Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [5]
“And did you buy anything there?”
“Uh, the wife bought some dish towels.”
“Did she need dish towels?”
Butts frowned. “Actually, come to think of it, she’s got dozens of ’em. She always buys one when we go somewhere.”
“Right. So why buy what you don’t need?”
Butts snorted. “Look, Doc, I learned a long time ago that when it comes to women, it’s better not to ask certain questions, know what I’m sayin’?”
“But there is an answer to this one.”
Butts jabbed the toe of his shoe into the dirt, kicking up the soft black soil.
“She says it reminds her of the trip.”
“Exactly. That’s why sexual murderers often take something from their victims: to remind them. It’s like hunting trophies—they serve no purpose, other than to bring the killer memories of the crime itself. The souvenirs help them relive the whole thing over and over.”
Butts tore off a piece of a jagged fingernail with his teeth and spit it out. “Man, this is twisted stuff. Mostly I just handle homicides, you know? Drug deals gone bad, abusive boyfriends, family fights that escalate—run-of-the-mill stuff. This is a whole new kinda weird.”
“Yes, it is.”
Butts looked at Lee suspiciously. “Doesn’t this stuff keep you up at night?”
“Sometimes. But knowing those people are still out there keeps me up even more.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Doc, but you don’t seem like the type…. I mean, how did you get into this kind of thing?”
“It’s kind of personal.”
“Sure, sure,” the detective answered, his homely face crinkled in sympathy. “No problem—I get it. Didn’t mean to pry.”
Lee looked away—he didn’t trust his reactions around other people. He wasn’t entirely in control of himself yet, not quite recovered from his breakdown.
The two men stood side by side, looking southward, watching the thin gray mist of smoke snaking upward from the ruined earth.
Butts shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well, then, I’m gonna move along now. I’ll, uh, catch you later. I’ll call you when we find the boyfriend.”
“Sure. See you later.”
He watched as the detective trundled off after the forensic team, his rumpled gray trench coat flapping in the wind.
Lee closed his eyes and let his head fall back. He could hear bagpipes, faraway and sad—their thin, plaintive tones carrying across the East River to where he stood on this melancholy bluff. He often imagined he heard bagpipes in times of stress and sorrow, and he had come to welcome the sound rather than taking it as a sign of deepening mental illness. It comforted him, bringing him back to the hills of his Celtic ancestors, where mountains rose sharp and bare from rushing riverbeds below, a mysterious and stark landscape that ran through his veins as strongly as his own blood.
He gazed up at the sky, where a lone crow scraped its way north, black and solitary against the creeping dawn.
Chapter Two
As it turned out, the boyfriend wasn’t difficult to locate. Within an hour Lee was standing outside a grimy interrogation room inside a Bronx precinct house, watching through the one-way mirror as he waited for Butts to question the young man. The interrogation room was small and stuffy, its pale green walls scarred with stains and scuff marks. Lee imagined the scenes that had taken place in this room—the outbursts of rage, poundings by fists or boots or both. Some of the black smudge marks on the walls did appear to come from kicks—they were the right height and size. But others—coffee splotches, the occasional streak of blue ink, even a few ominous red patches, dried to a dark rust color—were more mysterious.
The young man inside the room sat quietly, hands folded on his lap. He was slight of build, with narrow, bony shoulders—a boy who wouldn’t stand out in any crowd. Lee took an inventory of his regular but unremarkable features: straight brown hair over a thin, sensitive mouth and sad brown eyes. Under the harsh fluorescent lights his face had an unhealthy gray pallor, the circles under his eyes pronounced. He looked young—even younger than poor Marie—and very, very frightened. Not in a guilty way, Lee