Silent Screams (29 page)

He looked around the restaurant in Grand Central Station
. These were all nice people, surely, with families and mortgages and dogs they had gotten from rescue shelters—scruffy terriers with sweet, lopsided faces, sporting red bandanas, who liked to chase Frisbees in the park on Sunday afternoons. They were the kind of people that advertisers targeted on television: middle-class families looking to upgrade their dishwashers, their laptops, their life insurance policies. They had aging parents in managed-care facilities they were concerned about, college tuition to save up for, IRA accounts to roll over.

But
he
existed outside of their world. His was a half-lit netherworld of dark drives and even darker deeds. He glided in and out of their cheerful daytime lives like a ghost, an unwelcome visitor whose mission was to disrupt their daily ordinariness to satisfy his appalling fantasies.

If he could not be one of them, then he would live to remind them of that, to let them know they were not safe—not in their fortified SUVs, their multiplex houses with the elaborate security systems, or their fabulously expensive office buildings with the Japanese fountains and designer furniture fresh from the showroom. He would strike wherever they lived, worked, or played. He would invade their safety like a virus, a worm, a bacterium. They could not know his world, but he would know theirs.

He glanced at his watch—it was time to leave. His train would be boarding for Philadelphia soon.

Lee promised himself that he would call Nelson right after he had a short nap on the couch. His head had been pounding now for hours, his neck was stiffening up, and he felt nauseous. He took one of the pills Dr. Patel had given him, and tried not to think about the doctor’s face when he announced his intention to leave the hospital. He lay down on the couch and pulled the green afghan, the one Laura knitted him when she was sixteen and he was on his way to his freshman year at Princeton, over his legs. As he drifted off, he saw a thin ray of moonlight reflecting off the silver wind chimes Kylie had given him last Christmas.

He awoke to a ringing bell. In his dream it was the wind chimes ringing, but when he regained full consciousness he realized it was his phone. He threw off the blanket and staggered over to the phone.

“Hello?” His voice was slurred, ragged.

“Lee?” It was his therapist.

“Oh, hello, Dr. Williams.”

“Are you all right?”

“Uh, yes, I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry to call you on a Thursday evening, but I was becoming concerned about you. You’ve never missed an appointment and then not called.”

Thursday!
His weekly appointment with her was on Wednesday afternoons, and he had completely forgotten about it.

“I’m sorry. I was in the hospital.”

“What’s wrong?”

He could hear the concern in her voice, underneath the patrician professionalism.

“I’m okay now.”

“Was it…?”

“I had an infection of the brain. Bacterial meningitis.”

“That can be very serious. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes. I was just asleep, that’s all. I’m sorry I didn’t call you.”

“Never mind. I’m just concerned about you.”

“Look, I’d like to reschedule, but I think we’re closing in on this guy.”

“The Slasher, you mean? That’s wonderful.”

“Yes.” He tried to sound hopeful and positive, but knew he had failed.

“You feel conflicted about it.”

He stared out into the blackened sky. The stained-glass window on the Ukrainian church now reflected only pale lamplight.

“Maybe you identify with him. You told me that you believe he has an absent father and controlling mother.”

“Yes, but—”

“So in some ways, you may feel that his rage is your rage.”

A terrible thought crowded itself into his mind. Though he was, in every way, luckier than this young man, Lee realized that he felt an unwelcome emotion.

“It sounds awful, but I think I envy him just a little.”

“What do you envy about him?”

“Because I have to swallow my rage, and he gets to act it out.”

“So you wish you could be like him?”

He took a breath and held it. “Yes. I wish sometimes I could just be a murderer.”

There was a pause, and Lee heard the click of call waiting.

“Dr. Williams, will you excuse me? There’s another call coming in, and I really should get it.”

“Of course. Why don’t you just call me when you’re ready to see me?”

“I will. Thank you for understanding.”

He clicked the receiver button and picked up the second call. It was Nelson, and he sounded stone-cold sober.

“I am
so
sorry. Can you ever forgive me for acting like a damn fool?”

“Of course,” Lee answered.

He filled Nelson in on his theory about the locksmith store.

“That makes sense,” he agreed, “because he would probably have a van with the company logo on it—a perfect way to transport the bodies.”

“And a place to do the killing away from prying eyes.”

“Yeah, that too,” Nelson said. “So what did he say to you in the hospital?”

“He went on about being a servant of God, that kind of thing.”

“Anything else?”

“Not really—mostly how he was on a holy mission.”

“So he’s a true believer.”

