Silent Screams

Book 1: Lee Campbell Thriller

by C.E. Lawrence

Genres: Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

A Deranged Killer's Twisted Urges In the streets of New York City, the Slasher chooses his victim--and makes his move. As he wraps his fingers around the girl's pretty throat, his power increases. As he carves into her skin, his words become flesh. As he arranges her lifeless body in a loving tableau, his fantasies demand new, more violent sacrifices. . . A Profiler's Cunning Plan At first, NYPD detectives suspect a jealous boyfriend. But criminal profiler Lee Campbell senses something darker, even ritualistic, about the murder. More chilling, he's convinced he's witnessing the genesis of a full-blown serial killer. But time is running out. A new victim has been chosen. Campbell must search the most terrifying recesses of the human mind--and his own past-- before the screaming starts again. . . "Pulse-racing, compelling, first rate. Lawrence knows how to build and hold suspense with the best of them. Once you get into this one, you can't get out. A wild ride down a dark road." --John Lutz, New York Times bestselling author of Urge to Kill "C. E. Lawrence has achieved a rare level of authenticity, not only in character development but also in the realistic use of behavioral science. If you want to read a serial-killer thriller that's solidly based on frightening reality, this is the one." --Louis B Schlesinger, Ph.D., professor of forensic psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice "C. E. Lawrence delivers finely honed suspense, with unique twists, and accurately captures the logic and intuition of a profiler under pressure." --Katherine Ramsland, professor of forensic psychology, De Sales University, and author of The Devil's Dozen "Criminally compelling, Silent Screams by C.E. Lawrence nails you to your seat with a fascinating NYPD profiler who's hurled into the case of his lifetime. From the Bronx to Manhattan, Catholic churches to university classrooms, this journey into violence and the soul is unforgettable." --- Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Spies and The Last Spymaster "Silent Screams is a wickedly brilliant, carefully wrought thriller where the roles of hunter and hunted are skillfully blurred. Team up with a virtuoso profiler and a street-wise Bronx detective as they are thrown into an escalating torrent of murder that threatens to sweep them away. It's ride that neither they, or you, will soon forget." --Gregg McCrary, author of The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators Among Us "By setting the horror of fictional killings against the background of 9/11, C.E. Lawrence constantly reminds the reader that life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. The deviant perpetrator of grisly murders is described as someone who has a sophisticated knowledge of forensic investigations. The same can be said of the author. Silent Screams beckons C.E. Lawrence to become a repeat offender in this genre." --Marina Stajic, Ph.D., President of American Board of Forensic Toxicology

Release date: November 12, 2009

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 417

Sample

Lee Campbell stood looking at the naked body draped over the altar of the church. The girl’s delicate white skin was pale as the cold marble floor beneath his feet, in stark contrast to the vivid red wounds slashed across her torso and the purple bruising around her neck.

“Come on, Marie, talk to me,” he whispered. He bent down over her, looking for petechial hemorrhaging in or around the eyes, but could find none. The lack of patterned abrasions meant there had been no ligature. “So he used his hands,” he murmured. Some strangulation victims had no sign of injuries at all, so he was grateful for the bruising around her neck—pronounced enough to suggest that this, and not the slash wounds, was the cause of death. He thought about what her last moments were like: eleven pounds of pressure for ten seconds could cause unconsciousness, and thirty pounds of pressure, for four or five minutes, would result in death.

He observed the blue creeping into her lips, the porcelain smoothness of her dead cheeks. At least he left her face alone. He had always found it odd that strangulation victims sometimes looked strangely peaceful, with all of life’s pain, suffering, and uncertainty behind them now. Lee felt a stab of envy in his stomach, and a warning sounded in his head. He could not allow himself to linger over such thoughts. He closed the door of his mind to the desire to be where this dead girl was now, to be done with the mad dance of life and its many trials.

But, of course, there had been nothing peaceful about her death. His eyes fell on the jagged letters carved into her naked torso: Our father who art in heaven. The O encircled her left breast like a red halo, the blood droplets symmetrical on her pale flesh. For some reason, he was reminded of a red and white hula hoop his sister had as a child. The writing was uneven and slanted downward—a job done in haste, he concluded, by a killer who was not yet comfortable with this part of his work.

