Chapter Five
Denise
In a dingy, cramped room on the third floor of a drab, stone building on the west side of New York, a thin, young, blond haired woman sat tapping her heel on the dusty tile floor. She had been waiting about an hour and she was pissed. There was no smoking in the Detective Bureau, and Denise Purnell’s ire was intensified by the need for tobacco. Det. Sgt. Krasnowski would be back in a few minutes, they had told her. They had offered and she had accepted, to her regret, a cup of thick, stale coffee in a tiny plastic cup. It lay cold and rejected on the table next to her.
Two weeks ago Denise had come to New York to look for her sister, Cheryl. It was not like Cheryl to miss her weekly call and she had not answered any of Denise’s emails. When Denise called Cheryl’s em
