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Authors: C.E. Lawrence

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BOOK: Silent Kills
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CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Davey walked up the brick pathway to the rambling Victorian house in Riverdale, taking care not to step on the cracks between the bricks.
Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.
He couldn’t help obeying certain superstitions, even though he didn’t really believe them—and even though his mother was, of course, dead. He had avoided stepping on cracks ever since he was a child, and once he started doing something a certain way, he found it very hard to change his behavior. He picked his way carefully up the walk, doing his best to avoid the thin spray of water from the sprinkler on the Rosenbaums’ lawn.
The houses in this part of Riverdale were large but snuggled quite close together. It was impossible to avoid all contact with the neighbors, though he tried. Unfortunately, the Rosenbaums were friendly, and always gave a cheerful wave when they happened to see him. He always waved back, but he did his best to avoid talking to them, pretending to be in a hurry as he dashed out to his car or ducked inside, bolting the door behind him. The Rosenbaums were a happy, noisy lot, piling into their car with babies and dogs and picnic baskets in tow, on their way to soccer matches or garden parties or whatever it was normal people did.
Davey wasn’t normal. He had known this about himself ever since he could remember—he just wasn’t sure if other people could sense it or not. He burned night and day with a gnawing desire that felt almost religious at times, an all-consuming craving for the blood of young women. He believed—no, he
knew
—that it would keep him from suffering his sister’s fate.
Shortly after his sister’s death, he began having dreams of wasting away as she had. He would wake up in the night in terror, screaming and shivering, until his Aunt Rosa came to calm him. No one else ever came to comfort him or hold him. After Edwina’s death his mother became a cold, distant presence, wandering through their spacious house like a ghost, forlorn and lost, wearing a white flannel nightgown, twisting her hair between her fingers as she stared out the window, gazing beyond the tree line as if waiting for an unknown visitor. His father became more stern and silent. The house felt like a tomb, with Davey as its only living occupant.
They were both gone now—died of grief, it was whispered—while Davey watched and waited from the shadows. He continued to live in the big house after they were gone, wandering through empty rooms once filled with the noise and clatter of an entire extended family. Now there was only him and his Aunt Rosa, whose blood was also tainted. They called it leukemia, but it amounted to the same thing—her blood was bad. That was when he knew he too would die young unless he followed a very careful and well-thought-out plan. And today he would add a new twist to his plan. His skin tingled as he imagined what it would feel like.
Davey removed his light summer jacket, hanging it up on the hall coatrack. He slipped on a white lab coat and walked through the parlor to the door leading down to the cellar. Inserting the key he kept in the pocket of the lab coat, he pushed it open and crept down the steep wooden stairway. Fear and excitement trembled in his innards, making his stomach gurgle with anticipation.
He smiled when he saw the young woman lying on the hospital bed in the corner of the immaculate, brightly lit room. He had built his laboratory, as he called it, very carefully, a place for everything, and everything in its place. The equipment gleamed, all the metal polished to a squeaky shine. The bed linen was pristine, the floor swept clean of dust.
“Hello,” he said politely. “Did you sleep well?”
He picked up a newspaper from the metal tray next to her bed and held it up so she could see the headline.
 
Van Cortlandt Vampire Strikes Again
 
“See?” he said. “We made the front page.”
Smiling at the terror in her eyes, he adjusted the straps holding her to the bed and checked the gag around her mouth. The gag was an extra precaution—the room was solidly soundproofed. He walked over to the expensive sound system in the corner and slipped in a CD. He took a deep breath as the metallic opening bars of the guitar solo filled the room. He stood listening to the lyrics. He had them memorized, of course, but loved hearing them anyway.
The youth that time destroyed can live in me again
But I require blood—the time is coming when
I’ll come to you at night, as the owl hoots at the moon
I’ll be by your side to watch you as you swoon
He approached his victim with a soft smile on his face. “Don’t worry, this won’t take long,” he said soothingly. Then he noticed the thin yellow stain seeping onto his clean white bed linen. “Oh, dear,” he said, clicking his tongue in disapproval. “Look at that, you naughty girl—you’ve wet yourself.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
They were sitting in the Veselka when it happened. Kathy had called and said she needed to see him. He didn’t even know she was in town, but he agreed to meet her at the Veselka, the legendary Ukrainian joint on Second Avenue open twenty-four hours a day.
