"Okay, well, I'll see you tomorrow. Can I talk to your grandmom now?"
"Okay. Grandmom!"
His mother came and took the phone.
"Yes, dear?"
Lee wanted to tear into her for what he considered her irresponsible behavior, but he didn't have the energy. All he wanted to do was lie down, pull the blankets over his head and shut out everything.
"Was there something you wanted to tell me?"
"No-I just wanted to say good-bye."
"Fine. Take care of yourself-and remember to eat!" His mother often ended conversations that way. He had lost so much weight during his depression that she became worried.
"Okay, I will. 'Bye."
Lee hung up and lifted the filter from his coffee mug. The liquid inside was hot and strong and black-opaque and impenetrable, like his mother. Again the thought in the back of his mind struggled to make its way forward. He added a drop of milk to his coffee and took it over to the window seat. It was something about Marie, and yet not about her. Something related to her death…but what? He stared out at the gray February morning. A thin rain was falling, and he noticed the lights were on in the Ukrainian church across the street. In a flash, he remembered what had been bothering him all morning.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number for the Bronx Major Case Unit.
Chapter Four
The campus is quiet, still as a tomb. The thought came to Samuel as he tiptoed across the quad, toward the dormitory building with the one light burning in the first-floor corner room. The light cast a blurry yellow halo around the window, a protective aura surrounding the room's inhabitants. He shivered as he drew closer. He could hear music playing-something classical, with flutes and violins. A couple of other rooms on the third floor had their lights blazing-late-night studying, he supposed.
He stood beneath the windows and looked up at the occupants of the rooms. Three coeds, as far as he could make out, sat around a low table, talking and laughing. He watched the girls moving through the windows, the outline of their bodies blurred through the white lace curtains, their faces muted and indistinct, as if in a dream. Why didn't they want him? Why couldn't they see his specialness? He could hardly dare to desire them, but as he sat gazing at their soft forms, lit from behind by yellow lamplight, translucent and misty mermaids, the gentle glow of the room, the light breath of breeze on his cheeks induced a trancelike state in which he floated, caught in a sweet web of longing.
Then one of the girls threw back her head, laughing at something (he couldn't make out the words), exposing her throat. He watched as the light fell upon the sudden curve of her neck, so open, so vulnerable. He imagined his hands wrapped around that white neck, pressing, squeezing, tighter and tighter, until the life within seeped into his fingers. He imagined his hands growing stronger as the life force drained away from the girl's body and into his own.
It was a thrilling thought-and it seized him with a force that shook him to his bones. He trembled, he sweated, he burned with a fierce flame from deep within him, from a place he had not known existed until now, a place his mother could not see, could not even imagine. This was his secret, his delicious fantasy. He trembled at the idea of keeping something from his mother-it made him swell with a sense of his own manhood. He turned and walked away from the window, putting his hand on the key ring that hung from his belt to stop the keys from jangling.
For the first time in his life that he could remember, he felt powerful.
Chapter Five
Captain Chuck Morton leaned back in his chair and studied the man sitting on the other side of his desk. He looked thin, even leaner than when Chuck had last seen him two months ago, and definitely thinner than he had been when the two of them shared a suite of rooms at Princeton all those years ago. His friend's angular, handsome face was pale and drawn, and his long body was slumped forward, his elbows braced on the chair's armrests. Chuck knew Lee had been up since well before dawn. Morton leaned forward in his chair and fingered the glass paperweight next to his phone. It was a butterfly spread out beneath a glistening prism, and it gave him the creeps, but it was a gift from his son, so he kept it on his desk. The butterfly's multicolored wings gleamed like tiny rainbows under the fluorescent light.
He sighed and looked at Lee Campbell. Even sitting there studying crime photos, his friend gave the impression of restlessness. It had been a long time since their carefree days at Nassau Hall, days when all that seemed to matter were rugby, girls, and grades-in that order. Now Lee looked anything but carefree-Chuck could see his long fingers twitching as they gripped the photos. Chuck felt sorry for his old friend; this was not the Lee Campbell he had known at Princeton.
Mental. That's what some of the beat cops called him behind his back, but Chuck felt a fierce loyalty to this intense, earnest man with the haunted eyes and nervous hands, a loyalty that extended beyond their days together romping the ivy-drenched quadrangles of Princeton. On the rugby field, Lee was the team captain, with quick hands and an even quicker mind, playing the key position of fly half, while Chuck, with his speed, played wing or outside center. Maybe it was their opposite temperaments that made their friendship possible: Lee was always keyed up, charismatic, intense, while Chuck's own flame burned lower, with a steady blue glow. Lee was a born leader, and he was a born sidekick. The two of them bonded as roommates their freshman year in Blair Hall. Not even women could come between them, though Chuck still wondered occasionally if Susan ever regretted marrying him instead of Lee.
"You know," Chuck said, "maybe I shouldn't have called you in on this. Maybe it was-"
"A mistake?" Lee interrupted. "Cut it out, Chuck-it's obvious that this case needs a profiler."
"No, that's not what I mean. I was just thinking that because of…" Chuck paused, not wanting to say the words. He felt like a coward.
"Christ, Chuck, you can't second-guess every case I'm on because it might bring up memories of my sister's disappearance."
Five years ago, Lee Campbell's younger sister Laura had disappeared without a trace from her Greenwich Village apartment, and everything had changed. He had never been the same since then. It was as though a dark chord had been struck in his soul and the reverberations still had not stopped. He'd had a thriving private practice as a psychologist, and Chuck was surprised when Lee called a few months after his sister's disappearance to say he was attending John Jay College for an advanced degree in forensic psychology. Later he came to realize that the disappearance of Lee's sister had affected his friend in ways he couldn't quantify. Once Lee graduated, Chuck had been instrumental in getting him his present position as the only full-time profiler in the NYPD. Lately, though, he had been wondering if he had made a mistake-emotionally, his friend didn't seem up to it.
Chuck looked out the grimy window of his office, absentmindedly fingering the butterfly paperweight on his desk.
"So no signs of sexual assault, right?" Lee muttered, still studying the photos.
"Right," Chuck said. "The lab report just came in. But how did you-"
"I'm telling you, Chuck, the same guy who did Jane Doe also killed Marie Kelleher last night!"
Chuck looked back at him.
"You really think they're connected?"
"Yes, I do."
Morton shook his head. "I dunno, Lee. Seems like a stretch to me."
Lee ran a hand through his curly black hair, something he did when he was upset. His friend's hair was longer, too, Chuck thought-even shaggy, by his own standards. He wore his own sandy blond hair short-like the bristles of a hairbrush, his wife said. He had left her soft warm body with particular reluctance this morning. When he rose from bed, the house still so dark and quiet, Susan had flung an arm out after him and moaned a little, and he had wanted nothing more than to climb back under the covers next to her and plant kisses everywhere his lips could reach.