Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [75]
“I still say that’s an incredible long shot,” Nelson protested. “It’s just not—”
The phone on Chuck’s desk rang. He grabbed the receiver.
“Morton here.” He listened, his face darkening. “No, I don’t have any comment on the case.”
He slammed down the receiver. “Damn press—they’re all swarming around like flies on honey.” He sank down in his chair and leaned rested his elbows on the desk. “Look, I don’t have to tell you that forensic evidence on this case is not exactly piling up, so we have to try different angles. What about the churches?” he said to Florette. “Any luck there?”
“Well, staff interviews haven’t gotten us much—no one saw anything unusual, that sort of thing. Detective Butts and I have been looking into the congregations, but that’s taking a while.”
“Right,” Butts agreed. “So far no one fits the offender profile. And no one recognizes the sketch of the guy Lee saw.”
“We’ve also been looking for something these churches had in common,” Florette answered. “Maybe something that links them in some way.”
“And did you find anything?” Butts asked.
“Nothing obvious, other than they’re both Catholic churches. But then we looked into all the programs going on at the churches—most of them have lots of meetings, you know, support groups and the like.”
“Right,” Nelson said. “There’s a support group for everything these days. Mothers Who Lactate Too Much, Adult Children of Republican Parents—you name it.”
“But most of those groups are anonymous,” Lee pointed out.
“Exactly,” Florette replied. “So there’s not much we could do there—at least for the time being. We’d have to have a lot more evidence linking this guy to membership in one of the groups.”
“Which we don’t have,” Butts pointed out, extracting a battered cigar from his pocket.
“Right,” Florette said. “But then we started looking into the charitable works the church is involved in—feeding the homeless, that kind of thing.”
“We know that Marie Kelleher volunteered at her church once a month,” said Butts.
“Any leads there?” Nelson asked.
“Our first thought was that maybe he works for one of these organizations,” Florette replied.
“Okay,” Chuck said. “Definitely stay on that—we’ll check all the employees you can dig up against the profile we’ve got so far.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Who is it?” Chuck asked.
The answer was curt and businesslike. “Internal Affairs.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Chuck said, opening the door. “This is not a good time.”
“It’s never a good time for IA,” Butts muttered.
The man was tall and stern-looking, with an impassive, long-jawed face. He reminded Lee of a cross between his grade school principal and Abraham Lincoln.
“Dr. Campbell?” he said, looking at Lee.
“Yes?”
“Lieutenant Ed Hammer, Internal Affairs. I’m investigating the matter of a brutality complaint by a Mr. Gerald Walker, who was being interrogated in this facility on—”
“Yeah, we know who he is,” Chuck interrupted. “Get to the point, please.”
“Were any of you present during the interrogation?”
“I was,” Butts said. “And I can tell you—the guy is a class-A creep.”
“That may be, Detective…”
“Butts.”
The man checked a notebook he was carrying. “Detective Butts, would you like to tell me why you haven’t returned any of my phone calls?”
“I got more important things to worry about. Let me tell you something, Lieutenant Hammer: this guy was askin’ for it. I woulda whaled on him myself in a minute.”
“So you saw Mr. Campbell abuse the suspect?”
“Abuse, my ass!” Butts snarled, his cratered cheeks reddening. “He barely touched him.”
Lieutenant Hammer looked at Lee. “Is that how he got the black eye?”
“Look, Lieutenant,” Butts said, biting out the words, “Walker is a crybaby as well as a wife beater.”
“Will you come down to our office and make a statement?”
“You bet!” Butts snapped back, grabbing his coat.
Chuck waved Butts back to his chair. “Just a minute, Detective.” Then he stood up and crossed the small space between himself and Hammer, putting his face very close to Hammer’s.
“Look, Lieutenant Hammer, I appreciate that you are just trying