Silent Slaughter

by C. E. Lawrence

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Hwang.

  “You’re welcome,” said Butts. “Thanks for coming by. We’re doing everything we can, I promise.”

  “We know,” said Mr. Hwang. “We believe in justice system.”

  Taking his wife’s arm, he escorted her gently out of the room.

  When they were gone, Butts sank back into his chair. His bulldog face sagged, and he looked as if he was about to cry. He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands.

  “The justice system,” he said. “Jesus Christ. For God’s sake, Lee, let’s get this creep.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  In the end, Butts agreed with Lee that they should call Columbia University the next day to see if Edmund Moran would come in for an interview. When Lee got home that night, Chuck was sitting on the living room couch doing paperwork.

  “Hey,” Lee said, closing the door behind him.

  “Hey,” Chuck replied without looking up. “Chinese food in the fridge.”

  Lee went to the kitchen, microwaved a couple of spareribs and noodles, and came back out into the living room with a plate of ribs and lo mein.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Fine,” Chuck said. “You?”

  “Okay.”

  Lee perched on the arm of the couch and chewed for a while. Then he said, “Sure you’re okay?”

  Chuck stopped what he was doing. “Sorry, but I have a lot of paperwork to do. I can take it into my room if you want.”

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll go for a run.”

  “You sure?”

  “It’s fine, really.” He finished the rest of the food in the kitchen, then went through to his bedroom to change. When he emerged dressed in running gear, Chuck was still on the couch, head in his hands.

  “Hey,” Lee said. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, but his voice was ragged and thick.

  “No,” said Lee. “You’re not. Stop playing goddamn games with me and tell me what’s going on.”

  Chuck raised his head, his face tragic. “Susan had a spot on her mammogram.”

  “Okay,” Lee said. “You know that most of the time those anomalies turn out to be nothing.”

  “That’s not the point!” Chuck replied, his pale skin reddening. “I wasn’t there to give her support!”

  Lee sat down opposite him in the red leather armchair.

  “Look, Chuck, there’s always going to be something. No one’s life is trouble free, and if it’s not this, it’ll be something else. If you go running back to her at every bump in the road—”

  Chuck stared at him. “It could be breast cancer, for Christ’s sake!”

  “You don’t know that yet. Why don’t you wait until she—”

  “Why don’t I just wait until she’s dead? Then I can be done with her once and for all! How about that?”

  Chuck got up and began to pace the room. Lee had never seen him like this—agitated, hostile, frightened. He wondered if his friend was on something.

  “Okay,” Lee said, trying to keep his voice calm. “Do you have any friends in Jersey you can call on to help out? Maybe she can go for her follow-up with a girlfriend.”

  Chuck snorted. “You know as well as I do that Susan doesn’t have ‘girlfriends.’ She has admirers and acquaintances and plenty of ‘frenemies,’ but—”

  “What about neighbors? Aren’t you friendly with that older couple next door?”

  “You mean the Gogolicks?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Charlie is nice enough, but Jean is a space cadet. I can’t see relying on her in a crisis.”

  “What about—” Lee began, but he was interrupted by the ringing of his landline. The caller ID showed Gemma.

  “Who is it?” Chuck asked.

  “Brian O’Reilly’s sister. I can call her back.”

  “No, no—take it,” Chuck said. “It’s okay.”

  “I can call her back—”

  “Take it.”

  Lee picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hi, it’s me—uh, Gemma.”

  “Hi.”

  “You have a minute?”

  “Uh, sure.” He watched as Chuck put on his coat and hat. Lee waved at him, trying to signal him to stay, but Chuck ignored him. He unlatched the door and slipped out of the apartment. Lee had an impulse to toss the phone down and go after him.

  “You there?” said Gemma.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m here.”

  “Sorry I didn’t call earlier—I’ve been slammed with work.”

  “I showed the notes to our forensic linguist.”

  “And?” Her voice was tight with anticipation.

  “Brian did not write the suicide note.”

  “I knew it!” she said triumphantly.

  “You realize what this means?” he said. “Your brother’s killer is still at large.”

  “Yeah, I know. We’ll both have to be careful from now on.”

  But as she spoke the words, he realized that careful might not be good enough.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Murtis Pullman slid her feather duster into its slot on her cleaning cart and took a bottle of Coke from her lunch bag. She plopped down into the chair by the door in the office, lifted her legs up onto another chair, leaned back and took a long swig of soda, savoring the acidic bite on her tongue as the liquid slid down her throat. She only liked Coke in glass bottles—none of this canned stuff the kids drank nowadays; she could taste the metal on her tongue. There was a bodega in her Washington Heights neighborhood that sold Coke in the old-fashioned bottles, and she stocked up every week, bringing them to work with her.

  Murtis had been on the cleaning staff at Columbia University for thirty-three of her sixty-seven years on God’s green earth. She had seen department chairs come and go, generations of students pass through the halls and rooms she dusted and swept, and she had seen professors receive or be denied tenure. Some of them shared bits of their lives with her—the good news and the bad—and the really nice ones even brought her gifts on the holidays.

