Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [16]
“I see you two have met.”
“Ya-a-h,” Elena Krieger replied, stretching the word out sensuously, like a cat sunning itself. But she was more lupine than feline, Lee thought—like a big redheaded wolf.
“Good,” Chuck said briskly. “Let’s get started, then.”
Lee was startled. He’d had no idea that Elena Krieger was part of this investigation. He couldn’t say that in front of her, so he just said, “Isn’t Detective Butts the primary—”
Chuck cut him off. “Yes, he is, but Detective Krieger has recently been assigned to this station house, so she’ll be working the case, too. Her specialty is forensic linguistics.”
Lee thought two detectives was already one too many, but he said nothing. He could see from Chuck’s discomfort that his friend didn’t want her here any more than he did. It was clear she was here because of some bureaucratic game of musical chairs that neither of them had any control over.
“Where is Detective Butts, by the way?” Krieger asked. “Shouldn’t he be here?”
“He should, and he is,” said a voice behind them, and they all turned to see Detective Leonard Butts standing in the doorway, holding a cup of coffee and a bag of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
“Glad you could make it after all,” Chuck said. “Have a seat.”
“Yeah,” Butts said. “I told the wife that she’d just have to go to her uncle’s funeral without me, and that I’d catch up with her at the reception. She didn’t like it, but what can you do? Work is work. If you ask me, Monday morning’s an odd time for a funeral anyways.” He slurped happily at his coffee, took a big bite of a cream-filled doughnut, and leaned back in the chair with a satisfied sigh. “Man, these things are good.”
“Have you met Detective Butts?” Chuck asked.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Krieger replied. Lee couldn’t tell whether she was being sarcastic or not.
“This is Detective Elena Krieger,” Chuck said to Butts.
“Elena Krieger?” Butts said. “The Elena Krieger?”
She flushed from the base of her elegant neck to her cheeks, though Lee wasn’t sure if it was from embarrassment or anger.
“Well, if there are others with my name in the police farce, I am unaware of it.” Her mispronunciation of “force” took Lee by surprise, and he had to stifle an impulse to laugh.
“The pleasure’s all mine,” Butts said, shaking her hand vigorously before settling down to renew his attack on the bag of doughnuts. He seemed impervious to her charms—he was clearly more interested in the doughnuts. He munched away happily, hardly looking at her as Chuck went over the details of the case.
“Okay,” said Chuck, taking out crime-scene photos and handing them around. “Now, the reason that there’s some urgency on this is that if these two deaths are connected, then we may have a serial offender on our hands—one that’s very difficult to catch. So far we haven’t been able to find any links between these two men, other than they’re both obviously phony suicides.”
“Yeah,” Butts agreed. “We talked to the families of both vics, and we get the same thing. No history of depression or mental illness. The floater is Nathan Ziegler, and he just got hired by Roosevelt Hospital as an anesthesiologist. Bathtub guy, Chris Malette, was doing just fine financially—he was divorced but very amicable with his ex.”
“No history of mental problems?” Lee asked.
“Negative,” Butts answered. “And before you ask, no, his ex does not wear that shade of lipstick,” he added, pointing to the writing on the bathroom mirror in several of the photos. “She’s been wearing the same lipstick for years, according to her girlfriends and sister—Passion Fruit Panache. Apparently she’s a creature of habit. So if she did write that note, she bought or borrowed someone else’s lipstick to do it before she killed Baldy here.”
Elena Krieger stared at Butts. “I don’t think you should speak of the dead so disrespectfully.”
Butts stared back at her, then looked up at Chuck. “Is she always like this?”
“I always take our job seriously,