Silent Screams (3 page)

An hour later Lee entered his empty, darkened apartment on East Seventh Street, savoring the stillness before turning on the hall light. He removed his coat, hanging it on the Victorian bentwood coatrack, a gift from his mother. She loved all things Victorian: burgundy velvet drapes, satin-lined Chinese scarves with fat laughing cherubs, lace curtains, painted china tea sets, opera capes. Men were unreliable, and would come and go, but the Victorian era had a solid, carved-oak heaviness that she seemed to find comforting.

“Well, it’s a theory, anyway,” Lee muttered as he walked to the kitchen.

His piano sat in the corner under the window, waiting for him. But right now he wanted a cup of coffee, strong and bitter and hot, with a dollop of milk and a teaspoon of sugar. His insides ached from the strain of digging around among the demons that continued to plague him. There was something in the back of his mind, something he couldn’t quite grasp. He had a feeling that it related to Marie’s death in some way. As he put the water on to boil, the phone rang. The sound was jarring, cutting through the stillness of the air like a summons. He picked up the receiver and held his breath.

“Hello?”

“Hello, dear.” It was his mother, brisk and cheerful as usual. Her voice was a shield, with a veneer of warmth and optimism, but he could sense the fear and sadness underneath.

“So how are things?” His mother’s cheeriness was resolute, implacable—an immovable object.

“Fine, Mom.” There was only one answer to this question in the Campbell family. Nothing else was acceptable.
Fine, Mom. Everything’s just fine. Laura’s murderer is still out there, and there’s a college girl in the city morgue with her chest carved up, but everything’s fine.

“Isn’t this weather just awful? It’s hard to believe there are only six weeks until spring.”

Weather—a safe topic. Weather, food, home improvement, gardening—all safe topics for Fiona Campbell.

“I just can hardly wait to get my roses in. I’ve got three different colors of tea roses this year.” She was always planting things: roses, begonias, petunias.

“Oh, good.”

“Stan thinks it’s too early. He says we’ll have another frost, but I don’t believe him.”

Stan Paloggia was her next-door neighbor who hovered around her like an eager beagle. Actually, he was a lot like beagles Lee had known: short and stocky, with a voracious appetite, thick around the middle. His voice, too, was a kind of a bray, like the hoarse baying of a hound on the hunt. He followed Fiona Campbell around like a one-man posse, being helpful in any way he could, whether it was gardening advice or plumbing repairs. Lee had often wished he could tell the man he was wasting his time—his mother was only attracted to remote, elegant men like his father. Tall, glamorous, and handsome, Duncan Campbell was Stan’s opposite in every way—but Stan seemed to enjoy the quest, and panted happily along whenever he could. His mother tolerated his attention, and treated him about as well as she treated anyone.

“Well, if Stan says so, maybe you’d better listen,” Lee said, pouring coffee beans into the white Krups grinder.

“I don’t know; I just hate waiting,” his mother replied.

Lee turned the grinder on and took the phone into the living room as the machine whirred into action, screeching harshly as the beans tumbled over each other.

“How’s Kylie?” he asked.

“Oh, she’s just fine—growing like a weed, you know. It’s hard to believe she’s almost seven!”

Lee looked at one of the snapshots of Laura on the door of his refrigerator. It was taken in front of his mother’s house, and she was squinting into the sun, her hand raised to push back a few stray strands of long brown hair. He remembered the day well—he had taken the picture shortly before her graduation from college.

But his niece would have no memories of her—she would know her mother only through photographs like this one, or in the stories people told about her. Kylie lived with her father, but she spent Saturdays and Sundays with her grandmother, as he worked the ER shift at the local hospital most weekends. George Callahan was a big, bluff man without an evil thought in his head. Lee always wished Laura had married him, but he wasn’t her type. Steady, unexciting, and kind to a fault, George was nothing like the vain, high-strung father Laura had never stopped searching for in the men she dated. Even after Kylie was born, Laura refused to marry George, even though he had begged her.

“You’re still planning on spending Saturday with her, aren’t you?” His mother sounded wary—lately Lee had been less than reliable.

“Uh, sure.”

“Do you want to say hello to her? She’s right here.”

“Sure.”

In the background, Lee could hear his niece talking to his mother’s cat, Groucho. He pictured the scene: Fiona in the kitchen, cooking breakfast, her portable phone cradled on her shoulder as she stirred the potatoes, Kylie sitting in the corner kitchen nook with Groucho on her lap, trying to dress him in baby clothes.

