"It wasn't my idea," Chuck pointed out.
"Good God!" Nelson fumed. "You'd think they have enough on their hands right now, with all their recent screwups!" His eyes were bloodshot, and his cheeks were lit up by a map of tiny red veins. It was clear to everyone in the room that he was not sober.
"Look," Lee said, "why don't you get some rest? You don't look so good."
"I don't look so good? I don't? You should take a look in a mirror, laddy-you look like something the cat dragged in."
"Okay, okay," Chuck said, placing a hand on his shoulder, "calm down."
"I am perfectly calm," Nelson replied.
"I think we can use all the help we can get," Florette remarked. He was dressed in a dapper green suit with matching tie; his shoes were shined to a gleaming sheen. Next to him, Nelson looked ratty and scrappy, like a bar brawler ready to go.
"Well, then, why doesn't someone do something about it?" he muttered. "Why all this goddamn pussyfooting around?
Butts stepped forward. "I think the first thing that someone should do is to send you home. You're not-"
But he never got a chance to finish his sentence. Nelson growled and threw a punch at him. He was too drunk to make contact, though, and ended up flat on his back on the other side of the room.
"Oh, you wanna get into it?" Butts said. "Come on-bring it on! I'm ready for you."
"Stop it!" Chuck barked. "All right, that's it," he continued, kneeling beside Nelson. "We'll take a little break and start up again in a few minutes." He pulled Nelson to his feet. "What's the matter with you?"
"I'll tell you what's the matter with me," Nelson answered. "This damn psycho has us all by the short and curlies-that's what's the matter with me.
"This isn't helping things," Chuck said. "Why don't you go home until you can sleep this off?"
Nelson looked at Lee, who said, "I think you know Chuck is right."
It took more convincing to get Nelson to leave. After he had gone, a pall settled over the room. They were all emotionally exhausted, and Nelson's behavior reminded them how close to the edge they all were.
"All right," said Chuck. "Let's just try to concentrate for a moment, can we?"
"I know how Dr. Nelson feels," Florette said, adjusting his already perfectly centered silk tie, "but don't you think a fresh set of eyes might be a good idea at this point?"
"I'm surprised they've got anyone to spare, with all the antiterrorism work they're doing right now," Butts remarked.
"I trained with some of these guys at Quantico, and they're terrific, but it'll take time to bring them up to speed." Lee said.
"What you said before is right," Butts pointed out. "The bottom line is getting this guy off the street as soon as possible."
"Yeah," Lee agreed. He went to sit down, felt faint, and almost fell.
"Hey," Chuck said, "maybe someone else should be going home right about now."
"I'm fine," Lee replied tersely.
Butts squinted at him. "Is there any chance that your infection was caused by-by something that was done to you?"
Lee stared at him. "What do you mean?"
"Could he have-I mean, can someone cause that kind of infection in another person?"
"I think that's unlikely," Florette interjected. "I was a med student as an undergraduate, and I never heard of a case of bacterial meningitis that was the result of deliberate contamination. It's not-"
"Okay, so let's move on," Chuck said, coming around to lean on the front of his desk. "Did you have any luck tracing Samuel Beckett?" he asked Detective Florette.
"Not really. We looked into the handful of people with that name, but no one came even close to the profile-an old retired sailor on Staten Island, one rich, middle-aged French businessman on the Upper East Side, and a would-be playwright using it as a nom de plume in the East Village, most definitely gay."
"Any follow-up on how he got into the hospital room at that hour?" Chuck asked Butts.
"One of the night nurses found a discarded orderly jacket in a broom closet, but there are no workable prints on it," Butts replied. "Probably wore gloves again-God knows there are plenty of those in a hospital."
"Yeah, and he's too smart to discard those in the hospital," Lee remarked. "He would know that prints can be lifted from the inside of latex gloves."
Chuck looked at his watch. "Look, it's late. Why don't we all get a few hours of sleep, and meet first thing tomorrow morning?"
