Free Silent Victim by C. E. Lawrence Page B

they were zooming west along Route 78.
    “Sorry I couldn’t drive today, Doc,” Butts said as they headed west, the skyscrapers of Manhattan looming behind them in the rearview mirror. “The wife always does Meals on Wheels on Wednesdays. You know—brings food to the old folks and stuff. She’s an RN, but gave it up when the kids were born. Still has that need to feel useful, I guess.”
    “Sure,” Lee said. “I think we all have that.”
    He and Butts drove in silence for a while, lulled by the motion of the car and the soft morning light falling on the blacktop, damp from a rain the night before. The water evaporated in wispy threads of mist as the air heated up and the sun climbed higher in the sky. To his relief, Lee had not awakened with any symptoms from the previous day’s attack, though his emotions were still close to the surface.
    As they approached the exit for Route 202, Butts said, “What I’d like to know is why do we have to put up with that Krueger dame?”
    “Krieger,” Lee corrected him.
    “Whatever.” Butts stared moodily out the window, tracing waving lines with his finger in the thick mist of condensation on the interior of the glass.
    “I don’t know the story behind it, but I’ll bet you Chuck Morton had nothing to do with it.”
    “Yeah, I know,” said Butts. “He doesn’t like her any more than I do. How about you—can you stand her?”
    Lee thought about it for a moment. “She sort of reminds me of my mother.”
    Butts shivered. “Jeez. Some mother.”
    Lee smiled. “She’s not so bad once you get used to her.”
    Butts reclined his seat a little and stretched his arms out over his head. “The scary part is that I just know my kids will be talkin’ about me the same way some day—if they aren’t already.”
    They said no more about Krieger, though Lee had a feeling this was not the last he would hear about her. A few miles from the Route 202 exit, Butts’s cell phone rang, and he dug it out of his jacket pocket.
    “Butts here.” There was a pause as he listened. “Really? That puts a new spin on things. Thanks a lot, Russ, much appreciated. Yeah, right—thanks.”
    He closed the cell phone and whistled softly. “That was Russell Kim from the M.E.'s office—the tox screen on our first two vics just came back.”
    Lee knew Russell Kim—a quiet, dedicated Korean pathologist known for his thoroughness and reliability.
    “Okay,” he said impatiently,
“and—
?”
    Butts paused for dramatic effect. “GBH.”
    “Jesus.” GBH, or gamma-hydroxybutyrate, was well known to law enforcement as the “date rape drug.” It was a soporific, and could be added to a mixed drink without the victim being aware of its presence.
    “Yup, one and the same.”
    Neither of them said what they were both thinking—that Ana’s tox screen results would be identical. Lee tried not to think about her last hours, but he couldn’t help it—he could only hope that perhaps the barbiturate effect of the drug had made the ordeal less horrible, but he wasn’t ready to bet on it.
    “That still doesn’t explain the lack of forced entry in the bathtub killing,” Lee said.
    “Right. Either the killer gives it to him somewhere else or follows him into the apartment and forces him to drink it there. Either way, we still have missing pieces.”
    Lee turned onto Route 202, leaving the interstate to cut straight southwest through the farm fields of central Jersey, heading down to the Delaware River town of Lambertville. His mother and his niece lived not far from where they were going, but he would be seeing them in a few days, and today’s trip was not about pleasure.
    “This part of Jersey is real pretty, isn’t it?” Butts mused as they cruised past fields of grazing cows and horses. The sun sparkled on the damp meadows, the long grasses catching the yellow morning light in sprays of silver and gold.
    “Yeah,” Lee agreed. But his mind was not on the beauty of the summer morning. He