C. Lawrence: Silent victim

When it came to men, Susan Morton was a piranha-she ate them up. Junior year at Princeton she set her sights on Lee, after having chewed her way through most of the underclassmen on the rugby, soccer, and rowing teams (she favored those with brains and brawn, though not too much of either-she wouldn't touch football players or physics majors). Blessed with a body that needed little improvement on what nature had given her (or so she claimed), straight blond hair (Lee always suspected it was bleached), and bewitching green eyes, she only had to wiggle her pert little hips or flutter her expensive false eyelashes to have men drooling like doddering idiots.

Lee fell for her act for a while-then, after a particularly nasty fight over which restaurant they were going to (for her, the more expensive the better), he decided he'd had enough. Without even pausing to wipe the smudged lipstick off her pretty little mouth, she turned around and seduced his roommate and best friend, Chuck Morton. If she felt awkward about the situation, she didn't show it. In fact, Lee thought it was the ultimate power play for her: he might reject her, but look!-she could have the very next man she set her sights on.

And she had him, all right. She tugged on every heartstring poor Chuck had, and since Susan gave him the false impression that she had left Lee-and not the other way around-he could hardly point out her flaws to his friend, who might think it was just sour grapes.

They dated all throughout junior year, and when Chuck left Princeton early to support his mother after his father's sudden death, they were married within a few months. And now there they were, with two children and a house in the tony suburbs of Essex County, in north Jersey. And Lee saw the look of disbelief on his friend's face when they were in public together-as if he still couldn't quite understand how he ended up with such a beautiful woman.

"Hey! What are you doing, standing there with that grim expression?"

Kathy's voice brought him out of his reverie. He set the remote receiver down on the phone charger. Susan sends her love. Yeah, right, as his niece would say. As if.

"Didn't Chuck just ask you to join the team?" Kathy said, now on her feet, plucking at his shirt sleeve.

"Yeah, he did."

"So what's with the long face, ya crazy mug?"

They both liked black-and-white movies from the thirties and forties, and enjoyed imitating the way the characters spoke. It was one of those little private jokes that keep happy couples from being all alike.

"Aw, cut it out, will ya, you crazy dame?" Lee responded, but his heart wasn't in it. His stomach was beginning to churn, and it wasn't just because of his close encounter with Susan Morton. He had a premonition that nothing good was about to happen.

On impulse, he pulled the slip of paper from his pocket with Ana's cell phone number on it and dialed. The call bounced immediately to voice mail. He frowned and tried a second time, with the same results. He folded the paper and put it carefully on top of the mantel. Of course, it could mean nothing-she could have turned off her phone. But he couldn't shake the feeling that something very bad was about to happen.

"You okay?" Kathy said, wrapping her arms around him.

"Yeah," he said. "Sure."

But even as he said it, he knew he didn't believe it.

In you go, nice and easy. That's it, slide right in. Don't be afraid-the water's fine. Don't struggle, now-there's no point. The drugs should make you feel all nice and sleepy, so this shouldn't hurt a bit. If you had been a better girl, there would have been no need for this, no need, but some women are just born bad. It's sad, but that's the way it is.

Caleb stood and watched as she floated away, looking so peaceful, her limbs spreading out from her still form, her white-blond hair blooming like water lilies around her head. His father would be so pleased. He could still hear his father's voice in his head, as if it were only yesterday.

"Your mother was born bad-wicked and evil and bad. So this is what you do to bad women. Watch, boy-no, don't turn away! And don't cry. Only sissy boys cry. No son of mine will turn out to be a sissy boy, not if I can help it. That's better-be a man, and take it like a man. Only women cry-don't you ever forget that. And women are bad-nasty, evil creatures. They have this thing between their legs that makes them bad-this bleeding, gaping thing that will eat you up or bite off your manhood if you 're not careful."

This one had nice hair-so pale and thick, like a white halo around her head. Just like Ophelia, floating down the stream.

Oh, yes, Ophelia killed herself out of love, my dear, didn't she? Well, that was a bit of inspiration on my part, I must admit. A nice touch-I hope they like it when they find you. Of course, you won't look so pretty when they find you, will you? Not pretty at all-you'll be bloated like a watermelon, I should think, all white and ghastly and gruesome. Maybe some young policeman will even throw up when he sees you-some of them do, you know. I've seen them. That would be too bad, but you only have yourself to blame. I could have taught you some manners, but it's too late now, I'm afraid. Well, it's getting colder out, so I'm going to have to leave you. Bon voyage-sweet dreams.

Lee arrived at Chuck's office in the Bronx Major Case Unit a little before nine on Monday morning, feeling tired and worried. Tired because Kathy had spent the weekend-they were still in the early stages of their romance, and didn't want to waste time sleeping when they could be doing something together. For their first months together, that most often meant sex-Kathy had an unexpectedly voracious libido.

And he was worried because he had tried all weekend to reach Ana on her cell phone, with no luck. He even called the Swan in Lambertville to see if she had shown up for work, but was told she had requested that weekend off. That made him feel a little better-maybe she and her boyfriend had gone on vacation and she had turned off her phone. But she hadn't mentioned that when she came to see him, and under the circumstances, it seemed an odd omission.

He walked through the station house, which was unusually quiet for a Monday morning. The young desk sergeant tried vainly to stifle a yawn as he waved Lee through to Chuck's office, and the weary-looking policewoman talking to a thin young Latino man in purple rayon pants looked like she could use another night's sleep. Lee knocked on the door to his friend's office, and to his surprise, a woman's voice answered. "Come in."

He paused a moment to register what he had just heard, then swung the door open cautiously. He didn't know what he expected to find, but he certainly didn't expect what he saw. Instead of Chuck was a woman, perched next to his desk, one hip resting on the windowsill behind his scarred old captain's chair.

There are some women who, for whatever reason, make men feel inadequate. There are other women who, for perhaps more obvious reasons, make men want them. And then there are those rare women who do both.

Elena Krieger was one of those women.

She was extremely tall-Lee estimated at least six feet-with absurdly long legs, as though the painter's brush had slipped when creating her, but he decided to keep going anyway. Her silky hair was a strawberry-blond color he associated with Swedish stewardesses and Hollywood starlets. Her body was pure Vegas: beside the long legs, she had the trim waist and solid round breasts of a showgirl. He didn't see how they could be real: they looked too sculpted, too firm-and the lemon-yellow silk blouse she wore didn't leave anything to the imagination. At the same time, there was something masculine about her body, the broad sweep of her shoulders, the big bones of her hands and feet. She gave off an impression of power and strength, so that her sexuality had an oddly androgynous appeal. He understood immediately how she got the nickname Valkyrie-she was the personification of a Wagnerian goddess.