Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (44 page)

Jessica noticed that Lauren’s right hand was clenched into a tight fist. Something was in her hand—something with a sharp edge, something plastic. Jessica tried gently to open the girl’s fingers. Nothing doing. Jessica didn’t press the issue.

As they waited, Lauren rambled. Jessica got a sketchy tale of what had happened to her. Phrases were unconnected. Words slipped between her teeth.

Jeff’s house.

Tweakers.

Fucker.

Lauren’s dried lips and ravaged nostrils, along with the brittle hair and the somewhat translucent look to her skin told Jessica she was probably a meth head.

Needle.

Fucker.

Before Lauren was loaded onto the gurney, she opened her eyes for a moment, and said one word that caused the world to stop spinning for a moment.

Rosary.

T
HE AMBULANCE LEFT, taking Bonnie Semanski to the hospital with her granddaughter. Jessica called the station house and told them what had happened. A pair of detectives were on their way to St. Joseph’s. Jessica had given the EMS strict instructions to preserve Lauren’s clothing and, to any extent possible, any fibers or fluids. Specifically, she told them to safeguard the forensic integrity of whatever Lauren had clutched in her right hand.

Jessica remained at the Semanski house. She walked into the living room and sat with George Semanski.

“Your granddaughter is going to be all right,” Jessica said, hoping she sounded convincing, wanting to believe it was true.

George Semanski nodded. He continued to wring his hands. He ran through the cable channels as if it were some sort of physical therapy.

“I need to ask you one more question, sir. If that’s okay.”

After a few moments of silence, he nodded again. It appeared that the cornucopia of pharmaceuticals on the TV tray had him on a narcotically induced time delay.

“Your wife told me that, last year, when Lauren’s mom and dad were killed, Lauren took it pretty hard,” Jessica said. “Can you tell me what she meant by that?”

George Semanski reached for a bottle of pills. He took the bottle, turning it over and over in his hands, but not opening it. Jessica noted that it was clonazepam.

“Well, after the funeral and all, after the burials, about a week or so later, she almost, well, she . . .”

“She what, Mr. Semanski?”

George Semanski paused. He stopped fidgeting with the pill vial. “She tried to kill herself.”

“How?”

“She, well, she went out to the car one night. She ran a hose from the exhaust into one of the windows. She tried to breathe in the carbon monoxide, I guess.”

“What happened?”

“She passed out on the car horn. It woke up Bonnie and she went out there.”

“Did Lauren have to go to the hospital?”

“Oh yes,” George said. “She was in there for almost a week.”

Jessica’s pulse quickened. She felt the puzzle piece click into place.

Bethany Price had tried to slash her wrists.

Tessa Wells had a Sylvia Plath reference in her diary.

Lauren Semanski tried monoxide poisoning.

Suicide, Jessica thought.

All of these girls tried to commit suicide.

“M
R. WELLS? This is Detective Balzano.” Jessica was on her cell phone, standing on the sidewalk in front of the Semanski house. Pacing was more like it.

“Have you caught somebody?” Wells asked.

“Well, we’re working on it, sir. I have a question for you about Tessa. It’s about last year, around Thanksgiving.”

“Last year?”

“Yes,” Jessica said. “This might be a little hard to talk about but, believe me, it won’t be any harder for you to answer than it will be for me to ask.”

Jessica recalled the junk drawer in Tessa’s room. There were hospital bracelets in there.

“What about Thanksgiving?” Wells asked.

“By any chance, was Tessa hospitalized around that time?”

Jessica listened, waited. She found that she was clenching her fist around her cell phone. It felt as if she might break it. She eased up.

“Yes,” he said.

“Could you tell me why she was in the hospital?”

She closed her eyes.

Frank Wells took a rattling, painful breath.

And told her.

“T
ESSA WELLS TOOK A HANDFUL OF PILLS last November. Lauren Semanski locked herself in the garage and started the car. Nicole Taylor slashed her wrists,” Jessica said. “At least three of the girls on this list attempted suicide.”

They were back at the Roundhouse.

Byrne smiled. Jessica felt a charge of electricity shoot through her body. Lauren Semanski was still heavily sedated. Until they were able to talk to her, they would have to fly with what they had.

There was not yet any word on what was clasped in her hand. According to the detectives at the hospital, Lauren Semanski had not yet given it up. The doctors told them they’d have to wait.

Byrne had a photocopy of Brian Parkhurst’s list in his hand. He tore it in half, handed one piece to Jessica, kept the other. He pulled out his cell phone.

Soon, they had their answer. All ten girls on the list had tried to commit suicide within the past year. Jessica now believed that Brian Parkhurst, perhaps as penance, was trying to tell the police that he knew why these girls were being targeted. As part of his counseling, these girls had all confided in him that they had attempted to take their own lives.

There are things you need to know about these girls.

Perhaps, by some twisted sense of logic, their doer was trying to finish the job these girls had started. They would worry about the why of it all when they had him in irons.

What was obvious was this: Their doer had abducted Lauren Semanski and drugged her with midazolam. What he had not counted on was that she was full of methamphetamine. The speed had counteracted the midazolam. In addition, she was also full of piss and vinegar, a fighter. He definitely picked the wrong girl.

For the first time in her life, Jessica was glad that a teenager did drugs.

But if the killer’s inspiration was the five Sorrowful Mysteries of the rosary, why were there
ten
girls on Parkhurst’s list? Besides attempting suicide, what did five of them have in common? Was he really going to stop at five?

They compared their notes.

Four of the girls overdosed on pills. Three of them tried to cut their wrists. Two of the girls tried to commit suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. One girl drove her car through a guardrail and over a ravine. She was saved by the airbag.

