Silent Screams (25 page)

“Right. See you soon,” Lee said.

“I’ll tell Bunny you called.”

“Great, thanks. ’Bye.”

“So long.”

Lee hung up and stood in front of the collection of faded snapshots of his sister on the refrigerator. In one, the sun glinted off her dark hair, showing the copper highlights—more evidence of their family’s Celtic ancestry. Her grin was wide and lopsided, and she held a border collie puppy in her arms, a present from George Callahan. After Laura’s disappearance George had given the dog away. Though he never said so, Lee thought that he couldn’t stand the daily reminder of her absence. He knew that ever since Laura’s disappearance, George watched his daughter very carefully—and as an emergency room worker, he knew what people were capable of.

He went back into the living room, where the piano stood, waiting for him. It was close to eleven now, though—too late to play without disturbing the neighbors. He ran his fingers lightly over the keys, looking the pages of a Bach partita open in front of him. Tomorrow he would make time for Bach.

Back in the kitchen, he looked out the window at the couple across the way having dinner. They had finished now and were doing the dishes together. The woman stood at the sink, head down, washing dishes, and the man came up behind her and put his arms around her waist, hugging her body to him. It was a simple gesture, but it conveyed both protectiveness and possession. What happened, Lee thought, when protection faded and only possession was left? He closed the window’s bamboo shades and left the room.

Somewhere, out there in the darkness, was a man with evil on his mind. The phrase ran through his mind, over and over, stuck in a never-ending loop of numbing repetition:
Closer to home…closer to home…

The girl was slim and long of body, with willowy light brown hair. She walked with the loose-limbed grace of youth, and the satisfaction of being alive. She was not pretty, with small, pale eyes, a long prominent nose, and thin mouth, but her features were clean and wholesome and oddly aristocratic. Her face radiated kindness and honesty. She was the kind of girl you’d want as a best friend, the kind of girl men might not fall in love with right away but would feel drawn to. Samuel knew, down deep, that such a girl could never want him…. And he longed for her, for her carefree body that moved so freely and easily—her aliveness and unself-conscious enjoyment of physical existence. He tried to imagine feeling that way, but if he ever had, he couldn’t remember it.

He watched her sitting on the park bench for quite a while, until she stood up and stretched, arching her back and throwing her head back, exposing her throat. It was the sight of their exposed throats that excited him the most: moist, white, supple, arched in passion. The naked curves of this bare flesh were more alluring to him than breasts, erect nipples, or tender thighs. The sight of a woman’s bare throat made his eyes glaze over and his heart quicken in its bony cage, as if it wanted to burst out of his body.

After she had left the bench, he went over and sat on the spot where she had sat, warming the green-painted wood with her soft bottom. Samuel could smell faint traces of her shampoo—lily of the valley. He knew his floral scents—his mother had taught him well. He thought of his mother, digging in the dirt, her back to him, her bottom in the air, waving it at him, taunting him.

He felt the anger inside him, a tiny nugget of hardened rage, smoldered and condensed, shrunken like a piece of anthracite fired to its most hardened form. It hovered there at the core of him, shiny and black and smooth, nestled at the very center of his being. There was a time when it had hurt him, when its sharp and unpolished edges tore at his soul, chafing him no matter which way he turned—but he had nurtured it, until eventually it became his constant friend and companion. He turned it this way and that, gazing upon its shiny surface, noticing with admiration how it seemed to absorb all the light around it, drawing him down into its darkened depths.

Gradually he had come to accept his rage not as an enemy, but as a friend. It had things to teach him, and he was determined to listen. He learned to love its hard, unforgiving surface and dark beauty. The outside world would always be a bewildering, disappointing place, but he could draw into himself and know that his rage would be there waiting for him, an unpolished gemstone in the dark center of his soul.

Underneath the park bench, a fly struggled in a spider-web. He smiled as he watched the spider approach its struggling prey, all nicely wrapped in the deadly grip of the spider’s web. In eating the fly, the spider was simply doing its job. Just as he, in his late-night missions, was doing his job. A spider, he knew, can feel the tiniest vibration on its web—a signal that another meal has landed. Then, carefully, the spider will approach to inject venom in its hapless victim. He too felt a vibration on his web, and he was going to do what he could to trap his victim.

