Rosary girls

66

As Jessica drove home, the radio predicted a huge thunderstorm. High winds, lightning, flood warnings. Parts of Roosevelt Boulevard were already inundated.

She thought about the night she had met Patrick, so many years ago. She had watched him work in the ER that night, so impressed with his grace and confidence, his ability to comfort the people who came in those doors, looking for help.

People responded to him, believed in his ability to relieve their pain. His looks certainly didn't hurt. She tried to think rationally about him. What did she really know? Was she able to think about him in the same terms she had thought about Brian Parkhurst?

No, she was not.

But the more she thought about it, the more it became possible. The fact that he was an MD, the fact that he could not account for his time at crucial intervals in the time line of the murders, the fact that he had lost his kid sister to violence, the fact that he was a Catholic, and, inescapably, the fact that he had treated all five girls. He knew their names and addresses, their medical histories.

She had looked again at the digital photographs of Nicole Taylor's hand. Could Nicole have been spelling out F A R instead of P A R?

It was possible.

Despite her instincts, Jessica finally admitted it to herself. If she didn't know Patrick, she would be leading the charge to arrest him, based on one immutable fact:

He knew all five girls.