He was driving back to the city and I was on my phone checking messages when his played something heavy and Teutonic. Maybe Brahms during one of his depressive episodes.
He scanned the screen, switched to speaker.
Basia Lopatinski said, “Hey, guys!”
A woman who cuts up corpses all day and is constitutionally cheerful. I wondered what she thought of Brahms.
Milo said, “What’s up?”
“Good news and more good news. I hydrated your female vic’s fingertips and got enough ridge to send to AFIS. The first AFIS database I tried was kind enough to give me a name. I emailed it to your office computer, you should have it but I wanted to tell you personally.”
“You’re a saint, Basia.”
“Normally,” she said, “I don’t like it when men tell me that, it means they expect too much. But from you, I accept it.”
He pulled over and checked his mail. Said, “Bingo,” and handed me the phone and resumed driving.
Mary Jane Huralnik, fifty-nine years old. Much younger than I’d thought. She’d looked elderly for a decade of progressively sadder mugshots.
No felony arrests but plenty of misdemeanors up and down the state over a thirty-three-year period. Public drunkenness, public indecency, vagrancy, shoplifting, petty larceny, illegal panhandling, trespassing, failure to show on a slew of warrants for many of those offenses.
The most recent charge, an indecency bust eighteen months ago. Defecating on a sidewalk in the Sixth Street tunnel downtown.
I said, “Not that far from where Benny worked.”
He said, “Like we said, someone prowling downtown for vulnerables. I’ll call a Central D and ask if she knows Huralnik.”
This time he phoned while in motion. I continued to read. No jail for Huralnik on the tunnel offense; with the crowding situation, the priority is those who draw copious blood.
Overall, her incarcerations had been limited to days, not weeks. With that type of abbreviated sentence, no probation or parole. Also no address, phone number, or DMV listing.
Milo hung up. “Shireen Walker has no knowledge of her. Her record say anything to you?”
“She entered the system when she was in her twenties, which would fit mental illness. No violence in her history but the indecency busts make me wonder.”
“Uninhibited.”
“The kind of person whowouldbe vulnerable.”
“To what?”
“Attention, food, dope, an offer of kindness.”
“Psychopath lures her and turns her into a prop,” he said. “Same probably goes for Benny. And the dogs. But why theneedfor props, Alex? If we’re right about Gurnsey inspiring someone’s rage why not just off him and pull out his dick and leave him in a gutter for the world to see?”
I said, “Good question.”
“No, no, bad question. As in neither of us has a clue.”
CHAPTER
19
We returned to Milo’s office and set to work tracing Mary Jane Huralnik using separate pathways.
Beyond her minor arrests nothing further on any law enforcement database. A Social Security number issued fifty years ago yielded nothing, including disability payments. No claims on money she could’ve gotten. Someone low on self-care.
She didn’t show in my Google search but the uncommon surname provided an edge.
