Silent Victim

by C. E. Lawrence

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “No, I will not calm down until you explain to me what is going on!”

  Elena Krieger was angry, and when she was angry, the world knew about it. By the time Lee and Butts showed up at Chuck’s office, she had worked herself into a state and wasn’t going to work herself out of it until everyone around her had a piece of her mind. Judging by the string of expletives she let loose, there were plenty of pieces to go around.

  “Nothing’s going on,” Chuck explained patiently. “We tried to get hold of you yesterday, but we couldn’t, so we met anyway.”

  Krieger threw her arms in the air and paced the small office. The men kept well out of her way—Lee and Butts hugging the wall on either side of the door, Chuck behind his desk. She was wearing a tight-fitting gray suit with a military cut, and as she harangued them, her long arms sliced the air like swords.

  “You just happened to have a meeting when I was having my peer-review board, so that’s what you are claiming?”

  “We didn’t know about your peer review,” Chuck said. “How could we? You didn’t say anything about it.”

  “It was easy enough to find out,” she said, apparently determined to wring every last bit of drama out of this. “Is it because I’m a woman?” she demanded, looking at each of them in turn, as if daring them to answer yes.

  Not so much, Lee wanted to say. Krieger was exuding more testosterone than the three of them put together.

  “You know,” she said, “I didn’t ask to be on this investigation, but now that I am, you had better make me part of this team or there will be hell to pay, I can assure you!”

  Chuck looked like he’d had about enough of this. His face was already the shade of overcooked salmon, and his hands were clenched in fists at his side. Lee decided it was his turn to take some of the heat.

  “Look,” he said, “it was an honest mistake, but I think we can avoid this happening again if we just touch base by phone or e-mail with each other every morning, and maybe again in the early afternoon. That way, if there are any more last-minute meetings, at least we’ll have a system in place.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but the reasonableness of his suggestion and his soothing tone of voice took the wind out of her sails. All she could do was make some sputtering sounds before collapsing into a chair, her energy spent. Lee felt almost sorry for her. He could only imagine what kind of battles Elena Krieger had already fought in her life.

  “Okay,” Chuck said, “so let’s get on with it. What did you find out in Jersey?”

  Lee and Butts exchanged a glance, unsure how much to say about their trip. They ended up reporting on all the interviews in detail, referring to Butts’s notes when necessary, but they soft-pedaled the oddness of Perkins and his sister. Lee wasn’t sure why—maybe because they were both a little embarrassed at the way it had affected them. Now, sitting in the prosaic surroundings of Chuck’s office in the Bronx Major Case Unit, it seemed as though they were imagining it, and that Perkins was just a harmless eccentric with an equally odd sister.

  “We got a roster of customers she seems to have sold pottery to,” Butts said. “I’ll see what I can find out about them. Might be hard—all I’ve got is a list of names so far.”

  “I’ll see if Sergeant Ruggles can help you on that,” Chuck said. “We’re tracking down all calls made to and from her cell phone, and maybe that’ll give us something.”

  “Any forensic evidence from the lab yet?” Krieger asked.

  “Well, there is one interesting thing,” Chuck answered.

  “What’s that?” said Lee.

  “That threatening note she said she received, the one she gave you—”

  “You know who wrote it?” Butts asked, helping himself to coffee.

  “She did.”

  Butts did a double take just like an animated cartoon character. His jaw fell open and his eyes widened, giving him the expression of a startled bulldog.

  “What?”

  “The words pasted on the card came from a magazine found in her house—the pages were cut up in such a way that they were able to match it up in a few minutes. A child could have done it.”

  “But why would she fake that,” Krieger mused, “if she really was being stalked?”

  “Maybe so I would take her seriously,” Lee suggested.

  “Or,” Butts offered, “maybe it was the boyfriend after all. He spent time in that house, too.”

  “But why wouldn’t he cover his tracks more? Why leave the magazine in plain sight?” Chuck said.

  “To freak her out?” Butts suggested. “I seen weirder things than that, believe me.”

  Krieger frowned. “But the manner of death—”

  “Could it be a copycat crime?” Chuck asked. “Highly unlikely,” Lee said.

  “But you said she was a crime buff,” Butts pointed out. “She could have told the boyfriend about the other vics, or he could have read about them.”

  “It doesn’t really make a lot of sense for the boyfriend to cast suspicion on himself by leaving the magazine around, though, does it?” Chuck said.

  “No, not really.” Butts looked disappointed. “But there’s something about that guy I don’t like.”

  “Unfortunately, we can’t arrest people just because you don’t take a shine to them,” Krieger pointed out dryly. Butts glared at her. “May I ask what the magazine was?”

  Chuck leafed through the evidence photos. “Uh, it was Better Homes and Gardens.”

  Krieger frowned. “Does that seem like the kind of magazine a young girl like her would be likely to have lying around?”

  “They dusted for prints,” Chuck said. “Only hers were found on it.”

  “Well, if it was the boyfriend, he could have wiped off his—or used gloves,” Butts pointed out.