“Looks like it.” The sound of the killer’s voice was still fresh in his ears, and Lee continued to have the feeling he had heard it before—but where? An image popped into his head of Nelson lecturing in the crowded classroom, and then it struck him. The voice belonged to the thin young man at the far end of the hall—whose face he had never seen.

“Do you have a listing of all the students signed up for your class?” he said.

“Why do you ask?”

“Do you remember that thin blond boy with the raspy voice?”

“Let’s see…I think so.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t recall his name offhand, but he said he was doing a makeup class or two because he missed a lecture in Dr. Zellinger’s class.”

“I think that’s him.”

“You mean
him?
”

“Yeah—I think he’s the Slasher.”

“Oh my God. If you’re right, then he could have posed as building maintenance, or even picked a lock on a side door.”

“Sure,” Lee answered. “The main security gate at John Jay is up front, but no one guards the side entrances.”

“So he’s been watching us all this time.”

“That explains how he knew who I was—and you too.”

“Damn. So we had him
under our noses
all that time! Goddamn it!”

“Let’s just focus on getting him, okay? I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Right.”

After he hung up, Lee looked at the Seth Thomas clock on the mantelpiece, a gift from his mother. It was ten o’ clock.

He looked out the window one last time before going to bed. He could feel the Slasher, out there in the darkness, waiting for him, waiting,

“I’m coming,” Lee whispered. “Ready or not, here I come.”

By 8:30 the next morning all the members of the task force were seated around the table in the conference room, a pile of phone books scattered over the big oval table. Florette and his sergeant sat at two computer terminals, doing their search online, while the rest of them leafed through the Queens phone book.

“Not too many locksmith shops will have Web sites, I’d think,” Chuck said, peering over their shoulder.

Florette turned to look up at him. “Maybe, but you never know.”

“What are we lookin’ for, exactly?” Butts sneezed as he dialed a number. He was coming down with a cold, and his pockets bulged with tissues.

“Names and addresses of the owners,” Lee replied.

“How will we know when we find the right one?”

“We won’t,” Nelson growled from the corner, where he sat, sucking at an unlit cigarette, a phone book balanced on his lap. He was looking more cheerful than the previous day, since as it turned out, the FBI was too swamped to send anyone for at least a week.

“We’ll just start within a three-mile radius of the church, and go outward from there,” Lee said. “Assuming that he lives near his shop—”

“Which is a pretty big assumption,” Butts sniffled.

“Which, I was just going to say, is a pretty big assumption.”

“Hey,” Butts said, “do you remember the day that first girl died, and a locksmith showed up at the church? Claimed there was a broken lock in the basement?”

“Yeah,” Lee answered. “It turned out there was a broken lock, but no one seemed to know about it at the time.”

“You think that was him, coming in to check on his handiwork?”

“I think it’s likely. He’s been close to the investigation all along, it seems, in one form or another.”

“Too bad we didn’t detain him for questioning then.”

“How could we know?”

“Yeah,” Butts said. “I guess you’re right. Still, it really burns me that he was right there—”

“Never mind, Detective,” Chuck Morton said. “Let’s concentrate on the task at hand.”

They sat for about twenty minutes, dutifully collecting names and addresses of owners, when Lee chanced to put in a call to a place called Locktight Security Systems. It had a big ad splashed over half a page in the Yellow Pages.

We make sure that you stay safe—it’s our business! All the latest technology in locks and security systems

Lee dialed the number. A kid answered—unenthusiastic, bored.

“Locktight Security.”

“May I please speak with the owner?”

“Uh, he’s not here right now.”

“When will he return?”

“I dunno, really.”

“What’s his name—can you tell me that?”

“Uh, sure, I guess. It’s Sam. Sam Hughes—or Samuel, he likes to be called.”

“And he lives in…?”

“Queens. Not far from here. Can I ask who’s calling?”

“I’m an old friend. I’ll try back later—thanks.”

He hung up and sank back in his chair.

“What is it?” Chuck said, noticing him. “You got something?”

“I’m not sure. Remember how we kept seeing the name ‘Samuel Beckett’ on all those church volunteers lists?”

“Why, did it come up again?”

“Not exactly. Guy’s first name is Samuel, though. I just have a feeling. Let me try something.”

He called back, and when the boy answered, did a passable stab at an upper-class British accent.

“I say, my good man, I’m trying to get in touch with Mrs. Hughes, Samuel’s dear mother, old school chum of hers. He lives with her, I believe?”

There was a pause. Lee was afraid the kid wasn’t going to buy his act. But then he snickered.

