Lesser Evils

by Joe Flanagan

  Garrity left them and returned to his desk.

  “The beaches are public property,” the old man said as he passed.

  “Not for you, they’re not,” the sergeant replied. “Come over here and get your picture taken.”

  At 7 P.M., Warren and the detectives were still at the station, bleary-eyed, trying to figure out what else they could do. The shifts had changed long ago, and the busy radio traffic, the incessant squelching of keyed handsets, the fuzzy voices delivering clipped messages, the urgent electric conversation that would go on all night until dawn came and the town quieted, reached them from the dispatch room up the hall.

  The door opened and the desk sergeant stuck his head in. “Lieutenant? The district attorney’s on the phone.”

  “That’s it,” said Jenkins. “Pick up your marbles and go home.”

  “I’ll take it in my office,” Warren said. This, he supposed, was the call Elliott Yost had put off until the end of the day, the one where he would relieve them of the investigation.

  Warren heard Elliott’s fussy voice come through the telephone, touching off a rush of anger and resentment. “I heard about the Lefgren boy this afternoon,” the prosecutor said. “I would have gotten in touch sooner, but today they found the Gilbride child. He was in a pond in Truro.”

  “Did he drown?”

  “No. He was killed. At least that’s the opinion pending an autopsy, but the medical examiner down there is pretty certain. His arms were bound behind him, so that rules out an accident. Where do things stand over there?”

  Warren gave him a rundown of what they had done so far. At the end, he said, “We have notes, names, and addresses for everyone we’ve interviewed. It will save the state police a lot of work.” He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

  “That’s the thing, lieutenant. Now we’ve got two murdered kids. I’ve spoken with Captain Stasiak. The state police are sending two detectives down from Boston for the Gilbride case, but that’s all they can send. They just don’t have the manpower to spare right now. I want you to continue what you’re doing for the moment. I heard the Lefgren boy was sexually molested. Is that true?”

  “It is.”

  “There’s a possibility the Gilbride boy was as well. If they’re connected, we’ve got a problem. What I mean is, if we’ve got some kind of lunatic . . . If the two killings are connected, we’re going to have to work it as one case.”

  “And you’ll want us out.”

  “No. You stay with Lefgren but I’ll want you working with the state police. They’ll be the lead agency on this. They’ll run the wider investigation if it becomes one.”

  “I’m willing to do that, Elliott, as long as it’s reciprocal. Will they work with us?”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  Warren was skeptical. He had never found the state police very cooperative in high-profile cases. The new man in Yarmouth, Stasiak, was an unknown.

  “Why do they think the Gilbride boy was molested?” he asked.

  “His trousers were missing. They could have come off in the water, I suppose, but the way his arms were tied, plus the trousers . . . I don’t know. It’s speculation right now. What I’d like you to do is call Stasiak tomorrow, if not sooner, and put your heads together on this. See if you can determine any connection between the two.”

  Warren returned to Dunleavy and Jenkins. “They found the Gilbride kid.”

  The men looked up at him, said nothing, waiting.

  “It looks like a homicide. The coroner thinks it’s also a sexual assault.”

  “Where was he?” Dunleavy asked.

  “In a pond in Truro.”

  “They have a cause of death?”

  “No. The autopsy’s pending.” Warren told them about the boy’s arms being bound and the missing pants.

  “Are we off the case?” Jenkins asked.

  Warren sat down. “No. We’re still on it. If it turns out the two are connected, the state will take the lead with us in a supporting role.”

  “This is according to Elliott?” Jenkins asked, surprised.

  “Right. He says the state police are sending two detectives down from up above to deal with Gilbride, but that’s all they can do for the time being. We stay with Lefgren.”

  “Well I, for one, am not holding my fucking breath,” said Jenkins. “Excuse my French.”

  Dunleavy said, “Are we meeting with them?”

  “Tomorrow. I’m going to call this Stasiak and see what they have so far. If either of you wind up talking to the press, don’t divulge anything about sexual assault. I’m sure they know about it but let’s keep the details to ourselves. Don’t mention anything about bite marks. That’s stuff we want to keep real close. What time is the autopsy tomorrow?”

  “Ten-thirty,” said Dunleavy.

  “I’m driving over to the state police barracks and I want one of you with me.”

  Father Boyle stepped into the foyer of Nazareth Hall. There was a cacophony of voices coming from further in the house somewhere. At the far end of the corridor he saw Sister Julia Weyland walk quickly through and, spotting him, arrest her motion. “Father!” She was young and gangly, with her sleeves rolled up and protruding veins showing in her hands and wrists. She strode toward him like a boy athlete, like a farmhand. “You’re going to do catechism?”

