Silent Victim (15 page)

Chuck Morton poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the windowsill. A fat black fly buzzed sluggishly against the windowpane in a halfhearted attempt to escape into the steamy August air. The atmosphere was muggy and oppressive, the air heavy with rain that refused to fall.

“Okay, what do we know about this guy?” he said, slinging himself into his chair. He was feeling antsy, and more coffee probably wasn’t a good idea, but he didn’t care. Elena Krieger was at the far end of the room, putting as much distance between her and Detective Butts as possible.

Lee Campbell rested his lean body against the doorframe. Chuck thought his friend looked tired—there was a gray pallor to his face, and he cradled his injured arm in his left hand.

“There’s evidence of some confusion as to sexual preference or gender identity,” he said.

Detective Leonard Butts settled his broad backside into one of the chairs across from Chuck’s desk.

“In English, Doc?” he said, scratching his ear. His ears were large, with long, pendulous lobes, and reminded Chuck of the ears of his childhood beagle, Charlie.

“He kills men as well as women,” Lee said. “And since these probably are sexually motivated crimes, it points to an offender who is either attracted to both men and women, or is confused about where he belongs in the gender spectrum.”

“How do you know he is sexually motivated?” Krieger challenged.

“Postmortem mutilation almost always has a sexual element,” Lee replied.

“So he’s one kinky bastard,” Butts said, throwing a glance at Krieger, who stiffened. Chuck opened his mouth to reprimand Butts, but realized with a quiver of guilt that he enjoyed watching the detective bait Krieger. He turned and poured himself more coffee.

“Would that mean we’re looking for someone who is … effeminate?” Krieger asked.

More effeminate than you,
Chuck wanted to say, but he took a sip of coffee instead.

“Not necessarily,” Lee replied. “He’s conflicted, but he might appear completely normal to the casual observer.”

“Let me get this straight,” Morton said. “Are we talking about a bisexual?”

“It’s not as clear cut as that,” Lee answered. “I’d say that he’s primarily heterosexual, but displays some form of feminine identification—maybe rooted in a childhood trauma of some kind.”

Butts frowned. “We talkin’ about a tranny?”

Krieger stared at him. “A trann-ee?”

“A transsexual,” Chuck explained.

Krieger flushed, color spreading from her elegant neck to her forehead. “Oh, yes—of course.”

“Very possibly,” Lee replied. “Or a transvestite. There are plenty of men who like to dress in women’s clothing, but are primarily or even solely attracted to women.”

Butts leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, frowning so that his bushy eyebrows nearly touched. “Let me get this straight. You’re talkin’ about a guy who’s a hetero but who likes to wear panty hose?”

“That’s one possibility,” Lee answered.

They all paused to consider this idea. Chuck listened to the sound of daily life in the station house. Footsteps came and went, office doors opened and closed with a click, snippets of conversation drifted into the room. Out in the lobby, someone laughed—a short, percussive sound, like a dog barking. He found the everyday ordinariness of it comforting. After the horrors of 9/11, which swept them all up the flood of disaster and its aftermath, there was something reassuring about the gradual return of daily routine.

“Is there a chance this—person—could be a woman who had an operation to become a man?” Krieger asked.

“Sexual murders of this sort are almost entirely committed by men. I don’t see it as likely—it’s not just the physical size and strength required, it’s also the amount of testosterone in the system. This killer linked violence and sex early in life. Women aren’t likely to act as sadistic sexual predators. They’re much more likely to become victims, not offenders.”

This seemed to displease Krieger. She frowned and bit her lip, but said nothing.

“Some of ‘em become sidekicks to killers,” Butts said. “They work with their boyfriends.”

“That’s true,” Lee admitted, “but I’m fairly certain this offender is working alone.”

There was an awkward silence; then Butts said, “Well, what are we waitin’ for? Let’s get out there and track down some leads.”

“I have an idea of where we might start,” Lee suggested. “What?” Chuck asked. He recognized the look on his friend’s face—the narrowing of the deep-set eyes, the pursed lips. Lee Campbell was coming up with a plan.

