Silent Victim

by C. E. Lawrence

  He took a deep breath and went into the kitchen for a glass of water, passing the piano. It sat silent in the corner of the living room, moonlight reflecting off its shiny black veneer, a reminder that it would be a long while before he would be able to play again. He poured himself a glass of water.

  So the demons still raged in his soul. He took a drink, cursing his father for leaving him with nothing but memories and bad dreams.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  George Favreau was an ashen-faced, nondescript little man, neatly dressed in gray trousers and a pinstriped blue blazer. Quiet, cooperative, and well mannered, he was the very essence of inoffensiveness—unassuming, well spoken, with a light, gentle voice.

  As they waited for Chuck to finish with a phone call, Lee watched Favreau through the one-way glass partition. He sat patiently, studying his immaculate nails and playing with a St. Christopher’s medal around his neck. His eyes moved nervously around the room, then fixed on the door. He stared at it hungrily, like a dog waiting to be let out for a walk.

  Chuck came down the hall, Butts trotting behind him, his short legs pumping to keep up with Morton’s long stride. They both carried mugs of fresh coffee.

  “Come on—let’s get this over with,” Morton said. It was Saturday, and Lee knew he hated working on weekends. But they all knew they couldn’t afford to waste time on this investigation. They had flagged the Favreau house because he occasionally went to the Swan—and because he was a convicted sex offender. His name turned up on a list of credit card receipts—and on VICAP—so they figured he was worth a closer look.

  The three of them entered the room, Lee carrying a cup of coffee for Favreau. Butts winked at him, expecting the coffee to be a setup for the good-cop/bad-cop routine, but actually Lee felt sorry for the poor little guy. He had studied his file: Favreau had done his time, attended every counseling session set up by the court, and his parole officer said he seemed truly contrite for what he’d done. Lee didn’t doubt it—the man had a sincere, self-effacing manner, without the underlying arrogance of a true psychopath. This guy might be sick, Lee thought, but he was no killer.

  Lee knew it wasn’t unusual for Peeping Toms to graduate to more hardcore crime, but this guy—he just didn’t think so. Detective Butts sat directly in front of Favreau, with Lee to his right and Chuck on his left side.

  As the three of them took their places in the room, Favreau studied his hands. They were small and delicate, the nails pink and well cared for. Lee had trouble imagining those hands killing a woman—or a man, for that matter. Favreau had been a math professor at Rutgers before his arrest and prosecution for sex crimes. Maybe it was a coincidence that Ana was taking classes there—but maybe not.

  “So, Mr. Fav-reau,” Butts said, “do you know why you’ve been brought in here?”

  Favreau looked up at the detective and pursed his lips, as though he had just eaten a lemon. “I can only assume you have orders to beat the bushes a little to flush out this notorious murderer. A useless and ineffective gesture, of course, but something to placate the public thirst for vengeance.”

  Lee looked at Chuck, who sat back in his chair, arms crossed. He had evidently decided to let Butts take the lead on this one. Lee wondered how Butts would deal with this guy—and to his surprise, the detective backed off a little.

  “Look, Mr. Fav-reau, only you know whether or not you have anything to do with these crimes, okay? So let’s just say that even if you’re innocent, the easier you make my job, the sooner we can both get outta this dump, right?”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Favreau responded, flicking a speck of something from the table. Meticulous, orderly, outwardly calm, Lee thought. Like the killer.

  Butts took a gulp of coffee. “Okay, good—good. So it’s pretty basic stuff, really—where were you on the night of so and so, this and that. Okay?”

  “Fire away, Detective,” Favreau replied smoothly, giving Lee a little smile. “Thanks for the coffee, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Butts consulted his notes, though Lee knew it was purely for show. He had a nearly photographic memory, and no doubt had each date memorized. “Do you remember your whereabouts on August—”

  “Twentieth?” Favreau finished for him. “You see, Detective,” he said with a wry smile, “I know exactly why I’m here. And believe me, when I read in the papers about that poor girl’s death, I made sure to take an exact accounting of my actions, because I knew sooner or later, unless it was solved quickly, someone would try to put my head on the chopping block. Not that it’s your fault.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I mean, you’re only doing your job, right?”

  “Okay, fine,” Chuck said. “We’re only doing our jobs. Big of you to give us that. So would you mind telling us where you were that night?”

  Favreau placed his manicured fingertips together. “At the movies. I am an avid fan—I see nearly everything the moment it comes out. Ask anyone. Helps keep my mind off things.”

  “Okay,” Morton replied slowly. “And was anyone with you?”

  Favreau smiled. “I’m afraid not. I was forced to enjoy Julia Roberts’s manifold charms by myself that night—except for the other people in the theater, of course. And of course I saved my ticket stub. Under the right circumstances, it can be tax deductible—did you know that?” He took a neatly folded yellow ticket stub from his breast pocket and handed it to Chuck. “You’ll find my fingerprints on it, too. If I’m not mistaken, you already have a set of my prints on file.”

  Chuck studied the ticket. “Well, it’s the right day, but you could have gotten this in any number of ways. Did anyone see you at the cinema that night?”

