At the station, Lee followed Chuck and Butts down the hall to Interrogation Room Three, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, a cup of coffee in his hand.
Through the one-way glass he could see them: three East Village types, two boys and a girl. They were young, and probably even younger than Jane Doe Number Five. Two of them, the girl and one of the boys, were gothed up to the max-black leather, purple spiked hair, bloodred lipstick, their skin pierced with enough hardware to set off metal detectors in any airport. Lee counted five rings in the boy's nose alone.
The third kid was less outrageously dressed. Slim and small-boned, he wore a simple buckskin jacket over blue jeans and no makeup, and sported a single nose ring. His hair was brown and combed straight back, rather than spiked up into points like the other boy's hair, which resembled the crown on the Statue of Liberty. He looked more nervous than his companions, too, glancing at the door every few seconds, as if he expected it to open and disgorge a monster into the room.
The other boy was larger, solidly built but soft, with bits of baby fat poking out between his leather vest and metal-studded black leather pants. Judging by his pale eyebrows and lashes, Lee figured that his hair was probably naturally blond, but it was hard to tell what was hidden under all that purple dye.
His forearms showed evidence of recent wounds-not needle tracks, Lee thought, but the small slashes left after 'cutting'-a process where kids would nick themselves with sharp knives, sometimes a dozen or more cuts at a time. It was fashionable among the goth crowd right now, but it reeked of despair, a desperate attempt to numb feelings more painful than physical discomfort.
He looked at the girl to see if she too was a cutter, but her arms were covered by the sleeves of her lacy black sweater. She was tall, with dyed jet-black hair. Her lipstick was the color of dried blood, and her mouth turned downward at the corners in a habitual pout. Her eyes were ringed with black eyeliner, so that she resembled a surly raccoon. Under all the makeup, Lee imagined she was probably quite pretty. She wore a hard expression, and both boys looked as though they took orders from her. The smaller boy had a sharp, intelligent face, whereas the bigger one looked to be the muscle of the organization. Beauty, brains, and brawn, he thought, watching them. There was usually a leader and followers in groups like this, and the girl was clearly the leader.
The girl was staring at a photo of Jane Doe Number Five. Pushing it away from her to the other end of the table, she frowned at her companions.
'Look, you're good with kids,' Chuck said to Lee. 'Why don't you handle this one?'
'Okay.' Lee looked to see if Butts was feeling any resentment, but if he was, he wasn't showing it.
He and Butts and Chuck entered the room together, Lee moving slowly but with purpose, keeping his face as blank as possible. If he read these three correctly, the best thing he could do was to play his cards close and let them come to him. They watched him warily as he sat in the only vacant chair, a scarred green plastic affair with a crack in the seat. He smiled at them.
'Hi,' he said, 'thanks for coming in.'
'Look, we just want to help you catch her killer, okay?' the girl said, as though he had challenged her in some way.
'Okay,' Lee answered, not reacting to her belligerent tone. 'We appreciate that.'
'Here's the deal,' she said, leaning forward. Lee tried not to look at the dark line where her breasts met under the lacy shirt. 'You don't ask who we are, and we tell you everything we can. Deal?'
Lee glanced at Chuck, who nodded.
'Deal.' Their desire to remain anonymous meant they were probably runaways. Petty thieves too, maybe, drug users possibly-but mostly they were just scared kids.
'Okay,' the girl said. Her voice was husky, smoky as her kohl-lined eyes-whether from too many cigarettes or drugs, he couldn't tell.
'You have to understand our culture,' the girl said. 'We stick together, right?'
'I can appreciate that,' Lee replied. 'I'll be grateful for anything you can tell us.'
'Okay.' She took a deep breath and looked at her companions, who sat watching her. 'She turned up about a month ago at a rave in an abandoned building on Avenue C. Told us her name was Pamela. No last name, just Pamela. Then she turned up one night at CBGB around midnight. Wasn't that it, Scott?' she said to the larger boy.
CBGB (Country, Blue Grass, and Blues) was a legendary music club on the Bowery, home to many punk and heavy metal bands in its thirty-year history. Lee's apartment on East Seventh Street was just around the corner.
The larger boy shrugged uncomfortably, as if trying to loosen something from his shoulder. 'Yeah, around then.' His voice shook and jumped a little, as though it had only just broken. Lee wondered how old he was.
'How was she dressed? What did she say?' Chuck asked, but his eagerness made the girl more wary. She flicked a strand of black hair from her face.
'She was dressed like a nice girl-middle class, all that. I don't think she's from around here.'
'What makes you say that?' Butts asked.
'Her accent-it was different. I don't know how, but different.'
The smaller of the boys spoke. 'New England. She was from New England.'
Both Chuck and Lee turned to study him. He didn't really seem like he belonged with the other two. There was also an air about him, a thoughtful, refined quality, as though he were a scholar moonlighting among truckers.
'You sure about that?' Lee asked.
'Freddy's good with accents and stuff like that,' the girl said.
'New England,' he repeated. 'I have cousins up there. I recognize the accent.'
'Okay,' Butts said. 'New England's a pretty big place. Can you narrow it down, give us a state, at least?'
Freddy frowned. 'Uh, New Hampshire-Maine, maybe. Not sure about that.'
'What else can you tell us about her?' said Chuck.
The girl bit her lip. 'Well, she didn't do drugs or anything, right, Scott?'
'Yeah,' he said, looking at his shoes. 'Went to a rave with us but wouldn't drop any E. Said she'd heard of kids dying after taking it.'
'E?' said Lee. 'What's that?'
'Ecstasy,' said Butts. 'It's a big rave drug.'
'She ever mention friends, family, anything back home?' Chuck asked.
The three kids looked at each other, as if they were trying to decide how much to reveal.
'She said one time that her folks didn't understand her,' the girl said. 'But hey, take a number, right?'
'So she didn't give any specifics?' said Butts.
Scott replied without taking his eyes off the girl. 'Told me one time her dad was mean, and mom was a wimp.'
'No mention of friends or towns or last name?' Lee asked.
Freddy shook his head. 'I got the feeling she didn't want to be found…like she was hiding out.'
'For sure,' the girl said. 'She was hiding out. I asked one time what it was like where she came from, and she said she didn't want to talk about it.'
'She have a boyfriend or anything?' said Butts.
Again the three of them exchanged a glance.
'Not really,' said the girl. 'Had sex with a couple of guys. Had a weakness for losers. Nothing serious.'
Scott averted his eyes, and the other two avoided looking at him. Scott clearly had been one of her sex partners-the question answered was whether he was the last one.
'What about jewelry?' Lee asked. 'Did she wear anything special?'
'She hardly wore any-kind of stuck out, actually,' said the girl. 'But we accepted her even if she looked different.'
'That's real big of you,' Butts muttered. Lee and Chuck glared at him.
'She did wear something around her neck all the time,' Freddy said. 'A little silver cross, I think. I remember because someone asked if she was Catholic, and she said no, her grandmother had given her the necklace.'
Lee felt the blood rush to his head.
'Are you sure about that?'
'Yeah,' Freddy replied. 'It was real pretty. Never saw her without it.'
