Saints Of New York (42 page)

'It's
almost like I'm trying to do everything to get rid of that part of my life.'

'And
the kids?' Parrish asked.

She
shrugged. 'I don't know what to think about them. They don't ask me about him.
They never talk about the divorce. They go with him when he comes to take them.
They do whatever they do - Chinese meals, movies, going to the mall, and they
come back with stuff that he's bought them. Father's day they send cards. They
ask me for money to buy him stuff for his birthday and for Christmas. They see
what they want to see and they don't look for anything else.'

'And
if something comes of this? If we learn that he might have been indirectly
involved in something that—'

Carole
Paretski raised her hand to silence Parrish. 'We jump off those bridges when we
get there/ she said. 'Before that I don't want to know, and I'm not going to
ask, okay?'

'Okay,'
Parrish replied. 'We'll get out of here now. Weil be back in the morning. Jimmy
here will come with some uniforms at
nine,
and I'll be here a little later.'

*

Parrish
and Radick made their way back to the Precinct in silence. They delivered the
boxes to Evidence, where they were bagged and tagged. They divided the
paperwork between them, and then Parrish went looking for Valderas.

Valderas
didn't have a problem giving them three uniforms, but he wanted something in
writing from Carole Paretski, witnessed by at least two of the attending
officers, stating that she had given permission for the house to be searched.

Parrish
said he would type it up before he left.

Radick
took off just before ten. It had been a long day, and already they were a
considerable number of hours off-shift. Times like this it didn't matter. Times
like this it ceased to be a job, ceased to be anything but something that
needed to be done.

Parrish
sat at his desk alone. He remembered one of the last things that Carole
Paretski had said.
It's almost
like I'm trying to do everything to get rid of that part of my life.
Was she co-operating with them because it was a way of getting back at her
ex-husband? Was there nothing here at all? A guy who worked too hard, who
neglected his family, a guy who liked to read porn, a guy who may or may not
have said something to a little girl in a fucking playground however many years
before, who happened to own an SUV. A guy who was in the frame for something
that had nothing at all to do with him. And was he there simply because there
was no-one else? Was he getting too stuck on McKee because that's what
happened in this line of work, where desperation for a result could become an
obsession?

Parrish
thought about how it would be to change things. People
did
change their lives - sometimes the decision as rapid and definitive as a
lightning strike. He had seen it happen. They cut out for some distant state -
Wisconsin or Nebraska or somewhere - nothing for miles but storm clouds and the
promise of more distance. A house built of rough timber on a foundation of
disused sleepers and cinder blocks, the only sound that of the wind, or of the
infrequent passage of semis on the interstate. Nothing louder than someone
breathing in the next room.

Parrish
believed that if he did such a thing he would never forget New York. He had
seen veterans - ten years retired, the rush and punch of the hunt nothing more
than a vague memory, part of some other life now disowned and un-remembered.
Parrish
could
do such a thing. He
could
make such a
decision. But he knew he would not. He was one of those who would walk away
from the building and feel homesick after five blocks.

There
was a point where you realized you had done all the changing you were going to
do. The person you had become was the person you would always and forever be.
In the vast majority of cases such a realization was a disappointment, an
anticlimax. In Parrish's case it was a fact and a reality, and he didn't need
to avoid it.

For
a brief moment he thought to call Eve. He decided against it. He wanted to be
alone.

He got up and looked down at the files on
his desk.
This is what I do,
he thought.
This is what I will always do. This is my heroin.

'We're searching
his ex-wife's place now.'

 
'That's where you took the porn from last
night?'

'Yeah, that's
right.'

'And she's
co-operating with you on this?'

'Couldn't be more
co-operative.'

'Does that
concern you?'

'What? That she
might be helping us to get back at him?'

'They're
estranged, aren't they? You said that things hadn't been amicable.'

'When the hell
is a divorce ever amicable? Seems an oxymoron to me. An
amicable
divorce. If they're so fucking amicable why don't they stay together?'

'That sounds a
little bitter, Frank?'

'Whatever. Fact
of the matter is that Jimmy Radick is over there right now with some uniforms
and they're going to see if there's anything even vaguely incriminating.'

'Such as?'

'Well,
if
he's the perp,
if he
actually did the girls, then it's not
uncommon for such people to keep mementos. Maybe he left something there and
hasn't been able to go back and get it. If he's just passing information on to
someone outside Family Welfare, then there may be an address book, an old cell
phone, something that ties him into this.'

'But the
earliest case you have is - when did you say?'

'Earliest one we
have on record is October 2006. Melissa. The runaway.'

