Silent Victim

by C. E. Lawrence

  She heard footsteps on the floor above her, and the sound of a door opening. She struggled to move, but it was no use. There was a rustling sound; then a yellow band of light washed across the floor. He had turned on a light, perhaps at the top of the stairs. She held her breath at the sound of the footsteps coming down stone steps—he was coming! There was the sound of something falling, then a muffled curse. He had dropped something—a flashlight, perhaps, or something more sinister?

  The heavy wooden door opposite her was flung open, and a figure stood silhouetted in the hall light from behind. Elena blinked, trying to make out his face.

  “Hi there,” he said in a surprisingly mild voice. He took a step into the room and clicked on the overhead light, giving her a clearer view of his face. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the limo driver from the night before, but she was certain it was him. He had a delicate face, not handsome, but … pretty. Yes, that was it; he was pretty. She felt she had seen him somewhere else, too, but couldn’t think where. He leaned over and removed the gag.

  “What do you want from me?” she rasped, her voice tight and dry.

  “I’ve come to make you a bit more comfortable,” he said, holding a bottle of water out to her.

  She gazed at the bottle longingly, saliva gathering in her mouth. She shook her head. She was so thirsty, but she couldn’t take the chance.

  “Don’t worry—it’s not drugged,” he said, smiling. “I don’t need to drug you anymore.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Look,” he said, holding it close to her face, “the seal isn’t broken. Tell you what—I’ll take a drink myself first, okay?” He unscrewed the lid and took a long swallow, then offered her the bottle.

  She was so thirsty; her throat burned.

  “Come on,” he said, placing the mouth of the bottle to her lips. She leaned forward and drank, sucking greedily at the sweet, clear liquid, until the bottle was empty.

  “There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” he said. “I’m really not such a bad guy—you’ll see.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  He studied her, as if considering the question for the first time.

  “Not right now, anyway,” he said. “I like you. Of course, not as much as Matt liked you, but then Matt is a whore.”

  Matt … Matt? Where had she heard that name before? And then it came to her: Matt was the young man she had been flirting with in the bar. She looked at her captor again, and it suddenly became clear to her. He was the young tranny who had attacked Matt for flirting with her! So, she thought, the killer is a transvestite.

  “Frankly, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,” he said. “I wasn’t even planning to capture you, but I was on my way home, driving up Sixth Avenue, and—well, there you were. It felt like fate was calling the shots.”

  “I’m a cop,” she said.

  He gazed at her with pity in his eyes.

  “Oh, that’s too bad. Now I really will have to kill you.”

  He took a step toward her.

  A black mist began to descend over Krieger’s eyes, but she fought the growing panic. “No—wait!”

  He stopped and looked at her. “What?”

  “If they find my body, you’re dead.”

  He laughed softly. “I’ve evaded them so far. What makes you think you’re so special?”

  “No, you don’t understand,” she rasped, trying not to let the fear seep into her voice. “Right now they have a small task force looking for you. The minute you kill a cop they’ll call in—”

  “—the National Guard?” He gave a dismissive snort. “I don’t think so.”

  “Everyone and anyone they can spare. They will hunt you down—and if they can, they’ll kill you on the spot.”

  A narrowing at the corner of his eyes expressed the tiniest seed of doubt. Hope blossomed in her chest, and she fought to remain calm.

  “And if they don’t manage to kill you right away, do you know what they do to cop killers in jail?”

  He tried bravado, but it sounded hollow. “Reward them, I would think.”

  She tried a short laugh, but it came out equally fake. “Oh, not the other prisoners—I mean the guards. They rape you, first separately and then together. And then they—”

  There was a muffled scuffling sound upstairs, as though an animal was clawing at the basement door. His head snapped toward the sound; then he turned back to Krieger.

  “I’ll deal with you later.”

  Turning sharply, he left the room and bounded up the stairs two at a time. She could hear his shoes on the creaky boards.

  Left alone in the dark, Elena Krieger’s whole body began to tremble violently. She took a deep breath and began again.

  Lieber Gott, mach mich fromm….

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  “Her name is Carolyn Benton, and she is—was—sixteen years old.”

  Chuck Morton tossed a folder of crime-scene photos onto the desk and glowered at the other three men in the room. He looked angry and exhausted and fed up. But then, they all were, Lee thought, looking at his friend. Morton was fishing around in his desk drawer for some thumbtacks to put the photos up on the bulletin board with all the other pictures of the victims, their poor dead bodies mute testimony to the impotence and helplessness everyone in the room felt. While most people were home having dinner, here they were, stuck in the cramped office once again.

  Things could hardly be worse, in Lee’s view. A serial killer was still at large, he and Kathy weren’t speaking, and Krieger was missing. Poor brave, foolish Krieger—while he couldn’t say he liked her, exactly, he had come to respect her as a formidable presence. He suspected she had more integrity than she was given credit for.