There was a pause, and he could hear his mother in the background. “Put the cat down now—no, he doesn’t like being held like that.”

He smiled. Kylie was just like his sister, ferociously independent and stubborn. At six and a half, she already displayed Laura’s ironic wit. There was the sound of the cat hissing in the background, then a sharp “Ow!” and the sound of a chair falling. Moments later, his niece came to the phone.

“Hello, Uncle Lee.”

“Hi, Kylie. What were you doing with the kitty just now?”

“Playing.” Her voice carried a note of gleeful guilt.

“Really? What sort of game were you playing?”

“Um…dress up.”

“You were dressing up Groucho?”

“Um…yeah.”

“Did he enjoy that?”

“Not really. He tried to run away.”

“But you stopped him?”

“Yeah—until he bit my hand.”

“That must have hurt.”

“Uh-huh…Grandmom is putting a Band-Aid on it.”

Kylie’s relationship with Groucho was one of hunter and hunted—and, when she managed to corner him, it was torturer and victim. Her favorite game was dress up, and she clothed the cat in a dazzling array of humiliating outfits. The aging and dyspeptic tabby was far from child friendly, but Fiona Campbell had had him for years and wasn’t about to give him up now.

“My Band-Aid has Winnie the Pooh on it,” Kylie said.

“Oh, that’s nice. Did your grandmom buy them for you?”

“Uh-huh. I picked it out, though.”

Lee heard the whistle of the teakettle and went into the kitchen. “That’s good. I’ll bet it feels better already.”

“Yes.” There was a pause. Talking to a young child on the phone was a job. You had to constantly initiate topics, keep the conversation moving. As Lee poured hot water over the coffee grounds, he was aware of something in the back of his mind trying to press its way to the front, but he couldn’t quite grasp what it was—a thought, an idea, an image of some kind.

“Are you having fun in school?” he said into the phone.

“Um, yes.”

“What do you like best?”

“Art class. I drew pictures of Mommy today.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. We were apposed to bring a picture in and draw from that, so I brought one of Mommy from the scrapbook.” Kylie had trouble with “sp” sounds, and pronounced “supposed” as “apposed.” She also said “Francanscisco” for “San Francisco” and “pissghetti” for “spaghetti.” Lee found all of these childhood speech patterns charming, and was sorry the day would come—as he knew it would—when his niece would outgrow them.

A silence hung in the air, and Lee couldn’t think of anything to say. He knew his mother kept a scrapbook filled with pictures of Laura, but he didn’t know Kylie had seen it.

“And then when she comes back I can show it to her.”

Lee bit his lip. It was bad enough that his mother had never accepted Laura’s death, but it made him furious that she insisted on sharing her unreasonable hopes with her granddaughter.

“Okay, well, I’ll see you tomorrow. Can I talk to your grandmom now?”

“Okay. Grandmom!”

His mother came and took the phone.

“Yes, dear?”

Lee wanted to tear into her for what he considered her irresponsible behavior, but he didn’t have the energy. All he wanted to do was lie down, pull the blankets over his head and shut out everything.

“Was there something you wanted to tell me?”

“No—I just wanted to say good-bye.”

“Fine. Take care of yourself—and remember to eat!” His mother often ended conversations that way. He had lost so much weight during his depression that she became worried.

“Okay, I will. ’Bye.”

Lee hung up and lifted the filter from his coffee mug. The liquid inside was hot and strong and black—opaque and impenetrable, like his mother. Again the thought in the back of his mind struggled to make its way forward. He added a drop of milk to his coffee and took it over to the window seat. It was something about Marie, and yet not about her. Something related to her death…but what? He stared out at the gray February morning. A thin rain was falling, and he noticed the lights were on in the Ukrainian church across the street. In a flash, he remembered what had been bothering him all morning.

He picked up the phone and dialed the number for the Bronx Major Case Unit.

The campus is quiet, still as a tomb
. The thought came to Samuel as he tiptoed across the quad, toward the dormitory building with the one light burning in the first-floor corner room. The light cast a blurry yellow halo around the window, a protective aura surrounding the room’s inhabitants. He shivered as he drew closer. He could hear music playing—something classical, with flutes and violins. A couple of other rooms on the third floor had their lights blazing—late-night studying, he supposed.

He stood beneath the windows and looked up at the occupants of the rooms. Three coeds, as far as he could make out, sat around a low table, talking and laughing. He watched the girls moving through the windows, the outline of their bodies blurred through the white lace curtains, their faces muted and indistinct, as if in a dream. Why didn’t they want him? Why couldn’t they see his specialness? He could hardly dare to desire them, but as he sat gazing at their soft forms, lit from behind by yellow lamplight, translucent and misty mermaids, the gentle glow of the room, the light breath of breeze on his cheeks induced a trancelike state in which he floated, caught in a sweet web of longing.

