Silent Slaughter Read Free Page A

members, both locals and tourists. The customers perched on the stools lining the counter were not thinking of roaming sociopaths as they hunched over bowls of steaming cabbage soup.
    That was his job. As the only full-time NYPD profiler, Lee was technically a “civilian adviser”—but he was called in on the hardest cases, the ones resistant to forensics and ordinary detective work.
    He turned west at the corner of Second Avenue and Seventh Street, where for many years the Kiev was a popular place for late-night revelers as well as the neighborhood’s elderly Eastern European residents. The Kiev was gone now, replaced by a trendy Korean restaurant, the kind of place where sleek young Asian waiters looked as bored as the well-heeled clientele.
    The venerable Veselka still remained, though it had lost some of its downtown charm in a renovation a few years ago. He preferred it in the old days, when he would squeeze past the hodgepodge of tables scattered at odd angles in the crowded front room to get to his favorite table in the tiny back room, underneath a narrow winding staircase leading up to a tiny, cluttered office.
    Dusty ferns and spindly spider plants festered in moldy pots on the windowsill, as they had for decades, watching over endless cups of coffee served to aspiring actors and anarchists, scholars and scoundrels. That was the Veselka he loved—dirty and rumpled as an old coat. The new one, with its forest green trim and tidy paint job, was indistinguishable from Starbucks. New York was constantly reinventing itself, and it could break your heart. But he was hungry, so he stopped in for a bowl of soup.
    By the time he reached his building, it was nearly seven. As soon as he’d turned the lock in his apartment, the phone rang. He saw on the caller ID that it was his mother. She hated cell phones and only called him on the landline. He suspected one reason for this was a decline in her hearing, but she would never admit that. Fiona Campbell was a classic example of Scottish stoicism. Never complain, never grovel, and never admit to weakness of any kind. She was a virtuoso of denial, gifted in the art of deflection—so successful, in fact, that she had delegated most of her darker emotions to her children. And now that Lee’s sister was gone, the role of “surrogate empath” fell to him.
    He picked up on the third ring.
    “Hi, Mom.”
    “Hello, dear.” She sounded annoyed. He knew Fiona didn’t like caller ID, and he enjoyed irking her.
    “Good timing—I just walked in the door. Are you calling about this weekend?”
    “I just wanted to know if you were still planning on coming.”
    Lee rarely cancelled plans on his mother, yet she always called to double-check. Her determination to avoid disappointment no doubt stemmed from his father’s abrupt departure years before. Lee suspected she had never fully recovered from the shock, instead devoting her life to keeping other people at bay. Vulnerability did not come naturally to Fiona Campbell, and after his father left, she had constructed her firewalls carefully.
    “I’m still coming, Mom,” he said.
    “Good. Kylie is counting on you.”
    “Kylie is counting on you.” Good one, Mom—projecting your needs on to your grandchild. For God’s sake, don’t admit you want to see me.
    Kylie was his sister’s only child. Since Laura’s mysterious disappearance six years ago, Fiona had shared the care of her granddaughter with Kylie’s father, who also lived in New Jersey’s Delaware Valley. Lee saw his niece as often as possible, and he was planning to drive out for her school Christmas concert over the weekend.
    His cell phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. He dug it out—it was Butts.
    “Sorry, Mom, I gotta go,” he said. “I have another call. See you this weekend.”
    “All right,” she said stiffly, and hung up. He sighed—her ruffled feathers might need some smoothing when he saw her.
    He picked up the cell phone. “I’m here,” he