Silent Slaughter

by C. E. Lawrence

  “Rex, stop it!” she said, tugging on his collar.

  “Nice place you have here.”

  “Thanks. My father was an opera singer—sang in the Met chorus for years—and I managed to get on the lease before he died. Oh, I don’t like the way that came out,” she said, wincing. “It sounds kind of cold.”

  “Don’t worry—I knew what you meant.”

  In New York, real estate was everything. A rent-controlled apartment in a good neighborhood was the equivalent of winning the lottery—people would lie, cheat and steal (and in some cases, murder) for one. Otherwise you were subject to the steadily mounting cost of housing. In Manhattan, rents only went in one direction: up.

  “So you grew up in this building?” Lee asked.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Is it true Caruso lived here?”

  “Yep. They say he chose it because of the thick walls. I was just making tea. Would you like some?”

  “Sure, thanks.”

  She poured them each a mug of strong black tea and showed him to the living room. Rex padded after them, his toenails clicking softly on the hardwood floor. They sat for a moment sipping their tea while listening to the majestic opening of Beethoven’s Grand Fugue.

  “God,” Lucille said. “Can you imagine being able to write something like that?”

  “Must be amazing, being a conduit for something that glorious.”

  “A ‘conduit’? What do you mean?”

  “When I hear something this profound, it feels like Beethoven is tapping into something universal. If I were religious, I’d say it’s a piece of the Divine.”

  Lucille stroked Rex’s head, running her hand over the silky fur. The dog looked up at her adoringly. “So you think Beethoven was ‘channeling’ his greatest music?”

  “Well, if you put it like that, it sounds silly. I’m not expressing it well.”

  “Okay,” Lucille said. “I’ll admit, I didn’t just ask you here for tea. I have an ulterior motive.”

  Perhaps in response to the surprised look on his face, she added quickly, “Not that—it’s professional. I mean, you’re a good-looking man, but you’re not my type. Not enough X chromosomes.”

  “Oh,” he said, and then, “Oh.”

  “I probably shouldn’t even be telling you this, though I suppose it’s no secret that I’m a Friend of Ellen.”

  “Got it.”

  “I don’t know if the kids at John Jay spend any time talking about their moldy old professors,” she went on, “but I’m pretty sure most of them have me figured out. Which actually leads me to what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  She sat across from him on the divan and put her mug on the coffee table. “As you may know, there’s an opening at the school in the psychology department.”

  “Right.”

  “Tom Mariella was going to ask you himself, but his father died suddenly, so he asked me to feel you out on it.”

  His father died suddenly. Lee didn’t even know if his own father was alive or dead. There were too many open chapters in his family, too many unresolved chords.

  “Ask me what?” he said.

  “If you’d like to be an adjunct lecturer at the school. It would mean giving a couple of talks each semester—you could pick the topics yourself, more or less, as long as Tom agrees with them.” She saw his hesitation and said, “Maybe the timing isn’t good right now.”

  “No, it’s not that.” He couldn’t tell her that the news about Tom’s father had sent him spinning into a wild series of conjectures about his own father, long ago departed—though not necessarily from this world. He looked at Lucille, sitting across from him, perched on the edge of the sofa, the ever-faithful Rex pressing his body against her shins. “Can I think about it?”

  “Of course—take all the time you need. I’ll tell Tom we talked about it, and when he gets back into town, he may give you a call.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate your interest.”

  “Good. And now,” she said, rising from the couch, “if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a hot date with a stripper. Kidding,” she said in response to his surprised expression. “Not about the date but the stripper part. God, you’re an easy mark.” She laughed. “Oh, one more thing, before I forget. We just had a cancellation for our guest-lecturer series. Very well-respected FBI profiler—you probably know of him—was going to come, but there’s an illness in his family. So rather than cancel, we’d like to plug someone in. Can you do it?”

  “What was he going to talk about?”

  “Wait a second—I have the schedule right here,” she said, studying a pamphlet on her desk. “ ‘The sadistic sexual offender.’ ”

  “When is it?”

  “Thursday morning. Are you free?”

  “I could do it. Is it open to the public?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I should warn you, there’s a very good chance that the UNSUB in the Alleyway Strangler case will attend.”

  “We can have some undercover officers in the audience.”

  “Not a bad idea, though I doubt if he’ll announce himself. And you can’t really arrest someone for attending a lecture. Still, it can’t hurt.”

  “What are the chances he’ll come, do you think?”

  “I’d say they’re pretty good.”

  She shivered. “It’s a creepy feeling, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “To think you’ll be in the same room with a murderer, and that he’ll know who you are, but you won’t know him.”

  “Yeah. Real creepy.”

  But even then he was thinking, What if I do recognize him? What do I do?

  He didn’t say it out loud, because as yet the question had no answer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Detective Leonard Butts liked his life in Nutley, New Jersey. He liked his plump little wife, Muriel, their son, Joey, and their cozy little house just down the road from the headquarters of the drug manufacturing giant Hoffmann-La Roche. People in Nutley called it The House That Valium Built. The drug’s inventor, Leo Sternbach, was a tenacious researcher who had persevered against the directives of his bosses, creating one of the most profitable drugs in the world, earning the Swiss company billions of dollars. Butts liked to use the story as proof of Jewish ingenuity. Butts was only half Jewish on his father’s side, but he identified strongly with his Polish/Jewish ancestry.

