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Authors: C. E. Lawrence

BOOK: Silent Slaughter
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C
HAPTER
N
INE
T
he office of the Medical Examiner of the City of New York was a short cab ride up First Avenue. Within minutes they disembarked in front of the square, featureless building that housed the city’s morgue and evidence processing and toxicology labs. It might just the be the ugliest building in Manhattan, Lee thought as they swung open the stainless-steel and glass doors and stepped into the dowdy lobby with its scuffed plastic chairs and anemic ferns in the window. It was a perfect example of the drabness of governmental bureaucracy—there was little care or thought put into the design of the building and even less into its upkeep. A sickly Christmas tree scantily decorated with dusty ornaments perched in its lopsided metal base, listing drunkenly to one side.
The drowsy clerk behind the front desk sent them down a dingy hallway to the morgue, where a couple of lab technicians stood over the body of Lisa Adler. Draped with a crisp white sheet, she didn’t look asleep—she looked dead. Her flesh was waxy under the harsh fluorescent lights, the deep purple bruises around her neck vivid against the pallor of her skin. No wonder Jimmy Chen hated this, Lee thought with a shiver. The older of the technicians, a stocky, middle-aged white man with a neatly trimmed beard, gave a nod to the younger one, a thin young Latina Lee had seen before.
With one clean movement, as though unmaking a bed, she pulled back the sheet. Lee heard Butts gasp before he was aware of his own sharp intake of air.
“Jesus,” the detective murmured.
The girl’s body had been pierced multiple times.—Precise and round, the tiny stab wounds appeared to have been made with something the shape and size of an ice pick or barbeque skewer. After his initial shock wore off, Lee could see that the wounds formed a distinctive, swirling pattern.
“Ante- or postmortem?” Butts asked the older man.
“It’s impossible to say for certain. Her killer cleaned up any blood before dressing her and leaving her at the crime scene.”
“He did this while she was alive,” said Lee.
They all turned to look at him.
“It’s classic piquerism,” he said.
“What’s that?” asked Butts.
“It’s a form of sexual perversion where you stab, prick or cut another person, usually multiple times.”
“How do you know it was while she was alive?”
“Because he’s a sadistic bastard. He needs to see her suffer.”
The young Latina turned away, and the older man shook his head.
“I can’t yet come to any definite conclusion based on the forensics.”
“Okay, thanks,” Butts said. “You’ll let us know about any prints, DNA, trace evidence that turns up?”
“We’ll let you know the minute we have anything.” He handed the detective a manila envelope. “Here are some photos.”
“Thanks,” said Butts.
They took a cab back to the station house, where they found Krieger and Jimmy waiting for them. Jimmy was typing up interview reports on his laptop, and Krieger was studying the two messages from the killer, jotting down notes in her neat, cramped handwriting.
“What did you find?” asked Jimmy.
In response, Butts pulled out the photographs and tacked them to the bulletin board against the wall.
“Christ,” said Jimmy, staring at them. Krieger looked through them, stone-faced, without saying anything.
“They can’t tell us whether the injuries were ante- or postmortem,” Butts remarked. “The perp cleaned her up too good before leaving her in the alley. Doc here says the bastard did it while she was alive.”
Krieger folded her arms, her face still impassive. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s based on the type of offender I believe him to be—a power-excitation killer. He gets off on inflicting pain and humiliation on his victims.”
“Are you certain?”
“Not a hundred percent. But there are indicators—”
“Yes, this is piquerism,” Krieger finally agreed, studying the photos. “What’s the point unless you’re using it as a form of torture?”
Butts shot a glance at her. “How did you know what that was?”
Krieger shrugged. “It’s from the French word meaning
to prick
, and it’s a type of sexual perversion—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Butts interrupted. “Doc already explained all that.”
“What about prints, DNA, trace?” Jimmy asked.
Butts shook his head. “Nothing so far.”
Lee stared out the window at the bleak winter sky, which matched the mood of everyone in the room.
“Okay,” Butts said, shaking off the gloom settling over them. “Who wants to interview the family? They live in Westchester. Both parents are doctors. The girl was a student at Yeshiva University.”
“I’ll go,” Jimmy said. “I’ve always wanted to see how the other half lives.”
“I’ll go with him,” said Lee.
Butts gave Krieger an evil smile. “Looks like you and me will have a cozy little time together holding down the fort.”
Krieger returned a steely smile. “I look forward to it, Detective.”
C
HAPTER
T
EN
T
he Adlers lived in Waccabuc, a well-heeled neighborhood near the upscale town of Katonah, a few miles from the Connecticut border.
“Get a load of this, Angus,” Jimmy said as they drove past rambling white clapboard houses snuggled against the rolling hillsides of Upper Westchester. The homes were elegant, roomy and expensive-looking, sitting on gently sloping lawns bordered by rows of majestic oak trees.
Jimmy nodded toward a three-story Cape Cod–style mansion festooned with tiny white fairy lights. “There’s some major money here.”
“Yeah,” Lee said, wondering which of the tasteful nineteenth-century houses were home to Wall Street swindlers, drug kingpins and real estate developers who financed cheap, ugly high-rises so they could live in sequestered Old World luxury.
