Silent Victim (31 page)

“What now?” Diesel asked as the three of them stood looking at the body while Officer Anderson reported the murder to his station house, which would then call the crime unit in Trenton. Butts had already called Chuck Morton to inform him, though there was little he could do at this point.

“I think whoever did this has Charlotte Perkins,” Lee said.

“Unless
she
did this,” Butts remarked.

Lee had to admit that wasn’t completely unrealistic. She obviously had great resentment against her brother, with good reason—and it wouldn’t be the first time a victim of domestic abuse snapped and murdered her abuser. Lee wasn’t sure their relationship fit the legal definition of abuse, but he didn’t like what he’d heard from her. And so now Perkins was dead—
Serves him right,
he thought uncharitably—but where was Charlotte? And even more puzzling, assuming she was still alive, where was Krieger?

“You think a—a
woman
could have done this?” Officer Anderson said, with a naïveté that was touching.

Butts frowned at him. “Kid, one thing you learn when you’ve been a cop as long as I have is that
anyone
can do anything to anybody.”

Anderson’s pale eyes widened. “But—I mean, wouldn’t it take a lot of force to deliver blows like this?”

“Yeah,” Butts said. “But when a person’s angry enough, you’d be surprised how strong they are.”

“I don’t think Charlotte did this,” Lee said, looking at the body. “She wasn’t angry—she was frightened.”

“Okay,” Butts replied. “But I’d sure like to know where she is.”

“So would I,” Lee agreed. “Let’s have a look at his patient files. Perkins is dead now—we don’t need a warrant,” he added in response to Officer Anderson’s inquiring look.

“Yeah—yeah, I guess you’re right,” the young policeman agreed. “Where do you suppose they’d be?”

“Well, I kept mine in a filing cabinet in my office,” Lee answered.

“So all we gotta to do is go back to his office,” Butts remarked, leading the way back downstairs to the consulting room at the back of the house.

The room’s proximity to the kitchen made Lee guess it was originally a maid’s bedroom. Though not as large as the upstairs bedrooms, it was a decent size, as elegantly furnished as the rest of the house, and with the same obsessive sense of order. The books were lined up on the built-in bookcase so that the spines were exactly even, and on the desk, not a thing was out of place. Lee’s office was full of mismatched pens, pencils of different lengths and various stages of working order, all tossed in with dried-up Magic Markers and paper clips. Perkins’s desk had two pewter mugs (antique, no doubt): one for pens, and one for pencils. All the pencils were exactly the same length, sharpened to perfect points, a circle of tiny spears jabbing toward the ceiling.

“Jeez,” Butts said, looking around. “Was this guy anal or
what?”

“I wonder if his underwear is alphabetized,” Diesel remarked, and Officer Anderson giggled nervously.

“Yes, it does appear he had a case of OCD,” he said.

“Try not to touch anything,” Butts admonished Anderson as he ran a finger over the shiny surface of a table, apparently amazed at the lack of dust. The young cop jumped as though he’d been stung, and gave another nervous laugh.

“Yeah, right,” he said, and pulled a pair of rubber gloves from his uniform pocket.

“Got any more of those?” Butts asked.

“Uh, no—sorry,” Anderson said.

“Go into the kitchen and see if you can find more rubber gloves,” Butts instructed him. “Surgical would be best, but kitchen gloves are okay.”

“You think that’s necessary?” Lee asked.

“The whole house is a crime scene,” Butts replied. “We have to avoid destroying evidence of any kind, and that includes prints, trace evidence, that kind of thing.” He regarded Diesel, chewing on his lip. “You shouldn’t be in here at all. You said your dad was a cop?”

“Yes, he was,” Diesel replied, crossing his powerful arms over his chest.

“Okay, tell you what,” Butts said. “Why don’t you go out and stand guard and make sure no one gets into the house? And when the boys from Trenton arrive, you can explain things to them, okay?”

“You don’t have to treat me as though I’m ten,” Diesel replied, frowning. “I can just sit in the car.”

“No, no—it’d be really helpful,” Butts said earnestly. “I don’t want the locals getting too curious, y’know?”

“Very well,” Diesel said. Drawing himself up with a dignified scowl, he left the room.

Officer Anderson appeared with a box of surgical gloves, holding them out to Butts with the pride of a child who has done a very clever thing. “Will these do?” he said eagerly. “I found these under the sink—a whole box of them!”

“Fine,” Butts said, taking the box and handing a pair to Lee, while he put on another himself.

Officer Anderson looked disappointed, as if he had expected a pat on the back, or perhaps a lollipop.

Butts started looking through desk drawers, while Lee went to the wooden filing cabinet next to the desk. Starting at the top, he slid open the heavy oak drawer, and studied the folders inside. The top drawer was mainly about finances: the tabs, perfectly organized—and alphabetized—read,
BANKING,
followed by
BILLS, PAID,
and
BILLS, UNPAID,
and so on.

Meanwhile, Officer Anderson roamed the room restlessly, not touching anything, looking out of place and apprehensive.