The blood had dried and was caked in little mountainous crusts of crimson on her pale skin. The word “Heaven” was cut into her abdomen, just over the light dusting of dark pubic hair on her pelvis. There was little excess blood around the altar, and no signs of struggle, suggesting that she was killed elsewhere.

“What happened to you?” Lee whispered. “Who did this to you?” Even at a whisper, his voice echoed and fluttered, ghostlike, through the tall stone columns of the chapel’s interior. Lee had never been on the Bronx campus of Fordham University before, and he was surprised by the size of the campus chapel. But then, Fordham was a Catholic school—in fact, the college seminary was just across the quad.

Lee studied the dead girl’s face, waiting for the eyes to flutter open, and realized with a start that she resembled his sister—the same curly dark hair and white skin. He had often imagined seeing Laura like this, wondering what he would do or say, but her body had never been found. And so that encounter hung in suspended animation, waiting for him in some near or distant future. He looked down at Marie, cold and unmoving upon the altar, not a line creasing her smooth cheeks, her youth a rebuke to the person who had squeezed the life from her body. Lee was relatively new to such intimacy with the dead, and it held a fascination he knew was not entirely healthy.

But Leonard Butts, the Bronx detective assigned to this case, had no such fascination, nor was he of a sentimental turn of mind.

“Okay, Doc,” he said, approaching Lee. “You ’bout done there? ME’s here, and we’d like to get the vic downtown ASAP.”

Butts indicated several men unloading a stretcher from a van outside the chapel. Lee could see the words MEDICAL EXAMINER in large yellow letters emblazoned on the backs of their dark blue jackets as they brought in the stretcher, its wheels clacking on the stone floor. A couple of members of the forensics team glanced up briefly, then went on with their work—dusting, photographing, inspecting. They worked with swift, practiced gestures, moving smoothly through the crime scene, gathering evidence. A thin young Asian woman snapped photographs of Marie from every angle, her face set in a stoic, businesslike expression.

Looking around, Lee felt that he was the only one out of place here—he alone had nothing to contribute, nothing to offer toward the solving of this terrible crime, this trespass against society and decency. He wondered if his friend Chuck Morton, commander of the Bronx Major Case Unit, had made a mistake in calling him out to this crime scene in the predawn hours. After two years as the NYPD’s only full-time criminal profiler, Lee still had doubts about whether he was up to the job.

“Well, Doc, whaddya think?” Detective Butts’s Bronx accent bit through the solemn atmosphere of the chapel.

Lee glanced up at Detective Butts, who had an unlit cigar dangling from his mouth. He had told the man twice that he had a PhD in psychology, and was not a medical doctor, yet Butts still insisted on calling him Doc. With his beard stubble and unkempt hair, the detective looked like the kind of man you might see lurking around an off-track betting parlor. Lee couldn’t blame him for the beard stubble; after all, it was 6 A.M., and he could feel the scratchiness on his own chin. But he suspected that even with a shave and a haircut Butts would still look disreputable.

Instead of the handsome, regular features of a stereotypical Irish cop, the detective had a decidedly uneven face, with flaccid jowls, a bulbous lower lip, small eyes, and a complexion like an unkempt gravel road. There was no discernible change in the thickness where his skull began and his neck ended; his neck rose in an unbroken line up to the top of his head, crosshatched tanned skin fading into gray hair stubble. Lee was reminded of the mesas he had seen in Arizona. To top it off, Butts was short and thick—Elmer Fudd in a trench coat. Lee thought the unlit cigar was a bit much, as though Butts was deliberately trying to look cartoonish.

“Well, whaddya think?” Butts repeated. “Boyfriend did it?”

“No,” Lee replied. “I don’t think so.”

“Strangulation is typical of domestic violence cases, y’know,” said Butts, his small eyes narrowing even more in the dim light of the chapel. When Lee didn’t respond, he added, “You know what percentage of murder victims know their killer?”

