Disturbance

FOURTEEN

Hi, Irene,” Reed Collins said, looking up from the sandwich he was eating at his desk. “You here to see Frank?” “No,” Pete Baird answered from beside me. Since no one goes walking unescorted past the reception area of the police department, let alone into the homicide room, my husband’s partner had been the one who fetched me from the lobby. “Frank doesn’t know she’s here.” He didn’t spare me the tone of censorship, but I didn’t care-all that mattered to me at the moment was that he hadn’t left me sitting in the lobby. I didn’t even bother to correct what he said about Frank, at least not right away.

The others in the room knew me as a reporter, and I could see them moving to turn papers over and slipping files into desk drawers.

“Relax,” I said. “No newspaper anymore, remember?” Before their elation over that or their sympathy for me could make itself known, I quickly turned back to Reed and added, “Could I talk to you in one of the interview rooms?”

“I’ll come with you,” Pete said, and since I knew that trying to shake him would be a waste of effort, I didn’t protest.

When the door closed behind us, Reed said, “Are you working for a news agency of any kind, Irene?”

“No. I’m unemployed. This isn’t going out to the media.” I took a seat, and they followed suit. Interrogation mode-I was alone on one side of a table; they positioned their chairs to block me in. I tried not to let my claustrophobia distract me. I wouldn’t get anywhere if I didn’t stay calm.

“That leaves me with some questions, then,” Reed said. “I’ve been getting some phone calls.”

“I figured you would. Probably from Marilyn Foster’s friends and family. I’ve been going over her case.”

“Irene…,” Reed said pityingly.

“For what it’s worth, Frank felt the way you do. Wanted me to butt out, thought you and Vince would be pissed off at me for interfering with your case. Thought it was kind of sad that I wouldn’t just forget all about it. Pete’s wrong, though. Frank knows I’m here. I sat down with him and went over what I had found out, and he agreed with me that you should be made aware of what I’ve learned.”

Reed frowned. “He’s at lunch with Vince…”

“Yes. Neither of us thought Vince would hear me out.”

“Jesus, Irene. It might be an even bigger assumption on your part-and Frank’s-that I’d go behind my partner’s back.”

“You can tell him anything I tell you, but we both know Vince always needs four times the amount of time you do before he’ll calm down and listen to what I have to say.”

“Any reason why Frank couldn’t have come to us with this information you have?”

“I wouldn’t let him.”

Pete laughed.

“Does your wife give you her casework to carry in here, or does she come in herself?” I asked.

That shut him up. Rachel got into her work as a private investigator after many years as a homicide detective. It was impossible to picture Rachel handing her cases over to him.

“I don’t know, Irene…,” Reed said.

“Whatever. If you don’t want to know what I’ve found out, fine, I’ll go home.”

He made me wait it out for a minute or two. Then he said, “Let’s hear it.”

“Marilyn Foster had a son by Nick Parrish.”

“What!” Pete shouted.

“Settle down, Pete,” Reed said in his calm fashion. “You want to bring half the department running in here?” To me, he said, “What makes you think so?”

“When I interviewed Dwayne Foster for the story, he mentioned that she had given up a child for adoption as a teenager.”

“I read your story. That wasn’t in there.”

“The article you read was a missing person’s story that had to be rewritten as a murder story before it went to press. I never had a chance to write the follow-ups.” I paused, struggling to prevent my thoughts from going down a well-worn path of grief over the closing of the Express and to stay focused on convincing Reed. “I think you knew she had a child that had been put up for adoption.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, then seemed to come to some decision. “For the sake of argument, and to save Frank the pain of a really long lunch with Vince, let’s say we know not only that she gave birth to a son but that she was looking for him. Let’s say Dwayne Foster told us that much and her computer records supported it. All well and good, but how you can reach the sensational conclusion you’ve reached…”

“Did Dwayne tell you that the father of the child was in prison?”

“No,” he admitted uneasily.

“Parrish is not the only man in prison,” Pete scoffed. “For god’s sake, Irene, a father in prison could be any one of more than a million-and-a-half men in the U.S. I hate Parrish, too, but I can’t tie every crime in the country to the guy.”

“First of all, Marilyn told her husband that the father of her child was in prison ‘for life.’”

“In California, that cuts out about eighty percent of them,” Reed said, “but it’s still a big number.”

“And she might have just meant he had a long sentence,” Pete added, “or she might have been reassuring her husband that no dirtbag from her past was coming after her.”

I sighed. “Look, you two. You can keep arguing with me every step of the way, or you can let me lay this out for you.”

“It’s falling apart already,” Pete said.

Reed gave him a quelling look. “Go on,” he said to me.

“The age of her son-and figuring back to his conception-works out to a time when Parrish was living here in Las Piernas. So it’s possible.

“With all the publicity surrounding her death, Dwayne received lots of sympathy cards, including some from people who had only recently been back in contact with her-several of them had contacted her in the past year through a social networking site. Two were her closest friends from high school.”

I handed him a slip of paper with the names and numbers of the two women. “They’ve said they would be willing to discuss things further with the police.”

He took the paper and frowned down at it.

“I talked to them about the summer Marilyn had an ‘older boyfriend,’” I said. “He was in his late twenties-although who knows if he told her his real age-and she was fifteen when they met. She was in full-on rebellion mode with her parents. She had been secretive about the boyfriend, but her girlfriends were curious. So one night, they watched when she sneaked out of the house, and followed her. They saw the young man she met.”

“And twenty-some-odd years later,” Pete said, “happen to remember that the guy they saw in the distance in the dark was one of America’s most notorious serial killers. Give me a break!”

“Pete,” Reed warned.

“They didn’t just see him from a distance. He caught them spying.”

Pete sat back.

I told them the story as it had been recounted to me.

Marilyn’s family lived near a park, and that was where she had her assignation with her boyfriend. It was after closing time, and she met him near a tree-lined path. A perfect place to spend time with a lover, with lots of concealing shrubbery. The girls followed the couple, hanging back a little, trying not to be seen.

They passed a lighted area near a bench, but Parrish and Marilyn didn’t stop there. The path twisted and turned, and they thought he was with Marilyn, so when each girl felt a hand grip the back of her neck, they screeched simultaneously. He held them hard, painfully, just below their skulls, and controlled them as if they were puppets. He told them to shut up, but they had already fallen silent.

He marched them back to the lighted area and turned them so that they were facing him. They said-independently-that he didn’t say another word, just stared at them, then smiled. It had the same effect on each of them-he might have been smiling, but they felt certain that he was damned angry, and if they didn’t get out of there, he’d hurt them worse. He released his grip, and they ran home.

I took a breath and let it out slowly, pushing aside my own memories of having Nick Parrish take hold of me.

“Even though it was more than twenty years ago, if you heard them talk about that night-the intensity of his stare, the way he stood, the painful bruises on their necks-you’d believe they haven’t forgotten that man or how he made them feel.”

“You’re sure it was Parrish?” Reed asked.

“Not from that, no. I thought of showing them a photo of Parrish, but I don’t have one of him from that time, so…”

“Thank God for small favors,” Pete muttered.

“Go on,” Reed said.