Then one of the girls threw back her head, laughing at something (he couldn’t make out the words), exposing her throat. He watched as the light fell upon the sudden curve of her neck, so open, so vulnerable. He imagined his hands wrapped around that white neck, pressing, squeezing, tighter and tighter, until the life within seeped into his fingers. He imagined his hands growing stronger as the life force drained away from the girl’s body and into his own.

It was a thrilling thought—and it seized him with a force that shook him to his bones. He trembled, he sweated, he burned with a fierce flame from deep within him, from a place he had not known existed until now, a place his mother could not see, could not even imagine. This was his secret, his delicious fantasy. He trembled at the idea of keeping something from his mother—it made him swell with a sense of his own manhood. He turned and walked away from the window, putting his hand on the key ring that hung from his belt to stop the keys from jangling.

For the first time in his life that he could remember, he felt powerful.

Captain Chuck Morton leaned back in his chair and studied the man sitting on the other side of his desk. He looked thin, even leaner than when Chuck had last seen him two months ago, and definitely thinner than he had been when the two of them shared a suite of rooms at Princeton all those years ago. His friend’s angular, handsome face was pale and drawn, and his long body was slumped forward, his elbows braced on the chair’s armrests. Chuck knew Lee had been up since well before dawn. Morton leaned forward in his chair and fingered the glass paperweight next to his phone. It was a butterfly spread out beneath a glistening prism, and it gave him the creeps, but it was a gift from his son, so he kept it on his desk. The butterfly’s multicolored wings gleamed like tiny rainbows under the fluorescent light.

He sighed and looked at Lee Campbell. Even sitting there studying crime photos, his friend gave the impression of restlessness. It had been a long time since their carefree days at Nassau Hall, days when all that seemed to matter were rugby, girls, and grades—in that order. Now Lee looked anything but carefree—Chuck could see his long fingers twitching as they gripped the photos. Chuck felt sorry for his old friend; this was not the Lee Campbell he had known at Princeton.

Mental
. That’s what some of the beat cops called him behind his back, but Chuck felt a fierce loyalty to this intense, earnest man with the haunted eyes and nervous hands, a loyalty that extended beyond their days together romping the ivy-drenched quadrangles of Princeton. On the rugby field, Lee was the team captain, with quick hands and an even quicker mind, playing the key position of fly half, while Chuck, with his speed, played wing or outside center. Maybe it was their opposite temperaments that made their friendship possible: Lee was always keyed up, charismatic, intense, while Chuck’s own flame burned lower, with a steady blue glow. Lee was a born leader, and he was a born sidekick. The two of them bonded as roommates their freshman year in Blair Hall. Not even women could come between them, though Chuck still wondered occasionally if Susan ever regretted marrying him instead of Lee.

“You know,” Chuck said, “maybe I shouldn’t have called you in on this. Maybe it was—”

“A mistake?” Lee interrupted. “Cut it out, Chuck—it’s obvious that this case needs a profiler.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I was just thinking that because of…” Chuck paused, not wanting to say the words. He felt like a coward.

“Christ, Chuck, you can’t second-guess every case I’m on because it might bring up memories of my sister’s disappearance.”

Five years ago, Lee Campbell’s younger sister Laura had disappeared without a trace from her Greenwich Village apartment, and everything had changed. He had never been the same since then. It was as though a dark chord had been struck in his soul and the reverberations still had not stopped. He’d had a thriving private practice as a psychologist, and Chuck was surprised when Lee called a few months after his sister’s disappearance to say he was attending John Jay College for an advanced degree in forensic psychology. Later he came to realize that the disappearance of Lee’s sister had affected his friend in ways he couldn’t quantify. Once Lee graduated, Chuck had been instrumental in getting him his present position as the only full-time profiler in the NYPD. Lately, though, he had been wondering if he had made a mistake—emotionally, his friend didn’t seem up to it.

Chuck looked out the grimy window of his office, absentmindedly fingering the butterfly paperweight on his desk.

“So no signs of sexual assault, right?” Lee muttered, still studying the photos.

“Right,” Chuck said. “The lab report just came in. But how did you—”

“I’m telling you, Chuck, the same guy who did Jane Doe also killed Marie Kelleher last night!”

Chuck looked back at him.

“You really think they’re connected?”

