Saints Of New York (60 page)
Read Saints Of New York Online
Authors: R.J. Ellory
Frank
Parrish made it to the uppermost riser just as someone put a key in the front
door lock and turned
it. . .
just as he realized he'd left his screwdriver behind.
C
arole
Paretski paused in her ex-husband's hallway and waited for a good three or four
minutes. The house was utterly silent. She went on through to the kitchen, the
utility space, and right to the rear door that led out into the yard. She
headed back to the front of the house and began looking for anything that
seemed out of place. She looked in every DVD case, amongst piles of magazines
and work-related documents. She went through Richard's bureau - opening drawers
and rifling through them, ensuring that she put everything back exactly as
she'd found it. She walked around the edges of the room, pulling back the
carpet and looking beneath for any sign that floorboards had been loosened. She
tried to think what she would do if she had something important to hide. Where
would she put it? How would she make it as secure and concealed as possible?
She
did the same in the hallway, even started to knock the lower risers of the
stairwell to see if any of them sounded less solid than the others. There was
nothing.
The
last thing she checked was the under-stairs cupboard, and it was here that
something struck her as odd. Richard was meticulously neat, always had been.
What she believed would have been very orderly was somewhat random. A
screwdriver on the floor, the section of carpet haphazardly tossed in there,
cans of paints, a spilled bucket of brushes, a pair of Sarah's sneakers just
thrown in there as if they were to be discarded.
Carole
frowned. She started to lift things out one by one and place them on the
hallway rug behind her. The section of carpet came out last, evidently cut to
fit in the space, evidently supposed to belong there, matching the hallway
carpet exactly. She started to put it back - why, she didn't know - but she
did, and it was as she pressed it down that she felt the floorboards move
beneath the linoleum.
She paused. She looked
back to her
right the the screwdriver, and using the tip she lifted the edge of the
linoleum
and started to pull it
back. She tucked the screwdriver into her
back pocket, carefully lifted the
whole section out and placed it behind her. She paused for a moment, and then
she lifted one of the boards.
Frank
Parrish stood silently at the top of the stairs. Someone was down there, and
from the angle he could not see who it was. It had sounded as if they were
searching the place, much as he had done, but that didn't make sense. Who else
would have come over to look through the house? Someone with a key, evidently.
Who would have had a key? Only person he could think of was Carole Paretski. Or
perhaps a girlfriend that McKee had withheld from them? Then it struck him: the
accomplice. It had always been there at the back of his mind, the feeling that
McKee had not worked alone. Had the accomplice come over to remove evidence,
take something away, collect something that McKee had promised him? Was their
relationship such that they trusted one another with house keys? Of course it
was. Hell, they kidnapped, drugged, raped and murdered teenage girls together.
Parrish
eased out his .32 and took a deep breath. Perhaps half a dozen risers down the
stairwell and he would be able to see who was in the hallway. He raised one
foot, and then lowered it ever so slowly to the right edge of the uppermost
riser. He released his weight as carefully as he could, praying that the risers
did not creak, that they were solid and secure and silent. With all his weight
on his right foot he gripped the banister and started to move his left. He
could feel his heart thudding in his chest. What would he do? Arrest the guy?
He could do nothing else, and yet the arrest would be invalid.
He
would be the one arrested shortly
thereafter. Illegal search, BE, the whole works. Whatever the
consequences, it didn't matter. McKee's accomplice was down there removing all
the evidence and Parrish had no choice but to stop him.
He
lowered his left foot silently, exhaled, inhaled once more, and lifted his
right foot again.
The
horror and dismay that engulfed Carole Paretski as she lifted one image after
another from the box beneath the floorboards was immeasurable. Teenage girls,
they had to be, and they were dying. There was no question in her mind that
these girls were being tortured and killed. Their eyes staring back at the
camera - wide and terrified and bloodshot. Their faces reddened, blue in some
cases, as something was tightened around their necks and they were choked into
lifelessness. Naked, kneeling, prostrate, tied, handcuffed, some of them
bruised and bleeding, some of them already unconscious as her ex-husband fucked
them. There was no doubt in her mind that it was Richard. His face was not
present in any of the images, but she had spent sufficient years living with
him, sleeping with him, had carried and given birth to two of his children . .
.
She
knew what she was looking at, and every fear that had ever possessed her was
realized in that moment.
Beneath
the pictures were DVDs, dozens of them, and as she looked through them -
handwritten titles that were more often than not just a single girl's name -
she began to appreciate the breadth and depth of what he had been doing. Frank
Parrish had walked her around the edges of it, unable to tell her the truth.
There was something about how he had asked questions, something about his
manner, that had done nothing but exacerbate her fears. And now here she was -
kneeling in the hallway of Richard's house, in her hands the evidence that the
police needed - DVDs and photographs of some of the very worst things that she
could imagine, her husband guilty of far worse than she could ever have
believed.
The
DVDs slid from her fingers. They scattered across the floor, and as she watched
them go she saw something that struck her with such force she was unable to
breathe.
Sarah
and friends
-
August, September, October 2004
Carole
picked up the DVD. Sarah? Her daughter? It couldn't be. It wasn't possible.
