Saints Of New York (38 page)

'Jesus, Frank,
you know how many movies that covers?'

'I have an
idea.'

Joel
Erickson, Vice Archive Supervisor, custodian of all things celluloid and
digital, wore a face for the world. First appearances gave you the genial uncle,
the helpful next-door neighbor, the cousin who showed up each Christmas with a
different bleached- blonde forty-five-year-old girlfriend. Look a little deeper
and the cracks and crevices began to show. The lines were there, and the
shadows, and when asked about the things he knew he would smile sardonically
and shake his head.

'You
don't want to know the things I know,' he would say, and then proceed to tell
you.

Joel
Erickson was not the sort of man who was invited to dinner parties, and - even
if he had been asked - he was not the sort of man who would accept.

'Off
the top of my head I can think of three, four, five dozen that would fit the
bill just in the last quarter.'

Parrish
put the case files on Erickson's desk and pushed them towards him.

Erickson
opened them one at a time, perused the picture within, and then closed the file
and set it aside.

'All
the same,' he said quietly, and shook his head. 'They all look the same after a
while. Leave it with me for a few days. I'll take copies of the pictures now,
and I'll start looking as and when I get a chance. But you know what it's like,
right? Needle and a fucking haystack in the same sentence once again.'

Parrish
smiled ruefully. 'I get it, Joel. I'm just asking you to do whatever you can. I
got six. I think they're connected, and I think that some of those faces might
be somewhere here.'

'Like
I said, Frank, I'll do what I can.'

Parrish
and Radick waited while Erickson photocopied the pictures. They thanked
Erickson for his willingness.

'I
got all the willingness in the world,' he replied. 'It's time and resources
that are the problem.'

'Let's
take a break,' Parrish said as they reached the car. 'Let's go get some coffee
or something. I just want to take a few minutes to get oriented.'

There
was a Starbucks a block and a half down. Parrish ordered the coffee while
Radick found a table near the restrooms.

'Hangs
together with a fucking spider's web,' was Radick's comment as Parrish sat
down.

Parrish
didn't reply until he was seated, until he'd removed his jacket, set down his
files, fished his cell phone out of his pocket and set it on the table.

'A
spider's web is a very good analogy,' he said. 'I think there's so many more
threads to this than we see right now. Either that, or they're all unrelated.'

'I
don't think they
are
unrelated,' Radick replied. 'The fingernails, the haircuts, the
strangulations.'

'For
sure, but how many girls get their nails done, get their hair cut? They're
doing that kind of shit all the fucking time, aren't they? All we have that's
MO-consistent is the COD, and strangulation as a COD has to be about as common
as you can get.'

'I
understand that, Frank, but I still think you're onto something. I think
they're linked, I think they're all going to tie
together, and I think there's one
person and he works for South Two.'

Parrish
smiled. 'So who do you keep thinking about?'

Radick
shook his head. 'I keep thinking about McKee, but I know I'm thinking about him
because of the skin mags, and that. . . Well shit, it isn't even anything is
it?'

'You're
right. It isn't anything,' Parrish replied.

'What
did you used to say? Something about how things are often exactly as they
appear.'

'But
also that the obvious can sometimes occlude the truth.'

'McKee
is the model employee for sure, but he was also the most familiar with the
cases.'

'But
he would be,' Parrish replied. 'He deals with cases of his own, some he
supervises, and he even does case reviews for the guys they're training.'

Radick
didn't reply. He merely looked down for a moment.

'I'm
not disagreeing with you, Jimmy. I'm not saying it
couldn't
be him, but without anything to directly
connect him, no info on a car, nothing to . . . Hell, he's no more in the frame
for this than any of them.'

'So
who do you like for it?' Radick asked.

'I
don't
like
any of them for it,' Parrish replied. 'I would love for it to be McKee. I would
love for it to be that fucking simple.'

'Why
d'you bring his name up then? Why d'you say you want it to be him?'

