Silent Screams s-1

by C. E. Lawrence

  "What's 'gentle' about these crimes?" Chuck asked.

  "The killer is someone who didn't seem threatening to his victims, which means he was probably shy and unassuming-"

  "Or smooth and convincing, like Bundy," Nelson interjected.

  "Then there are the physical difficulties of one perpetrator doing this all by himself," Lee went on.

  "Yeah," Butts agreed. "It does seem kinda tricky."

  "The girls were all low-risk victims who were left in public places," Lee continued. "And the carving is both arrogant and incredibly risky. At least one perpetrator is controlling and organized, with a sophisticated knowledge of forensic investigation."

  "It's perfectly believable that it could be the work of one person," Nelson argued.

  "If there are two killers," Lee continued, "we could expect the more submissive partner would be exhibiting odd behavior as the stress begins to get to him. People around him would notice this."

  "What about the other guy?" Florette asked.

  "If he is in a relationship of some kind, he would be controlling and possibly violent-though not necessarily physically violent. But he would certainly be manipulative and controlling. He might have a history of petty crimes: shoplifting, breaking and entering, that kind of thing. But he might not have a criminal record yet, depending on how old he is-or how lucky."

  "What about these mysterious text messages you've been getting?" Chuck asked, changing the subject. "Do you think they're related?"

  "I don't know," Lee replied. All attempts to trace them had been unsuccessful so far.

  "What text messages?" Nelson asked. "I didn't hear anything about that."

  The door was flung open, and Detective Butts stormed into the room, brandishing a newspaper over his head as though he were going to swat someone with it.

  "What the hell is this?" he demanded, slapping the paper down on Morton's desk.

  Nelson's eyes narrowed and hardened, as they did when he was dangerously irritated. Butts was oblivious to Nelson's mood, however; his square body was rigid with rage.

  "Look at what these pansy reporters wrote! Where the hell do they get off writing this kind of crap?"

  Lee looked down at the paper, its headline screaming out alarm:

  Slasher continues to terrorize city.Police baffled.

  "For Chrissake, talk about yellow journalism!" Butts fumed, shoving a chewed cigar stub into his mouth.

  Florette snorted. "Well, what do you expect from the Post?"

  "That's all we need, to have a goddamn panic on our hands!" Butts threw himself into the beat-up chair in front of the window and stared out moodily.

  Lee looked down at the headline, and read the first paragraph of text. "The killer is not content to merely kill, but must mutilate his victims in order to achieve his sick satisfaction…" He looked at Butts. "Where did they get this? This information wasn't released to the public." What he didn't say was that it was curious that the press had picked up on the nickname Butts himself had chosen for the killer.

  "Who knows?" Butts replied. "They're goddamn vultures-scavengers makin' money off these girls' deaths."

  "Well, if you put it that way, we are too," Florette pointed out.

  Butts chewed viciously on his cigar, nearly biting it in two.

  "It's not the same thing! We're workin' to solve this thing. Our job is about protecting people."

  "Well, we're not going to get very far if someone keeps leaking things to the press," Lee pointed out.

  Butts got up and tossed what was left of his cigar in the trash basket next to Morton's desk and sat in one of the captain's chairs scattered around the desk. "It probably was one of the geeks in the morgue, or maybe a CSI did it. Who knows? Could be anyone."

  Chuck walked into the room, his face grim.

  "We've got trouble," he said, sitting behind his desk. "Walker's lodged a formal complaint against you," he said to Lee.

  Butts smacked the arm of his chair with his closed fist. "Bastard!"

  "What does this mean for the investigation?" Lee asked.

  Chuck picked up the glass paperweight from his desk and held it in both hands. "It's hard to say. Internal Affairs will have to evaluate the complaint and decide what to do about it."

  "Can they take me off the case?" Lee asked.

  Chuck put the paperweight down and put his hands in the air in a gesture of helplessness. "They can do anything they want."

  Butts blinked, his homely face slack. "Anything?"

  The relationship between Internal Affairs and the other members of the police force was like the relationship between a prison warden and the incarcerated: watchful, wary, and mutually distrustful. Visitors from IA were as welcome in precinct houses as an infestation of head lice in an elementary school classroom.

