Silent Victim

by C. E. Lawrence

  “Yeah,” Butts said, lowering himself next to a boulder on the side of the trail. “Too—many—goddamn doughnuts.”

  In a lighter moment, this would have been funny, but now all Lee felt was a pressing need to get up the trail. They left Butts leaning against the boulder and continued their climb. Lee didn’t mention the fact that his own side had been throbbing for the last mile and a half.

  When they had been going for a good fifteen minutes, well out of earshot, Diesel said, “Maybe now he’ll back off on the sugar and fat and hit the gym more often.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Lee panted.

  As he said the words, he heard the sound of running water.

  “Hear that?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Diesel said. “We’re not far now.”

  They clambered on in silence for a while, and then they saw it through the trees—the water tumbling and gurgling gracefully over the rocks, as if it didn’t have a care in the world. High above the falls was a wooden viewing platform. Standing on the platform were two people. It was hard to make out their features at this distance, but there could be no doubt that the people on the platform were Eric McNamara and Charlotte Perkins.

  Diesel clutched at Lee’s arm. “What’ll we do?”

  “He hasn’t seen us yet,” Lee said. “We need to get closer without being spotted.”

  “Perhaps one of us could serve as a decoy or distraction while the other one sneaks up on him?”

  “Good idea,” Lee said. “Do you want to be the decoy?”

  “All right,” Diesel agreed, “since you know the trail.”

  Lee didn’t want to point out that it had been many years since he hiked these woods, but he didn’t want to put Diesel in danger, and he thought it was riskier to approach someone like Eric from behind than to stand talking with him at a distance.

  “Okay,” he said. “Don’t get too close—he might have a gun. Keep yourself covered at all times.”

  “Right.”

  He looked back down the trail for any sign of Butts, but saw nothing. He left the trail and bushwhacked through the woods, veering to the south, so that he would come up on the platform from the back. The foliage was dense once he left the path, and he scrambled up the hill, pushing branches and leaves out of his way.

  The roaring of the falls made it hard to hear anything else, but he hoped Diesel was occupying Eric’s attention. He pushed onward. Sweat was trickling into his eyes, and he paid no heed to the branches and twigs whipping him across the face. Twice he stumbled on the rocky ground and was brought to his knees by vines wrapping themselves around his ankles. Still, he pressed on, until he could see through the trees that he was above the viewing platform.

  He clambered back to the trail, scurrying down the hill toward the place in the falls where they had seen the viewing platform. He cleared the underbrush only yards away from the platform, just in time to see the figure standing on it extend his arm. He saw the glint of metal, and the unmistakable flash of a firearm. Far on the trail below, he watched horrified as Diesel fell to the ground, clutching his side.

  There was a roaring in Lee’s ears as his body filled with fury. All of the rage of the past months gathered within him, propelling him forward, just as a tremendous clap of thunder sounded overhead.

  He heaved himself up the few steps at the rear of the platform before his quarry had time to turn around—the combined sound of the roaring falls and the thunder made anyone standing on the platform effectively deaf. He saw the combination of alarm and relief in Charlotte Perkins’s eyes as he threw himself at Eric McNamara, aiming at his knees in a rugby tackle. The young man turned around just as Lee lunged, bringing him down hard on the cedar planks of the floor. The gun went clattering across the platform, coming to rest against a cedar support timber in the far corner. Charlotte lay sprawled in the opposite corner, stunned and dazed.

  To his surprise, McNamara was strong, and he was quick. In a flash, he had thrown Lee off and was diving for the gun, scrambling on his hands and knees across the wooden boards as fast as he could. Lee grabbed his ankle and pulled with all his might, flames of pain shooting through his injured hand. McNamara responded by twisting his body around and kicking him in the face. Lee felt his nose thicken with blood as he lunged at his foe, reaching him just as his fingers closed on the handle of the gun. Lee grabbed him by the wrist, surprised once again by the wiry strength in that body, as his enemy writhed and twisted like a serpent beneath him.