“I’d like to look through old police reports of missing persons.”

“How come?” Butts asked.

“I’ll explain on the way. Let’s go down to records.”

The NYPD was in the process of converting old case records into computer files, which was—predictably—taking forever. There were miles of dusty stacks of manila folders containing all that was left of people’s lives. It was ironic, Morton thought, that if you were a crime victim you stood a good chance at having the details of your life recorded—even if it was in a smudged file folder in the basement of a police precinct.

“Shall I come?” Krieger asked.

“Many hands make light work,” Lee said, opening the door for her. He looked back at Chuck. “I’ll check in with you later.”

“Right,” Chuck said.

When they had all gone, Chuck sat down at his desk with the crime-scene photos. He stared down at the bloated bodies of the victims, grotesque and swollen beyond recognition. He rubbed his eyes, red from lack of sleep and bad city air. Murder was a nasty, dirty business. Sure, you could glamorize it in books and films and tidy little stories where the bad guys always got caught and crime never paid, but the truth was that crime
did
pay, far more often than anyone in law enforcement wanted to admit.

He knew all this, and tried not to let it keep him up at night. But when it came down to it, there was no one left to speak for the victims except people like himself who were willing to do whatever it took to track down their killer. The responsibility he felt was oppressive—and instead of growing lighter over the years, it had become heavier. He looked back down at the crime-scene photos, forcing himself to think of each lifeless body as a former person—with a soul, if you like, a living flame snuffed out by a ruthless murderer who was just getting started.

There was a knock on the door, and Sergeant Ruggles stuck his head through the door.

“Beg pardon, sir.”

“Yes?”

“Your wife’s on the phone.” “Thanks, Ruggles.”

“Not at all, sir.” He cleared his throat. “I was wondering, sir, about—” He paused, blinking rapidly.

“Yes, Ruggles?”

“It’s about Detective Krieger, sir.”

“What about her?”

“Is she—I mean, she’s not—” He cleared his throat again. “I mean, do you know if—” “If she’s married?”

“Not that it’s any of my business, of course,” Ruggles added quickly, frowning. He looked like a condemned prisoner facing a firing squad.

“No, she’s not.”

Ruggles’s eyes widened. His neck muscles tightened, and he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, like a turkey gulping for air.

“Right—thanks.”

“She’s trouble, Ruggles. I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, sir,” he said, but Chuck knew the sergeant was lost already. Krieger would eat him up and spit out the bones, not even pausing to pick her perfect teeth as she searched for her next victim.

But Ruggles was glowing. Sweat darkened his collar, and his hands trembled, but the man was grinning all over. If the brass buttons on his uniform could smile, Chuck thought, they would have.

“I’m off now, sir, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure—see you tomorrow, Ruggles.”

“Yes, sir—thank you, sir.”

Ruggles withdrew and closed the door. Chuck wondered if he should be more sociable with his desk sergeant. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all to ask Ruggles to join him for a drink sometime. The cops under him socialized with each other all the time—why couldn’t he join them once in a while? And maybe he could warn him off Krieger. That woman was a Venus flytrap; he had no wish to see poor Ruggles caught in the sticky sap, wriggling and struggling to escape as she slowly digested him.

He looked down at the phone on his desk, the console blinking red. He sighed and picked up the receiver, but as he did, his eye caught one of the crime-scene photos. He leaned over and flipped it facedown, then cradled the phone to his ear.

“Morton here.”

His wife’s voice stroked his ear like a cool caress.

“Hi there. Will you be home for dinner tonight?”

He glanced at his Rolex, a Christmas present from Susan. He didn’t give a fig about expensive trinkets, but she did. It was after six—he was officially off duty over an hour ago. The meeting had lasted well over two hours.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

“The kids want to wait to have dinner with you.”

“I’m leaving now.”

As he put on his jacket, Chuck thought about the photos of the victims on his desk. No one would be waiting for them to come home ever again, he reflected as he flicked off the lights and closed the door behind him.

