He knew where she was going, but to be perverse he said, “They’re cops?”
“Aside from that. They’ve all warned me about all the creepos and pervs on the Internet. I know how to handle myself. I thought you might give me a little credit.”
“I do.”
She rolled her eyes, disbelieving. The sound of a bus horn honking forestalled any further discussion of the topic. Stevie grabbed the handle of her backpack and slung it over her shoulder as she stood. “There’s my ride.”
For the first time, he noticed what she was wearing—a crop top that didn’t completely meet the waistband of her skirt and a pair of thigh-high stockings that didn’t quite meet her hem. “Are you sure your mother would let you out of the house dressed like that?”
“Bye, Uncle Zach.” She hurried up to him, smacked a kiss on his cheek, and was out the door.
He supposed he had his answer, to that question at least. He still hadn’t gotten any further in finding out what was going on between her and her mother. Barbara called him every day to check on Stevie, and he sensed Barbara held something back from him that she’d rather spill. Something kept her from doing so; maybe she feared he’d tell Adam whatever she said. But she had to know him better than that. She’d kept his secrets; he’d do the same for her.
Oh well, he didn’t really have time to worry about it now. He needed to get changed and get back on the job. They needed to find the girl’s identity and if she was the latest victim of the Amazon Killer or some other foul play. He shut down the computer and went back to his room. The king-sized bed that dominated the room called to him, though most of his dreams of late centered on Alex, either her present incarnation or the one he’d known in the past. Maybe if she were here in the flesh rather than merely tormenting his psyche, he wouldn’t have had the same degree of resolve. That was something else he couldn’t dwell on—the prospect of Alex’s soft body under his. That was a long-ago event never to be repeated except in his own imagination. He showered, changed, and headed back out the door.
“We have to stop now.”
Alex watched the frown spread across Damaris Freeman’s face. It was the same every week. Damaris might be a narcissistic complainer, but she had no pressing need for therapy, or rather none she made use of. Damaris wasn’t interested in self-examination or change. She simply wanted a sounding board for her petty whinings and complaints. But since Alex was in no position to turn patients away she put up with her. Besides, every time she tried to end their sessions, Damaris would phone her ceaselessly until Alex relented and took her back.
“Are you sure that was the whole fifty minutes?”
“Quite sure.”
Damaris pouted. “I never even got to tell you about the dream I had two nights ago.”
Alex said nothing, merely waited with her hands folded. Eventually Damaris picked up her teeny pocketbook from where she’d left it on the floor and slung it over her shoulder. “I guess it will have to wait until next time,” she said in a voice designed to guilt Alex for making her leave.
“Next time,” Alex echoed, wishing there would be no next time, both for her sake and for Damaris’s. What Damaris needed was to cultivate some interests outside her own shallow problems—something Alex had been unable to help her accomplish. Then again, Alex had never envisioned herself in this sort of practice. Maybe it was her father’s influence, but the criminal mind fascinated her, it always had. They honestly didn’t think like other people. She’d devoted her training and her practice to making sense of those others found unfathomable. She hadn’t intended to spend her life coddling young women with juvenile complaints.
Alex sighed. That wasn’t a fair assessment of her practice. Many of her clients were helped by her and went on to live fuller, happier, more productive lives. Nor was she being fair to Damaris. But seeing the other woman provoked in Alex a sense of impotence in her and invariably annoyed and depressed her. That’s why Alex always scheduled her early in the day and made room for a break after she left.
When Alex considered that there was a young girl in a nearby hospital fighting for her life, who would be scarred both mentally and physically forever if she survived, Damaris’s melodrama over minor complaints grated more than usual.
With her fingertips, Alex rubbed her temples where a dull throb beat. These headaches of hers were getting worse. She knew it was the stress of dealing with this case—one more reason she hoped it would be over soon. But as her mother used to say, if wishes were horses beggars would ride. She needed to do something proactive to feel like she was accomplishing something. But what?
Her phone rang, startling her. It was her private line, not the one that went through Alice. Very few people had that number, but since it was one number off from the main one, people often dialed it by mistake. “Dr. Waters, how can I help you?”
“Dr. Waters, this is Ginnie Thorpe.”
Alex sat up in her seat. Walter’s sister was calling her? “What can I do for you, Ms. Thorpe?”
“You can’t believe the things they’re saying about my brother, can you? My brother is no killer.”
Alex didn’t know how any human could state that so unequivocally about another human. No one could know completely the depths of another’s psyche. But given the nature of these crimes, she could see how Ginnie Thorpe’s mind would rebel at the possibility that her brother could be responsible.
“Do you know where Walter is?” Alex asked.
“He hasn’t tried to contact me, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think he would now considering his name is all over the papers. He wouldn’t want to get me involved.”
Alex didn’t know if she bought that. Walter had looked to his big sister for protection and had railed about her running away and not providing it.
“What is it you really want to tell me?” she aked Ginnie.
