Silent Screams (5 page)

“It’s Detective,” Butts corrected.

She was not deterred a bit, though, and continued without a pause.

“You see, Detective, the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. He must have had a reason for wanting our Marie up there with him—because that’s where she is now, sitting in heaven beside God the Father. He must have some plan for her, or He wouldn’t have taken her away from us like this.”

“So your daughter was religious, too?” Lee asked.

Mrs. Kelleher shifted her focus to him. “Oh, goodness me, yes! She never missed church. Marie was the very best child that anyone could hope to have,” she added, dabbing at her eye with the corner of a flowered handkerchief, which gave off an oppressively heavy floral scent. Lee tried to place it: Was it mimosa? Patchouli? Lilies of some kind?

Brian Kelleher put a protective hand on his wife’s shoulder. Lee had more sympathy for him. It looked as though he was just playing along with his wife’s religious passion, and that left to his own devices, he might be a sensible, rational man. Mrs. Kelleher sighed, though Lee had the impression that she was feeling sorry for herself rather than mourning her daughter. Something about this woman rubbed him the wrong way and set off alarm bells in his head.

Another half hour of questioning brought them no closer to useful information about poor Marie. Her parents merely corroborated everything they already knew about her. She was a good student, quiet but well liked. She honored her parents’ faith by attending church regularly—she even worked as a volunteer to feed the homeless in a program her church ran at a local shelter once a month. After refusing another cup of lukewarm instant coffee, Lee and Butts made their escape. Lee felt the Kellehers’ eyes on them as they walked down the short walkway to the street. Neither of them said a word until they rounded the corner toward the bus stop; then Butts exploded.

“What
is
it with people?” he bellowed. “Those two were more interested in their reputation than in finding out who killed their daughter.” He snorted and pulled a cigar out of his breast pocket. “What the hell,” he muttered as he placed it between his teeth. “Sometimes I just don’t know about people. I mean, why do we even bother, you know?” He bit off the end of the cigar and spat it out into the waste can. “You ever feel that way, Doc?”

“Yeah,” Lee said, “sometimes.” He didn’t want to suggest or even hint to Butts how deeply he had drunk from the well of despair.

“I dunno,” Butts said. “I just don’t goddamn know.”

Neither do I
, Lee thought, but he said nothing.

“They’re hiding something,” Butts fumed, biting his lower lip. “I swear to God, they know something they’re not telling. I just don’t know what it is.”

Lee looked at the detective, who was chewing furiously on the cigar, working his jaw as if he wanted to pulverize it.

“I don’t know,” he answered, shaking his head. “It did seem like they were hiding something, but I’m not sure it related to Marie’s death. They did seem more interested in preserving their self-image than tracking down their daughter’s killer, but I’m not sure it adds up to collusion. Sometimes people react to grief in strange, unpredictable ways.”

“Funny, isn’t it?” Butts remarked as they walked down the hill toward the bus stop. “I mean, you say this guy is some kinda religious nut, right?”

“Something like that.”

“Right. So who does he go after? The kid of a coupla religious freaks. Talk about irony, huh? I mean, if that’s not irony, what is?”

Lee mumbled some words of agreement. It
was
ironic—or was it? He was beginning to wonder if Butts was on to something after all. What if the Kellehers
did
know more than they were letting on? And if so, what exactly did they know?

Dr. Georgina F. Williams was an African American woman of imposing dignity, with a formal manner and precise way of speaking that bordered on frosty—except for the occasional wayward smile that began at the corners of her eyes and culminated in a wry, upward twisting of the lips, first the right side, then the left.

Lee had learned to anticipate that smile and often did his best to provoke it; his ability to make this stern woman laugh was one of the few things in his favor in the unequal balance of power between them. He remembered when he used to sit where she was, treating patients—when he was the one with the power. Fortunately, though, he was comfortable around strong women, no doubt because of his mother, Fiona Campbell, who, even at seventy-two years of age, was a force of nature.

Dr. Williams crossed her elegant legs at the ankle, pressed her fingertips together, and leaned back in her chair. She wore a rust-colored suit with a full, flowing skirt, and a pendant with an African design around her neck. Her office matched her perfectly: understated, tasteful, refined. Soft track lighting and a potted palm tree in the corner set off the apricot-colored walls, lined with prints of Monet, Klee, and Matisse. Ethiopian sculptures decorated the bookshelf in the far corner of the room, nestled in between the rows of books, mostly psychology texts. There was always a vase of fresh flowers on the table next to her chair. Today it was a bouquet of peach-colored roses.

Dr. Williams regarded Lee with her large, prominent eyes. “So. How are you this week?”

