Silent Kills (9 page)
Authors: C.E. Lawrence
CHAPTER TWENTY
The funeral parlor was vast and solemn and dark.
Its dim interior was lit by softly glowing candelabras and chandeliers, glimmering so low Davey could barely make out the faces of the people around him. Everyone was dressed in muted colors, black and grey and chocolate brown, clothing that swished as they walked. Davey himself wore a worsted navy-blue suit so dark it appeared black in the faint light. It was like being in church, only worse. There were pews, except they were a sickly white color instead of the rich dark wood of their usual church. There was organ music, low and somber. It came from an electric organ instead of the great pipe organ he was used to hearing in St. Andrew’s.
Its dim interior was lit by softly glowing candelabras and chandeliers, glimmering so low Davey could barely make out the faces of the people around him. Everyone was dressed in muted colors, black and grey and chocolate brown, clothing that swished as they walked. Davey himself wore a worsted navy-blue suit so dark it appeared black in the faint light. It was like being in church, only worse. There were pews, except they were a sickly white color instead of the rich dark wood of their usual church. There was organ music, low and somber. It came from an electric organ instead of the great pipe organ he was used to hearing in St. Andrew’s.
Worst of all was the smell. The heavy floral bouquet, instead of being comforting, was nauseating, the air oppressively thick with the aroma of gardenias and lilies. He stood stiffly in his newly polished black oxfords, his toes wiggling and twitching inside the heavy leather. His wool suit was equally confining; his skin itched and sweated inside the thick fabric.
He clung to his Aunt Rosa’s hand, clutching so tightly he could feel the sharp metal of her emerald ring cutting into his flesh. He didn’t mind—he didn’t mind physical pain much at all. It was the other kind of pain he found so terrible, the kind he saw reflected on his mother’s face, drawn and tight from weeping. She sat in the front pew, hands folded uselessly in her lap, looking utterly lost. He wanted more than anything to comfort her, but he knew that she would take no more comfort from him or from anyone. The magic had drained out of her nights forever.
He sat in the second row, between Aunt Rosa and his Uncle Glen, a bulbous man with a mustache like a walrus and bushy black eyebrows that resembled excited caterpillars. Uncle Glen was sweating profusely and breathing loudly through his nose, making little whistling sounds as he exhaled. He drew a white handkerchief from his vest pocket and dabbed at his forehead, wheezing and whistling.
The pastor climbed to the podium and began a long, tedious recitation of scripture in a mellifluous singsong. The even cadence of his voice was irresistible as a lullaby. Davey’s head fell forward and his eyelids grew so heavy he could keep them open no longer.
As he sat drowsing in the chapel of the funeral parlor, another, more comforting feeling came over him. Davey had a vague sense of things unseen, and only dimly recognized, of worlds beyond the one he knew, nestled inside normal three-dimensional reality like Chinese boxes. Perched on the hard wooden pew, legs dangling underneath him, he drifted off into a state of consciousness different from the one he had known all his life. He imagined he was floating above the congregation in the funeral home chapel, weightless as a jellyfish, looking down upon them in their stiff black clothing, hunched together on their rigid benches, miserable and trapped in their fleshly bodies as he was free.
Anyone looking at him would have seen a small boy dozing off sandwiched between his aunt and uncle, but in his dreamy state of mind Davey saw epic battles of good and evil being played out in vast fields of green, in great dank forests and shores where land and sea met in swirling fury and eternal combat. He dreamed of devils and demons, of fairies and woodland creatures in landscapes so rare and fantastical, the kinds of images that only come in dreams or to the very young.
And then his Aunt Rosa was shaking him gently. “Davey, wake up. It’s time to say good-bye to your sister.”
At the front of the chapel was a tiny white coffin, swathed in great masses of flowers, their blossoms bursting with the thick, noxious odor Davey loathed. He glanced at Uncle Glen, whose pudgy fingers caressed a thin silver flask in his jacket pocket. Davey knew that whatever was in the flask, Uncle Glen wanted to keep it a secret from the rest of the family.
He followed Aunt Rosa to the front of the chapel, stepping carefully on the soft white carpet. They joined the line of people around the casket, heads bowed, some of the women weeping quietly into delicately scented handkerchiefs. Finally his turn came. Aunt Rosa led him up to the edge of the casket. He had to stand on tiptoe to see over it.
Trembling, he looked down at his sister Edwina, so white and still amid the yellow satin lining. And yet she didn’t look quite dead—there was color in her cheeks, more than when she was alive, and her lips were so full and rosy Davey thought she might say something at any minute. He found the sight strangely exciting, and felt a tingling in his groin. She looked so pretty, so—
alive
, much more so than in those last terrible weeks of her life. He leaned over to touch his sister’s face, to feel the warmth of life coursing through the pale skin, but Aunt Rosa grabbed his wrist and pulled back his hand.
alive
, much more so than in those last terrible weeks of her life. He leaned over to touch his sister’s face, to feel the warmth of life coursing through the pale skin, but Aunt Rosa grabbed his wrist and pulled back his hand.
