Saints Of New York

by R.J. Ellory

  'Karma.'

  'Whatever you want to call it, he got his dues.'

  'You think that happens to everyone?'

  'One way or another, eventually, yes.'

  'So you're a closet Buddhist?'

  'If you like.'

  'And what do you think is going to happen to you?'

  'Me? I have no idea.'

  'You think it's going to work out fine, or do you think—'

  'I try not to think about that.'

  'So where now with the case you're on?'

  'We get the blood and tox tests, we find phone records for all of the girls. We start to dig a little deeper on this connection to Child Services and Adoption.'

  'And if they are connected?'

  'Then there's going to be a shit storm.'

  'And how are you sleeping?'

  'On my back usually.'

  'Frank!'

  'I'm okay, Doc, seriously. I'm sleeping fine.' 'And your diet? Your drinking?'

  'The diet ain't so good. Hasn't been for a long time. Sometimes I want to eat, most times not. And I want a drink most of the time.'

  'There are pills you can take for that.'

  'The ones that make you sick if you drink? No thanks. I hate pills. You start down that road and you never come back.'

  'Well, I can't force you to take anything, but do you feel any better at all than when we first started talking?'

  'I feel ... I don't know how to describe it. I feel ... uh ... I feel sort of agitated.'

  'Agitated? In what way agitated?'

  'Like talking about this stuff has made me aware of the fact that I have plenty to be pissed off about.'

  'Better to have it out there than all bottled up inside.'

  'So I'm told.'

  'You don't believe that?'

  'Undecided as yet.'

  'Okay, Frank, I understand. I'm not going to keep you any longer today. You need to make progress on this case, and I think work is the best therapy for you right now.'

  'Yeah, for sure. Finding dead teenagers always lifts my day.'

  THIRTY-FOUR

  On Parrish's desk was a note that Father Briley had called.

  Would Parrish please call him? He threw the note in the trash. Hell, he was already dragging through everything with Griffin, he really didn't need a priest on his case as well, especially one that seemed to see no difference between him and his father.

  By eleven Parrish had learned from Kelly's teachers that she had in fact made it through to the end of school on Monday. That gave him a time-window. Refuse collections from the rear alleyway of Brooklyn Hospital were made between nine-thirty and ten each morning. Now all he needed was the autopsy report, and hopefully that would tell him how long she had been in the box, how long she'd been dead.

  While he and Radick waited for those results they worked on tracking down records for each of the girls' cell phones. They contacted available family members, and with each one there was the recognition that this was something they should have done before. But the possibility of some slim connection between them had really only come to light in the past day or so. And even now it was nothing more than intuition and assumption on the part of Parrish. If there was a connection, however, it was somewhere waiting to be found.

  Two hours' work and they started to make headway. It appeared that records for Kelly and Rebecca were obtainable, though it would take several more phone calls and the requisite paperwork to get them e-mailed over. Karen, Nicole and Melissa - due simply to the length of time that had elapsed since the last account activity - were out of the ballpark. Parrish even tried the Alice Forrester name, taking a flyer to determine if someone might have contacted Nicole through her step-sister, but that was a blind hunt down a dark alley. They would have to work with what they could get, and until that time they could only hope that it would give them something.

  Antony Valderas came down at two o'clock, haunted the room for a few minutes. He surveyed the board, he made some notes on a piece of paper, and then he rounded on Parrish and Radick in his inimitable style.

  'So I understand that you have these things connected?' he asked Parrish.

  'It's a real maybe,' Parrish replied. 'We're waiting on some tox tests for the Duncan girl and a couple of phone records that we've asked for. If she got benzo'd then we're playing in the same league. If what I think is on the phone records turns up then we're definitely on a straight line to someone within Child Services or County Adoption.'

  'As a killer or a fixer?'

  Parrish shook his head. 'I don't know. It could just as easily be someone feeding someone else as the man himself.'

  Valderas turned to Radick. 'And your APB on the campus stabbing suspect?'

  'It's still running. We've had a couple of reports, but they turned out to be someone else.'

  Valderas shook his head. He inhaled deeply, exhaled again as he looked back at the board. 'I need some movement, guys, I really do. You have a lot of red names up there, and I need some black ones.' He looked at Radick again. 'Good impressions are made fast, Radick, remember that.'

  'Sure, Sergeant, sure,' Radick replied.

  'So get onto whatever you have to get onto, but do it quicker, okay?'

  Valderas left. Parrish looked at Radick but said nothing. Radick held his tongue.

  The call from the Medical Examiner's office came just before three. Kelly's results were ready. The ME himself, Tom Young, had done the blood work and he would be down there for another couple of hours if they wanted to speak with him.

  Radick drove them the four blocks and they parked in back of the building.

  'She was benzo'd,' Young told Parrish before they'd even reached the end of the corridor. 'He got her good. A very heavy dose. From what I can determine it would have happened late afternoon, early evening of Monday.'

  Young held open the swing door for the detectives. They walked the length of the theater, and there she was. Naked. The Y-incision scarring her torso, her hair still wet from where they had finally washed the body. Her arms were slim, her hands delicate - and her nails were red.