  McNamara wrenched his hand free, and Lee felt a swift, hard blow on the back of his head, delivered by the barrel of a gun, followed by a hard kick to his ribs. He heard a cracking sound, felt something give inside him, and sank to the floor with a groan. He looked up, his vision blurry, just as a streak of lightning ripped through the sky. McNamara stood over him, the gun aimed at his head. Meanwhile, Charlotte Perkins had risen shakily to her feet. McNamara was unaware of her, smiling down at Lee as he took aim. Charlotte had a thick cudgel in her hand—it looked like a hiking stick. Backlit by the stark white streak of lightning, her damp hair streaming in the wind behind her, she raised the cudgel over her head, her usually mild features distorted by fury.

  She struck, and McNamara went down, crumpling to his knees as another clap of thunder shook the heavens. Lee struggled to get up, but pain seared his torso, and he collapsed again with a groan. Charlotte Perkins tore the gun from McNamara’s limp hand. Incredibly, he was still conscious, and struggled unsteadily to his feet as Charlotte aimed the gun at his chest.

  He leaned against the platform railing for support. “Give—me—the gun, Charlotte,” he commanded groggily.

  Her face rigid with rage, she aimed the revolver at McNamara’s chest. “You killed my brother,” she said in a flat voice, all the more terrible because of its utter lack of emotion.

  “He—lied—to me,” McNamara said, gazing with dazed eyes at the barrel of the gun. “He promised me—”

  “I don’t care what he promised!” she hissed. “You killed him, and now you’re going to pay!”

  “No!” Lee gasped, but it was too late. The gun barrel blazed, a brief yellow flash against the darkening sky. He didn’t know if it was thunder or the sound of the gunshot ringing in his ears. McNamara looked at Charlotte with shock and surprise as a bright red flower of blood blossomed on his chest. Then, teetering on unsteady feet, he let go of the platform and plunged through the opening in the railing, onto the rushing waterfalls below. Lee watched in horror as his body hit the rocks. Tossed by the torrential flood of water, it was quickly washed downstream, bobbing and twisting, caught in the pulsating current, as another resounding clap of thunder sounded, shaking the skies with its fury.

  Lee remained conscious long enough to see a jagged streak of lightning slash across the sky, and then everything went black.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Forty-eight hours later Lee sat at a table in the front window of McSorley’s, waiting for Detective Leonard Butts to show up. In front of him was a pair of cold mugs of beer—one for him and one for the detective. You couldn’t order just one mug of beer at McSorley’s. They were always served two at a time, and you had two choices: light or dark. Lee had ordered one of each. The room was quiet, and sunlight streamed in through the big picture window, falling on the businessmen and women who had slipped in for a late lunch.

  The events of two days ago still had an unreal, dreamlike quality. He vaguely remembered Butts lumbering up the platform stairs and taking the gun away from Charlotte, who, after shooting Eric McNamara, was meek as a kitten. He recalled the search for McNamara’s body, which they finally found at the bottom of the falls, lodged behind some rocks. A few sticks and leaves had become trapped by his body on their way downstream, so that he resembled a grotesque version of a Green Man. There was a sheathed hunting knife in his pocket, and no one had any doubt about what he intended to use that for.

  Lee also remembered—and wished he didn’t—the slow, painful descent bac
k down the trail. He was in worse shape than Diesel, who had suffered a flesh wound to his side—whereas, as it turned out, Lee had three broken ribs and smashed nose cartilage. Somehow the four of them made it down the hill. Butts had driven them to the emergency room in the nearest town, grumbling all the way that he should have been there, and that he would now start a program of diet and exercise, and so forth.

  Lee took a long, deep swallow of beer and looked around the room. He liked the atmosphere here. True to its origins as a bar for working-class Irish men, McSorley’s sported a thick layer of sawdust on the floor. An even thicker layer of dust covered the musical instruments, knickknacks, paintings, and photographs occupying every spare inch of wall. There was always a smell of onions in the air—he liked to order the cheese and crackers and onions, which were served “on the house” to the nineteenth-century working-class customers.

