Silent Victim

by C. E. Lawrence

  Laura’s trail still blazed brightly in Lee’s mind, but he was afraid that her light was beginning to dim for others who knew her. His mother rarely mentioned her anymore, and Kylie had been too young when she disappeared to have any memories of her. He had taken up the torch to find her killer when he became a criminal profiler, but so far he had failed. His need to punish himself for this failure was intense, and it was only with an extreme effort that he could pull away from it.

  The ringing of the phone snapped him out of his self-recriminations.

  He grabbed the receiver.

  “Hello?” “Lee?”

  The voice was deep, resonant, and cultivated. He recognized it at once.

  “Hello, Diesel. How are you?” “More to the point, how are you?” “I’m okay.” “You don’t sound it.”

  Lee smiled, in spite of the feelings raised by Diesel’s voice. He had met the man through his late friend Eddie Pepitone. He missed Eddie, and he knew Diesel did, too.

  “How’s Rhino?” he asked, trying to steady his voice.

  “Oh, he’s very pleased with himself. He’s lost five pounds this month and is unbearable to live with.”

  Diesel and Rhino (a.k.a. John Rhinehardt Jr.) were the most unlikely couple Lee had ever met. Diesel was a giant of a man, with shiny mahogany skin, whereas Rhino was tiny, muscular, and pale as a ghost. Lee was grateful for Diesel and Rhino’s continued presence in his life. They were good men and all he had left of Eddie.

  “Are you both still working at Bellevue?” he asked.

  “Actually, I’ve had a promotion. I’m now in charge of all the other orderlies.”

  “Congratulations—that’s great.”

  “Yes, it’s great if you don’t have to live with John K. Reinhardt Jr., I suppose. He’s never forgiven me for it.”

  “You mean because now you’re his boss?”

  “Something like that,” Diesel answered. “He said to say hi, by the way. But I actually called to see if you were investigating these bizarre killings.”

  Lee wasn’t sure how to respond. His assignment to the case wasn’t exactly a secret, but it wasn’t something the NYPD would broadcast to the public. Luckily, Diesel saved him from having to answer.

  “I can see by your hesitation that you are,” Diesel continued smoothly. “I just called to offer our services. If there’s anything we can do—anything at all—don’t hesitate to ask. I think Eddie would have wanted …” Diesel began, but his voice trailed off, the silence on the line between them like a physical presence. “I’m sorry—I don’t know what Eddie would have wanted. Maybe I’d just like to think I know.”

  “Yeah,” Lee agreed. “I know.”

  “I think he would want us to keep in touch, anyway.”

  “I agree,” Lee said. “I’m glad to hear from you. But this killer is dangerous, and I don’t think—”

  “Hey, look,” said Diesel, “Rhino and I can take care of ourselves. I’m just saying that if you can use us as a resource, we’re here for you.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “There are some things Eddie didn’t tell you about us. We have certain … skills, let’s say, that might be of use to you at some point.”

  That was all very mysterious, and Lee was intrigued, but he heard the click of call waiting on the other line.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I have an incoming call.”

  “No problem. You know where to find us.”

  “Yes—give my best to Rhino,” Lee said. “I’ll talk to you soon.” He clicked the receiver and picked up the other call.

  The voice he heard had the same reptilian coldness as before.

  “I know about the red dress.”

  Ripples of terror slithered across the surface of Lee’s skin. He clutched the edge of the piano to steady himself. “Who are you?” “Does it matter?”

  “If you know something,” Lee said, trying to keep his voice from shaking, “why don’t you go to the police?”

  The caller chuckled—a low, unpleasant sound, like two rocks knocking together.

  “What would be the fun in that?”

  “Look,” Lee said, but the line went dead. He immediately dialed *69, but a recording told him that the caller had blocked his number when he called.