“The thing is,” Kathy said, poking at her muffin with her fork, “I’ve sort of met someone.”
The words were a thunderbolt, a body blow, a rip in the space-time fabric. He sat there, unable to respond, staring like an idiot down at the croutons floating in his soup. The split pea soup resembled congealed vomit. He willed himself to look up, but she avoided his eyes.
“It’s not like it’s anything serious—I mean, I just met him.”
His jaw felt as if it had rusted in place. He forced his mouth to move.
“But ... you like him.”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“So you want to break it off with—us?”
Us. Odd,
he thought.
First there was an Us, and now there isn’t.
She studied her nails, which were short and even and all exactly the same length. It had never struck him before, but now he thought it was kind of obsessive/compulsive. Too damn neat, too damn tidy. That was her problem—she was so damn
scientific
about everything.
“Look,” she said.
“No, I get it,” he said. “You want to see other people.”
“Not ‘other people’—”
“Oh, right—just him.” He felt small and petty, and enjoyed the stricken look in her eyes.
Well, fine
, he thought.
Take that. You can dish it out well enough.
“I don’t
know
what I want!” she moaned. “It’s just that—around you, I feel there are all these landmines I’m afraid to step on.”
“I see,” he said coldly. “Well, look, when you know what you want, you can give me a call, okay?”
He rose from his chair, knocking it over. He didn’t bother to pick it up, leaving it lying on its side like a discarded corpse. Ignoring the alarmed stares of the other patrons, he stalked out of the restaurant. He headed downtown, through the usual weekend swarm of East Village types and tourists milling around the corner of St. Mark’s Place. He looked neither right nor left, and didn’t stop until he reached his apartment.
Tossing his keys on the mantel, he threw himself on the couch, ignoring the incessant ringing of the phone. He knew it was her, and knew she wanted to talk, but he had nothing more to say. He got up and yanked the phone line from the receiver.
That’ll show her
. It was juvenile, but he didn’t care. Staring out the window at the circular rose window of the Ukrainian church across the street, he had trouble summoning up the energy to care about anything at all.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Detective Leonard Julius Bronislaw Butts was not fond of dogs. In fact, he hated and feared them. As a result of a run-in with a Doberman when he was a child, he had a phobia of the horrible, snarling creatures. It was something he was not proud of, and though he had to deal with it occasionally in his line of work, he had managed so far to keep it a secret from his colleagues.
Today was definitely going to be a challenge, though. Standing at the entrance to the Bronx Botanical Gardens, next to an officer of the NYPD K-9 Unit, Detective Butts was sweating. He could feel droplets of moisture running down the small of his back—he always seemed to sweat there worse than anywhere. He mopped his forehead with his sleeve and took a deep breath, but it was no use.
The K-9 officer held a leash in his right hand, and at the other end of the leash was a beast with ears like a jackrabbit and long, white teeth, bared in a horrible grin. The animal was panting in the midday heat, and Butts could see great wads of saliva dripping from its mouth. He imagined it to be his own blood, and felt those fangs closing on his unprotected arms. Shivering in spite of the heat, he instinctively pulled the cuffs of his jacket over his wrists.
The beast’s name was Toby, he had been told. It seemed that Toby was a star in the department. A purebred German shepherd, he had a track record second to none, and could pick up a whiff of blood or human scent half a mile away. Butts had an image of the dog tracking him through the woods as he scrambled frantically through the underbrush like a fugitive.
Sergeant Quinlan, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any issues with Toby. He looked entirely relaxed, leaning his large, lumpy body languidly against a lamppost. He took a deep drag on his filterless cigarette and flicked it onto the ground.
“Those things will kill you,” Butts said.
The big sergeant ground the butt into the dirt with his heavy black regulation-issue shoe. “So you keep tellin’ me.”
“I bet they’re bad for your allergies, too.”
Quinlan squinted at Butts, his small blue eyes nearly disappearing under the flesh of his brow. “What’s the matter?”
“Aw, nothin’. I just don’t like dogs, is all.”
“Scared of ’em?”
“No, just don’t like ’em much. No biggie.”
