Silent Victim (26 page)

After Diesel left, they talked about what should be released to the media and when. It didn’t take them long to agree to leave out the fact that Krieger was working with them on the case—though some people would certainly draw that conclusion. Apart from that, they decided to give out as much information as possible, encouraging other patrons of the Jack Hammer that night to come forward. Diesel had promised to do what he could from his end, but he wasn’t scheduled to work until the weekend, and he knew his customers only by their first names—or so he said. Lee believed him, but he could tell Butts wasn’t entirely persuaded.

Chuck leaned back to stretch his spine, groaning as his stiff muscles protested. “Is there anything you can add to his profile?” he asked Lee.

Lee poured himself some more coffee. Awake since before dawn, he was flagging, and needed the caffeine. “I still think he’s reliving some kind of childhood trauma, something very specific.”

“All right,” Chuck said. “So how can that help us?”

“If we can identify how he was damaged, we’ll be that much closer,” Lee said, taking a sip of coffee. It was strong and startling—like Krieger, he thought.

“So how do we do that?” Butts asked.

“Let’s start with the signature aspects of each crime. What do they all have in common besides water?”

“He leaves notes,” Butts said.

Lee took another gulp of coffee, feeling the caffeine trickle into his bloodstream. “What do they tell us?”

“He’s punishing the victims,” Chuck answered.

“Right,” Lee said. “So there’s a motive of retribution, of punishment.”

Chuck rubbed his eyes. “Punishment for what, though?” “Good question.”

Butts pulled a long string of red licorice from his pocket. It was limp and covered with lint. He brushed off the lint and chewed on it, a contented expression on his cratered face. In response to a glance from Chuck, he said, “Stomach’s been actin’ up. The wife says this will help. She’s into all this natural stuff.”

“What else do we have to go on?” Chuck asked. “Well, later he starts doin’ the eyeball thing,” Butts remarked.

“Yes, but
why?
What does that mean?” said Chuck.

“It has something to do with watching,” Lee replied. “Being looked at.”

“Who would have been watching him like that?” Butts asked.

“The most obvious answer would be a parent,” Chuck suggested, picking up the glass paperweight on his desk and shifting it from one hand to the other.

“His dad, maybe?” said Butts. “Maybe he disapproved of the whole cross-dressing thing.”

“Or his mother … but how would that fit with the water?” Chuck asked.

“I have an idea,” Lee said. He turned to Chuck, who was slumped in his chair, the glass paperweight dangling from his right hand. “Can I borrow your computer?”

Morton rose from his chair and waved a hand toward it wearily. “Go ahead.”

Lee sat down at the computer. Butts followed him, still chewing on the piece of licorice.

“What are you lookin’ for?”

“Drownings—twenty years ago, in the tristate area.”

“How come?”

“I think he may have had a trauma when he was still very young, involving water—probably a drowning.”

Butts bit off a piece of licorice. “That seems like a long shot.”

“I know. And that’s even assuming it was reported.”

The detective frowned and pulled up a chair next to him. “Why wouldn’t it be reported?”

“If she was drowned by someone who knew her, it could have been covered up.”

“Like her husband, you mean,” Chuck said, perching on the edge of his desk.

“Exactly,” Lee answered. “He could have done it and gotten away with it—said she went off with another man, that kind of thing.”

“But if the kid saw it happen, he would know,” Butts pointed out.

“Right,” said Lee. “That kind of thing is bad enough when it’s accidental. But if it was murder, and if his father told him to keep quiet, he would be replaying it over and over in his mind.”

Chuck put down the paperweight, stood up, and paced in front of the window. He looked animated for the first time all day. “So the reason he cuts out the eyes—”

“He doesn’t want her looking at him,” Lee finished for him.

“The way his mother did,” Butts said.

“Right,” Lee agreed, still typing. He studied the screen, frowning. “This search is too general. We’d have to comb through every newspaper from that time period.”

“What about missing-person cases?” Butts suggested.

“That’s a good idea,” said Chuck. “If he covered up her death, someone could have still reported her as missing.”

