Saints Of New York (35 page)
Read Saints Of New York Online
Authors: R.J. Ellory
'And how long
has she been dead?' Parrish asked.
'I'd
say two, maybe two and a half years. The trash can wasn't airtight, that's for
sure. She just broke down in there, much as she would have done had she been
buried. Clothes rotted, flesh decomposed. Water got in there, did its work.'
'Can
was found in an alleyway at the end of Bay Street,' Pagliaro said. 'Some bum
pushed it over with a shopping cart and the lid came away. It had been wired,
but the wire corroded. Soon as it went over the base of the can came away, and
there she was.'
'Is
it realistic that a trash can like that could have been in an alleyway for two
years with no-one any the wiser?' Parrish asked.
Pagliaro
answered with a 'who knows' expression; Kubrick shrugged, and said, 'I have no
idea. Can could have been there all this time, could have been there a week.
The lid was wired shut, as your colleague says, but if it was down there with
other trash cans and dumpsters I don't think anyone would have necessarily
identified the smell of decomposition. Wiring the lid down prevented rats
getting in there, that's for sure, but aside from that, well . . . hell, it
could have been there all this time without anyone knowing about it.'
'So how do we
formally identify her?' Radick asked.
'We
don't,' Kubrick said. 'We could get a forensic anthropologist to try and
reconstruct her face over the skull, but there's little chance of getting approval
to do that. Weil do dental, but as far as I can see she doesn't seem to have
had any significant work. Teeth are in good condition, no irregular spacing, no
major cavities, no overcrowding. She just happens to be one of the very few who
wasn't dropped into the orthodontist's chair at three years of age.'
There
was silence for a while - Pagliaro, Radick and Parrish on one side of the
table, Kubrick on the other, the broken-down remnants of somebody's daughter on
the smooth stainless-steel surface between them.
is there any
hope of determining whether or she was given drugs?' Parrish asked. 'Rohypnol
primarily, or any other kind of benzodiazepine?'
Kubrick
was shaking his head before Parrish had even finished the question.
'Not
a prayer,' he said. 'You can pick it up in the hair for a month or so, but
beyond that no. It passes very rapidly through the system.'
'I
figured so,' Parrish said, unable to hide his disappointment. 'How was the
alley?' he asked Pagliaro.
'Crime
Scene went through it thoroughly but there was nothing there beyond the usual
crap you find in such places. Nothing that related to this. What we have is the
body, the trash can, the purse and its contents. I'll ask for the phone to be
processed and we'll get whatever's on the card downloaded to see who she was
calling, who might have been calling her. That should give us the owner of the
phone, but that doesn't confirm that the dead girl and the owner of the phone
are the same person, just like the ID card doesn't confirm that this is Melissa.'
'I
can take care of the phone,' Parrish said. 'Effectively this is my case now,
isn't it?'
'And
you're welcome to it,' Pagliaro said, 'though God knows what you're going to do
about formal ID and informing next of kin and all that.'
'I'm
going to proceed on the basis that this is Melissa, certainly as far as the
investigation is concerned. I'm not going to speak to her family, not yet . . .
hell, maybe never. We can't exactly ask them to come down and ID her—'
'I'll
see what I can do on the forensic anthropologist front,' Kubrick said.
'Sometimes we get graduates from the university down here who do some work for
free. For the experience, you know? They're properly supervised so it won't be
bullshit, but I can't guarantee anything.'
'That
would be good,' Parrish said. 'I really appreciate that. Anyway, we'll get the
phone sorted out, and we'll go from there. I think it's her. I feel in my gut
that it
is
her. I don't
see her purse and her phone being put in a trash can with some other girl
's
body, do you?'
'Who
knows?' Pagliaro said.
'I
stopped being surprised by any
of
this
shit years ago.'
Parrish
thanked him. Pagliaro left. Kubrick said he was off-shift imminently, and he
needed to close up the place.
Parrish
took the phone, signed for it, called Valderas as they were leaving.
'I
need you to authorize some work on a cell phone, and I really would like to get
it done tonight or tomorrow.'
Valderas
said he'd do what he could.
Parrish
told Radick to take him to the Precinct, drop him there. He planned to start
running backgrounds on the employees from South Two.
'I'll
come do it with you,' Radick said. 'And I can see if there's any trail on Young
at the same time.'
'It's
okay. I have nothing to do this evening. You go do whatever. I've wrecked one
evening for you already, so I'll check on Young as well . . . can't be that
hard to find someone who's worked both for Welfare and Probation.'
Radick
hesitated, and then said, 'The thing with Caitlin—'
Parrish
shook his head. 'Forget about it. I was being an asshole. I can be an asshole
far too often and far too loudly. It means a great deal to me that you didn't
speak to anyone about that. I'll sort things out with her.' He smiled wryly,
issues, you know? We all got issues.'
Radick
let Parrish out at the 126th, watched him as he hurried up the steps, carrying
the notepads and files, the cell phone in a baggie, and he wondered if he would
ever be as alone as Frank Parrish.
He
called Caitlin, shared a few words, and then turned around and headed directly
down Hoyt towards Smith Street.
Parrish found Valderas, turned over the cell
phone.
'You
got the Schaeffer girl, I hear.'
