Monday morning. The young desk sergeant tried vainly to stifle a yawn as he waved Lee through to Chuck’s office, and the weary-looking policewoman talking to a thin young Latino man in purple rayon pants looked like she could use another night’s sleep. Lee knocked on the door to his friend’s office, and to his surprise, a woman’s voice answered. “Come in.”
He paused a moment to register what he had just heard, then swung the door open cautiously. He didn’t know what he expected to find, but he certainly didn’t expect what he saw. Instead of Chuck was a woman, perched next to his desk, one hip resting on the windowsill behind his scarred old captain’s chair.
There are some women who, for whatever reason, make men feel inadequate. There are other women who, for perhaps more obvious reasons, make men want them. And then there are those rare women who do both.
Elena Krieger was one of those women.
She was extremely tall—Lee estimated at least six feet—with absurdly long legs, as though the painter’s brush had slipped when creating her, but he decided to keep going anyway. Her silky hair was a strawberry-blond color he associated with Swedish stewardesses and Hollywood starlets. Her body was pure Vegas: beside the long legs, she had the trim waist and solid round breasts of a showgirl. He didn’t see how they could be real: they looked too sculpted, too firm—and the lemon-yellow silk blouse she wore didn’t leave anything to the imagination. At the same time, there was something masculine about her body, the broad sweep of her shoulders, the big bones of her hands and feet. She gave off an impression of power and strength, so that her sexuality had an oddly androgynous appeal. He understood immediately how she got the nickname Valkyrie—she was the personification of a Wagnerian goddess.
Her face couldn’t really be described as pretty. Everything was too big, too prominent: her mouth, her nose, her strong chin. And her eyes were rather small, light colored and deep set, so that they looked even smaller. Still, in the split second that Lee took in all these details, he also registered the fact that he couldn’t think of a single man he had ever known who would kick her out of bed. The part of him that was pure animal instinct, the part that wasn’t madly in love with Kathy, reacted to her as any other red-blooded heterosexual man would: he immediately imagined her naked, available, and interested.
And in that moment he also knew something else about her: she was dangerous. He wasn’t sure who she was dangerous to—maybe herself, maybe the men she came in contact with, maybe other women—but there was no doubt she was dangerous.
In the moment or two it took for all of these thoughts to race across the landscape of his brain, Elena Krieger took the three steps required to cover the width of Chuck’s small office and extended her hand.
“Hello,” she said, with a light dusting of a German accent. “I’m Elena Krieger.”
Lee wanted to say Of course you are, but instead he said, “Pleased to meet you,” shaking her hand, which was firm, cool and strong, like a solid piece of oak, or cedar.
“And you are the famous Lee Campbell.”
Lee laughed and felt his face go red.
“Well, if I’m famous, I’m the last to hear about it.”
“Oh, but of course you are—everybody knows about you. What happened to your sister was terrible,” she repeated, shaking her head so that her silky bangs swung back and forth like windshield wipers over her wide forehead.
Lee tried to avoid looking at her—frankly, it was distracting. He turned toward the door, which he had deliberately left open.
“Where’s Chuck?” he said, pretending to search for him in the hall outside.
“He’ll be back in a minute,” she said. “That must have been so hard going through what you went through, the nervous breakdown and all. Are you sure you’re well enough to work now?”
Stunned by this remark, he turned to look at her. His sister Laura’s disappearance five years ago was the reason he turned from private practice as a psychologist to become a criminal profiler. And his recent nervous breakdown, though not a secret, was a private matter. It wasn’t the kind of thing he talked about; clearly Elena Krieger had done some homework.
Her words were loaded with subtext—he just wasn’t sure what it was. She certainly wasn’t expressing concern for him. She didn’t even know him, and from what