“Jesus,” he said under his breath. His leg trembling, he rammed his foot down hard on the accelerator. The little Honda jerked and shifted into first gear, spurting ahead of the car next to him.
“Uncle Lee,” Kylie whimpered, “what’s happening?”
“There’s a crazy driver following us,” he replied, trying to sound casual. “Maybe he’s drunk or something.”
This was a route he had driven countless times, from the day he got his license at the age of sixteen, and he knew every twist and turn in the road. He had often joked that he could drive it in his sleep. It was the one advantage he had over his unknown pursuer, and he prayed that it would count for something now. If the other driver managed to pull in front of him, Lee knew, he could almost certainly force Lee to stop. If Lee attempted to pass him, he could force Lee off the road.
He pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The Honda’s engine revved, and the car pulled ahead of his pursuer. The Honda’s engine was small but efficient, and had good pickup speed. Lee offered a silent prayer of thanks to Japanese engineering.
The headlights reappeared behind him once again, and he heard the other car’s engine gun as its headlights got closer. He prayed that the other car was not a more powerful machine than his four-cylinder rental Honda.
The road lay in front of him, a dark, curling ribbon of concrete. Ahead of him loomed McGill’s Hill, curved as the back of a whale, barely visible in the darkness.
He gripped the steering wheel and leaned forward.
“Okay, you bastard,” he muttered, “let’s see how you like this.”
With an abrupt twist of the wheel, he pulled off the road and headed for the stream at the bottom of the hill, his headlights on full beam. The car shuddered and shook as it hit the uneven ground, bumping and jerking along the frozen earth. He could hear Kylie whimpering in the backseat, but he gritted his teeth and drove on at a steady speed. Seeing the frozen stream—shallow enough to be frozen clear through, he knew from experience—he steered the car toward it.
His tires slid onto the frozen stream. The car fishtailed, then righted itself. He pressed the accelerator steadily, in search of what traction was possible with the car’s front-wheel drive.
The sedan continued its pursuit, weaving as its tires hit the ice.
Lee’s headlights picked up the copse of trees at the bottom of the hill, the grove of poplars so dangerous to generations of sledders. The stream was at its deepest point there, and on the other side of the trees was a deep ditch—invisible at night. He gunned the engine and then jerked the wheel all the way to the right, just missing the first tree. With the wheels spinning in the thin layer of snow covering the ground, he turned the car in a tight circle and avoided the ditch.
His pursuer was not so lucky.
Lee heard the crunch of metal as the other car glanced off the first tree. He glanced out of the rearview mirror just in time to see the car land headfirst in the ditch, tires spinning uselessly in the air.
Anxious as he was to know the identity of his pursuer, his instinct to protect his niece was stronger. He knew that if the driver was wearing a seat belt, he might be only mildly injured. He longed to go back for a look at the license plates, but what if their pursuer had a gun? He couldn’t take that chance. He turned the Honda in a tight circle and headed back to the road. A wave of nausea threatened to overcome him as he pulled back onto the road, but he took deep gulps of the icy air coming in through his still open window and sped off into the night.
Kylie had grown very quiet in the backseat, so when he had gone a mile or two, he looked back at her to see if she was all right. She sat staring at him without speaking, her hands clutching the stuffed dinosaur he had bought for her earlier.
“Kylie? Are you okay?” he said.
“What happened to the other car?” she asked. “He hit the tree. Is he going to be all right?”
“I don’t know, honey, but I’m going to call the police as soon as I can so they can go rescue him.”
“Why did you go off the road like that?”
Because he was trying to kill us.
“Well, I just wanted him to stop following us.”
“Why was he following us?”
“I think he must have been drunk or something.”
Kylie began to cry. “But what if he died?”
“Don’t worry, Kylie—it’s going to be all right. The police will take care of him. Everything’s going to be all right.”
But the more he said the words, the less he believed them. Someone was after him, and he suspected that whoever it was, they wanted him off the case—very, very badly.