  The bell over the door tinkled, and in strode Detective Butts, carrying a leather gym bag. He nodded to the waiter—a big, burly Irishman, probably an ex-cop—as the man slung half a dozen beers onto one of the thick oak tables, as though he were wielding billy clubs instead of beer mugs.

  Butts lowered himself into the chair next to Lee with a groan, putting the satchel on the floor next to him. “Just came from the gym,” he said with a rueful but triumphant smile. “Bench presses and abs today.”

  “Do you think you’re tackling this fitness thing a little too vigorously?” Lee asked, sliding a beer across the table toward him.

  Butts looked at the mug of beer. “I shouldn’t,” he said, patting his generous girth. “Aw, what the hell,” he shrugged, lifting the glass to his lips. “You only live once, right?”

  Drinking deeply, he set the mug down with a satisfied clunk.

  The waiter appeared again, wiping his hands on the long white apron tucked into his pants.

  “Ready for another round, then, are ya?” His accent was pure County Cork.

  “Yeah,” Butts said. “This one’s on me.”

  The mugs were small, and needed refilling often, but that meant the beer was always cold and fresh. They drank again, and Lee settled back into his chair, the edges of the room softened by alcohol.

  “Okay,” Butts said. “So I have answers to some loose ends you were asking about.”

  “Right.”

  “Turns out that Baldy was someone he picked up at the Jack Hammer. When I showed pics of him around the place, some of the guys remembered seein’ him on more than one occasion.”

  “So the pickup went bad in some way, and—”

  “—and Baldy was history. He must have got as far as the guy’s apartment, but what happened next I guess we’ll never know.”

  “What about the doctor—the anesthesiologist?”

  Butts took a long swig of beer and wiped his mouth.

  “Far as I can make out, poor guy was at the wrong place at the wrong time, I found a pickup request at Fleet Limos that McNamara responded to at Roosevelt Hospital. Some-thin’ must have gone down in that limousine—maybe a proposition gone wrong, I dunno. Whatever happened, it got McNamara mad enough to off the doc.”

  He took another swallow of beer. “Tox screens came back positive for GHB on all the vics. In some cases they drank the stuff, but with a couple it looks like he injected them with it.” Butts traced one of the deep groves in the dark wood of the table with his finger. “I, uh—I watched some more of the videotapes, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That is some weird shit, let me tell you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, Perkins has this Caleb guy convinced that in his past life he killed his mother, see? I think it was some twisted notion of therapy, to try and get the truth of what happened to the kid in childhood. It was somethin’ involving his mother, I know that much.”

  “So when he took Charlotte to the waterfall, he was going to reenact that event in his ‘past life'?”

  “Somethin’ like that, yeah—by that time he was so whacked who knows what was goin’ through his head?”

  “How is Charlotte doing?” Lee asked.

  “She’s out at Rikers. How do you think someone like her would be at a place like that?”

  Lee looked down at the round oak table, heavily scarred by initials carved into its surface by over a century and a half of patrons.

  “She shouldn’t have shot him,” he said. What he didn’t say was that if Caleb had lived, it would have been a chance to study him, leading to potentially valuable insights into his mind and motives.

  Butts waved a hand dismissively. “She’ll get off easy. I can’t imagine a jury alive that wouldn’t have sympathy for her after what happened.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “How’s Diesel—he okay?”

  “He’s back at work already. I think he’s enjoying the fuss everyone’s making over him—big hero, you know, taking a bullet and all that.”

  Butts looked down and pushed his beer mug away. “Yeah, about that. Look, I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t say another word about it. It’s a tough hike for anyone, and you just happened to get a stitch in your side. It could happen to anybody.”

  “Well, it happened to me, so I’m hittin’ the gym from now on. I’m tellin’ you, Doc, I’m a new man—you just wait and see!”

  Lee smiled. “Okay. I’ll wait and see.”

  “How ‘bout you? How’re you doin'?”

