Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [2]
“Okay, Doc,” he said, approaching Lee. “You ’bout done there? ME’s here, and we’d like to get the vic downtown ASAP.”
Butts indicated several men unloading a stretcher from a van outside the chapel. Lee could see the words MEDICAL EXAMINER in large yellow letters emblazoned on the backs of their dark blue jackets as they brought in the stretcher, its wheels clacking on the stone floor. A couple of members of the forensics team glanced up briefly, then went on with their work—dusting, photographing, inspecting. They worked with swift, practiced gestures, moving smoothly through the crime scene, gathering evidence. A thin young Asian woman snapped photographs of Marie from every angle, her face set in a stoic, businesslike expression.
Looking around, Lee felt that he was the only one out of place here—he alone had nothing to contribute, nothing to offer toward the solving of this terrible crime, this trespass against society and decency. He wondered if his friend Chuck Morton, commander of the Bronx Major Case Unit, had made a mistake in calling him out to this crime scene in the predawn hours. After two years as the NYPD’s only full-time criminal profiler, Lee still had doubts about whether he was up to the job.
“Well, Doc, whaddya think?” Detective Butts’s Bronx accent bit through the solemn atmosphere of the chapel.
Lee glanced up at Detective Butts, who had an unlit cigar dangling from his mouth. He had told the man twice that he had a PhD in psychology, and was not a medical doctor, yet Butts still insisted on calling him Doc. With his beard stubble and unkempt hair, the detective looked like the kind of man you might see lurking around an off-track betting parlor. Lee couldn’t blame him for the beard stubble; after all, it was 6 A.M., and he could feel the scratchiness on his own chin. But he suspected that even with a shave and a haircut Butts would still look disreputable.
Instead of the handsome, regular features of a stereotypical Irish cop, the detective had a decidedly uneven face, with flaccid jowls, a bulbous lower lip, small eyes, and a complexion like an unkempt gravel road. There was no discernible change in the thickness where his skull began and his neck ended; his neck rose in an unbroken line up to the top of his head, crosshatched tanned skin fading into gray hair stubble. Lee was reminded of the mesas he had seen in Arizona. To top it off, Butts was short and thick—Elmer Fudd in a trench coat. Lee thought the unlit cigar was a bit much, as though Butts was deliberately trying to look cartoonish.
“Well, whaddya think?” Butts repeated. “Boyfriend did it?”
“No,” Lee replied. “I don’t think so.”
“Strangulation is typical of domestic violence cases, y’know,” said Butts, his small eyes narrowing even more in the dim light of the chapel. When Lee didn’t respond, he added, “You know what percentage of murder victims know their killer?”
“Eighty percent,” Lee replied, bending down over Marie again.
“Yeah,” Butts said, sounding surprised that he knew the answer.
Lee straightened up and stretched his cramped back muscles. At just under six foot two, he was half a foot taller than the stubby detective. He ran a hand through his own curly black hair, which was getting shaggy in the back.
Butts frowned and deepened his bite on the cigar. “So who do you think did it?”
Lee stepped aside as the men from the medical examiner’s office loaded the body onto the stretcher. All around him, the forensics team members continued with their work; silent and efficient, they were the opposite of this stubby detective with his battered cigar and bad skin.
Lee looked down at his hands, feeling their uselessness. “I don’t know,” he answered.
Butts made a sound between a grunt and a sigh. “Humph. Okay, Doc—well, when you get some ideas, let me know.”
“Oh, I have some ideas,” Lee replied. “I just don’t know what they add up to yet.”
Butts moved the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “Yeah? Well, let’s have ’em.”
“It