The next day, Lee, Nelson, Chuck, and Detectives Butts and Florette sat in Chuck Morton’s office, discarded coffee cups littering the surfaces of the room. The five of them now comprised the officially appointed members of the mayor’s “elite task force.” Butts and Florette also had a couple of sergeants and patrolmen at their disposal, as needed.

Nelson had responded to Chuck’s phone calls—and, without apology or explanation, had turned up at the meeting, looking tired and thinner, but sober.

“What’s with this whole ‘elite task force’ business?” Butts said, biting deeply into a sugared doughnut. “And why does it rate a press conference?”

“Politics,” Chuck replied. “The mayor wants to let people know he’s in control and on top of things.”

“All right, so what about the instant messages the killer sent to Lee?” Nelson asked. “Any chance of tracking them?”

“Nope,” said Chuck. “It’s a cold trail. According to the computer whiz kids in the Computer Crimes department, the address and information on the account were bogus.”

“He certainly knows what he’s doing,” Florette remarked with a frown. He was dressed elegantly as usual, with a gray silk tie over a striped blue and white shirt with French cuffs.

“What about leaving a trail from where he logged on?” Lee suggested.

“Holyman logged on from different locations all over the place, including public libraries,” Chuck answered.

“So he’s used every means available to protect himself,” Florette said.

“Yep,” Chuck agreed. “And so far it’s worked.”

“So our guy is basically a ghost,” Butts remarked. “A face without a name.”

“Okay, what about the online conversation between this guy and Lee?” Chuck said. “Did anyone have a chance to study it?”

“I did, yes,” Nelson said.

“Does it tell us anything?”

“I don’t think it adds anything to the profile, other than he’s educated and articulate—but we knew that already. He’s ballsy, but that’s not news either.”

“Right,” Florette agreed. “Even if he knows his way around a computer, he has to know he’s taking a chance getting in touch like that.”

“The guys in Computer Crimes were reluctant to admit defeat. They wouldn’t even tell me exactly how he did it,” Chuck said. “Said they don’t like to give out that information.”

“Maybe they don’t want people knowing there are ways of getting around their tracking techniques,” Florette suggested.

Chuck indicated the series of crime scene photos spread out on the large poster board that had been set up in his office.

“All right, what about the placement of Sophia’s body?” Chuck said. “Any thoughts on that?”

There was a silence as they studied them; then Nelson said, “I know what he’s doing. It’s so obvious—I can’t believe I didn’t see it immediately.”

“You want to share it with us?” Chuck said. He sounded irritated; Lee didn’t think he’d entirely forgiven Nelson for his long unexplained absence.

“It’s the
Via Dolorosa
—the Stations of the Cross,” Nelson replied.

“The what?” Butts said.

“There are fourteen Stations of the Cross, each representing a moment in Christ’s final hours. The idea is to meditate on the major moments in Christ’s suffering and death. It’s especially popular among Roman Catholics, and it’s also called the
Via Dolorosa
, or Way of Sorrow.”

“How do you figure that’s what’s behind it?” asked Butts, the fat wrinkles on his forehead folding over each other. His face never resembled that of an old bulldog so much as when he was looking thoughtful.

Nelson pointed at the wide-angle shot of her leg, in which the stained-glass picture of Death was clearly visible. “The first station of the cross is Christ being condemned to death.” He pointed at the second photo, in which Sophia’s arm was placed underneath the cross at the back of the church. “The second station is Christ receiving the cross. And this,” he said, pointing to her other leg, which was positioned on a set of steep stairs leading down to the basement, “this is the third station, in which Christ falls for the first time.”

“And this one?” Florette said, pointing to the final series of photographs, in which Sophia’s other arm had been placed at the feet of a pietà.

“That’s the fourth station,” Nelson replied. “Jesus meeting his mother on the way to his death.”

“Jesus,” Chuck said, wiping sweat from his forehead, even though the room was quite cool. “What does this tell us?”

“Well,” Nelson said, “the good news is that as his rituals get more bizarre and obsessive, his daily behavior may start to draw attention to itself. The bad news is that the killing is more frenzied, and that makes him more dangerous.”

“I still think there could be two offenders at work here,” Lee commented. “This new twist in the signature—”

“Oh, come on, Lee! If you learned
anything
from me, it’s that a signature is perfectly capable of evolving!” Nelson interrupted irritably.

