Saints Of New York (26 page)

'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.'

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.

'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 cut
back on the booze the day before.
You come off shift, you tank it up some. That's the nature of the beast.'