“Yeah, sure he does. Guy’s pushing thirty, and he still lives with his mother.”

“I see. Do they still live on the same street—oh, what was it…?”

“Lourdes Street.”

“Yes, of course! Number—”

“Number 121.”

“Right. Thanks ever so much. Cheerio.”

He hung up, to find everyone staring at him.

“Cheerio?” Nelson said.
“Cheerio?”

Lee made a face at him. “I was improvising.” He looked at Butts. “Want to go out to Queens and check this out?”

Butts muffled a sneeze in a wad of Kleenex. “Yep—you bet!”

Fifty minutes later, Lee and Detective Butts emerged into the diffuse glare of an overcast sky, the sun struggling to assert itself through a thick gray cloud cover. Lourdes Street was a few blocks from the subway, right across the street from St. Bonaventure Catholic Church.

The Queens neighborhood had the smell of defeat. The houses were depressing little boxes with peeling paint, crumbling bricks, and cheap aluminum siding, stained and battered with age, overlooking cramped lots with rocky lawns—if you could call them that—of crabgrass and overgrown weeds. The occasional lawn ornament—mostly plaster dwarfs and religious figures—only reinforced the aura of hopelessness.

The same attitude of resignation was stamped upon the faces and slumped shoulders of the residents, who shuffled along the ill-kempt sidewalks, heads down, eyes focused on the cracked slabs of concrete, probably to keep from tripping and breaking their necks.

“This is it,” Butts said, pointing to a little white house crammed between its equally undistinguished neighbors. Like many of the other properties, it was surrounded by an ugly chain-ink fence. Number 121 was a little neater than some of the others. The walk was swept, and a small concrete pond was adorned with a white plaster Virgin Mary, perched next to a statue of a fawn drinking from the pond.

The front gate on the chain-link fence creaked when they opened it, and their footsteps clicked loudly on the concrete path leading up to the house. When they reached the front door, Lee lifted his hand to knock, but saw that the door was cracked open. He pushed on it, and it swung forward on well-oiled hinges but then stopped, as though something was blocking it. There were no lights on inside the house, and no sign of life within its whitewashed stucco walls.

“Mrs. Hughes?” he called out through the opening.

No response.

He called louder.

“Mrs. Hughes? Are you there?” He rapped the door sharply with his knuckles. He was burning to burst into the house, but they had no search warrant, and the last thing they needed was to have the whole case thrown out of court.

“I don’t think anyone’s in there,” Butts said, shifting his weight back and forth on his feet. He, too, looked impatient and anxious.

“The door is open,” Lee said, “do you think we should—”

But at that moment he realized what was blocking the door. As his eyes adjusted to the dim interior, he could make out a pair of woman’s shoes—still attached to their owner. She lay partially out of sight, in the small front foyer, but even in the darkened room, Lee could see her feet, her legs, and—was that blood?

He turned to Butts. “We’re going in. Cover me.”

“I don’t think we should—” Butts began, but that was all he managed to get out.

Lee didn’t wait for Butts to pull his gun. He pushed against the door with his shoulder, and it gave.

What he saw made him catch his breath.

The dead woman in front of him was nude, just like the rest of the Slasher’s victims. But there was no neat positioning of the body with the arms spread out evenly from her shoulders. Instead, she lay splayed out on the floor, her hands flung above her head, a jagged scar where her throat had been cut. A dark rivulet of dried blood snaked crookedly from her throat across the white linoleum floor.

“Jesus,” Butts said softly, behind him, looking around the room. Blood spatter was everywhere—on the floor, the walls, the furniture, even the ceiling.

The victim was slight of build—
like her son
, Lee thought—and, unlike the other victims, she was middle-aged, but slim and trim, what was once called “well-preserved.”

On her chest had been carved the words,
Deliver us From Evil
.

He was looking at a textbook example of overkill. In addition to slashing her throat and carving on her chest, the killer had ripped her clothes from her body, and they lay in tatters around her. Her limbs were splayed out in every direction. It’s possible she had fallen like that, but Lee thought it more likely that the killer was making a point by leaving her this way. He had staged every other crime scene, and would probably have staged this one—unless he was falling apart completely now, which was also possible.

He knelt and felt for a pulse, but knew there was no point. Her dead eyes stared reprovingly at the ceiling. The expression on her face was of shock and disbelief, as if she could not fathom what could cause this depth of violence from her own flesh and blood.

Lee straightened up to face Butts, who was staring down at Mrs. Hughes.

“He finally killed the person he meant to kill all along,” Lee said.

“So we finally got our guy,” Butts remarked.