“Eighty percent,” Lee replied, bending down over Marie again.

“Yeah,” Butts said, sounding surprised that he knew the answer.

Lee straightened up and stretched his cramped back muscles. At just under six foot two, he was half a foot taller than the stubby detective. He ran a hand through his own curly black hair, which was getting shaggy in the back.

Butts frowned and deepened his bite on the cigar. “So who do you think did it?”

Lee stepped aside as the men from the medical examiner’s office loaded the body onto the stretcher. All around him, the forensics team members continued with their work; silent and efficient, they were the opposite of this stubby detective with his battered cigar and bad skin.

Lee looked down at his hands, feeling their uselessness. “I don’t know,” he answered.

Butts made a sound between a grunt and a sigh. “Humph. Okay, Doc—well, when you get some ideas, let me know.”

“Oh, I have some ideas,” Lee replied. “I just don’t know what they add up to yet.”

Butts moved the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “Yeah? Well, let’s have ’em.”

“It’s too early yet to draw a lot of conclusions, but I don’t think the attacker knew his victim.”

“Really?” Butt’s voice conveyed his disapproval and disdain.

“This was not a personal crime—this was a ritualistic murder.”

Butts cocked his head, letting the cigar dangle from his thick lips. “How do you figure that?”

“Look at the positioning of the body—he wants to shock us. And then there’s the carving.”

“Well, yeah, I can see that,” the detective said irritably. “I’m not saying this perp isn’t a creep. You should see some of the things I seen these guys do to their girlfriends.”

“And leave her in a church?”

Butts sniffed at the body like a bird dog. “She wasn’t killed here—she was brought here.”

“Exactly my point.”

“These days you got a lotta weirdos out there. You never know what they’ll do.”

“Who ID’d the body?”

“Chapel priest. Same one who discovered her. Said he came in for early prayers and found her here.” The detective lowered his voice as though he was afraid someone might overhear. “You know, I had a guy once who killed his mother, then dressed her up for church.”

“Someone who kills like this is displacing his rage onto a stranger. This is a ritualistic display of the body—it’s impersonal.”

Butts plucked the cigar from his mouth and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. “Okay, Doc—you’re the one with the degree.” He turned to the forensics team. “You boys ’bout done there? I’m gettin’ hungry.” He turned back to Lee. “Wanna go for some eggs? I know a great little place on Arthur Avenue.”

Lee did his best not to be irritated at this homely little detective for his casual attitude toward death. “Thanks—another time, maybe.”

The detective didn’t appear to take the rejection personally. He shuffled across the smooth floor toward the side exit, scratching his chin. “Okay, Doc, catch you later.”

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Lee called after him. It was only then he noticed the young priest huddled in the corner, his arms wrapped around his body, a mournful expression on his face.

He walked over to the man, who looked even younger close up, with his smooth pink skin and sleek black hair. There was no stubble on his face—he looked almost too young to have any.

“You knew the victim, Father…?” Lee asked.

The priest’s eyes were dark and pleading, like a puppy’s. “Michael. Father Michael Flaherty.”

“You were able to ID the body?”

“As I told him, I knew her because she was one of my—”

“Flock?”

“One of my comparative religion students.” His voice was thin and ragged; he looked away, perhaps suppressing tears.

“I see.”

“As I told the detective, she wasn’t a regular in church. She attends another one, I believe.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Ralph is going to be so devastated when he hears about this.”

“Ralph?”

“Her boyfriend. Nice kid, a science major.” Father Flaherty let his hands fall to his sides, a gesture of surrender. “I, uh…I just came in to pray and tidy up the altar.” He glanced at the vases of drooping and withered lilies to one side of the altar. A CSI worker was bent over them, dusting for fingerprints.

The priest swallowed hard. “And…there she was.” He gave Lee a searching look. It was clear he was studying Lee to see how his explanation was being received. The priest was obviously concerned about establishing his own innocence, but that didn’t necessarily mean he had anything to hide. Lee knew that even innocent people are often nervous in the presence of the police.

“Okay, thank you, Father Michael,” he said, handing him a business card. “Here’s my card if you think of anything else.”