  He drove down Kingsland Street, past the company’s vast research and manufacturing plant, its smokestacks belching out God only knew what toxic by-products, and turned right onto Terrace Avenue. He wasn’t that crazy about living near Roche, but the houses close to the plant were cheaper—theirs had been a real bargain when they bought it. It was the last one on the left before the road dead-ended into Princeton Street—a nice, leafy corner lot with a decent-sized lawn. He and Muriel had agreed they didn’t want anything too roomy—he wasn’t big on property upkeep, preferring to spend his weekends barbequing with friends or attending his son’s baseball and soccer games. Neither he nor Muriel were sporty types, so it had been a surprise when they produced a natural athlete like Joey. Butts was proud of his son but rarely talked about him, for fear of becoming one of those boring parents obsessed with their children’s accomplishments.

  As he entered the house through the kitchen door, he heard the Jeopardy! theme song coming from the den. He hung up his coat and tiptoed downstairs to the renovated basement that served as their TV room and den, where he found Muriel stretched out in the black leatherette recliner, watching the show.

  He and Joey had strict instructions not to disturb her during this daily ritual. They were not to speak to her, make comments or, worst of all, give answers to the questions. Muriel alone was allowed to play along, muttering responses under her breath—often long before Alex Trebek had finished giving the clue, and usually correctly.

  Butts sat quietly on the sofa until the first commercial break. His wife picked up the remote, muted the television and smile
d at him.

  “Hello, Buttons.” It was a nickname she had used since their second week of dating, when he had picked her up wearing a jacket missing two buttons.

  “Hi,” he said, getting up to give her a kiss.

  “How was your day? Catch any murderers?”

  Butts smiled indulgently. It wasn’t that his wife took his work lightly—she was supportive and proud of what he did. But Muriel had a sly way about her, an offhand manner of dismissing important things like life-threatening diseases or disasters. He supposed some people might find it annoying, but he found it comforting. It defused his anxiety about the importance of succeeding in his job and gave him space to breathe and relax a little. It was easy to get eaten up by the job. He had seen it happen to other guys on the force, but what was the point of doing this kind of work if you were going to let it destroy your life? He had decided a long time ago that that was a price he wasn’t willing to pay. Some might call him callous, but he didn’t care. He liked to joke that he might be part Jewish, but he was no masochist.

  He kicked off his shoes and lay back on the couch. “I’ll tell you all about my day when your show is over. How’s it going?”

  “I’m rooting for the librarian. She’s good with literature and history, but she has a weakness in geography.”

  “How’re you doing?”

  “Not bad. I cleaned up in Odds ’N’ Ends but was stumped in Pop Tunes of the Nineties.”

  “I don’t know why you don’t audition for that show.”

  She waved aside his comment dismissively. “I’d never make it.”

  “You’re better than most of the contestants.”

  “Here in my living room, sure. But I’d wilt under the pressure.”

  “That’s a load of bull. I don’t see you wilting under nothing.”

  She laughed. “Always the supportive husband, Buttons, aren’t you? Oh, the show’s coming back on,” she said. Picking up the remote, she pointed it at the TV just as Alex Trebek came back on-screen, smiling from ear to ear of his big Canadian head.

  “And now it’s time for Double Jeopardy,” he said, without losing that superior smile of his. Butts despised Alex Trebek.

  Double Jeopardy. Butts thought that just about described his life right now. Each time another day went by without apprehending the man they sought, another girl was in jeopardy.

  He looked at his wife. She was no beauty, but he loved her bright, intelligent eyes, upturned nose and rosy cheeks. Like him, she was short and pudgy, but she had a way about her, always had. It stirred something inside him and grabbed his heart the same way looking at the oak tree in the corner of the garden in the early-morning light did. His attraction to her went deeper than sex. Over the years they had grown together like two vines intertwined; the only way to separate them would be to cut away parts of them. He loved his son, but he couldn’t imagine life without Muriel.

  One of the categories on Double Jeopardy was Mathematics. The librarian went right for it, starting with the first clue.

  “This American physicist and mathematician, known for his diagrams, received the Nobel Prize in 1965 along with two others for his work in quantum electrodynamics,” said Alex.

  “Who was Richard Feynman?” Muriel barked. She was right—and she proceeded to get every answer in the column right, along with the librarian, who ran through the entire category, putting herself squarely in the lead.

  “Good,” Muriel said when the next station break came. “I think my librarian friend might pull it off after all.” She muted the show again and turned to her husband. “So how did it go today?” They had long ago fallen into the habit of talking about trivial things as though they mattered and important things as though they didn’t.

  “No real leads. This guy is smart, and he doesn’t leave clues behind, unless he wants us to find them.”