  The phone on the desk rang, and Chuck answered it.

  "Morton here." He listened briefly and then he said, "Really? When? Where are they now? Okay, thanks."

  He hung up and exhaled. "Jane Doe Number Five has been identified. Her parents just called and ID'd her photograph from our Web site."

  Lee rose from his chair. "Who is she?"

  "Name's Pamela Stavros. She's a runaway from New England. Parents are flying down from Maine today."

  "Okay," Chuck said, "let's go over what we have." He read from aloud from an autopsy report on his desk. "Two of the autopsies indicated the presence of semen. One girl was on the pill, the other was found still wearing her diaphragm. The third girl used a condom. In each case there was sexual conduct shortly before her death, but no evidence of rape. In the case of Marie Kelleher and Annie O'Donnell, the boyfriends admit to having sex with the victims the night before they were found dead."

  Lee stood up, his face rigid. "He watches them."

  Chuck stared at him.

  "You mean…?"

  "He watches them have sex-but he can't stand the feelings it stirs in him, so he has to kill them."

  "So since they're the source of his arousal," Nelson said, "they have to die?"

  "But that's not how he sees it. Somehow he manages to rationalize his acts."

  "Maybe he sees himself as their savior, rescuing them from the sin of carnality?" Florette suggested.

  "Yes, yes. That would make perfect sense," Lee agreed.

  "Look, the mayor and the DA are both coming down hard on us," Chuck said, "so we're going to-"

  "Round up the usual suspects?" Nelson suggested dryly.

  "Bring in a few more known sex offenders for questioning," Morton finished, ignoring him.

  They had already completed interviews of half a dozen known sex offenders. Nelson disdained to be present at any of these interviews, which he deemed a waste of time and taxpayers' money, but Detective Butts was keen on them.

  "Go ahead," Nelson said. "But it won't do you any good."

  "Yeah?" Butts challenged. "And why's that?"

  "Because you won't find him that way."

  Butts blew air out of his nostrils and rolled his eyes.

  Chuck looked at Lee. "You agree?"

  "I'm afraid so," he replied. "He'll have a history of abusing animals, maybe setting a few fires, but chances are he wasn't caught."

  "I checked with VICAP again for crimes similar to this UNSUB," Florette said, flicking an invisible speck from his immaculate shirt. He seemed to enjoy using anagrams whenever possible. VICAP stood for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and UNSUB was shorthand for Unknown Subject.

  "VICAP could be useless for a guy like this," Nelson responded. "Up until now, he could have been flying under the radar."

  "Oh, that's just great!" Butts said, biting off the end of a cigar and spitting it in the trash can. He frowned, the pockmarks on his forehead merging. "You said this was a sex crime."

  "Like I said, this guy will probably have a history of cruelty to animals," Lee said. "Also possibly voyeurism and fetishistic behavior, maybe some arson-but arsonists are hard to catch, so he may not have any criminal record."
>
  "Fetishism-you mean like a fixation on shoes or women's underwear, somethin' like that?"

  "Right. And that isn't illegal."

  "Not yet, anyway," Florette remarked glumly. "Though if this administration had its way-"

  "Also, wouldn't that kind of behavior tend to be pretty private?" Chuck asked, turning to open a window. The frigid February air felt good as it rushed into the room.

  "Right," said Lee. "He's a voyeur, obviously, but that too can be hard to spot, especially if he's careful. He's not breaking and entering to get his victims, so he's abducting them outside their homes."

  "That means less chance of leaving forensic evidence behind," Chuck pointed out, bending down to pick up some papers the wind had blown off his desk.

  "Exactly," Nelson said. "And the wide dispersal of victims means he's comfortable in a large geographic area."

  Lee pointed to the map on the wall, placing his finger on the red tack indicating the location where Pamela Stavros's body had been found.

  "One of the reasons it's important that we include Pamela Stavros as the first known victim is that most likely this is the borough where the killer lives."

  Butts frowned again. "Really? How do you figure?"

  "Well, he's most likely to live nearest to his first victim," Nelson said. "It's where he feels most comfortable-closest to home. After that, he's more likely to branch out, but statistically, he will kill for the first time close to home."