She
got up suddenly, and walked through to the sitting room. She snatched the DVD
remote from the coffee table, switched on the TV, waited for the DVD tray to
slide from the front of the machine and then she dropped the disc in.
Even
as she pressed the play button her heart was hammering through the front of her
ribcage. Even as she saw the jagged black and gray lines at the start of the
images she knew . . . she just
knew .
. . and there
she was, Sarah, her own daughter, with a couple of school friends on a
sleepover.
She
fast-forwarded the images, and she found what Richard had been looking for. The
three of them getting changed into their nightclothes. She closed her eyes. She
felt the overwhelming grief, alongside it the sense of relief as she began to
understand what would happen to him, that now he would be out of their lives
for ever, that he would never, never be able to do anything to Sarah again.
As the TV started up Parrish
moved more quickly. Maybe whoever was down there had just come over to watch
some of the DVDs. Maybe that was the arrangement he had with McKee. On the days
McKee was out of the house the accomplice could come over. Or maybe they
watched these things together, but Saturdays - when McKee was out with the kids
- the accomplice had free rein to come around and party all by himself.
The
feeling of vindication he had experienced when he saw the pictures that McKee
had hidden beneath the floorboards more than compensated for any sense of guilt
he felt about breaking into the man's house. The man was scum, the lowest of
the low, and this was where the game ended. How he would do it he didn't know,
and in that moment - as he reached the bottom of the stairs, as he turned with
his gun ahead of him towards the front room of the house, he didn't care. It
was now over - for Melissa, Jennifer, for Nicole and Karen and Rebecca and
Kelly. For all those that would have followed in their wake, the nightmare was
finished.
Frank
Parrish - feeling a greater sense of resolve and clarity than he could ever
recall - reached the sitting room door.
Was that the front door?
Carole
stopped dead. She froze for a split-second, and then she backed up and pressed
herself against the wall behind the door. The sound of the TV almost drowned
out the beating of her heart. She squinted through the gap at the edge of the
doorframe, and she saw nothing but a gun. She couldn't believe what she was
seeing, but she could not negate her own eyes.
Did
Richard own a gun? Had he obtained a gun from somewhere? Had he come into the
house while she'd been watching the DVD, seen the mess spilling out of the
cupboard, and was even now planning on shooting the imagined burglar?
Carole
reached for the screwdriver in her back pocket and held it tightly. She
hesitated for a second, looked through the gap one more time to see Richard
take another step forward, and knew she had to do it. She knew that this was
her chance to be rid of the bastard for ever.
Stepping
forward suddenly, her left hand brandishing the screwdriver, she grabbed the
door handle and used it as a pivot to swing herself around the edge of the
door. She had her full weight and strength behind her, and even as Frank
Parrish stepped across the threshold of the room he saw nothing but a flash of
silver, the shape of an arm, and then there was a pain beyond description in
the middle of his body. It was not the pain that made him drop the gun, but the
sudden and unexpected shock. The gun clattered to the ground, and he dropped to
his knees, and he looked down to see the handle of a screwdriver protruding
from his upper abdomen, right there beneath his ribs, and when he took a moment
to look up he saw Carole Paretski looking down at him with a look of such
surprise he couldn't help but smile.
The
smile lasted no more than a second. His system went into shock, he started to
hyperventilate and shake, and had Carole Paretski not had the foresight to grab
his shoulder then Frank Parrish would have fallen forward and driven the
screwdriver all the way into his stomach. Internal bleeding kicked into
overdrive as he passed out without a sound.
R
obert
was in his father's apartment no more than five minutes before he picked up the
phone and called his cell. It rang out. He called the Precinct and asked for
Frank Parrish and was told that Frank was not on duty that weekend.
He
wondered where his father could be, and then thought of Eve. He searched for
Frank's phonebook, couldn't find it, and then noticed the cell phone at the
side of the bed. He had switched it off, left it behind, and Eve's number would
definitely be there. He found it without delay, called it, got the voicemail
and left a message.
'Hi,
Eve, this is Robert, Frank's son. Was wondering if you knew where he was—'
'Robert?'
'Oh,
hi there. How ya doin'?'
'I'm
good, yes. How are you?'
'Fine,
fine, no problems. Was after my dad.'
'I
haven't seen him, Robert, not for a while.'
'Okay.
If you do see him, or if he calls you, let him know to give me a call on my
cell.'
'I'll
do that, Robert. You take care now?'
'You
too.'
Robert
hung up. Way cool. Dad's hooker friend. He put Frank's cell on the kitchen
table and opened the refrigerator. There were four cans left of a Schlitz
six-pack. He pulled one out, cracked it, sat down at the table and drank his
beer. He figured he'd hang out for an hour or so, maybe watch the tube, play
some records, and then he would head home. That was unless Dad showed up, and
then they'd maybe go get a burger or something. He hadn't seen
him for some weeks, and it would
be good to catch up.
*
Caitlin
Parrish was drying her hair when the phone rang. Instinctively, she picked it
up just as Radick was coming through to tell her he didn't want to answer it in
case it was Frank.
She
asked who it was, what they wanted, and even as Radick stood there watching
her, even as she listened to the caller at the other end, she visibly paled.