Hold Still (6 page)

TEN

October 6th

Outside Anita’s room, Jocelyn briefed
Kevin, although he had heard most of the conversation with Anita. “Where’s the nurse?” Jocelyn asked.

“Bathroom,” Kevin replied.

When Kim Bottinger emerged from the restroom down the hall, Jocelyn pulled her aside. “I need to know the name of the other woman—the prostitute.”

Kim looked around, suddenly nervous. She jammed her hands into her scrubs’ pockets. “There are HIPAA laws,” she said. “I could lose my job. Get fired.”

“Goddamn privacy laws,” Kevin groused.

Jocelyn leaned into the woman, her brow furrowed in concern. “You called us, Kim. You’ve been checking in on Anita. I can see that this is eating at you. Now there are a group of sadistic rapists on the loose. I don’t need the woman’s records. Just a name. That’s all.”

Kim swallowed. She looked away for a moment. Her hands broke free of her uniform pockets. She stroked the inside of her palm with the fingers of her other hand—in the same place Anita had been crucified.

“No one has to know who gave us her name,” Jocelyn added. “You give me a name, and we’re done here.”

Kevin caught the nurse’s eye and smiled reassuringly. “You’ll be helping a lot of women.”

Kim looked back at Jocelyn, her face paler than it had been moments earlier. She glanced down the hall, but no one in or around the nearby nurses’ station appeared to be listening. She lowered her voice anyway. “Alicia,” she said. “Alicia Herrigan or Herman—something like that. She was tall, like five-nine, and she had a big tattoo on her throat. I don’t remember what it was, but it was big.”

Jocelyn laid a hand on Kim’s forearm. “Thank you.”

“How long ago was that?” Kevin asked.

“About six months ago.”

Jocelyn pulled a business card from her jacket pocket and pressed it into Kim’s hand. “Thank you. Call me if you think of anything else or if another victim comes in.”

“What is this? Some kind of religious thing?” Kevin asked as they weaved their way through the parking lot, looking for the car. He popped a Nicorette tab. His lips smacked as he chewed.

“Keys,” Jocelyn demanded.

Kevin tossed her the keys, and she unlocked the car. It had started to rain. A fine mist fell outside the car. Once inside, Jocelyn flipped on the windshield wipers. “I don’t think there is any religious element here at all.”

She didn’t have to look at Kevin to know one eyebrow was raised skeptically. “They crucified her.”

He took out another piece of gum, but Jocelyn snatched it out of his hand. “Will you just fucking smoke? You’re killing me with all that lip smacking.”

“This case has you cranky,” he said as he glanced out the window, his chewing noticeably quieter. “I’d love to, believe me. Chicks don’t like the smoke smell.”

“Chicks who smoke do.”

“Funny. It’s not healthy. You used to smoke. Now you have Olivia, and you’re all straight and narrow and shit. You’re real fucking boring now, Rush.”

Jocelyn thought about the anger management class she had taken that day and sighed. “Not that boring, Kev. Not that boring. Look, this was more about mutilation and humiliation. The guy watched, for fuck’s sake. He hammered in the nails, and then he watched. He jerked off. It’s sadistic.”

“Well, let’s turn it over to SVU.”

Jocelyn pulled out her cell phone and called the SVU only to find out Lieutenant Vaughn was on the street. She had his cell phone number from their earlier conversation. She tried that three times, but it went to voice mail.

“They’re pretty swamped down there,” Kevin reminded her. “They got the Germantown Groper, the Center City rapist, and the Kaufman thing. Oh, and the usual stuff that doesn’t make the news—like our friend Anita.”

Jocelyn groaned. She leaned her elbow on the ledge of the window and rubbed her eyes. “I forgot about the Kaufman thing. God, I hope they find that girl.”

Taylor Kaufman was a nine-year-old who had been abducted from her Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood in broad daylight two days earlier. In the weeks leading up to her kidnapping, there had been two prior abduction attempts by a man matching the description of Taylor’s abductor.

Kevin’s lip smacking grew in intensity. “Me too. Look, they aren’t getting back to you today. Let’s get back to the Division. We’ll file our report and see what else comes in.”