  “I’m not really sure. I’m not exactly someone who stands out in a crowd, as you may have noticed.”

  Butts leaned forward. “You were seen on the campus of Rutgers prior to the victim’s death. What business did you have there?”

  “No business at all, really. I was just wandering around the campus, reflecting on better days, when I taught there. Mathematics. Oh, but you probably already know that—no doubt you read my file. But did you also know that I have an IQ of 165? Genius level, so they tell me. I’m afraid it hasn’t done me all that much good.”

  “So you were just wandering around?” Butts said. “Did you speak to anyone?”

  Favreau shook his head. “No. I recognized some of the security guards, but I was too embarrassed to say hello. Sort of puts a crimp in your self-confidence, being convicted as a sex offender, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Butts replied acidly. “So how long were you wandering around campus?”

  “Oh, for at least an hour. I am allowed to do that, you know—it’s a free country, or at least until our Republican administration has its way. Then, look out—pretty soon civil liberties will be just a fond memory. Sort of like my career, actually,” he added thoughtfully.

  Lee wasn’t sure how much of what Favreau was saying was an act—he seemed to be playing with them, enjoying the self-pitying ruminations and wisecracks. He liked having an audience. That wasn’t surprising—good teachers were part actor, part scholar. According to his file, Favreau’s reputation as a professor before his fall from grace had been very good—he was popular among both students and faculty. He had a dry way of saying things that made you wonder how sincere he was.

  Lee was beginning to change his mind about Favreau. He no longer seemed so pathetic or downtrodden. In fact, he was downright self-possessed, even arrogant, in his professorial way. Arrogant—maybe the contrition routine had been for the benefit of his parole officer, or maybe it too was just an act. He decided to tell Chuck later that they should watch this guy.

  In the end, nothing constructive came of the interview. Favreau claimed to have been at the movies, but couldn’t produce anyone who had actually seen him there. It also struck all three of them that there was something a little tidy about his alibi—he happened to be at a movie during the time frame in w
hich the murder was committed, but if he was setting up a fake alibi, why not do a better job? But then, with an IQ of 165, he may have already anticipated all of these questions, and, if he was the killer, be several steps ahead of them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Caleb pushed back the French lace curtains and looked out the window. Soon twilight would come, and he would venture out. He loved the city at night. When the sun went down, he owned the streets. He loved to roam around when he knew everyone else was asleep. His favorite time of night was 3 A.M.—the Witching Hour, or, as his Gran had called it, Dead Time. The time when the bridge between the living and the dead is thinnest, when spirits can be seen by those who have the Gift.

  He had the Gift—he’d known it since earliest childhood. He saw his first spirit at the age of five, only he didn’t know it was a spirit. He just thought it was the old man who lived across the bridge in the woods. But when his father mentioned the brutal murder that had taken place there many years ago, he knew—knew that the old man was dead and had been for many years before Caleb saw him.

  He didn’t tell anyone except his Gran, and only then on her deathbed. He touched the cream-colored lace curtains fondly. She had made them, years ago, and he had taken them with him when he left. He missed his Gran. She alone understood him. She alone had kindness in her heart for him, and when she was gone, terrible things began to happen—terrible, unspeakable things. He covered his eyes with his hands to make the images go away, but that only made them burn brighter in his head. They came to him at night. But if he stayed up all night, catching catnaps during the day, that would sometimes keep the memories from swirling through his dreams, shadowy visitors looming over him as he slept.

  Now he saw spirits all the time—especially the ones he killed. They came to him at night, reaching toward him with their dead, white fingers, their faces strewn with seaweed and water lilies and other flora of the rivers and streams. They looked so wistful, so lost, and sometimes they seemed puzzled, as if they couldn’t understand why they no longer walked the earth among the living. He tried to explain to them, tried to tell them why he had to do it, but the words never came. He was as mute as the lovely mermaids whose murky faces haunted his dreams.

  Slowly, he let fall the curtain his Gran had made with her own dear, beloved old hands. He picked up one of the syringes from the table in front of him. His father wouldn’t mind if he borrowed one or two from time to time—the people at the hospital had given him so many. The familiar thrill threaded its way through his bowels as he watched the sun slink its way out of the sky. It was time.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  On Sunday, Lee left early to get to his mother’s house for Kylie’s birthday dinner. He took the Holland Tunnel as usual, heading west on Route 78, but when he reached the turnoff to Route 202 he took local roads the rest of the way, winding through the towns of Morris, Sussex, and Hunterdon Counties. He watched pastures give way to villages, winding through narrow main streets before emerging back out and past the sweet-smelling farm fields of the central portion of the state.

  Most people thought of Jersey as an ugly jumble of industrial wasteland wrapped around Newark and Jersey City. That’s what you saw when you came in from the south: miles of polluted swamplands crisscrossed by major highways and crammed with factories and spewing smokestacks. Visitors to New York flying into Newark Airport would go rattling and jouncing along poorly kept roads with signs that looked as if they’d been there since the 1930s—and that would remain their only impression of the much-maligned neighboring state.

