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Authors: C. E. Lawrence

BOOK: Silent Stalker
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C
HAPTER
T
WO
The sound of the ringing phone blended with Lee Campbell's dream. It took him a moment to realize the harsh bleating came not from the woman in his dream, but from the parallel world of reality. He shook off the fog of sleep, dragging his unwilling brain back into consciousness. Flinging off the thick winter quilt, he grabbed for the phone, knocking the headset onto the floor, where it landed with a clatter.
“Damn! ” he muttered, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Dropping to his knees, he groped under the bedside table for the receiver. Sitting on the hardwood floor, he put the headset to his ear.
“What is it?” he grunted as he craned his neck to see the clock on the nightstand. It was 5:20
AM
. “Christ,” he muttered. “This better be worth it.”
“I guess it depends on whether you call the murder of a young woman worth it or not.” The voice on the other end of the line sounded as irritated as he was. Even at this hour, there was no mistaking the borough-accented growl of Detective Leonard Butts.
“Hello, Butts,” he said.
“Well, Doc? Is it worth it, or are you goin' back to bed?”
“Tell me where to meet you.”
“Forty-seventh and Ninth Avenue.”
“That's not your precinct.”
“I'll explain later.”
“I'll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Make it ten.”
He sighed and hung up the phone. The image from his dream swirled in his head. His sister Laura stood before him in a long white nightgown, arms outstretched, her eyes pleading. It had been over six years since her disappearance, but he was still plagued with the same repetitive dream. The location varied, but she was always there, her sad eyes burrowing into his soul, begging him to rescue her.
He shook off the mood of depression threatening to settle over him, pulled on a flannel shirt and jeans, and grabbed his coat. A sharp gust of February wind hit him as he descended the steps of his building, and he pulled up his coat collar, cursing himself for neglecting to put on a hat. There were no cabs on East Seventh Street, so he loped west toward Third Avenue, where the Cooper Union Building loomed stolid and silent in the thin predawn light. Taxis were thick on the avenue, on the cusp of a shift change, and soon he was in the backseat of a yellow cab barreling uptown.
Famously known as the city that never sleeps, there were about three hours out of twenty-four when New York managed a brief catnap. In the middle of the night, just before street vendors began wheeling their carts up the avenues of Midtown, and the Chinatown bakeries flicked on their lights in the predawn gloom, there was a stillness about New York that Lee savored. Looking out the cab window now, he saw that aura of calm dissipating as the city stretched itself, awakening from its brief slumber to prepare for another workday.
The cab lurched to a stop at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street. Lee paid the driver and unfolded his long body from the vehicle, blowing on his hands to keep out the early morning chill as he hurried toward the building with the bright yellow crime scene tape wrapped around the front door.
The redbrick tenement huddled next to its nearly identical neighbors in the cold winter dawn. A few scraps of dirty snow still clung to the pavement, and a couple of fat pigeons strutted nearby, pecking at a heap of bread crusts scattered on the sidewalk. An old-fashioned sign hanging in front of the bay window on the building's eastern half contained a single word: LAUNDRY.
Lee nodded to the uniformed officer guarding the front door, flashing his credentials. The young cop nodded back and lifted the yellow crime scene tape so he could pass underneath it. As the only full-time criminal profiler employed by the NYPD, Lee was becoming known to some of the rank and file, though not all of them approved of him. There was still prejudice in the force against methods that did not involve traditional forensics, lab results, or hard evidence.
Detective Leonard Butts was a recent convert. After a couple of cases together, Lee had won the chubby detective's admiration, and the two had developed a close working relationship. He found Butts at the rear of the front hallway, kneeling over the body of a young woman. Detective Butts wasn't a good-looking man at any time of day, and the bare fluorescent bulb hanging overhead did him no favors. His pitted complexion looked sallow under its unhealthy glow, his small eyes puffy and bloodshot. He wore a gray raincoat that had seen better days, and his thinning sandy hair stood up in wisps.