  Murtis Jefferson Pullman was a lady of great and generous girth; her skin, brown as a coconut, was as clear and firm as that of a woman half her age. She felt that Columbia belonged as much to her as to the generations of fey, waifish students who wandered through the hallowed halls with their oversized backpacks and thirst for knowledge. She looked upon them with a mixture of motherly affection and disdain. Murtis had all the knowledge that anybody really needed: she had the love of her Savior in her heart. Since she had found Jesus, her outer life mattered not a whit. The sweetness she carried inside made up for her lowly position in life, her humble occupation of cleaning up after other people far more privileged and respected than herself.

  She took another swig of Coke and looked around the tidy office. He was a neat-freak, this one—everything stacked so perfectly on his shelves, the book bindings lined up so that they all were on the same plane. His desk was immaculate and nearly bare, with only a clock and a phone on it. No family pictures in clunky homemade frames, no sentimental keepsakes; the office was as orderly and impersonal as a hotel room. She wondered if he had any family—there was something heartbreaking and disturbing about the obsessive neatness.

  She barely saw him—once or twice darting out of the office as she arrived to clean it—and he nodded curtly to her, ducking out of sight to avoid further contact. Murtis was used to odd behavior—they were a strange lot, these university professors, with their rumpled suits, bow ties and stringy hair. And none were more peculiar than the math and science professors.

  Murtis swallowed the rest of her Coke and glanced at her watch. She could afford a few more minutes’ rest before getting back to her chores. She felt a song coming on. She leaned back, closed her eyes and let it wash over her. Songs often popped into her head, gifts from her sweet Savior. They were always about Jesus, and they came complete with words and melody. She sang them softly to herself as she worked, a
nd sometimes she would sing them to her nephew, Jeffrey, who lived with her, and he would play them on the piano, putting chords to her melodies. Jeffrey encouraged her to take them to Pastor Jackson, but Murtis had no such ambition; she was happy enough to have these songs in her heart, and the knowledge that they were a special gift from her Lord.

  You are my only Savior, sweet and good and true.

  My life was emptiness and pain before I knew you.

  I lived in a world of suffering and sin

  Before I opened my heart to let you in.

  She smiled to herself as the lyrics floated through her head—if Jeffrey was there when she got home, she would sing them to him. She took a deep breath and heaved her bulky body from the chair, wincing at the sharp twinge in her left knee. No doubt about it, the pain was getting worse. She should probably think about taking that nice young doctor’s advice about losing weight. Murtis sighed—she loved her honey buns from the local bodega, smeared in cinnamon and sugar. . . .

  As she reached for her feather duster, she thought she heard a sound coming from—where? Murtis froze, listening intently. There it was again—coming from beneath the floor, of all places. It was a kind of squeaking noise, like something a small animal might make. The office was on the first floor, and she wasn’t aware of a basement underneath the building, but she supposed there must be one. And if there was a basement, no doubt there were mice—or, worse, rats.

  In her years at Columbia there had of course been occasional infestations of vermin from time to time, but she had never heard this sound. There it was again, louder this time—eee-eeek, eee-eeek. She shuddered. Yes, it must be coming from the basement, and it was probably a rodent of some kind. It sounded trapped, poor thing—she reminded herself that God loved even the humblest of his creatures. Still, it was her duty to report it to the chief of the maintenance staff. God might love rodents, but universities did not. Murtis made a mental note to tell her boss about it as soon as she finished her rounds.

  She took up her feather duster again and began humming her new melody as she cleaned. She was happy that the good Lord had given her the gift of a song. It was a good day, Murtis thought, one she would remember.

  Later, she would reflect that she remembered that day, but not for the reasons she had thought.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  “You had a long day,” Muriel said as Leonard Butts closed the kitchen door behind him and wiped his feet on the rubber mat. No one except door-to-door salesmen and Jehovah’s Witnesses ever knocked on the front door—family and friends came and went through the side door leading into the cheery kitchen where Mrs. Butts now stood, her hands covered in flour. A red-checked apron covered her fleshy body, and her sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, exposing her plump white forearms.

  “Smells good,” Butts said, hanging his coat on the rack by the door. He lowered his stocky form into the nearest chair and rubbed his forehead wearily. The smell of meat sautéing in olive oil reached his nostrils, and he heard the comforting sound of sputtering fat in the broad iron skillet on the gas stove.

  “I’m making your favorite, breaded pork chops,” his wife replied, kissing him on the forehead before returning to her work.

  “That’s not on my new diet.”

  “I know. I thought you could use something nice this week.”

  “You’re too good to me,” he said, reaching for her.

  “I’m covered with flour,” she protested, but he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, burying his head in her comforting bosom. Here with her in their warm and cozy kitchen, he could feel his body releasing the stress of the past few days.

  “What is it, Buttons?” she asked when he released her.

  He knew his face was damp with tears, but he made no attempt to wipe them off. He looked at the signs of domesticity all around him—his little wife in her cheery apron, the pictures of their son, Joey, smiling at him from the refrigerator, the hand-sewn sampler over the sink his mother had spent so many hours on when he was a boy, with its ornate stitching and brocade borders: GOD BLESS OUR HOME.

