Part 42 (1/2)
”Yeah?”
”The cops think it's Julia Arruda.”
The scene at the farm was all too familiar: a small lump under a blue tarp, detectives pawing through a pile of garbage, Parisi inside the farmhouse talking with Scalici. I took notes, going through the motions, but my heart wasn't in it.
That evening, Parisi called to say his detectives had found some bits of human skull in the garbage. They looked as if they'd been smashed into fragments with a hammer. So much for the mystery of what the child killers were doing with the heads.
62.
That evening I found Fiona hunched at her usual table at Hopes, drinking beer with Anne Kotch, an a.s.sistant attorney general. I got myself a club soda from the bar, strolled over, and joined them.
”Would you mind giving Mulligan and me a few minutes?” Fiona said, so Anne got up and claimed a stool at the bar.
”I'm glad you showed,” Fiona said. ”I could use a friendly shoulder.”
”How come?”
”I handled the Arruda notification myself.”
”Why put yourself through that? The state cops could have done it.”
”I owed it to the parents.”
”Must have been awful.”
”Worse than you know.”
Fiona's lower lip quivered, and I noticed then she was wearing lipstick. Her shoulders shook, and she began to weep. I got up, stood behind her chair, wrapped her up in a hug, held her until the shaking stopped, and then sat down again across from her.
”That was one h.e.l.l of a story yesterday morning,” she said.
”Thanks.”
”Probably earn you a big journalism prize you can hang on your wall.”
”I don't much care about that.”
”Well, you should. You earned it. You did a brilliant job figuring everything out.”
”Not really,” I said. ”After all, you figured it out first.”
”What are you talking about?”
”You know exactly what I'm talking about.”
”Think you know the rest of it, do you?”
”I do.”
”Tell me what you think you know.”
”You did your own research on Sal weeks ago and learned he was a big donor to child protection groups.”
”I might have.”
”And you went to the New Haven Public Library, dug into Puglisi's past, and learned what happened to his sister.”
”So what if I did?”
”Once you had all that, it wasn't much of a leap to guess Sal was the one behind the hits on the child p.o.r.nographers.”
”Go on.”
”It was around that time that I told you my suspicions about Wayne.”
”I remember.”
”There were only two other people who knew Wayne might be dirty,” I said. ”One of them was the source I got it from, and I know for a fact he didn't tell anybody else. The other was Wayne's secretary, and she's way too nave to have done anything with the information.”
”So?”
”So after I told you my suspicions, you pa.s.sed them on to Sal.”
”Why would I do that?”
”Because you couldn't touch Wayne legally. You didn't have enough to get a warrant for his computers.”
Fiona raised her beer to her lips and discovered the can was empty. I got up, walked to the bar, and fetched her another. She took it from my hand and drank deeply.
”Is Vanessa going to continue her father's crusade?” I asked.
”Let's say I have reason to believe she will.”
”Going to hunt down the child p.o.r.nographers who are still on the loose, is she?”
”And maybe the child p.o.r.n fans we found on the computers at Chad Brown,” Fiona said.