Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [130]
“I’m fine,” Lee replied tersely.
Butts squinted at him. “Is there any chance that your infection was caused by—by something that was done to you?”
Lee stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“Could he have—I mean, can someone cause that kind of infection in another person?”
“I think that’s unlikely,” Florette interjected. “I was a med student as an undergraduate, and I never heard of a case of bacterial meningitis that was the result of deliberate contamination. It’s not—”
“Okay, so let’s move on,” Chuck said, coming around to lean on the front of his desk. “Did you have any luck tracing Samuel Beckett?” he asked Detective Florette.
“Not really. We looked into the handful of people with that name, but no one came even close to the profile—an old retired sailor on Staten Island, one rich, middle-aged French businessman on the Upper East Side, and a would-be playwright using it as a nom de plume in the East Village, most definitely gay.”
“Any follow-up on how he got into the hospital room at that hour?” Chuck asked Butts.
“One of the night nurses found a discarded orderly jacket in a broom closet, but there are no workable prints on it,” Butts replied. “Probably wore gloves again—God knows there are plenty of those in a hospital.”
“Yeah, and he’s too smart to discard those in the hospital,” Lee remarked. “He would know that prints can be lifted from the inside of latex gloves.”
Chuck looked at his watch. “Look, it’s late. Why don’t we all get a few hours of sleep, and meet first thing tomorrow morning?”
“Okay,” said Butts. “My wife’s gonna be real shocked to see me—says she hasn’t seen me for so long that she’s forgotten what I look like. Which, in my case, maybe isn’t such a bad thing,” he added with a rueful smile.
They all headed out for their various subway trains as the city settled into early evening stillness. A few clouds punctuated an otherwise clear night sky, and there was a smell of fresh earth in the air.
Lee and Florette took the express train downtown together as far as Times Square.
“You know,” Lee said as the local stops flashed past the windows, “there’s got to be some key to this whole thing.”
Up on the walls of the subway car was an advertisement for horse racing at Belmont Park, a speeding thoroughbred with a jockey leaning low over its muscular neck. As Lee looked up at the picture, an idea slowly formed in his mind.
“Oh, my God—that’s it! A key.”
“What?” said Florette.
“Eddie,” he said. “The racing form—that was the key!”
“What key?” Florette asked, still confused.
He explained his idea to Florette as the stops continued to rush by.
Half an hour later, he was on East Seventh Street, headed for his apartment. The minute he got inside, he dialed Chuck’s number in New Jersey. After two rings a woman answered.
“Hello?”
It was Susan, her voice low and liquid, smooth as olive oil. Lee had seen her once since her drunken Christmas party confession, at one of the 9/11 police funerals, and he had done his best to avoid her then. He considered hanging up, and rejected the idea—knowing Susan, she would have caller ID, and hanging up would only make things worse.
He took a deep breath. “Hello, Susan.” He tried to sound natural, and ended up sounding completely forced.
“Hello, Lee.” She stretched out the l’s, rolling her tongue over the consonants sensually, like a cat stretching itself. “Long time, no see.” It was an accusation, an implication, and an invitation. Lee wondered if she was faithful to Chuck.
He took another breath and swallowed hard.
“Is Chuck around?”
“Yes, he’s in the basement working out. Just a minute—I’ll get him.”
She put down the receiver, and he could hear the click of her heels as she crossed the kitchen floor. Since being married to Susan, Chuck had become devoted to his weight routine, buffing his already athletic body to a burnished movie star musculature. If he didn’t exercise regularly, he was given to thickening around the middle—unlike Lee, whose appetite came and went, Chuck had been renowned at Princeton for his eating ability. He