“I know,” Lee answered. “I just think—”

“Do you think he had something to do with Laura’s disappearance?” Nelson said, changing the subject.

“My instinct tells me no. Because of the five-year gap, and also because it would be just too strange a coincidence.”

“But then how did he know about the red dress?” Florette asked.

“Maybe he knows the guy who did it?” Butts suggested.

“Okay, let’s shift focus,” Chuck said, turning to Florette. “Have you dug up anything on the churches?”

“I checked with the volunteer programs at all the churches, and none of the volunteers are screened. Some of them have a sign-in sheet, but they don’t really check up on anyone.”

“Sign-in sheets,” Butts said. “Does that include names and addresses?”

“Optional,” Florette replied. “But I thought it might be useful to have a look at these.”

He pulled a pile of papers from his briefcase. “Now, here are the sign-in sheets for the past few weeks—or at least all the ones I could get hold of. Fordham doesn’t keep theirs for more than a few days, but Saint Francis Xavier does, and Old St. Patrick’s adds the names to their mailing list. We got lucky at St. Patrick’s—they hadn’t yet updated their mailing list, so they hadn’t thrown it out yet.”

He spread the sheets, half a dozen crumpled pages, stained and covered with handwriting, out on the desk.

Lee looked over the first sheet of names, from Saint Francis Xavier Church. Nothing stuck out. It was about evenly divided between men and women, most of whom did not include their addresses or phone numbers. He picked up the second sheet. At the bottom, someone had signed in as “Samuel Beckett.”

He handed it to Nelson. “What do you make of this?”

Nelson peered at the list and frowned. “Very funny.”

“Can I see that one for St. Patrick’s, please?” he asked Butts, who was studying it.

“Okay,” Butts replied, handing it to him.

Lee looked at the list. The names were different from the one for Saint Francis Xavier, except for one name: Samuel Beckett. Same handwriting, delicate and almost feathery. Not “manly” handwriting. Maybe the handwriting of a mama’s boy?

He handed the sheet to Chuck.

“Samuel Beckett, like the playwright?” Chuck said. “This guy trying to be funny?”

“That’s what I was wondering,” Lee answered.

“This is definitely strange,” Florette agreed. “I was wondering what you’d make of it.”

“If this is our guy,” Nelson said, “it would fit it with the whole idea of this being a game to him. He’d get a kick out of signing in as a playwright known for his gloomy existentialism.”

“Waiting for Godot,” Florette murmured. “That’s sort of what we’re doing.”

“Yeah,” Chuck agreed.

“So he could be using this volunteering to look for victims,” Butts said.

“Right,” said Nelson.

“I’ll run the name through VICAP, see if we come up with anything,” Chuck said.

“And we should also find out how many people with that name live in the five boroughs. Check up on each of them,” Florette said.

“Right,” Chuck agreed. “I’ll get the sergeant on it.”

“There’s something else about him doing all this volunteer work,” Lee suggested.

“What’s that?” Butts asked.

“Someone who has a lot of time on his hands. Not only does he volunteer a lot, but he does it all over the five boroughs.”

“Right,” said Chuck. “So maybe he’s wealthy, or at least well off?”

“Or self-employed,” Nelson suggested.

“Right,” Lee agreed.

Butts studied the sheet in his hand. “Do you think it’s possible this name is a clue to his identity in another way?”

“What do you mean?” Chuck asked.

“Well, like maybe it’s partially right—an anagram, or something like that.”

“That’s good,” Lee said. “That would fit in with his personality.”

“I’ll run it through an Internet program on anagrams,” Florette said. “It’s not that great on proper names, but it might give us something.”

“Good idea,” said Chuck.

The phone rang, and Chuck picked it up.

“No comment,” he said after a moment. “I have a suggestion, though. Why don’t you stop wasting the department’s time, so we can do our job?”

He hung up, his face red, and stalked out of the office. They could hear him through the closed door, chewing out the duty officer for putting the call through.

“But I didn’t know it was a reporter,” they heard the cop say. “He told me he was—”

“I don’t
care
what he told you!” Chuck bellowed. “Next time use your head!”

Lee looked out the window at the bright splash of sunlight on the windowsill. Even as the days were growing longer, everyone’s temper was getting shorter, as they all realized that time was slipping away.