Jocelyn turned to him, holding his gaze intently. “I don’t want to file a report.”

Kevin stared back for a long moment and shook his head. “Rush, I know you and Anita go way back, but this isn’t our case. You can’t cherry-pick an SVU case. We don’t handle sex crimes. We have enough calls without doing someone else’s work.”

“She said the car was gray,” Jocelyn went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “I thought I heard a GRM about a gray Bonneville on the way over here.”

A GRM, or General Radio Memorandum, was Philadelphia’s version of an APB. Jocelyn flipped on the police radio in the car and listened.

“It could be connected,” she added.

Kevin sighed and scratched the thinning hair on the back of his head. “Rush. This. Is. Not. Our. Case.”

Jocelyn swatted Kevin’s arm, immediately regretting it as pain reverberated through her wrist. “Come on, Kev. We’re already on the street. Let’s just hit the Dunkin’ Donuts on the way back to the Division and see if they’ve got surveillance. We’ll save Vaughn the trip.”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “Anything else you want to do for this guy?”

Jocelyn smiled and pulled out of Einstein’s parking lot. “I want to find this Alicia Hardigan.”

“I thought Kim said her name was Herrigan.”

Jocelyn shook her head. “Yeah, she said Herrigan, but I think I know the girl she’s talking about, and her name is Alicia Hardigan. She used to work the Stroll. She had a big butterfly tattoo on her throat.”

Kevin shrugged. “Okay. But then we file the report and get on with our lives.”

“Absolutely,” Jocelyn agreed.

The manager of the Dunkin’ Donuts showed them footage of Anita Grant meeting with two black men who matched the description Anita had given. They appeared to talk for less than five minutes before Anita stood and exited the restaurant. The two men stared at one another for a moment and left. The black-and-white footage was grainy, but Jocelyn and Kevin could use it to corroborate Anita’s story. The manager promised to burn the footage onto a DVD for them by the end of the night. They returned to Northwest Detectives to prepare a report for SVU and download the e-mails Anita had forwarded to Jocelyn. Kevin went out to get cheesesteaks, and Jocelyn took the steps up to the detectives’ offices.

She found her sister sitting next to her desk, wrists cuffed in front of her. Camille looked sunken and pale, with dark smudges beneath her eyes. The orange halter top she wore seemed too large for her. Her once pert breasts were flat. Her curves had given way to hard angles, bones straining against her skin. A short denim skirt barely concealed her legs, which made Jocelyn cringe. She was two pounds away from anorexic.

Camille’s eyes lit up when she saw Jocelyn. She shifted in her seat like a dog on a chain as Jocelyn approached.

“What are you doing here?” Jocelyn said. “What is she doing here?” she asked more loudly, her question addressed to the handful of colleagues at their desks.

“Talk to Inez,” someone called back.

“Jesus Christ,” Jocelyn muttered. It had become common practice for the officers in the Division to bring Camille up to Jocelyn’s desk so that she could decide whether or not to charge Camille whenever she got arrested. But Jocelyn had been clear with Inez that Camille was to get no special treatment this time.

“Joce, Joce, you got smokes?”

Jocelyn sat, facing Camille. “You know I don’t smoke.”

The handcuffs rattled. Camille deposited something onto the desk. It was then that Jocelyn noticed the twenty origami figures littering the desk. She unfolded one—it was an evidence voucher.

“Camille!”

Camille rocked back and forth in her chair, her eyes all lit up and hungry. “You were gone a really long time. I didn’t have any smokes.”

“This is important paperwork, Camille.”

The rocking increased, causing the chair to creak a little. “I’m sorry. The folding—it calms me down. You know that.”

Sighing, Jocelyn went to Kevin’s desk and found his emergency pack of cigarettes in the middle drawer. She tossed the pack at Camille, who clutched it greedily, nearly crushing the pack in her hands. Sitting back down, Jocelyn used Kevin’s lighter to light one for Camille. Technically, smoking wasn’t allowed in the building, but the detectives routinely disregarded the rule when it came to witnesses and victims. And Camille.