  “Any other evidence we should know about?” said Lee.

  “Nope,” said Chuck. “The crime scene didn’t give us much. But that’s not surprising. The water pretty much washes everything away.”

  “Very clever way to dispose of bodies,” Krieger said. “Obvious but effective.”

  “That’s not the only reason he does it,” said Lee.

  “What do you mean?” Krieger said, her eyes narrowing.

  “Water is important to him—it’s the only constant factor in every one of his crimes. I’m convinced it’s part of his signature.”

  Krieger frowned. “Do you really believe in that whole ‘signature’ business?” Lee stared at her.

  Butts spoke up for him. “What kind of question is that?”

  “I mean the notion of these killers needing to perform a certain ritual in order to get satisfaction. It’s all a bit unscientific, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not so much a question of ritual,” Lee replied, determined not to lose his temper. “It’s more that certain elements remain constant.”

  “But that’s even more nebulous, isn’t it? I mean, so we have a criminal who likes to leave his victims in water—what good does that do us if we have no forensic evidence?”

  “It’s an insight into his psychology, his personality,” said Lee.

  “So maybe he had a traumatic episode with water as a child,” she scoffed. “I don’t see how that helps us. And now you say that signatures can ‘evolve’ and change—which makes it even more useless, it seems to me.”

  “Not useless,” Lee said, “just more complex.”

  “And what about all this terminology—psychopath, borderline personality disorder, and so on. I don’t see what good that does us. So what if this man is a psychopath—how does that help us catch him?”

  “Actually, the clinical term is sociopath,” Lee corrected her.

  Krieger rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to reply, but Butts beat her to it.

  “Okay, we done here?” he said irritably. “Can we get on with this?”

  Krieger stiffened, her spine even more rigid than usual. “I was just trying to save time by establishing what ou
r working methods are going to be.”

  “Well, do us all a favor and don’t, okay?” Butts snapped.

  “All right, settle down, both of you!” Chuck said. He turned to Krieger. Lee could see from the tension in his shoulders he was making an effort to control himself. “Whether or not psychological analysis of a criminal is a flawless method—and I think we can admit that no method of crime analysis is perfect—it’s all we have right now. So can we just agree to carry on until we have something more ‘scientific'?”

  Krieger smoothed her flawlessly coiffed hair. “I have no intention of hindering the investigation. I just thought it was appropriate to raise a few questions before getting too far into it.”

  “Look, lady,” Butts interjected, “like it or not, we’re already way further into it than any of us wants to be. The question is, how do we get out of it?”

  “Okay, so what stands out about these killings so far?” Chuck asked Lee.

  “Well, as I said, water plays an important part in the killer’s fantasy. Although the one victim was electrocuted, it was still a death involving water, since he was in his bathtub.”

  “It’s weird, though, isn’t it?” Butts remarked. “How often do you see these guys killing men and women?”

  “That’s an important part of the profile,” Lee agreed. “But I don’t know what it means yet. He’s also going after relatively low-risk victims—”

  “ ‘Low-risk’ victims?” Krieger interrupted.

  “Yeah,” Butts said. “In other words, he’s not goin’ after prostitutes and drug addicts—lowlifes who take risks.”

  “So that means he’s bold—confident,” Chuck added.

  “Right,” said Lee. “He’s taking more chances by going after these kinds of victims.”

  Krieger frowned and crossed her long arms over her ample chest. “How can you automatically assume the killer is a man?”

  Butts rolled his eyes, but Chuck glared at him.

  “Actually, that’s a good question,” Lee said, trying to maintain the delicate truce they had struck with Krieger. “Though there are female serial killers, they’re very rare. Statistically the odds are against it being a woman.”

  Krieger made a little puffing sound with her lips and plopped down in the nearest chair with an air of dissatisfaction.

  “Right,” Butts said. “I’d say the odds of this being a woman are about as great as the odds that I’ll develop an interest in playing bridge.”

  Lee had to smile at the irony of Butts defending the art of criminal profiling, considering his initial disdain when they first started working together. He suspected Butts was more interested in putting Elena Krieger in her place than he was in supporting Lee.

  “I think Detective Krieger has an excellent point,” he said. “At this point I think one of the worst mistakes we could make would be to close off possible options, just because they seem unlikely. I think keeping an open mind is really important in a case like this. There are already enough unusual factors to indicate to me that this is not a textbook example of any particular type of offender.”

  “Agreed,” Chuck said. “So we keep an open mind, at least for now.”

  “What do you mean by ‘not a textbook example'?” Krieger asked. “I didn’t know there was such a thing in your field.”

  “Well, strictly speaking, there isn’t,” Lee replied. “No two criminals are exactly alike any more than any two people are identical. But there are greater and lesser degrees of conformity to certain—types, I guess you might say. We use terms like organized and disorganized, rage driven, sadistic, and controlling—but the truth is most offenders are some combination of those types.”

  “And this particular offender?” Krieger said.