“Wonder how much of this money is legit?” Jimmy said as they passed a golf course bordered by looming maple trees.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Lee said.
Jimmy smiled. “We always did think alike, you and me. I mean, considering you’re a Round Eyes.”
Round Eyes
was the derogatory term some Chinese people used to describe Caucasians.
“Hey, watch it,” Lee replied. “You don’t want me to tell my mother that you’re prejudiced, do you?”
“Don’t threaten me,” said Jimmy. “Or I won’t invite you over to dinner.”
“Your dad is an amazing cook.”
Jimmy’s father used to run a restaurant in Chinatown that was very popular with the locals. He’d sold it to a cousin some years ago but continued to give advice to the kitchen staff, often immigrants who spoke only Mandarin Chinese.
“I know, and my mom didn’t even marry my dad because of his cooking.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Lee. “Why did she marry him?”
“Because of his enormous—”
“Oh, here we go,” Lee groaned.
“I’m just
saying
,” Jimmy said, keeping his eyes on the road.
“I can’t believe I actually missed you. What was I thinking?”
“Oh, Angus, stop being such a dour Scot. Leave that to your mom.”
Lee smiled. Jimmy always cheered him up. Since his bout with depression, a lot of people treated him with kid gloves, but not Jimmy. He was the same pain in the ass he had always been, always looking for trouble and very often finding it.
“Seriously, how have you been?” Jimmy asked, not taking his eyes from the road.
“Can’t complain, because if I did—”
“No one would listen. No, I mean it—how have you been?”
Lee looked out the window as the car zipped past a meadow bordered by a low stone wall. “Good days and bad days.”
Jimmy nodded. He had the good taste not to pry too much, to back off when it was called for. “Any news about your sister?”
“No. It’s a cold case by now.”
“Hey, cold cases get solved all the time.”
“Not when there’s no evidence—and no body.”
“Seriously, no evidence at all?”
“They had some leads early on that went nowhere. It’s like she just dropped off the face of the earth.”
Jimmy shook his head. “Man, that’s rough. I know if anything happened to my little brother, I’d freak.”
“How is Barry?”
“He’s doing pretty good. Thanks for asking.”
Jimmy’s younger brother, Barry, was severely autistic and lived at home with his parents. He was something of a savant with numbers and had memorized pi to a thousand decimal places. It was people he had trouble with—the simplest social exchange could leave him baffled and perplexed. He idolized Jimmy, who was fiercely protective of him.
“Here it is,” said Jimmy, turning down a tree-lined lane. “Old Post Road. Jeez, think these people are rich enough?”
The Adlers’ house fit in well with the neighborhood, and so did the Adlers, Lee noted as he and Jimmy were ushered into their home. Tasteful, well-spoken, understated—and rich. At least they had worked for their money, Lee thought, since they were both physicians. Dr. Eli Adler was short, Jewish and energetic, and Dr. Rachel Adler was willowy, blond and reserved. It was obvious Lisa had gotten her looks from her mother.
Jimmy and Lee were led into a living room with a Steinway concert grand and a Persian rug the size of the Croton Reservoir. The whole place dripped with taste and money, from the elegant Japanese silk screens to the Tiffany lamps and inlaid card table. Complimenting the couple on their aesthetic sense after they had just lost their only daughter seemed inappropriate, so Lee took a seat on the olive green sofa next to Jimmy, who whipped out a notebook and rested it on his knee, pen poised.
“I suppose you’d like to know if we have any idea who’d want to hurt our daughter,” Mrs. Adler said, folding her elegant hands on her lap. She wore a simple blue silk blouse over straight black pants, her ash blond hair pulled back in a tight bun. “Well, we don’t. Everyone loved Lisa.”
“No, ma’am,” said Jimmy. “Actually, we’d just like to hear you say anything that comes to mind.”
Dr. Eli Adler frowned and twisted the thick gold wedding ring on his left hand. He wore a black turtleneck over gray slacks and creamy brown leather loafers. “Anything?”
“Anything at all. It doesn’t even have to relate to your daughter.”
Mrs. Adler gave a little cough, as if the detective had just committed a faux pas she was too polite to point out. “Isn’t that a little—
vague
, Detective?”
“It’s the way I work. You’ve undergone a terrible shock, and your brains are already having trouble processing what’s happened. So rather than ask you to focus on specific questions, I like to start out by letting you say whatever’s on your mind.”
“I’ll tell you what’s on my mind,” her husband said. “I’d like to get into a dark alley with the animal that did this to our Lisa. Just five minutes—that’s all I ask. I swear, I wouldn’t care what happened to me, as long as I—”
His wife laid a hand on his arm. “Eli, I don’t think that’s the kind of thing the detective is talking about.”
“Actually, that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about,” Jimmy said. He turned to Mrs. Adler. “What about you?”