  And now this. He looked at the pictures of Carolyn Benton spread out on the desk. The photo of her dead body bore little resemblance to the one of her with her family, all lined up in front of a grand marble fireplace. They wore expensive-looking matching Christmas sweaters—thick, creamy Irish wool with red and green trim. Her father wore a cheery Santa hat with a big red tassel. Her mother was petite and athletic-looking, with the kind of midwinter tan that didn’t come from a tanning salon, but from a Caribbean cruise—probably on their own private yacht. Her brother was clean-cut and handsome and, Lee guessed, a couple of years older than Carolyn, probably a freshman at Yale or Duke or some other school where money and pedigree mattered as much as grade point average.

  Lee held up the family Christmas photo. “Where did you get this one?”

  Chuck ran a hand over his stiff blond crew cut and looked down at his shoes. “The family brought it with them when they ID’d the body this morning. Said they wanted us to know what she really looked like.”

  Lee could understand why. In the crime-scene photo, Carolyn lay on the banks of the East River, where she had been found floating a few hours ago. Her eyes had been removed, and this time the note had been found not attached to her body, but in her mouth—as with the others, neatly wrapped in a Ziploc bag.

  Sergeant Ruggles studied the picture and looked nervously at his boss. After Krieger’s disappearance he begged to join the task force officially, and Chuck had relented, removing him from desk duty for the duration of the investigation.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” Morton said, his pale face reddening. “The family has already released the same picture to the media. They’re even talking about giving interviews—the victim’s ‘bereaved loved ones’ and all that.”

  “Do they really think that’s going to help catch this guy?” Butts said with disgust. “Or are they just publicity hogs?”

  “Who knows?” Chuck answered. “But if we can’t keep control of what the media does and doesn’t know we’re in even deeper than before.”

  “That’s all we need,” Butts grumbled. “A game of tug-of-war with the media.”

  Lee had his own personal struggle to wage, and had no desire to inflict it upon anyone else. He could feel the f
amiliar claw of depression tugging at him, trying to pull him downward into its evil embrace. He was determined to keep it at bay at least until the investigation was over. The possibility of that being anytime soon felt very remote right now.

  “What about this note?” he asked.

  Chuck handed him the printout copy, with the familiar block-letter handwriting.

  “Okay,” Chuck said to him, “Let’s go over what we know about him already, and if there’s anything you can add, this is the time.”

  Lee felt a sense of accusation behind his words, but just nodded.

  “You know,” Butts remarked, “the water may be part of his signature, but it sure as hell helps eliminate evidence.”

  “Yeah,” Chuck agreed. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  Lee summoned his dwindling wits, grabbed a Magic Marker, and wrote on the easel next to the bulletin board.

  Butts scratched his ear. “Okay, I get the gender, but how do you figure the age?”

  “The crimes are too sophisticated for a teenager, so he’s at least in his twenties. The fantasy is well developed and elaborate, so he thought about this for a long time before his first kill. Therefore, he could be as old as his early thirties.”

  Ruggles frowned. “Excuse me, sir, but why couldn’t he be older?”

  “It’s not impossible, especially if he was in jail for unrelated crimes for a period of time—but my guess is that’s not the case. He’s clever and he’s careful. I’m not saying he hasn’t broken the law before—I just don’t think he’s been caught yet.”

  “Why do you think he’s white?” Butts asked.

  “Two reasons. For one thing, most serial offenders are. But more importantly, all of the victims are white. He kills cross-gender, but it’s unlikely that he would also kill cross-racially. If he were black, or even Hispanic, we would expect some of the victims to be as well.”

  Chuck grunted and folded his arms. “All right—continue.”

  Lee turned back to the board and wrote:

  “I think I catch your drift, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Ruggles offered. “Yes, Ruggles?” Chuck said.

  “Well, it’s the killings, sir—they’re all spread out, which indicates that he is quite, uh, able to get around, you know. And I expect that his job could give him such mobility, as well as familiarity with the Upper East Side and the Bronx. Is that what you meant, sir?” he asked Lee.

  “You have the makings of a first-class profiler, Sergeant,” he replied, and Ruggles’s rather prominent ears turned scarlet.

  “Okay, okay,” Butts grumbled irritably. “So he gets around. What else?” Lee turned and wrote:

  “We know about the gender issues,” Chuck said, “but just how literate do you think he is?”

  “That’s a good question. Krieger said the notes indicated he was trying to make an impression. He might be an over-achiever trying to impress us with how intellectual he is. There was that reference to Hamlet in the note found on Ana, but it was clumsily done.”

  Butts shook his head. “Good God. It’s not enough that he’s leadin’ us on by the nose—now he wants us to admire his learning on top of it?”

  “We’re his audience,” Lee pointed out. “We’ve probably given him more attention in the past few weeks than he’s had in his whole life.”

  “I see, sir—that makes sense to me,” Ruggles said.

  Butts glared at him. “So basically he’s enjoying all this?” the detective said with disgust.

  “On one level, absolutely. But people who know him will notice his behavior changing—maybe he’s losing weight, or becoming forgetful. He might be short of temper or preoccupied, or acting odd in other ways.”