'But he split
with his wife before that, three years ago.' 'Sure he did, but who's to say
that Melissa was the first? And he has been back there many times since.'

'Just
to collect the kids for the weekend, right?'

'Sure,
but who the hell knows what he might have left there. I know it's the longest
of long shots but it's not something I can overlook.'

'You
think he's your guy.'

'I
hope
he's our guy.'

'But
do you think he is?'

'Honestly?
I have nothing. Not of any substance. I am interested in McKee solely because
I feel certain it's someone from Family Welfare, directly or indirectly. It has
to be someone from inside the unit itself. And, truth is, I now have no-one
else that even raises an eyebrow from
me.'

'And
there's no doubt it's someone inside Family Welfare?'

'No,
no doubt as far as I'm concerned. There's too much circumstantial evidence to
indicate it's any other way.'

'So
where do you go with it now?'

'We
have to find something sufficiently probative to get a warrant for his current
place of residence, his car, access to his finance records, whatever we can get
to. I'd like a DNA sample, his prints, some of his hair, you know? I want
anything I can get on him that can be used to cross-reference against the
samples we have from the girls.'

'Does
it frustrate you?'

'Of
course it frustrates me.'

'Do
you ever feel like stepping over the lines to get what you need?'

'Sure
I do. Who doesn't? But you don't, do you? You start down that road and you wind
up like my father.'

'You
believe that's what happened? That he started out doing things for the good,
and it all went bad?'

'With
my father? No, I shouldn't think so. I figure that he started out bad and it
just got worse.'

'Do
you feel any need to tell the world what he was really like?'

'I
haven't really thought about it since we last spoke of him, so no, maybe not.
Maybe I can just let him rot in hell.'

'Do
you consider that's progress? Do you consider that you're carrying a little
less baggage now?' 'Hell, you know me. I put down one suitcase full of shit I'm
just gonna go pick another one up.'

'You know yourself better than
you let on, Frank. I think you like to project that persona - the troublemaker,
the loner, the outsider, the difficult one that no-one can get rid of because
he's too good at his job.'

'I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't
say that I was too good at my job.'

'And that's the other part of it
right there - this false humility. You know how good you are, you just believe
that talking about it diminishes the effect it has on others.'

'I don't know what the hell
you're trying to say here.'

'I'm saying that you want the
world to believe that you're this lonely -

'Sure I'm lonely. Who isn't these
days? I have enough loneliness to open a store.'

'Of course you do.'

'What? You're laughing at me
now?'

'I'm not laughing
at
you, Frank, I'm laughing
with
you.'

'That's just such a full-of-shit
thing to say. I'm laughing
with
you. I'm not
laughing. Did you happen to notice that?'

'I'm sorry, Frank. I just hear
you say one thing and I know you're really saying another.'

'Well, I suppose that's where a
psychology major comes in handy, 'cause it feels to me that what I say and what
I mean are precisely the same thing.'

'Okay, agreed. What you say is
what you mean.'

'Now you just sound patronizing.'

'I'm sorry. I apologize. I
certainly don't mean to sound that way.'

'So what now? We're done for
today?'

'You think we're done?'

'Christ, what is it with this
can't-answer-a-question-without- asking-another-question bullshit? Far as I'm
concerned, we were done the first day I came here.'

'I've upset you, Frank, and I'm
sorry. I've said I'm sorry. I know you're on edge—'

'I'm on edge because I've got
Jimmy Radick over at this woman's house and I'm not there. I think he'll be
fine, but I'd feel a hell of a lot better if I was there, too.'

'I
don't want to hold you up from your work, Frank, but it seems to me that what
we're doing is a way to make you work better. And you have to learn to
delegate. You're not going to always be there. At some point you're going to
have to stop doing this, and there have to be some people left behind that can
do this job as well as you. If Jimmy Radick can't organize searching someone's
house then he has no place as a homicide detective, right?'

'Right,
yeah. Sure.'

'So
sit back for a minute. Just relax, okay? A few more minutes of your time isn't
going to affect what happens out there one way or the other.'

'Okay,
okay. So what do you want to ask me now?'

'I
want to know what you'll do if there's nothing at the house?'

'What
I'll do? I've got a trace going on with someone at Archives for any footage or
pictures of these girls in their files. I'm going to have to find a way to get
into McKee's SUV. I need to look at his finance records, see if he's received
any unusual amounts of money—'

'In
case he's being paid for information about these girls from their files?'

'Right.
And I need to look at his work attendance records. I need to know if he was at
work when these girls were supposedly abducted, or if there were days he was
absent from work after they went missing . . . this kind of thing. I just need
to start building up a much better picture of the kind of person I'm dealing
with.'