“I—I can’t really . . .” She looked down at her hands, and a single sob shook her body. No tears fell, though, and when she looked up again, her face was contorted with grief and fury. “I—want—to—
rip
—
his
—
face
—
off
.” The words shot from her mouth like bullets. Lee could see that her rage was even deeper than her husband’s. Mr. Adler looked at her with astonishment, as if he had not known her to be capable of such feelings.
“Okay,” said Jimmy. “I understand that you’re both angry.”
“No, Detective, I don’t think you do understand,” Mrs. Adler continued. “ ‘Angry’ doesn’t cut it, not by a long shot. I think what my husband and I are saying is that we’d like to
kill
someone—specifically, the man who . . . did this to Lisa.”
“How do you know it’s a man?” Lee asked.
She looked at him with pity mixed with contempt. “Oh,
really
. I don’t even watch those crime shows on TV, but even I know that this kind of crime points to a sexually motivated predator. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.”
“Okay,” said Jimmy. “So, any ideas?”
She looked at her husband, who shook his head. “Lisa’s boyfriend, Carl, is the nicest kid on the planet. He’s devastated. We know his parents—his father was the rabbi at our son’s bar mitzvah.”
“So it wasn’t her boyfriend,” Jimmy said. “Anyone else hanging around her? Any suspicious e-mails, phone calls, text messages?”
“Your forensics people have her cell phone. So far we haven’t had a single call from anyone who wasn’t a friend or fellow student.”
“She was at Yeshiva University?”
Mrs. Adler nodded. “On Lexington Avenue. She loved it—used to eat in the Korean restaurants all the time.”
Lee nodded. Part of Murray Hill had become known as Little Korea, with a high concentration of Korean restaurants, students and tourists.
“What was she studying?”
“Psychology,” her father said with a bitter laugh. “Ironic, huh? Guess all that book learning wasn’t enough to protect her from a psychopath.”
“No one’s safe from people like that,” Lee said. “It wasn’t her fault.”
“Sure,” Dr. Adler said. “As a parent, you know that. It’s just that you never think it will happen to your . . .” He resumed twisting his wedding ring.
Lee looked at Jimmy, wondering if he noticed. “Did she ever seem . . . secretive about anything?” he asked.
The Adlers shook their heads in unison. “Never. Lisa didn’t have secrets from us,” Mrs. Adler said. “We were very close. Almost like sisters.”
“Please don’t take offense at this, but did your daughter indulge in any . . . risky behavior? Drugs, casual sex, that kind of thing?”
Mrs. Adler’s patrician face tightened, but her husband laid a hand on her shoulder. “Rachel, they
have
to ask these questions.” He turned to Jimmy. “Lisa was a quiet girl. Her idea of a big night out was to go to a revival cinema with her boyfriend and sneak in homemade popcorn. That’s about as wild as she ever got.”
“What about her friends? Did you get a chance to meet them?”
“Lisa was very close to her roommate,” said Mrs. Adler. “Have you talked to her yet?”
“Not yet. Do you happen to know how to reach her?”
“I think I have her cell phone number, if you’ll give me a minute,” she said, getting up from the couch. She left the room in the direction of the kitchen, and when she was out of earshot, Eli Adler leaned toward Jimmy and spoke in a low voice.
“She seems to be handling this well, Detective, but she’s not—trust me. Lisa was all we had.” He paused to collect himself and continued to twist his wedding ring as he spoke. “There’s a few things about Lisa that my wife didn’t know about. For instance, she—uh, she liked to pose for art students at Pratt sometimes. Life drawing, you know?”
“Nude modeling?” said Jimmy.
“Shh! Keep your voice down, please,” Eli Adler said with a nervous glance in the direction of the kitchen. “I don’t want to upset Rachel any more than necessary. Yes, sometimes the classes called for nudity. But it was all very professional, you know—I mean, they were art students, right?”
“Just the same, I’m glad you told me,” said Jimmy. “It’s worth checking out.”
“My wife doesn’t need to know about it, though, right?”
“Not if you don’t want her to. Unless it turns out to be relevant to solving—uh, the crime.”
“Thanks,” said Dr. Adler as his wife returned to the room carrying a small green address book.
“Here it is,” she said. “Her roommate’s name is Carrie Lieberman, and here’s her cell number.”
“Thanks,” said Jimmy, writing it down.
After a few more routine questions, they finished the interview. The Adlers continued to be polite and helpful, though Lee had the mounting sense that Mrs. Adler longed for the interview to be over. That wasn’t unusual for grieving parents—what was interesting was that Mr. Adler seemed eager to talk with them and sorry when they got up to leave.
Back in the car, they waited until they were halfway down Old Post Road before Jimmy said, “Interesting—he wanted to talk, she didn’t.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” said Lee. “The question is, why? She seems afraid of something.”
“As my grandfather would say, ‘Mankind fears an evil man, but heaven does not.’ ”
“The same grandfather who ran the
tong
in Chinatown?”
Jimmy shrugged. “He was a complicated man.”
“Even heaven might be afraid of the guy we’re looking for.”
“Then we’d better catch him fast,” said Jimmy.
Amen
, Lee thought as he gazed out the window at the elegant landscape of Upper Westchester decked out in tasteful holiday decorations.
Amen.

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