Pied Piper

CHAPTER 56

Boldt and Daphne’s admission to the Bureau of Vital Statistics did not come from Montevette, the director of the boys’ home, nor did it come through the front door. Miss Lucy made the contact-at the back door-and in a matter of an hour instead of what might have taken days or even weeks through proper channels. They had no warrant; they were well out of their jurisdictional authority. They possessed only Boldt’s compelling urgency in his eyes and Daphne’s internal calm. With both barrels loaded, no one could refuse them, least of all Walter, a black man in his early fifties who wore polyester trousers and a starched houndstooth shirt. Walter, whose hair was graying at the temples, walked like a man sacrificed at fullback on an overly competitive high school team. His nose had been flattened several times and left to wilt on his face like the curled thumb of an old leather glove. He wore half glasses that magnified a string of dark moles under his left eye.

Boldt and Daphne were led down a long narrow aisle between gunmetal gray shelves that stretched fourteen feet into the air toward bare-bulb funnel lights and the exposed steel trusses that supported the building’s flat roof. The volume of paperwork overwhelmed Boldt, for this was but one of dozens and dozens of such rows. “I hope this isn’t all adoptions,” he said.

“This here is birth certificates,” Walter replied, his strained voice absorbed like the spoken word in a snow-covered forest. “To your left, death and marriages-same thing, far as I’m concerned. That area toward that far wall is divorces. We got maybe twelve, fifteen stacks filled to the top with ’em.” He turned right, left and right again. A maze of paperwork, marked only by tiny white labels on the shelves and typed stickers on the boxes, the place seemed artificial to Boldt, created simply to overwhelm him. The prospect of dust and gum and paper cuts loomed. His impatience mounted; perhaps he could leave Daphne here to sort through it. But no, he answered himself, two sets of eyes were critical to such an undertaking.

Another right, left and right-they were working their way to this, the top floor’s far corner where a massive chain-link fence isolated the small reception area with its wood bench, wooden counter and black pens on chains. A woman named Amy glanced once when she heard Walter’s approach and a second time as a double take when she saw him in company.

“I need Ole Blue a minute, Amy,” Walter said, indicating the computer.

A computer! Boldt felt a rush of hope. “You’re computerized?”

“I’m not,” Walter replied, “but these stacks are all indexed on Ole Blue, and anything filed after nineteen hundred and eighty-eight is in his memory instead of on the shelves. Thank the lord.” He said, “Although it did cost four jobs up here on the seventh.” He smiled warmly at Daphne. “Seniority do have its privileges.”

Amy came to Walter’s rescue several times over the course of the next ninety minutes. He had trouble keeping the search targeted to all parishes, the system defaulting to citywide searches. The result was that adoption records were sorted parish by parish; neither of them could seem to convince the machine to do a districtwide search. The process was painstakingly slow.

Daphne requested printouts-the number of parishes stunned Boldt. Realizing he had the search dates wrong, Daphne explained patiently to Walter, “We’re particularly interested in adoptions registered from sometime in the last five to six months, right up to the present.”

“Nineteen hundred and eighty-eight to nineteen hundred and ninety-two, I wouldn’t been able to help you.” Hep you. “Ninety-two on they gone directly to the screen. Afore that we still done all the paperwork, but they filed it on computer and archived it on fiche. Now it’s straight to the computer and they run two of ’em-two different locations-one watching the other, backing it up, you know. Only paperwork is the signatures and the court documents. They can’t seem to figure this thing out completely. Always some kind of paperwork involved.”

Boldt’s patience, on the other hand, had run out. He kept his mouth shut and tried to stay out of things. Trudy Kittridge was going to be sold into adoption within a day or two-Boldt felt convinced of this.

With each search, Daphne requested another printout and then studied the results while Walter again isolated a particular parish and conducted the search. Boldt had the feeling that Amy might have accomplished this all much faster, but Walter and Miss Lucy shared an aunt or grandparent-some blood relative-and Walter was their man.

“Lou,” Daphne whispered, gaining his attention.

He joined her at a metal desk, taking a rolling chair that squeaked when he leaned forward.

She contained her excitement, using only her index finger to direct him, so as not to be overheard. No telling who else Walter might know or be related to. Her nails held a clear finish and were cut short. She had filed them recently.

Boldt’s eye followed the line she indicated. The filing was for January. The judge of record was Judge Terence Adams; the attorney, one Vincent Chevalier, whose mailing address placed him in the city. The very next adoption, recorded three weeks later, was again the work of Judge Adams and Vincent Chevalier. Her finger danced down the page. She glanced up and looked at him with wet, excited eyes.

Boldt withdrew his notebook and flipped pages hurriedly. The dates fit into the Pied Piper’s schedule remarkably well-the adoptions coming four to eight working days after each of the abductions. He counted back and realized that if these entries indeed belonged to the Pied Piper, as he now believed, then he still had between two and six days in which to find Kittridge. The adoption process took slightly longer to arrange than he had foreseen. It was the first ray of hope he had felt.

The printout for Tanipahoa Parish showed eleven adoptions performed over the most recent six-month period, all with the same pair: Adams and Chevalier. All but two of the children had been placed with couples living out of state. Prior to November there had been no adoptions in the parish for five months.

“We’ve got them,” Boldt whispered, disbelief permeating his words.

Daphne folded the printout, carefully aligning the corners and using her nail to make the fold. She said, “Now let’s hope we’re not too late.”