Chapter Forty-three
Lee drove for a while without looking back, taking side roads and detours. When he was certain that he wasn’t being followed, he pulled off the road to call the police. After dialing 911 and reporting the accident, he started the Honda’s engine up again. He was worried about his family’s safety. The attack had taken place in their backyard this time, and he couldn’t be there to protect them constantly.
Kylie had fallen asleep in the backseat again—with the emotional resilience of childhood, she had forgotten her panic, accepting Lee’s explanation that the whole thing was just the crazy actions of a drunk driver. He had no intention of telling her the truth.
As the engine turned over, he was seized by an uncontrollable wave of shivering, and had to turn off the car again for a while to calm down. He realized that all he knew about the other car was that it was a dark sedan—any other details were lost in a blur of action and decision making. He couldn’t even say how many people were in the car. It could have been more than one, for all he knew, though he didn’t think so. Every instinct in his body told him that the pursuer was one man and one man alone.
When he arrived at Fiona’s house it was three in the morning. The grandfather clock in the front hall ticked loudly as he tiptoed in through the front door, Kylie in his arms. Surrounded by the familiar smell of apples and old wood, Lee had trouble imagining the threat they had both just survived—here, at his mother’s everything felt so familiar, so comfortable, and so safe.
He closed the heavy door behind him quietly and carried Kylie upstairs to her bedroom. She hardly stirred as he laid her on the bed, removing her shoes and socks and tucking her under a thick layer of blankets and quilts. Fiona Campbell kept a watchful eye on the thermostat, and the house was cold at night. “A cool room at night is better for you than a stuffy one,” she would say. “A bit of fresh night air never hurt anyone.”
Lee was exhausted but wide awake, so he went down to the living room and lit a fire. He then took out his cell phone and dialed the state police headquarters, located in Somerville, about twenty minutes away. He had a feeling that the state troopers would find an empty car down by the stream, but he wanted the car held and checked for evidence: blood, DNA, anything that could help identify his pursuer. He gave his name to the sleepy operator who answered.
“New Jersey State Police. How can I help you?”
“Hello, this is Lee Campbell of the NYPD. May I speak with your shift commander, please?”
“That would be Lieutenant Robinson. Just a minute, please.”
“Robinson here.” The voice was deep, educated, probably African American. Lee hadn’t had much contact with Jersey troopers, but they had a reputation for being fierce and efficient.
Lee explained the situation as calmly as possible, emphasizing to Lieutenant Robinson that he didn’t know if the attacker was related to the case he was working on, but that he suspected there was a link. Robinson listened, then asked if Lee and his niece were all right.
“We’re fine, thanks—just shaken up a little. I’m at my mother’s house, and if it’s all right with you I’ll come by tomorrow to have a look at that car.”
“Fine. I’ve already spoken with the troopers who found it—it’s right where you said it was, but it’s empty. There’s a trail of footprints in the snow leading away from the
car out to the road, but that’s where they disappear.”
“How many sets of prints?”
“One. A man, by the look of it. Medium-sized feet—about a size nine, Trooper Edwards said. Guess we should take a cast of the prints, if there’s a possible connection to a murder suspect.”
“I would appreciate that very much.”
“And we’ll do a trace on the car, of course. Doesn’t look like a rental.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re sure you’re okay now?”
“Yeah, fine—thanks.”
“Okay, then, we’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Right.”
Lee hung up and stared into the fire. The flames licked greedily upward, as if they wanted to fly straight up the chimney and into the night. The pointed tongues of flame reminded him of pitchforks, and, listening to the wind whistling through the house’s ancient eaves, he imagined he was hearing the howls of the damned.
Chapter Forty-four
The trip to Somerville the next day was disappointing. The car had been reported stolen earlier that day, and the owner, a well-respected local doctor, was beyond suspicion. He also wore a size-eleven shoe.