  He turned and wrote on the board in capital letters, underlining the words twice.

  “You said that before,” Chuck commented. “That he had some kind of trauma around water early in life. Any ideas what that could be?”

  “Someone close to him might have drowned, sir,” Ruggles offered.

  “We already thought of that,” Butts said in a bored voice. Lee turned and wrote.

  “What about the eyes?” said Butts.

  “I think it’s related. I think his trauma with water also involved being observed, maybe by women.”

  “The first victim whose eyes he removed was male, sir,” Ruggles suggested.

  “Good point,” Lee said. “So probably it isn’t gender specific, but could just be his signature evolving.” Underneath the last entry he wrote:

  “That’s self-explanatory,” said Chuck. “But how does it help us?”

  “He’s methodical and thorough. He probably drives a late-model car, well maintained. His appearance will be neat and not call attention to itself.”

  “What about visiting the bodies, sir? Might he do that?” Ruggles asked. “I remember how the Green River Killer used to do that, and that’s how they caught him.”

  “It’s possible,” Lee said. “If they are there long enough without being discovered—but we’ve hardly given him time. They’ve usually been discovered within a day or two at the most.”

  “I take your point, sir,” Ruggles said.

  “The water motif means more to him than it did with the Green River Killer,” Lee mused.

  “Right,” Chuck agreed. “The Green River Killer just used the water to dispose of his victims, but with this guy you think there’s a deeper meaning there.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Lee said. “I don’t know if it’ll help us find him, but it’s likely there was a precipitating stressor before his first victim. Something in his life that changed—probably for the worse.”

  “A breakup, a job loss, something like that?” Butts suggested.

  “Could be—but I think we should keep our minds open. The important thing is not the event itself, but his reaction to it. Whatever it was, it pushed him over the edge, and caused him to start killing.”

  “All right,” said Chuck, looking at his watch. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I need some caffeine.”

  He scooped some coffee into the Krups grinder and pushed the button. Lee watched as the beans tumbled over each other as the blades shredded and ground them to dust. The loud clattering assaulted his sleep-deprived system and made his ears ring. He looked at the others. Butts was staring at the coffee grinder with a blank expression, Ruggles was fiddling with the photos on the bulletin board, and Chuck was leaning wearily on the edge of his desk, pouring water into the coffeemaker.

  It was going to be a long night.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Later that night, shortly after arriving home, Lee heard a rapid, timid rapping on his door. When he opened it he was stunned to find Charlotte Perkins standing there, rain dripping from her soaked garments. She wore a long woolen cloak with a hood, but it was no match for tonight’s downpour. Her matted hair hung in damp strands around her face, and she was shivering.

  “The lady who lives downstairs let me into the building,” she said apologetically.

  “Come in, please,” he said, taking her sopping wet coat and hanging it on the coatrack to dry. “How did you find me?”

  “You left your card with my brother when you were at our house.” She looked around the apartment while rubbing her hands together.

  “Can I get you something hot to drink?”

  “Y-yes, p-please,” she said, her teeth chattering.

  He put the kettle on and came back to the living room. She was seated on the ottoman in front of the couch, her thin arms wrapped around her body. Whereas Ana Watkins had sauntered in and taken possession of the place as if she owned it, Charlotte Perkins was an uncomfortable visitor, trying to take up as little space as possible.

  “Would you like some dry clothes?” he asked.

  She looked up at him gratefully. “Do you have some?”

  “Yes—my, uh, girlfriend keeps some clothes here I think you could wear.”

  Was Kathy still his girlfriend? She hadn’t calle
d to ask for her clothes back yet, at least. He thought of giving Charlotte something of his, but that felt like too intimate a gesture for this virginal woman in her prim lace-up boots and long skirt. He suffered a brief pang of guilt at offering Kathy’s clothes, but brushed it aside. Charlotte Perkins was at least half a foot taller than Kathy, but had the rail-thin build of a fashion model, and he thought she would be able to slip into one of Kathy’s dresses easily.

  He ducked into the bedroom and returned with the most conservative things he could find in the closet—a long flowered skirt and a long-sleeved black oxford shirt. He handed them to Charlotte and pointed the way to the bathroom.

  When she came out he had hot tea waiting. He was right—Kathy’s clothes did fit, up to a point. Charlotte’s long arms protruded from the shirtsleeves, which came down just past her elbows. He took her wet clothes down to the laundry room to put in the dryer, and when he returned she was perched on the edge of the sofa sipping Earl Grey (he didn’t care for it much, but something told him that she would). He asked her why she had come.

  She clutched her cup in her hands and hunched over her knees. Once again Lee was reminded of a tall, thin bird—an egret, perhaps, or a heron. Her wet hair was plastered to her head, and made her deep-set, luminous eyes appear even larger. He handed her a fresh bath towel for her hair and sat across from her on the leather hassock.

  “You must excuse me, but this is very difficult,” she said, running the towel over her hair. He couldn’t help notice how it curled around her face when damp, and looked rather fetching. In spite of her maidenly ways, she was quite an attractive woman.