Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [98]
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Lee sat at the cafe at the Eighty-second Street Barnes & Noble, playing the table upgrade game. Customers perched on the edges of their chairs, waiting for someone to vacate a better table than the one they occupied. Downstairs, people glided dreamily between shelves of books, roving planets in a shifting constellation of bodies.
He and Kathy were meeting there, but he had come early to be alone for a while, to think about the case somewhere outside his apartment or Chuck’s office. Sometimes a change scenery helped him think about things in a new way, and he liked bookstores. He inhaled the musty, comforting aroma of paper, book bindings, and steaming espresso. It was the smell of thought, of learning, of culture and commerce coming together in a calming cacophony of cookbooks and coffee. The voices all blended into one, a smooth overlay of sound soothing as raindrops.
We seek each other, he thought, looking around. These people weren’t here for the coffee or the books or the pastries—they were there for the nearness of other human bodies.
And now he was seeking someone in a different kind of way. He yearned for this man’s capture almost as one might yearn for a lover—as his killer might yearn for the victims he killed seemingly so heartlessly. These crimes were anything but heartless, of course. Some murders were heartless—people who killed for money or property—but not this murderer. He was full of repressed rage, and though his choice of victims might seem impersonal to the untrained observer, they were very personal to him.
Lee sensed something else behind the brutality, a motif running like an underground stream beneath the carnage: loss, longing, and disappointment.
The bearded man next to him was playing with his PalmPilot. Lee wondered whether all these gadgets were really useful time-saving devices or merely sophisticated toys. And did it even matter? Toy or time-saver, what was the difference as long as people were enjoying themselves? His killer was enjoying himself—that was for certain. Or, at least, in whatever way a tortured soul like him could be said to be enjoying anything. Was a compulsive act an enjoyment, or merely the scratching of an unbearable itch?
He looked up to see Kathy headed his way, slipping in between the rows of tables, cheeks flushed, her dark hair tousled. The sight of her made his stomach do a little flip.
“Hi—am I late?” she said, seeing his half-empty coffee cup.
“No, I got here early,” he said, pulling up a chair for her. “The train was a nightmare,” she said, setting her cloth briefcase next to her. “What are you drinking?” “Just coffee.”
She frowned and twisted around in her chair to squint at the menu over the counter.
“Hmm. I think I’ll go for something stronger. Be right back.”
She slipped between the crowded tables to the coffee bar and returned balancing a cup of espresso and a piece of carrot cake.
“Help yourself,” she said, putting out two forks.
“Thanks.”
Kathy took a sip of espresso, a little bit of foam clinging to her upper lip. He wanted to lean forward and lick it off. She flicked her little pink tongue over it and it was gone.
“Working on the case?” she asked, seeing his notes spread out on the table.
“Yeah.”
“Making any progress?” “Hard to say … it’s a tough one.” “Do you ever think what that would be like?” she said in a low voice.
“What?”
“To totally lack compassion or remorse.”
“I’ve tried—it’s nearly impossible. It’s like trying to imagine being an alcoholic if you’re not one.”
She leaned over the table, her breasts brushing the tabletop.
“And if these people really are lacking these qualities, is it their fault?”
“Probably not. But does that matter? They have to be stopped, they have to be caught, and they have to be imprisoned. There’s no other solution.”
He had been through all this in his head, many times—but he wasn’t going to tell Kathy that. He wondered if she was aware that the woman sitting at the next table was listening to them. Her untouched tea sat