The crime photos Lee was studying were from an unsolved murder out in Queens a few weeks ago—Jane Doe Number Five, they called her. She was well groomed and wasn’t dressed like a hooker, and it was odd that no one had called yet to report her missing.
Outside his office, Morton could hear the morning shift of cops arriving, as the building that housed the Bronx Major Case Unit stirred with the beginning of a new workday. The aroma of fresh coffee seeped through the closed office door, making Morton’s mouth swim with saliva. He looked wistfully at the empty coffee mug on his desk, swallowed, and rubbed his stinging eyes, dry from lack of sleep.
“I just know they’re related, Chuck,” Lee was saying, his dark eyes intense in the stark fluorescent lighting. “The posing of the bodies—”
“But there was no mutilation on Jane Doe,” Chuck protested.
“No, because he didn’t feel comfortable enough—she was probably his first kill.”
“Okay, okay,” Morton answered. “I believe you. Trouble is, I don’t know who else will.”
Lee stood up and paced the small office. “The same perp that killed this girl in Queens also killed Marie Kelleher. I know he did!” He thrust a photo in front of Chuck’s face. The glossy print showed a well-dressed young woman lying on her back, her arms flung out from her body, so that if you stood her up she would be in the same position as a crucifixion victim. But there was no cross anywhere in sight—the body lay in a ditch on the edge of Greenlawn Cemetery in Queens.
“Look at that!” Lee said, his voice tight with emotion. “Look at the positioning of the body! It’s exactly the same as Marie Kelleher, except this time he managed to get a little closer to his fantasy.”
“And what’s that?”
“Leaving the body in a church. There was nothing random about that. And the carving—that’s part of the fantasy too.”
Chuck leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know, Lee. It seems a little thin.”
“I’ll tell you something else. He won’t stop until he’s caught.”
“So you say we’re dealing with a serial offender here?”
“That’s right.”
Something in his voice made Morton believe him.
“Please, Chuck,” Lee said. “Please. I need to study the file on the Queens killing.”
Morton and rose from his chair. He felt stiff and old and tired. Seeing his friend like this didn’t help.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I had to call in some favors just to get a copy of these photos. Let me run it past the guys upstairs, okay? I don’t have to tell you that detectives can get very territorial about their cases.”
“All right.”
“So,” Chuck said after a pause that threatened to swallow them both, “how’s the Frau ohne Schatten?”
The old Lee Campbell would have smiled at this. But now his friend just raised an eyebrow, his face devoid of mirth. “Oh, some things never change, you know. Brisk as ever.”
Lee had come up with the nickname for his mother after seeing the Strauss opera in college. Chuck, who had some German ancestry on his mother’s side, found it amusing, having experienced Fiona Campbell’s relentless cheerfulness firsthand. They used to joke about how she was really the original Frau ohne Schatten—woman without a shadow. But now the shadows had fallen heavily over his friend.
Campbell turned to leave, but he swayed and caught himself by grabbing the door frame.
“You okay?” Chuck asked, reaching a hand out to him.
Lee waved him off. “Fine. Just a little tired, that’s all.”
Morton didn’t believe him, but he kept silent. He recalled Lee’s Presbyterian stoicism only too well from their days on the rugby field, and still remembered the day Lee refused to leave a tournament game after breaking his nose on a tackle. Blood spurting from his nose, he insisted on finishing the game; he muttered something about “setting an example.” Chuck called it masochism, but he would never say that to his friend.
“Can I speak with the pathologist doing Marie’s autopsy?” Lee asked.
“I don’t see why not. I’ll be in touch,” he added.
“Right,” said Campbell. He paused at the door to Chuck’s office, as if he were about to say something else, but then turned, opened the door, and was gone.
Morton leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his stiff bristle of blond hair. Then he stood, picked up his mug, and headed out of his office toward the coffee station. The mug—a gift from his daughter—proclaimed him as “World’s Greatest Dad,” but today he didn’t feel like the world’s greatest anything.
When he got to the coffee station, he saw that a few beat cops were gathered in the corner, heads lowered, talking quietly, and he heard one of them snicker. Then another one said, “Yeah—real mental, I guess.” They all laughed—until one of the conspirators saw Chuck and nudged the others with his elbow, at which point they abruptly stopped laughing. Rage gathered in Chuck’s chest, constricting his throat and making his forehead burn. He was noted for his even temper most of the time, but when he lost it, he truly lost it.
“What the hell are you looking at, Peters?” he bellowed.
Everyone in the station house stopped what they were doing and looked at him. He advanced on the group of subordinates, who shrank from him, averting their eyes as he approached.
“Let me tell you something,” he said, his voice lowered to a steely calm. “If you don’t get back to work right this minute, some heads are going to roll around here. Do you understand me?” he said, addressing himself to a young sergeant, Jeff Peters.
“Yes, sir,” Peters replied, his blunt face sulky. He was short and black-haired and built like a prizewinning Angus.
Chuck felt his face redden. “I didn’t hear you, Peters!”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you, O’Connell—do you have anything to say to me?”
