Silent Slaughter

by C. E. Lawrence

  “So, what do you have for me?” Lee asked.

  “Follow me, Doc,” Butts said, leading him through the lobby to a small office at the end of a short corridor. “My new digs,” he said, closing the door behind them. Three desks sat spaced evenly apart in the cramped room. Two were tidy and orderly; the other was a mess. Butts sat down at the third desk.

  “Nice,” Lee said. “Your own office?”

  “Naw, I share it with two other guys, but still, it’s better than the Bronx.” Butts shuffled through some papers with one hand, the other still clutching the half-eaten bagel. “Have a seat,” he said, clearing off another pile of papers from a beat-up captain’s chair next to his desk.

  “Thanks,” Lee said. He sat down and looked around. A frugal afternoon sun crept listlessly through the single window, filling the room with pale gray light. “Who’s this?” he asked, pointing to a photograph of a young woman tacked to a large bulletin board on the wall.

  “Lisa Adler,” Butts said. “Her mother reported her missing two days ago.”

  “That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “Not really.” Butts took another bite of bagel and scratched his head. “Although I suppose there could be a connection. Ah!” he cried triumphantly, plucking a sheath of plastic from the clutter on his desk. He thrust it at Lee. “Have a look at this.”

  Inside the plastic sleeve was a letter. Neatly typed, in Times New Roman font, it could have come from any number of mass-produced laser printers. He read the letter without removing it from the plastic.

  Dear Detective Butts,

  I just thought I’d say hello because you’ll be seeing a lot more of me. Or, rather, hearing a lot more. I very much doubt you’ll ever see me. Still, you never know—anything’s possible. I hear you work with that hotshot profiler. Good luck to both of you ever catching me.

  The game’s afoot!

  Yours,

  The Professor

  There was no signature or handwriting of any kind on the letter.

  “You’ve dusted it for prints?” Lee asked.

  “Completely clean. The envelope he used is on the other side.”

  Lee turned over the plastic sleeve and studied the envelope. The letter was addressed to Detective Butts, Thirteenth Precinct, Manhattan, printed in the same font as the letter. There was no sign of handwriting anywhere on the envelope.

  “Probably a waste of time to do DNA testing,” Lee remarked. “He avoided using his handwriting. I doubt he’d be stupid enough to lick the envelope.”

  “That’s what I was thinkin’,” Butts agreed. “Plus, there’s been no crime to link it to yet, and the labs are backed up as it is. What does it mean, Doc? Do we have to worry about this guy?”

  “I’m afraid we do.”

  The department got hundreds of crank letters every year, most of them irritating but harmless. Lee’s experience told him that this one was different. The writer was clearly literate and intelligent. Worst of all, Lee was quite certain, he was very dangerous.

  “What do we do now?” Butts asked.

  “You’re not going to like my answer.”

  “Try me.”

  “We wait.”

  As he spoke, the weak afternoon sun lost its struggle with the advancing darkness and slipped behind a dense cloud cover, leaving the room in the gloom of early-winter twilight.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Edmund gazed lovingly at the girl on the bed. She had stopped struggling now and gazed up at him with terror in her eyes. Small-animal sounds came from her throat, like the whimpering of a rabbit. The black duct tape over her mouth made it impossible for her to make any serious noise. He took in the sight of her, reveling in every detail: the fair skin with its faint dusting of freckles, the nails with their chipped polish, in need of a manicure.

  Too bad, he thought. She had had her last manicure. Lust surged through his body at the thought of the complete power he had over her.

  Most of all he liked to watch their eyes. The moment when their fear turned to pure animal terror was delicious—it never failed to send a shiver of pleasure down his spine. There was an instant when they all realized they were going to die, and watching the hope drain from their faces was thrilling, an intoxicating nectar. And the more he drank, the more he craved.

  He had it all planned out—the who, what, where, and when, right down to the last detail. The key to success was organization.

  He glanced at the wall clock. It was exactly six, the big and little hands forming a perfect 180-degree angle, a straight line . . . the shortest distance between two points. The sight of it sent warm little shivers down his spine. Six o’clock, and all’s well. Time to get to work.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lee left Butts with instructions to inform him of any updates and headed back to his apartment through the descending December dusk. He decided to walk the mile or so home, turning south on Second Avenue. The storefronts sported festive holiday decorations, the nodding Santas and grinning elves in stark contrast to the grim thoughts running through his head. As he walked, he pondered the nature of the letter writer and didn’t like his conclusions. Intelligent, mature, organized. And cruel. The man’s coldness practically leaped off the page.

  Of course, there was no telling what his crimes were or would be, but this was no ordinary jealous husband or bitter ex-employee about to go on a rampage. This man would be more difficult to catch than the average criminal because, more likely than not, he would not know any of his victims. He was in complete control, and he was enjoying himself.

  In short, Lee concluded, he was very likely a sociopath.

  Similar thoughts crowded his mind as he passed the cozy, misted windows of the Stage Restaurant, a tiny Polish hole-in-the-wall serving fabulous homemade soups, pierogis, and the best turkey burger in the East Village. Next door to the Orpheum Theater, it served a constant stream of actors and audience members, both locals and tourists. The customers perched on the stools lining the counter were not thinking of roaming sociopaths as they hunched over bowls of steaming cabbage soup.