Lee had been promising Kathy he would go with her to a Café Philosoph, an informal monthly meeting of people to talk about philosophy. There were apparently quite a few of them in Europe, especially France, and she had been going to one in Philadelphia. When she found one that met not far from him in New York, she begged Lee to join her, and he agreed.

It was Friday, so she came in by train after work, meeting him at his apartment before heading off for the meeting.

When she saw his bandaged arm, he spoke before she could ask about it.

“I had a run-in with a door.”

“Yeah?” she said, raising an eyebrow. “And wait till I see what the door looks like?” “Very funny.”

“Seriously, how do you have a—”

“I was angry and I punched out a glass door.” He went into the kitchen.

She followed him. “Angry about what?”

“Everything.” He began unloading the dishwasher, just so he didn’t have to look at her.

“I can see you’ve given this some serious thought,” she replied sarcastically as he slid a steak knife into the wooden rack on the counter. He kept unloading dishes as she stood, arms crossed, leaning on the wall next to the Italian spice cabinet he had bought for a song at the Eleventh Street Flea Market.

“Okay, I get the picture—you don’t want to talk about it,” she said, and went back into the living room. This time he followed her.

She sat down on the couch and put her feet up, kicking off her sandals. She had nice feet—small, well-formed, with high arches. Her nail polish was the color of dried blood.

“Was this before or after the lecture?” she said, plucking a grape from the ceramic bowl of fruit on the coffee table.

“Before.”

“You could have mentioned it.”

“I thought you had enough on your hands.”

“Oh.” She had been asked to join the team of specialists identifying the remains found at Ground Zero. There was little left of the victims, so what was left was that much more precious.

“How’s that going?” he said.

She reached down for another grape, but changed her mind and leaned back against the couch. “I guess I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I’m glad to help, but on the other … it’s so hard.”

“Yeah,” he said, feeling the inadequacy of words in this situation.

“The whole thing is so … overwhelming.”

“Are you sure you can handle it?”

“Oh, yeah, you know—I didn’t go into this line of work expecting it to always be easy. It’s just that this feels different, you know? The sheer scale of the disaster … it’s hard not to feel a crushing sadness about it all.”

“Yeah, I know.” In the weeks afterward, he was down near Ground Zero meeting up with some friends—going downtown as often as possible, to spend money in the restaurants and shops, following the mayor’s urging, to try and stave off some of the economic devastation that was just one of the many by-products of the tragedy. Suddenly, without warning, he was seized by a fit of sobbing so intense that he had to lean against the side of a building. A middle-aged woman with a kind face stopped and laid a hand on his shoulder, asking him if he was all right. He remembered nodding, helpless to stop the heaving sobs racking his body. The look on her face told him that she was aware of the reason for his weeping—no one in the city in those days remained untouched by what had happened.

Kathy got up from the couch, slipped her sandals back on, and stretched. “Well,” she said, “we should get going.”

Minutes later, strolling down Elizabeth Street, he thought that some semblance of peace was beginning to return to the city, though it was a jittery kind of normalcy. They walked through the burgeoning neighborhood that had recently been dubbed NoLita (North of Little Italy), where art students, Asian fashionistas, and would-be screenwriters mixed with the Italian and Latino working-class families who had lived there for generations. The night was balmy, and the trees along Ludlow Street swayed and rippled in the gentle breezes of late summer.

“No-lit-a?” Kathy said, when Lee told her where they were. “What is it with New York? Does every neighborhood have to have a trendy name?”

“I remember TriBeCa before it was called TriBeCa,” Lee said. “It was just a jumble of industrial buildings, not anyplace you’d want to live.”

“Wow,” Kathy said. “And now no one can afford to live there—it’s worse than Chelsea.”

“So are you saying that in Phillie you don’t name your neighborhoods?”

“Well, some of them, sure. But I don’t think we have quite the same rabid zest for it you do.”

“I see.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said quickly. “This is a great town. It’s just that everything is so—so
intense,
you know? People here are so self-conscious, so aware of the impression they’re making.”

