The Perfect Child(99)

“I need your help. Please, I need your help. I keep calling. Nobody answers. But okay, okay. Here’s what I’m going to do. This is it. This is what I have to do to show y’all what I’m talkin’ ’bout. Otherwise, y’all just look at me like I’m the crazy one. But she the bad one. She pure evil, this child. I tell you. What’d I tell you? How many times?” She worked her jaw as she spoke. “I want you to see for yourselves what I’m talkin’ ’bout. You’ll see how she acts. I’m gonna record her. You’ll see. I can’t keep doing this. You gotta help me. Somebody gotta help me with this child. Please. I call and call, but nobody comes. None of you ever want to help me.”

The video stopped on its own. We’d reached the end. My emotions moved quickly from panic to sadness and back again. Ron took a seat. They each turned their chairs inward, fencing me between them. Sweat dripped down my neck.

Luke leaned forward as he spoke. “Becky reached out for help. More than once. In fact, quite a few times. Do you know who she reached out to?”

I shook my head, my throat too dry with fear to speak.

“Ron, why don’t you tell her who she called?”

“Certainly.” Ron pulled the file across the table and flipped through it before he found what he was looking for. “It says here that Becky called the Department of Children’s Services seven times in the year leading up to her death. In fact, she started making these videos the day one of the social workers was supposed to come by the trailer and help her.” He pulled out a piece of paper and held it in front of me. Our agency letterhead was in bold letters at the top. “Do you know which social worker was assigned to visit Becky?”

I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. Words were impossible.

He set the paper back on the table. “It was you, Piper. You were the worker assigned to follow up on her phone calls. But you never did, did you? You never went. Never even called.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Imagine if you would’ve. What would’ve happened if you’d gone all those months ago when she called the department clearly distressed from trying to parent a child who we all know is sick. Really sick. That must be a lot of weight to carry on your shoulders.”

Every wisp of air was stolen from my lungs. “I didn’t know anyone had called the department. I’d never heard of Becky Watson until I met Janie in the hospital. I swear.”

He leaned so close our heads nearly touched, the smell of stale coffee on his breath. “Then what happened? Who dropped the ball? Because it says right here that you were assigned to do the visit.”

“I didn’t know about any of this.”

“Stop!” He slammed his fist on the table. I jumped. “Allison might be alive today if you’d done your job the way it was supposed to be done.”

My voice shook. “I had no idea Becky contacted the department. Nobody ever said anything. I was never assigned to do a home visit, but that doesn’t mean I’m not responsible.” Tears spilled over, and once they had started, I couldn’t hold them back. “You don’t understand. The Department of Children’s Services gets so many calls every day—parents, teachers, friends, police, even elderly people who are just bored and have nothing to do with their time. We are so short staffed it’s impossible to handle every complaint that comes across our desks. So we prioritize. Claire weeds through the complaints and handles my schedule.” I struggled to speak. “Becky Watson’s case never made my list.”

“How is it possible that something like this never made your list?”

Was he serious? Didn’t he know how broken our department was? “The Department of Children’s Services is a revolving door. The same files come across our desks again and again. We see the same faces, meet the same families. We take one child out of the home and are forced to leave the other children behind or send children back to the families that abused them in the first place. I’ve been called to investigate abuse in foster homes almost as much as birth-parent homes. We have to operate within the system. Every social worker knows it’s broken, but it’s the only one we have, so we have to make do with it.”

Luke raised his eyebrows. “So you’re saying you failed Becky?”

“I’m saying the system failed them both.”

We’d failed all of them. Christopher was never going to be the same again after he heard this. He had to believe that children were born good and pure, that no child was beyond repair, in order for his world to make sense. This would shatter his core belief.

“What will you tell the Bauers?” I asked. It went without saying that they had to know. I couldn’t begin to imagine how this would change things.

Ron didn’t need time to think about his answer. This was what he’d been waiting for all day. “The only thing I can tell them—the truth. Their daughter is a killer, and until she’s an adult, they’re responsible for making sure she doesn’t hurt another human being.”

“When?”

“When what?”

I cleared my throat. “When will you tell them?”

Ron glanced at his watch. “It’s too late now, but we’ll be there first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Can I come with you?”

He frowned. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”