by R.J. Ellory
He smiled to himself and turned over. He hoped Frank was okay. A weekend alone. He hoped he stayed off the sauce, sitting around the house obsessing about Richard McKee and dead teenage girls. Radick respected the man, no question. Respected him, but would do everything he could not to wind up like him. Some things you could admire from a distance without ever wanting to become them.
He listened to Caitlin making coffee in his kitchen, and then wondered if he should call Frank on the cell. Maybe later. Just to make sure he was okay. Just to make sure he wasn't planning anything crazy.
SEVENTY-NINE
It was very much the house of a single man. The refrigerator wasbarely stocked, same with the kitchen cabinets and the freezer in the back utility space. Three bedrooms, a large one at the front of the house, two smaller rooms on the left and right of the passage that led to the bathroom. It was meticulously clean and neat, just as Ron had said it would be.
Frank Parrish walked around looking for the obvious, and when he was done with the obvious he looked for everything else. He walked the carpets in all the rooms with his shoes off, feeling for indentations and ridges - the index of uneven floorboards, a trap, a hatch of some sort. He tested beneath the linoleum in the bathroom, and then carefully tugged back the plastic paneling on the side of the tub to see if there was anything behind. He went through every room, every section of upper-floor ceiling to determine if there was a trap for the attic. There wasn't, but that didn't necessarily mean that there was no crawl space; it was simply a matter of determining how such a space could be accessed. The smaller rooms had the kids' backpacks on the beds. These were stop-over rooms for their weekends there. McKee's bedroom he checked more thoroughly than all of them. Here was the TV, the DVD player, a collection of discs in a unit beside it. Action movies, regular stuff, nothing of any interest, but he did check inside each box to ensure that the advertised disc matched the one within. He went through the wardrobes, checked for false bottoms and tops, looked under the bed, lifted the mattress, pressed along the edges to make sure that nothing had been hidden there. He came away with nothing but frustration.
Parrish headed downstairs, beginning to feel a nagging sense of doubt. The kitchen also gave him nothing; he pulled back the freezer and washing machine, but however closely he looked he saw only a freezer and a washing machine.
In the back yard there was nothing but a flagstone path, a small section of grass, a couple of yards of scrubbed earth.
Parrish stood for a while looking out of the kitchen window.
Think. If I was him, what would I do? Where would I keep things that I didn't want anyone to find?
He went back to the sitting room. He moved the sofa and table away from the walls and tugged up the carpet a good three or four feet towards the center of the room. He upended the sofa and used a screwdriver to loosen sufficient staples to get his hand under the canvas backing. He felt nothing but padding and wooden struts. But there was something here. He knew it. He just knew it.
Parrish replaced everything as he'd found it. He wondered if there was an inspection pit in the floor of McKee's lock-up garage, or if the man had another property, a trailer somewhere outside of the city, a safehouse, a bolthole, a private fucking cinema . . .
The cupboard beneath the stairs was narrow and awkward, but Parrish managed to take everything out of it - paint cans, a vacuum cleaner, a box of blankets - and he kneeled in there and tapped the walls. They were all solid, no doubt about it, even the underside of the risers above his head were solid wood. No paneling, no false ceiling, no secure box padlocked and wedged against the wall. Parrish put everything back. He sat on the hall carpet and felt that overwhelming sense of disillusionment and failure he had been dreading. He tried to resist it, to slow it down, but it was upon him.
And with it came the sound of an engine, a car engine, and it slowed as it reached the front of the house, and for a second Parrish believed that it couldn't be happening. The car stopped.
Parrish got up and hurried to the front door. Through the spy hole he saw McKee's SUV, McKee exiting even as he looked, and Parrish felt his heart stop dead. He ran back to the kitchen, grabbed his holdall, his flashlight, his screwdriver, and rushed back to the under-stair cupboard. He crammed himself in there, pulled the door to as best he could even as he heard the sound of McKee unlocking the front door.
'Stay there!' McKee shouted. 'I think it's in the back.'
Parrish willed his heart to stop beating. He felt dizzy, frightened, utterly panic stricken. His pulse surged erratically; he felt it in his temples and his neck. His legs were beginning to protest the awkward space, the onset of cramp, that sudden and unbearable pain that would force him to move, to fall forwards out of the cupboard and into the hallway.
He shifted his foot. It touched the door and the door inched open a fraction. There was no handle inside, nothing to grab onto and close the door again.
McKee hurried past. Parrish saw his legs as he went through to the kitchen. He closed his eyes and held his breath.
He heard the sound of cupboards opening. He willed the cramp to go with everything he possessed. The pain was building slowly, his muscles tightening with every second. There was nothing he could do to stop it. Any moment now it would grip him like a vice, and it would take everything he possessed to not make a sound, to not move.
'Got it,' he heard McKee say, and then he was coming back down the hallway, and for a split-second Parrish believed he might just walk right on past the open cupboard door, the door that had been firmly closed when he left the house earlier that morning.
But McKee did not walk past. He slowed, and then he stopped. Here was a precise and meticulous man. Here was a man who didn't leave doors ajar.
