C. Lawrence - Silent Screams

Lee glanced at poor Annie again, lying so still in the midst of all the activity around her, as the CSI and ME teams continued with their work. This princess was dead, and there would be no prize, no hand given in marriage to the hero who tracked down this dragon.

"I'll just have to wait to see how they handle it, but I'd guess a task force is likely, yeah," Chuck said.

Florette took a deep breath and put his little notebook in his pocket. "Okay. Well, I don't have to tell you that I'd like to be on it."

"Yeah, sure," Chuck answered, "if I have anything to say about it."

Florette wandered over to speak with the CSIs on the other side of the room, and Lee took the opportunity to draw Chuck aside.

"There's something else I should tell you," Lee said.

"What's that?"

"I…I think someone took a shot at me tonight."

"What?"

Lee told Chuck about the bullet that narrowly missed him, and Chuck called the commander of the Ninth Precinct to send someone over to dig out the bullet.

"We'll do a ballistics test on it. It could give us something," Chuck said. "And you'll need protection."

"Oh, come on-" said Lee.

But Chuck cut him off. "It's not up for debate."

"Okay," Lee answered. "It doesn't really fit the profile, though. I wouldn't expect someone like this killer to be a shooter. It could be completely unrelated to the case."

He thought about mentioning the text message on his cell phone, but he saw Detective Florette heading their way and decided to wait.

Florette walked up and stood beside them, hands in his pockets. "This guy is really sick, isn't he?" he said to Lee.

"Yeah," Lee replied. "He's really sick."

"So now we've definitely got a multiple on our hands," said Chuck.

"What we have here," Lee said, "is a serial killer."

Everywhere he went, he felt people were looking at him, judging him. There was no forgiveness, no redemption. He knew that as well as he knew every inch of his bedroom ceiling, having stared up at it all these years while lying on his bed, hoping that his mother wouldn't call him-no, please don't-but then she always would, asking him to kneel beside her on the hard floor, smelling the odor of floor wax and hair spray that permeated her bedroom.

But the Master understood him, and one day, he promised, he would find Samuel a girl who would embrace him and forgive him for all his wickedness. They were so young, so innocent, soft as young birds, with smooth skin and eyes as wide as the blond meadows that surrounded his boyhood home. He often thought of that house in Iowa, the rows of cornfields stretching off into the horizon, and the feel of his father's hand in his as they headed for the barn to bring out the big green tractor.

He never really understood why his father left, except that men are evil by nature, and that they all leave sooner or later. And now there was just Queens, and the sound of trucks on the Long Island Expressway at night, and his mother's footsteps upstairs as she wandered the house like a lost soul searching for redemption. The Lord loves you, Samuel-find your salvation in Jesus.

Rage bubbled up from deep inside him, boiling in his stomach and constricting his throat, choking him. Maybe it was as his mother had said, that if she had never had a child, his father would not have left. He imagined scenarios that might have been if he had never been born: his mother and father together, driving in the car with the wind blowing in the open windows, his mother laughing, her head thrown back-not that tight laugh he knew now, but a softer, happier sound, like the tinkling of wind chimes. One of the girls had laughed like that, a gentle, rolling sound, like the bubbling of a brook. He imagined making a woman laugh like that someday…a sound that she would make only for him, in response to his touch… Women like that are sluts, Samuel-they'll corrupt you, you'll see!

He shook his head to try to erase the voices in his head, but it was no use. He was tired, so tired… Spread out on the table in front of him was a small collection of silver and gold crosses on their delicate chains. He selected one with a tiny diamond in its center and smiled. His mother would like this one.

The sad-eyed priest beckoned to him from the other side of a long, winding river. Lee longed to cross the river and be with the priest, but the current was strong and he was afraid of being sucked downstream. The priest opened his arms and smiled, and just as Lee was about to jump into the water-

The phone rang. Lee pulled himself out of the world of his dream, threw off the covers, and grabbed the receiver, glad to be rid of the image of the sad-eyed priest, relieved to be in his own bedroom.

"Hello?"

"It's me." It was Chuck. "We got a hit on the girl in Queens. Some kids came forward to say they thought they knew her. They're at the station now."

"Be right there."

At the station, Lee followed Chuck and Butts down the hall to Interrogation Room Three, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, a cup of coffee in his hand.

Through the one-way glass he could see them: three East Village types, two boys and a girl. They were young, and probably even younger than Jane Doe Number Five. Two of them, the girl and one of the boys, were gothed up to the max-black leather, purple spiked hair, bloodred lipstick, their skin pierced with enough hardware to set off metal detectors in any airport. Lee counted five rings in the boy's nose alone.

The third kid was less outrageously dressed. Slim and small-boned, he wore a simple buckskin jacket over blue jeans and no makeup, and sported a single nose ring. His hair was brown and combed straight back, rather than spiked up into points like the other boy's hair, which resembled the crown on the Statue of Liberty. He looked more nervous than his companions, too, glancing at the door every few seconds, as if he expected it to open and disgorge a monster into the room.

The other boy was larger, solidly built but soft, with bits of baby fat poking out between his leather vest and metal-studded black leather pants. Judging by his pale eyebrows and lashes, Lee figured that his hair was probably naturally blond, but it was hard to tell what was hidden under all that purple dye.

His forearms showed evidence of recent wounds-not needle tracks, Lee thought, but the small slashes left after "cutting"-a process where kids would nick themselves with sharp knives, sometimes a dozen or more cuts at a time. It was fashionable among the goth crowd right now, but it reeked of despair, a desperate attempt to numb feelings more painful than physical discomfort.

He looked at the girl to see if she too was a cutter, but her arms were covered by the sleeves of her lacy black sweater. She was tall, with dyed jet-black hair. Her lipstick was the color of dried blood, and her mouth turned downward at the corners in a habitual pout. Her eyes were ringed with black eyeliner, so that she resembled a surly raccoon. Under all the makeup, Lee imagined she was probably quite pretty. She wore a hard expression, and both boys looked as though they took orders from her. The smaller boy had a sharp, intelligent face, whereas the bigger one looked to be the muscle of the organization. Beauty, brains, and brawn, he thought, watching them. There was usually a leader and followers in groups like this, and the girl was clearly the leader.

The girl was staring at a photo of Jane Doe Number Five. Pushing it away from her to the other end of the table, she frowned at her companions.

"Look, you're good with kids," Chuck said to Lee. "Why don't you handle this one?"

"Okay." Lee looked to see if Butts was feeling any resentment, but if he was, he wasn't showing it.