“No, Davey!” she whispered, casting a look around to see if anyone had noticed.
She took firm hold of his hand and led him away from the casket, to the back of the chapel where the pastor was greeting people as they left to climb into their cars for the long ride to the cemetery. Davey had a sudden panicked feeling that his sister might not be dead after all—what if the whole thing was a terrible mistake? He imagined her entombed in the airless family crypt, amid the crumbling bones of their ancestors, with only rats and worms for company. He seized his aunt’s hand and tugged at it. He had to explain, to make them listen!
But his childish fears fell on deaf ears. No one took his concern seriously. Even his aunt just smiled sadly at him and told him to be quiet for his mother’s sake. And so once again Davey felt cast aside by his family and by the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
On Monday Chuck Morton sat down at his desk and poured hot tea from his thermos as he watched the morning sun slide across the grimy windowsill. Normally he would drink coffee at this hour, but he felt a cold coming on. He liked a cup of good, strong Darjeeling—not Assam or oolong, or (god forbid!) orange pekoe—but Darjeeling, straight and honest and true. A man’s tea. That’s what his wife called it:
a man’s tea
.
a man’s tea
.
A smile caught the corner of his mouth as he thought of Susan and her drowsy good-bye to him this morning. Usually she got up early with him and made his coffee, but today he awoke before the alarm. She was sleeping peacefully, her head buried deep in the pillows, so he crept down to the kitchen and put on the kettle himself. He dressed in the dark so as not waken her. It was easy enough—being a precise man, he knew where everything was and could do it with his eyes closed. The faint glow of early-morning sun seeped in around the edge of the blinds, and he knew it was already hot out. He could tell from the quality of the light—clear and bright and heartless.
He sipped the hot liquid and felt it slide down his scratchy throat. He really hoped to head off this cold—the last thing he needed right now was to get sick. He glanced at his watch, a nervous habit. It was eight o’clock. Usually he arrived at the precinct earlier, but the traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel was worse than usual this morning. There was a brisk knock on the office door, and his desk sergeant Ruggles poked his bald pate through. He had remarkably pink skin, like a baby piglet.
“Yes, Ruggles?”
“Beg pardon, sir, but I have an urgent call from Captain Cardinale of the Forty-seventh Precinct.”
“Okay, put him on.”
“Right you are, sir.”
“And Ruggles—?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Stop apologizing.”
“Yes, sir—sorry, sir. Right you are, sir.”
The sergeant’s ruddy complexion deepened and he withdrew from the room, closing the door behind him.
Chuck looked at the blinking red light on his phone, winking at him like an evil eye. The Forty-seventh Precinct included the Bronx Zoo, Botanical Gardens, and Woodlawn Cemetery. Morton made it a point to know as many precinct commanders as possible, and George Cardinale was a steady, competent officer, recently moved east from a stint in L.A. Whatever he was calling about, though, it couldn’t be good.
Morton picked up the phone. “Hi, George. What’s up?”
“One of my men just called in a one-eight-seven. Young woman, not dead very long. Rigor was just starting to set in.” “One eight seven” was police code for a homicide, though it was used more in California than New York. Cardinale had carried some of his West Coast habits back east with him. His jargon might reek of L.A., but his accent was pure North Jersey.
“Where’d they find her?” Chuck asked, stirring his tea.
“Woodlawn. She was laid out on one of the graves. I thought you should know ASAP.”
“Shit,” Chuck muttered.
“Another thing you should know.”
“What’s that?”
“Looks like all her blood was drained.”
“Christ, George.”
“It’s your guy again. What are they calling him—‘the Van Cortlandt Vampire?’ ”
“I’ll send my team over.”
“Leonard Butts is your primary on this one, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Funny little guy. Good cop, though, I heard.”
“You heard right. Listen, George, I gotta call my guys.”
“Send ’em to the precinct house and Sergeant Quinlan will take them to the scene. We won’t touch a thing until they arrive.”
“Thanks, George.”
“Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”
“Thanks, I will.”
“Let’s get this guy, Chuck.”
“Yeah,” Morton replied, and hung up.
Yeah, right.
He took a sip of his tea, but it was already cold.
Yeah, right.
He took a sip of his tea, but it was already cold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Woodlawn Cemetery spread over more than four hundred idyllic, leafy acres in the Bronx. Sandwiched between two major highways, the Bronx River Parkway to the east and I-87 to the west, it was spectacular countryside. Gently rolling hills and broad avenues were lined by thick, noble oaks and maples, and its expanse of greenery contained some of the most remarkable monuments and mausoleums in the country. Except for the distant hum of traffic, Woodlawn retained the bucolic splendor of its nineteenth-century origins. Its majestic grounds evoked the borough’s past as private farmland once owned by its namesake, Jonas Bronck, a wealthy Swedish immigrant.