  "He may have other attempts in his past, where he tried but failed to abduct a girl," Lee pointed out. "You should send that to the media for possible leads."

  "Right," said Chuck.

  "Isn't there usually a stressor of some kind that sets these guys off?" Florette asked.

  "Usually, but not always," Lee replied.

  "Like what?" Butts asked.

  "Oh, it could be anything-loss of a job, death of a parent, being dumped by a girlfriend. Something like that…an event that a normal person could handle, but which sends these guys over the edge."

  "Look, Annie O'Donnell's funeral is day after tomorrow," Chuck said. "I was thinking-"

  "One of us should be there?" Nelson interrupted.

  "Returning to the scene of the crime," Florette murmured, running his elegant fingertips over the arm of his chair.

  "Some criminals get a lot of pleasure from observing the results of their crimes," Lee observed.

  Butts frowned and kicked at the wastebasket. "That always really fries me, you know."

  "Detective Butts," Nelson remarked, "I'm sure that we're all equally upset by these events, but do you think it's really necessary to express yourself constantly on the subject?"

  Butts blinked twice, and his mouth moved like a fish gulping for air.

  "All right, that's enough," said Chuck. "Let's focus."

  "I'd like to cover the funeral," said Lee.

  "Do you believe the UNSUB is likely to make an appearance?" Florette asked, removing a pair of glasses from his breast pocket and cleaning them with a crisp white handkerchief.

  "It's not unusual for them to show up," Nelson replied.

  "Okay," Chuck said. "You've got the funeral, Lee."

  "But if he already took a shot at Lee-" Nelson protested, but Lee cut him off.

  "We don't know whether the shot was even intended for me."

  "Right," Chuck agreed. "And no one is likely pull out a gun at a daytime funeral in Westchester. It's not the same thing as shooting at someone on Third Avenue at night. Detective Florette, I'd like you to start an investigation of the churches involved so far-find out what, if anything, they have in common."

  "Right," Florette said, rising from his chair. "I'll get right on it."

  Lee looked around the room at the others. The mood had visibly darkened. Butts slumped back in his chair, forgetting all about picking a fight with Nelson. Somehow, putting a name to Jane Doe Number Five didn't help things. Now they had a name to go with a victim, but they still didn't have a killer.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Annie O'Donnell's funeral was held in Hastings, one of the quaint Westchester towns dotting the Hudson Valley like puffballs after a spring rain. Lee took Metro North from Grand Central, catching the 12:15 local train on the Harlem Line, arriving in Hastings in forty minutes flat. He had convinced Chuck to remove the plainclothes cops who had been tailing him, as their presence at the funeral would be too conspicuous. The train station was down by the water, but it wasn't far to the church. He walked up the long road that curved inland from the river. Hastings was perched on the bluffs that rose from the banks of the Hudson, its waterfront buildings looking down over the moody currents of the great river. Clouds swung low over the sluggishly moving gray water, and seagulls swooped low over the river's opaque surface, searching for fish.

  The church was a modest white clapboard affair, not very grand by Catholic standards. Except for the sepia tones of the grass on the church lawn, black and gray dominated the landscape. The drab February sky hung low over the mourners, not even a suggestion of sunlight filtering through the flat gray cloud cover. The monochromatic setting, the dark suits of the mourners as they stood in a little clump outside the white wooden church, all reminded Lee of a scene from a black-and-white film. A shiny black hearse was parked in the driveway, waiting for the slow, stately crawl to the cemetery.

  The ceremony was just ending as Lee arrived. As he walked up the flagstone path, one of the mourners emerged from the church carrying a bouquet of red carnations, bright as a splash of fresh blood against her black dress.

  A solitary crow perched atop a low branch of a black oak, observing the scene with its head cocked to one side, its bright eyes sharp as pine needles. The tree's trunk was darkened by the recent rain, the rough black bark still visibly damp, tiny droplets of water tucked into the deep crevices. The crow gave a low, hoarse caw and took off from its branch, ascending rapidly into the dun-colored sky in a flurry of flapping wings.

