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Unless you’d done something truly vile—like get caught with a bag full of money and leave a state trooper in a coma—in which case you were gone.
    I took out the sheet that Courtney had typed and hoisted the phone. I didn’t bother with the U.S. military—getting a date with Cameron Diaz would’ve been easier, though I didn’t try that, either. I dialed 411 and got the listing for the New Jersey department of human services. It
took several more calls and some waiting through taped menus before finally I reached the division of youth and family services and got hold of a Ms. Alice Parigian, who confirmed that she was the person who had handled Pepper’s foster care case in Nutley sixteen years before. “Who is this again, please?” she asked.
    I told her, making it clear that I was on Pepper’s side, at least in terms of the law. From her questions, I got the sense that someone, probably Cote, had already been in contact with her. “I don’t want to seem rude or impolite, Mr. Rasmussen, but is there somebody who can vouch for you?”
    I gave her Fred Meecham’s number, and she said she’d get back to me as soon as she’d vetted me. I wasn’t holding my breath when the phone rang three minutes later. “What do you need to know about this individual?” Alice Parigian asked.
    â€œAnything that you can tell me, ma’am.”
    That was a long while ago, she said; I agreed that it was. In a profession where people tended to get used up, burned out, and shuffled to other agencies like tattered office furniture, it was a stretch of time to be a social service worker (or a sofa, for that matter). Was she another Roland Cote? Of course, some people had a particularly strong sense of mission—or a stoic sense of delayed gratification that enabled them to envision a Florida condominium for the golden years. I couldn’t tell from her voice what drove her but she sounded dedicated. “As a matter of fact, he was one of my very first cases. And I did take out his file when a policeman called me this morning. I can tell you exactly what I told him. The boy’s mother got struck and killed by a commuter train when he was just five, a freak thing. The father was pretty much a nonentity, so the boy was picked up and put into DHS care. He was an only child, healthy, and seemingly well adjusted. For the first few years after he came into our custody, he was in foster situations and moved around from family to family. He was a shy, respectful boy. Tested average on IQ. He liked sports. He left our official custody when he turned seventeen. I know he didn’t finish high school, but I believe he went into the marines. That’s about all I can tell you. This office had no further contact with him after that.”
    That was the formal end of our conversation. I took a chance. “Ms.
Parigian, you said he was quiet and polite, and yet he never ended up being adopted?”
    There was a silence, and I wondered if she’d already hung up; then she said, “No, he never did,” in a kind of wistful voice, as if it were a mystery she still hadn’t fathomed. “His early childhood wasn’t any picnic, but he was a survivor. He had no physical or severe emotional handicaps. Though that isn’t necessarily a factor in adoption. Families choose for reasons of their own. Some people, God bless them, are willing to take on even the most challenged children.”
    â€œBut no one took him,” I said. “No one adopted Troy Pepper.”
    â€œMr. Rasmussen, it would break your heart to know the children who never find a loving home. Troy was one of my very first cases, as I said. I really believed he’d do just fine. I worked hard to place him.”
    â€œI’m sure you did. You said he had no ‘severe’ emotional problems—were there some other kind?”
    â€œThat’s not anything I’m able