Parrish imagined the frown, the moment of curiosity, McKee's certainty that he had last seen the door shut tight, and then he would reach for the door. He would open it, and there he would find Detective Frank Parrish of the New York Police Department's 126th Precinct crouching beneath the stairwell with a flashlight, a screwdriver, a holdall full of tools and keys and assorted housebreaking equipment. What would he do? What could he possibly say? Hi there, Mr McKee . . . well, let me say first and foremost that this isn't what it looks like? McKee knew him. He knew his name. There would be no point in running. If he ran, what would he say later when McKee reported the incident? McKee's a liar. I was never in the guy's house . . .?
The kids, Alex and Sarah, sitting in back of the SUV waiting for their dad, their innocent dad, to come right on out with whatever they'd forgotten, would see him.
Parrish could see the headlines. He could hear the IAD investigators. He could feel the shame and humiliation that he would suffer until his final dismissal. He knew this was it, this was how it would end, caught crouching in a cupboard after having committed felony BE and an illegal search of a suspect's house. Not only that, but McKee would sue the PD, then he would sue Parrish for harassment, mental cruelty, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and while Parrish reached the very lowest level of his life, McKee would be exonerated and rewarded for his undue suffering . . .
Parrish closed his eyes. He held his breath.
McKee kicked the door shut with his foot and hurried out of the house.
Parrish waited until he heard the car pull away and then he let out an anguished gasp of pain.
It was then that he realized he was trapped beneath the stairs.
EIGHTY
Carole Paretski had thought long and hard about the discussions she'd had with Detective Frank Parrish. There was something unspoken - she knew that. And though she believed that Parrish's partner was unaware of it, she knew that Parrish suspected her husband of so much more than reading stroke mags and watching Barely Legal porn films. She had misjudged the man she'd married, considered that he'd become someone else, and that did nothing but fuel the fundamental concern she felt for her daughter.
Sarah was fourteen. She was becoming a woman. She was pretty and bright and blonde, a
nd she trusted her father without question. Richard had never given her any reason to do otherwise, but Carole believed that Richard harbored dark thoughts about Sarah - the kind of thoughts that grown men should never harbor about teenage girls, especially not their own daughters. There was an aura of malevolence that she felt around her ex-husband. She sensed it, and she trusted her own instincts. That malevolence was directed at her, and not only because she had divorced him, but because she was the one that withheld Sarah from him. She was the mother and, as is usual, the courts had not only granted her custody, but they had directed Richard to pay alimony. To Richard's mind, it was as though the courts had believed her more reliable, more ethical, more honest, a better parent than he, and for this he resented his ex-wife. Carole believed that Richard would not have been at all concerned if she came to harm. He would never do anything to her directly, he was too much of a coward. But if she were to disappear from the scene then he would be only too pleased. Since the divorce she'd tried to imagine him otherwise, but it was not something that she could so easily escape. The meetings with Parrish had reminded her of everything that she disliked about her ex-husband, and the thing she liked least of all was that he still had access to the kids.
At nine-thirty that morning she concluded that the only way to allay her fears was to go over there. She had a key, had always had a key - one of those things she had insisted on when they'd at last concluded the visitation rights. Each possessed the other's house key for use in case of emergency. They were still parents, and despite the divorce, despite the animosity and acrimony, despite everything that had gone between them and everything that was yet to come, Alex and Sarah were still their most important consideration.
Richard had taken them out for the day. She knew that. He was taking them to the mall, the movies, a restaurant. He'd told them that the week before. He had more money than she did, and he lavished gifts on them. He bribed them for affection. Alex and Sarah didn't see it that way. They saw him as a loving father, and every once in a while he would drive it home by subtly implying that how it was at weekends would be how it would be if they lived with him full-time. They had been too young to be aware of what an asshole he was, and though she had no question that Alex and Sarah loved her, they were still tempted. As far as Carole was concerned, Richard had gone to the dark side, and the dark side was where he would always be.
Before she left she thought about what would happen if she was found in his house. If they came back early, having forgotten something perhaps? What would she say? She went up to Sarah's room and found her iPod. She was always leaving it behind. Okay, so she didn't use it that much these days, but it wasn't so long ago that she wouldn't have been seen without it. I just brought Sarah's iPod over. I thought she might want it. That would do. It was better than nothing.
Carole Paretski took her purse, her keys, her jacket, and left the house. It was a good thirty-minute drive south-west, all the way from Steuben, across Washington, Flatbush and down Fourth. Being Saturday, the traffic wasn't as bad as it could have been, and she crossed the Gowanus Canal a little before ten. She felt nervous, afraid even, but there was a question in her mind that had to be resolved. Was his house full of this stuff? The same kind of stuff that Parrish and his partner had taken away? Were her kids spending weekends with a man who watched child pornography and wanted to fuck teenagers? She shuddered at the thought. If he touched Sarah ... Hell, if Richard touched Sarah she would kill him. She would drive a kitchen knife Into his eyes and castrate him. She would douse him in gasoline and let the motherfucker burn to death.