“Well, we all got somethin’, right?” Quinlan said with a shrug. “I don’t much care for spiders. Creepy things, with all those spindly legs, and they sneak up on you at night. They bite, too—they get you when you’re asleep, then you wake up with a nasty welt.”
Butts made a mental note to buy the sergeant the biggest double whiskey he could find when they were out of this place. “We ’bout ready to head out?” he asked the dog handler, Officer Kalamka, a tall, handsome African American with skin like burnished ebony and a trim, athletic body.
“As soon as you say the word,” Kalamka replied, gazing out over the lush landscape of the Botanical Gardens. At his side, Toby looked eagerly up at his master, a glob of drool falling from his mouth. Butts shuddered.
Next to Kalamka, Butts thought, he and Quinlan looked misshapen, a couple of soft, doughy white guys. The sergeant didn’t seem to be overly concerned by his ungraceful build, though. “We’re waitin’ for your profiler friend, ain’t we?” he asked, lighting another cigarette.
“I don’t know if he’s comin’,” Butts said. “He’s been sick.”
“Yeah? What’s wrong with him?”
Butts hesitated. He didn’t like to lie, especially to another detective, but he was damned if he was going to expose his friend to someone he barely knew. Campbell struggled enough with his illness, but as far as Leonard Butts was concerned, it was nobody’s business except his own.
“Infection of some kind—maybe stomach flu.”
“Shit, that sucks,” Quinlan said, taking a deep drag and blowing the smoke away from Butts. “My wife had that last winter—man, was she in bad shape.”
Officer Kalamka looked at his watch. “It’s almost six. If we don’t go soon we’ll lose the light.”
The garden closed at six o’clock, and they had timed their search to begin just after closing hours to eliminate the distraction of visitors. The stream of tourists and other visitors to the garden was heaviest in the summer months, and especially when the weather was as beautiful as it was today.
“Right, sure,” Butts said, taking out his cell phone. When he speed-dialed Campbell, Lee answered on the first ring. “What’s up?” Butts said. “You comin’ or not?”
“Can you handle it without me?” Campbell asked. “I’m not doing too well right now.” His voice was flat, shaky. He sounded like he had just lost his best friend.
“Yeah, sure,” said Butts. “We’ll catch you later.” He slid the phone into his jacket pocket. He was worried. It wasn’t like Campbell not to show up, and he sounded like shit on the phone. Something was going on.
“So he’s not comin’?” Quinlan said, stubbing out his second cigarette on a tree trunk and flinging it into the bushes.
“Naw—he’s still feeling lousy,” Butts said, which was technically true.
Officer Kalamka gazed sternly in the direction of the discarded cigarette. “That’s littering, you know.”
“Really?” Quinlan replied, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
“You think you’re above the law?” Kalamka said, his voice steely. “You ever give a thought to the people who have to clean up after jerks like you?”
Quinlan looked as if he were about to make another retort, but then he shrugged and waded into the bushes, emerging with a retrieved cigarette butt.
Kalamka looked at the one he had discarded earlier. “There’s a trash can right over there,” he said, pointing.
Quinlan grunted and picked up the other butt, depositing them both in the trash can. Kalamka watched him impassively, tightening his grip on Toby’s leash as the dog strained forward, eager for action. Butts wiped beads of sweat from the back of his neck, thinking that he would do just about anything Kalamka asked him, so long as he held the leash of that godforsaken canine killing machine. Toby glanced at him, and he was surprised at the intelligence in those orange eyes. He was also struck by how much the dog resembled a wolf.
All the better to see you with ...
Kalamka pulled a woman’s shirt from his backpack and held it under the dog’s nose. Butts knew it had belonged to the last victim. After the crime lab finished processing it for trace evidence, they had turned it over to the K-9 unit. This was how the dogs worked, Kalamka had said. One good long sniff of the vic’s scent, and Toby knew what to look for. He didn’t like the damn creatures, but Butts was impressed. He would be even more impressed if the dog actually found something useful.
“Okay, let’s go,” Kalamka said. They hugged the perimeter of the garden, heading north along the thin stretch of greenery on either side of the Bronx River Parkway. They walked along the banks of the Bronx River, which was just a narrow creek at that point. The stream was surrounded by thick woods, a blend of pine and oak, maple, and other tall deciduous trees. Butts caught a whiff of honeysuckle as they walked, and the
whoosh
of traffic on the parkway blended with the soft chirp of crickets.
