W. Griffin - The Last Witness

Society Hill, Philadelphia

Saturday, November 15, 10:29 P.M.

“Stop yelling, Krystal, and listen very carefully to me,” Maggie McCain ordered evenly, hoping her tone did not betray her deep fear. “He can track you with your cell phone. Turn it off. Then take out the battery if you can.”

Maggie, at the wheel of her eight-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser, was twenty-five years old and, standing five-six and weighing one-thirty, slender and fit. She had pale skin, intense green eyes set in a pleasant face, and shoulder-length chestnut brown hair that she mostly wore up, as now, brushed smooth against her scalp and tied in a tight, neat ponytail. She had on elegant dark woolen slacks and a heavily woven black sweater.

Her work cell phone in hand, Maggie heard her personal phone begin ringing in her purse. When she quickly dug it out and saw that the caller ID read MOTHER, she pushed a key to silence the ring, then let the call roll into voice mail.

Oh, damn it, Krystal! she thought, as she heard Krystal starting to cry.

And damn this traffic!

A sea of glowing red brake lights reflected on the rain-slick Center City street. It was a cold, dreary night, the rain occasionally mixing with wisps of snow. She stared out past the swishing windshield wipers, anxiously awaiting the signal light to turn green.

“Did you hear what I said?” Maggie went on. “Use my house phone to call me back. But first make sure all the doors are locked and stay away from the windows. Try to be calm. I’m just minutes away.”

The image of a desperate Krystal Angel Gonzalez-a curvy five-foot-one, nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican-frantically pacing the stylish living room of Maggie’s Society Hill town house flashed in her mind.

That was exactly what Krystal had done two days earlier, when she banged on Maggie’s door at four in the morning. Then she dropped onto the leather couch and lay on her side. Under crossed arms, she tugged her knees tightly against her chest and, off and on, sobbed uncontrollably for hours.

Krystal had finally escaped from Ricardo, the twenty-seven-year-old Fishtown strip club manager she briefly had been calling her boyfriend. But at a brutal cost. Her short dark hair was matted with dried blood, her face bruised and swollen. Raw welts had formed on the back of her thighs where he had whipped her with a pair of wire coat hangers folded together.

She promised me she’d never go back to him, Maggie thought, watching the traffic light finally cycle to green. I warned her over and over that he really didn’t love her .

“Please hurry!” Krystal said hysterically. “Ricky said the beating was nothing like what he’d do if I told! He’d make me disappear, like Lizzi and Brandi. Then. . he tore my clothes off and. . and. .”

Krystal Gonzalez’s quivering voice trailed off.

And you did tell, Maggie thought, shaking her head.

Oh my God. .

“I’m almost home,” Maggie said, and then, raising her voice to be heard over Krystal’s sobs, added, “Now turn off your phone!”

Maggie broke off the call. She stuffed the phone in her pocket as her silver SUV rolled up to the intersection. She hung a fast right, pressing harder on the accelerator as she followed Pine Street toward Society Hill.

As a rule, and Maggie devoutly believed in rules-“A place for everything and everything in its place,” she often said-she did not like talking on the phone while driving. She also did not like speeding. And she really did not like breaking her own rule of anyone connected with Mary’s House being prohibited from coming to her residence.

But seeing Krystal throwing away what might be her last chance to get her life straight. . I just can’t stand that.

We were accomplishing so much.

And now this. .

Mary’s House, in nearby South Philadelphia, served as a temporary residence for young children and teenagers waiting to be placed in foster homes by the city’s Department of Human Services. The facility actually was composed of two four-bedroom row houses sharing a common wall. With no signage announcing its existence, Mary’s House looked no different from the neighboring well-kept duplexes that lined the street across from Girard Park.

The charity was one of the many ministries of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the century-old Roman Catholic parish on Philadelphia’s affluent Main Line, where Maggie McCain’s family had worshipped since before her birth.

At Mary’s House, Maggie, with a master’s degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania, wore many hats. Her biggest was that of chief administrator. She dealt with the detailed-and often obscure-requirements of the Department of Human Services while overseeing the two other social workers who day to day kept up with the twenty-plus female residents ranging in age from five to seventeen.

If allowed-especially as compassion for the kids’ lot in life chipped away at any wall of professional detachment-it quickly could become an all-consuming job.

Maggie knew the City of Philadelphia had its challenges-perhaps more than its fair share in terms of struggling families. It was the fifth-largest city in the United States, with one in four of its 1.5 million residents living in poverty, a third of them under age eighteen.

And the tragic result of that meant an annual caseload of some twenty thousand-from infants to teenagers-moving through the overburdened bureaucracy that was the city’s Department of Human Services.

DHS’s role, with hundreds of millions in annual funds, was to protect the abused and neglected. This meant investigating and overseeing broken families-and, when necessary, immediately removing children from a potentially dangerous environment. Thus, at any given time thousands found themselves in temporary care while DHS evaluated if it was safe for them to be returned to their family-or placed with a foster family.

And Mary’s House was but one small charity among dozens in Philly providing help-temporary shelter that included food, clothing, health care, and more-until permanent foster care, or adoption, could be secured.

The thick, well-worn file labeled “Gonzalez, Krystal Angel” had been among the first cases that Maggie McCain had reviewed after arriving at Mary’s House.

That had been two years earlier, when Krystal had just turned seventeen. It had taken Maggie nearly half a year to earn the confidence of Krystal, who since age ten had suffered the revolving doors of various homes. The last time at Mary’s House had been her third to live there.

What Maggie found in her file was, while without question horrific, sadly common.

“DHS, after notification by an anonymous source, confirmed through the various utility service providers that the address of the Brewerytown row house where the mother and her five (5) children lived did not have gas, water, or electricity. On-site inspection by caseworkers found that there was trash littering every room, as well as evidence of rodents and human feces. Said conditions-‘clear and convincing evidence of parental inadequacy’-thus meet the Pennsylvania standard for terminating parental rights.”

The file further stated that the anonymous source alleged that the mother and her new boyfriend were selling crack cocaine-when they were not using it.

With a court order, and backed by two Philadelphia Police officers, DHS caseworkers came and took the children away.

Krystal-at ten the youngest sibling-and her four sisters were placed in Mary’s House and from there into their first foster home. All against the objections of their maternal aunt, who wanted them in her Kensington home with her three children.