Lee typed some more, then shook his head. “It’s still too general, even assuming he grew up around here. It’s possible that he moved to this area at some point.”

Butts shook his head as if trying to dispel the image from his mind. “Jeez. You gotta be one sick bastard to put your kid through somethin’ like that.”

“Not only that,” said Lee, “but you are guaranteeing your kid will be—”

“One sick bastard.”

“You know, this whole process kinda reminds me of bridge,” Butts said, chewing on his licorice thoughtfully.

“How so?”

“Well, the wife has been playing lately, you know.” “Yeah, so you said,” Chuck remarked impatiently. “So when she opens with one no trump, for example, it’s a code.”

“Right—she’s telling her partner she has a certain number of points, and asking for information back,” said Lee.

“Yeah. So her partner answers in code, too—which she has to interpret. It all depends on whether he’s a risky bidder or not. If he says two spades and he’s a risk taker, it could mean one thing, but if he’s a conservative player, it could mean something else.”

“And that difference can make or break the hand,” Lee observed. “You miss just one trick and you go down.”

“Exactly. So part of the game of bidding depends on knowing your partner’s personality, their strengths and weaknesses, and being able to guess what they mean by their bid.”

Chuck stared at him. “So?”

“So this guy is talkin’ to us in code—and it’s our job to figure out what he’s saying.”

Lee gazed out the window as the soft pink light of early evening settled over the city, bathing the buildings in a strangely beautiful glow. It was in such contrast to the conversation in the rapidly darkening room. A shiver started at the back of his neck and radiated outward. He wished that the only thing at stake were a card game, but if they continued in their failure to decode the messages the killer was leaving behind, another victim would fall to his implacable rage.

Caleb looked around the coffee shop. It was a clean, well-lighted place, but he couldn’t imagine Hemingway spending five minutes in it.
The décor was black and white, from the checkerboard floor tiles to the sleek counter. Everything was hard, reflective surfaces, shiny as the hair of the pubescent rich girls who were gathered there. School would start in a week or so, and there they were, freshly tanned from their summer in the Hamptons or the south of France.

They wore short flared skirts over bony-kneed coltish legs, but they also wore a smart, close-fitting self-assurance, a thick coating of self-esteem, smooth and sleek as their bouncy, well-cared-for hair. They moved among the short, squat members of the waitstaff as if they owned the restaurant—which, in a way, they did. Their parents were the monied classes of the Upper East Side, the highest average income bracket of any zip code in the country. Never mind Beverly Hills 90210, with its crude new money—these people were the true aristocracy, and their daughters knew it.

Caleb looked at the little sluts and imagined their parents roaming their roomy, multimillion-dollar apartments in their tailored Armani suits and Gucci loafers, pausing to deposit checks from wealthy clients or check on their blue-chip stocks before making lunch reservations at La Giraffe or Chanterelle. They owned the grand brownstone buildings they lived in and shopped in the expensive, exclusive boutiques of Madison Avenue. The immigrants from Ecuador, Mexico, or Peru who shined their silverware and washed their sheets came and went at their pleasure.

Caleb stirred another spoonful of sugar into his coffee. He hated these girls, living in the cocoon of comfort and care available only to the very rich. He watched a couple of them talking, slouched around one table, laughing as they flipped their long, shiny hair off a shoulder, delicately fingering their tiny designer backpacks.

They were disgusting, with their inbred complacency—that aura of self-satisfaction they had swallowed with their mother’s milk, confidence absorbed through the placental fluid. These girls might not know who they were yet, but they
thought
they did.

Caleb watched as a short, pug-faced Dominican busboy cleared the table, his face set in that deliberate expression of disinterest he had seen on so many workers. He wondered what the Dominicans and Guatemalans thought of these girls. Did they resent their financial, social, and genetic superiority, or were they just grateful to be in America, working for minimum wage while waiting on these princesses of privilege? He was always amazed at the goodwill and cheerful humor of New York restaurant workers.