"Okay," said Butts. "My wife's gonna be real shocked to see me-says she hasn't seen me for so long that she's forgotten what I look like. Which, in my case, maybe isn't such a bad thing," he added with a rueful smile.
They all headed out for their various subway trains as the city settled into early evening stillness. A few clouds punctuated an otherwise clear night sky, and there was a smell of fresh earth in the air.
Lee and Florette took the express train downtown together as far as Times Square.
"You know," Lee said as the local stops flashed past the windows, "there's got to be some key to this whole thing."
Up on the walls of the subway car was an advertisement for horse racing at Belmont Park, a speeding thoroughbred with a jockey leaning low over its muscular neck. As Lee looked up at the picture, an idea slowly formed in his mind.
"Oh, my God-that's it! A key."
"What?" said Florette.
"Eddie," he said. "The racing form-that was the key!"
"What key?" Florette asked, still confused.
He explained his idea to Florette as the stops continued to rush by.
Half an hour later, he was on East Seventh Street, headed for his apartment. The minute he got inside, he dialed Chuck's number in New Jersey. After two rings a woman answered.
"Hello?"
It was Susan, her voice low and liquid, smooth as olive oil. Lee had seen her once since her drunken Christmas party confession, at one of the 9/11 police funerals, and he had done his best to avoid her then. He considered hanging up, and rejected the idea-knowing Susan, she would have caller ID, and hanging up would only make things worse.
He took a deep breath. "Hello, Susan." He tried to sound natural, and ended up sounding completely forced.
"Hello, Lee." She stretched out the l's, rolling her tongue over the consonants sensually, like a cat stretching itself. "Long time, no see." It was an accusation, an implication, and an invitation. Lee wondered if she was faithful to Chuck.
He took another breath and swallowed hard.
"Is Chuck around?"
"Yes, he's in the basement working out. Just a minute-I'll get him."
She put down the receiver, and he could hear the click of her heels as she crossed the kitchen floor. Since being married to Susan, Chuck had become devoted to his weight routine, buffing his already athletic body to a burnished movie star musculature. If he didn't exercise regularly, he was given to thickening around the middle-unlike Lee, whose appetite came and went, Chuck had been renowned at Princeton for his eating ability. He once ate four dozen Maryland crabs at a seafood festival, and Lee had seen him down a sixteen-ounce steak.
Susan had kept her looks, too-she worked hard at it. Hours at the gym, Botox, implants, micro this, retinol that-her body was a project. Within a week of giving birth to her son, according to Chuck, she was doing crunches in front of Oprah reruns. She'd get her beauty any way she could have it. From a bottle, a box, or a scalpel-it was all the same to her.
Susan came back on the line. "He's coming," she purred. "And don't be such a stranger-come out and see us sometime. It doesn't always have to be about business, you know."
Oh, yes it does.
Chuck came on the line. "Hello?" he said, sounding out of breath. Lee imagined him standing on the immaculate kitchen floor, toweling off, being careful not to get a drop of sweat on the perfectly waxed floor.
"Listen, Chuck, I have an idea."
"Yeah?"
"I know it sounds crazy, but I think Eddie's racing form may hold the key-
"
"What racing form?"
"Eddie Pepitone called me before he died to say he had an idea about the killer's identity."
"And?"
"He had just won some money on a horse called 'Lock, Stock, and Barrel.'"
"So?"
"Eddie was a superstitious guy. I think he bet on that horse because of something he knew-or thought he knew-that he wanted to tell me."
"What would that be?"
"Well, you know how this guy has been getting into the churches so easily?"
"Yeah. But some of the churches told us they often leave doors open."
"I know. But remember how he got into the hospital the other night with no problem?"
"Right."
"And got into the locked room where they kept the communion wine with no sign of a break-in?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, this may sound far-fetched, but what if he has an expertise that helps him do this?"
