by R.J. Ellory
'I'll see you tomorrow, okay?' 'Tomorrow it is.'
THIRTY-SIX
There was another message on his desk from Father Briley. Did the guy not have better things to do? Once again Parrish threw it in the trash.
There was still no progress on phone records. Parrish believed that such information might be unavailable for Melissa, Jennifer, Nicole and Karen due to the length of time that had elapsed, but he still held out a thin hope for Rebecca and Kelly. Obviously those two girls' clothes and personal effects - cell phones included - had been taken by the perp, and more than likely been destroyed. It was simply a question of how long their phone companies retained an account record once the customer ceased using the service. One month? Six? A year maybe? The fourth victim had died in December of 2007, eleven months earlier. Nicole had been dead fifteen months, Jennifer twenty-two, and Melissa had vanished off the face of the earth more than two years before.
The warrant for access to Family Welfare records came down at eleven-thirty. Parrish and Radick walked together to the South Five office, where it took little more than half an hour to determine that Kelly had been dealt with by the new South Two office. Rebecca featured as nothing more than a filed note regarding a possible transfer back to Williamsburg's office, South Nine. The South Two offices were up on Adams near the High Street Metro station. Parrish stayed where he was while Radick walked back to fetch the car from the precinct.
'You could walk with me,' he told Parrish. 'Use the exercise, you know?'
'Single most common cause of premature death is exercise,' Parrish replied. 'If you knew the number of people who got seizures and strokes while jogging and weight-training you'd never go in a gym again.'
Parrish made small-talk with the security guy in the lobby, until his partner pulled up to the curb. He got in the car, and Radick turned right onto Adams at the end of Fulton. Borough Hall on the left, the Polytechnic on the right, a little way further and they passed the Supreme Court building across from NY Tech. Made him think of Caitlin; a paper she'd sat a while back at one or other of those colleges.
'So Kelly was dealt with by the South Two office, but Rebecca was dealt with by South Nine over in Williamsburg,' he said, reviewing the state of play. 'And we know that the earlier four were all dealt with by the original Family Welfare South District Office, as it was before they all split up. Which means, perhaps, that our guy was in the original South section and is now in either South Two or South Nine . . .'
Just before Adams became the Brooklyn Bridge, Radick turned left and came back on himself down Cadman Plaza. He parked up, put a Police notice in the front window, and he and Parrish walked across to the South Two building.
By a quarter after twelve they had the undivided attention of the unit's deputy supervisor. Supervisor was attending a 9/11 memorial for two City Family Welfare staff who had died in the North Tower collapse, but Deputy Marcus Lavelle seemed all too eager to assist with whatever questions they had.
Ten minutes of Lavelle's time, and they had further confirmed that Karen Pulaski, Nicole Benedict, Melissa Schaeffer and Rebecca Lange had all been under the aegis of the original Family Welfare South District.
'Of course, not all of them would have wound up with us here at District Two,' Lavelle explained. 'As my colleague explained to you, and as you have learned with Rebecca, it all goes by zip code now.'
'We found a file note over at District Five regarding Rebecca. I didn't really understand what it meant.'
'Let me take a look,' Lavelle said. 'As deputy supervisor I have access to the entire system regardless of district.' He typed, paused, scrolled, paused again, and then he nodded his head. 'This explains it. Rebecca should have been transferred to
Williamsburg, which is South District Nine, but her brother was registered as her legal guardian and he is South Two. The note was from someone who thought she should go to Nine. What was decided was that she should stay in Two because of the brother. We kept tabs on him because he was adjudicated a risk. According to this it seems he had a drug problem.'
'And how many employees do you have here?' Parrish asked.
'A hundred and nineteen,' Lavelle replied.
'And of those, how many are men?'
'Including myself and Supervisor Foley, forty-eight.'
'And do you have temporary staff?'
'God no,' Lavelle said. 'This is all strict security clearance stuff. We manage records for thousands and thousands of minors. Once you're in it's very hard to get fired, but it's even harder to get taken on in the first place.'
Parrish was quiet for a moment. He breathed deeply, wondering how much he really wanted to tell Marcus Lavelle.
'I am going to tell you a couple of things,' he began, 'but you have to understand that I am telling you only because I need to, and that I am relying on you to maintain the utmost confidentiality.'
'I can assure you, Detective—'
Parrish raised his hand and Lavelle fell silent. 'This is a tough deal, Mr Lavelle, a really tough deal, and you might not want to hear this, but you're going to, and you have to really understand the importance of keeping this to yourself.'
Lavelle nodded. His expression was sober and matter-of-fact.
'We have six girls,' Parrish said. 'Five of them are dead, one of them is missing, believed dead. Three of them were registered with the original Family Welfare South District office - directly in the case of Melissa Schaeffer and Karen Pulaski, and indirectly in the case of Nicole Benedict who was connected to South through her step-sister, Alice Forrester. Nevertheless, Nicole's personal details and pictures were held in Alice Forrester's file so she might as well have been here herself. As you have just told us, the last two victims - Rebecca and Kelly - were both registered with you here at the new South Two office. Then we have one more, a girl called Jennifer Baumann. Now, we haven't yet been able to trace Jennifer on file, but she fits the physical attributes and MOs of the others. You understand what I'm saying?'