  It was against policy to talk about an ongoing investigation with anyone outside the force, even family members, but everyone he knew had broken that rule at one time or another. He avoided talking about things in front of Joey, but it was hard to leave your work behind each day. Everyone in the NYPD knew that, and no one talked about it. It was understood.

  “That’s too bad,” she said.

  “Where’s Joey?”

  “Soccer practice. He’ll be back in time for dinner.”

  Then the show came back on, and she returned to watching it.

  Butts got up and wandered into the kitchen. He reached for the icebox door and saw the note dangling from a refrigerator magnet in the form of a carrot.

  ASK YOURSELF: DO I REALLY NEED THIS

  RIGHT NOW?

  OR IS IT JUST HABIT??

  REMEMBER, HABITS CAN BE BROKEN!!

  REPLACE BAD HABITS WITH HEALTHY

  ONES!!!

  He let go of the door handle and turned away. Muriel was trying to reform him and lose some weight herself in the process. Healthy habits . . . The man he was chasing had already formed some very nasty habits indeed, which would be much harder to break than overeating. No amount of notes on refrigerator doors would change his actions at this point; they would only become more ingrained over time.

  He picked up an apple from a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table and took a bite. It wasn’t the same as a doughnut, but he chewed dutifully and swallowed, determined to control his own impulses. Somehow, he felt that might bring him one step closer to catching a man whose impulses had already spun dangerously out of control.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Edmund looked out over the sea of smooth young faces. So innocent, so trusting, so . . . unformed. Empty vessels to be filled with knowledge and experience—and, in some cases, terror. He opened his folder of lecture notes and cleared his throat. The room instantly quieted down. He had that effect on people. Maybe it was his stature and air of quiet authority, or maybe it was the jagged scar on his face. He could cover some of it with a longer hairstyle, but he deliberately wore his hair short to catch people’s reactions when they saw him.

  He enjoyed cataloguing the variety of responses. There was disgust, pity, revulsion, indifference and—most interesting of all—desire. He found it fascinating to watch the women who, when confronted with his deformity, displayed signs of arousal. Their eyes would widen as their lips grew plumper, and all the muscles in their face would soften. Those were the ones he spared; they already had some of the same darkness in their souls that he did. They knew something of his struggle, his pain, his eternal, gnawing loneliness, and they were attracted by it.

  No, it was the others he went after—the ones who were so naïve and stupid that they knew nothing of how the world worked. They knew only softness and ease, the luxury of being young and pretty and desirable and privileged. Those were the ones who needed to be taught a lesson—that life hurts and that other people can’t be trusted. He had learned that at a tender age, and now he had to pass it on.

  He gripped the lectern with both hands and leaned on it.

  “Mathematics is an exacting science, and it can be a stern master,” he said. “But once its secrets are revealed to you, you will enter a world of surpassing beauty. You will discover that it is as much an art as a science, a discipline of the imagination as well as of the logical mind. Mathematics has spirit, as surely as music or painting or sculpture. It is perhaps more austere but nonetheless beautiful.”

  He looked at a girl in the front row. She was lovely, with alabaster skin and black hair, like Snow White. She looked up at him with such trust in her blue eyes—pathetic, really. Someone would have to remove that trust and replace it with terror. He smiled down at her, and she returned his smile.

  She was perfect.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Brian O’Reilly poured himself another drink and watched through the kitchen window as the last of the gray winter light faded from the sky. He took a swallow and felt the whiskey slide down his throat, harsh and burning. He was having a bad day. First there was the visit from the dead girl’s broth
er—that’s how he thought of Laura, as the dead girl. It galled him that they hadn’t even found her body, let alone her killer—she’d disappeared as if plucked right off the earth by the giant, unforgiving hand of God. In spite of his Catholic background, he never had much time for religion. Oh, he believed, all right—he just thought God was an evil bastard. The Campbell case was simply a prime example of God’s many transgressions. No one knew this better than Brian O’Reilly—his years on the force had given him enough insight into the evils of God and man to last a lifetime.

  And the Campbell case came as close as any to making him want to pull his hair out. A missing girl was always upsetting, but there was something else about this case, something that galled him to the bone and filled his stomach with acid. Maybe it was the complete lack of viable suspects; usually with missing-persons cases there were a couple of creeps hanging around that he could sink his teeth into during the interview process. It might not solve the case, but it made him feel better, like he was doing something toward solving the case.

  He took another swallow of Jameson and leaned his elbows on the Formica table. Nothing irked him more than feeling impotent. Cops in general didn’t do well with feelings of helplessness, and Brian Seamus Timothy O’Reilly was no exception. He had always been hotheaded; that’s what his Irish grandmother had called him, God rest her soul. And now the dead girl’s brother shows up and starts digging around, bringing up loathsome feelings of helplessness, the ones he’d joined the force to avoid. It nauseated him and made him feel hollow right in the center of his gut, as if someone had carved his stomach out of his body.

  The phone rang, and he snatched up the receiver. Probably his sister calling to see if he was sober. He wished she would just leave him alone—the guilt of letting her down only made things worse. He was about to hang up without answering when he heard the voice on the other end of the line—a man’s voice, flat and cold and insinuating. His hand shaking, he held the phone to his ear.