Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [42]
“Some interesting names on here,” Butts remarked. “Here’s a funny one—Caleb. Like one ‘a those old-fashioned New England names out of Hawthorne or somethin'.” Butts scratched his head. “But what are the chances that one of her customers killed her?”
“I believe when we first met you pointed out to me that most murders are between people who know each other.”
“Yeah,” Butts said, “but we both know that the guy we’re lookin’ for is a whole different kettle of fish, right?”
“You’re right,” Lee said. “Serial offenders don’t often kill people they know—but the suicide notes indicate that he may have had at least some contact with his victims.”
“Right—so I’ll hold on to this, for the time being,” Butts said, dropping it carefully it into a blue evidence bag. “You never know.”
The house yielded few more clues, only the sad feeling that here was a young woman working hard to put her life together, a life that was abruptly and cruelly cut short. The sun was low in the sky by the time they finished and bade Trooper Anderson good-bye. He seemed sorry to see them leave and stood watching as they walked down the long, sloping driveway back to their car. They drove in silence through the dusky summer evening, the smell of freshly mown hay mixing with the dark odor of cow manure as they drove past miles of pastures and farmland.
Just outside Somerville, the sky darkened, and big, fat drops of rain began to splash on the windshield. Just as Lee reached to turn on the windshield wipers, his cell phone rang. He fished it out of his jacket and tossed it to Butts, who put the phone to his ear.
“Hello? Oh, hi, Captain.” He put the phone on speaker.
“Is Lee there?” It was Chuck, and he sounded anxious.
“Yeah—I’m driving,” Lee called over the sound of the rain, which was escalating into a downpour. “We’ve got you on speakerphone.”
“Hey, listen, are you guys about done out there?”
“Yes, we’re about to head back—why, did something happen?” Lee asked, with a glance at Butts.
“Not exactly,” Chuck said evasively. “It’s—well, it’s Krieger. She’s mad as a nest of hornets and she’s on her way over here later.”
“Oh,” said Lee. “And you don’t want to face her alone, is that it?”
“How soon can you get here?” Chuck sounded miserable.
Chuck Morton’s one weakness—if you could call it that—was his helplessness at the hands of strong women, especially when they were angry. Lee had seen his friend face down an entire station house of disgruntled cops and lead a group of riot police through an angry mob of protesters. At Princeton when there was a dorm fire it was Chuck who dashed into the building to see that everyone got out safely—against the orders of campus police. But women were another story. Lee didn’t even ask what Krieger was upset about—they’d find out soon enough.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re on our way.”
Butts turned the phone off as the sky let loose with a deluge of biblical proportions. The sound of the rain was deafening, as though someone were sitting on the roof pounding on tin buckets with sticks. Lee slowed the little sedan to a crawl and turned on the headlights.
Safety in numbers, he thought. That’s what Chuck wanted. Well, they might outnumber Krieger, but they wouldn’t necessarily outgun her—he could tell from their one meeting that she could be a formidable adversary. It was too bad that they were wasting precious time and energy in-fighting when there was a much more dangerous adversary out there taunting them to catch him—or her. With women like Krieger in the world, Lee thought, not for the first time, they couldn’t necessarily assume their killer was a man.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“What are you standing there looking at, boy? Give me a hand! Come on, don’t cry—remember, crying is for sissies and women. Do you want to be a woman, boy?”
His father’s face was red, and there was sweat under the rim of his green John Deere tractor cap.
“Do you want me to cut off your little pecker so you can be a little crybaby girl? No? All right, then, stop crying—that’s better. There’s a little man for you. Now, give