Saints Of New York (44 page)

 
Erickson looked serious. He sat behind his
desk with an expression that Parrish had seen all too many times before. Something
had punctured the veneer and reached him. The more years in Vice, the more
years in Homicide or Narco, the tougher the veneer became, but every once in a
while there was something of sufficient force to get through. Evidently,
whatever he had found had possessed that force.

'Sit down,' he told Parrish and
Radick. 'I found your Jennifer. A picture we've managed to isolate as
originating in January or February of last year.'

'Jennifer was dead by mid-January
2007,' Parrish said.

'So January it is . . . and it
might have been the day she died.'

Radick's eyes widened.

Erickson leaned forward to his
desk and picked up a thin manila folder.

'How much of this kind of stuff
have you dealt with?' he asked Parrish.

'Did three years in Vice, '96 to
'99.'

'And you?' he asked Radick.

'Narco, Robbery-Homicide, and now
this.'

'Buf you've seen some shit,
right?'

Radick nodded. 'I've seen some
shit.'

Erickson opened the folder. He
removed a single picture and slid it across the desk to Parrish.

It was Jennifer, no question. She
was gagged with a black scarf, but her hair was back from her face and she was
twisted around, looking back over her shoulder at the camera. Her eyes were
wide with - what? Fear, horror, pain? As was routinely the case with many such
pictures the faces of the male participants were out of view. Jennifer had her
hands tied behind her back, and from the look of her fingers and wrists it
appeared she had been tied roughly and with far greater tension than was
necessary. Her hands were significantly paler than her forearms. On her upper
left thigh was a series of dark bruises, one of them carrying a thin line of
blood at the edge. Her face appeared to be bruised also, and to Parrish it
looked like the right cheek beneath the eye was swollen.

'Is
this what we're dealing with?' Radick asked. 'Girls kidnapped for torture, for
rape, for pornography?'

Erickson
nodded, if money-lending is the first profession and prostitution the second,
then pornography is the third. Ask Parrish. He did three years in Vice. He'll
tell you.' He indicated the photograph in Parrish's hand. 'This is toy town
stuff compared to most of what we see.'

'I
think the roofies came later,' Parrish said, almost to himself.

'You
what?'

'Rohypnol.
We found traces of rohypnol on the more recent cases. This one . . . hell, this
one looks like she was beaten into it. I think whoever's doing this got
smarter, started drugging them.' He turned to Radick. 'You see her
fingernails?'

'Red,'
Radick replied. 'Just like the Lange girl.'

'You
want me to keep looking for more pictures?' Erickson asked.

'For
sure, yes,' Parrish replied, and then, 'Can you tell where it came from?'

Erickson
shook his head. 'Almost impossible. A
magazine defin
itely,
but they all use the same processing
facilities, the
same
kind of paper, the same printers. And
then
there's the strong
possibility
that it was a movie still that
was then
printed for
a
magazine.
Two for the price of one, you see?
The digital
evolution
has done us no favors. Now you don't
even get
negatives or film
stock
numbers. Now it really is the case that anyone with a
hard-
on and a camcorder can do this shit for
no money at all.'

'This
is good,' Parrish said. 'This is progress. We can keep this?'

'Let
me give you a copy. I need the original.'

'Give
me half a dozen, would you?' Parrish said, and handed the picture back.

*

At the 126th, Parrish secured the
assistance of one of the uniforms who had been at the Paretski search. His name
was Landry. Parrish asked if he had a strong stomach.

'Strong enough for what?'

Parrish showed him the picture.
'Need you to go through all those magazines and DVDs we took from the woman's
house and find anything that's similar to this.'

Landry took the picture. He
didn't wince, he didn't frown. He just looked at it like it was someone's
holiday snapshot. 'I can do that.'

'They're in the Evidence Room.
Tell them I sent you. Any difficulty call me.'

'And we're going where?' Radick
asked as Landry walked away.

'Back to see an old friend.'

There was no question that it was an image
from the same film.

There
was no question that it was Jennifer. A tiny advert in the back of one of
Richard McKee's magazines shouted
SM TEENS!!,
and
then gave a PO Box where you could send twenty-five dollars. By return, and in
discreet packaging, you would receive a copy of
HURTING BAD,
and if you mailed your request before March 31st, 2007, then you would get a
free copy of
EAT ME BEAT ME.

'It's
her, no question,' Landry said. 'Third or fourth magazine I went through.' He
shook his head. 'And this is some sick shit they advertise in the back of these
things, let me tell you.'

'You
don't need to,' Parrish replied. He looked more closely at Jennifer's
frightened face. 'Call the magazine,' he told Radick. 'Tell them we need
details of this company, who booked the ad, the usual.' Parrish turned the
magazine over, and Radick noted the title. Buried in the small print, he found
the name of the company - Absolute Publications; some place out in East LA.

Radick
was gone no more than ten minutes. He came back shaking his head. 'Out of
business. No longer exists.'

'It'll
exist,' Parrish said, it'll just be under another name and working out of
another office. Try the offices of the East LA Postal Department; trace the PO
Box number.' He turned back to Landry. 'Get me six color copies of the ad, blow
them up a couple of times so we can see her more clearly. Drop those off in my
office, and then carry on going through this. See if you can find anything
else.' He walked to the door. 'You did good, Landry, real good.'

Back
in his office Parrish took stock of these developments. He felt certain that he
was heading in the right direction. Eight hundred and fifty thousand teens went
missing every year in the US. The percentage of those that ended up in the sex
industry? He didn't know, would never know, but it would be significant. He
believed that these girls had gone this route. Not only Jennifer, but also
Melissa, Nicole, Karen, Rebecca and Kelly. And what better source than the
soon-to-be-adopted, the unwanteds, the children that haunted the edges of
society? Caught somewhere between dead junkie parents, new families and the
state, what better resource than the comprehensive files of Family Welfare to
scout for new blood? Parrish wanted it to be McKee. Since that moment in the
interview room, the moment he'd seen the flash in the guy's eyes.
I
told her I wanted her to sit on my face so I could put my tongue inside her.
What he would give to get into the guy's apartment, his car, his bank records,
his work-space. He looked at Jennifer's picture.
Hurting Bad.
Jesus, the depths these people fell to. More accurately, the depths they were
dragged down to by others.