The rocking slowed with her first inhale. Kevin had left a mostly empty can of Coke on his desk. Jocelyn grabbed it and set it in front of Camille to use as an ashtray. She smoked silently as Jocelyn unfolded each of her creations, smoothing out each page. The origami had become a nervous habit for Camille over the years. Concentrating on the intricate folds, creasing the seams over and over, always helped calm her when she was anxious. She’d always been good at it. Uncle Simon’s star student. Jocelyn had never had the patience for it.

Jocelyn booted up her computer so she could log in to her e-mail account and print out the e-mails Anita had forwarded from her BlackBerry.

“Have you heard from Uncle Simon?” Camille asked.

“No,” Jocelyn lied.

“Isn’t he handling Mom and Dad’s estate?”

“I’m sure he is.”

“Do you think they cut me out?”

“Well, if they didn’t, they should have.”

Camille ignored the dig and moved on to something else. “How’s Taffy?”

Jocelyn winced. “Her name is not Taffy. We’ve been over this.”

Clink,
clink
went the cuffs. Camille lit a second cigarette from the first one.

“That’s right. It’s Olivia now. I don’t know why you changed it.”

“Because I don’t want her to grow up to be a stripper,” Jocelyn said flatly.

Camille humphed. “How’s Olivia?”

“None of your business.”

Camille quickly covered her wounded look with one of intense earnestness. “Can I see her? Just once?”

Jocelyn shook her head, eyes on her computer screen. “You just got picked up for prostitution. What do you think?”

Camille’s shoulders sagged, rounding forward, making her look even more sunken. “She’s my daughter,” she said quietly.

Jocelyn tried to keep her voice down, the old anger bubbling up like bile in her throat. “She’s
my
daughter,” Jocelyn corrected.

Camille stared at her lap and deposited the second cigarette butt into the can. A tense moment passed. Jocelyn leaned toward her sister. “Do you know what Ramon said when I asked him to sign away his parental rights?”

Camille met Jocelyn’s eyes, a small flicker of remorse in her gaze. “We weren’t really together. I mean, I was going to break up with him.”

Ignoring Camille’s lie, Jocelyn continued. “He said, ‘Take her. She can’t earn me no money till she’s at least four.’ ”

The memory still made Jocelyn sick to her stomach. Sometimes looking at Olivia now, it took her breath away to think of all the things Jocelyn had saved her from.

Clink, clink.
Camille squirmed as if her chair were on fire. “But she was my baby,” she pointed out weakly. “He wasn’t the one taking care of her.”

Jocelyn laughed, the sound a short dry bark. She pushed back in her chair. “You weren’t taking care of her either. Unless you think raising a seven-day-old infant in a meth lab and putting her to sleep in the bathroom sink makes you mother of the year.”

“It was only temporary—”

Jocelyn raised a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care. She’s mine now. My daughter. You come talk to me after you’ve been clean for a couple of years. Then maybe you can see your niece.”

Camille slumped in her chair. Jocelyn could see her give up. Her eyes wandered around the room, the intense expression on her face gone flat. There wasn’t much besides drugs that could hold Camille’s attention for longer than five minutes. As Camille lit another cigarette, Jocelyn went back to printing out the e-mails Anita had sent her.

“One more and then you’re going down to booking,” Jocelyn said.

Camille looked stricken. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Camille said nothing and took her time finishing the cigarette. When Jocelyn heard the sizzle of the lit butt being extinguished in the Coke can, she stood up and pulled Camille to her feet. “Let’s go.”

Camille held both hands out, palms up, the handcuffs knocking against her bony wrists. “Come on, Joce. Give me a break.”

“No,” Jocelyn said.

They passed Kevin on the stairs. He smiled at them and opened his mouth, Camille’s name dying on his tongue when he caught Jocelyn’s icy glare. He clamped his mouth shut and gave them a wide berth. When Jocelyn returned to her desk, he stared at her until she snapped, “What?”

Kevin shook his head. “That’s cold, Rush. Real cold.”

ELEVEN

October 6th

Kevin tossed the three e-mails
and Craigslist ad that Jocelyn had printed out onto the heap of paperwork already cluttering his desk. “This is useless,” he said. He picked up the nub of his cheesesteak and popped it into his mouth. “The ad is for a companion—who sounds more like someone who cares for the damn elderly—and his response to it says nothing.”