“Not great.” It was always a struggle to admit this, to block his mother’s voice from his head:
I’m fine, just fine—everything’s fine
.

“Are you still having nightmares?”

“Sometimes.”

Dr. Williams shifted in her chair. “A lot of people continue to have trouble with the events of September eleventh, you know.”

“But not everyone had a nervous breakdown.”

“No. But don’t you think it’s time you started forgiving yourself for it?”

Lee looked at the window behind her, where a fat gray and white pigeon was pecking at something on the windowsill. The bird cocked its head, regarding Lee with its perfectly round, tiny orange eye. Lee made the sound of a pigeon cooing under his breath. The bird on the windowsill took a few stiff steps to the edge of the ledge—then, with a rush of wings, was gone.

The corners of Dr. Williams’s eyes crinkled. Lee watched for the smile to spread down her face, but instead she spoke.

“What did you say to it?”

“What?”

“The pigeon. What did you say to it?”

Lee looked away.

“Don’t think—just answer.”

“But I—”

“Say the first thing that comes into your head.”

“Uh, be careful.”

“You told it to be careful?”

“That’s what popped into my head.”

Dr. Williams uncrossed her legs and leaned forward.

“Be careful of what?”

“Everything, I guess.”

“So you feel there’s danger lurking everywhere?”

Lee looked out at the empty window ledge.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“What kind of danger?”

“Human danger. Bad people—people who want only to kill, to hurt others.”

“Like the terrorists?”

Lee looked down at his shoes. “Yes. Like them, and…”

“And the person who took your sister?”

Lee felt hot, stinging tears spring into his eyes, and he brought his hand up to wipe them away. He hated crying in front of this woman, with her long, elegant legs and understanding eyes.

“Do you always have to bring up my sister?” His voice was harsh, tight.

Dr. Williams leaned back and uncrossed her legs.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Lee looked out at the empty windowsill.

“I’m on a new case.”

He expected Dr. Williams to disapprove; they had discussed the inadvisability of Lee taking on a case just yet. To his surprise, though, her face betrayed no emotional reaction.

“I see,” she said. “So perhaps you were thinking about the new case when you made the comment.”

“Right,” he answered, though he didn’t believe it himself. He looked at her for a response, but her face was composed, unreadable. “You’re not angry?”

“Should I be?”

“Well, we both agreed that it was probably a bit early for me to be…I mean, this just sort of landed in my lap, but I thought you’d be angry.”

“Are you disappointed I’m not?”

Lee was caught off guard by the question. “What do you mean? Why would I be disappointed?”

Dr. Williams smiled. “Sometimes when you’re expecting a certain reaction and you don’t get it, it can be disappointing.”

“Are you saying I
wanted
you to be angry?”

“It’s not about wanting, exactly. It’s about using other people as a counterbalance to your own actions. We’ve talked about your tendency to not take care of yourself, for example—”

“Yes, I know.” Lee suddenly wanted to leave this tasteful room with its muted lighting and faint scent of eucalyptus. It all felt oppressive, confining, and he wanted to flee out the door.

“And how you have managed to delegate the duty to other people from time to time.”

“Right.” He didn’t even try to hide his irritation. He
knew
all of this; as a psychologist himself, he could jump through the same intellectual hoops as Dr. Williams. But when it came to his own unconscious mind, he was continually amazed at his own blind spots—and he resented her knowledge of his inner life. “So what are you saying?”

“Only that it’s possible that you count on me to some extent to worry about you, so you don’t have to worry about yourself. So you expected me to be upset when I found out that you had taken on a case, and when I didn’t appear to be, you may have found that disappointing.”

Lee refused to consider what she was saying. He hated his own defensive reaction, but felt helpless to avert it. He was finding it difficult to concentrate.

“And maybe it even made you angry,” Dr. Williams continued.

“Now why would that make me angry?”

“Because you felt I let you down—because I refused to fill the role you assigned me to.”

Lee rolled his eyes. “Oh,
please
. That’s a little far-fetched, don’t you think?”

Dr. Williams smiled. “What do you think?”

Lee squirmed in his chair and looked at the door.

“Have you noticed that often when we encounter a difficult or painful subject, your first impulse is to leave?”

Lee looked back at her. “No shit, Sherlock.”

To his surprise, Dr. Williams laughed. Then she said, “That’s not how your mother would react to such vulgarity, is it?”

“No. When I was a kid, the bar of Ivory soap would be in my mouth so fast I wouldn’t know what hit me. So what?”

“So maybe you were testing me. I don’t have to tell you that often in therapy, as in our relationships, we’re ‘testing the waters,’ trying to evoke a different response from the one we grew up with.”

