“He’s got five seconds,” Carruthers said. If his gut was right on this, he wasn’t going to give Perlini time to dispose of evidence-or a little girl.
He heard a small pop at the door-the deadbolt releasing-then a face that resembled a mug shot he’d recently seen, staring at him through a torn screen door.
“Mr. Perlini?”
The man didn’t answer.
“Detective Carruthers. This is Detective Gooden.”
Carruthers stopped there. Curious about the response he’d get.
Perlini’s eyes dropped. Pedophiles were like that. Wouldn’t look adults in the eye.
“Yeah?” Perlini said.
“We’re looking for a little girl, Mr. Perlini. She wandered off from her house. We think she walked this way, and we were wondering if anyone took her in. Y’know, to take care of her, until her parents showed.”
The first order of business here was to get that little girl back home safe. Didn’t matter how. He was giving Perlini an out, the opportunity to pretend that the child had simply wandered off, that Perlini had done what any good citizen might do. From Perlini’s perspective, it was a way to stop this right now, with the possibility of avoiding a criminal charge.
Perlini didn’t answer.
“She’s real young,” Carruthers elaborated. “Probably too young to even say her name. So we figured, maybe someone was hanging on to her. To be safe.”
It was going to work now or never. The suspect couldn’t hesitate on the answer. Either he had her or he didn’t. If he had her, and he was going to buy this out Carruthers was offering, he’d have to purchase that ticket now.
“I was just sleepin’.” Perlini scratched his head, gathered a bunch of his thick red hair in his hand.
“How ’bout we step inside and talk a minute.” Carruthers wasn’t asking.
Perlini scratched his head again and looked back over his shoulder. He had a small frame. He was skinny and below-average height. The neighbor’s description wasn’t much, but it generally fit this guy.
“What do ya say, Griffin? A quick talk.”
“Um-well-my lawyer is Reggie Lionel.”
Perlini pointed behind him. “I could call him, but it’s early-”
“Your lawyer needs his beauty sleep, Griffin.” Carruthers grabbed the handle to the screen door, but it wouldn’t move.
Perlini’s eyes moved up to the detective’s, reading pure fear.
“You’ll need to unlock this door, Griffin. Right now.
“O-okay. Okay.” He pushed the door open.
Carruthers took the door handle. “Take two steps back, please.”
Carruthers, Gooden, and the uniform stepped in. Perlini suddenly looked lost in his own house, unsure of what to do, where to stand or where to go. Carruthers thought he’d let Perlini make the call. Surely, Perlini would try to direct them away from anything telltale.
The detective’s pulse was racing. She might be here in the house. She might still be alive. Behind him, Detective Gooden was strolling casually beyond the foyer, looking for anything in plain view.
“Is anyone else in this house, Griffin?”
Perlini shook his head, no.
“Griffin, you know a girl named Audrey Cutler?”
Perlini’s eyes were once again downcast, in anticipation of unwanted questioning, like a child expecting a scolding. On mention of the girl’s name, his eyes froze. His posture stiffened.
The answer was yes.
“No,” Perlini said.
“Griffin,” Gooden called out, “you don’t mind I look around a little?”
He did mind; it was all over his face. But pedophiles, they didn’t have a spine, not with adults. It wasn’t exactly textbook consent, but Perlini hadn’t said no. Carruthers was pretty sure he’d be able to reflect back on this moment and remember Perlini nodding his head.
“Eyes up, Griffin. Look at me.” Carruthers gestured to his own eyes, his fingers forked in a peace sign.
Perlini did the best he could, his eyes sweeping back and forth past Carruthers like a searchlight.
“If there was a misunderstanding here, Griffin-if maybe you thought about doing something but changed your mind-hey, let’s get that girl back home. No harm, no foul-”
“No. No.” Perlini shook his head, the insolent child, and gripped his tomato-red hair in two fists.
Carruthers heard a noise outside. A voice, yelling. He looked through the door and saw a man pointing at the house, talking to a gathering crowd. Something about a child molester.
The detective turned back to Perlini, who was beginning to dissolve. He was shaking his head with a childlike fury, tears forming in his eyes.
“This won’t get any better, Griffin,” Carruthers told him. “Every minute you stiff-arm me, it gets worse.”
“
Gooden’s voice sounded distant.
“Take that seat over there, Griffin.” He pointed to a small living room, a beat-up love seat with a torn cushion. He nodded to the officer, who clearly understood his direction to keep an eye on the suspect.
Carruthers moved quickly down a small tiled hallway, turned into a carpeted room with a television and fireplace, and found the back door to the place ajar. He stepped outside, into a yard of neglected grass and some old lawn furniture.
“Vic!”
His partner was calling from the detached garage behind the house. No-it wasn’t a garage at all, just a small coach house within the fenced property.
“I’m here,” Carruthers said, opening the door. “Jesus Christ.”
The room was filled with black-and-white photos on the walls and hung from clotheslines. Children. Toddlers. Dozens of them, looked to be ages two or three at best. Some of them were taken indoors-maybe a shopping mall, probably the one a couple miles away. Most of them were photos from a park.
Gooden walked along one of the clotheslines and fingered a series of photos taken of a small girl in a sandbox. Carruthers had seen the face very recently. For confirmation he did not need, he removed the photograph of Audrey Cutler from his jacket pocket, her innocent serenity lighting a deepening rage within him.
He marched into the main house, his body on fire, his hands balled in fists. He thought of Mary Cutler, hours ago, clutching her seven-year-old son Sammy in her arms, bursting out words breathlessly as she gave a physical description of Audrey.
He thought of that little boy, Sammy Cutler, the confused expression on his tiny face, not comprehending the situation entirely but understanding, on some level, that something bad had happened to his baby sister.
Griffin Perlini sat motionless in the chair, his head in his hands. The officer snapped to attention when he saw Carruthers, the officer’s expression confirming the look on Carruthers’s face.
Carruthers brushed past the officer. He grabbed Griffin Perlini by the shoulders and pushed him hard against the back cushion.
“You tell me where she is,” he said in a controlled whisper, “before I rip your throat out.”
TWENTY-SIX YEARS LATER SEPTEMBER 2006