'We
are assuming it's her, yes.'
'Not
enough left of her to give you anything?'
'Enough
left to tell us she was strangled. That's all we've got.'
'And
how did your interviews go?'
'As
expected. We've done a little more than half. There's another twenty and then
the supervisor himself, and we'll deal with those on Monday.' Parrish nodded at
the phone in Valderas's hand. 'That would be good, you know? If you can get
someone in Tech to download the card and tell us who she was calling.'
Valderas
looked at his watch. 'Honestly? I don't think we'll even get a look in until
Monday morning.'
'Whatever
you can do,' Parrish said. He held up the stack of paperwork from South Two.
'Going to start running backgrounds on these guys, see if anything turns up.'
It
was nearly eight by the time Parrish sat at his desk and spread the interview
notes out in front of him. He typed in every name - all twenty-six of them,
twenty-seven including Lavelle; dates of birth, Social Security numbers, the
bare minimum that was needed to get the process started. He let the computer
start working, and left for the upstairs canteen.
Seated
at a corner table, cup of coffee between his hands, he looked out through the
window to the street below. Saturday night. Fulton Street busy with traffic,
people heading somewhere other than where they'd been for the week. Himself?
Not a hope. He was where he'd always been, perhaps where he always would be. He
smiled to himself. Today, sitting there listening to
the
South
Two employees tell their little stories, he had noticed
Jimmy
Radick - how he looked, his mannerisms, his expressions. He had started to show
the signs of wear. You could see his vocation in his eyes: eyes that looked for
meaning in shadows. It would not be long, and then the line between who he'd
been and what he'd become would blur and disappear. It was the effect that dead
teenage girls in trash cans had on you. That was all it was.
An
hour later - Parrish surprised at the amount of time he had spent thinking of
very little at all - he returned to his desk to check progress on the
backgrounds.
Two
of them were flagged. The first was Andrew King. The face was there on the
screen, but Parrish didn't recognize him from that afternoon's interviews until
he realized that the assault charge that had put King in the system dated back
to March of '95. It was then that Parrish recalled the man - thirty-four years
old, suited, clean shaven, polite, and presentable for any occasion. The
picture on file was of a long-haired, unshaven twenty- one-year-old. Appeared
that King had gotten into a fight with a grocery store clerk who'd accused him
of stealing something. King had hit the guy twice in the face and run, leaving
behind his wallet and his groceries. King had turned himself in within half an
hour, perhaps to ensure that he got his wallet back. He was arrested, arraigned
and brought up. Judge gave him a community order, sent him back to the grocery
store to work it off.
And
then there was Richard McKee. Appeared that McKee had been handed a caution for
violation of a City Building Ordinance. He'd applied for a permit to convert
his roof space but began work before the permit arrived. The permit was
approved and, in the end, no-one pursued the case, but it was still there in
the paperwork.
And
that was all he had. Two people. Two bits of paperwork. Nothing substantive,
nothing incriminating. But what had he expected?
He
ran a search on Lester Young, found four of them - three DUIs and a GTA. They
all had work records on the system, and none of them were registered as having
been employed by the City in any capacity. So the Lester Young they were after
had never been arrested. That was all the system could tell him.
Parrish
called it quits. He packed everything up and put the files and reports back in
his desk.
Once
again he thought of trying to speak with Caitlin, but it was Saturday night.
She would more than likely be out with her friends, and if she was not, then
she'd have made the definite decision to have a quiet night at home. If either
was the case then Parrish would have found himself superfluous or unwanted. He
took the subway to DeKalb and walked home. He bought a fifth on the way. He
knew he ought to eat something, but he had little appetite. He would have a
good breakfast tomorrow. That's what he would do. It would be Sunday, and
Sundays were a good day for breakfast.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2008
The
dreams woke him again, but this time he did not get up. He lay amidst a tangle
of sweat-dampened sheets and wondered if Marie Griffin would now term him an
obsessive.
The
girls had been there. Pale blue skin. No eyes, or rather there
were
eyes, but no whites, no pupils, no color. Black hollows, sunken and shadowed,
like small vacuums into which every ounce of light and shade had been absorbed.
Everything in some sort of stilted monochrome apart from the fingernails. Red
like new blood. But even as he looked at the hand that reached out towards him,
he saw that they possessed no prints. Smooth, perfectly smooth, front and back.
We are no-one, it said. We have no identity. We were here, and then we were
gone, and we are now remembered only by you - Frank Parrish. Only you.
There
were flickering images - children broken, children tortured, children abused.
Parrish
did not sleep again. Perhaps he dozed for a handful of minutes here and there,
but all he could recall when he finally stood beneath the shower was how he had
wrestled with the sheets and the pillow, doing all he could to find comfort and
finding none.
Whatever
thoughts regarding breakfast he might have possessed the night before were now
well forgotten. He made coffee, he craved cigarettes, he considered calling
Radick and meeting with him to discuss any ideas he might have had regarding
the case. If Monday's interviews proved to be as non-productive as those they
had already held, then they were going to need another direction in which to
take this thing real soon. He thought about walking over to Clare's. Check if
Robert was home, see if he had plans. Parrish could hardly remember when he had
last seen his son. That was not a good sign. He needed to do something about
it.