“Except that we don’t have him yet,” Lee reminded him. He touched her dead hands. Rigor mortis had already begun to set in, indicating the time of death was probably some hours earlier.

“Do you think it means anything that he skipped over part of the prayer?” Butts asked, looking down at the body. “I mean, should we be lookin’ for more vics to turn up?”

“Judging by this, he’s spinning out of control, becoming more disorganized. I think he’s on the run.”

Bundy had gone on the run at this point, fleeing all the way down to Florida, where his killing became unhinged—he attacked five young women on his final, orgiastic night of slaughter.

“I’ll call it in,” Butts said, getting out his cell phone.

“Okay,” said Lee. “I’m going to look around.” There was a slight chance Samuel was still here—
very slight
, Lee thought, given the circumstances. The killing of his mother represented the culmination of his violence, the final—and most authentic—act of retribution in what had until now been symbolic slayings. This would make him more vulnerable, but also far, far more dangerous.

Lee stepped from the foyer into a small but tidy living room adorned with religious icons. He caught a flash of white disappearing around the corner—a cat, probably. He looked around the room. Statues of Joseph and the Virgin Mary graced either side of the mantelpiece, and one wall had a kitschy portrait of Jesus looking heavenward with tragic, soulful eyes. But the most striking icon was the heavy gold cross above the fireplace. A suffering carved Christ was nailed to it with what looked like real nails, and he was dripping blood from every pore. The carving was so realistic that it made Lee’s flesh crawl. The furnishings evoked a Victorian parlor—dark furniture covered with fringed antimacassars and lace doilies.

“Okay,” Butts said, lumbering into the room, “they’re on the way. Hey—look at that, will ya?” he said.

Lee followed his gaze. There, sitting on a small round table, next to an old-fashioned dial telephone, was a white plastic inhaler, the kind used by asthmatics. Next to it was a slip of note paper. Lee picked it up and read the hastily scrawled handwriting.

He glanced at his watch. The train had left from Penn Station an hour ago.

“Philly?” Lee said. “Why would he go to Philly?”

“Here,” said Butts. “Take a look at this.” He thrust another crumpled receipt in front of Lee, this one for the Adam’s Mark Hotel, just outside downtown Philadelphia.

Lee stared at the receipt. Suddenly his ears were ringing, and there was a roaring sound in his head. He realized why Samuel Hughes was going to Philadelphia.

Next time I’ll strike closer to home
.

He’s after Kathy
. Panic rose in his throat, choking him. He grabbed Butts by the arm, dragging him to the door.

He wasn’t sure what he said or did, but somehow he managed to get Butts out of there. They rushed down the street, the stubby detective trundling a few years behind him as he sprinted toward the subway. There were no yellow cabs cruising this neighborhood, and he reasoned that an express train would be faster anyway.

“What’s goin’ on?” Butts asked, panting as he tried to catch up with Lee. “You trying to give me pneumonia or something?”

“I’ve got to get to Philadelphia!” Lee called back over his shoulder.

“How are you gonna find him in a place like that?” Butts yelled as they charged down the steps to the train, dashing through the turnstiles just in time to catch an express headed for Manhattan.

“Okay,” Lee said as they threw themselves down onto the plastic seats, panting heavily, “listen carefully. I’m going straight to Penn Station. I want you to contact Chuck Morton and tell him that I’ve gone after Samuel Hughes, and that he’s our man.”

“Oh,
man
,” Butts said, struggling to breath through a sudden coughing fit. “Have you gone loco on me? How do you figure to find this guy in goddamn Philadelphia?”

Lee told him what he feared—that Hughes was going after Kathy now—and that that was the reason for his trip to Philadelphia.

“Oh, jeez,” Butts said. “Let me come with you!”

“No, I need you to talk to Chuck first, and explain everything. Then maybe he can get in touch with the cops in Philly and get me some backup. It’s tricky, though. We don’t really have anything concrete on this guy, so they might not want to stick their necks out. And he might not want to risk asking them, either. They may all think I’m crazy.”

“Okay, okay,” said Butts. “Where are you gonna be?”

Lee gave him the addresses of Kathy’s father’s house, and the Vidocq Society.

“If you can, call both those places and leave a message for her or her father to stay put until I arrive. There’s no guarantee he’ll show up either of those places, though,” Lee said, looking at his own cell phone. The battery only had one bar left on it. He turned it off—he wouldn’t be able to charge it again before reaching Philadelphia.

“So what do you think he’s gonna do?”

“I don’t really know.”

And that was what frightened him most of all.