Parrish
inhaled deeply. 'Gut feeling? Intuition? Fuck, I don't know. He came in the
room, he sat down, and - I don't know, Jimmy, I just don't know. Something,
nothing . . . maybe I just want it to be him so we aren't going round and round
in fucking circles. I have no more reason to think it's him than I do any of
them. If I'm completely logical and rational then there's nothing, and if I'm
not . . .'

He
didn't bother finishing the sentence.

'So
let's just put some heat on him,' Radick said. 'Let's get him to come down to
the 126th and ask him some more questions. We can
ask
him to assist us with the investigation
without making it formal, and if he refuses then we have another little flag
waving over his head, right?'

'We
can do that, yes.'

'Only concern I
have,' Radick went on, 'is that if we push him for some more info then he'll
take evasive action with whatever evidence might be in his car and his home.'

'The mere fact
that we're questioning everyone at South Two has done that already,' Parrish
replied. 'If he had things to hide then he'll have hidden them already.'

'But they always
miss something, don't they?' Radick asked.

'Not always,'
Parrish said.

Radick
hesitated. 'Shit, Frank, we're just making this up as we go along. In all
honesty, Lester Young is more connected to this stuff than McKee.'

'Sure he is, but
Lester Young we don't have. We have McKee, and McKee had skin mags in his
locker.'

'So I'll call
Lavelle, tell him we want to speak to McKee some more, and that we'll pick him
up outside South Two when he's done at work.'

Parrish glanced
at his watch: it was a little after two. 'Screw it . . . ask Lavelle if he'll
let him out now.'

Radick called,
didn't get Lavelle but reached Raymond Foley. Foley didn't have a problem, said
McKee could have the time to do whatever was needed. He said he would speak to
McKee right away, tell him that Parrish and Radick needed his help with some
further information.

'We're up,'
Radick said as he ended the call. 'Foley is letting him out now. We're going to
go pick him up at South Two.'

'Good enough,'
Parrish said. He got up, put his jacket back on, and walked to the counter to
get a take-out cup for his coffee.

An interview room in the basement
of the 126th Police Precinct, Brooklyn South, was perhaps one of the most
airless and unwelcoming places within which to find yourself. Tiny louvered
vents high above the door permitted little more than a minimal escape route for
the sweat-drenched air that clouded the room; these same louvers didn't seem to
allow any fresh air back in.

Radick asked McKee if he wanted
coffee. McKee said yes. Parrish showed him to the chair, and immediately apologized
for the room.

'If I had an office of my own
we'd be in it,' he said, 'but I'm just your standard government mule.'

'Same with us,' McKee replied.
'Dozens of us in one big open space. Doesn't lend itself to discretion, does
it?'

Radick returned with coffee. He
sat down between Parrish and McKee at the end of the table, Parrish and McKee
facing one another. A few moments of awkward silence before Parrish leaned
forward and brought the palms of his hands together as if making a small
prayer.

'Richard,' he started. 'I can
call you Richard? Is that okay?'

McKee nodded. 'Of course, yes.'

'I wanted to ask you some more
about your involvement with Jennifer Baumann and Karen—'

'Involvement?'
McKee interjected. 'I didn't have any involvement with either of them.'

'I think you said you'd heard of
Jennifer, even knew her
case
officer.
If I remember rightly, you said he'd gone to the Probation Service.'

'Yes, I did say that. I knew of
the Jennifer Baumann case,
but I
didn't
know the girl. Never met her, never spoke to her.
Same
with Karen Pulaski. The name rang a
bell, but I didn't even know she'd been murdered.'

'But
now you do.'

'Do
what?'

'You
do know she's been murdered.'

McKee
frowned. 'Yes, of course I know she's been murdered. You told me yesterday.'

Parrish
nodded. He smiled understandingly. 'Yes, of course I did. I did tell you that.
But before I told you that you had no idea that she'd been killed.'