“No, sir.” Danny O’Connell was a tall, skinny redhead who followed any lead that Peters set. Chuck knew this, and knew that the rest of them were just playing along. One of the rules of group dynamics—which functioned in station houses exactly as it did in high school locker rooms—was to make fun of others to deflect the possibility that others might make fun of you. Peters was the ringleader, as usual, and Chuck knew he had a mean streak. He came from an unstable home, had a drunken failure for a father, and was angry at the world. Chuck put his face close to Peters’s face, so close that he could smell his wintergreen aftershave.
“Or maybe you wanted to transfer out of Homicide? Because that could be arranged.”
“No, sir.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you’d better keep your nose clean. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Chuck took a look around the station to see that he had things under control. He was satisfied with the results. Everyone was looking at him with respect tinged with fear, and that was the way he wanted it. There would be opportunities for joking later, for loosening the reins a bit, but what he needed now was respect. He glanced at Peters one last time and stalked back into his office, being sure to slam the door behind him.
Once inside, he closed the venetian blinds and sank into his chair. Being in command was part theatrics, part intimidation, and part setting an example. He didn’t enjoy the theatrics or the intimidation, but he dreaded even more losing control of his men. Once that happened, he knew, you might as well turn in your badge.
He was not a natural leader—he knew that. At Princeton, Lee was always the alpha male, and Chuck had been happy with his role as sidekick. But then a miracle had happened: he had finally attracted the attention of Susan Beaumont, the most glamorous and beautiful woman he had ever known. For a long time she seemed to have fixed her sights on Lee, and then they had broken up and she was pursuing him. Even now it seemed like a dream from which he would awaken someday, but until then, he had resolved to do everything in his power to keep her inte
rested. Being a lowly policeman would not do for the likes of her, so he set his eyes on precinct commander—and he made it, though it was not a natural fit. Chuck Morton was tailor-made to be second-in-command. He was diligent, honest, and intelligent, but not especially imaginative or charismatic. Still, he worked hard—harder than anyone would ever know—to get what he wanted, to please Susan, to make her proud of him.
And now here he was, commander of the Bronx Major Case Unit. It was a demanding job, especially now, after what had happened on the southern tip of Manhattan just a few short months ago. Everyone was jittery, and his men looked to him to set an example. And by God, he would set one if it killed him.
He looked out the window at the soot-covered sill, where a pigeon pecked away at some invisible scraps. He wished there was something he could do to take away his friend’s pain, but he knew that the demons dancing in Lee’s soul were beyond anyone’s reach. But at least he could keep the men from making fun of his friend behind his back. He looked down at his empty coffee mug—he had forgotten to fill it. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. He knew that to go back out there now would spoil the dramatic effect of his stormy exit. The coffee would have to wait.
Lee Campbell stepped out of the police station into the dismal dog days of February, that time of year when all holiday cheer has evaporated, leaving in its place only a lingering shiver of wistfulness. The days were still short, and the cold weather a brusque reminder that spring was still a distant reality.
This year the cheer had been thin in New York, the holiday meetings filled with a sense of loss, of those suddenly gone, ripped brutally from their lives, like a conversation interrupted mid-sentence. There had been much talk in the media about healing, and of a “return to normalcy,” but he knew that for many people the words were empty ones. The healing process would never be finished, and “normalcy” would never come. He didn’t know about the rest of the country, but New Yorkers now lived in two time zones: before and after.
Lee wrapped his knee-length tweed coat tighter around himself and headed for the subway. Like so many of the nicer things he owned, the Scottish tweed was a present from his mother, brought back from a recent trip to Edinburgh. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in a store window, his haggard face looking mismatched with the elegant coat.
He ducked his head low against the biting wind and hurried onward. At times like this, there was one man he could turn to, who always seemed to know what to say, what to do. He smiled as he slipped through the turnstile to make a trip he had made a hundred times before, during his student days at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He needed to see his old mentor: the irascible, brilliant, moody, and thoroughly misanthropic John Paul Nelson.
Chapter Six
Professor John Paul Farragut Nelson was not a happy man.
“Good God, Lee! Can’t you give it a rest? You just got out of the hospital, for Chrissakes!”
Nelson savagely stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette in the glass ashtray on his desk and stalked over to the window. His office at John Jay College was spacious but cluttered, with books and research papers stacked on the floor on both sides of his desk.
Lee shifted in his chair and looked down at his shoes. He had expected a lecture, but his old professor was more worked up than he had anticipated. Nelson jammed one freckled hand into his right pants pocket and ran the other one through his wavy auburn hair.
“Do you really think you can be of any help in this case?”
“Well—”
“You had a nervous breakdown, for God’s sake! And you think you can come waltzing back to work a few weeks later as if nothing ever happened?”
Lee stared at the floor. He knew Nelson well enough to know that when he got like this, arguing with him would only infuriate him more, like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Nelson actually resembled a bull at this moment, with his short, thick body tensed, nostrils dilated, his face as red as Lee had ever seen it—redder even than after an evening of Nelson’s legendary bar crawling and untold shots of single-malt scotch.