“I know,” he said, smiling as they passed an artsy couple all in black, very thin, perfectly Euro-chic. The woman’s black heels clicked sharply on the pavement, and the man’s pants were so tight that Lee wondered if he had to hold his breath when he sat down.

“Is your arm bothering you?” Kathy asked, glancing at the way he carried his bandaged forearm.

“No, it’s fine,” he lied. Even with the ibuprofen, it still throbbed insistently, but he wanted to get off the subject as quickly as possible.

The meeting was held at Le Poéme, a French/Corsican restaurant owned by a family who lived in the back of the building but seemed to do a lot of their living in the actual restaurant—there were always a couple of kids underfoot, as well as assorted dogs and cats.

When they arrived at La Poéme they were escorted to the rear of the restaurant by the owner, a tall, long-faced Gaul with rumpled gray hair, slumped shoulders, and a weary, benign expression. The back room was kind of a cross between a living room and a restaurant—the décor was an eclectic mix of objets trouvés, secondhand furniture, discarded children’s toys, and dusty spider plants. Furniture and knickknacks from various cultures and time periods lined the wall—blue and white Quimper pottery hung on the wall above a Regency-style couch complete with silk tassels, next to which sat a sturdy French country oak coffee table. Lee would have called it East Village chic, but since this was NoLita he supposed it would have to be called NoLita chic.

The philosophers straggled in one by one, looking very much like what you might expect. A tall, seedy Frenchman with baggy eyes wearing a tattered gray pullover arrived with his petite, sharp-eyed wife, chicly dressed in black spike-heeled boots and a miniskirt over black leggings.

A bearded Russian with tobacco-stained teeth strode in carrying a large leather-bound volume—Dostoevsky? Pushkin? Tolstoy? Lee couldn’t make out the embossed lettering on the front, but it looked old and well worn. Perhaps the Russian had brought it to back up his points with quotes. A nervous-looking young man with an unforgiving crew cut and little round glasses looked as if he was either emulating the dissident German writer Bertolt Brecht or auditioning for the role of Motel the Tailor in
Fiddler on the Roof.
There were others, arriving alone and in groups of two or three. By the time they were ready to start, a dozen or so people had gathered at the tables and couches along the wall.

Even for New York, it was a strikingly European-looking crowd. Philosophy just wasn’t an American pastime—it didn’t drive fast or shoot or take its clothes off in public.

The moderator was a charismatic, soft-spoken man who taught philosophy at Baruch College, Bernard Elias. His skin was olive, but his accent suggested Paris rather than Cairo. His face and manner were charming, gracious, and kindly.

“We have a rather good turnout tonight,” he observed, looking around the room. “I see a few new faces.”

Lee stiffened, hoping he wouldn’t ask them to introduce themselves, but to his relief, Elias continued.

“Those of you who are new, just a few quick ground rules. To avoid confusion or cross talk, we ask that you raise your hand to be recognized by the moderator before speaking. This week I’ll be the moderator, though we often take turns—if other people volunteer to moderate, it’s fine with me.”

“You’re still the best,” the sharp-faced Frenchwoman said, and several other people nodded.

“Well, thank you, but my job is mostly just to keep things moving,” Elias replied with a modest smile. Lee didn’t doubt the Frenchwoman was right—Elias exuded warmth, and had a quiet self-confidence.

“Now then,” he continued, “this week’s topic was suggested by Jonathan.” He nodded in the direction of the young man with the round glasses, who nodded back stiffly. “So it is our tradition to have him begin with the first comment—perhaps telling us why he chose this topic.”

Jonathan removed his glasses and wiped them with his napkin.

“Well,” he said, replacing them on his nose, “I have always been interested in the relationship between culture and language. The Japanese, for example, have no word for ‘no'—only an elaborately polite way of avoiding saying yes. This tells you something about the way their culture operates.”

Several people nodded and smiled. Jonathan was younger than most of them, and it appeared he functioned as a kind of mascot, or pet, of the group.

“So I was wondering what it says about our culture that we seem to place a lot of value on this word ‘evil'—especially in the current political climate.”

