Saints Of New York (19 page)

The
tox test on Rebecca Lange's blood and urine came back negative, but there was a
note to say that hair had been sampled and would be processed before the end of
the day.

Parrish
sat at his desk, aware of the stack of files in his drawer and feeling some
sense of urgency, a need to look further, delve deeper. He needed to pursue the
possibility of any Child Services connection to Jennifer Baumann and Nicole
Benedict. He had no reservations about the competence of Hayes, Wheland, Engel
or West, but something such as this would have been so easy to overlook had
they not known what they were looking for. The smallest fragment of information
could change perspective utterly.

Parrish
was frustrated that he'd not had these names before his visit to Child Services
Records and Archives. It required time, but he didn't want to get Jimmy Radick
in deep. Not yet. Not until there was something more substantial. Too many
times he had fixated on a case, come to some wild conclusion, and chased it
relentlessly, only to find out that the conclusion was a figment of his
too-fertile imagination. This time he didn't want to go that route. Discretion
and tact had never been his strong points, but now - in the current climate -
it seemed that to ignore caution would be to court further criticism and
censure. It was either tread carefully or get handed an official suspension.
His only assigned homicides were Danny and Rebecca Lange, the hooker, the subway
death, and the campus stabbing. The last three wouldn't go away, and yet
Parrish felt no compelling duty to pursue them. For a moment he wondered if he
could convince Radick to work them, but he knew that wouldn't fly.

Nonetheless,
apart from Rebecca, it was those earlier homicides he was interested in -
Karen, Jennifer and Nicole. With Rebecca, that gave him four girls, two aged
sixteen, two of seventeen. The first - Jennifer - had been found in January
2007; the second - Nicole - in August of the same year; Karen was found in that
December, and finally Rebecca. Karen's body had been in clothes she wouldn't
ordinarily have worn, and Rebecca's hair had been cut and her nails painted.
Parrish knew little of the other two, save that Jennifer was found in a motel
room, Nicole in a mattress bag with her neck broken. The circumstances of their
disappearances had been as unremarkable as those of Karen and Rebecca. They
just went somewhere, and they never came back. Somewhere between one and three
days later they were found dead.

Parrish
told Radick to start familiarizing himself with the different report forms
that needed to be completed for ongoing cases. While he was distracted with
this, Parrish spent a couple of hours going through the files again. Wheland's
unmistakable scrawl, Engel's cryptic notes that only Engel would ever
understand. They were standard open cases - the canvass, the preliminary
reports, the autopsy, the friends and relatives QA. Autopsy was of the
greatest interest to Parrish, both Jennifer and Nicole having been found within
twenty-four hours of their respective TODs. Jennifer's death was caused by
strangulation, apparently manual, and in Nicole's case it had been a clean
break between the second and third vertebrae. As
if she'd been hung,
the medical examiner reported,
but there were no outward abrasions or ligature marks to the neck that a
hanging would have left.

A
severe contusion on the right side of Nicole's head suggested that she had been
hit with something - or against something - with sufficient force for the neck
to break.
Against
was the considered opinion of the ME, simply because there was no indentation,
no shape to the injury as was usual when an object was applied with external
force. This contusion showed just a flat and even impact, as if her head had
been slammed against a wall. However, it was a neck-related injury that had
occasioned the death of both girls - of all four girls.

There
were no notes in these files regarding manner of dress, alterations in usual
outward appearance, or other such things that might have alerted Parrish to a
similarity to the others. Of course, they may have been present, but gone
unnoticed. It was not, however, those outward signs that had grabbed his
attention, but several other similarities common to all four cases. First,
there was height, weight, coloring and age. Then the fact that each had engaged
in sexual intercourse some short time before death, yet in no instance were
there indications of rape. The fact that they all came from within a couple of
miles' radius of one another was possibly significant. The fact that each body
had just been left for someone to find. That no attempt had been made to hide
the victims from the eyes of the world was an aspect that intrigued Parrish
particularly. Criminal psychology was a field all its own, but homicide touched
on it periodically. Parrish was not a profiler, but he understood sufficient to
be aware of the four types of killer as detailed in standard texts. One man, or
four different men, it didn't matter. Four dead girls. Four open cases, three
in-house, and one that belonged to Richard Franco at the Williamsburg 91st.

Was
there even the slightest possibility that they were connected?

Parrish's
thoughts were interrupted by the telephone.