“I’m not trying to say we had an ideal childhood. My mother had no use for Walter, but not because he was a boy. He was born sickly and problematic. She couldn’t be bothered. But let’s face it Doctor, my brother was not the brightest bulb in the box, if you know what I mean. I doubt he’d know a Greek god from a can of tuna fish. But if he did, they’d have to better than the flesh-and-blood men my mother brought home.”
“What do you mean?”
“My mother made her living on her back. She brought men home. Most of them slapped her around before or after, you know what I mean? I hated it, but Walter used to watch. If the door was cracked a little, you could see them in the broken mirror over her dresser without them noticing you.”
Well, that might explain Thorpe’s predilection for shattered mirrors and the linkage between violence and sex. “You didn’t watch?”
“No. I figured I might be next.”
“Were you?”
There was a long pause before the sister answered. “Sometimes.”
Alex exhaled. Such a warped family, but nothing she hadn’t seen a hundred times before. What did surprise her was Ginnie Thorpe’s candidness, especially since the purpose of the call was ostensibly to prove her brother’s innocence. Nothing she’d said so far had been all that helpful in that regard.
“Someone must be framing him, Ginnie continued, “someone who hates him. I don’t know. Our mother might have been a whore, but she died when we were ten years old. Walter was never fixated on that junk.”
It wasn’t unheard of for one criminal to mimic another’s pattern in order to deflect suspicion from themselves. Whoever was committing the murders might have co-opted Thorpe’s m.o. and added his own sickness to it. But could she believe that happened here? She honestly didn’t know.
The line went dead and Alex hung up the phone, wondering what Ginnie Thorpe’s true motive had been for making the call. Could someone be framing Walter? Or could someone be using Walter’s psychosis as the basis for a killing spree? Even if either implausible scenario was true, who could it be?
Alex leaned back in her chair. There always the possibil
ity that Walter’s sister was as nuts as he was. No one survived such a childhood unscathed. They didn’t all become serial killers or criminals of any kind, but a good dose of therapy wouldn’t hurt. She rested her elbows on the table and put her forehead in her hands.
A knock sounded at her door. “Anybody home?”
Alex looked up to see Roberta peeking in her door.
Roberta slumped into one of the visitor chairs. “You look like hell anyway. Late night?”
Roberta sounded far too hopeful for Alex’s liking. “You could put it that way.”
“That wouldn’t have anything to do with that hunky police detective who keeps showing up here, would it?”
Alex sighed again. She wasn’t the type of woman to run to her girlfriends with every bit of dirt from her own life. She didn’t mind being a shoulder for others, but her secret thoughts she kept, well, secret. If Sammy had taught her anything it was to guard closely what she held dear, and that included her emotions.
Still, it would be nice to have the opinion of someone who wouldn’t judge her, berate her, or cause her name to be mentioned in the Daily News.
“What are you so worried about spilling? I already know he’s your father’s ex-partner.”
“How did you find that out?”
Roberta offered her a wicked smile. “A certain lawyer and I are following the case. We shared.”
Alex cast Roberta a disgusted look. Leave it to a lawyer to ferret out things that were none of their business in the first place. “So what if he is?”
“That means you two have some sort of history, no?”
“We knew each other. If you must know, I had a monster crush on him.” That wasn’t an accurate description of what she’d felt, but it was one Roberta would understand. In truth, she’d cared for him as if they were equals, though in fact they hadn’t been.
“So what’s the problem? I caught a glimpse of him looking at you. He’s interested. Worse things could happen to a girl than to have her girlhood crush panting after her.”
“Here’s the problem, as you put it, in a nutshell. Zach idolized my father. He was young and my father took him under his wing. I’m sure you can imagine that the things that make one an ideal cop and mentor are not the same things your average girl is looking for in a father.”
“I guess not.”
“If someone has to disabuse Zach of his notions about my father, I don’t want to have to be the one to do it.”
The minute the words were out of her mouth Alex knew she lied. That’s what she’d been telling herself, but Zach was a big boy. He could handle the truth about her father. It was Zach’s opinion of her she worried would change. Even after all this time she still cared what he thought of her.
Roberta shook her head in a way that suggested she didn’t believe Alex either. “I’m no shrink,” she said. “But it sounds to me like you still have feelings for this guy.”
That was the problem; she had too many feelings, all of them jumbled on top of one another not making any sense. She didn’t tell Roberta that, though. Alex didn’t bare her soul to anyone, not even the shrink she’d been required to see as part of her training. She’d already done more sharing with Roberta than she usually did. “What’s your point?”
Roberta shrugged. “I have to have a point? I was just making an observation. But tell me this—has he said or done anything to make you think he wants to start something on a more than platonic level?”
Alex sighed. She’d accused him of that, but honestly he hadn’t done anything, unless looking counted. For all she knew she’d projected onto him her own desires, since despite everything going on and everything that stood between them, she still wondered if there would have been any future for them if things hadn’t turned out the way they did.
But enough was enough. She’d said all on the subject she intended to. “I thought you wanted to hear about the case.”
Roberta affected a child’s pout. “Fine, spoilsport. Go ahead.”
“On one condition. You’ve got to tell me what you think from your professional perspective.”
Roberta scrutinized her for a long moment, perhaps picking up that for the first time in a long while Alex questioned her own judgment.