It wasn’t method that tied any five together.

What about school? Four of the girls went to Regina, four went to Nazarene, one went to Marie Goretti and one to Neumann.

As to age: four were sixteen, two were seventeen, three were fifteen, one eighteen.

Was it neighborhood?

No.

Clubs or extracurricular activities?

No.

Gang affiliations?

Hardly.

What was it?

Ask and ye shall receive,
Jessica thought. The answer was right in front of them.

It was the hospital.

St. Joseph’s
was what they had in common.

“Look at this,” Jessica said.

On the day they had tried to kill themselves, the five girls treated at St. Joseph’s were Nicole Taylor, Tessa Wells, Bethany Price, Kristi Hamilton, and Lauren Semanski.

The rest were treated elsewhere, at five different hospitals.

“My God,” Byrne said. “That’s it.”

It was the break they were looking for.

But the fact that all of these girls were treated at one hospital was not what made Jessica shaky. The fact that they all tried to commit suicide wasn’t it, either.

The fact that made the room lose all of its air was this:

The same doctor had treated them all: Dr. Patrick Farrell.

64

FRIDAY, 6:15 PM

P
ATRICK SAT in Interview Room A. Eric Chavez and John Shepherd handled the interview while Byrne and Jessica observed. The interview was being videotaped.

As far as Patrick knew, he was merely a material witness in the case.

He had a recent scratch on his right hand.

When they could, they would scrape beneath Lauren Semanski’s fingernails, looking for DNA evidence. Unfortunately, according to the CSU, it probably wouldn’t yield much. Lauren was lucky to even
have
fingernails.

They had gone over Patrick’s schedule for the previous week, and, to Jessica’s chagrin, they had learned that there wasn’t a single day that would have prevented Patrick from abducting the victims, nor dumping their bodies.

The thought made Jessica physically ill. Was she really considering the notion that Patrick had something to do with these murders? With each passing minute, the answer was getting closer to
yes
. The next minute dissuaded her. She really didn’t know what to think.

Nick Palladino and Tony Park were on their way to the Wilhelm Kreuz crime scene with a photograph of Patrick. It was unlikely that old Agnes Pinsky would remember him—even if she did pick him out of a photo lineup, her credibility would be torn to shreds by even a public defender. Nick and Tony would canvass up and down the street nonetheless.

“I
HADN’T BEEN KEEPING UP with the news, I’m afraid,” Patrick said.

“I can understand that,” Shepherd replied. He was sitting on the edge of the battered metal table. Eric Chavez leaned against the door. “I’m sure you see enough of the ugly side of life where you work.”

“We have our triumphs,” Patrick said.

“So, you’re saying that you were not aware that any of these girls had at one time been a patient of yours?”

“An ER physician, especially in an inner-city trauma center, works triage, Detective. The patient needing the most immediate care is treated first. After patients are patched up and sent home, or admitted, they are always referred to their primary care physician. The concept of patient doesn’t really apply. People who come to an emergency room may only be a patient of any given doctor for an hour. Sometimes less. Quite often less. Thousands of people pass through St. Joseph’s ER every year.”

Shepherd listened, nodding at all the appropriate cues, absently straightening the already perfect creases in his pants. Explaining the concept of triage to a veteran homicide detective was wholly unnecessary. Everyone in Interview Room A knew that.

“That doesn’t really answer my question, though, Dr. Farrell.”

“It seemed that I knew the name Tessa Wells when I heard it on the news. I didn’t, however, make any immediate connection to whether or not St. Joseph’s had provided her with emergency care.”

Bullshit,
Jessica thought, her anger growing. They had discussed Tessa Wells the night they had a drink at Finnigan’s Wake.

“You say
St. Joseph’s
as if it was the institution that treated her that day,” Shepherd said. “It’s
your
name on the file.”

Shepherd held up the file for Patrick to see.

“The record doesn’t lie, Detective,” Patrick said. “I must have treated her.”

Shepherd held up a second file. “And you treated Nicole Taylor.”

“Again, I really don’t recall.”

A third file. “And Bethany Price.”

Patrick stared.

Two more files in his face now. “Kristi Hamilton spent four hours in your care. Lauren Semanski five.”

“I defer to the record, Detective,” Patrick said.

“All five of these girls were abducted and four of them were brutally murdered this week, Doctor. This
week
. Five female, teenaged victims who just happened to pass through your office within the past ten months.”

Patrick shrugged.

John Shepherd asked, “You can certainly understand our interest in you at this point, can’t you?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Patrick said. “As long as your interest in me is in the nature of material witness. As long as that’s the case, I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.”

“By the way, how did you get that scratch on your hand?”

It was clear that Patrick had an answer well prepared for this. He wasn’t, however, going to blurt anything out. “It’s a long story.”

Shepherd looked at his watch. “I’ve got all night.” He looked at Chavez. “How about you, Detective?”

“I cleared my schedule just in case.”

They both turned their attention back to Patrick.

“Let’s just say that one should always beware of a wet cat,” Patrick said. Jessica saw the charm shine through. Unfortunately for Patrick, these two detectives were immune. At the moment, so was Jessica.

Shepherd and Chavez exchanged a glance. “Have truer words ever been spoken?” Chavez asked.

“You’re saying a cat did that?” Shepherd asked.

“Yes,” Patrick replied. “She was outside all day in the rain. When I got home tonight, I saw her shivering in the bushes. I tried to pick her up. Bad idea.”

“What’s her name?”

It was an old interrogation trick. Someone mentions an alibi-related person, you slam them immediately with a question regarding the name. This time, it was a pet. Patrick was not prepared.