  Parrish stood for a moment in silence. She looked so much like Rebecca. Too much like her.

  'Dead somewhere between four and eight on Tuesday morning, I'd say. Rigor is harder to determine, but I'd say she was in the box for four or five hours. She was found at one, right?'

  Parrish nodded.

  'That gives you your timeframe. Picked up and drugged late afternoon Monday, dead in the early hours of Tuesday morning, say around five, in the box pretty much right away, dumped around ten-thirty.'

  'After Tuesday's refuse collection had already been made,' Radick said.

  Parrish said nothing. He was looking at her face, then at her hands, then at her bright red toenails. She seemed so small, so fragile. She seemed like nothing at all.

  'COD?' Radick asked.

  'The strangulation,' Young said. 'No doubt about that. A scarf more than likely. Not a rope or a cord. A scarf or a length of fabric, but twisted tight. There's no tearing, no indent of a thread. And it looks like she didn't struggle. There are no additional abrasions or bruising, nothing beneath the fingernails, no defensive wounds.'

  'Was she raped?' Parrish asked.

  'No signs of rape,' Young replied. 'She had intercourse - anal as well as vaginal - there's bruising in the rectal passage, but nothing beyond what would ordinarily be expected from intercourse. Nothing in either orifice except Nonoxynol-9 spermicidal agent and some lubricant.'

  'He used a condom,' Radick said matter-of-factly.

  'For sure.'

  Parrish looked at Radick. Radick's expression said all that needed saying. Same MO, same type of vie, and the connection to Child Services or CAA.

  They thanked Young, and made their way to the car behind the building.

  They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Parrish turned to face his partner.

  'This will not be straightforward,' he said. His voice was measured
and calm. 'Right now, there's a chance we have more than one victim from the same perp. Melissa - the runaway - she may not be a homicide, because we haven't found her body. That was assigned to Rhodes and Pagliaro. Jennifer was Hayes and Wheland, but we don't know if she's one of them because I haven't found a CAA or Welfare file. All I have on her is similar physical attributes to the others, and the same manner of death. Nicole was Engel and West, Karen was Franco at the Williamsburg 91st. Rebecca and Kelly are ours.

  'Okay ... All of them, except for Jennifer, had direct or indirect involvement with Family Welfare South, the office that co-ordinated all administrative records for Child Services and the County Adoption Agency. The offices separated into different districts a while back, and there's now sixteen in all. They were all handled by the old South office, but Rebecca and Kelly would have been transferred to the new district office. What we need to know now is which district office. If we discover that they were dealt with by the same office—'

  'Which is the closest office?' Radick cut in, all too quickly understanding what such a discovery would suggest.

  'District Five,' Parrish told him. it's just across Fulton.'

  An hour later they left the District Five office with nothing. Whichever way it went, they didn't have a warrant. Welfare Office records were confidential. Back at the office Parrish had Radick start on the request paperwork while he went to speak with Valderas.

  'I want a let-up on the other actives,' he told the Squad Sergeant. 'I think I have a multiple, and some of those cases were originally taken' by other teams.'

  'How many?'

  'Three of them. Rhodes and Pagliaro, Hayes and Wheland, Engel and West. One of them is a Williamsburg 91st case and I want that as well. Six in all.'

  'I really can't do it, Frank.'

  'Because?'

  'Because the other actives will just get dropped if you don't handle them. Who the hell else am I going to give them to?'

  'You could have Radick handle them, and I could work this thing alone—'

  'Not a prayer, Frank, not a prayer. I have strict instructions to keep you on a short leash from now on. Hell, man, you've got a Duty Review Board in the New Year. You might not even have a job in the second week of January.'

  'Tony - I really need you to get me the other four cases.'

  Valderas shook his head. 'I don't know, Frank, I just don't know. You're going to have to put something substantial together to swing it. I need something a little more credible than a Frank Parrish hunch to get them reassigned. And even if I get ours turned over to you, I don't see how we can get the one from Williamsburg.'

  'Okay, okay ... do what you can for me, would you? I got Radick filing for a warrant on some Child Welfare records. Can you at least push that through for me?'

  'On who?'

  'Rebecca Lange and Kelly Duncan, the last two. They're both ours.'

  'That I can do.' Valderas looked at his watch. 'It's nearly six. You're not going to see anything today. I'll do what I can to get it processed before noon tomorrow. You can put some time in on the other cases while you wait for it.'

  'Yes, sure.'

  But Valderas knew he wouldn't. It was there in Parrish's expression as he turned to leave the room.

  'Frank?' Valderas called after him.

  Parrish paused.

  'How is Radick?'

  'He's okay. He'll make a good detective someday.' 'Don't spoil him before he has a chance, okay? You have a tendency to break the things you're given.'

  Parrish didn't reply. He closed Valderas's office door behind him and hurried down the hallway.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

  'Did you drink last night?'

  'Yes, I did.' 'How much?' 'Enough.' 'Enough for what?'

  'Enough to stop me thinking about you.'

  'I'll ignore that, Frank.'