  He stood there for a moment, then picked up his martini glass and gulped down its contents. As he did, he made a grim vow. If this caller really did know something about his sister’s murder, Lee swore to himself that he would hunt him down, no matter the cost.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The largest of the five buildings comprising the campus of John Jay College of Criminal Justice is Haaren Hall, a handsome, imposing redbrick and gray-stone building on the west side of Tenth Avenue. The building spans the entire block between Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth Streets, the sidewalk outside busy with the comings and goings of students and faculty from early in the morning until well after dark. The building, originally the home of a public high school, houses a fully equipped theater, as well as a swimming pool and a gym.

  Around twilight the next day, Lee stood across the street on Tenth Avenue staring at the entrance, thinking about all the times he had mounted the broad stone steps, on his way to class or, after graduating, to meet a friend or former classmate there. The building was backlit in the pink glow of the sun setting over the Hudson, the temperature of the windless air so perfectly matching the warmth of his skin that it felt as if there were no atmosphere at all. He could smell the fresh woodsy smell of the magnolia bushes in the little pocket park behind him.

  He was still in a daze from the phone call of the night before, immersed in a deep, bitter fog of self-pity he couldn’t seem to shake off.

  Behind him, he heard a familiar voice.

  “Hello, my friend!”

  He turned to see the Greek hot dog vendor who worked that corner, a man who had sold him dozens of hot dogs over the years, pushing his cart along the sidewalk, on his way home. The man’s weather-beaten face broke into a broad smile, displaying strong, yellow teeth.

  “How are you, my friend? I no see you in long time!” he said, stopping his cart next to Lee and clapping a friendly hand on his shoulder. His hands were thick and brown, the skin mottled and cracked from the wind and sun. “Is good to see you!”

  “Yes, it’s good to see you, too,” Lee replied, and in truth, it was. One of the sweet things about life in New York was the relationships you had with people like this man. The young Guatemalan immigrant who makes your breakfast sandwich so quickly and efficiently, the Cuban deli owner who knows just how you like your coffee in the morning, the Korean salad bar lady with the good sushi at the Essex Market, the Indian grocer who sells you your daily bagel or newspaper. You rarely know their names, and you may not know much about them, but the moment you share with them every day is a thread in the fabric of city life. Lee valued these relationships: they were not complex and layered and ambiguous like intimate relationships, but that was part of their charm. New York was so full of people who came from other places, and those moments where they briefly touched, exchanging a sandwich and a greeting, were something Lee clung to and valued greatly.

  He turned to face his friend. “How have you been? How’s business?”

  The man wagged his head back and forth. “Now is so-so, you know—not so good. When September come, is much better. Everyone back to class, everyone hungry!” He winked and let out a robust belly laugh. Lee was always impressed with the man’s good spirits. After a hard day of standing outside in all kinds of weather, he still had good humor and a belly laugh. Lee didn’t think he’d be up to a job like that—and this man probably had fifteen years on him.

  “So, my friend, is good to see you—I see you again?” the man said, beginning to wheel his cart away.

  “Yes,” Lee replied. “You will definitely see me again.”

  He watched as the vendor pushed his cart uphill along the sidewalk, stooped over with the effort, favoring his r
ight leg, his shoulders rounded from years of physical labor. Watching him, Lee’s self-pity and indecision evaporated like steam from a hot dog bun. When the light changed, he strode out into the dusky street and toward John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

  Little had changed since he was last there some five months ago. The building was quiet, in the break period between the end of summer classes and the beginning of the fall term. At the front security desk, the pretty black girl with the colorfully beaded hair was absorbed in her textbook and barely glanced at him as he flashed his ID card. She pressed the release button, and he went through the metal turnstile as he had a hundred times before. Lee wanted to get used to being in the building again, to acclimatize himself, as it were, before tackling a lecture hall full of students.

  He started up the stairs to the third floor, where most of the faculty offices were, and pushed open the door to the familiar corridor. The hall was empty, which wasn’t surprising—most of the professors and staff would be enjoying the last week of summer vacation. He walked slowly down the hall, his footsteps ringing hollow through the deserted corridor.