Lavelle had noticeably paled. 'You're saying that someone who used to work at the original South District Office now works here in South Two, and they're a murderer?'
'Not definitely, no. Someone in the office could be passing information to someone outside, and that person might be the perpetrator. However, the fact that the last two girls were dealt with here suggests that this is where he works.'
'But what about supervisors? Supervisors have access to files all over the system regardless of district?'
'I've considered that since you mentioned it,' Parrish said, 'but the fact that both Rebecca and Kelly were in your zone implies otherwise. It tells me that the connection is right here.'
Lavelle was silent for some time. When he looked back at Parrish he was visibly distraught. 'This is horrific. This is utterly unbelievable. God ... I don't even know what to say. I don't even know what to think about this . . .'
'We don't want you to think anything,' Parrish said. 'This is a standard investigation. It is slow, thorough, often laborious, and many times it comes to nothing. We are assuming a great many things here. We are assuming that this is one of your employees, but we could be completely wrong. It could be someone who has tapped into your computer system, or someone who once worked for Family Welfare and has information on how to access your data. We don't know, and the very worst thing we can do in such situations is assume further and take action based on hunches and intuition. That is why it is so vitally, vitally important that you say nothing to anyone, not even your supervisor. I will come over tomorrow and speak with him personally, and in the meantime we are going to work out a precise course of action to vet your employees and determine whether any of them are potential suspects. This will be done with the utmost care and discretion, not only to avoid upsetting innocent people, but also to ensure that we do not tip our hand too heavily to whoever might be responsible, if in fact he does actually work here.'
'And it would definitely be a man?' Lavelle asked.
'The perpetra
tor? Yes. There is always the possibility that we have a woman inside the office feeding information to someone outside, but the likelihood of that is extraordinarily slim. Women who murder very rarely tend to be organized and premeditated. They also tend to stick with shooting and poisoning. The vast majority of female killers, and I'm talking in excess of ninety percent, are those driven by jealousy or passion to kill in the heat of the moment. Those who act with premeditation, and certainly anyone who could be classified as a serial killer, are invariably men. As of this moment we are looking for a man, and that will involve the forty-eight of you in this office.'
'Forty-six,' Lavelle said, somewhat sheepishly. 'Surely you don't think that I, or Supervisor Foley, have anything to do with this?'
'I'm sorry, Mr Lavelle, but I'm afraid you're going to have to fall in with this program the same way everyone else will. If I exclude anyone then it will appear to be selective, and that I cannot have. Also, the courts may work on the philosophy of innocent until proven guilty, but as far as a homicide investigation is concerned we have to be a little bit Napoleonic about the whole thing and assume that anyone could be guilty until we have ruled them out.'
Lavelle nodded understandingly. 'And those who have nothing to hide won't fear inquiry,' he said.
'Either that, or they're so self-confident and organized they believe there's nothing that can connect them. I have seen it go many ways, and one thing I am certain of is that you can never second-guess or predict the outcome of an investigation.'
'And so what do I do now?'
'You can check one thing for us,' Parrish said. 'You can look up Jennifer Baumann on your system and tell us whether she was ever in the care of the County Adoption Agency or Family Welfare.'
'Of course, yes,' Lavelle replied. 'How do you spell—'
'B-A-U-M-A-N-N.'
Lavelle went to a keyboard and typed in the name. He waited for a moment, opened files, scrolled, opened more files, and then turned and looked at Parrish. 'You won't find a file,' he said.
Parrish frowned.
'A file isn't retained unless there is cause to consider that the case will be ongoing. A girl called Jennifer Baumann was interviewed by the police in December of 2006, but she was an apparent material witness to a sexual abuse case. The victim of the sexual abuse was in the care of Family Welfare, and so Family Welfare had someone present at the interviews. Jennifer wouldn't have a file in her own right, just the interview notes and her photograph. Seems that the case went no further and was dropped. The notes and the pictures would have been filed in the Miscellaneous Interviews for that month.'
'Does it say who was present at the interview?'
'Yes, it was Lester Young. He was one of our longest-serving staff.'
'Was?'
'Yes, he went into the Probation Service.'
Parrish nodded at Radick. Radick was already writing down the name.
'And now?' Lavelle asked.
'Nothing,' Parrish replied. 'You do nothing, you say nothing. I'll speak with Mr Foley tomorrow, and we'll go from there.'
Lavelle showed them out through the lobby, watched them as they made their way around to the side of the building. Once back on Cadman Plaza, Parrish told Radick he wanted to coordinate with Valderas, get Rhodes and Pagliaro briefed, and reinstate the Melissa Schaeffer Missing Persons investigation.
'And this Baumann girl,' Radick said. 'Interviewed in December of 2006, dead in January of 2007. Now we've confirmed that she's connected to Welfare we have a whole new case to open up. I'll start checking on this Lester Young guy.'
'I know a Fed as well,' Parrish added. 'He might give us a hand on this, get us a profile that will help eliminate some of these people at South Two.'
'We're assuming that he's inside that office,' Radick said.