  'Please yourself.'

  'I want to talk about this now.'

  'What?'

  'The drinking.'

  'What do you want to say about it?'

  'I want you to talk about when you started drinking, what was happening in your life at the time. I want you to just tell me whatever comes to mind.' 'This is like proper psychoanalysis now, right?' 'No. It's just you and me talking about some things, and then maybe in amongst the things you say I might find something we can look at more closely . . . analyze, you might say.' 'So it's just guesswork.' 'No, it's not guesswork.' 'Sounds like guesswork to me.'

  'I think you should stop evading the issue now, Frank.' 'I don't know what to tell you. I started drinking when I was a teenager. A coupla beers with my friends, some shots maybe. Same as anyone that age.' 'And you carried on drinking after you joined the police.' 'Like all the guys. It was never an issue. You're on shift, you cutback on the booze the day before. You come off shift, you tank it up some. That's the nature of the beast.'

  'And you drank because you wanted to?'

  'Sure.'

  'So when did you drink because you needed to?'

  'Since I started visiting with you.'

  'Enough being cute already. Answer the question, Frank.'

  'God, I don't know. I was married maybe. The kids came. The job got tougher.'

  'And your father's death?'

  'What about it?'

  'Did you drink more after he died?'

  'I don't remember.'

  'Try, Frank. Try and remember.'

  I remember the funeral. I remember the number of crews that were there. Seemed like everyone he'd ever known from Brooklyn Organized Crime and the OCCB and the precincts he'd worked, all of them . . . even a couple of Federal suits and some reporters from The New York Times. They had a big picture of him, just a head and shoulders shot, on an easel up at the end of the church where his coffin was. He was looking back at everyone, and there was that same expression on his face.'

  'What expression?'

  'Like everyone but him was a schmuck. Everyone but him was two-bits' worth of bullshit. He looked like that a lot, like he knew he was smarter than everyone else.'

  'But he wasn't?'

  'Wasn't so smart that he could avoid getting whacked.'

  'Did you have any ideas about who killed him?'

  'Sure I did.'

  'Any that still stand up after sixteen years?'

  'Hey, it's like all of these things . . . the longer it goes on the more theories you get.'

  'Were there any theories that scared you?'

  'Like people in the department? That kind of thing?'

  'Yes, that it might have been someone in the department who was protecting their own interests.'

  'That's very cynical of you.' 'But very credible, perhaps? Considering what he was involved in for all those years.'

  'I was being ironic. Of course he was killed by someone in the department, or at least someone who was set up to do it.'

  'You're a conspiracy theorist?'

  'Everyone is a conspiracy theorist, but I know he was murdered. He took and took and took all of his working life, and finally someone decided to take something back.'

  'Well, I guess it wasn't as a result of Lufthansa. I don't think someone would have waited all those years to get him for that.'

  'Unless someone was inside for all those years, and then got him after they were released.'

  'So it could have been someone other than a police officer.'

  'It could have been anyone. It doesn't matter now.'

  'So - do you remember drinking more after he died?'

  'No.'

  'After your divorce, maybe?'

  'No.'

  'What about when your partner was killed last year?'

  'I don't want to talk about that.'

  'I think we need to talk about it.'

  'Need and want are not the same thing.'

  'I think you need to talk about it, Frank.'

  'I'm not going there, Doctor.'

  'Why?'

  'Because it's finished. It's the p
ast. I don't see the point of dragging everything out into the daylight only to realize why you packed it away so tight.'

  'You're talking about your father. That's the past, too.'

  'So?'

  'And you said you felt better as a result.'

  'I said I didn't feel worse. I can't say that I feel a great deal better.'

  'What was your partner's name?'

  'You know his name.'

  'I want to hear you say it.'

  'Why?'

  'Because it's a start.'

  'Michael Vale.'

  'There, that wasn't so hard, was it?'

  'Don't patronize me.'

  'How old was he?'

  'Younger than me.'

  'How long had you been partners?'

  'Four years. Back since May of 2003.'

  'And you were both Homicide right from the start?'

  'Robbery-Homicide until the fall of 2005, and then Homicide.'

  'And he was Gold Shield too?'

  'He was, yes.'

  'He got his shield before you?'

  'A month later.'

  'Were you competitive?'

  'This is a homicide unit, not a college fraternity.' 'So there was no rivalry between you?'

  'No, there was no rivalry. Where the hell did you get that idea from?' 'I'm just asking.'

  'I think you've asked enough for today. I have six dead girls to deal with.' 'I understand, Frank.' 'What's that supposed to mean?'

  'It means that I understand, Frank. There's only so much time that you can spare.'

  'So why make it sound like I'm finding reasons not to be here. I have a lot of work to do. A helluva lot of work—'

  'I apologize. I know you have a heavy workload, I really do. I just wish that you'd be a bit more forthcoming when you're here.' 'Hell, Doc, how long have we been meeting?' 'We started on September first, so ten days, give or take.' 'Well, in a week and a half you've got more out of me than my wife did in sixteen years. You should take that as a compliment.' 'Okay, Frank.'