A Simple Act of Violence (17 page)

‘I figure he selects loners . . . watches them, follows them . . .’

‘Not realistic,’ Miller said. ‘He’d have to know them all to one degree or another or it would be the most remarkably random job. Find a woman, start following her, learn her movements, find out something about her work, who she hangs out with, and the moment she looks like she has some kind of personal life you drop her and go find someone else who seems a better candidate. Doesn’t work for me.’

‘You said something about their social security numbers—’

‘Yes, the first three. On the face of it all fine, no problem at all. Any kind of routine and cursory check, no more or less than we would ordinarily do, and everything holds together. If Catherine Sheridan’s number checked out the same way I would never have looked further.’

‘But it didn’t, right?’

‘Right. So I start to dig. I go back five years, start to look at drivers’ licenses, traffic citations, club and organization memberships, bank account details, anything I can think of, and I see a pattern.’

‘Kinda pattern?’ Roth asked, leaning, forward, intent.

‘There’s something about every one of them that doesn’t hang together.’ Miller stood up, reached for a yellow legal pad on his desk, and sat down beside Roth. He used his pen to point at lines he’d written on the page. ‘Margaret Mosley, thirty-seven years old, date of birth on her driver’s license is June 1969. Go back to June 1969 and there is no record with the city of anyone named Margaret Mosley registered in Births.’

‘So she wasn’t born here,’ Roth said.

‘Social Security file gives her place of birth as Washington.’

‘So there’s an error somewhere.’

Miller smiled knowingly. ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet, my friend. Second one, Ann Rayner, forty years old, date of birth given as January 3rd, 1966. Social security file gives no place of birth so we can’t even find out if her birth was recorded.’

‘Social security file has to register her place of birth.’

Miller nodded. ‘Just like every healthcare practitioner and medical facility has to register a patient who comes for treatment, right?’

‘And the third one?’

‘Third one looks an awful lot better,’ Miller said. ‘Barbara Lee, twenty-nine years old. Date of birth is February 24th, 1977. Social security file gives her place of birth as Washington, D.C. Records at the city registry confirm that there was a Barbara Caroline Lee born in Washington on the 24th of February 1977, but Deaths records that the same Barbara Caroline Lee died on February 27th of the same year.’

‘Three days?’ Roth asked.

‘Place of death is University Hospital. Whoever Barbara Lee was she never made it out of maternity ICU, let alone to twenty-nine years old and working in a florist’s.’

‘You’ve been busy this morning . . . God, I wished I’d stayed home.’

‘It’s all bullshit,’ Miller said. He rose from the chair and once again walked back to the window. ‘The common denominator isn’t in these people as victims, it’s with them as people. And you wanna know what I think?’

Roth raised his eyebrows.

‘I think that we need to find out what the Sheridan woman did for a living, who she knew, if she knew anyone at all. I want to look into what happened to this Darryl King guy, and then we need to find out who went with Catherine Sheridan to see him.’

‘You want to find out the deal with this cop McCullough as well?’ Roth asked.

‘All of them,’ Miller said. ‘I want to find out who they all are.’

‘I’ll have someone check all the McCulloughs in Washington, ’ Roth said.

‘So right now we go get these pictures from Reid, and then back to the Sheridan place,’ Miller said. ‘We go through everything until we find out who she was.’

Roth rose from his chair. ‘And the first three? What about them?’

‘This one I want to know about first . . . we’ll start on the other three when we get some of this information from Metz and Oliver,’ Miller replied. He reached for his jacket. ‘The guy phoned for pizza. Appears he used the Darryl King case number. We know for sure that McCullough would have had that number. Maybe it’s a cop we’re looking for. A retired one sure, but a cop all the same. And then there’s the newspaper clipping, the photographs beneath the bed . . . maybe something, maybe not, but there’s more here than with the first three. I think he’s telling us to find him, Al . . . I think he wants us to find him.’

Downstairs at the desk Roth left a request with the sergeant to run a trace on Michael McCullough.

‘Where you off to?’ the sergeant asked. ‘Just in case Lassiter asks.’

‘Forensics division,’ Roth said. ‘Got some pictures to collect.’

 

 

 

 

 

He smiled. Stood over me, the smell of wood and wax and tobacco around him like a mist, and he smiled.

 

 

Eleven a.m. and Natasha Joyce leaves her apartment and heads out of the projects on foot. She catches a bus that will take her along Martin Luther King into Fairmont Heights. East Capitol Street metro station, a half dozen stops, and she walks up to the corner of A Street North East and Sixth. Imposing building, marble and granite all over it. Has on an overcoat, but the day is cold, bitter, a blustery wind that causes her eyes to water. Makes her way up the steps and into the foyer, the grand reception of this almighty Police Department Administrations Unit, staffed by people who don’t call you back. Homage to the white man. All so much bullshit and bravado.