'Got
your tox results on the Lange girl,' he was told. 'You ready?'

Parrish
took a pencil, a sheet of paper. 'What you got?'

'She
was benzo'd. A heavy dose.'

Parrish
felt the kick in his gut - the feeling that something
was
becoming something else. How had he
known that this would happen with this girl?

'Specifically?'
Parrish asked.

'Flunitrazepam.
Rohypnol, right? Roofies I believe they call
it
now.'

'How
much?' he asked.

'Well,
considering that recreational use averages
somewhere
between one-point-eight and
two-point-seven, she was hit
with
about
five or six as far as I can tell. It metabolizes very fast.
That's
why it wasn't apparent in the urine or
the blood.'

'But
the hair?'

'You
can take it from the hair for up to about a month.
Depends
how much was in the system, but about a
month and you can
still
find
it.'

'Anything
else?'

'No,
just the roofies. You want I should send the report on up to your office?'

'Yes,
please. Soon as you can.'

'No
problem.'

Parrish
hung up. Karen, Jennifer and Nicole were out of the ballpark as far as new tox
tests were concerned. Blood and urine would have been checked as standard, but
hair was done only on request. Had he not asked for it in Rebecca's case it
would have remained unknown. This threw a new slant on the thing. She was
drugged, heavily, and she was probably fucked while she was out of it. She
wouldn't have been capable of resistance. There would have been no fight in her
at all. Truth was, she wouldn't have even been aware of what was happening, and
if she had survived, she wouldn't have remembered a thing. Her brother? Someone
her brother sold her to? And was this porno something else entirely? A snuff
movie? Fuck a teenage girl while she's dying of a benzodiazepine overdose, or
maybe fuck her once she's dead? Stick it on a DVD and sell enough copies to buy
yourself out of a lifetime of addiction? Was
that
what Danny Lange had planned?

Shortly
after six they were over the other side of Flatbush.

 
Radick
came to a stop on Smith Street near Carroll Park.

'You
don't have to come in,' Parrish said.

'It's
fine. I don't mind.' Radick came out of the car, waited for Parrish to show him
the way.

Caitlin
Parrish shared an apartment with two other trainee nurses, but Parrish found
her alone.

'Jesus,
Dad, you should call before you come over. I'm going out.'

'Hey,
sweetheart,' Parrish said. 'Good to see you. How are you? I'm fine. And how are
you? I'm good thanks. Come on in, why don't you? Have a cup of coffee, take a
weight off.'

'Okay,
okay,' she said. 'We can do without the sarcasm.'

Radick
appeared back of Parrish.

'Oh,
this is Jimmy Radick. He's my new partner.'

Caitlin
- brunette, five-five, slim and bright and sharp as a pin - extended her hand
and shook with Jimmy Radick. 'Good to meet you,' she said. 'For your sins eh?'

Radick
frowned.

'They
gave you my dad as a partner for your sins.'

'Seems
that way.'

'So
come in, both of you, but I am in a hurry. Like I said, I'm going out. You want
coffee then you're going to have to make it yourself.' She hurried down the
hallway and disappeared through
a
doorway on the
right.

'Where
are you off to?' Parrish called after her. He stepped into the apartment
hallway, waved Radick in, closed the door behind him.

'I'm
going out to meet my pimp, and then I'm going to have sex with three different
guys, and after that I figured I might get some crank and sit up all night
smoking and talking shit with black people.'

'Caitlin—'

She
appeared in the hallway, her blouse untucked, her feet bare, her hair loosely
pinned back.

'Dad,
seriously, you have to stop asking . . . and more importantly, you have to
stop worrying yourself about what I might be doing and where I might be going.'

'Force
of habit,' Parrish replied.

'Well,
get another habit, for God's sake. A year or so and I'll be in Manhattan,
either that or London.'

'London?'

'I'm
kidding, Dad. Lighten up.' She disappeared back into her room.

'Coffee?'
Parrish asked.

'Sure,'
Radick said.

Parrish
made himself busy in the kitchen. Radick walked on through to what must have
been the girls' communal lounge room. A TV, a stereo, a couple of bookcases.
Peanuts, The Tommy- knockers
by Stephen
King,
Introduction to Diagnostic Medicine,
DVDs
of
Scrubs, Grey's Anatomy
and
24.
Predictably diverse, at the same time appropriate.