A tall, skinny student with a punk hairstyle and a silver nose ring wandered past the office and poked his head in the door—but after one look at Nelson’s face, quickly withdrew. Lee watched as the kid’s spiky, bright orange hair disappeared down the hall. He looked back at Nelson, who was rummaging through his desk—probably looking for cigarettes. He never seemed to be able to remember which drawer he kept them in. Lee had always been a little mystified by the interest the celebrated Professor Nelson took in him, an interest that began the first day he took his seat in Nelson’s Criminal Psychology 101, nicknamed “Creeps for Geeks.” It was a required course, even for the technicians who investigated crime scenes, the CSIs who were generally thought of as nerds by the other students.
Nelson’s teaching style reflected his personality. Imperious, brilliant, and impatient, he had a temper that could sweep up as suddenly as a storm over the waters of Killarney Bay, where he had traced his ancestry back for centuries. It was rumored that his father had been a member of the notorious Westies, a murderous Irish gang in Hell’s Kitchen that flourished in the middle of the twentieth century. It was said their ruthlessness and brutality made the Mafia look like choirboys.
In spite of Nelson’s reputation for remoteness, his interest in Lee had been immediate and fatherly. Lee thought maybe it was because he was a good ten years older than the average John Jay student, or perhaps it was their similar Celtic heritage. Nelson treated Lee with a kindness he did not display to the other students. In fact, he didn’t seem to regard the human race as worthy of the kind of affection he usually reserved for his Irish setter, Rex. Nelson doted on the animal and spoiled him as extravagantly as any Upper East Side lapdog.
Nelson’s interest in Lee’s career continued after he left John Jay to join the NYPD as its only criminal profiler, an appointment Nelson helped make possible. The bar crawling continued, as did the late-night discussions of German composers, French philosophers, and Celtic poets.
Now, however, Nelson did not appear at all pleased with his prize student.
“I thought you had more sense than that, I really did,” he said as he lit the cigarette he had dug out of the recesses of his desk.
Lee couldn’t help noticing that Nelson’s hands were trembling. Taking a deep drag from the cigarette, Nelson absently twisted the wedding ring on his left hand. His wife had been dead for nearly three months now, but he continued to wear the ring. Lee wondered why. To keep potential mates away? Out of loyalty and devotion to her memory? Nelson rarely discussed Karen, but her picture hung in the living room of his spacious apartment, showing her fresh faced and smiling from the stern of a sailing yacht, her short brown curls blowing in the wind—with no hint of the cancer that was to gnaw stealthily away at her in the years to come.
The wind seemed to leave Nelson’s sails. He blew out a puff of smoke and sat down behind his desk, linking his hands behind his neck.
“All right, lad,” he said. “What is so compelling about this case that it can’t wait?”
Lee was used to Nelson’s abrupt mood changes.
“I just have a feeling I can help here, that I—well, there’s something about this killer that I can feel, that I understand.”
Nelson leaned forward and studied the younger man.
“I don’t know that that’s necessarily a good thing.”
“Yes, I know. I realize the danger of—”
“Of compromising your objectivity.”
Now it was Lee’s turn to be angry.
“This whole notion of objectivity is a fantasy, you know.”
Nelson looked startled, but Lee continued.
“There is no such thing! It’s a comforting fiction created by people who don’t want to get too close to things that go bump in the night.”
Nelson took another drag from his cigarette. “If you’re suggesting that it’s relative, I would agree with you.”
“No,
what I’m suggesting is that it doesn’t exist at all. The whole idea is some outdated Age of Reason notion, some classical model that went out with powdered wigs and knee breeches—only we just haven’t realized it yet. It’s an impossible ideal.”
Nelson grunted and stubbed his cigarette out on the floor. “Impossible or not, as a criminal investigator you owe it to your victims—and to yourself—to be as objective as possible. Otherwise your conclusions become clouded by emotion.”
Lee felt his shoulders go rigid as he looked at Nelson. “What are you saying?”
Nelson held his gaze. “I think you know.”
Lee didn’t reply, and the silence between them lay thick as the layers of books and manuscripts stuffed everywhere in the cluttered office. He glanced at the brass busts of Beethoven and Bach on Nelson’s desk. Beethoven’s face was tragic: the tightly compressed lips and broad nose, the stormy, tortured eyes under a mane of wild hair; the stubborn chin, jutting out defensively against the world, as if bracing himself for what Fate was to throw at him…the picture of determination, the triumph of human will in adversity. How different from the bourgeois contentment of Bach, with his big nose and face ringed by a wig of riotous Baroque curls. Nelson had a particular fondness for Beethoven. He had read Lee excerpts from the Heiligenstadt Testament, Beethoven’s tragic letter to his brother after learning of his impeding deafness.
Lee laid a hand on the bust of Beethoven, the metal cold and hard under his palm. “You think this is about my sister, don’t you?”
Nelson raised his left eyebrow. “This victim is about the same age Laura was when she…” he looked away as if embarrassed.
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