C. Lawrence - Silent victim

"Wife's taken up bridge. She belongs to this club-duplicate bridge, they call it. Some kind of a round-robin thingy, where the hands are dealt ahead of time, and each team gets a chance to play them."

"Sounds fun."

"I dunno, Doc-I'm not a card-playing man. All I know is they sit there playin' for hours, and at the end someone wins fifty bucks or somethin'. Seems like a waste of time to me, and they pretty much take over the living room for the evening."

"So you decided to be elsewhere tonight."

Butts threw his arms up in surrender. "I'm just in the way. I can't even go to the kitchen for a beer without havin' to pass by a dozen people or more."

"I understand. I felt that way sometimes when my parents had parties when I was a kid." Lee remembered with a pang what a handsome, glamorous couple they were-his tall, elegant father with his curly black hair and Italian suits, presiding over the arrival of smartly dressed guests, his mother hanging on his arm, her head thrown back, laughing-a hearty, full-throated sound Lee hadn't heard since the day his father walked out.

Butts took a swig of beer, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and set the glass down on the table with a clunk. "Hey, listen, I'm glad the wife has her own thing, really I am. I just don't happen to share her love of cards, is all."

Lee rested one elbow on the white linen tablecloth and looked around the room. Virage had an easygoing East Village charm, elegant and casual at the same time, a relaxed atmosphere with seriously good food. The floor was done in the classic black-and-white Art Deco tiles used in so many building interiors in the twenties, and the decor reflected the French/Moroccan cuisine: comfortable green and white wicker chairs, white tablecloths, with French movie posters on the walls. With the slowly rotating ceiling fan and potted palms, the restaurant could have been a back room at Rick's in Casablanca.

Lee glanced at his watch. Kathy was late, but he knew the rush-hour trains from Philadelphia often ran behind schedule.

"So what is this mysterious case you're working on?" he asked.

Butts licked his lips and took another sip of beer. "It's very weird, you know, Doc-very weird." "How so? Who's the victim?" Butts leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Well, that's the thing. There's more than one." "Yeah? Tell me more."

"Okay, but if they decide to call you in on this one, you didn't hear this from me."

"Really? You think they might call me in?"

"Who knows? Alls I know is that we're not even sure yet these are homicides."

"Is Chuck Morton involved yet?"

"Well, if we decide that these guys are vics and not suicides, he will be."

Besides being the head of Bronx Major Case Unit in the Bronx, where Butts was a homicide detective, Chuck Morton was also Lee's college roommate and best friend-and was largely responsible for his appointment as the only criminal profiler in the NYPD.

Lee took a long swallow of beer. It was very fizzy and a little sweet-it tasted yellow, like honey.

"Okay," he said, leaning forward, "tell me the whole thing from the beginning."

By the time Kathy showed up at the restaurant, Butts and Lee were well into their second round, hunched over the table deep in conversation, their heads almost touching. When he saw her, Lee leapt up from his chair and rushed over to her, his handsome face flushed with happiness. How different he was from the thin, pale, and worried-looking man Kathy had met five months ago. Though he still suffered from occasional bouts of depression, he was much more relaxed than he had been when they met. Of course, he told her it was because of her presence in his life, and as much as Kathy wanted to believe this, she suspected there were other factors as well.

"Hi! We were beginning to worry about you," he said, kissing her on the lips and putting his arm around her shoulders. She was much shorter than he was, so he had to bend down a little. Kathy was self-conscious about her height, but Lee Campbell made her feel good about the way she looked-one of the many reasons she loved him. She was dark-haired and small, and he claimed to prefer compact brunettes over the American stereotype of beauty-tall, leggy blondes. She didn't even need to believe him to feel grateful-it was enough that he said it. She was a successful scientist, brilliant and respected in her field, and a member of an old aristocratic Philadelphian family, but she was still a woman, with all the insecurities about her appearance of most American women, bombarded daily by impossible images of airbrushed physical perfection.

"What took you so long?" asked Detective Butts.

"Oh, you know, the whole rush-hour train thing," she said, slipping into the booth across from the homely detective. Kathy liked the plainspoken Butts-his lack of pretension was refreshing. Her father moved in elite circles in Philadelphia, and sometimes Kathy found his friends irritating, with their expensive wines and trendy restaurants-or at least as trendy as Philadelphia could claim to have. She enjoyed mentioning her frequent trips to New York, knowing that inside most Philadelphians is an envious would-be New Yorker.

Impulsively, she gave Butts a kiss on his pockmarked cheek, and his already florid face turned a deep cherry red.

"Let's get you a beer," he said, looking around for the waiter, though she suspected it was so she wouldn't notice his embarrassment. "You got a lot of catchin' up to do."

"What's everyone drinking?" she asked.

"There's a special on this Belgian brew," he said, signaling to the waiter for another round. "It's really not bad."

"Sounds good," Kathy said, looking around the room, which was beginning to fill up. Friday night was prime time for the East Village, but it didn't begin to really heat up until around ten. She and Lee always tried to be indoors by then, away from the roaming mobs of drunken bridge-and-tunnel teens.

"So," she said, turning to Lee, "what did I miss?" There was an awkward pause as Lee looked to Butts, who said, "Nothin' much-we just been talkin' shop."

"I see," said Kathy. "I'm not allowed in on it." "Well," Butts said, beginning to sweat, "see, technically speaking-"

"Technically speaking," Lee interrupted, "I'm not even officially in on it."

"Yeah," Butts said apologetically. "See, it's my case, but I probably shouldn't be talkin' about it."

"But if you're talking to him about it, why can't you talk to me?" she said.

Butts picked at the bumpy skin on his chin. "Yeah, well, I probably shouldn't' a even said anything."

"Well, you already have, so are you going to let me in, or am I just going to sit here all evening in suspense?"

Butts frowned and chewed on his lower lip. "Okay, okay-seein' as how you're a professional, too, I guess it couldn't hurt. But you can't tell anyone I told you," he added quickly, "or my ass is grass, you know?'

"Understood," Kathy replied. "Maybe I can be of some help."

"I dunno," Butts said. "It's not the science that's wacky on this one, it's the psychology."

"Ah," said Kathy. "So that's why you confided in Doc Campbell here."

Lee rolled his eyes. He was a PhD, not an MD, but Butts had insisted on calling him "Doc" ever since they first met. He wasn't sure whether Kathy was making fun of him or Butts-or both of them.

"We're not even sure there's a connection yet," Butts said, lowering his voice as the sleek young, white-aproned waiter delivered their drinks. "But there's a coupla pretty weird deaths within a week, both staged to look like suicides-but badly staged, y'know, suggesting they weren't no suicides."

"That's why you think they're linked?"

"Yeah, maybe-or maybe not. The two vics are real different, and as far as we can make out, there's no other connection between them. Didn't know each other-weren't even the same age or profession."