on the keyboard. As he played, he experienced the piano as the percussion instrument it was—a great, resounding drum with eighty-eight voices, made up of tones and half-tones, a glorious creation of wood and metal and ivory, all melded together by e
ngineering genius.

  As he dug his fingers in deeper, pounding the keys in an ecstasy of fury and release, he was enveloped by a feeling of profound gratitude. He was able to participate in the grand dance of music, communing with great composers—a gift shared by even the lowliest of musicians. It wasn’t about ego, or showing off—there was a purity about this that existed nowhere else in his life.

  It was only when he stopped that he felt the tears sliding down his face.

  Afterward, he sat in the green stuffed armchair by the window and thought about Ana Watkins. What he didn’t tell Chuck or Butts—what he had never told anyone—was that he had very nearly fallen for her. He had to admit, she was good—she pushed every button he had with such dexterity it left him breathless. She played the hapless victim, tossed aside by the men around her, a fragile waif orphaned by the storms of an unfortunate life. She drew out his need to protect and shield women, a need instilled in him by his mother long before his father walked out. His father’s desertion only intensified his determination to make up for the sins of all men, brutish and uncaring creatures. His mother had already decided, without realizing it consciously, that Lee’s job—indeed, his duty—was to make up for the transgressions of thoughtless scoundrels like Duncan Campbell.

  And so when Ana Watkins leaned into him, her thin body trembling with terror and desire, he met her halfway, pulled toward her with an inexorable magnetic force. Even as he felt himself falling into the sinkhole of self-disgust, he was helpless to stop, spinning like a top when he tried to pull back against the centrifugal force of their mutual desire. They shared a fervent and fumbling embrace in a rain-darkened alley one Friday night, soaked and sweating under a burned-out streetlamp. He managed to pull away after a prolonged and very wet kiss, but he felt himself weakening even as his forehead burned with shame and his ears rang with the sound of self-condemnation.

  Fortunately for him, fate—or luck, or chance, or whatever it was—intervened before he betrayed his ethics and his profession. Ana came down with a serious case of bronchitis, and an elderly aunt swooped down from New England to nurse her back to health, breaking the forward momentum of their passion. Left standing alone, he took a shaky step backward before regaining his footing and his self-respect. When Ana recovered, he insisted on meeting only at the clinic in Flemington, and only on days when his accountant was sitting in the outside office.

  Faced with this new reality, Ana discontinued her sessions and slunk away. He considered himself lucky that she didn’t report his conduct to the state licensing board. Perhaps she had enough of a conscience to realize that would be less than honorable, since she had instigated the whole thing. He had not heard from her until she called two days ago.

  And now she was dead. The only thing he could do for her now was to find her killer.

  The walk to Dr. Williams’s office on East Twelfth Street was less than fifteen minutes on average—he was there in less than ten. There was no one else in the waiting room when he arrived, and he sat listening to the murmur of voices coming from the rooms around him. Dr. Williams’s office was on the fifth floor of a medical building and shared a waiting room with two other therapists. On the left was the office of a short, dapper man with spectacles and a goatee who could have been the young Freud himself. In the office to the right was a tall, willowy woman, an Upper West Side type with long silver-gray hair and owlish glasses. Lee found these women intriguing: they seemed to eschew conventional notions of fashion and beauty, and yet they had a natural quality and style that was its own kind of beauty.

  Dr. Williams’s door opened, and Lee’s heart contracted. His throat felt dry and lumpy. He heard her familiar low, soothing voice, and then a male voice. Moments later a thin, intense-looking young man emerged from the office. He averted his eyes as he passed, focusing on the floor ahead of him. Lee had noticed, there was an elevated need for privacy in therapists’ offices. People who might smile and make friendly eye contact in say, a dentist’s office, studiously avoided noticing one another. He wondered if it was some vestigial feelings of shame or embarrassment, or perhaps the need to protect the tender ego, which could undergo quite a shredding process during the course of treatment. He knew this not only from his own experience, but from years of private practice as a therapist. It was a terrifying and wrenching journey, and sometimes it felt—as it did today—nearly unendurable.

