by R.J. Ellory
Radick showed McKee out, was gone no more than three or four minutes, and when he returned Parrish was still standing beside the table with a thoughtful expression on his face.
'Doesn't seem like our man,' Radick said.
Parrish slowly shook his head. 'I'm not so sure, Jimmy.'
'But—'
Parrish shook his head. 'Sometimes the obvious occludes the truth. And sometimes things are exactly as they appear.'
FIFTY-FOUR
'Lester Young,' Parrish said. 'That's who I need now. Ex-employees are going to be numerous, and I really didn't want to go down that route, but at least we know him as Jennifer's case officer. Do a search on City and County Probation Service officers, find out where he worked, when he left... do whatever has to be done. I need him found. And see if you can't get a license plate on McKee's SUV. I'm going to run some background on McKee's ex-wife and the kids.'
'You want to speak to Valderas, or shall I?'
'I’ll do that,' Parrish replied, 'and I'll chase up Erickson at Archives as well.'
Parrish headed out to find Valderas, located him in the canteen.
'I like McKee,' he said matter-of-factly. 'Him, and another character called Lester Young who was indirectly involved with Baumann and whose name was mentioned by both the deputy supervisor there and McKee himself.'
'McKee is your Welfare guy, right?' Valderas asked.
'Yes, up on Adams. There isn't a great deal beyond circumstantial and guesswork to tie them to anything, but of the candidates we're looking at these are the only ones that give me anything.'
'A hunch. That's what you're telling me, right? That you have a hunch.'
'Well, we know it's more than likely a South Two employee. They're either the perp, or they're supplying the perp with info on these girls. Maybe they're working together. McKee has an alibi for the Baumann murder, but if we're looking at him as a supplier, then it doesn't mean a great deal. Whatever, the simple fact is that there's too many similarities in these cases for it to be anyone other than a South Two connected person. Secondly, the box where Kelly was found had to have been delivered into that alley in the brief window between the truck emptying the dumpsters and the janitor finding her. Box was too big for a compact, so it had to be a pickup or an SUV. McKee has an SUV.'
'Fine. I understand that, but - like you say - this is nothing more than vague circumstantial stuff.'
'Deputy supervisor at his place of work said he had kiddie porn in his locker. I say kiddie porn, but more like teen stuff, you know? He's divorced, two kids, no current relationship. A bit of a loner.'
Valderas smiled.
'What?'
'Sounds like you.'
'I don't do teenage porn.'
'That we know of,' Valderas replied, and then he smiled sardonically. 'So, in truth, you have nothing but a suspicion, and we would put that suspicion in the realm of intuitive feelings and hunches. We have to, don't we?'
'Well, yes, but there's a—'
'What else are you chasing?'
'I have Joel Erickson down at Vice Archives looking for some of these faces. If we can find a single picture, any footage at all that puts these girls in the hands of the sex industry then we're going to be talking to a great deal more people than we've already spoken to.'
'You think that's what we're dealing with?'
'I do yes. I'm pretty much convinced of it. The roofies, the strangulation, the recent sexual activity, the cosmetic stuff - nails, hair, whatever else. I think this is an unavoidable conclusion.'
'Okay, so keep me briefed on what Erickson finds.' Valderas picked up his coffee cup and hesitated. 'And how's Jimmy Radick doing?'
'He's good, yes. He'll be fine. He's just making whatever adjustments he needs to make from Narcotics to Homicide.'
'Good to hear. I liked the guy from day one. I hope he makes it.'
Valderas left. Parrish got himself a cup of coffee, one for Radickalso, and headed back to the office.
*
Four-thirty and Radick had a lead on Lester Young. It didn't look good. By five o'clock he had confirmed that Lester Young, he of Family Welfare, subsequently New York County Probation, had died of a heart attack in December 2007. Five days after Christmas he dropped like a stone while shoveling snow in the front yard.
'That definitely takes him out of the frame,' Parrish said, his disappointment evident in his tone. 'Young was dead three days after Karen, and nine months before Rebecca and Kelly.'
'That's something that's been bothering me,' Radick said.
'What?'
'The spacing. We have Melissa around October 2006. We wait three months for Jennifer, seven months for Nicole. Then it's four months to Karen, another nine months until Rebecca gets killed. Then it's only a week before Kelly is murdered. It's very erratic, no consistency.'
'We should have words with the perp when we find him then. Make a complaint.'
Radick smiled wryly.
'Who knows, Jimmy? You can't rationalize irrationality. It's going to be lunar cycles, some crazy shit like that. These people have their own particular strains of complete fucking madness, and there's no predicting them. After you've got them it all makes sense, but before that? Hell, there's very little you can do to determine what they'll do next or when they'll do it.'
'Okay, so what about the ex-wife? You manage to track her down?'
'Yes, I did. We have a meeting with her at six.'
'Official? Unofficial? Did you tell her we want to talk about McKee?'
'No, I didn't tell her what. She said we were lucky to get her, that the kids are with friends for the evening. She's going out but we have her for an hour or so. I said we'd buy her a drink someplace.'
'Better make a start,' Radick said.