  Lee watched it rise and disappear over a copse of trees as a light mist fell on the already soggy ground. The small clump of journalists looked miserable, huddled under their huge black umbrellas, cameras tucked under their raincoats. He studied them. Most were young, probably greenhorns still on probation with their cranky, overstressed bosses. None of them had the look of established stars or even up-and-comers-this was hardly a plum assignment, covering the funeral of the unfortunate victim. The real stars would get to cover the discovery of the body, police press briefings, that kind of thing.

  Lee watched the mourners leaving the church, searching for any unusual aspect of appearance or behavior that stuck out-anything that didn't quite fit. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for, but hoped he would recognize it when he saw it.

  He scanned the crowd of mourners. Their faces were suitably solemn, some swollen and red-eyed from grief, most of them pale and pasty in the feeble sun. A tall, sandy-haired man with handsome Irish features emerged from the church, supporting a slight, black-haired woman on his arm. She wore a long black veil, but the devastation on her face was clear even through the gauzy material. Obviously they were Annie's parents. The daughter took after her mother, with her wavy black hair-the so-called Black Irish, whose curly dark hair was a remnant of their Italian conquerors of centuries past. Annie's mother had the same delicate white skin as her daughter, though, bespeaking her Northern European ancestry.

  Her father had the kind of Irish good looks Lee saw all over New York City: square, broad forehead, deep-set blue eyes, his prominent jaw jutting out beneath a thin, determined mouth. His ruddy, wind-burned skin was the complexion of someone who spent his time out herding sheep on the moors instead of working at an accounting firm. He had the big, blunt hands of a shepherd, not an accountant.

  The rest of the crowd was varied-friends and family, as well as neighbors and schoolmates. A dozen or so young people of college age gathered in a little group to one side. As the O'Donnells made their way down the church steps, the cro
wd parted for them, people stepping respectfully aside as the couple moved slowly toward the waiting cavalcade of automobiles. When Mrs. O'Donnell saw the hearse, she stumbled and lost her footing, collapsing forward. Half a dozen hands came up to steady her, and she continued on her slow pilgrimage. Her husband tightened his grip on her arm, his face a tight mask of grief and anger.

  The family climbed into the limousines the funeral home had provided, as everyone else dispersed toward their own cars, leaving the journalists alone on the wet sidewalk in front of the church. Lee studied the mourners, but he couldn't see anything unusual about them. They all looked grief stricken, and everyone seemed to be there with at least one other person. Lee was quite certain that the killer, if he came, would be alone. There were a few young men who fit the age and physical profile, but they were with girlfriends or families, or were part of the group of Queens College students. Lee looked over the students, but it was highly unlikely that the Slasher was a college student, let alone one of Annie's classmates.

  The television journalists stood around delivering their spiels into the cameras. Others were scribbling earnestly in notebooks, while a few more lit up cigarettes, hunched under raincoats pulled over their heads, shielding their matches from the rain. Lee turned to go-and then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure standing apart from the rest of the press corps.

  A thin young man in a dark blue raincoat stood leaning against a Douglas fir. Even under the bulky coat Lee could see that he had narrow shoulders, and his protruding wrists suggested a scrawny, underfed physique. He had long, thin neck and a prominent Adam's apple, but his head was bent over a notebook, so Lee couldn't see his face. There was something unsettling about him, the hunch of his shoulders perhaps, that reminded Lee of a vulture perched on a tree limb.

  The man lifted his face to look at the column of departing cars, and Lee saw the delicate, almost feminine features-on a girl they would have been considered pretty. His face had a haunted quality, with sunken hollows beneath his cheeks and dark circles under his eyes, as though it had been a while since he'd had a good night's sleep. He looked about nineteen, but was probably twenty-five or so, Lee guessed. His most striking feature were his golden eyes, yellow as lamplight-wolf's eyes. Watchful and wary, they gleamed like gemstones in his pale face. Lee couldn't make out the name on the press pass hanging from the lapel of the blue raincoat, and he didn't want to stare. So far the young man hadn't noticed him. As he was watching, the man pulled something white from his pocket and put it to his mouth. At first Lee had the impression it was a pack of cigarettes, but then he realized the object was an inhaler. His stomach tightened as the stranger gave the plunger a single, well-practiced push, inhaled deeply, held his breath, then exhaled.