"Such as?"
"Well, what if he's a locksmith?"
"Hmm. You mean as in 'Lock, Stock, and Barrel.' That's not bad. It's worth a shot, anyway."
"We agreed that he was probably self-employed, right?"
"Right."
"So what if he actually owns a business?"
"Okay," Chuck said. "We can put Florette's men on it right away."
"I rode the train down with him."
"Yeah? And?"
"He liked the idea. I suggested we draw a radius to begin with of a mile around that church in Queens. That will be the most likely place-assuming he works not far from where he lives."
"Okay. We can start calling places by about eight a.m."
"I'll be in your office at eight sharp."
"Okay." There was a pause, and Chuck spoke softly, as if he didn't want someone in the room with him to hear. "Lee?"
"Yeah?"
"You okay?"
"Yeah. I'm going to bed now."
"Okay. Do that, all right?"
"Sure. I may call Nelson first, but-"
"Oh, let him sleep it off. He acted like a total jerk."
"I know. He's in pain, though."
"Yeah, right. Aren't we all?"
"Yeah. Sure."
"Bed, Lee."
"Right. Good night."
"Good night."
There was a click on the line, and Lee imagined Susan wrapping her arms around Chuck, luring him to bed. Well, he thought, one man's meat is another man's poison.
He put on a CD of some vocal music by the Estonian composer Arvo Part, and looked out the window at the fading light as the voices of the choir floated around him in the air, singing cluster chords in soft, spooky tones. The days were getting longer now, and on warm days he could smell a hint of spring in the air. He knew he was supposed to rejoice in the opening of buds and the quiet greening of the trees, and yet all he felt was wistfulness.
He longed for a retreat into darkness, to sink into the womb of winter, instead of having to claw his way into the light. The longer the day, the more he felt the pressure to solve this case, and the growing impossibility of his task shook him to the core.
He could not know that was something he had in common with the man he pursued.
His mother rejoiced in the sunlight, of course; in fact, she took Lee's journey into depression as a rebuke to her very existence. When she asked about his mental health-which she did rarely-she danced around the topic as though it might bite her.
The phone rang. He picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Hi, it's me." It was Kathy. "Just called to say good-bye."
"Why?"
"I'm going back to Philadelphia tomorrow. The Vidocq Society monthly meeting. My dad invited me, remember?"
"Oh, right. Sorry-I forgot."
"No problem. My place is being renovated, so I'll be staying with my dad. I'll call you."
"Okay, great."
"How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine."
"Well, make sure you get enough rest," she said, sounding unconvinced.
"I'm going to go lie down right now."
"Okay. I'll talk to you later in the week."
"Right."
"I'll miss you."
"Me too."
After they hung up, he looked out the window at the Orthodox Ukrainian church across the street. A ray of moonlight fell on the huge round window above the door of the church, lighting up the colors of the stained glass like a kaleidoscope.
He was reminded of the sun glinting off the windows of the World Trade Center, windows that would never reflect light again, and of the three thousand souls that lay buried in the debris. The sheer arbitrariness of the attack still stunned him. But for the grace of…God? Fate? Nature? What would you call it if you'd rejected traditional Christian notions of faith? A leap of faith-more like a dive, a plunge into the abyss. And yet, he thought, surrender could be sweet-so sweet that intelligent, educated young men had surrendered themselves, or so they imagined, to the will of Allah.
He wondered what was in the minds of the hijackers as they carried out their implacable plan. For, he was convinced, it was not so different from what was in the mind of his own Holyman, the Slasher.
Chapter Sixty
He looked around the restaurant in Grand Central Station. These were all nice people, surely, with families and mortgages and dogs they had gotten from rescue shelters-scruffy terriers with sweet, lopsided faces, sporting red bandanas, who liked to chase Frisbees in the park on Sunday afternoons. They were the kind of people that advertisers targeted on television: middle-class families looking to upgrade their dishwashers, their laptops, their life insurance policies. They had aging parents in managed-care facilities they were concerned about, college tuition to save up for, IRA accounts to roll over.