  As he turned the corner, he heard the dreaded voice in his head, in all its reptilian coldness.

  I know about the red dress.

  His knees weakened and he began to sweat.

  “Get a grip, Campbell,” he muttered, and walked onward. But each step seemed to pound out the same three syllables, over and over. The red dress … the red dress … the red dress. His vision seemed to narrow, and the walls felt as though they were slowly beginning to press inward, closing in on him. He knew the warning signs of a panic attack, but fought the sensation by swinging his arms vigorously, concentrating on taking deep breaths.

  He passed the familiar place where there was a water stain on the ceiling in the shape of Florida, and the janitor’s closet two doors away. He headed for the big lecture hall at the end of the corridor, which was where he would probably be giving his talk. He thought he detected a faint, lingering aroma of clove cigarettes in the air.

  He reached the lecture hall, but the door was closed and locked. He tried to peer in through the gray smoked-glass partition on the door, with no success—he could see nothing except the sheen of sunlight coming through the row of tall windows on the far wall. The interior of the room was foggy and indistinct. The numbers 303 were stenciled on the top of the glass in an old-fashioned, gold-colored typeface.

  He thought he heard footsteps behind him and spun around, his heart pounding, but the hall was empty. He felt all of his senses were magnified, more acute, but especially his hearing. It was as though he had the ears of a bat, and every little sound gave him a start. He leaned against the wall and put his hand to his left side, throbbing and pulsing with each beat of his heart. Steady on, Campbell.

  There, on the opposite wall, was a student bulletin board, and clinging to it was a tattered scrap of paper with the remnants of a photograph of a smiling young woman wearing a lopsided graduation cap. Underneath the picture he could still make out the words, Please Help. He recognized it at once as a picture of one of the thousands still missing from the attack on the World Trade Center—no doubt buried under the mounds of rubble still piled high in Lower Manhattan. In the months following the tragedy, these pictures were everywhere—plastered on bus stops, park benches, trees, fences—hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, and the message was always the same: Missing—Please Help. And there was always a phone number to call. The smiling faces in the photographs were a terrible irony, as if mocking the reality of their fate—the people were never found, the phone numbers never called.

  The girl in this photo was about the same age his sister had been when she disappeared.

  The irony was suffocating. He tried to intellectualize it: Here he was, in the halls of the largest school for criminal justice in the greatest city in the world, yet he was as helpless to find his sister as the family of the lost girl was to ever find her again.

  He turned to go but was overcome with nausea and had to lean back against the wall again. Saliva spurted into his mouth. His stomach rolled and churned, but he fought it. “Damn,” he muttered, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to be sick. “ Even as he said the words, he was aware they were somewhat ridiculous, but he fought the nausea anyway, and after a couple of minutes he felt a little better. He took a few steps but was still shaking. and then realized what he really wanted, more than anything, was to scream until he was hoarse. That was impossible, as there were other people in the building.

  Suddenly he wheeled around, his body filled with an intense, gathering rage. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he lunged back toward the door and swung at the glass partition with all his might, hitting it almost directly in the center with his right fist. The glass shuddered and held for a fraction of a second, then cracked and shattered, crashing to the floor in a waterfall of broken shards.

  Lee stared at the broken pieces of glass at his feet, then at his hand, which was bleeding. He felt no pain yet—that would come later. His body was too full of adrenaline to register anything. It did occur to him with some irritation that it would be a while before he could play the piano again—some of the cuts were pretty deep. He watched with detachment as his blood dripped onto the polished tile floor. He thought of how a forensic investigation might classify it: Blood spatter from a puncture wound, non-high-velocity impact, indicating no blunt-force trauma or femoral arterial spray. Not enough volume to indicate the death of the victim. No, he wasn’t dead—not yet.