“Any luck?” Butts grunted as he rifled through desk drawers, which Lee thought he was doing with unnecessarily vigor.

“Not yet,” he said, closing the top drawer and moving on to the middle one. There he hit pay dirt: the first tab proclaimed,
PATIENT FILES,
in neat capital letters. “Got it,” he said, pulling a stack of manila folders from the cabinet.

“Good,” Butts said, slamming closed the desk drawer.

Lee handed Butts half the folders and kept the rest. He estimated there were about forty or so, one for each patient; Perkins appeared to have quite a thriving practice. Of course, some of the folders were possibly of past patients, though he imagined someone like Perkins would create separate file drawers for past and present patients. There was no sign of a computer—another indication of Perkins’s avoidance of modern technology.

Ana Watkins’s file was in the stack of folders Lee kept. He started by looking at it—perhaps there was a clue hidden in it. Perkins kept impeccable notes, all handwritten. The file was organized in chronological order, with notes for each session on a separate page, all in blue ink, the handwriting obsessively neat and precise, but oddly ornate. Lee started with the most recent sessions first.

“Got anything so far?” Butts asked. “Not really. How about you?”

“Naw—just a bunch of neurotics so far; no one that looks threatening. A lotta people whining about their mothers. What are you reading?”

“I’m reading Ana’s file, hoping to see some clues to who might have killed her. So far I haven’t seen anything I didn’t already know about her.”

“Well, keep lookin',” Butts said. “I still think it’s possible the UNSUB is one of his patients.”

“I do, too,” Lee agreed, especially now that Perkins seemed to be eliminated as the killer—or was he? “Hey,” he said suddenly, “how likely it is that Perkins could still be the UNSUB?”

Butts frowned. “Doesn’t that seem like too much of a coincidence? He’s the killer, but then he’s found murdered?”

“Yeah. I was just wondering what you thought.”

“What I think is that the same guy who did Perkins did everyone else, and has got Charlotte—and if we’re lucky, Krieger, too. If we’re really lucky, his name is somewhere among these papers.”

“Right,” Lee said, and went back to perusing the patient files.

Then one file in particular caught Lee’s eye. The patient’s name was Eric McNamara. He was in his late twenties, worked as a chauffeur, and owned his own limousine, which he garaged somewhere in the Bronx. He also took care of an infirm and elderly father. But what really caught Lee’s attention was the mention of an unnamed tragedy in his past, one that Dr. Perkins could not seem to get to the bottom of, but which, it was hinted, was something involving water. There was only one reference to gender issues. After a session two weeks ago, Perkins had written

There were plenty of other patients who had cross-dressing fantasies, but Eric was the right age and matched other aspects of the profile. Throughout Eric’s file, as with most of the patients, there were mentions of a past-life identity. Here, though, Perkins was more specific, referring to a person by the name of Caleb, whose soul he believed Eric had inhabited in a previous life. The man named Caleb was a troubled spirit, and had died tragically by water—though the file wasn’t specific on exactly how.

“Hey, look at this,” Lee said to Butts, handing him the folder. Officer Anderson, who had been wandering aimlessly around the room, looked on with interest, like a dog waiting for a scrap of food or affection.

Butts glanced at it and handed it back at Lee. “Caleb … wasn’t that one of the names on Ana’s pottery receipts?”

“You’re right!” Lee said. “You commented what an old-fashioned name it was.”

“You think this could be the guy?”

“Look at the similarities to the profile. The age is right, there’s the cross-dressing thing—and look at this.” He pointed out the section where Perkins had written:

Butts looked at Lee. “Curiouser and curiouser,” he said softly. “Too bad the good doctor had to die for us to find this.”

Finally Officer Anderson could stand it no longer. “Find what?” he cried impatiently, twitching all over with excitement. “Did you find the killer?”

“Maybe,” Lee said.

Anderson lunged eagerly across the room to have a look. In his haste, his foot caught the edge of the Persian carpet, and he tripped, falling forward.

“Hey—watch it! Don’t contaminate evi—” Butts yelled, but stopped in midsentence, staring at the edge of carpet where Anderson’s foot had caught. The corner of the rug had been pulled from the floor, exposing it. “Wait just a minute,” Butts said as the trooper got to his feet, leaning over to straighten the carpet.

“What is it?” asked Lee.

“I dunno, but there’s something funny about that floor,” Butts replied.

Lee looked at the section of the floor Anderson had just exposed. The smooth pattern of floorboard was interrupted by something at that spot. He walked over to inspect it more closely. There appeared to be a small round handle, the kind you could hook your thumb through to open—
a hidden compartment.
He looked at Butts, who smiled.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Lee said.

“What is it?” Anderson almost yelped. “Is something hidden down there?”

“The good doctor had somethin’ he didn’t want anyone else to see,” the detective said. He kneeled, his knees cracking like walnuts, and inserted a stubby thumb through the handle. There was a click, and the door slid smoothly open.

They all gazed down at the opening. It was a small recessed compartment underneath the floorboards, about a yard square on all sides, and a couple of feet deep. It contained a video camera, a stack of tapes, and a VCR.