One of the girls, a coltish brunette in a pink sweater, bumped his table, then, catching his eye, giggled and whispered something to her friends. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, so aware of her superiority it took his breath away. Caleb stirred his coffee and took a sip.
She is clearly a bad girl, and bad girls deserve to be punished.

Caleb adjusted his stockings and straightened his wig. The disguise was a good one—no one had even glanced at him twice on the subway. He smiled as he smoothed his green tweed skirt. It was expensive and well cut—his mother would have looked good in it.

Caroline Benton waved good-bye to her girlfriends and sauntered out into the gentle atmosphere of the late summer evening. The sun was sinking into a salmon-pink sunset, the air soft as a caress.

Pausing to wipe a few drops of moisture from her downy upper lip, she stood at the bus stop, rocking back and forth on her heels. Never mind trying to get a cab this time of day, in this neighborhood—you might as well wish for a unicorn to ride home. She unzipped her Prada shoulder bag and dug around inside. The bag was lemon yellow, the leather buttery and soft, and it cost seven hundred dollars, which she thought was a bargain—though her father had rolled his eyes when he saw the bill on his Visa card. God, she thought, he could be so
retarded
sometimes, considering what he spent on that single-malt Scotch of his.

Her fingers found what she was looking for, the pack of Marlboro Lights at the bottom of the bag. She wanted a cigarette very badly, but was afraid her stepmother would smell it on her clothes and hair—that woman had a nose like a bloodhound. Caroline didn’t see why she should have to obey her, anyway. It’s not like she was her real mother or anything.

She squinted and peered down Madison Avenue, as if that would make the bus come faster. She looked around. She was the only one at the bus stop, so maybe it would be okay to have a cigarette after all. She could run right up to her room when she got home, claiming she had homework to do, and her stepmother would never be the wiser.

As she was fiddling around in her bag for a lighter, a black limousine rolled up to the bus stop. It was a Lincoln Town Car, polished to a gleaming shine. Even the whitewall tires looked clean. The electric window slid down, and a young man leaned out. He was wearing a gray wool cap with a black leather brim—like the kind of hat you might see a cab driver wearing in an old movie on AMC or TCM, she thought.

“You the one who called for a car service?” Caroline shook her head.

He held up a clipboard. “I got the address here—says I’m to meet a young lady in front of this coffee shop.”

She looked back at the restaurant. No one was standing outside waiting to be picked up.

“Any idea who it might be?” he said. “One of your friends, maybe?”

In the back of her mind, she wondered briefly how he knew she had friends in the restaurant, but the thought never made its way into her conscious brain. Something else registered only vaguely in her pretty head: though it was August, he was wearing black leather gloves.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, and started to roll the window back up. She glanced down the avenue—there was no bus in sight as far as she could see. Yellow cabs zoomed by, all of them filled with passengers.

“Wait a minute!” she called to him.

He lowered the window again.

“Yes?” He smiled. He had a pleasant face—not handsome, but pleasant. The kind of face you would forget as soon as you saw it.

“I’d like a lift home, if you’re free.”

“Sure—hop in.”

She slung her bag over her back and opened the door to the limo, inhaling the aroma of oiled leather seats. The cigarette could wait, she thought—now she just wanted to get home.

“Where to?” he said.

She told him.

“How much?”

He turned around and grinned. “For you, no charge.”

She smiled and leaned back into the soft, yielding embrace of expensive leather. She stretched out her tanned legs and regarded the polished toenails poking out from her Versace sandals with satisfaction. It was good to be young and pretty and rich on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

“Help yourself to water,” he said, and she saw a row of Poland Spring bottles tucked neatly into the pocket behind the front seat.

She reached for one and opened it, drinking greedily. It was a hot day, and she was thirsty. If she had noticed it tasted a little funny, or if that the seal had already been broken, she might have survived. But by the time the black Town Car turned toward the East River, she was already losing consciousness. She barely felt the car come to a stop after pulling into the cul-de-sac amid the block of warehouses on East Seventy-seventh Street. The last thing she saw before her young life ended was a pair of gloved hands moving toward her pretty white throat.