Saints Of New York (33 page)

 
Friday evening Parrish and Radick parted
company amicably enough. Lunch had been brief, relatively laconic on both
sides, and the hours until the end of their shift had been spent going back
through files, through photos, through dates and names and Missing Person
reports.

Parrish's
conclusion, unavoidable in its simplicity, was
that
beyond Lester Young and the people at
South Two they had no- one. If these enquiries came to nothing then they were
back
at
square
one.

That
evening, willpower mustered to stay away from Clay's, Parrish watched TV for a
couple of hours. Then he dragged out
a
box
of letters and pictures that he kept beneath his bed. Robert and Caitlin as
kids. Clare - young and pretty and still free of the antagonistic bitterness
that seemed to be her stock-in-trade these days. At the bottom were photos of
himself as a child, photos of his mother, his father, of graduations from high
school and the Police Academy. His whole life in a box no more than ten
by
twelve.

He
thought of going over to see Caitlin, of trying to explain himself. He imagined
standing there outside her door, the feeling in his lower gut like an awkward
teenager collecting his prom date. He hadn't felt this anxious since Caitlin's
birth, before
that
Robert's,
before even that the night he'd asked Clare to
marry
him. But that night he'd been drunk.
Drunk also when
Caitlin
had
been conceived. Hell, if his adult life was a road trip
he'd
done pretty much all of it DUI.

His thoughts of
loss and loneliness like weeds that had taken root simply through neglect,
Parrish wondered where it had
gone
off
the rails. You worked so hard at so many things, you
made
decisions based on what you believed to
be right, and more
often
than not it came out wrong. He
understood that life was not meant to be easy, but how come it could be so
hard?

Shrugging
off the temptation to let himself get morose and nostalgic, Parrish packed up
the letters and pictures and slid the box beneath the bed. There was something
about this case that had really crawled beneath his skin. The sense of
innocence abused, the feeling that someone somewhere had taken advantage of
the trust and dependence afforded them by these girls. That was what it looked
like, and that was what it came down to. Someone had said they would do one
thing, and then they had done another. Someone had assumed a position of
responsibility and guardianship, and then violated that agreement. Hadn't he
done the same thing with Clare, with Robert, with Caitlin? Yes, for sure, but
he hadn't murdered anyone. He might have killed a marriage, he might have
suffocated any chance of real reconciliation between himself and his daughter,
but he hadn't ended any lives. He considered his discussions with Marie
Griffin, the details about his father - wondered whether John Parrish
had
in fact been guilty of the murders of
Joe Manri and Robert McMahon that night in the spring of '79. He believed he
had. He had felt sure of it. And it wasn't until now that he had allowed
himself sufficient space to consider how that made him feel. Guilty? Not for
the killings, but for saying nothing? For being sure of something and saying
nothing? No, not even that. So what was it? It had to be that same thing:
violation of trust, the agreement to carry the burden of responsibility, and
then to do something else entirely. His father the lawman, the keeper of the
peace, the one who was supposed to protect and serve . . . well, he protected
and served the very people he was meant to stop. What was that if not
betrayal?.

So
where did that put him? Right in the middle of this mess, right there in plain
view, and he could make a decision to see it through, regardless of
consequence, or he could call it quits, pack up his stuff, and walk.

The
man he had always hoped to be would see it through, but what about the man he
really was?

At
quarter past eight Parrish left his apartment and walked over to Clay's. He
told himself he would have only one drink, but he was a liar, and he knew it
well enough not to try and convince himself otherwise.

For
no other reason than to satisfy his own curiosity, Parrish went by Marie
Griffin's office on Saturday morning. It was locked, lights out, no-one home.
Why this gave him a curious sense of satisfaction he did not know, but it
served to assuage his guilt. He had suggested they take a break from one
another, more for her benefit than his own, and she had done just that. He had
made her feel awkward, challenged her position - personally and professionally
- and yet he was not sorry. Whatever he was experiencing was real, very real
indeed, and she was either up to dealing with it or she was not. He would see
her Monday, and he hoped that by then he would have made some progress on the
case. Perhaps with some forward motion on this thing he would be able to think
about other things - what to do with Robert and Caitlin, how best to deal with
Clare. Seemed to him that it was others' problems with him that caused the
difficulties, not the problems he had with himself. But such things could be
shelved for some other day. Today, Saturday the 13th, they would begin their
interviews at South Two and see if there was a child-killer in Family Welfare.

Radick
appeared just before nine, and Parrish had already prepared the files on each
girl to take with them.

'How
do you want this to go?' Radick asked him.

'Keep
it simple at first. Names, addresses, how long have they worked there, where
did they work before. Then we ask did they know any of these girls, have
anything to do with them directly. That kind of thing. Once we've got whatever
we can get from these guys, then we run our own checks on them, all the
standard stuff - who has yellow sheets, who doesn't, you know. Like I said
before, there's a guy I know in the FBI who might just be willing to do a
search on them for us, if he's still there, and if he's in
a
good
mood. For me, it's a matter of getting in front of some of these characters and
seeing if there's anything that shows up. The over-confident ones, the
dismissive ones, the nervous ones. There's bound to be a couple that stand out.
We know that both Karen and Kelly took calls from Family Welfare in the days
before they were murdered, and Rebecca called into the office herself. What
that gives us I don't know, but it's a hook, you know? It's
a
coincidence,
and I don't like coincidences.'

Radick
agreed, couldn't see any better way to go, and they left for South Two just after
nine-thirty.