“Very timely, Jonathan,” Elias said with a fatherly smile. “Would anyone care to comment?”

They discussed the connotation of the word as it relates to religion and sin, and whether or not the concept of evil existed at all outside religion. Most of the group agreed it did—and also that it seemed to exist as a concept in most cultures. Then they began to investigate where evil comes from, and whether it exists in the animal kingdom outside the realm of humans.

“It seems to me that animals have no moral sensibility,” the chic Frenchwoman said. “Therefore their actions, no matter how vicious or cruel, could not be said to be evil.”

“All right,” said Elias. “So would you also say that a knowledge of right and wrong as defined by society is necessary in order to call an action—or, indeed, an individual—evil?”

As the others contemplated the question, Elias looked around the room, and his eyes fell on Lee and Kathy. She had offered one or two comments, but Lee had not yet spoken. Elias smiled at Lee.

“What do you think, Mr.—”

“Campbell,” said Lee. “Call me Lee.”

“Lee, then—what do you think?” Elias repeated.

Lee squirmed in his chair. He didn’t want to throw the cold, hard light of criminal psychology into the discussion, but it was exactly what was needed.

“Well, in my profession I deal with criminals—”

“Oh, how
interesting,”
the Frenchwoman said, leaning toward him, hands clasped in her lap. Her husband frowned and crossed his arms. “What’s the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath?” she asked.

“It’s subtle,” Lee said, and went on to explain what a psychopath is. The group listened silently, a few people nodding when he gave examples of psychopathic behavior, and how it seemed to reflect an inability to feel compassion or empathy.

“So if they can’t feel empathy, how can they know their actions are wrong?” the Russian asked, pouring himself more tea. He had a large pot of black tea on his table, and he held little bites of sugar cubes between his teeth as he drank.

“They know their actions are wrong,” Lee answered. “They just don’t care.”

“Ah!” said the Russian, brandishing his book like a weapon. “But if they can’t empathize with how their actions affect others, then how can they have a real sense of morality?”

“How do they … get like that?” asked Jonathan, the serious young man with the glasses.

“There’s some indication this kind of hardwiring takes place when they are young,” Lee said.

“How young?” said the Russian, concentrating so hard his bushy eyebrows almost touched.

Lee told the story of Ted Bundy’s aunt waking up with the knives all around her bed, and everyone was suitably impressed.

“My God,” said the Frenchwoman with a gasp. “How can you blame a five-year-old boy?”

“So does that mean evil exists but we’re not responsible for its existence?” asked her husband.

“How old does someone have to be before their actions can be considered evil?” said Jonathan.

“Can they be … helped?” asked the Frenchwoman.

“We don’t know for sure,” Lee said, “but there is evidence to suggest that once this psychopathic personality is in place, no amount of therapy can change it.”

The Russian slurped down some tea and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “It sounds as though these people lack a key component of what it means to be human.”

“That’s very tragic,” said the Frenchwoman.

“So you’re saying that this kind of monster can be created—through no fault of their own?” Elias asked Lee.

“And they can’t be fixed?” the Frenchman added. “There is some indication that once those neural pathways have been laid down, there’s no going back,” Lee said. A pall fell over the group.

They went on to discuss the difference between evil deeds and evil people, and concluded that while no one was totally good, it was likely that no one was totally evil either. They did not revisit the issue of psychopathic personalities, perhaps because it was too depressing—Lee had the feeling his comments had upset them. Kathy added few more remarks, but he kept silent. No one invited him to comment further, which was just as well, he thought.

They ended on an upbeat note, with the agreement that if evil does exist, it is overshadowed by good more often than not. They took a vote on next week’s topic of discussion, and “Is Happiness Attainable?” won.

The formal discussion over, they broke into small groups. Heads bent over their wineglasses, they continued their earnest discussion. Lee found it profoundly comforting that these people were willing to gather twice a month to tackle the Big Questions—wine or no wine, they clearly took their philosophy seriously.

He and Kathy stood next to a life-sized statue of Apollo and sipped their wine. Someone had covered his private parts with a yellow polka-dot bikini.