Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [13]
“Great,” said Chuck, sounding relieved. Lee could hear a woman’s voice in the background, and Chuck called to her, “Just a second, all right? Okay, I will.” Then, into the receiver, he said, “Susan sends her love.”
“Thanks,” Lee said, feeling his throat tighten. Whatever
Susan Morton was sending, it wasn’t her love. Her lust, perhaps—maybe her desire, her need, which was bottomless—but hardly her love.
When it came to men, Susan Morton was a piranha—she ate them up. Junior year at Princeton she set her sights on Lee, after having chewed her way through most of the underclassmen on the rugby, soccer, and rowing teams (she favored those with brains and brawn, though not too much of either—she wouldn’t touch football players or physics majors). Blessed with a body that needed little improvement on what nature had given her (or so she claimed), straight blond hair (Lee always suspected it was bleached), and bewitching green eyes, she only had to wiggle her pert little hips or flutter her expensive false eyelashes to have men drooling like doddering idiots.
Lee fell for her act for a while—then, after a particularly nasty fight over which restaurant they were going to (for her, the more expensive the better), he decided he’d had enough. Without even pausing to wipe the smudged lipstick off her pretty little mouth, she turned around and seduced his roommate and best friend, Chuck Morton. If she felt awkward about the situation, she didn’t show it. In fact, Lee thought it was the ultimate power play for her: he might reject her, but look!—she could have the very next man she set her sights on.
And she had him, all right. She tugged on every heartstring poor Chuck had, and since Susan gave him the false impression that she had left Lee—and not the other way around—he could hardly point out her flaws to his friend, who might think it was just sour grapes.
They dated all throughout junior year, and when Chuck left Princeton early to support his mother after his father’s sudden death, they were married within a few months. And now there they were, with two children and a house in the tony suburbs of Essex County, in north Jersey. And Lee saw the look of disbelief on his friend’s face when they were in public together—as if he still couldn’t quite understand how he ended up with such a beautiful woman.
“Hey! What are you doing, standing there with that grim expression?”
Kathy’s voice brought him out of his reverie. He set the remote receiver down on the phone charger. Susan sends her love. Yeah, right, as his niece would say. As if.
“Didn’t Chuck just ask you to join the team?” Kathy said, now on her feet, plucking at his shirt sleeve.
“Yeah, he did.”
“So what’s with the long face, ya crazy mug?”
They both liked black-and-white movies from the thirties and forties, and enjoyed imitating the way the characters spoke. It was one of those little private jokes that keep happy couples from being all alike.
“Aw, cut it out, will ya, you crazy dame?” Lee responded, but his heart wasn’t in it. His stomach was beginning to churn, and it wasn’t just because of his close encounter with Susan Morton. He had a premonition that nothing good was about to happen.
On impulse, he pulled the slip of paper from his pocket with Ana’s cell phone number on it and dialed. The call bounced immediately to voice mail. He frowned and tried a second time, with the same results. He folded the paper and put it carefully on top of the mantel. Of course, it could mean nothing—she could have turned off her phone. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something very bad was about to happen.
“You okay?” Kathy said, wrapping her arms around him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
But even as he said it, he knew he didn’t believe it.
CHAPTER SIX
In you go, nice and easy. That’s it, slide right in. Don’t be afraid—the water’s fine. Don’t struggle, now—there’s no point. The drugs should make you feel all nice and sleepy, so this shouldn’t hurt a bit. If you had been a better girl, there would have been no need for this,