Saints Of New York (41 page)

Parrish
was disappointed. The boxes of pornography turned out to be two, not twelve or
fifteen or twenty. The magazines were magazines, the DVDs were DVDs. It was the
kind of thing that Joel Erickson would call 'lightweight'. It was not difficult
to see that many of them were well in excess of eighteen years of age, and yet
dressed and photographed in such a way as to make them appear younger. It was
impossible to know - as with all such photographs - how many were there consensually
or there against their will; how many were drugged or drunk or stoned or
threatened; how many were being blackmailed or prostituted, or how many had
been convinced that if they didn't do what they were told and make like they
were enjoying it, then something dreadful would happen to them, their loved
ones, their friends . . .

It
was impossible to know anything except that Richard McKee was a man who
possessed a predilection for young-looking girls. This was not the dark world
that Parrish had hoped he would uncover.

Parrish
and Radick stood in the corner of Carole Paretski's garage on Steuben Street.
Crime Scene had been and gone, pictures had been taken. They had been given
clearance to examine the contents of the boxes, and they did so while Carole
Paretski hovered by the connecting door to ensure that Sarah and Alex didn't
wander through to see what was going on.

'I
told the kids you were bug people. Said that we might have
a
roach
infestation and you were going to check it out. I told them to stay in the
house until after you'd gone.'

'Where
did he hide these when you were together?' Parrish asked her.

'In
the crawl space up here,' she replied, and indicated the passageway that ran
from the garage to the roof of the kitchen. 'You can access it through a trap
over in the corner.'

Parrish
noted the trap, wondered if there was anything else up there that would be of
interest. He remembered the permit, the citation from the City for Ordinance
Violation.

'I
went up there,' Carole Paretski said, anticipating his next question. 'I had a
real good look, and there isn't anything else.'

'Are
there any other places in the house where he could have hidden things?'

'I'm
sure there are. You want to have a look?'

'Most
definitely,' Parrish said, 'but I'd have to get a warrant and I'd have to
arrange to get it done while the kids were away. I also wouldn't want to leave
any indications that we'd been here.'

if
I give you permission you don't need a warrant, right?'

'That's
right, yes.'

'So
you have my permission, and the kids are away all day tomorrow. You have some
people that can do this, then let's get it done.'

'Thank
you, Carole. That's much appreciated,' Parrish said.

She
didn't say a word in response. She hesitated for a moment, almost as if she
wanted to look once more through that dark and narrow window into her husband's
soul, and then she turned and closed the garage door behind her.

Parrish
and Radick went through the magazines and DVDs.
Barely
Legal. Just Eighteen. Teen Dreams.
All the
material possessed that same consistent thread, yet none of it was any worse
than the usual fare one found on the shelves of drugstores and supermarkets
all across the country. Perhaps that was the saddest thing of all - the fact
that such material was now nothing more than routine. Girls subjected to the
degrading parodies of sex that were so prevalent in such publications. Anal,
oral, double penetration, undertones of bondage and SM; some of them
dressed as schoolgirls, as cheerleaders, some of them displaying that flash of
fear or anxiety that they would have been forced to hide with wide eyes and
false smiles.
No, no, no . . . look like
you're enjoying yourself!

'This
is not what I wanted to find,' Radick commented.

'Same
here,' Parrish replied. 'The more I see, the more I think we might be dealing
with an external connection, someone outside of Welfare. Whoever got Rebecca
killed Danny, remember? I don't get that McKee is capable of shooting someone
in the head with a .22, but if there's someone in the porn business he's
working with then there'll be no shortage of people capable of that.'

'You figure a
lot of these girls wind up dead?'

'Dead,
or addicts, maybe in the porn business for real, or working as hookers. They
all wind up the same way eventually. Very rare to find anyone who makes it out,
and if they do they're badly broken.'

'So
we go through the rest of the house tomorrow, and then what?'

'We
have to find something more than this tomorrow or we have to drop him.' Parrish
held up one of the magazines. 'This shit I can buy at the drugstore.' He threw
the magazine back into the box. 'This gets us nothing aside from the fact that
he likes to read porn. We could never prove that he knowingly purchased
magazines featuring underage girls. The fact that he works at Family Welfare is
circumstantial; so is the fact that he drives an SUV. In all honesty, we still
have nothing.'

'But
do you think he's the guy? Do you think there's even the slightest possibility
that he might be the guy?'

Parrish
closed his eyes for a moment. He then turned and looked upwards, up to the
trapdoor, the crawl space within which Richard McKee had hidden his boxes of
porn, and he said, 'I can't get away from the fact that it has to be someone at
South Two, and right now I have no-one else who even comes close. We've lost
Lester Young. Now I want McKee to be the guy. That's all I can say. I really
want him to be the fucking guy.'

'And for
tonight?' Radick asked.

'I'll
get Ms Paretski to sign something that turns this over to us. I'll put it in
evidence lock-up. You go home, I'll wrap up here. I'll get Valderas to give us
three or four uniforms for the morning and we come back and go through this
place in detail. I want to see if there's anything beyond circumstantial that
connects him.'

'I'll come back
to the Precinct with you,' Radick said. 'I have
nowhere important to go tonight.'

*

Carole
Paretski seemed relieved at the disappearance of the boxes in the garage.

'What
time do the kids leave for school?' Parrish asked her.

'Eight-thirty.
Leave it until nine if you can.'

'And
you don't have to go to work?'

'I
won't go tomorrow,' she said. 'I'll call in. They won't have a problem.'

'I
wish everyone we dealt with was as co-operative as you,' Radick said.

She
shook her head. She hesitated as the sound of one of the kids running across
the upper landing interrupted her. Whichever one it was, they didn't come down
the stairs.

'It's
like the end of something,' she said. 'I've struggled with this for a long
time. I don't know what to think about it now. I try to make sense of it. He
worked, he paid for the things that he needed to pay for, but there was always
that distance. I thought it was me. You always think it's you, right?'

Parrish
started to agree but Carole Paretski wasn't waiting for an answer to her question.