A handful of crime scene techs in blue jumpsuits were dusting for prints and examining the cramped foyer for trace evidence. The door to the apartment at the far end of the hall was open a crack, and the lined face of an aged Asian woman peered through the slit. When she saw Lee, she closed the door abruptly, and he heard the sound of a dead bolt sliding into place. The smell of pork fat and rice vinegar drifted from the apartment into the hallway.
“The victim is Mindy Lewis,” Butts said, handing Lee a pair of latex gloves. “Struggling actress, lives upstairs, waits tables at a local restaurant.”
Lee slipped on the gloves and looked down at Mindy. She was young, uncommonly pretty, with curly black hair, wearing a red wool coat over leggings. She lay in a congealed pool of blood, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling with an expression of astonishment. A leather knapsack lay beside her, and next to her gloved right hand was a set of keys.
“Well?” said Butts. “Whaddya think?”
“Blitz attack,” Lee said. “He must have been waiting for her. Any defensive wounds?”
“Nope. I'm thinkin' either she knew him and let him inside or he was already waiting for her, like you said. And robbery was not a motive.”
Lee glanced at the backpack, which was securely fastened. “Right. This was no mugging.”
“There's more.” Butts motioned to one of the crime scene techs, a handsome young African American with wire-rimmed spectacles who appeared to be in charge. “Okorie, can I see that mask for a moment?”
Okorie nodded and produced a plastic evidence bag containing a white theatrical mask. It was one of the standard Greek tragedy/comedy masks Lee had seen a hundred times—oddly, it was the laughing comedy mask. A shiver slid up Lee's neck as he gazed at the empty eye sockets and grinning mouth.
“It was on her face,” Butts said. “So you see why I called you.”
“Yeah.”
“Ever seen anything like this?”
“Not exactly, no. Do you have COD yet?” he asked Okorie.
“A single stab wound to the solar plexus,” he replied. “She would have bled out within minutes.”
“I don't suppose there's any trace of the murder weapon?” Lee said.
“No, but it went clean through her, and was quite slender, so my best guess is a sword of some kind. We'll know more after the autopsy.”
“How long has she been dead?”
“Five to six hours, judging by the amount of rigor.”
Butts ran a hand through his meager hair. “The Chinese couple in 1-A say she often comes home late from rehearsal. ”
Lee looked at the mask, then back down at poor Mindy. “Looks like her killer has a connection to the theatre as well.”
“A groupie, maybe? A lovesick fan?”
“That's a possibility.”
Butts stretched himself and looked at the head crime scene tech. “You gonna be a while yet, Okorie?”
“A few more minutes, yeah,” the young man replied as he dusted the stair banister for prints.
“I need some air,” said Butts. “Let's step outside.”
They pushed open the greasy front door with its decades-old layers of paint. Outside, a pale dawn was doing battle with a thick cloud cover that had settled over the West Side. The result was an eerie greenish light that seemed to have no source, as though the air had been sprinkled with phosphorus.
“So why did you get this case?” Lee said as they descended the steps to the street.
Butts spit on the sidewalk. Startled, a pair of pigeons took flight, flapping up to settle on a second-story window sill.
“Connors,” he said. “He took one for me when I had that root canal that got infected. Remember?”
“Oh, right.”
Butts had spent much of January dealing with tooth problems. Though he was delighted to have dropped nearly ten pounds, he had missed a fair number of work days.
“I owed him one, and he's dealin' with a sick mom right now, so I took this call. Whaddya think, Doc? Pretty weird, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Is she his only vic, you think?”
“She could be, but I wouldn't put odds on it.”
“That's what I was thinkin'.”
As the neighborhood stirred into life, the two men fell silent, contemplating the presence of a murderer among them in the city that never sleeps.