No blood was found inside the car, at least not in the preliminary search, but it was being sent to the state crime lab for further analysis. Lee doubted they would find anything—the driver, whoever he was, had probably worn gloves.
The first thing Lieutenant Robinson did was to put a twenty-four-hour guard on Fiona’s house, much to her disgust. Lee also called Kylie’s father, over his mother’s protests, and asked him to come stay with them for a while, which he did gladly. Lee tried not to alarm him unduly, but George Callahan was a kind man, and his concern was obvious. He offered to take Fiona and Kylie over to his house, but Fiona was having none of it. She called the whole thing “silly,” insisting that Lee had simply had an encounter with a drunk driver.
“It’s true what they say about Jersey drivers, you know,” she said, both eyebrows lifted in disdain. “They are a dangerous lot.”
Lee wasn’t interested in his mother’s opinion, and insisted on the safety precautions. The state trooper was to accompany Kylie to and from school, at least for a while.
When Lee told Chuck Morton about the attack, he insisted on meeting as soon as Lee was back in the city.
By the time Lee left New Jersey it was nighttime, and a late winter storm was blowing in. Lee returned to the city just as the storm slammed into the coast with a vengeance. He barely made it to the car rental place in the Village. A foot of snow had already fallen by the time he headed out for his apartment on foot.
When he got in, he phoned Chuck on his cell phone to say he would come by first thing in the morning. He wasn’t going out again tonight. Chuck was already on his way back to his house. If he delayed his departure from the city any longer, he might end up having to spend the night. Everyone was saying this was going to drop a load of snow on the area—possibly up to three feet.
Lee sat at the piano playing a Bach prelude as he listened to the storm moaning as it swirled around the low-lying buildings of East Seventh Street. The old tenement building creaked and shuddered as the wind whirled around the edges of the windows, gusting and howling like a living thing, a demon in search of souls to capture.
He stopped playing and stared out the window at the trees across the street, which were bending and swaying so violently he thought they might snap. Demons. Lost souls. Lee wasn’t sure he believed in the existence of souls, but what was this killer if not a lost soul?
The phone rang, jolting him out of his reverie. He picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Can I—uh—see you?” Nelson’s voice was ragged, shaky.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s Karen. I need—”
It was as though he were straining his words out through a sieve, trying to hold back the emotion behind them. Lee knew that it was barely three months since his wife’s tragic death. He also knew all about grief. Just when you thought the worst was over, it could come back at you like the kick of a shotgun.
He looked outside at the gathering snow and sighed.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Lee pulled on his waterproof hiking boots and walked to the liquor store on Third Avenue. He picked out a bottle of Glenlivet single malt, then found a brave cabbie with snow tires. Traffic was light on Park Avenue, and the cabbie crossed Central Park through the 68th Street transverse right behind a snowplow, pulling up in front of Nelson’s building on 73rd Street.
John Paul Nelson lived in a penthouse apartment of the Ansonia Hotel, a splendid, ornate Rococo building on the southwest corner of 73rd and Broadway. Rising proudly over the confluence of Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, the Ansonia stands at one of the great crossroads of the city. The Seventh Avenue line spits out its passengers at the subway stop in the traffic island that bifurcates Broadway as it splits in two before reuniting and continuing on its northwesterly journey, while Tenth Avenue, reborn as Amsterdam—its name a reminder of the city’s Dutch heritage—shoots straight uptown, slicing through the Upper West Side, neatly bisecting the neighborhood, equidistant from its two great parks, Riverside and Central Park.
Nelson opened the door when Lee knocked. He looked exhausted and lost. His auburn hair was uncombed. He was unshaven and wore an old blue flannel shirt over rumpled chinos. He waved Lee to a seat on a couch strewn with books and magazines.
“Sorry about this. Just, uh, make a place for yourself.”
