by R.J. Ellory
'You think he might have done that?'
'Honestly?' Briley shook his head. 'He might, but I don't really believe so. I think when I saw your father he was long gone. I think he'd walked so far down that road that there was no turning back.'
'And you never told anyone?'
Briley smiled. 'The church is a sanctuary, Frank, you know that.'
'And me? You never told me. All those conversations we had when Clare and I were breaking up, and you never thought to mention the fact that my father came and spoke to you about what he'd done?'
'What good would it have done, Frank? What good is it doing you now? You have your own difficulties to deal with, and they're enough for any man.'
Parrish started to get up from the pew. 'Seems like I should have said something . . . seems like you should have said something—'
'I couldn't say anything. You know that. And you? What would you have said, and who would you have said it to? We draw lines everywhere, and then we stay inside them. That's the way we stay alive, Frank, especially in our line of work.'
'I don't know ... I just don't know . . .'
'Don't know what?'
'I don't know what to think. I don't know what to feel about this.'
'Nothing. These things have occurred, my son. It is too late to do anything about them now. The sins of the father should not be carried by the son. You are not your father. He wasn't you. However, unless there's a great deal about you that I don't know, then it seems to me that you have not taken such a different path than him . . .'
'You don't know what you're talking about,' Parrish interjected. 'There is a world of difference between me and my father.' He got up from the pew and stepped into the aisle. 'I have to go now,' he said quietly.
Briley rose. He stepped ahead of Parrish and gripped his shoulders. 'I am here,' he said. 'I've been here for a long while, will more than likely be here for a good while longer. You know where I am.'
Parrish said nothing. He turned and walked back down the aisle to the front door.
As he left the church he felt that gnawing pain in his lower gut once again, but this time he couldn't tell whether it was fear or hatred or something altogether more insidious.
THIRTY
Radick was waiting for him in the office. He didn't ask where Parrish had been, and Parrish didn't ask why his partner was late.
'Today?' Radick asked.
'I need to go back to County Records and Archives and chase up some possible connections to Child Services.'
'Valderas has been down here,' Radick said. 'I think I should stay, do some work on these other things. It doesn't need both of us to go over there does it?'
'No. Makes sense.'
Radick got up, started to put on his jacket. 'I'll drive you,' he said.
'No, I'll get the subway. I'll be fine.'
'You sure?'
'You spend some time on these other things. Call me if you need to go out and see people. I won't be more than a coupla hours anyway.'
Parrish left, relieved that he was alone, relieved that it had been Radick's suggestion. Could he trust Radick? Hell, in all honesty he didn't know the guy from any other suit. The fact that he did good someplace else was no testament to his reliability or trustworthiness.
He made good time into Manhattan, was there just before noon and aware only then that he had not yet eaten. He stopped at a deli and had half of a pastrami sandwich. He couldn't face any more, but sat on in the corner booth a while, one eye on the street, another on the TV on the wall. A pretty girl in little more than her underwear urged him to drink Miller Lite. Right now. Right this minute.
Parrish tried not to think about Father Briley. He tried even harder not to think of his own father. It used to be that there were two parts to his existence: his work, and his own life. A single door separated the two but, after a while, even with the greatest effort, you became aware of the voices from the other side. They grew louder and louder, until finally, inevitably, whatever side you were on was populated with voices from the other. At home he would think of the dead. While he communed with the dead he would think of home. His marriage had suffered greatly, but perhaps this was the pattern for all marriages: a wide road, seemingly endless, that yet narrowed unnoticeably, until at last both husband and wife were trapped in a lightless cul-de-sac of bitterness . . .
Seated in a small windowless office on the second floor of the County Records building, something came to light that raised the hairs on the back of Frank Parrish's neck. Had he not somewhere been convinced that there would be a connection, he believed he would not have found it. Had he not been certain that there was something more to the deaths of these girls than locale, he would have overlooked the tiny thread that showed itself.
It concerned a girl called Alice Forrester, the stepsister of Nicole Benedict. Nicole's parents - Steven and Angela Benedict - had divorced. Steven had then married a woman called Elaine Forrester, and with her came her daughter, Alice. Parrish found Alice's file without difficulty, and there learned that Alice had been an only child, her father having died before she was born. Angela Benedict had been an alcoholic, and thus - unusually - the father, Steven Benedict had been granted custody of Nicole. The details of this soap opera were in Alice Forrester's file, and this was where Parrish found Nicole. Steven Benedict, now married to Elaine Forrester, had legally adopted Alice, and thus the link was incontrovertible. Anyone looking at the Alice Forrester adoption files would have come across Nicole. Her picture was there, her personal details, a brief report on her attitude towards having a 'new' sister. Alice was the responsibility of the CAA, but she had not wound up a victim. The stepsister had become a victim, and solely because her picture and her details had been there in Alice's file and someone had seen them.
Parrish leaned back in the chair and slowly exhaled. Same district, same jurisdiction, same offices that had dealt with Rebecca, Karen, and now Nicole. But no Jennifer. He spent a good while searching out Jennifer but found nothing. That didn't necessarily mean there was no connection, but simply that the link could have been even more tenuous.