  That was his job. As the only full-time NYPD profiler, Lee was technically a “civilian adviser”—but he was called in on the hardest cases, the ones resistant to forensics and ordinary detective work.

  He turned west at the corner of Second Avenue and Seventh Street, where for many years the Kiev was a popular place for late-night revelers as well as the neighborhood’s elderly Eastern European residents. The Kiev was gone now, replaced by a trendy Korean restaurant, the kind of place where sleek young Asian waiters looked as bored as the well-heeled clientele.

  The venerable Veselka still remained, though it had lost some of its downtown charm in a renovation a few years ago. He preferred it in the old days, when he would squeeze past the hodgepodge of tables scattered at odd angles in the crowded front room to get to his favorite table in the tiny back room, underneath a narrow winding staircase leading up to a tiny, cluttered office.

  Dusty ferns and spindly spider plants festered in moldy pots on the windowsill, as they had for decades, watching over endless cups of coffee served to aspiring actors and anarchists, scholars and scoundrels. That was the Veselka he loved—dirty and rumpled as an old coat. The new one, with its forest green trim and tidy paint job, was indistinguishable from Starbucks. New York was constantly reinventing itself, and it could break your heart. But he was hungry, so he stopped in for a bowl of soup.

  By the time he reached his building, it was nearly seven. As soon as he’d turned the lock in his apartment, the phone rang. He saw on the caller ID that it was his mother. She hated cell phones and only called him on the landline. He suspected one reason for this was a decline in her hearing, but she would never admit that. Fiona Campbell was a classic example of Scottish stoicism. Never complain, never grovel, and never admit to weakness of any kind. She was a virtuoso of denial, gifted in the art of deflection—so successful, in fact, that she had delegated most of her darker emotions to he
r children. And now that Lee’s sister was gone, the role of “surrogate empath” fell to him.

  He picked up on the third ring.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hello, dear.” She sounded annoyed. He knew Fiona didn’t like caller ID, and he enjoyed irking her.

  “Good timing—I just walked in the door. Are you calling about this weekend?”

  “I just wanted to know if you were still planning on coming.”

  Lee rarely cancelled plans on his mother, yet she always called to double-check. Her determination to avoid disappointment no doubt stemmed from his father’s abrupt departure years before. Lee suspected she had never fully recovered from the shock, instead devoting her life to keeping other people at bay. Vulnerability did not come naturally to Fiona Campbell, and after his father left, she had constructed her firewalls carefully.

  “I’m still coming, Mom,” he said.

  “Good. Kylie is counting on you.”

  “Kylie is counting on you.” Good one, Mom—projecting your needs on to your grandchild. For God’s sake, don’t admit you want to see me.

  Kylie was his sister’s only child. Since Laura’s mysterious disappearance six years ago, Fiona had shared the care of her granddaughter with Kylie’s father, who also lived in New Jersey’s Delaware Valley. Lee saw his niece as often as possible, and he was planning to drive out for her school Christmas concert over the weekend.

  His cell phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. He dug it out—it was Butts.

  “Sorry, Mom, I gotta go,” he said. “I have another call. See you this weekend.”

  “All right,” she said stiffly, and hung up. He sighed—her ruffled feathers might need some smoothing when he saw her.

  He picked up the cell phone. “I’m here,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “They found the girl,” Butts said. “Lisa Adler.”

  “Where?”

  “In the back of Shinbone Alley, off Bond Street. It’s him, Lee. It’s the guy who wrote to me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He left a note. I’m on my way to the scene now.”

  Lee glanced at his watch. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Call Krieger, and tell her to meet us there.”

  Elena Krieger, forensic linguistics specialist, was the most glamorous cop Lee had ever met. She was also the most difficult to work with. But her skill was needed now—and even Butts, who couldn’t stand her, must realize that.

  The detective was silent.

  “Call her,” Lee said. “We need her.”

  “All right.” Butts didn’t sound happy about it.

  “See you there.”

  “Right.”

  He hung up and threw on his coat, pausing to pull his curtains closed as night settled over the East Village. The sound of Christmas carols floated out from the Ukrainian church across the street: “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” He recognized John Calkin’s setting of Longfellow’s words.

  Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

  “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

  The wrong shall fail, the right prevail

  With peace on earth, good will to men.”

  As he turned out the lights in his apartment and closed the door behind him, he could only hope that Longfellow was right.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  New York City had an excess of many things—buildings, people, noise, poverty and glamour—but it was severely lacking in alleyways. More modest East Coast cities, such as Philadelphia and Baltimore, boasted far more, and Boston was fairly bursting with them. Real estate in New York had always been a numbers racket, and through the years buildings had been crammed next to one another like cupcakes stuffed into an undersized bakery box. One casualty of the city’s unbridled real estate frenzy was its alleys.

  Shinbone Alley was one of the few remaining of its kind. Nestled between Lafayette and Broadway on a block of Bond Street still sporting its original cobblestones, the alley was separated from the street by a tall metal gate that now stood open, bordered by yellow crime scene tape.