But he existed outside of their world. His was a half-lit netherworld of dark drives and even darker deeds. He glided in and out of their cheerful daytime lives like a ghost, an unwelcome visitor whose mission was to disrupt their daily ordinariness to satisfy his appalling fantasies.
If he could not be one of them, then he would live to remind them of that, to let them know they were not safe-not in their fortified SUVs, their multiplex houses with the elaborate security systems, or their fabulously expensive office buildings with the Japanese fountains and designer furniture fresh from the showroom. He would strike wherever they lived, worked, or played. He would invade their safety like a virus, a worm, a bacterium. They could not know his world, but he would know theirs.
He glanced at his watch-it was time to leave. His train would be boarding for Philadelphia soon.
Chapter Sixty-one
Lee promised himself that he would call Nelson right after he had a short nap on the couch. His head had been pounding now for hours, his neck was stiffening up, and he felt nauseous. He took one of the pills Dr. Patel had given him, and tried not to think about the doctor's face when he announced his intention to leave the hospital. He lay down on the couch and pulled the green afghan, the one Laura knitted him when she was sixteen and he was on his way to his freshman year at Princeton, over his legs. As he drifted off, he saw a thin ray of moonlight reflecting off the silver wind chimes Kylie had given him last Christmas.
He awoke to a ringing bell. In his dream it was the wind chimes ringing, but when he regained full consciousness he realized it was his phone. He threw off the blanket and staggered over to the phone.
"Hello?" His voice was slurred, ragged.
"Lee?" It was his therapist.
"Oh, hello, Dr. Williams."
"Are you all right?"
"Uh, yes, I'm fine."
"I'm sorry to call you on a Thursday evening, but I was becoming concerned about you. You've never missed an appointment and then not called."
Thursday! His weekly appointment with her was on Wednesday afternoons, and he had completely forgotten about it.
"I'm sorry. I was in the hospital."
"What's wrong?"
He could
hear the concern in her voice, underneath the patrician professionalism.
"I'm okay now."
"Was it…?"
"I had an infection of the brain. Bacterial meningitis."
"That can be very serious. Are you sure you're all right?"
"Yes. I was just asleep, that's all. I'm sorry I didn't call you."
"Never mind. I'm just concerned about you."
"Look, I'd like to reschedule, but I think we're closing in on this guy."
"The Slasher, you mean? That's wonderful."
"Yes." He tried to sound hopeful and positive, but knew he had failed.
"You feel conflicted about it."
He stared out into the blackened sky. The stained-glass window on the Ukrainian church now reflected only pale lamplight.
"Maybe you identify with him. You told me that you believe he has an absent father and controlling mother."
"Yes, but-"
"So in some ways, you may feel that his rage is your rage."
A terrible thought crowded itself into his mind. Though he was, in every way, luckier than this young man, Lee realized that he felt an unwelcome emotion.
"It sounds awful, but I think I envy him just a little."
"What do you envy about him?"
"Because I have to swallow my rage, and he gets to act it out."
"So you wish you could be like him?"
He took a breath and held it. "Yes. I wish sometimes I could just be a murderer."
There was a pause, and Lee heard the click of call waiting.
"Dr. Williams, will you excuse me? There's another call coming in, and I really should get it."
"Of course. Why don't you just call me when you're ready to see me?"
"I will. Thank you for understanding."
He clicked the receiver button and picked up the second call. It was Nelson, and he sounded stone-cold sober.
"I am so sorry. Can you ever forgive me for acting like a damn fool?"
"Of course," Lee answered.
He filled Nelson in on his theory about the locksmith store.
"That makes sense," he agreed, "because he would probably have a van with the company logo on it-a perfect way to transport the bodies."
Silent Screams s-1 Page 30