And then he remembered the runaways, the three girls that had gone missing.
Searching his pockets, Parrish found the notebook in which he'd scribbled their names. Shannon McLaughlin, reported missing on Thursday, February 1st, 2007; Melissa Schaeffer, missing since Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 and, most recently, Sarah Burch, who left home to meet with friends at a local mall in the early evening of Monday, May 21st, 2007 and not seen since. Melissa was seventeen, the other two sixteen.
There was no sign of Shannon or Sarah in the records, but it wasn't long before Parrish found the next one with a CAA connection. Melissa Mockler. Adopted at the age of four by a young couple named Steven and Kathy Schaeffer. Parrish remembered the file back at the office. He recalled her face. Rhodes and Pagliaro had taken the case, had worked the usual lines, canvassed the street, spoken to the neighbors, the boyfriend, the girls who shared her classes. As was always the case with such disappearances, the first forty-eight hours were crucial. Beyond that the likelihood of success faded rapidly. A week, and you could pretty much kiss goodbye to ever seeing the runaway alive.
Parrish left the office and took the files down to the lobby. He asked if there was someone who could assist him and was asked to wait.
Ten or fifteen minutes passed, then a young man approached him from the elevator.
'Detective Parrish?' he asked.
Parrish rose to his feet.
'Hi, I'm Jamie Lewis. Someone said you needed help with something.'
'Yes, I do. I don't know if you can help me, but I had a couple of questions. Is there somewhere we could go that's a bit more private?'
Jamie Lewis led them to a narrow room back of the lobby and Parrish outlined the four cases he was dealing with. He stressedthat there was no official inquiry into the Child Services or CAA connection, that this was merely something that he was pursuing as a possibility.
>
'You realize that you're crossing jurisdictions now,' Lewis said. 'Of course, six months ago it wouldn't have been that way—'
'Six months ago? What do you mean?'
'The whole thing got turned inside out at the start of the year. They'd been talking about it for ever, certainly as long as I've been here, and finally they did it.'
'Talking about what, Mr Lewis?'
'The management system. The way the cases are dealt with. Up until the start of the year everything was dealt with through two main departments that acted as co-ordination points between Child Services and the Adoption Agency. They called them Family Welfare North and Family Welfare South. North District handled Manhattan, the Bronx, and everything west of the river, whereas the South District handled Brooklyn, Maspeth, Williamsburg - everything to the east. Then they divided each one into eight separate departments, each with its own jurisdiction.'
'So the cases that I have here—'
'Would have all been in the original South Zone.'
'And the CAA and Child Services maintain separate records for each case?'
'Yes, they do, and it's the job of the Family Welfare Departments to co-ordinate and liaise between the two.'
'So regardless if you were in South or North you would have access to both sets of records and would know where these kids were at all times.'
'Yes, you can access information at every level of the childcare and adoption process.'
'And how many people were employed in each of the original offices?'
'Oh Christ, I don't know. Maybe seven or eight hundred in each office.'
'Seven or eight hundred?'
'Yeah, easily. Could have been more. They covered a hell of a lot of cases across a huge zone, Detective.'
'Right. Sure. And if I wanted to get a list of every employee of the original South office how would I do that?'
Jamie shook his head. 'I should think that we'd have it somewhere here. Probably Personnel.'
'And they'd also have records of which people from South Welfare went to whichever of the new departments?'
'I should think so, yes. They go by zip code now. Personnel could give you a list of all those offices and their addresses as well.'
'Okay. That's been a great help, Jamie. I really appreciate your time.'
'You think it's someone working for Family Welfare who's done this to these girls?'
Parrish shook his head. 'I have no idea. There might be no connection at all. It could simply be a coincidence—'
'I'm not a great believer in coincidences,' Jamie interjected. 'Never have been.'
'I'm the same, but until there's something more substantial to connect them it is nothing more than coincidence.' Parrish got up. 'I'll go see Personnel,' he said. Pausing at the door he added, 'You appreciate that what we have discussed here is strictly confidential. No water cooler chatter with your colleagues. I really cannot stress that enough, Jamie.'
Jamie smiled. 'I'm not one for rumors and hearsay, Detective, don't worry, though if it does turn out to be someone in-house it'll turn things upside down, don't you think?'
'For sure it will,' Parrish replied, 'but let's hope that's not the case, eh?'
THIRTY-ONE
Parrish left the County Records and Archives building clutching a sheaf of papers that detailed over nine hundred names, all of them original employees of Family Welfare South. He also had a print-out listing all the new North and South District offices. The nearest one to the 126th - District Five South - was literally a handful of minutes' walk across Fulton. The feeling he had was one of quiet resolution, yet beneath that a sense of overwhelm. The first thing he would have to do was separate out the men from the women. This business - aside from rarities like Carol Mary Bundy and Aileen Wuornos - was a predominantly male province. Whether Family Welfare South was the link between Rebecca, Karen, Melissa and Nicole he did not know, but it could not be ignored. And if there was a connection, and if these girls had been selected not at random, but from files and records held within the administrative co-ordination units of the county's Child Services network, then the ramifications would be staggering. And if this was the case then Parrish believed there would be more. Teenage girls with unstable family backgrounds, perhaps chosen from photographs, even interviews, with a Child Services or Adoption Agency counsellor . . . chosen in the belief that they would never be missed, that no-one would care, that they were expendable?