Parrish collected his jacket. He thought about how he would approach Carole Paretski. We need to talk to you about your ex- husband. We think he might be drugging and killing teenage girls. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Parrish smiled to himself. It would play out however it played out.
Carole Paretski was a good-looking woman. Diminutive, dark- haired, but fiery-eyed. She looked like she carried a loaded temper and could knock you down with it if she wished.
'Just a legal secretary,' she said, when Parrish asked after her position at Gaines, Maynard and Barrett. 'I went back to work when the kids hit their teens. I needed to. I was going stir-crazy.'
They were in a bar on Lafayette Avenue, a block or so from where she worked.
'And how old are your kids?' Parrish asked. He knew their ages, of course, but he wanted to get her relaxed. Talking about kids was always a way in.
'Sarah is fourteen, Alex is a year older. And both of them are going on thirty-five,' she added ruefully.
'Mine are a little older,' Parrish said. 'He's twenty-two, she's twenty.'
'So you're through the worst of it then?'
'It doesn't stop. They're a full-time job however old they get. You don't stop worrying about whether or not they're making the right choices. You want to interfere, but then you just have to take a moment to look at your own life and ask yourself if you really made such good decisions that you can pass them on. Usually the answer is no.'
'You are too cynical, Detective. You make a very valuable contribution to society, and very underestimated. I understand a little of what you guys have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, and I take my hat off to you all.'
'That's appreciated, Ms Paretski, that really is.'
'Carole,' she said, and then - glancing at Radick - she added, 'So what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?'
'To be completely honest, Carole, we wanted to talk to you about your ex-husband, Richard.'
The shift was immediate. Her whole demeanor and body language changed. It was something neither Parrish nor Radick could have missed.
'What about him?' she asked.
'You are divorced now, correct?' 'Yes, we are divorced. Have been for three years.'
<
br /> 'An amicable divorce, or was it difficult?'
'Amicable? The divorce itself was quiet enough, I'll say that much, but definitely not amicable.'
'You were married for fifteen years.'
'Yes, we were.'
'I'm sorry to have to ask you about this, but Richard said that the divorce became necessary because you were involved with someone else. Was that right?'
Carole Paretski sneered, is that what he said? Christ, he's a gutless bastard isn't he?'
'Gutless? Why d'you say that?'
She inhaled slowly and shook her head. 'You know something? You're married to someone all those years and you think you know them, and then you find out that they've been lying to you the whole time, and that you have chosen to be completely blind.'
Parrish looked at Radick. Radick said nothing.
'I agreed to the divorce on the grounds of my adultery because that was the fastest way to end the marriage. He refused to give me a divorce on any other basis, and I was more than happy to agree to that to get the thing over and done with.'
She paused for a moment, and then looked directly at Parrish. 'Why are you here?' she asked. 'Why are you asking me about Richard? What has he done? Has he gotten himself into some sort of trouble again?'
'Again?' Parrish asked.
'That bullshit that went down back in 2002. That shit that he got into . . . You know, right?'
Parrish frowned.
'The things he was supposed to have said to that girl?'
'Girl?' Parrish asked.
Carole Paretski sighed deeply and closed her eyes for a moment. She slowly shook her head and looked towards the window.
'Of course, you wouldn't know,' she said, it was never on record, was it?'
Parrish didn't say a word.
'June of 2002. He was accused of making provocative comments to a nine-year-old girl. No charges were pressed. Her namewas Marcie Holland. She was in a playground where Richard used to take Alex and Sarah. This girl told her mother that Richard said something to her. He was questioned at the 11th Precinct, the girl was questioned by a female police officer in her home. It was the girl's word against Richard's, and the girl got scared, and then her mother got scared, and nothing happened. There were no charges, no arrest. End of story.'
'You think he did that? You think he said things to this girl?' Parrish asked.
'I don't know, Detective. According to Richard no, he never said a word to the girl. He was a difficult man to live with. He was stuck in that job. He was driven by that job, spent more time and more energy worrying about other peoples' kids than he did his own. I hardly ever saw him, the kids saw him less. That is how he is. He's driven by something, and he does it to the exclusion of all else. And now . . . well, I don't know what's happening here, but he's in trouble for something else—'
'He's not in any trouble, Carole, he's just helping us with some enquiries about a case that is indirectly connected to where he works.'
'Welfare?'
'Right.'
'And if there ever was a job that one man shouldn't have, it has to be that one.'
'I'm sorry, I feel like I'm missing something here. I'm listening to one half of a conversation and trying to figure out the rest. Why do you say that?'
'Because of the sex stuff. You know about the sex stuff, right?'
'The sex stuff?' Parrish asked.
'Yeah, the porn he was into. That's what I couldn't deal with. That was what tipped me over the edge finally, why I divorced him. He said he had control over it. He said he could handle it. He said he wasn't thinking about fucking other women . . . other girls. I mean, they weren't kids or anything, but they were teenagers, seventeen, eighteen, God only knows how old, but sure as shit too young to be in fucking porno magazines. And all I could think about was Sarah, but he gave me his word that he had never had thoughts like that about his own daughter. Her friends, yes . . . Jesus, you could see his tongue on the floor when she brought her friends over. It was disgusting. It was fucking degrading.' She shuddered. 'And then that business with the nine- year-old, Marcie, my God! It went away, but it was so fucking embarrassing.'