“Yes, I do.”

Morton shook his head. “I dunno, Lee. Seems like a stretch to me.”

Lee ran a hand through his curly black hair, something he did when he was upset. His friend’s hair was longer, too, Chuck thought—even shaggy, by his own standards. He wore his own sandy blond hair short—like the bristles of a hairbrush, his wife said. He had left her soft warm body with particular reluctance this morning. When he rose from bed, the house still so dark and quiet, Susan had flung an arm out after him and moaned a little, and he had wanted nothing more than to climb back under the covers next to her and plant kisses everywhere his lips could reach.

The crime photos Lee was studying were from an unsolved murder out in Queens a few weeks ago—
Jane Doe Number Five
, they called her. She was well groomed and wasn’t dressed like a hooker, and it was odd that no one had called yet to report her missing.

Outside his office, Morton could hear the morning shift of cops arriving, as the building that housed the Bronx Major Case Unit stirred with the beginning of a new workday. The aroma of fresh coffee seeped through the closed office door, making Morton’s mouth swim with saliva. He looked wistfully at the empty coffee mug on his desk, swallowed, and rubbed his stinging eyes, dry from lack of sleep.

“I just know they’re related, Chuck,” Lee was saying, his dark eyes intense in the stark fluorescent lighting. “The posing of the bodies—”

“But there was no mutilation on Jane Doe,” Chuck protested.

“No, because he didn’t feel comfortable enough—she was probably his first kill.”

“Okay, okay,” Morton answered. “I believe you. Trouble is, I don’t know who else will.”

Lee stood up and paced the small office. “The same perp that killed this girl in Queens also killed Marie Kelleher. I know he did!” He thrust a photo in front of Chuck’s face. The glossy print showed a well-dressed young woman lying on her back, her arms flung out from her body, so that if you stood her up she would be in the same position as a crucifixion victim. But there was no cross anywhere in sight—the body lay in a ditch on the edge of Greenlawn Cemetery in Queens.

“Look at that!” Lee said, his voice tight with emotion. “Look at the positioning of the body! It’s exactly the same as Marie Kelleher, except this time he managed to get a little closer to his fantasy.”

“And what’s that?”

“Leaving the body in a church. There was nothing random about that. And the carving—that’s part of the fantasy too.”

Chuck leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know, Lee. It seems a little thin.”

“I’ll tell you something else. He won’t stop until he’s caught.”

“So you say we’re dealing with a serial offender here?”

“That’s right.”

Something in his voice made Morton believe him.

“Please, Chuck,” Lee said. “Please. I need to study the file on the Queens killing.”

Morton and rose from his chair. He felt stiff and old and tired. Seeing his friend like this didn’t help.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I had to call in some favors just to get a copy of these photos. Let me run it past the guys upstairs, okay? I don’t have to tell you that detectives can get very territorial about their cases.”

“All right.”

“So,” Chuck said after a pause that threatened to swallow them both, “how’s the
Frau ohne Schatten?
”

The old Lee Campbell would have smiled at this. But now his friend just raised an eyebrow, his face devoid of mirth. “Oh, some things never change, you know. Brisk as ever.”

Lee had come up with the nickname for his mother after seeing the Strauss opera in college. Chuck, who had some German ancestry on his mother’s side, found it amusing, having experienced Fiona Campbell’s relentless cheerfulness firsthand. They used to joke about how she was really the original
Frau ohne Schatten
—woman without a shadow. But now the shadows had fallen heavily over his friend.

Campbell turned to leave, but he swayed and caught himself by grabbing the door frame.

“You okay?” Chuck asked, reaching a hand out to him.

Lee waved him off. “Fine. Just a little tired, that’s all.”

Morton didn’t believe him, but he kept silent. He recalled Lee’s Presbyterian stoicism only too well from their days on the rugby field, and still remembered the day Lee refused to leave a tournament game after breaking his nose on a tackle. Blood spurting from his nose, he insisted on finishing the game; he muttered something about “setting an example.” Chuck called it masochism, but he would never say that to his friend.

“Can I speak with the pathologist doing Marie’s autopsy?” Lee asked.

“I don’t see why not. I’ll be in touch,” he added.

“Right,” said Campbell. He paused at the door to Chuck’s office, as if he were about to say something else, but then turned, opened the door, and was gone.

Morton leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his stiff bristle of blond hair. Then he stood, picked up his mug, and headed out of his office toward the coffee station. The mug—a gift from his daughter—proclaimed him as “World’s Greatest Dad,” but today he didn’t feel like the world’s greatest anything.