  Dr. Williams stepped out into the corridor and beckoned to him. She was a very tall, elegant black woman with long limbs and a handsome, fine-featured face. Today she wore a long black skirt decorated with African motifs in earth tones, a yellow silk blouse under a short rust-colored jacket. He felt as though he could weep at the sight of her, but he just nodded meekly and followed her inside. She settled herself in her usual spot, a tall, ergonomic leather swivel chair, her back to the window. Lee sat opposite her, in a similar black leather chair with a matching footrest.

  Dr. Georgina Williams had the most amazingly steady energy of anyone he had ever known. Of course, it was always possible he was projecting onto her the ideal personality for a therapist. They even joked about how he sometimes called her Yoda, but she really did seem to possess the perfect combination of calmness and intuition. She never pressed him with unwanted insights, and had an uncanny ability to come up with the perfect metaphor or key question most of the time.

  The room was decorated in a style both comforting and relaxing. The walls were painted in earth tones, the lighting was muted, the prints on the wall were tasteful but not disturbing—a Monet haystack, a Matisse still life of a goldfish bowl, and a colorful Klee in cheerful primary colors. There were also a couple of original landscape paintings that looked to be Hudson Valley scenes. The bookshelf in the back of the room contained mostly works on psychology—classics by Jung, Freud, R. D. Laing, and Alice Miller, among others. There was also a small collection of poetry, in particular a book of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. Wooden sculptures of African masks served as decorative bookends.

  As always, she looked alert but relaxed. On the table next to her chair was a blue vase with white lilies of some kind.

  “So,” she said, studying him, “you’re not doing well today.”

  “No,” he replied. “I had … an episode.”

  “A bad one?”

  “Pretty bad, yeah.” “How do you feel now?”

  “Better, now that I’m here. But I always feel better here.” “You feel safe here.”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked at the potted palm in the corner next to her—was it his imagination or had it grown rapidly in the last few weeks? It suddenly looked much larger.

  “But not out there,” she said.

  “No. Not out there.”

  She crossed her long legs at the ankle. He noticed she was wearing heeled sandals—in a heeled shoe, he imagined she would be taller than he was, and he was well over six feet. “Are you on a case?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So is this episode related to that?” “Partly, yeah.” “In what way?”

  He told her about the visit from Ana, the shock of seeing her body, his fainting in the office.

  “That’s very upsetting,” she said when he had finished.

  “That’s not all,” he said, his palms beginning to sweat. “I had a—a phone call.”

  “What kind of phone call?”

  He felt the old reluctance to talk, to drive a knife into old wounds, to feel its sharpness. He wished he could just sit here for a while, drinking in the calming atmosphere, but that wasn’t the deal. And he knew perfectly well what the resistance was about, knew also that he had to overcome it. He took a deep breath.

  “It was about the red dress. A man’s voice—I didn’t recognize it. He said he knew about the red dress.”

  “But I thought you never released that detail to the public.” “We didn’t.”

  “So who is he, and how could he know?” “That’s what I’d like to know. It’s bringing everything back again.”<
br />
  “Your sister’s disappearance?”

  “Yes.” He almost wished she would say her death, because there was no doubt in his mind that Laura was dead. “Anything else?”

  He knew what she was hinting at, but he wasn’t ready yet.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t talk about it.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s it—okay?”

  “I’ve never forced you to talk about anything—you know that.” She uncrossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. “What, you were hoping I would? You want me to push you into dealing with it, so you don’t have to make that decision?”

  He looked out the window at the softly fading evening sun, a pink glow in the western sky. Now, in late August, the light was fading earlier every day, as the sun weakened in its journey across the heavens.

  “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder? All the symptoms fit.”

  He gave a wry smile. “A rose by any other name … oh, I don’t know. When I’m like this I barely have enough will to make a cup of coffee.”

  “Do you think you’re ready to talk about it?”

  “You think I have to sooner or later.” It wasn’t a question—he knew the answer.

  She shrugged, a tiny lift of her elegant shoulders. “Not necessarily. It depends on the person. Some people seem to do all right without processing their pain.”

  “Look,” he said, looking her directly in the eyes, “you and I both went into this profession because we believed in the value of the therapeutic process. So why don’t you just say what you really think and stop trying to give me an out?”

  “Okay,” she said after a moment. “I do think you have to deal with it, and that you’re avoiding it, because when you finally do …”

  He knew the rest. Sooner or later, he would have to confront his long-buried feelings about his father’s abandonment. And then, he feared, his rage would rise up like a mythical beast, full and terrifying in its primitive fury, and swallow him up whole.