Roberta sat up and crossed her legs. “Deal. What’s going on?”
Alex capsulized the events of the last twenty-four hours, leaving in the call from Thorpe’s sister, but leaving out her own feelings about the girl. She ended with the supposition that at least some of the girls might have been contacted online.
“As for the sister,” Roberta said, “I can’t help you with that. She’s probably one fry short of a Happy Meal herself.”
“No kidding. But at least I know why he became so agitated when I pressed him for information about his childhood. Who would want to reveal that?”
“As far as that online thing goes,” Roberta continued, “I’ve got a friend who does work with that. They track and ‘out’ child predators on this Web site he runs.”
Being that Alex was a cop’s daughter, Alex’s first question was, “Is that legal?”
“I’m not sure. I know they used to threaten to arrest him every other week until he started cooperating with the local PDs, giving them information they used to catch these guys. And his heart is in the right place. His sister was abducted by some scumbag she met online. They got her back, but she wasn’t the same after that.”
Alex could imagine she wouldn’t be. “How do you think he could help? I doubt whoever killed these girls announced his intentions online.”
“He monitors the chat rooms kids go to. Maybe a particular wacko will stand out to him. And think about it, he’s got to be local or someone who travels to the city monthly. If he’s targeting girls here, he might stick to chats based in New York or this region. Honestly, I don’t know enough about it to be much help either. But if you want to talk to him, I think I can arrange it.”
Well, she’d wondered about something she could do to feel proactive. This might come to nothing, but she didn’t see how it could hurt. “Sure. See what you can set up.”
Roberta checked her watch. “I’ll call as soon as my next session is over. Which reminds me, I better go.”
Alex hid a yawn behind her hand. She hoped Roberta set something up early since Alex doubted she’d make it through the day without a nap.
“Is that it?”
Zach shifted in his uncomfortable chair, hoping that the early morning meeting was drawing to a close. Each of the detectives had been asked to report the results of what they were working on. A preliminary report had come back from the techs examining the car. A fingerprint not matching Thorpe’s, the victim’s, or the car’s owners had been found in the blood on the dashboard guaranteeing that the killer had been a copycat, not the real deal. Damn. As if they needed more complications in this case. The fingerprint wasn’t on file either, which also didn’t help. When that news came out, Smitty had whispered to him, “It was probably the boyfriend.” Zach couldn’t argue with that, but it disturbed him to think that someone this girl had known had done this to her.
A couple of the guys had been searching abandoned, incomplete, or in-progress houses in the area as a possible primary crime scene, without success. Even that chickenshit McKay claimed to have a new lead on Thorpe’s whereabouts, though he hadn’t elaborated on where that was or how he’d come by such a lead.
Honestly Zach didn’t care, since McKay having something to do meant he’d be staying away from Zach. The girl in the hospital hadn’t woken either. The doctors were keeping her in a coma hoping her brain would have a chance to rest and heal. More bothersome was the fact that no one had come forward to claim her. Given that they knew the identity of neither the victim nor her assailant, someone coming forward to identify her might be their only shot of finding out either.
That wasn’t quite true either. Alex had been right about the crime scene. It was sloppy, full of evidence, including DNA that could be linked back to
the doer when they came up with a suspect. Right now, the neighborhood from which the car was stolen was being canvassed to see if anyone had seen who stole the car.
A knock sounded at the door. One of the civilian aides poked her head in the door. “I hate to interrupt, but there’s a Mr. Parks here. He thinks he might be Jane Doe’s father.”
If Zach had been given a moment for a prediction, he’d have guessed all eyes had turned to him. This was his area of specialization, talking to the grieved or bereaved after one of their own was a victim of sexual assault. He was an expert in asking the ubiquitous litany of questions: Was there penetration? With a penis or other object? And on and on. You got used to asking them, even if the victim was a ten-year-old girl or a seventy-five-year-old granny, but they were never comfortable. Nor was it a picnic dealing with the relatives or the crazies that showed up looking for five minutes of attention, but that was the job. He stood before any one of the people staring back at him had a chance to ask if he’d handle it.
Avery Parks was a beefy man of Polish or maybe Slovakian heritage, but short on stature. He wore a windbreaker over the blue uniform of a Transit Authority worker. He held a cap in his hands that he’d twisted into an unnatural shape. He turned in Zach’s direction as he approached.
Zach immediately felt sorry for this man. He wasn’t one of the crazies; he was the genuine article, at least if his demeanor and the sheen of banked tears in his eyes could be believed. Even if his daughter were not the girl in question, some situation had brought him here that in all likelihood would not turn out well. Zach extended his hand toward Parks. “Mr. Parks, I’m Detective Stone. Let’s go somewhere that we can talk.”
Parks nodded as he shook his hand. Zach led him to the small interrogation room. It was quiet, there was a tape recorder to capture their conversation, and if anyone else was interested in listening in they could do so without Parks’s knowledge.
After getting Parks’s permission to record his statement, Zach took the seat opposite the other man. “What do you want to tell me, Mr. Parks?”
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