When he got to the coffee station, he saw that a few beat cops were gathered in the corner, heads lowered, talking quietly, and he heard one of them snicker. Then another one said, “Yeah—real
mental
, I guess.” They all laughed—until one of the conspirators saw Chuck and nudged the others with his elbow, at which point they abruptly stopped laughing. Rage gathered in Chuck’s chest, constricting his throat and making his forehead burn. He was noted for his even temper most of the time, but when he lost it, he truly lost it.

“What the
hell
are you looking at, Peters?” he bellowed.

Everyone in the station house stopped what they were doing and looked at him. He advanced on the group of subordinates, who shrank from him, averting their eyes as he approached.

“Let me tell you something,” he said, his voice lowered to a steely calm. “If you don’t get back to work right this minute, some heads are going to roll around here. Do you understand me?” he said, addressing himself to a young sergeant, Jeff Peters.

“Yes, sir,” Peters replied, his blunt face sulky. He was short and black-haired and built like a prizewinning Angus.

Chuck felt his face redden. “I didn’t hear you, Peters!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you, O’Connell—do you have anything to say to me?”

“No, sir.” Danny O’Connell was a tall, skinny redhead who followed any lead that Peters set. Chuck knew this, and knew that the rest of them were just playing along. One of the rules of group dynamics—which functioned in station houses exactly as it did in high school locker rooms—was to make fun of others to deflect the possibility that others might make fun of you. Peters was the ringleader, as usual, and Chuck knew he had a mean streak. He came from an unstable home, had a drunken failure for a father, and was angry at the world. Chuck put his face close to Peters’s face, so close that he could smell his wintergreen aftershave.

“Or maybe you wanted to transfer out of Homicide? Because that could be arranged.”

“No, sir.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you’d better keep your nose clean. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Chuck took a look around the station to see that he had things under control. He was satisfied with the results. Everyone was looking at him with respect tinged with fear, and that was the way he wanted it. There would be opportunities for joking later, for loosening the reins a bit, but what he needed now was respect. He glanced at Peters one last time and stalked back into his office, being sure to slam the door behind him.

Once inside, he closed the venetian blinds and sank into his chair. Being in command was part theatrics, part intimidation, and part setting an example. He didn’t enjoy the theatrics or the intimidation, but he dreaded even more losing control of his men. Once that happened, he knew, you might as well turn in your badge.

He was not a natural leader—he knew that. At Princeton, Lee was always the alpha male, and Chuck had been happy with his role as sidekick. But then a miracle had happened: he had finally attracted the attention of Susan Beaumont, the most glamorous and beautiful woman he had ever known. For a long time she seemed to have fixed her sights on Lee, and then they had broken up and she was pursuing him. Even now it seemed like a dream from which he would awaken someday, but until then, he had resolved to do everything in his power to keep her interested. Being a lowly policeman would not do for the likes of her, so he set his eyes on precinct commander—and he made it, though it was not a natural fit. Chuck Morton was tailor-made to be second-in-command. He was diligent, honest, and intelligent, but not especially imaginative or charismatic. Still, he worked hard—harder than anyone would ever know—to get what he wanted, to please Susan, to make her proud of him.

And now here he was, commander of the Bronx Major Case Unit. It was a demanding job, especially now, after what had happened on the southern tip of Manhattan just a few short months ago. Everyone was jittery, and his men looked to him to set an example. And by God, he would set one if it killed him.

He looked out the window at the soot-covered sill, where a pigeon pecked away at some invisible scraps. He wished there was something he could do to take away his friend’s pain, but he knew that the demons dancing in Lee’s soul were beyond anyone’s reach. But at least he could keep the men from making fun of his friend behind his back. He looked down at his empty coffee mug—he had forgotten to fill it. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. He knew that to go back out there now would spoil the dramatic effect of his stormy exit. The coffee would have to wait.

Lee Campbell stepped out of the police station into the dismal dog days of February, that time of year when all holiday cheer has evaporated, leaving in its place only a lingering shiver of wistfulness. The days were still short, and the cold weather a brusque reminder that spring was still a distant reality.

This year the cheer had been thin in New York, the holiday meetings filled with a sense of loss, of those suddenly gone, ripped brutally from their lives, like a conversation interrupted mid-sentence. There had been much talk in the media about healing, and of a “return to normalcy,” but he knew that for many people the words were empty ones. The healing process would never be finished, and “normalcy” would never come. He didn’t know about the rest of the country, but New Yorkers now lived in two time zones: before and after.