C. Lawrence - Silent Screams

Lee stood up, his face rigid. "He watches them."

Chuck stared at him.

"You mean…?"

"He watches them have sex-but he can't stand the feelings it stirs in him, so he has to kill them."

"So since they're the source of his arousal," Nelson said, "they have to die?"

"But that's not how he sees it. Somehow he manages to rationalize his acts."

"Maybe he sees himself as their savior, rescuing them from the sin of carnality?" Florette suggested.

"Yes, yes. That would make perfect sense," Lee agreed.

"Look, the mayor and the DA are both coming down hard on us," Chuck said, "so we're going to-"

"Round up the usual suspects?" Nelson suggested dryly.

"Bring in a few more known sex offenders for questioning," Morton finished, ignoring him.

They had already completed interviews of half a dozen known sex offenders. Nelson disdained to be present at any of these interviews, which he deemed a waste of time and taxpayers' money, but Detective Butts was keen on them.

"Go ahead," Nelson said. "But it won't do you any good."

"Yeah?" Butts challenged. "And why's that?"

"Because you won't find him that way."

Butts blew air out of his nostrils and rolled his eyes.

Chuck looked at Lee. "You agree?"

"I'm afraid so," he replied. "He'll have a history of abusing animals, maybe setting a few fires, but chances are he wasn't caught."

"I checked with VICAP again for crimes similar to this UNSUB," Florette said, flicking an invisible speck from his immaculate shirt. He seemed to enjoy using anagrams whenever possible. VICAP stood for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and UNSUB was shorthand for Unknown Subject.

"VICAP could be useless for a guy like this," Nelson responded. "Up until now, he could have been flying under the radar."

"Oh, that's just great!" Butts said, biting off the end of a cigar and spitting it in the trash can. He frowned, the pockmarks on his forehead merging. "You said this was a sex crime."

"Like I said, this guy will probably have a history of cruelty to animals," Lee said. "Also possibly voyeurism and fetishistic behavior, maybe some arson-but arsonists are hard to catch, so he may not have any criminal record."

"Fetishism-you mean like a fixation on shoes or women's underwear, somethin' like that?"

"Right. And that isn't illegal."

"Not yet, anyway," Florette remarked glumly. "Though if this administration had its way-"

"Also, wouldn't that kind of behavior tend to be pretty private?" Chuck asked, turning to open a window. The frigid February air felt good as it rushed into the room.

"Right," said Lee. "He's a voyeur, obviously, but that too can be hard to spot, especially if he's careful. He's not breaking and entering to get his victims, so he's abducting them outside their homes."

"That means less chance of leaving forensic evidence behind," Chuck pointed out, bending down to pick up some papers the wind had blown off his desk.

"Exactly," Nelson said. "And the wide dispersal of victims means he's comfortable in a large geographic area."

Lee pointed to the map on the wall, placing his finger on the red tack indicating the location where Pamela Stavros's body had been found.

"One of the reasons it's important that we include Pamela Stavros as the first known victim is that most likely this is the borough where the killer lives."

Butts frowned again. "Really? How do you figure?"

"Well, he's most likely to live nearest to his first victim," Nelson said. "It's where he feels most comfortable-closest to home. After that, he's more likely to branch out, but statistically, he will kill for the first time close to home."

"He may have other attempts in his past, where he tried but failed to abduct a girl," Lee pointed out. "You should send that to the media for possible leads."

"Right," said Chuck.

"Isn't there usually a stressor of some kind that sets these guys off?" Florette asked.

"Usually, but not always," Lee replied.

"Like what?" Butts asked.

"Oh, it could be anything-loss of a job, death of a parent, being dumped by a girlfriend. Something like that…an event that a normal person could handle, but which sends these guys over the edge."

"Look, Annie O'Donnell's funeral is day after tomorrow," Chuck said. "I was thinking-"

"One of us should be there?" Nelson interrupted.

"Returning to the scene of the crime," Florette murmured, running his elegant fingertips over the arm of his chair.

"Some criminals get a lot of pleasure from observing the results of their crimes," Lee observed.

Butts frowned and kicked at the wastebasket. "That always really fries me, you know."

"Detective Butts," Nelson remarked, "I'm sure that we're all equally upset by these events, but do you think it's really necessary to express yourself constantly on the subject?"

Butts blinked twice, and his mouth moved like a fish gulping for air.

"All right, that's enough," said Chuck. "Let's focus."

"I'd like to cover the funeral," said Lee.

"Do you believe the UNSUB is likely to make an appearance?" Florette asked, removing a pair of glasses from his breast pocket and cleaning them with a crisp white handkerchief.

"It's not unusual for them to show up," Nelson replied.

"Okay," Chuck said. "You've got the funeral, Lee."

"But if he already took a shot at Lee-" Nelson protested, but Lee cut him off.

"We don't know whether the shot was even intended for me."

"Right," Chuck agreed. "And no one is likely pull out a gun at a daytime funeral in Westchester. It's not the same thing as shooting at someone on Third Avenue at night. Detective Florette, I'd like you to start an investigation of the churches involved so far-find out what, if anything, they have in common."

"Right," Florette said, rising from his chair. "I'll get right on it."

Lee looked around the room at the others. The mood had visibly darkened. Butts slumped back in his chair, forgetting all about picking a fight with Nelson. Somehow, putting a name to Jane Doe Number Five didn't help things. Now they had a name to go with a victim, but they still didn't have a killer.

Annie O'Donnell's funeral was held in Hastings, one of the quaint Westchester towns dotting the Hudson Valley like puffballs after a spring rain. Lee took Metro North from Grand Central, catching the 12:15 local train on the Harlem Line, arriving in Hastings in forty minutes flat. He had convinced Chuck to remove the plainclothes cops who had been tailing him, as their presence at the funeral would be too conspicuous. The train station was down by the water, but it wasn't far to the church. He walked up the long road that curved inland from the river. Hastings was perched on the bluffs that rose from the banks of the Hudson, its waterfront buildings looking down over the moody currents of the great river. Clouds swung low over the sluggishly moving gray water, and seagulls swooped low over the river's opaque surface, searching for fish.

The church was a modest white clapboard affair, not very grand by Catholic standards. Except for the sepia tones of the grass on the church lawn, black and gray dominated the landscape. The drab February sky hung low over the mourners, not even a suggestion of sunlight filtering through the flat gray cloud cover. The monochromatic setting, the dark suits of the mourners as they stood in a little clump outside the white wooden church, all reminded Lee of a scene from a black-and-white film. A shiny black hearse was parked in the driveway, waiting for the slow, stately crawl to the cemetery.

The ceremony was just ending as Lee arrived. As he walked up the flagstone path, one of the mourners emerged from the church carrying a bouquet of red carnations, bright as a splash of fresh blood against her black dress.