  “Oh, fine. I’m a little beat up, but I’ll live.”

  “Yeah.” Butts paused and looked out the window at the pedestrians striding along East Seventh Street, so full of purpose and energy. “Any follow-up on the phone calls—the ones about the dress?”

  “No. I don’t know who was making them. It wasn’t McNamara. Chuck still has my line tapped, of course.”

  “How about … have you talked to … her?”

  “No. I’m going to call her.”

  “Okay,” Butts said. “Be sure you do. You two got some-thin', I’m tellin’ you. You be sure to call her.”

  Lee nodded and took another swig of beer. It slid down his throat, cold and bitter, rich with the promise of the serenity of forgetfulness. Gazing at the amber liquid, he longed to sink into its River Lethe for a long, deep sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  Barefoot, Lee padded into the kitchen and stared at the phone hanging on the wall next to the refrigerator. It was the old-fashioned kind—the receiver was attached to the phone with a cord—but he liked it. It was there when he moved into the apartment, and he liked its cherry-red color. It seemed to be waiting patiently for him to make up his mind.

  He circled the room like a bird dog on a scent three times before finally picking up the receiver from its cradle. He dialed her number, hung up before the first ring, then dialed again. He almost hung up again, but forced himself to wait for at least three rings. He prayed he would get her answering machine, but she picked up after the third ring.

  “Hi,” he said, trying to sound as casual as possible. Don’t want too much, don’t be too needy.

  “Hi.”

  He wondered if Kathy felt as neutral as she sounded, or if she was deliberately flattening her voice. “How are you?”

  “I’m doing okay. How about you? I hear you got a little beat up.”

  Was she really okay? Or was she hiding her desperate need for him with a deliberately dispassionate tone, feeling him out before committing to anything herself?

  “I’m okay.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. He took a deep breath, and felt a sharp stab from his injured ribs. Okay, fine—tell her the truth. “I miss you.”

  Time stretched out like pulled taffy in the pause that followed.

  “Congratulations on solving the case.”

  Congratulations. Could she sound any more impersonal? But all he said was, “Thanks.”

  Another pause. He twisted the phone cord around his finger and shifted his weight to the other foot. He regretted using the kitchen phone rather than the por
table in the living room. All he wanted to do was flee, rather than stand here and wait for her next response.

  “I miss you too, you know.”

  Caught off guard, he wasn’t sure how to answer.

  “Okay,” he said, feeling immediately it was a lame response.

  “It’s not that I don’t care about you.”

  “Okay,” he repeated. What were you supposed to say to something like that? And what’s with the double negatives? he thought irritably.

  “Look,” she said, “the last thing I want is to hurt you.”

  Too late for that.

  He summoned his courage. If the truth wasn’t good enough, then to hell with the whole thing.

  “Look,” he said, “relationships are hard—they just are. And we’ve both been through a lot lately. But we can handle it one of two ways. We can get over it separately, or we can work on getting through it together. Either way, we’ll probably survive. But if we do it together, we have a chance to grow closer rather than farther apart.”

  Another pause, and then she said, “I’m so … angry.”

  “I know. I am, too.”

  “Sometimes I just want to scream. Other times I feel like I could … kill someone.” “Me, too.”

  “I hate feeling that way.”

  “As long as we both feel that way, we might as well feel it together.”

  She gave a little laugh, and he felt a dam break inside him. Relief flooded through his veins like rushing water.

  “Wise guy, eh?” she said.

  “Whaddya gonna do about, ya crazy dame?”

  “Think you’re a big shot, huh? Why, I oughta—”

  “Just try it—you’ll be sorry, see?”

  She laughed again; it sounded like water tumbling over rocks. “I’ll be in New York tomorrow. I’ll see you for dinner, but on one condition.”

  “Name it.” “I’m buying.”

  “Now who’s being funny? My city, I’m buying. You can pay when I come to Philly.” “See you at Keens, then.” “Hey—that place is expensive!” “Yeah, and you just said you’re buying.”