'Did he do anything else that got him in trouble with the law?'
'No, nothing else. And I don't know what to say. Maybe he didn't say anything to that little girl, and maybe it's completely normal for guys of his age to think about sex with cheerleaders, but it's not the kind of person I am, and it's not something that I could condone. He could come across as the most honest and genuine guy you could imagine, and he took his job so seriously, and he brought work home at the weekend, and he appeared to be the most caring and dedicated guy in the world, but he could also be the most convincing liar in the world. Little things, nothing particularly significant, but a couple of times he looked me dead-square in the eye and told me he'd done something he'd promised to do when I knew he hadn't. And after however many years of putting up with him not being there I finally had enough.' She seemed flustered for a moment. 'God almighty, isn't it enough that I have the worry of him with the kids every weekend without having to deal with this? And I don't even know what I'm dealing with here. Why are you talking to me?'
Parrish hesitated. He sensed Radick's unease. He could clearly see how agitated Carole Paretski was, and he wondered just what lines he dared safely cross.
'Richard knew someone who was managing a teenage girl's case a couple of years ago,' he told Carole. 'The guy is dead now, but Richard knew him. The girl in question was murdered back in January of last year, and we are working on unresolved and open cases. This just happens to be one of them.'
'But why talk to me?' she asked. 'What am I going to be able to tell you? You think that Richard had something to do with this girl's death?'
'We follow everything,' Parrish said. 'Doesn't matter how thin, doesn't matter how long ago, we follow everything. We have to. You understand that from your work. Sometimes these things look like some kind of wild chase into nowhere, but when you wind up in court, if you ever wind up in court with a thing like this, then defense can pull a case apart because there was one person you overlooked, one person you couldn't be bothered to speak to. You know how it goes.'
For a moment Carole Paretski seemed convinced that this was nothing more than a routine follow-up, but then she turned towards Radick and said, 'That still doesn't make sense. That still doesn't tell me why I would have any connection to a welfare case that was being managed by someone who my ex-husband knew.'
'In case Richard said anything to you about it at the time. He was working with the guy, one of this guy's charges was murdered, and we wanted to know whether Richard had ever spoken of it at home. It's not every day that you are indirectly connected to an incident like this, and we have found that people generally go home and talk about it.'
'That doesn't make sense, Detective. The girl in question was murdered when? January of last year? I divorced Richard three years ago.'
'Yes, I know that,' Parrish replied, 'but you see him every weekend—'
'So the guy that originally managed the case. When did he die?'
'December last year.'
'And so you're looking at him for the murder?'
'We're looking at every possibility, Ms Paret—'
'Don't bullshit me, Detective,' she interjected. The fiery eyes were alight. 'Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining, okay? You're straight with me, I'll be straight with you. What do you want to know, and why do you want to know it?'
Parrish was silent a moment or two. He looked right at her and she returned his gaze unflinchingly. She looked ready to put him through the mill and kick whatever was left over down a storm drain.
'There was a rumor at his workplace that he might have been involved in possession of potentially underage pornography—'
'A rumor? Would've been more than a rumor. I said what I said.'
'How bad?'
Carole Paretski frowned and shook her head. 'How bad does it have to be to be conside
red bad in your eyes? All of it's bad as far as I'm concerned. Disgusting. The amount of money that's involved in that industry could most likely rescue every third world country out of starvation and disease. It's fucking shameful if you ask me.'
'The things you see in the store. The retail magazines, even the stuff they have on display in sex shops . . . I'm not talking about that kind of thing. I'm talking about juveniles, girls under sixteen—'
'I couldn't tell you. Girls of twelve can look sixteen . . . depends on cosmetics, hairstyles, all sorts of things.'
Parrish thought of Rebecca and Kelly - the painted nails, the cut hair.
'How did he react when you told him you wanted a divorce because he neglected the family?'
'He said he'd try harder. He said he'd be a better husband, a better father, but we'd had fights before, and he'd said the same things before.'
'And how long before you divorced him had you been aware of his interest in pornography?'
'Months, a year maybe. I found some of it in the attic, but I guess that's what really did it. You get the feeling that even if you repaired it, even if you tried to make it work, then you're going to be working on your own. The porno thing? At first he said he couldn't help the porno thing, and then he said he had it under control. He tried to make me think that people who were into that kind of thing had some kind of mental difficulty, and it wasn't something that they could just stop and start as and when they liked.'
'Did you believe him?'
'Good God no, of course not.'
Parrish leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, pressed the palms of his hands together and hesitated before he spoke again.
'Ms Paretski - Carole,' he said quietly. 'For no other reason than you're the one person who probably knows Richard better than anyone, I have to ask you: do you think - do you think he possesses the capability of harming another human being?'
'You're looking at him for this girl's murder, aren't you?' she said matter-of-factly. 'All this runaround shit is besides the point, isn't it? You think he's killed some teenage girl don't you?'
