Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [4]
Lee wasn’t surprised. He was beginning to believe that no one would be able to think of anyone who wanted to hurt this unfortunate girl—except, of course, her killer. He shuddered as the team from the ME’s office loaded poor Marie into a shiny black body bag. Marie. He forced himself to recite her name, to think of her as a person, not as “the vic,” as precinct detectives often referred to their crime victims. It was more painful to keep a sense of her as a person, but it helped to motivate him. Lee held his breath as they zipped up the body bag. He hated the sound of the metal teeth as they caught one another—so cold, so final, a young life reduced to that terrible, sad sound of metal on metal.
He approached one of the techs from the ME’s office, the thin young Asian woman who had been taking the photographs earlier. Her skin was as uncreased and pristine as Marie’s—he thought she might be Korean, or possibly Chinese. Her shiny black hair was looped back in a ponytail, and her jumpsuit looked two sizes too big for her slender body.
“Can you tell me if the wounds were postmortem or—” Lee began.
She replied quickly, as if wanting to get this over with as soon as possible. “Most likely postmortem. There wasn’t much bleeding.”
“Most likely? Is there any chance—?”
She shook her head, her black ponytail slicing the air. “It can be difficult to tell, but here you can see where the blood trickle ends. I can’t say for sure, but my best guess is that these wounds were postmortem…I hope to God,” she added in a low voice. Lee thought he saw her shiver inside her oversized jumpsuit.
“And the weapon?”
She frowned. “Hard to say for sure, but nothing fancy—possibly an ordinary knife, the kind you could get anywhere.”
“Thank you,” he said, turning away.
As he left the chapel, a wicked wind whipped up around Lee’s ankles, flipping his coattails skyward, scattering a few wisps of dead leaves up into a spiral swirl, like a miniature tornado. The sharp, dry gust took his breath away. He shivered and shoved his hands into the pockets of his green tweed overcoat. A thin, pale dawn began to bloom in the eastern sky as he gazed down at the southern end of Manhattan, where a smoldering gash in the earth was all that was left of the once-proud towers. It was barely five months ago that the planes dropped from the sky like some mythic beasts, their tongues dripping with fire and destruction…and despair….
He forced his mind back to the present.
Hearing footsteps, he turned to see a man standing next to a blue van parked at the back of the church. He was dressed in a workman’s jumpsuit and carried a tool case.
“Who’s that?” he asked Butts, who had stopped by the side exit to speak to one of the crime scene technicians.
“I dunno,” the detective answered, walking over to converse with the man.
“Locksmith,” he said, returning to where Lee stood. “Got a call from the college administration that there was a broken lock in the basement. I told him to come back tomorrow.”
Lee turned to Father Michael, who had wandered out of the church. The priest looked lost, and had the glazed look of someone in shock. “Were you aware of a broken lock in the basement?”
Father Michael shook his head. “No. But the maintenance staff might have put the call in. You’d have to ask them.”
“Right,” Butts said, writing it in his notebook. “Do you think there’s a connection?” he asked Lee.
“I don’t see one, really—I mean, the killer came right in through the unlocked side door, and presumably left the same way.”
“I’ll check it out anyway,” Butts said.
“He took something,” Lee murmured to himself, “but what?”
“Whaddya mean, he took somethin’?” Butts asked.
Lee gazed over the wounded landscape of the city, soaking in its stark and terrible beauty. “A souvenir, a memento.”
“Jeez. What for?”
Lee turned to face him. “What was the last trip you took?”
Butts pushed back his battered fedora and scratched his head. He reminded Lee of a character out of a 1940s screwball comedy.
“I dunno…The Adirondacks, I guess.