  Lee Campbell nodded at the pair of uniformed cops guarding the entrance and ducked under the tape. He walked toward the group of people huddled at the far end of the alley, his steps echoing in the narrow canyon formed by the buildings on either side. Floodlights mounted on metal poles gave the scene an eerie resemblance to a movie set.

  In the apartments above them, a few windows had been opened, and several people leaned out to watch the proceedings. Even in New York, where you could see just about anything, people were curious. Lee couldn’t blame them—it wasn’t every day you saw a body dumped on a city street like this. In recent years Bond Street had been transformed from its funky East Village roots of crumbling storefronts and underground theaters to a gleaming showcase of upscale boutiques, galleries and chain croissant shops. Aging hippies, low-rent artists and folk singers had been replaced by well-heeled young Asians, NYU students and Euro-hipsters.

  Lee had liked it better in the old days.

  Crime scene technicians were everywhere—photographing the body, dusting for prints, carefully inspecting the sidewalks for trace evidence.

  Butts looked up as Lee approached and shook his head. “I’ll say this. He’s an arrogant son of a bitch, to dump a body in a place like this. Anyone could have seen him.”

  “You have the cause of death yet?”

  “Looks like ligature strangulation. Petechial hemorrhaging, bruises around the neck—the whole nine yards.”

  “Who found her?”

  “The building super’s son,” Butts said. “Snuck out to the alley for a smoke, found her there.” He glanced at a slim Latino youth huddled on the stoop of the western building’s entrance. The boy sucked heavily on a cigarette, his eyes haunted and vacant. A short, dark-haired woman had thrown a protective arm around his shoulders—probably his mother.

  “Did he see anything else?”

  “Naw. Kid’s in total shock. His parents didn’t even know he smoked.”

  They do now, Lee thought, studying the boy and his mother. He didn’t look older than about fourteen, and his mom stared at them defiantly, as if challenging them to arrest her son. Lee glanced up at the onlookers in the windows above them. “You interview any of them yet?”

  “Detective Chen is on it. He’s got a sergeant with him—even so, could take a while.”

  “You mean Jimmy Chen?”

  “Yeah, why?” Butts said. “You know him?”

  “I went to John Jay with him. We used to hang out together. Last time I saw him, he was working Chinatown.”

  “He was transferred to the Sixth Precinct after 9/11. They were hit pretty hard and had a shortage of experienced cops.”

  “I guess I haven’t seen him since before then.”

  What he didn’t say was that he hadn’t seen much of anyone during those dark days. He didn’t like to dwell on it.

  “Technically this is Sixth Precinct territory,” Butts said, “but since the first note was sent to me, I’m the primary on this one.”

  “Lucky you,” Lee said, looking down at the body.

  The girl was young—very young, from the look of it. Tall and thin, with golden blond hair, she had a sweet, round face. She lay on her back, hands folded over her stomach as if she were sleeping. The pinky finger of her left hand had been neatly severed. There was no blood, which could mean one of two things: The cutting could have been done somewhere else, and the killer cleaned her up before leaving her here. The other possibility was that the amputation was postmortem. Lee hoped it was the second explanation.

  A note was fastened to the front of her down jacket with a safety pin. He remembered seeing his sister’s bus number pinned to her blouse in just such a manner on her first day of school. He shook off the memory and focused on the girl in front of him.

  “This is the note?” he asked Butts.

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “As much as I could
without moving it. It’s the same guy, Lee. Calls himself The Professor. Arrogant prick,” he muttered, turning to one of the crime scene techs, a black-haired young woman with a serious face and a pronounced widow’s peak. “You done here? Can I remove this?”

  The young woman nodded and handed Butts two pairs of latex gloves. He put one on and handed the other to Lee. He bent down and carefully extracted the note, taking care not to rip the paper.

  Just then Lee heard the assertive click of heels on cobblestones behind them. He turned to see Elena Krieger approaching.

  “Well, here I am,” she said, striding across the uneven paving stones with the arrogant confidence of a runway model. “What have you got for me?”

  Nice to see you too, Lee thought, shaking his head at her typically abrupt entrance. Still, he thought, there was no doubt about it—Detective Elena Krieger was a knockout. She was dressed in a clingy gray cashmere sweater over tight black pants and knee-length leather boots, topped off by a white fake fur jacket and silk scarf. The outfit was sexy, but it didn’t really matter what she wore; she was the kind of woman who would turn heads even if she was dressed in a burlap sack. Her thick auburn hair was stacked on top of her head, exposing her downy neck and small, close-set ears. She wore no makeup except a slash of bright red lipstick on her full lips.

  Detective Leonard Butts was unmoved by her charms and thrust the note at her.

  “We got this,” he said. “What do you make of it?”

  She slipped on a pair of latex gloves and took it, eyeing him coolly. The two detectives disliked each other intensely, their enmity tempered by a grudging professional respect. She held the note up to the light and squinted.

  “No chance of fingerprints, I suppose?”

  “Too early to tell,” Butts said. “But it doesn’t look good so far.”