Jocelyn shrugged. “Well, it gives the time and location of the meet. I’ll send it over to my friend in computer crimes and see if she can track down the owner of the Yahoo account. She owes me a favor.”

Kevin scoffed. “I’ll be in the nursing home before you get that back. Why bother? Just give it to SVU. You talk to the lieutenant over there? What’s his name? Vaughn?”

Jocelyn nodded. “Yeah, Caleb Vaughn. He’s still on the street and not answering his cell.”

Kevin leaned back in his chair, eliciting a long squeal from its rickety frame. He stretched his arms over his head, lacing his fingers behind his head. Looking around, he said, “It sure is crowded in here. What the hell is going on?”

Jocelyn looked away from her computer screen, taking in her colleagues seated at their desks. It was very unusual to find them all in the office at one time. Answering calls kept most of them on the street throughout the shift. Normally, they’d be hard-pressed to find bodies to send out on investigations.

Chen walked by, nudging Kevin’s chair and nearly sending him feet over head. “Slow night, Sullivan.”

Kevin grabbed for the edge of his desk, steadying himself, the chair squealing again, this time even louder. “There are no slow nights in Philadelphia. Criminals must be on dinner break. Give it an hour and—”

“Look at this,” Jocelyn interrupted. She tapped a finger against her computer screen. “A nine-one-one call came in last night at six o’clock. A witness saw a large light-skinned black male force a black woman into an older model gray Bonneville. Witness got the plate number. The car is registered to forty-nine-year-old Larry John Warner.”

With a few clicks on her computer, Jocelyn brought up an old mug shot of Larry Warner, taken about five years earlier. His brown hair was shot through with gray. He looked like an emaciated Morgan Freeman. “Looks like the guy Anita described and the guy from the Dunkin’ Donuts video.”

“What’s he been in for?” Kevin asked.

Jocelyn scrolled down all the arrests and convictions Warner had accumulated over the years. “Forgery . . . writing bad checks . . . receiving stolen property . . . identity theft. A couple of drug possession charges and a DUI.”

Kevin’s eyebrows drew together. “Anything violent?”

Jocelyn scrolled down further. “Aggravated assault . . . terroristic threats. Five years ago. He did eighteen months.”

“Did he get picked up last night?”

Jocelyn clicked back to the first screen. “Inez responded to the call. Let’s find out.”

It took only a quick text to locate Inez. “She’s downstairs in CCTV,” Jocelyn said. “Let’s go.”

Kevin sighed. “Now just a minute there, Rush. I’m not running all over town for an SVU case. When’s the last time we had a slow night? We should be enjoying this shit.”

Jocelyn rolled her eyes. “You really want to be sitting on your ass when Ahearn makes his rounds?”

Kevin grimaced, his lips forming a thin line. “Good point.”

“Let’s just run with it till I get in touch with Vaughn.”

Inez met them in the hallway. “Yeah, I talked to the witness. He was pretty shook up. We ran the tag, came up with Warner. He wasn’t home. His mother was there. She let us do a plain view search of the house. There wasn’t anything there. We put out a GRM on the vehicle. We got nothing. No one reported any black females missing, so there’s no movement on it.”

“The woman’s at Einstein,” Jocelyn said.

“She alive?”

“Yeah, but she wishes she wasn’t,” Kevin said.

Inez rattled off Warner’s address. “You might take another ride past there to start. Maybe he’s been home since then.”

“Thanks, Inez,” Jocelyn said. To Kevin, “Let’s go.”

Larry Warner lived in a run-down row house on North Sixteenth Street. Jocelyn rolled past the house once and parked three houses away. The gray Bonneville was parked across the street from Warner’s house.

“It cannot be this easy,” Kevin said as they got out of the car.

“Give it time,” Jocelyn said as she locked the car. “I’m sure it will get harder.”

Weeds sprung from the cracks in the pavement outside the house. Small piles of broken glass had collected in the creases of the porch steps. The house was an ugly red color—almost burgundy. The porch roof sagged, and one of the upstairs windows above it had been boarded up. The screen door let out a loud belch as Jocelyn opened it.