Had this been the selection process for a sex killer? Or was he chasing a fragile thread of coincidence that would merely serve to alienate his colleagues and superiors further, and finally remove any possibility of real repatriation within Homicide and the Police Department?
Was it worth it?
Parrish didn't think that such a question even justified consideration.
He took the subway back across the river from Canal Street to DeKalb. As he walked towards the station house he felt an unexpected and immediate hunger. He had forgotten how it was to have an appetite. He stopped at a diner on Livingston and ordered a tuna mayo sub, some fries, a cup of coffee, and when he was done he had more coffee and a pecan Danish. He left nothing on his plate, and when he left the diner and walked up the street towards the office, he believed that he might get through the rest of the day without a drink. Something had changed. It was subtle, almost unnoticeable, but he recognized it for what it was: This was how a case had felt when he first made detective. Like there was a point.
Radick was at his desk. He asked how Parrish had got on over in Manhattan.
'It was okay,' Parrish replied. He held up the sheaf of papers. 'I might have something here. I'm looking at the possibility of a link between Rebecca and some older cases.'
'You serious?'
Parrish raised his hand. 'Hold on there,' he said, and smiled knowingly. 'Don't go all puppy-dog on this thing, Jimmy. It may be nothing. I got a bunch more questions that need to be answered before I come to any conclusions.'
He sat down, asked, 'So how did you get on with these others?'
'Think we have something on the campus stabbing. I have an APB out on someone.'
'And the subway?'
'Frank, seriously, nothing's gonna happen on that. No witnesses, no-one has come forward, nothing from his friends or family. The likelihood of that ever closing is a million to one.'
'I figured so,' Parrish replied.
'On the Rebecca Lange case, shouldn't we be following up on whoever Larry Temple was talking about? People who could've been doing a porno with her? He said that you and he knew the same names for that kind of thing.'
'There's two or three possibilities,' Parrish replied. 'I think one guy went out to LA, but there's still a couple here that we could chase up.'
'You wanna do that today?'
Parrish glanced at his watch just as the phone rang on an adjacent desk. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I just need to look at where our time is best spent.'
The phone kept ringing. Another three or four rings and it would transfer through to every phone in the office.
They waited - Radick and Parrish - for they knew that if Engel or West didn't appear in the next handful of seconds it would be their pick-up.
'Fuck it!' Radick said, snatching the receiver from the cradle and pressing 1.
'It's Radick,' he said to the operator. 'What's up?'
He motioned for a notepad and took a pen from his inside jacket pocket.
'Again,' he said, and started writing down an address. 'Okay, we're on the way.'
Radick hung up.
Parrish raised an eyebrow questioningly.
'Dead girl in a cardboard box back of Brooklyn Hospital.'
It was close enough to walk, and had Parrish been alone he would have done. They made their way across Fulton and Flatbush, took a left on Ashland, and then stopped at the corner of St. Edwards and Willoughby. A couple of black-and-whites had already taped the entry to a narrow alleyway that ran between two sections of the building. To the left was
Fort Greene Park, and already a few stragglers and hangers-on had started to gather. Had there been forewarning they perhaps would have brought the kids, some sandwiches, a blanket to sit on. Parrish shared a few words with one of the responding uniforms. The Deputy Coroner and Crime Scene had already been alerted and were on their way. Parrish learned that the original call had come in from a janitor who had responsibility for the dumpsters at the far end of the alleyway. They were filled and emptied daily, and apparently it was not uncommon to find other trash dumped there. This time someone had put a large cardboard box halfway down the alley. The janitor had taken a look inside, and there she was. Right now he was in back of the building with a nurse and another uniform. He was an elderly man. Seemed his heart wasn't so good at the best of times.
The two detectives started down the alleyway towards the box. The buildings on each side were at least seventy or eighty feet high, and there was limited light. Parrish squinted into semi- darkness, wondering how many shadows he was bringing with him. This was where everything he knew had the most relevance. This was where the specialized knowledge that played no part in any other aspect of life was the most vital thing of all. The smallest things became the biggest things, and the obvious became meaningless.
Grateful in some small part for the relative cleanliness of the alleyway, Parrish paused for a moment and orientated himself. At one end was a small car park belonging to the Brooklyn Hospital, at the other an L-shaped bay where the trash dumpsters were kept. The alley was actually a sixty or seventy foot cul-de-sac with a single secure fire exit set in the right hand wall approximately ten feet from the end. The cardboard box was a good thirty feet into the alleyway, and while Radick surveyed the ground at the alley's mouth, Parrish took a deep breath and walked on down to see what had been left for him.