  But the vast majority of New Jersey was fertile farm fields, orchards, and pastures. Driving through the soft late-summer countryside, it was hard to imagine that there was anything harsh or wicked in the world.

  But of course, Lee knew better He was nine and Laura just six when their secure and cozy existence was shattered, like a plastic Christmas village picked up by an unseen hand and shaken, the familiar scene obscured by the snowflakes falling all around. There had been increasing tension between their parents for some time. They had few arguments, but there was a growing distance between them that both children noticed. Long silences at the dinner table were becoming more common, their mother serving the meal, then wordlessly slipping into her chair without even saying grace, something that had been unthinkable in the past. She had always insisted in maintaining certain social rituals, regardless of belief. But lately she had become a grim creature, going about her daily tasks with a dour determination that was unlike her, her high spirits dampened by some unseen sorrow. It seemed to Lee that she was laughing less and less, and he often saw her staring out the window after his father’s car as he drove off to work in the morning.

  His father, too, had changed: gone were the evenings when he would come up behind her in the kitchen and tickle her neck. She would turn just as he slipped his arm around her waist, hugging her to him, tucking his head into the nape of her neck. Neither of them was given to public display of affection, so this was a ritual the children especially enjoyed. But now they seemed to be moving around the house like strangers, talking only when necessary, acknowledging each other’s presence with no affection or intimacy. There were no fights, but there was such a coldness between them that the air itself seemed to shiver. Lee longed to ask about it, but important matters such as that were rarely spoken about in their family.

  It was a Friday evening in September, and their father had come home late, missing dinner that night, whiskey on his breath, his mood unusually volatile. The children were upstairs getting ready for bed, and they heard his footsteps on the stairs, slower and heavier than usual. They were both in Lee’s room. Laura was sitting cross-legged on the floor reading a book of Grimm’s fairy tales, and Lee was mending a piece of track on his model train. Their father came into the room and greeted the children with unusually affectionate hugs for such a normally reserved man, squeezing both of them until they pulled away, puzzled at his odd behavior.

  Lee remembered his words on that night, because they were some of the last words he ever heard his father say.

  “I love you both very much—you know that, don’t you?” he said, holding each of them by the shoulder. Lee remembered the feel of that strong hand pressing down on him, a kind of desperation in the touch. He could smell the musty aroma of malt whiskey on his father’s breath, and looked at his sister, who seemed as perplexed as he was. She was wearing her pink pajamas with the fluffy white bunny tail, and next to her was her beloved Pooh bear with the missing orange glass eye, whom she always slept with. Both of the children were taken aback by this emotional declaration of affection in a man who believed in spareness in all things—except perhaps single-malt Scotch.

  Duncan Campbell stood gazing at them, and Lee was startled to see his eyes brimming with tears. “Whatever may come,” he said huskily in a voice throaty from emotion and whiskey, “always remember that I love you.” The children were too surprised to say anything. They sensed from their father’s mood something important and solemn was about to happen, but they had no idea what it was.

  Their father opened his mouth as if he was going to say something more, then, changing his mind, turned and left the room. Laura started to cry softly. As always, feeling that it was his job as the older brother to comfort and take care of her, Lee patted her head as though she were a puppy and said, “Don’t cry—it’s all right.” But even as he said the words, he did not believe them. He knew that something was very wrong.

  The sound of conversation rose from downstairs, and he and Laura crept out to the landing overlooking the living room, peering down through the wooden slats to listen to the unfolding drama. Their parents were in the kitchen, but the door was open, and their voices carried through the house to where the children sat listening intently.

  “Don’t lay all of this on my doorstep,” their father was saying, his voice tight and angry, the words a little slurred at the edges.

  “That’s exactly where I’m laying
it!” their mother replied, shrill and almost hysterical. Lee’s stomach twisted as he listened—this was so unlike his mother, normally so calm and in control of her emotions. Laura grasped his hand in hers, crying harder now, the tears spilling onto the front of her pink pajamas. Lee squeezed her hand and put his other arm around her shoulders.

  “None of this would ever have happened,” his father said, “if it weren’t for—”

  “Don’t you dare bring that up!” his mother cried savagely. “I swear, Duncan Campbell, if you ever dare mention that again—”

  Now it was his father who interrupted. “Fine, I won’t. But you know as well as I do if we’d only been able to talk about it, none of this would have—”

  “Doesn’t that sound all tidy and virtuous?” his mother sneered. “All we have to do is talk about it, is that it, and everything will be all right?”

  There was a pause, and his father said slowly, “You blame me. You have always blamed me, and you will always blame me. There’s nothing I can do with that, Fiona, and I have tried these past three years—God knows I’ve tried. I thought I could earn your forgiveness, but I see now I was wrong.”

  “Forgiveness!” his mother hissed. “After what you’ve done, you can talk about forgiveness?”

  There was a long pause, and then the sound of footsteps coming out of the kitchen and toward the living room. The children ducked back from the stairwell landing, but their father crossed to the front door without a glance in their direction. He was wearing his coat and hat and carrying a suitcase. Their mother came running after him, crying hysterically.