without anyone seeing him. I got zip from the janitor, likewise the chaplain, who says he was in his office for part of the afternoon.' He nodded in the direction of the dead girl; a team from the medical examiner's office was bending over her. 'She's only dead three, maybe four hours, according to the body temp, when the janitor found her.'
Since body temperature fell one to two degrees Fahrenheit per hour after death, on average, undoubtedly one of the first things the ME team had done was to measure the girl's temperature.
Lee said, 'That means he brought her in here in broad daylight, and yet no one saw him.'
Florette frowned. 'How could he do that? Wouldn't someone have seen him?'
Lee considered the question. 'Somehow, he must have found a way to sedate her.'
'For a while,' Florette added. 'She obviously struggled once he got her here.'
'Maybe she didn't even look like a person at all,' Morton suggested. 'Maybe he brought her in a bag or container of some kind.'
'That would make sense,' Lee agreed.
'I'll do a complete sweep of the building and see if we can come up with anything,' Florette said. 'I also want to talk to your primary on the Bronx girl… what's his name? Detective Butts?'
'That's right,' Chuck said. 'We tried to reach him, but his daughter says he took his wife to a matinee, and he's turned off his cell phone.'
'Well, give him my number and tell him to call me as soon as he can.'
They all looked at the dead girl, her skin already turning bluish white as the blood drained away. The carved words stood out against the pale skin. Hallowed be thy name. The wounds were the color of dried rust.
'I suppose the brass could establish a task force on this guy, right?' Florette said.
'They might,' Chuck answered.
'In that case, Detective Butts would be the primary from now on,' Florette said, looking down at his polished shoes, and Lee could sense the reluctance in his voice. He understood the way the system worked, but once cops got a case, they didn't like to let go-especially when they were homicide detectives, and especially when the victim was a young girl. Lee had noticed the white knight types were drawn to police work, and often ended up in homicide. Seeing women in distress was likely to press every button they had. The fact that the women were young and attractive would just raise the stakes for the white knight cops-they wanted to come to the rescue of the princess, to kill the dragon and claim the prize.
Lee glanced at poor Annie again, lying so still in the midst of all the activity around her, as the CSI and ME teams continued with their work. This princess was dead, and there would be no prize, no hand given in marriage to the hero who tracked down this dragon.
'I'll just have to wait to see how they handle it, but I'd guess a task force is likely, yeah,' Chuck said.
Florette took a deep breath and put his little notebook in his pocket. 'Okay. Well, I don't have to tell you that I'd like to be on it.'
'Yeah, sure,' Chuck answered, 'if I have anything to say about it.'
Florette wandered over to speak with the CSIs on the other side of the room, and Lee took the opportunity to draw Chuck aside.
'There's something else I should tell you,' Lee said.
'What's that?'
'I…I think someone took a shot at me tonight.'
'What?'
Lee told Chuck about the bullet that narrowly missed him, and Chuck called the commander of the Ninth Precinct to send someone over to dig out the bullet.
'We'll do a ballistics test on it. It could give us something,' Chuck said. 'And you'll need protection.'
'Oh, come on-' said Lee.
But Chuck cut him off. 'It's not up for debate.'
'Okay,' Lee answered. 'It doesn't really fit the profile, though. I wouldn't expect someone like this killer to be a shooter. It could be completely unrelated to the case.'
He thought about mentioning the text message on his cell phone, but he saw Detective Florette heading their way and decided to wait.
Florette walked up and stood beside them, hands in his pockets. 'This guy is really sick, isn't he?' he said to Lee.
'Yeah,' Lee replied. 'He's really sick.'
'So now we've definitely got a multiple on our hands,' said Chuck.
'What we have here,' Lee said, 'is a serial killer.'
Chapter Twenty-two
Everywhere he went, he felt people were looking at him, judging him. There was no forgiveness, no redemption. He knew that as well as he knew every inch of his bedroom ceiling, having stared up at it all these years while lying on his bed, hoping that his mother wouldn't call him-no, please don't-but then she always would, asking him to kneel beside her on the hard floor, smelling the odor of floor wax and hair spray that permeated her bedroom.
But the Master understood him, and one day, he promised, he would find Samuel a girl who would embrace him and forgive him for all his wickedness. They were so young, so innocent, soft as young birds, with smooth skin and eyes as wide as the blond meadows that surrounded his boyhood home. He often thought of that house in Iowa, the rows of cornfields stretching off into the horizon, and the feel of his father's hand in his as they headed for the barn to bring out the big green tractor.
He never really understood why his father left, except that men are evil by nature, and that they all leave sooner or later. And now there was just Queens, and the sound of trucks on the Long Island Expressway at night, and his mother's footsteps upstairs as she wandered the house like a lost soul searching for redemption. The Lord loves you, Samuel-find your salvation in Jesus.
Rage bubbled up from deep inside him, boiling in his stomach and constricting his throat, choking him. Maybe it was as his mother had said, that if she had never had a child, his father would not have left. He imagined scenarios that might have been if he had never been born: his mother and father together, driving in the car with the wind blowing in the open windows, his mother laughing, her head thrown back-not that tight laugh he knew now, but a softer, happier sound, like the tinkling of wind chimes. One of the girls had laughed like that, a gentle, rolling sound, like the bubbling of a brook. He imagined making a woman laugh like that someday…a sound that she would make only for him, in response to his touch… Women like that are sluts, Samuel-they'll corrupt you, you'll see!
He shook his head to try to erase the voices in his head, but it was no use. He was tired, so tired… Spread out on the table in front of him was a small collection of silver and gold crosses on their delicate chains. He selected one with a tiny diamond in its center and smiled. His mother would like this one.
Chapter Twenty-three
The sad-eyed priest beckoned to him from the other side of a long, winding river. Lee longed to cross the river and be with the priest, but the current was strong and he was afraid of being sucked downstream. The priest opened his arms and smiled, and just as Lee was about to jump into the water-
The phone rang. Lee pulled himself out of the world of his dream, threw off the covers, and grabbed the receiver, glad to be rid of the image of the sad-eyed priest, relieved to be in his own bedroom.
'Hello?'
'It's me.' It was Chuck. 'We got a hit on the girl in Queens. Some kids came forward to say they thought they knew her. They're at the station now.'
'Be right there.'