C
HAPTER
T
HREE
The tenant in apartment 1-A, Mrs. Chen, turned out to have a husband, Louie, though she did most of the talking. Together they ran a laundry business out of the ground-floor apartment across the hall, which meant that they were the only tenants on the floor. Butts had already interviewed Mrs. Chen briefly, but she seemed eager to talk to Lee as well, so he and Butts accepted an invitation to share a pot of tea and moon cakes.
Louie Chen was a slight, wiry man with a long face and thick black hair. His wife was even smaller, with pale skin and large eyes behind thick glasses. Her graying hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a pink flowered dress. They both appeared to be in their seventies, but moved with a quick, youthful grace. Their apartment was shabby but comfortable, and very clean. A large golden statue of a smiling Buddha dominated the bookshelf across from the couch Lee and Butts sat on. The shrine was surrounded by tea candles and plates of fruit, nuts, and other food offerings.
“Very good moon cakes,” Louie Chen announced loudly as his wife passed them around on a blue willow china plate. “Good, right?” he prodded as Butts took a bite.
“Yes, very good,” the detective replied, though the look on his face suggested otherwise.
Louie beamed. “My wife make. Excellent cook!” he declared proudly.
Mrs. Chen—whose first name Lee hadn't caught—gave her husband a disapproving look, but couldn't hide her obvious pleasure.
Louie thrust the plate in front of Lee. “You try! Very good—you try.”
Lee complied, taking a large bite. It wasn't bad—kind of dry, and not very sweet, but with a lemony flavor. He glanced at Butts, who was washing his down with gulps of tea.
“Now then, Mrs. Chen,” the detective said. “You told me that Miss, uh—Lewis often came home late.”
She nodded vigorously. “Yes. She works in restaurant, also as actress, so she come home late.”
“But you didn't hear her come in last night?”
“No, we go to bed early, hear nothing.”
“That means the attack was probably over quickly,” Lee remarked.
“Yeah,” Butts said. “If they didn't hear anything, I doubt anyone else in the building did.”
“We find her this morning,” said Louie.
“When you left your apartment to go to work across the hall?” Butts said.
“Yes.” He looked as if he was about to cry. “She very nice lady, always friendly.”
“You ever see anyone in the building who looked suspicious in any way, like they didn't belong here?” the detective asked.
Louie perched on the edge of a tattered brown armchair and stroked his chin. “I don't think so. . . . Wait!” He looked at his wife. “You know Mrs. Mingelone, live upstairs? ”
“Yes!” she said, clapping her hands together. “Mrs. Mingelone, she nice lady but old, you know?” She said this with sympathetic superiority, as if it were an unfortunate affliction.
“Yes?” Lee said, being careful not to smile at elderly Mrs. Chen calling her neighbor “old.” He was reminded of his mother, who refused to join a local bridge club because “it was full of old ladies.”
“Mrs. Mingelone sometimes forget to close door behind her,” Mrs. Chen continued. “We talk to her—everyone remind her—but she forgetful.” Mrs. Chen shook her head with gentle disapproval.
Butts glanced at his watch. “It's seven-thirty. You think Mrs. Mingelone will be awake yet?”
“Could be,” Mrs. Chen replied. “Old people up early.”
“Like us,” said Louie with a grin, displaying a set of broad, yellowing teeth.
His wife gave a disapproving frown. “Not so old—run business, take care of grandchildren, work all day long!”
Louie looked at the two men and shrugged, as if to say,
Women—what can you do?
To Lee's surprise, Butts smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “You're not so old, not in my book.”
After refusing another serving of tea and moon cakes, Lee and Butts left the Chens to interview the other tenants in the building. They began with Mrs. Mingelone, who lived on the second floor. Unfortunately, she was a rather addled person—kindly and eager to help, but forgetful and easily flustered. Perhaps the presence of the police in her apartment was too much for her—she offered them gingerbread cookies three times, apparently having forgotten that she had already done so. Lee thought her behavior indicated early stages of dementia.