Carole Paretski came out from the junction too quickly and someone blared at her. Surprised, she pulled over suddenly, her heart racing. What was she doing? This was crazy behavior. But would she say that if something happened to Sarah and she had done nothing to prevent it? They were out - all three of them. She had the house key. She just had to know. She needed to.
She pulled up outside the house on Sackett Street. She paused for a moment. There was nothing else to do. She flipped the door lever and climbed out.
EIGHTY-ONE
Robert Parrish sat at the kitchen table and looked at his mother defiantly. He had long since tired of the complaints and bitterness that seemed to hover at the edges of every conversation about his father.
'He would understand,' Robert said once again, and rolled his eyes exasperatedly. 'The fact that you and he seem incapable of even having a civil conversation these days is beside the point. It's my education, it's my life, and I do actually have a say in it.'
'But you've done two years, Robert, two years of the course, and now you want to drop it and do something else entirely.'
'Yes.'
Clare Baxter sighed. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then reached for a cigarette. She lit it, smoked it rapidly like a teenager, shaking her head every once in a while as if she was battling with some internal conflict.
'I'll speak to him,' Robert said.
'No,' Clare replied, 'I will speak to him. I will deal with this, Robert.'
'You're just going to try and convince him to make me do what you want. The thing you seem to forget, and this is not the first time, is that what you want and what I want are not the same thing.'
'You think I don't have your best interests at heart?'
'I think you have your own best interests at heart—'
'That's a dreadful thing to say—'
Robert sneered. 'What's the matter? You can't handle the truth?'
Clare Baxter gritted her teeth. She ground her half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray and got up from the table. She neededto do something - anything - to distract herself. Otherwise she would more than likely slap the disrespectful—
'I am going to speak to him,' Robert said, interrupting her thoughts.
Clare reached the sink. She turned back towards him and took a deep breath.
'Your father is a drunk, Robert. That's a truth for you right there. You say I can't handle the truth . . . well, let me share a few home truths with you about the marvelous and wonderful Frank Parrish.'
Robert started to get up. 'I don't want to listen to this shit anymore Mom, I really don't—'
'Sit the fuck down, Robert! I'm serious now. You sit right there for a minute and listen to what I have to say. You can do that much at least. What you do after that is entirely up to you. You go over and see him. Go tell him you're going to quit engineering halfway through the course. Graphic design? Jesus, you really believe that there is work out there for you—'
'What the fuck do you want from me, eh?' Robert snapped back. 'You want me to go on doing something that I don't like and can't do?'
'Well, if you can't do it that's probably got more to do with your own attitude than anything else—'
'It's not about attitude, it's about purpose. I've done enough of it to realize that I don't want to spend the rest of my life in the guts of filthy fucking machines in dirty factories, smelling like a fucking—'
'Enough!' Clare snapped. 'We don't need to scream and shout at one another, and I certainly don't see the need for you to use that kind of language to me.'
Robert took a deep breath. 'Okay,' he said quietly. 'Okay, this is the way it is. I am not going to carry on doing engineering. I am going to quit the class and do graphic design. This is what I want to do. If I told Dad he would say okay, that's fine, if that's what you want to do and you're sure—'
'Your dad would just say what he thought you wanted to hear—'
'No, Mom! Dad would treat me like an adult and respect the fact that I have power of choice.'
Clare hesitated, and then something just came over her and she let it go. 'Robert, listen to me. He's a drunk. He is in trouble at work. He's always in trouble at work. You know they took his driver's license off of him and put him on pay-hold. He doesn't know that I know this, but I do. His last partner was killed in the line of duty, and there was an internal investigation to determine whether Frank contributed to that si
tuation—'
'And the internal investigation decreed that every action he took was in-policy, that he demonstrated the exact procedure and protocol for that scenario—' 'You sound like a police manual.'
'No, Mom, I sound like someone who's taken the time to talk to his father about what really happened with him and Michael Vale. You want to know what happened?' 'No, I really don't, to tell you the truth—' 'Well, I think you should. I think that's the least you should do. Listen to what someone else has to say for a moment instead of being so eager to hear your own voice.' 'How dare you—'
'No, Mom, how fucking dare you! He's my father and I love him, and here's a blind-sider for you, Caitlin loves him too. We respect him for who he is and what he does. You never worked before you got divorced. He supported you and us, and as far as we're concerned he did a damned good job of it. You only started working after he left, and that was because you had to. You didn't have a fucking choice. Well, let me tell you something. He did have a choice about what he could have done. He didn't become a cop because he wanted to. He became a cop because he needed to, because he felt it was the right thing. He had a sense of responsibility, which is more than I can say about you . . .'
That's when Clare Baxter lost it. She took two swift steps forward and raised her hand to slap her son, but even as her hand arced towards him, Robert stood up. The chair fell over backwards. He caught her arm by the wrist before it reached him. They stood there for a moment - deadlocked, a stand-off - and then Robert leaned forward, inches taller than his mother, and said, 'I'll do what I want, Mom. That's the simple truth of it. I will do what I want when I want how I want, and there's not a goddamned thing in the world you can do to stop me.'
Robert released her wrist and stepped away. The look in her eyes told him that she was not going to challenge him anymore.