The dog didn’t exhibit any unusual behavior during most of the hike, walking just in front of Officer Kalamka, his long wet nose to the ground, sniffing industriously. When they were just north of Gun Hill Road, near the southern edge of Woodlawn Cemetery, there it was, just as Lee had said—a break in the chain-link fence separating the grounds of the garden from the cemetery. The shallow stream that fed into the Bronx River was easy to ford, and you could pick your way across the flat rocks lining the bottom, crawl under the break in the fence, and be inside Woodlawn within minutes. Butts could see a scattering of tombstones, interspersed with a few grander mausoleums, their ornate stone carvings shaded in the evening light.
And then Toby went crazy—or at least that’s how it seemed to Butts. The dog lunged forward, whining and straining on his leash, and Officer Kalamka had to grab it with both hands to restrain him. The sight of the powerful animal leaning forward, controlled only by a thin strip of leather, caused beads of sweat to spurt from Butts’s forehead.
“We got a hot spot,” the handler said as Toby sniffed the ground frantically, panting and whining. To Butts’s horror, Kalamka leaned down to unfasten the leash, letting the creature roam unfettered through the grounds. He had a brief image of the dog hurtling toward his throat—he had read that animals could sense your fear—but to his relief, Toby showed no interest in him. The dog raced over the area, zigzagging back and forth, sniffing furiously. All at once, he sat down and looked up at his handler.
“Okay, she was definitely here,” Kalamka said. “Good boy, Toby! That’s as good as it gets.” He stroked the dog’s head, scratching his absurdly big ears. Butts swallowed hard.
All the better to hear you with ...
“What do you mean?” Sergeant Quinlan asked. Butts didn’t trust himself to speak—his voice, if it came out at all, was likely to be an octave higher than usual.
“We got a positive ID,” Kalamka said, looking at Quinlan as though he were a half-wit. “Toby is telling us the vic was definitely at this spot.”
“And you know this because ... ?”
“He’s sitting down. That’s his signal,” Kalamka replied, as if every schoolchild should know this.
“Is it possible he could be mistaken?” Butts asked.
“Detective, a dog’s sense of smell is a thousand times better than ours. Toby here has approximately two hundred and twenty
million
olfactory receptors in his nose, while we—”
“
Okay
,” Butts answered. “He’s a super smell machine—got it.”
“He’s much more than that,” Kalamka said, looking offended.
“I’m sure he is,” Quinlan said, glancing at Toby, who sat patiently awaiting the end of this nonsense.
“Okay,” Butts said. “Does the scent continue on, or is it just here?”
Kalamka bent over, unfastened the leash, and whispered, “Toby, go find!”
The dog leapt to its feet and headed out across the cemetery, with Kalamka close behind him. Butts and Quinlan followed, breaking into a run as the dog raced onward. He led them through the meticulously tended grounds, past rows of tombstones, grand old mausoleums, and statues, until finally they came to Melville’s grave, still roped off with yellow police crime scene tape. The dog dashed under the tape, right up to the grave itself. When he reached the tombstone, Toby gave a few final sniffs and sat down again, looking expectantly up at his handler.
“This is it,” Kalamka said. “This is where it stops.”
“Good work!” Quinlan said, wiping sweat from his upper lip. “I gotta say, I’m impressed.”
“The next step is to send a crime scene team in to look for trace evidence,” Butts said, not taking his eye off Toby.
“We could just poke around and see if we find anything in the meantime,” Quinlan said. “Right?”
Butts’s heart sank. The sergeant was right, of course, but that meant spending more time with the monster sitting so quietly a few yards away. Toby might be good at his job, but he was still a dog. On some level Butts knew his terror was unreasonable, but he couldn’t help it. Just the sight of the beast made his knees weak.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go ahead and look around some. Do you think you should, uh, put him back on the leash, just in case?” he asked Kalamka.
“He’ll be fine,” the handler replied. “Unless he makes you nervous.”
“No, no—not at all,” Butts said.
Toby grinned at him. The dog’s mouth lolled open, his long pink tongue flapping out to one side, displaying his sharp, white incisors. Butts looked away.
All the better to EAT you with ...
BOOK: Silent Kills
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