The priest looked at the card. “The detective already gave me one of his. Aren’t you working together?”

“Yes, we are, except that—well, we sometimes work on cases from…different angles.” He hoped that was enough to satisfy the priest. He had no wish to discuss the tension between criminal profilers and traditional law enforcement.

The priest fished a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it a swipe across his nose. “All right. He already asked me the usual questions—could I think of anyone who would want to hurt her, and all that. I couldn’t think of anyone.”

Lee wasn’t surprised. He was beginning to believe that no one would be able to think of anyone who wanted to hurt this unfortunate girl—except, of course, her killer. He shuddered as the team from the ME’s office loaded poor Marie into a shiny black body bag. Marie. He forced himself to recite her name, to think of her as a person, not as “the vic,” as precinct detectives often referred to their crime victims. It was more painful to keep a sense of her as a person, but it helped to motivate him. Lee held his breath as they zipped up the body bag. He hated the sound of the metal teeth as they caught one another—so cold, so final, a young life reduced to that terrible, sad sound of metal on metal.

He approached one of the techs from the ME’s office, the thin young Asian woman who had been taking the photographs earlier. Her skin was as uncreased and pristine as Marie’s—he thought she might be Korean, or possibly Chinese. Her shiny black hair was looped back in a ponytail, and her jumpsuit looked two sizes too big for her slender body.

“Can you tell me if the wounds were postmortem or—” Lee began.

She replied quickly, as if wanting to get this over with as soon as possible. “Most likely postmortem. There wasn’t much bleeding.”

“Most likely? Is there any chance—?”

She shook her head, her black ponytail slicing the air. “It can be difficult to tell, but here you can see where the blood trickle ends. I can’t say for sure, but my best guess is that these wounds were postmortem…I hope to God,” she added in a low voice. Lee thought he saw her shiver inside her oversized jumpsuit.

“And the weapon?”

She frowned. “Hard to say for sure, but nothing fancy—possibly an ordinary knife, the kind you could get anywhere.”

“Thank you,” he said, turning away.

As he left the chapel, a wicked wind whipped up around Lee’s ankles, flipping his coattails skyward, scattering a few wisps of dead leaves up into a spiral swirl, like a miniature tornado. The sharp, dry gust took his breath away. He shivered and shoved his hands into the pockets of his green tweed overcoat. A thin, pale dawn began to bloom in the eastern sky as he gazed down at the southern end of Manhattan, where a smoldering gash in the earth was all that was left of the once-proud towers. It was barely five months ago that the planes dropped from the sky like some mythic beasts, their tongues dripping with fire and destruction…and despair….

He forced his mind back to the present.

Hearing footsteps, he turned to see a man standing next to a blue van parked at the back of the church. He was dressed in a workman’s jumpsuit and carried a tool case.

“Who’s that?” he asked Butts, who had stopped by the side exit to speak to one of the crime scene technicians.

“I dunno,” the detective answered, walking over to converse with the man.

“Locksmith,” he said, returning to where Lee stood. “Got a call from the college administration that there was a broken lock in the basement. I told him to come back tomorrow.”

Lee turned to Father Michael, who had wandered out of the church. The priest looked lost, and had the glazed look of someone in shock. “Were you aware of a broken lock in the basement?”

Father Michael shook his head. “No. But the maintenance staff might have put the call in. You’d have to ask them.”

“Right,” Butts said, writing it in his notebook. “Do you think there’s a connection?” he asked Lee.

“I don’t see one, really—I mean, the killer came right in through the unlocked side door, and presumably left the same way.”

“I’ll check it out anyway,” Butts said.

“He took something,” Lee murmured to himself, “but what?”

“Whaddya mean, he took somethin’?” Butts asked.

Lee gazed over the wounded landscape of the city, soaking in its stark and terrible beauty. “A souvenir, a memento.”

“Jeez. What for?”

Lee turned to face him. “What was the last trip you took?”

Butts pushed back his battered fedora and scratched his head. He reminded Lee of a character out of a 1940s screwball comedy.