  “I would guess that he has some trauma in his past, probably early childhood, involving water. And in these killings he is playing out some version of that event—reliving it, so to speak.”

  “Why early childhood?” said Butts.

  “Because that’s when things tend to impact us most deeply. The brain is more fluid in young children, and it forms connections that are almost impossible to sever later on. So when Ted Bundy’s aunt awoke from a nap one day to find five-year-old Teddy placing knives all around her as she lay in bed, she was witnessing the early deviant behavior of a serial killer in the making.”

  “Christ,” Butts said. “That really happened?”

  “Yes. It came out when his former friend Anne Rule wrote a book about him.”

  “I remember that book,” Chuck said. “The Stranger Beside Me, wasn’t it?”

  “Right,” said Lee.

  Elena Krieger stood up and stretched her long body.

  “All of this is quite fascinating, I’m sure,” she said, “but shouldn’t we focus on the matter at hand?”

  Butts glared at her, his porous face reddening, as though it were about to sprout spores. He opened his mouth to say something, but Lee intervened.

  “Have you been able to establish any link between the victims?” he asked Chuck.

  “Not yet. The only link seems to be that they’re dead.”

  “And the notes,” Butts pointed out.

  “Right. The notes indicate the killer had some interaction with them before he decided to the kill them—but does that fit your usual situation in cases like this? Don’t serial offenders usually prey on strangers?” Chuck asked.

  “This case is odd in a lot of ways,” Lee answered. “They do usually kill relative strangers, which helps them depersonalize their victims.”

  “And makes them harder to catch,” Butts interjected.

  “True,” Lee agreed. “But guys like Gacy and Dahmer had some interaction with their victims before killing them, for example, so I think we should start with the idea that this UNSUB knew the victims—at least to an extent.”

  “He must have known the man he killed in the bathtub, no?” Krieger asked. “There was no sign of forced entry.”

  “I agree,” Lee said. “A key element here is motive. Once we figure that out, it will help us to connect the victims. I’m convinced there is a link—we just haven’t seen it yet.”

  “Maybe the killer is the only link,” Butts suggested.

  “Is there any chance the choice of victims was random?” Chuck asked.

  Lee shook his head. “Highly unlikely. The notes all suggest a relationship of some kind—at least in the killer’s mind.”

  “Okay, then we need to set up more interviews with people who knew the vics,” Chuck said. “Detective Butts has done a few already, but I’m thinking we need to cast a wider net.”

  Lee nodded in agreement, but what he was thinking was that nets have holes, and their prey had already proven slippery enough to evade them so far. He was beginning to wonder if there was a net in the world big enough to catch him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When Lee arrived home, there was a message on his answering machine, and it wasn’t entirely welcome. It was from Kay Shackleton, the head of the Psychology Department at John Jay College, asking him if he was interested in being a guest lecturer at the college. He sank down in the red leather armchair by the window and listened to the message a second time.

  “We’ve been working on the list of visiting professors, and Tom thought of asking you,” she said. Tom Mariella was a senior professor on the faculty and an excellent teacher—Lee had taken several of his courses.

  “… your position on the police force gives you a unique point of view, and we thought you might be interested in giving your perspective on the attack on the World Trade Center. It would be part of a series of lectures given by other faculty members as well. With the anniversary coming up, we just thought—” Lee hit the STOP button on the machine.

  He had read somewhere—R. D. Laing, perhaps—that the primary emotion experienced by people in the presence of evil was confusion. He felt that now—as he did with every case he worked on. It was a familiar feeling, and yet one he never seemed to get us
ed to … underneath the cold, hard fact of three dead victims lurked a whirlpool of bewilderment. Spuyten Duyvil … Whirlpool of the Devil.

  He wandered into the kitchen and made himself a martini, shaking it in the sterling-silver decanter that once belonged to his father. He poured it into a V-shaped glass, added an olive, and took a swallow. The taste of gin was reassuring—sharp, medicinal, like drinking pine sap. He drank some more and wandered into the living room.

  The anniversary is coming up…. He had lived through more than enough anniversaries already—his father’s desertion, his sister’s disappearance—and now this. His profession was about solving things, the puzzles and mysteries behind crime, and yet he could not solve the mysteries in his own heart. The questions gnawed at him, and they all seemed connected. How could his father have left his family behind, just walking out the door one rainy night, never to return? And how could his sister have disappeared without a trace, as though she had never existed? And how could someone slip through the crowded streets of the city, carrying the knowledge that he was a murderer, yet not betray that dark fact to anyone he met—until it was too late?

  Dusk settled uneasily over Manhattan as Lee stared out his front window, martini in hand. The rays of the setting sun fell on the Ukrainian church across the street, caught in the vast circular design of the stained-glass window that took up most of the church’s front façade. He imagined the light traveling forever in the circular whirl of saints and visions, caught in an endless trajectory of faith and belief. He was reminded that many of the stars whose distant light we see on clear nights are already dead, and that what we see is just the trail of ghosts, left behind long after their lives have ended.