  But instead of feeling satisfaction or relief, he felt only a terrible, heavy sadness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It began that day, the delight he took in wearing soft, fluffy fabrics and lacy undergarments—the kind of thing his mother wore when she was alive. It all started that day Caleb came back home with his father, and the house was so still. Instead of the sound of his mother preparing dinner in the kitchen, there was nothing—only the quiet scuttering of mice in the attic, the dripping of rain from the eaves. It had started raining when they left the river. His father drove without speaking as the drops grew in size, splashing onto the windshield as the wipers did their brisk business of flinging them off the car. He sat watching the wiper blades swoosh back and forth. Foopah, foohpah, foo-PAH. The sound they made was so soothing—they swung in front of his tired eyes like a pendulum, hypnotizing him. Their timing was off, so that one blade was always falling a little bit behind the other one. He remembered liking the syncopated rhythm they created—he found it comforting. Foopah, FOOpah, foo-PAH.

  When they returned home, his father said nothing, retreating silently to his workshop in the basement. Caleb wandered the empty house, listening to the sound of rain on the roof. He didn’t remember deciding to go there, but found himself in the little room off the master bedroom his mother used as a dressing room. There was her dressing table, with the brushes and combs laid out, as though she had just gone for a walk. He picked up a tortoiseshell brush and lifted a long brown hair that clung to the bristles. It was her hair, probably brushed from her head this morning, one of the last things she did while still alive. He rolled it up and tucked it carefully into his pocket.

  The top drawer of her bureau was open—something black and shiny was poking out. Looking over his shoulder at the open bedroom door, he tiptoed to the dresser and pulled it out, running his hand over the silken material. It was a pair of black panties with lace trim. He put them to his face and caressed his cheek with the fabric as his father’s words ran through his head. Slut! Evil, whoring slut! She’s just like all the rest of them—can’t be trusted! He inhaled deeply, the aroma of his mother’s almond-scented body lotion filling his head. Perhaps this was the same pair she wore when she … slut, whore, evil bitch.

  His hands trembled as he slid his own pants to the ground and pulled the panties on. He almost fainted as the cool silk glided up his bare legs. He pulled it snug around his crotch, his mouth dry with excitement and shame as his penis stiff
ened and grew at the touch of the fabric. Slut! Whore! Bitch! He imagined his mother pulling on the panties just like this, standing where he stood now.

  He turned and went to her closet, where her dresses hung on their wooden hangers. His mother disliked wire hangers, because they were so easily twisted around each other. He reached for a yellow sleeveless summer dress and pulled it on over his shirt. It fell flat against his thin chest, so he rooted around in the bureau and found some panty hose, which he stuffed in the front of the dress. He had turned to admire himself in the mirror, when he heard his father’s heavy tread on the stairs.

  His heart hammered in his chest as he heard the movement of feet under the crack in the door frame, like the scurrying of gray mice, the flitting of far-off shadows—a brief, harried interruption in the thin band of yellow light that hugged the floor. He pulled off the dress, flung it into the closet, and pulled his pants back on. But he could still feel the silk panties on his skin. A satisfied smile crept across his face as he stepped out into the hall. Now he had a secret to keep from his father.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “What happened to you?” Chuck’s voice was weary, a combination of concern and irritation. He stood behind his desk, looking at Lee, arms crossed, his blond eyebrows knit in a frown, staring at his friend’s heavily bandaged hand. Lee had come straight from the emergency room to the afternoon meeting in Chuck’s office.

  “I had a misunderstanding with a door,” Lee said, avoiding eye contact.

  “Yeah, very funny.” Chuck didn’t move. “What really happened?”

  “Seriously, that’s what happened.”

  “Okay—let me see, then.”

  “Look, I didn’t try to kill myself, if that’s what you’re afraid of. If I’d done that, both wrists would be bandaged.”

  “Yeah? So let me see.” Chuck was being unusually obstinate.