“I dunno…The Adirondacks, I guess.”

“And did you buy anything there?”

“Uh, the wife bought some dish towels.”

“Did she need dish towels?”

Butts frowned. “Actually, come to think of it, she’s got dozens of ’em. She always buys one when we go somewhere.”

“Right. So why buy what you don’t need?”

Butts snorted. “Look, Doc, I learned a long time ago that when it comes to women, it’s better not to ask certain questions, know what I’m sayin’?”

“But there is an answer to this one.”

Butts jabbed the toe of his shoe into the dirt, kicking up the soft black soil.

“She says it reminds her of the trip.”

“Exactly. That’s why sexual murderers often take something from their victims: to remind them. It’s like hunting trophies—they serve no purpose, other than to bring the killer memories of the crime itself. The souvenirs help them relive the whole thing over and over.”

Butts tore off a piece of a jagged fingernail with his teeth and spit it out. “Man, this is twisted stuff. Mostly I just handle homicides, you know? Drug deals gone bad, abusive boyfriends, family fights that escalate—run-of-the-mill stuff. This is a whole new kinda weird.”

“Yes, it is.”

Butts looked at Lee suspiciously. “Doesn’t this stuff keep you up at night?”

“Sometimes. But knowing those people are still out there keeps me up even more.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Doc, but you don’t seem like the type…. I mean, how did you get into this kind of thing?”

“It’s kind of personal.”

“Sure, sure,” the detective answered, his homely face crinkled in sympathy. “No problem—I get it. Didn’t mean to pry.”

Lee looked away—he didn’t trust his reactions around other people. He wasn’t entirely in control of himself yet, not quite recovered from his breakdown.

The two men stood side by side, looking southward, watching the thin gray mist of smoke snaking upward from the ruined earth.

Butts shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well, then, I’m gonna move along now. I’ll, uh, catch you later. I’ll call you when we find the boyfriend.”

“Sure. See you later.”

He watched as the detective trundled off after the forensic team, his rumpled gray trench coat flapping in the wind.

Lee closed his eyes and let his head fall back. He could hear bagpipes, faraway and sad—their thin, plaintive tones carrying across the East River to where he stood on this melancholy bluff. He often imagined he heard bagpipes in times of stress and sorrow, and he had come to welcome the sound rather than taking it as a sign of deepening mental illness. It comforted him, bringing him back to the hills of his Celtic ancestors, where mountains rose sharp and bare from rushing riverbeds below, a mysterious and stark landscape that ran through his veins as strongly as his own blood.

He gazed up at the sky, where a lone crow scraped its way north, black and solitary against the creeping dawn.

As it turned out, the boyfriend wasn’t difficult to locate. Within an hour Lee was standing outside a grimy interrogation room inside a Bronx precinct house, watching through the one-way mirror as he waited for Butts to question the young man. The interrogation room was small and stuffy, its pale green walls scarred with stains and scuff marks. Lee imagined the scenes that had taken place in this room—the outbursts of rage, poundings by fists or boots or both. Some of the black smudge marks on the walls did appear to come from kicks—they were the right height and size. But others—coffee splotches, the occasional streak of blue ink, even a few ominous red patches, dried to a dark rust color—were more mysterious.

The young man inside the room sat quietly, hands folded on his lap. He was slight of build, with narrow, bony shoulders—a boy who wouldn’t stand out in any crowd. Lee took an inventory of his regular but unremarkable features: straight brown hair over a thin, sensitive mouth and sad brown eyes. Under the harsh fluorescent lights his face had an unhealthy gray pallor, the circles under his eyes pronounced. He looked young—even younger than poor Marie—and very, very frightened. Not in a guilty way, Lee thought, just plain scared. He would bet that this boy had never seen the inside of a police station before, and certainly never as a suspect.

Ever since he could remember, Lee had an unusual ability to “read” people. He used to think that everyone could do this, and it wasn’t until after his training in psychology that he had realized how uncommon his gift was. He studied aspects of human behavior in textbooks explaining things he had always known instinctively. He could see into people—into their souls, so to speak.