Lee Campbell and Detective Leonard Butts entered through the Jerome Avenue Gate, a grand Gothic construction of carved stone and wrought iron that set the tone for the entire place, stately and solemn. This was not Lee’s first visit to Woodlawn. During his depression, he had found comfort wandering amid the tombs and gravestones.
Ever since Laura’s death, he had tried to imagine what it was like, being dead. To have the flesh he was so used to become inanimate and lifeless, dry as the leaves crunching underfoot as he roved among monuments to the dead. He imagined his skin, pale and drained of blood, sinking into his bones as his flesh decomposed, nature’s scavengers feeding off his body, as he had seen them do on so many crime scene victims. The thought comforted him. Even in death, he would become part of the cycle of life, food for worms and beetles and bluebottle flies; there was nothing shameful about that.
But he could no more grasp the death of his body than he could imagine the end of his own consciousness. If he was no longer conscious, he would not be able to observe this fact. If he no longer inhabited his body, what did it matter what happened to the tissues, once they were drained of the mysterious thing called life?
And yet he kept trying. If he could fully inhabit death in his mind, he would know what Laura knew, experience what she had experienced. But that was another cognitive dead end. What if she experienced nothing at all? He didn’t believe in gods or devils or an afterlife. He wanted to believe in angels and destiny and spirits who walked among the living, but he couldn’t. He knew his obsession with death was perverse, but it twisted around in his mind like a body dangling at the end of a hangman’s noose, disturbing and just beyond reach.
On this particular visit Lee and Butts were accompanied by Sergeant Sean Quinlan of the Forty-seventh Precinct, a seasoned and rather irritable officer who let his opinions fly as freely as his spit, which he evacuated in copious amounts in gutters, curbs, and sewers as he passed by.
“Bad sinuses,” he remarked when he caught them staring at him as he hurled a wad of saliva toward the base of a Japanese maple. “Postnasal drip, y’know. Drives my wife crazy. Forgot to bring my allergy meds today.” He pulled a handkerchief from his rear pocket and dabbed his watery blue eyes. He was what Lee’s mother would call “big-boned”—a large redheaded man, with a thick neck and bulky shoulders that made his uniform appear two sizes too small. He had a foghorn of a voice, deep and rusty as old scissors. A faint remnant of County Cork clung to his consonants like a thin layer of clotted cream.
“Allergies are a bitch,” Butts said, struggling to keep up with Quinlan’s loping stride as they walked down the broad avenue. “My son’s got ’em—has to carry an EpiPen around with him.”
“Oh, mine aren’t that bad,” Quinlan said, brightening somewhat. “Just pollen and stuff like that. Not gonna kill me or anything—at least not in the near future,” he added glumly, eyeing a massive mausoleum across the broad lawn to their left.
Butts read aloud from a brochure an attendant had thrust into his hand as he entered the grounds. “ ‘Dating back to 1863, many of the monuments and memorials were built by leading architects of the day. Among Woodlawn’s many illustrious residents are Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Bat Masterson, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington.’ Wow, how about that,” he said, stuffing the brochure into his pocket.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Sergeant Quinlan confided in a low voice as he led them through a grove of birch trees. “I been comin’ here for years for one reason or another, but it still gives me the willies.”
“Really?” Butts replied. “I kinda like it here. It smells nice,” he said, inhaling the aroma of freshly mown grass, flowering shrubs, and pine needles.
“We’re going in on foot so the media doesn’t follow us,” Quinlan said with a glance at Butts, who was panting as they climbed a hill through a grove of beech and evergreens. “Tryin’ to keep a low profile, long as we can, anyway.”
Just ahead, Lee could see the yellow police tape fluttering in the breeze. The crime scene techs in their black jumpsuits emblazoned with
MEDICAL EXAMINER
in yellow unloaded equipment from a van. A handful of uniforms stood in a little clump, deep in conversation, their heads almost touching. They nodded to their colleague when they saw Quinlan, stepping aside to let the newcomers examine the scene.
MEDICAL EXAMINER
in yellow unloaded equipment from a van. A handful of uniforms stood in a little clump, deep in conversation, their heads almost touching. They nodded to their colleague when they saw Quinlan, stepping aside to let the newcomers examine the scene.
The girl was laid out as neatly as the first victim had been, her hands chastely folded over her stomach. She was young and fresh-faced, and wore jogging shorts and a sweat-stained T-shirt. As with the first girl, her face was peaceful in death, and there was no sign of sexual molestation or violence of any kind.
By far the oddest thing was the location of the body. She was stretched out on the grave of Herman Melville.
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