Saints Of New York (23 page)

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
stressed
that 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?'