'We are,' Parrish replied. 'It makes sense. Too much for me to ignore.'
THIRTY-SEVEN
Valderas didn't buck the request to reinstate the Melissa Schaeffer Missing Persons, and he told Parrish that he would brief the other detectives. They had all dealt with one or other of the victims, and the last thing he wished for was a rash of political in-fighting.
'I'll give you all the cases,' he said. I’ll tell them that they'll get a note on their file to say that the case wasn't transferred due to lack of diligence, but because new information came to light and their own workload precluded the possibility of picking it up again. That should keep them quiet. I'll try and work an APB on the Schaeffer girl, but it'll be more like a few uniforms out canvassing her neighborhood. She went absent when?'
'October of 2006,' Parrish replied.
'Ain't gonna happen, is it?' Valderas said. 'I mean, it's very fucking unlikely that anything new will come out the woodwork two years on.'
'I know, I know, but hell, we have to try, right?' Parrish said. 'Maybe someone who knew something back then is no longer connected up here, and they can speak without fear of direct reprisal. I've seen it happen.'
'Leave it with me. What are you going to work on now?'
'The phone records, as many of them as we can get. That's more than likely another dead end, but who the hell knows, eh? We don't look, then we don't find.'
'Keep me briefed,' Valderas said.
Parrish sat down at his desk. He took the case files from his lower drawer and set them in front of him. No need to hide them now. The only one missing was Detective Franco's from Williamsburg, and then it struck him: Karen was from Williamsburg, and that's where Rebecca had lived when she was with Helen Jarvis. He'd known this, of course, but it was only in that moment that he wondered whether it possessed any significance. Perhaps it was a line to follow, but a secondary line. There was nothing to suggest a connection, whereas with Family South Two there was every possibility that the man they wanted was right there in amongst the forty-eight employees.
Seated there at his desk, once again the faces of the girls before him, he believed that such moments as these would ultimately define his life. People would always die, and others would always be responsible. Parrish believed that fear of dying was there within everyone, inherent and inescapable. Those that said they were not afraid were merely more afraid of showing it. Like a virus - subtle, insidious, gentle even - this fear invaded people such as himself, those who visited with the dead in the subsequent hours, the narrow window of warmth before all signs of life had evaporated. Despite arm's length or latex gloves the gentle airborne virus was absorbed through the tear ducts, the pores of the skin, the breath, and it started its work. It began - at first - to kill the personal things. First to die was the ability to speak of what was seen. Emotional transparency began to cloud over. Next to go were such things as hope, a belief in some fundamental and universal justice, the certainty that everything would turn out okay in the end. And finally the virus would take love and passion; it would take relationships, empathy, fellowship, fraternity. Wasn't it true that from the moment of birth we were in fact dying? Work such as Parrish's merely served to accelerate a process that was as natural as breathing. When all was said and done, there was nowhere to go but where you came from.
Some people's lives were bold statements. Parrish believed that his life would never be anything more than a parenthesis. There had to be something wrong with people like himself, people who did this work - a psychological fault line. It was this fault line that gave them the eyes, the stomach, the nerve to go on looking when any rational person would long since have turned away.
He believed he would die alone. Perhaps in a bar someplace between the jukebox and the next Bushmills. People would remember him, but they would more easily forget. And then - only then - would he truly discover what he had always been looking for in the narrow spaces, the darkest shadows, the awkward corners: he would know for himself what really happened when the lights went out.
'Frank?'
Parrish looked up to see Radick staring at him. The expression on his face was something akin to concern.
'You okay?'
/>
'I'm fine,' Parrish said. 'I'm going to call Franco at Williamsburg 91st. You chase up the phone records.'
Franco was as helpful as Parrish could have wished.
'The file you can't have, of course,' he said, 'but there's nothing that says you can't have a copy of everything. I'll get it done and sent over. One thing ... if you break this, then don't make me look like a dick, okay?'
Parrish gave his word, and Franco hung up with a promise to have the papers at the 126th the next morning.
Radick was not so fortunate. There were no phone records for Melissa, Nicole or Karen. Yes, both Rebecca and Kelly had active cell phone accounts, but accessing those records would take a warrant. However polite and insistent Radick had been, they hadn't budged.
Radick started on the paperwork while Parrish went back to the files to look for what he had so far failed to see.
At quarter to five Radick sent his warrant application over to the courts by courier. In all honesty he would be unlikely to get a response before Monday. Parrish called Valderas, explained the situation, and Valderas said he would have words with Captain Haversaw. They needed the Divisional Commander's authority to prioritize and expedite, but Haversaw's backing would at least be useful. Maybe, just maybe, they would get the thing back before close of business on Friday, and then it was simply a matter of walking it over to the respective cell phone companies' offices and asking for the information. And what would they find? A million texts to the girls' friends about boys and music and Face- book; endless calls to organize rides from their folks and rendezvous at the mall. The odds of finding a number that bore some relation to their disappearance? Such a thing would be incalculable. Nevertheless, it could not be overlooked. There could be something there, however small, and if there was even the slightest fragment of connection between Rebecca and Kelly, it would serve as confirmation that these were in fact the same case.
