A trip to California to interview Harvey was simply not possible at the moment. Monday morning dawned with the threat of rain and the promise of the Welch bail hearing, to be held before Melanie’s least favorite judge. The Honorable Wilton Warner had the distinction of bouncing more good arrests on more inane technicalities than any other judge in the district. Melanie hated appearing before him on an average case. The thought of Warner holding Welch’s fate in his hands—and by extension, Melanie’s own—positively appalled her.
Terrozzi dropped her off early at the office so she could prepare. Melanie had passed a restless night, partly because she missed Maya, who was staying with Melanie’s mom until further notice. Partly because Deputy Peter Terrozzi was sleeping on the living-room sofa—in his boxers, no less, which gave Melanie the heebie-jeebies. And partly because she was preoccupied with all the big, pressing questions in her life. But she’d risen with new steel in her backbone. She had no choice but to prevail and keep Welch locked up. Her own safety depended upon it. As to everything else—her career, Dan—well, she’d just have to look her problems in eye and overcome them.
As step one in her new regime, she left a message for Dan.
“Hey, it’s Melanie,” she said after the tone sounded. “This fight is weighing on me. I want to talk. I’ve been thinking that maybe I have some…trust issues. Maybe that explains why I reacted so strongly to you having dinner with Diane. I don’t know if I can get past them or not, but I want to try. The Welch bail hearing is scheduled for nine and I’m not sure how long I’ll be in court. But call me.”
She paused, worrying that her words might not have sounded encouraging enough, or worse, might’ve come too late. Had he given up on her already? But she wasn’t one for leaving mushy messages, or desperate ones. She depressed the button with her fingertip, disconnecting the call, and sat there feeling paralyzed, like she couldn’t move on with her day. Luckily, the phone rang and jolted her back to life.
“Melanie Vargas.”
“Hey, it’s Pauline.”
The caller ID indicated that Pauline was standing at the guard station near the elevator. “You’re here?”
“You bet, baby doll. I brought you some kick-ass shit on your boy Benedict Welch just in time for the bail hearing. You’re gonna wild out when you see it. Come get me. The guard’s not here yet.”
“Be right out.”
Melanie opened the bulletproof door to find Pauline balancing a cardboard Starbucks tray precariously on top of a stack of files. Over skintight jeans, Pauline wore red cowboy boots.
“Welcome home!” Melanie said, grinning.
“I got you a latte and a banana muffin,” Pauline said, gesturing toward the tray with her chin.
“Oh my God, I love you! Here, let me help.”
Melanie took the tray and let Pauline slip by her through the door. A few minutes later, they were settled in Melanie’s office wading through articles and photographs from a quarter century earlier.
“You were right on the money when you told me to investigate the real Benedict Welch,” Pauline said. “I call him ‘Dead Welch.’ Like you said, Welch here in New York didn’t just pick this identity out of a hat. A doctor who died in Tulsa, Oklahoma, eleven years ago? He picked it for a reason.”
“He had to have known him somehow,” Melanie said.
“Exactly.”
Pauline handed Melanie a group photo that, based on clothing and hairstyles, looked vintage late seventies, early eighties. It showed a bunch of boys of varying ages standing in rows as if for a class photo, with several sober-looking middle-aged men seated on chairs down in the front.
“This is a photo from the Marietta Welch Youth Residence taken the final year of its existence, which was 1981,” Pauline explained. “The man in the front row with the blond hair and glasses is the real Benedict Welch, whose identity our suspect stole. The home was founded by Dead Welch’s grandmother about fifty years earlier, and any search you do of the Welch name in Tulsa immediately brings up information about the home. Just so you understand what type of place we’re talking about, it used to be called the Marietta Welch Home for Wayward Boys until they saw the light of political correctness and sanitized it.”
“You said this picture is from the last year the home existed?” Melanie asked.
“Yes! The place burned to the ground about six months after this was taken. Arson. It was a huge scandal in Tulsa at the time. Four boys died, along with a psychiatrist named Howard Vine who was the director-in-residence. They said the—”
“What?”
“What?”
“The director’s name was Howard Vine?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Pauline, Howard Vine was the name of a plastic surgeon in L.A. who skipped town after the murder of a stripper who had the word ‘slut’ carved into her stomach.”
Pauline blinked. “Hit me with that again?”
“It’s complicated, but the point is, Benedict Welch wasn’t the first doctor from this boys’ home whose identity our suspect stole, and I don’t think Suzanne Shepard was the first woman he murdered, either. I have copies of all the paperwork from that old case. You should look at it.”
Melanie’s heart was racing with excitement. She held the group picture up so the morning light streaming through her window would fall directly on it.
“Our Benedict Welch has got to be in here, don’t you think?” she asked urgently, scanning the rows of boys.
“Check out Mophead, middle row, third from the left. He looks promising to me.”
Melanie squinted. “That’s him! Younger and with dark hair, but it’s him.”
“You knew that yellow hair was fake, didn’t you? That kid’s name is Cory Nash, and he’s one of the ones who disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yeah. I didn’t get a chance to finish the story. So the bodies of Howard Vine and four of the boys were discovered after the fire, right?”
“But not Benedict—I mean, not Dead Welch?”
“No. The real Benedict Welch survived the fire. He died years later in a car accident. Anyway, the bodies were burned to a crisp, but the ME still had the bones to work with, and listen to this. One of the boys’ bodies was missing limbs. One of his arms and part of a leg were chopped off. Guess where they were found?”
“Where?”
“In the basement, inside a metal trash can. And the rest of the body had scoring on the bones like from a cutting implement.”
“He was stabbed to death and dismembered,” Melanie said.
“Exactly. Well, more like somebody started dismembering him but gave up because it’s, you know, a shitload of work. I’ve had guys tell me sawing through all those muscles and tendons is not easy.”
“So the killer got too impatient to dispose of the remains that way, and he set the place on fire instead.”
Pauline nodded. “That’s what the cops thought, that the killer burned the building down to cover up the murder.”
“But he was never caught?” Melanie asked.
“No. I was getting to that part. Remember now, these kids were no Eagle Scouts. They were a bunch of delinquents, in fact. When the dust settled, eight of them who should’ve been present and accounted for were plain gone, never to be heard from again, and the cops believed the killer was among them.”
“They ran away?”
Pauline shrugged. “Probably. Or met with foul play and the cops never found out. Who knows.”
“Cory Nash was among the missing?”
“Yes,” Pauline said.
“And he stayed that way, until we just found him masquerading as a doctor for the second time. Pauline, now that we’ve got him locked up, we need to make all three murder charges stick. Suzanne Shepard and Cheryl Driscoll and the boy he cut up and put in the trash. We have to close out those cases. Please, tell me you have background on Cory Nash. Fingerprints? A rap sheet?”
“No, sweetie, I’m sorry. I couldn’t get any of that stuff. All the records were lost when the place burned down.”
“Ugh. How am I going to prove all this to the judge?”
Melanie’s phone rang. “Hold on. Don’t go anywhere,” she said, grabbing it. “Melanie Vargas.”
“Melanie? Julian Hay. I’m here at the courthouse. We got a problem.”
“What is it?”
“Welch is going through some kind of psychosis caused by meth withdrawal. He just tried to kill himself. Judge wants you in court. Now.”