Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [54]
“She have a boyfriend or anything?” said Butts.
Again the three of them exchanged a glance.
“Not really,” said the girl. “Had sex with a couple of guys. Had a weakness for losers. Nothing serious.”
Scott averted his eyes, and the other two avoided looking at him. Scott clearly had been one of her sex partners—the question answered was whether he was the last one.
“What about jewelry?” Lee asked. “Did she wear anything special?”
“She hardly wore any—kind of stuck out, actually,” said the girl. “But we accepted her even if she looked different.”
“That’s real big of you,” Butts muttered. Lee and Chuck glared at him.
“She did wear something around her neck all the time,” Freddy said. “A little silver cross, I think. I remember because someone asked if she was Catholic, and she said no, her grandmother had given her the necklace.”
Lee felt the blood rush to his head.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yeah,” Freddy replied. “It was real pretty. Never saw her without it.”
Lee looked at Chuck, who was biting his lower lip.
“Is that right?” he said, looking at the others.
The girl picked at her fingernails. They were long and pointed, with tiny death’s-head emblems on each nail. “Yeah. I saw the cross. At first I thought it was like, ironic, you know, but she wasn’t really the ironic type.”
Lee turned to Scott. “Did she wear it during sex?”
The boy’s face turned a mottled, boiled-lobster red, and Lee felt sorry for putting him on the spot.
“Yeah,” he answered in a barely audible voice.
“Can you describe it exactly?”
“Uh, silver…just plain silver, that’s all.” He held up his thumb and forefinger. “About this big.”
“Okay,” said Chuck. “Anything else you can tell us?”
The kids looked at one another, and all of them shook their heads.
“If you think of anything—anything at all—you can call us day or night,” Chuck said, handing them each a business card. “You’ve been really helpful,” he added, escorting them out the door. “Thanks again.”
The girl stopped and looked at him. “Whatever. Just catch that guy, okay?”
“Don’t worry, we will,” Chuck replied.
Just then Chuck’s cell phone rang.
“Morton here,” he said, leaning against the wall. He looked exhausted; Lee could see the toll the investigation was taking on his friend.
After listening for a moment, Chuck said, “Are you sure?” After another pause, he said, “Okay. Thanks anyway,” and hung up.
“What is it?” Lee asked.
“That was Delaney from the Ninth Precinct. He sent his guys over there right after I called, but they couldn’t find the bullet.”
“Are you sure it was the right lamppost?”
“Oh, it was the right one—had a deep dent in it. But the bullet was gone. Looks like the shooter got there first and dug it out himself.”
“Christ,” Lee said. “Whoever this is, he’s good at covering his tracks.”
“He’s got to slip up sooner or later.”
Lee wished he shared his friend’s confidence. His cell phone beeped, and a shiver shot through him as he fumbled to dig it out of his pocket. Another text message:
I’m watching her too.
He stared at it, then handed the phone to Chuck.
“What’s this about?” Chuck said after reading it.
Lee told him about the text message of the day before.
“Your sister?” Chuck said, puzzlement on his squarely handsome face.
“What else could it be about? Laura was wearing a red dress when she disappeared.”
“But no one knows that except—”
“Exactly. How did he find out?”
“And is this even the same guy?” Chuck said. “How do we know these messages are from the…the killer?” He resisted using the name Butts had chosen for the killer. He thought “the Slasher” sounded lurid and distasteful.
“We don’t,” Lee answered, but in his mind there wasn’t much doubt.
“I’ll see what we can do about tracing the messages,” Chuck said. “And starting tomorrow, you’ll be under surveillance.”
What neither of them said was that if the Slasher was talking about watching his sister, it meant that Laura was still alive.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Who among us can say he’s never had a violent fantasy?”
John Paul Nelson looked over the assembly of students,