Sitting with them at her kitchen table, Mrs. Mingelone tried valiantly to be helpful. “Mindy only moved in about six months ago,” she offered, wringing her hands. Her knobby knuckles were swollen with arthritis, the skin dry as parchment. She wore a faded housedress and fuzzy pink slippers, but had slapped some bright red lipstick on her thin lips. From time to time she fussed with her hair, which she wore in a loose chignon. Lee felt sorry for this sweet, muddled old woman, alone in her Hell's Kitchen apartment, and was glad to see family pictures stacked three deep on top of the bookshelf in the hall.
“You ever see her with a boyfriend?” Butts asked after refusing a third offer of homemade cookies.
Mrs. Mingelone shook her head slowly. “No . . . I don't think I ever saw her with anyone. Except once, another woman—older, I think, another theatre type.”
“How so?” asked Butts.
“Well, she was
dramatic,
you know—the way they are. Looked like she had put her outfit together from bits and pieces of costumes she found in thrift shops.”
“You get a name?”
“It was exotic—Devonia, Camellia, Carlotta, something like that. Mindy introduced me. She thinks I'm lonely, but I'm not. I can't stand it when people think just because you're old it means you're lonely. Know what I mean?”
“Sure,” said Butts. “Anything else you remember that might be useful? Anyone in the building who looked like they didn't belong, or who you'd never seen before?”
Mrs. Mingelone broke off a piece of cookie and popped it in her mouth. Bits of crumbs clung to her mouth, brown punctuation marks on the cherry-red lips. “I don't think so . . . only that nice young man who carried my grocery bags for me.”
“When was that?” asked Butts.
“Last night, when I got home from the store. I was struggling to get out my keys, and he just seemed to come out of nowhere. Very sweet, made sure I got up to my apartment.”
The detective's expression didn't change, but Lee noted the subtle adjustment in body language indicating he was on high alert.
“And you never saw him before?”
“No, I don't think so.”
“What time?”
“It was late—I volunteer at the library, you know, and it's open late on Thursdays. I had a bite to eat and did some shopping afterwards. It was after eleven.”
Lee did the math in his head. Mindy was attacked between eleven and twelve, according to Okorie, which meant her killer would have had plenty of time to wait for her, behind the staircase, across from the Chens' apartment.
“Can you describe him?” Butts asked.
Mrs. Mingelone looked puzzled. “Well, I suppose I can try, but I don't think—I mean, he was such a
nice
boy.”
They always are,
Lee thought,
until they murder someone.
“Sure,” Butts said, “but we have to check out every lead.”
“Of course, Detective,” she said, blushing. For a moment the years fell away and Lee saw the shy young woman she had been—rather lovely, with her large, dark eyes and delicate nose, though she had the kind of bone structure that hadn't aged well. “I'm afraid I didn't get a very good look at him.”
“Just tell us what you can remember.”
“He wasn't tall—solidly built, though. . . . He had strong hands.”
“Any facial hair?”
“I don't think so.”
“Eyes? Hair color?”
“He was wearing a hat. Pale, though, I believe. Caucasian.”
“Would you be willing to go down to the station and work with a police sketch artist?”
“I don't know how helpful it would be, but I suppose so.”
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Mingelone,” Butts said, rising from the table.
“Are you sure you wouldn't like a cookie?” she asked, waving the plate in front of Lee.
“Sure,” he said, taking one. “Thanks.”
The other tenants were no more helpful. Shocked, stunned, and sad to hear the terrible news, but without insight into who might want poor Mindy dead. She seemed to be well liked but not very well known. No one had seen her with a boyfriend; she seemed to be a hardworking girl who was always on her way to work or rehearsals. Butts did manage to get the name of the company she acted with, a group specializing in classic revivals, the Noble Fools Theatre Troupe. They were residents of a little off-Broadway place just off Eighth Avenue, so Butts decided to make that their next stop.
But the only thing they had approaching an actual lead so far was Mrs. Mingelone's helpful grocery bag boy. As they ventured back out into the damp chill of February, Lee thought it didn't seem like much.

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