Now, looking at the scared young man sitting in front of him, Lee was quite certain that the boy was not guilty of his girlfriend’s murder.

Detective Butts entered the room with two paper cups of coffee and slid one across the scarred Formica table to the boy.

“Thought maybe you could use one too,” he said, sitting down across from him. “Hope you take it regular.”

In western New Jersey, where Lee grew up, “regular” meant milk, no sugar, but in New York City, regular coffee always included a liberal amount of sugar.

“Thank you,” the boy replied in a small voice, but he didn’t touch the coffee. Butts flipped back the plastic lid of his own cup with a well-practiced gesture and slurped it noisily.

“That’s better,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He appeared to be enjoying himself. “I hate to start the day without it, y’know?”

The young man stared at Butts, his face still frozen in fear. He reminded Lee of a fox he had once seen cornered—the animal had the same expression of wariness and creeping panic. This interrogation was going to be a waste of time; he knew Butts was showing off for him, trying to impress him with interrogative skills. First soften him up, become his friend, then close in for the kill. This technique seemed so obvious to Lee that he couldn’t imagine any criminal—even the simplest shoplifter—not seeing right through it. This kid was no criminal, though, and he figured that Butts knew this—but procedure was procedure. You had to jump through the right hoops.

“Okay,” the detective said, setting his coffee down and glancing at a file on the table, “Mr…. Winters. Rough luck, by the way—sorry about what happened to your girlfriend.”

“Yeah,” Winters responded softly.

“Can I call you Ralph?”

“Okay,” the boy answered, his voice still barely above a whisper. Lee had the impulse to intervene, but that was out of the question. This was Butts’s investigation, and the last thing he wanted was to alienate the burly detective.

Ralph sat staring at the untouched coffee in front of him, as a thin ribbon of steam spiraled upward through a tiny hole in the lid.

“Okay, Ralph,” Butts said, “why don’t you tell me anything you can think of that might help?”

Ralph gulped twice, his Adam’s apple rising and falling sharply in his thin throat. He appeared to be on the verge of tears.

“Says here you’re a chem major,” Butts continued, maybe to save Ralph the embarrassment of tears. Whatever his motive was, it apparently worked. The boy leaned forward, and his eyes seemed to focus on Butts for the first time. He reached for the coffee, his hand trembling.

“Yeah. Organic chemistry. I’m studying to be a pathologist.” He took a sip of coffee.

“Oh, really?” Butts’s tone was friendly, jocular. “You interested in forensics?”

“Uh, I want to specialize in diseases, actually.”

“Well, well,” Butts replied, smiling. “How ’bout that? You gotta be real smart to do that kinda stuff, I know that much. Me, I was no good in science. I envy guys like you.”

Ralph seemed suspicious of this attempt to butter him up. He sat looking at Butts, his hands wrapped around the paper coffee cup.

“So, Ralph, what can you tell me?” Butts said, his tone indicating it was time to get down to business. “How long have you known Marie?”

“Since last semester. We, uh—we were in the same comparative lit class.”

Butts frowned. “But you’re a science major.”

“It’s a required course. I need it to graduate.”

Butts cocked his head to one side. “I get it. And Marie was a religion major?”

“Comparative religion, yeah. She wanted to teach eventually.”

“I see. So you guys just sorta hit it off?”

Ralph winced. “Yeah. I mean, at first I didn’t believe a girl like her would be interested in me. I mean, she’s so pretty and lively and everything, and I’m…well, a science geek, you know?”

Butts gulped down some more coffee. “Yeah. I know what you mean—never could figure out what the wife sees in me. Women are a mystery.”

This admission seemed to put Ralph more at ease, and he sipped at his coffee, though without taking his eyes off the detective.

“Tell you what, Ralph,” Butts said. “I’m not gonna keep you here very long, but can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt Marie? Anyone at all?”

“Well, she was really sweet and trusting. I can’t think of anyone who didn’t like her. I mean, she didn’t try to be popular or anything, but there was just something about her, you know?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Ralph shifted in his chair. “There was one thing….”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Well, I had the feeling she was seeing someone—someone else, I mean. I don’t really have any evidence of it. It was more of a feeling, I guess.”

