Saints Of New York (28 page)

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
perpetrator? 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.'

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.