“Right. You don’t have to tell me. Classic transference, yadda yadda. So what?”

“So nothing. Either it’s useful to you or it isn’t. It’s not important whether I’m right or not—what matters is whether or not it helps you.”

Lee looked down at his hands.
Nothing can help me
, he thought. A silence widened between them, a chasm built of his unwillingness to wade into the murky depths of his mind, to grapple with the monsters lurking there.

“He carves them up,” he said abruptly, hoping to shock her, to punish her with his words. He hated her calm, her confident poise, and he wanted to shake her out of it.

“Who does?” she asked.

“The killer. He slashes words into their bodies.”

“What kind of words?”

“The Lord’s Prayer, for God’s sake!”

A thought sprouted in his head, a tiny seed that blossomed as he spoke.

“He’s searching too.” He spoke slowly, the idea still forming.

“Who is?”

“The killer. For him, it’s an eternal search for a better outcome. Only it never happens: The moment passes. Then the rage takes over, and the only thing left for him is to kill. But each time he goes in hoping it won’t come to that.”

“How do you know this?”

“I don’t
know
—I just have a feeling about it.”

“An instinct.”

“Right—an instinct. There’s something about him, his MO, his signature—he’s killing as a last resort.”

“So you feel you understand him.”

“Yes, I do.”

“And his rage? Do you understand that?”

Lee looked out the window. The pigeon was back again, strutting and pecking, his bright orange eye impersonal as Nature herself.

“Oh, yes,” he said, biting out each word. “I understand his rage.”

Samuel was drawn back to the campus again, hoping to catch another glance of the misty mermaids behind their translucent lace curtains. It was a Friday night, though, and the mermaids were gone—out having fun, no doubt.
Girls like that are sluts, Samuel! Sluts! They will corrupt you!

He shook off the harsh echo of his mother’s voice in his head and walked toward the dormitory. A couple of lights shone on the second floor, and he could see bookish students seated at desks, heads bent over their studies. As he approached, he saw light in the windows of one room on the first floor. The first-floor room was different—the lighting was dim, with a warm orange glow to it.

It was the glimmer of intimacy.

He crept to the window and crouched down behind some bushes, listening. There were sounds coming from inside the room, unclean sounds that made his heart pound faster, as a sickly excitement filled his veins. His stomach felt like a vast cavern carved out of his flesh. His palms leaked sweat, and all the blood seemed to drain from his head, leaving it light and empty. He closed his eyes tightly and concentrated on breathing so he wouldn’t pass out.

“Oh, Roger, oh, oh…
Roger
.”

The girl’s voice was slurred and heavy with passion, and sliced into his consciousness as he crouched there in the darkness, knees digging into the damp ground, a patch of wetness creeping up his pants leg. He brushed a strand of hair from his eyes and clasped his knees, making himself invisible in the darkness. Ever since he was a child, the darkness had been his friend, hiding him from the intrusive glares of his mother and the inquisitive insolence of his classmates. In the darkness he was safe, at one with the velvety blackness surrounding him.

He had never been afraid of the dark, never cried when the lights were switched off in his bedroom at night. He longed to retreat into the silence and stillness of the night, while others slept around him, listening to the subtle murmurings of the creatures who also felt at home in the dark. He would lie in his bed and pick out the various sounds: the metallic clicking of the crickets, the soft hoot of an owl, all the rustlings of the nocturnal creatures of the woods.

He especially liked walking from the bright sunlight of a Sunday morning into the tall, vaulted interior of the church—he loved the cool stillness of the stone columns. He knew that his mother was gratified by his interest in church, but she had no idea how much he loved the dimness of the chapel, especially on dull grainy days, when the weak light could barely make it through the tall stained-glass windows, and the congregation sat shrouded in a holy gloom. It was moments like that when he felt closest to God, when he could almost imagine His forgiveness for his own dark desires…

“Oh, oh, God…R-r-r-o-ger!”

The girl’s voice tightened and exploded in a wail of pleasure. He put his hands over his ears as he felt his face redden, warmth spreading up from his neck. Hot tears of shame slid down his cheeks, falling from his chin and gathering in the hollow of his collarbone. He felt violated by his proximity to her unholy passion, and knew then what he had to do. He leaned over on the damp ground and cradled his head in his hands, rocking back and forth as the wetness seeped deeper into his skin, his veins, his bones. He moaned softly. There was only one thing to do now, and the awesome responsibility of it humbled him.

The hand of God
. He looked at his own hands, so white and delicate that they might almost be the hands of a woman. He knew how could it be done—he’d seen it. Now he was ready to do it himself.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done…

He rose from his lonely lookout and retreated into the welcoming darkness. It was time to do God’s will.