“Glad it didn’t come off in your hand,” Kevin remarked as Jocelyn rapped her knuckles against the door.

They waited a long moment. The rain had stopped. A cool October breeze drifted across the porch, bringing with it the sounds of children playing down the block. In the street, two men labored past, pushing a metal shopping cart with a disemboweled refrigerator atop it. Jocelyn knocked again, harder. After another moment, the door creaked open. Larry Warner stood before them in jeans and a worn black T-shirt. He looked them up and down. It was clear to Jocelyn by the way his eyes darted up and down the street that he knew they were cops. In neighborhoods like these, whether you’d done something to break the law or not, you didn’t want to be seen talking to cops.

Larry remained calm. “Help you?” he said.

Jocelyn put a foot in the doorway and flashed her credentials. “I’m Detective Rush—this is Detective Sullivan. Can we come in?”

With the same feigned indifference, Larry shrugged and let them past. A musty smell greeted them. The floorboards in the living room bowed beneath their feet. A nubby green carpet covered the center of the room. There was a mismatched living room set that looked about as old as Jocelyn. The only thing modern was the fifty-two-inch flat-screen television that sat atop a rutted coffee table.

“Anyone else here?” Kevin asked, standing near the front door.

Larry nodded. “My mom’s upstairs sleeping. My friend is here.” Larry motioned down the hall to what looked like the kitchen. “Angel!” he shouted. “Police is here.”

The man who emerged from the kitchen carrying a plate piled high with spaghetti was huge. His frame swallowed the kitchen doorway. Jocelyn estimated his age to be mid to late twenties. His jowly cheeks hung down over his neck. Rolls of fat strained against his red sweatshirt. He was exactly as Anita had described him. Kevin and Jocelyn exchanged a furtive look. Jocelyn could practically hear Kevin’s thoughts.

It can’t be this easy.

Angel nodded at them and sat on the couch, eating his dinner as if they weren’t even there. “This is Angel,” Larry said.

“Angel got a last name?” Kevin asked, flipping his notebook open.

“Donovan,” Larry said. He sat on the love seat and began channel surfing with the remote control. “Angel don’t talk,” he added.

“Why’s that?” Jocelyn asked.

“Got shot in the throat a few years back.”

As if on cue, Angel stopped eating and pulled his collar down, revealing a large lump of mangled scar tissue at the center of his throat. Jocelyn caught Angel’s eyes. They were brown and flat. There was nothing there. “How many years ago?” she asked.

Angel held up a hand and wiggled all his fingers. “Five,” he mouthed.

“Mr. Warner, Mr. Donovan, we’d like you to come down to the Division to answer a few questions.”

“About what?” Larry asked. His posture was wide-open, relaxed.

“About a woman being treated at Einstein for some pretty nasty wounds,” Kevin said.

“Don’t know nothin’ about a woman in the hospital,” Larry said. Angel nodded in agreement.

“You know a woman named Anita Grant?” Jocelyn asked.

“Nope.”

“How about Nitaluv79?”

It was a split-second flicker in his eyes that gave him away. Jocelyn could tell he was trying to decide how much to tell them—how much trouble he was really in. He leaned forward. Angel finished up his dinner, setting his empty plate on the coffee table, and leaned back, watching with total disinterest.

“You said this about a woman?” Larry said finally.

“Why don’t you come down to the Division, and we’ll talk about it there,” Jocelyn suggested.

Larry had been picked up enough times to know how the game worked. He didn’t put up a fight. Instead, he stood and turned the television off. “Let me get my shoes,” he said.

Kevin followed Larry upstairs as the man retrieved his shoes. Jocelyn looked at Angel. “You too, Mr. Donovan.”

Wordlessly, Angel stood and walked over to her. He towered over her, the broad expanse of his chest blotting out the rest of the room. Jocelyn stood erect and looked up into his eyes. He stood close to her, but he wasn’t trying to intimidate her, she realized. He was merely waiting for further instructions.

Larry returned to the living room with Kevin trailing behind him. Jocelyn glanced at Donovan again and pointed to the door. “Let’s go.”