  He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Hwang in their kitchen. Would they take the pictures of their daughter off the refrigerator, because they were too painful to look at, or leave them to remind them of happier times?

  “What’s wrong?” Muriel repeated, wiping at a tear with a floury finger.

  “Another family lost their little girl,” he said. “And they tried to pay me to find her killer. They didn’t have the money, but they tried to give it to me anyway.”

  “Oh, Buttons,” she said, cradling him in her arms.

  “We know who the guy is—or probably is—but we haven’t got a lick of solid evidence yet.”

  “You’ll get him,” Muriel said. “I know you will.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he said. “God, I hope you’re right.”

  Later that night, Leonard Butts crept down the hall and pushed open the door to his son’s room. A thin shaft of light from the hall lamp fell across the boy’s bed. Joey lay on his back, one arm flung over his head, the other clutching a baseball mitt. Pennants for all the major-league teams were carefully arranged on the wall above the bed—Butts remembered the rainy Saturday he helped Joey put them up.

  A baseball signed by Derek Jeter sat in a glass case on the bookshelf. Joey’s dirt-encrusted cleats lay in the center of the room, where he had left them—no amount of scolding from his mother had so far affected his boyish untidiness. The carelessness of youth, Butts thought—and, he hoped, the freedom from care as well. He longed to keep his boy as far from the troubles of the adult world as he could.

  Looking at Joey, his blond hair the same shade as his own at that age, his face so much like Muriel’s, with the same upturned nose and pointed chin, Butts felt a tugging in his heart that reached to the center of his being. Parenthood was so many things—all the clichés and all the pratfalls, the corny Hallmark sentiments and the frustrations. And there was a dark side too—sometimes Butts feared that Muriel loved Joey more than she loved him, and other times he was threatened by the boy’s promise, by the fear he would eclipse his father in all things.

  But now, looking at his son sleeping so sweetly, surrounded by his beloved baseball mementos, Butts felt only tenderness—a swelling, all-enveloping love so fierce, it frightened him. If anything happened to Joey—if anyone were to hurt him, Butts thought—he would instantly slip from the ranks of law enforcers and turn into a single-minded beast bent on vengeance. Not justice—vengeance. In that way he was able to identify with the criminals he pursued, to understand their rage and fury. It wasn’t hard for him to imagine circumstances where he would feel exactly the same as the monster he now pursued.

  These weren’t thoughts he shared with anyone—not his wife, not Lee Campbell, no one. It was as if saying these things out loud might release the demons of fate and start events tumbling down a disastrous path he was powerless to stop. He liked to think of himself as rational, but perhaps his Polish fatalism ran deeper than reason. You didn’t tempt fate, and you kept your head down so that the dark forces of evil didn’t find their way to your doorstep.

  He took one last look, closed the door to his son’s room, and tiptoed down the hall to his bedroom, where his wife was waiting to welcome him with her plump, warm body.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  The bleating of his bedside phone shook Lee out of a deep slumber. Thrashing around to throw off the covers, he knocked the receiver to the floor.

  “Damn!” he muttered, leaning down and fishing around under the bed. Retrieving it, he put it to his ear and sat upright against the carved Victorian headboard. “Who is it?” he barked, glancing at the clock, which read 7:05 A.M.

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir.” The accent was British, distinctly working class, and he recognized it at once.

  “What can I do for you, Sergeant Ruggles?”

  Ruggles was Chuck Morton’s desk serg
eant at the Bronx Major Case Squad. Efficient, devoted and helpful, he was the kind of right-hand man most station commanders could only dream of.

  Ruggles cleared his throat. “Well, sir, I was wondering if you had heard from Captain Morton. I just spoke with his wife, and she says he hasn’t been home for several days.”

  “Wait a minute,” Lee said, rubbing his forehead to clear the cobwebs from his brain. “Are you telling me that Chu—uh, Captain Morton—hasn’t been at the station house?”

  “He didn’t turn up yesterday, sir,” Ruggles said. “When I called his cell phone, it bounced straight to voice mail. When I finally got through to his wife, she said she hadn’t seen him either. And he’s usually here by this time in the morning, but there’s been no word from him. That’s why I’m calling you, sir, seeing as you’re his best friend and all.”

  “Christ,” Lee muttered, throwing off the covers. “I’ll call you back, Sergeant, okay?”

  “Right you are, sir—thank you, sir.”

  Lee slung the receiver back into place, threw his legs over the side of the bed and heaved himself to his feet, swearing. He was not a morning person.

  He marched into the hall and threw open the door to Chuck’s room. His friend lay in bed, curled in a fetal position. He wasn’t asleep, though—his eyes stared blankly at the opposite wall.

  “Hey,” Lee said. “What gives?”

  Chuck didn’t look up.

  “What’s going on?” Lee demanded, alarmed.

  “I don’t feel well,” Chuck said, his voice shaky.

  “Are you sick?”

  “Not like that,” Chuck said, trembling all over. “I’ve never felt this way before.”

  “How’s that?” Lee asked, but he already had a good idea about the answer.

  “Like the walls are closing in. Like I don’t want to get out of bed or do anything. And scared. Really, really frightened.”

  “Of what?”