“Okay. Any idea who it was?”

Ralph looked down at his hands, which were clasped tightly in his lap. “No. I was meaning to ask her about it, but…I guess I didn’t want to pry. It’s not like we were engaged or anything, you know?”

“Yeah, sure. Will you excuse me for a moment?”

He got up and lumbered out of the room, closing the door behind him. He came over to Lee and slumped his stocky body against the wall.

“That kid’s clean as my mother-in-law’s kitchen. No way he did it—and I don’t think he has any idea who did.” Butts pulled a cigar stub from his breast pocket. Placing it between his sturdy teeth, he bit down on it hard.

“Do you ever actually smoke those things?” Lee asked.

“Not anymore. Used to, wife hated the smell, said it got into everything. So I gave it up. This is the closest thing I have now to a vice…. I miss it, but I’ll tell you, this is a helluva lot cheaper. I used to buy the good ones—you know, the Cubans—when I could get ’em, and they set you back a buck or two.”

Butts shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “This other guy he mentioned—that could be a lead. That is, if she really was seeing anyone else.”

“Maybe,” Lee replied. “I wonder if you’d just let me ask him one thing?”

Butts shrugged. “Go ahead—knock yourself out. Then we should let the poor bastard go home.”

“Thanks.”

Lee entered the interrogation room and felt the oppressiveness of its windowless silence. The one-way mirror behind which Butts now stood watching only added to the sense of isolation and paranoia the suspects must feel.

Ralph Winters looked up at him apprehensively when he entered the room. Lee tried to dispel his fear with a friendly smile, but the boy’s body didn’t relax as Lee sat down opposite him.

“Hi, I’m Lee Campbell. I’m helping with this investigation.”

Ralph responded with a twitch of his head and wrapped his hands tighter around his coffee cup.

“Look, Ralph,” Lee said gently, “we’re going to let you go soon. I just want to see if there’s anything else you can tell us about Marie that might help us catch her killer.”

The boy’s face reddened, and his eyes welled up with tears. “You—you don’t think I did it, then?”

“No, we don’t. But we hope you can help us by telling us about Marie—anything you can think of.”

Ralph swallowed hard. “Well, like I told the other detective, she was really sweet, and everyone liked her.”

“Yes,” Lee replied. “I know.” On the last day of her life Fate swooped down upon her, a slap out of nowhere, a sudden shock as she rounded the corner of her life. It was a line from a poem he had written about his sister, and he shook it out of his head. “Why don’t you just tell me what you can about Marie?”

“Well, she was kinda religious—Catholic, you know.”

“So she went to church how often?”

“Oh, not more than twice a week. She went Sundays, and then sometimes to Wednesday night mass. But she didn’t like people who swore and took the Lord’s name in vain, you know? And she had a crucifix over her bed—kind of creepy, if you ask me, but I wasn’t raised religious.” His lower lip trembled. “Have they called her parents yet?”

“We’re taking care of that. They live in Jersey somewhere, I think?”

“Yeah—Nutley.” He swallowed again and took another sip of coffee.

“Did she have any special friends at church?”

“Not that I can think of. A couple of girlfriends. She didn’t really socialize all that much. She did volunteer to feed the homeless at the church once a month.”

“Did you go with her?”

“Sometimes.”

“You mentioned her girlfriends—are they religious?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But Marie was?”

“Yeah. She wore a cross around her neck all the time.”

“Can you describe it?”

“Uh, yeah…it was plain gold—oh, with a tiny little pearl in the center.”

“A white pearl?”

“Yeah. She never took it off.”

Lee felt his heart quicken. He carried a clear image of Marie as she was in death, and he could swear that when they found her there was no cross around her neck.

“Never?”

“No. She kept it on even in the shower—said it was like keeping Jesus with her all the time. I remember it scratched me one time when we were…” His face crumpled, and his thin shoulders sagged under the weight of his grief. “Oh, God, oh, God!” He collapsed sobbing, burying his head in his arms. . .