He plucked a few books off the end of the sofa and put them on the floor. Nelson’s apartment, like his office, was a place of controlled chaos, comfortable clutter. When she was alive, Karen had managed the mess, keeping it under control, but since her death, things had deteriorated. There were books and periodicals all over the room—Lee wondered how it was possible for anyone to read as much as that. The books were on everything from archaeology to philosophy, physics to natural history.
Nelson stood in the middle of the room, running a hand through his untidy hair. After one look at him, Lee decided not to mention the incidents of two nights ago. Nelson would find out about the mad car chase soon enough.
“What can I get you?” Nelson asked.
It was only then Lee remembered the bottle of scotch in his hand.
“I didn’t remember if it’s your brand or not,” he said, handing it to Nelson.
“If it’s alcohol, it’s my brand,” he replied, and Lee regretted buying an expensive single malt.
But when his friend returned with two cut-crystal glasses and handed one to Lee, he was glad. The scotch had a piney, musty flavor, like open woodland and fireplaces in the fall.
“Really nice of you to spring for the good stuff,” Nelson said, settling down in a tattered blue armchair. His Irish setter, Rex, emerged from the kitchen, padded over to him, and sat at his feet, sniffing the air. Nelson reached down and scratched the dog behind the ears.
“Thanks for coming over,” he said, taking a swallow of scotch. “I guess I didn’t want to be alone. Funny, it kind of caught me off guard…” He stared at his glass for some time before speaking. “I just can’t help thinking that if I loved her better, she wouldn’t have died.”
“She was very sick, you know.”
Nelson looked down at Rex’s silky head. “I know. My logical mind tells me that, but I feel that if I had loved her better, she wouldn’t have been able to leave me.”
“It wasn’t like she had a choice—”
“I know! I’ve told myself that a thousand times over, but what I fear more than anything is that Karen really didn’t want to live enough. That she just…gave up.”
“My God,” Lee said. “You’ve got to stop punishing yourself over her death. Take it from someone who knows.”
Nelson looked at his glass, and then at Lee. “How did you do it?”
“I don’t think we ever get over missing the people we lose. We just lear
n how to live with the loss.”
“I still can’t accept that I had no control over it.”
“It isn’t uncommon to feel guilty in a situation like this.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Nelson answered, some of the old impatience creeping into his voice. “It’s just that—well, when it comes right down to it, I guess we don’t think of ourselves as ‘other people,’ do we?”
“No, I guess not.”
Nelson slumped in his chair and stroked Rex’s shiny golden fur. They matched almost exactly, master and dog—Nelson’s curly rust-colored hair was just a shade or two darker than the dog’s burnished red-gold coat. Rex leaned into his master’s leg, a blissful expression on his big, friendly face. The dog was Nelson’s perfect mirror image, a kind of reverse alter ego, as sweet and outgoing as Nelson was sour and mistrustful. Lee knew his friend’s behavior was a mask for an almost unbearable sensitivity, but few people saw through the mask. Lee had been allowed a glimpse of this, and over time Nelson had opened up to him—but he was one of the few. Karen was another, of course, but now she was gone.
Nelson broke the silence with a cough—the deep, rattling hacking of a lifetime smoker. Lee looked at him sternly. The whole apartment smelled of clove cigarettes.
“When is it you’re going to quit smoking?”
“For God’s sake, Lee, one thing at a time! I never smoked around her, you know,” he added. “Not even before she—”
“I know,” Lee answered. “I know you didn’t.”
“It was pretty funny, leaving my own apartment to smoke out on the street like some furtive teenager. We used to laugh about it,” Nelson said, smiling, and then his smile slid away. His face fell, and a sob raked his vocal cords, making a harsh sound. He regained control after a moment, though, and took a deep breath.
“It’s funny how so many other fears seem to spring from the basic fear of abandonment, isn’t it?” he said.
Lee looked into his glass of scotch, the tawny liquid catching the light refracted by the cut-crystal glass. “Yeah. You know, that’s even true for…” He broke off without finishing the thought, and looked away.
Silent Screams Page 24