  “Yes. Whatever you’d like.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Sister. Thank you.”

  “Come this way. The kids are in the yellow room.”

  He could hear wailing. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “Perry Boggs. He’s having a terrible time.”

  They walked down the hallway off of which were a series of classrooms. Crude drawings and attempts at individual letters in cursive form were tacked to a strip of cork that ran along the wall, hanging like sad pennants, declarations of existence more than achievement, banners in a pageant of irretrievable causes. In one of the rooms, a man in a suit was speaking into a Dictaphone. A nun leaned against a nearby desk, jotting in a manila folder. She smiled and waved at Father Boyle as he passed. The man said, “. . . with stereotypic movement disorder and emotional lability.”

  Up ahead, a pair of nuns was struggling with a boy. There were droplets of blood on the floor and three crumpled tissues. One of the nuns had a smear of blood on her cheek. “Perry, stop. Perry, stop. Perry, stop,” she said.

  Perry Boggs’s screaming was agonized and terrified. Sister John Frances, who was red-faced from the struggle, said, “Let’s get him into the lounge.” They formed a scrum and shoved their way into a room the nuns used as their personal area. Father Boyle closed the door behind them. He knew from his experiences with Perry that the boy didn’t like to be crowded. Now, with four people holding on to his limbs, he was panicking. Sister John Frances said, “Everybody at once, let go and back away from him.” They released Perry’s limbs and stepped back. Standing free, he shrieked repeatedly, his eyes closed tightly, his hands convulsed and rigid by his sides. The nuns’ eyes were going back and forth between Perry and Sister John Frances. Father Boyle watched them. “What do we do?” asked Sister Julia. “Leave him be?”

  “One of us should stay with him,” said Sister John Frances. She flexed her meaty fingers and examined a scratch on her hand. “The rest of us should leave.”

  “I’ll stay,” said Father Boyle. He knew that this was what was expected of him.

  “Thank you, Father,” Sister John Frances said. “I’ll check back in ten minutes. I have to call his mother.”

  Perry’s methods of self-harm waxed and waned. The latest was tearing at his flesh with his fingernails until he bled. Father Boyle had sat with Perry before while he unwound from tantrums. He had struggled with him as well. The boy was strong for a thirteen-year-old. He didn’t speak, was secretive and distrustfu
l, and didn’t engender tenderness like the smaller children did.

  Father Boyle took a seat on the couch. “Perry. Will you sit down with me?” The shrieking had devolved into a soft moaning and tears flowed down his cheeks. Perry was beginning his descent into the semi-catatonic state that always came after his rages. He shuffled stiffly to the couch and bent at the waist and lowered himself.

  Perry Boggs, Father Boyle reflected, might soon be introduced to the world of restraints, locked rooms, and heavy sedatives. The boy’s glazed, faraway look seemed to say that he knew it too, and that no god or medicine or good intention was going to stand before it.

  Father Boyle slowly put a hand forward and touched Perry’s arm. “Why, Perry?” he whispered. “Why, why, why do you hurt yourself? I don’t want to see you hurt.” Father Boyle knew the boy was unreachable. Uttering the words was just a habit formed by a lifetime of prayer. He lofted them into the air because it seemed appropriate they be put there, perhaps to be received somehow, perhaps to simply hang among the molecules. He didn’t even know if what he did was prayer. It was more an offering, an appeal, a general expression of this moment, now, with this doomed thirteen-year-old who was staring down a hellish future in institutions. Father Boyle looked at him and felt a tightness in his throat. Someone had dressed him in checked trousers and oxfords for God’s sake.

  When one of the nuns came in and said that Perry’s mother had come to collect him, Father Boyle went across the hall to the classroom where the children were waiting for what was called his catechism class. He told stories from the Bible in fairytale form, using a large picture book with pages made of thick cardboard, and gave primers on basic Catholic doctrine because this was what the nuns wanted. But what he really tried to do was provide whatever it was they seemed to need most at the moment, a challenge on the best of days. If they were fearful, he calmed them. If they were bored, he amused them. If they were playful, he indulged them. If he was being observed by the nuns, he framed whatever he was doing in such a way that it could plausibly be interpreted as religious education.

  Sister Julia had the children sitting patiently at their desks when he entered. She was standing off to the side like an officer presenting a regiment for review. There were children with oversized heads, some with braces on their legs, some with features that looked like they’d been hurried to the finish, smeared while the flesh was still soft. Two were in wheelchairs, their heads lolling, their hands like claws. The Down’s children with their owlish expressions. The secret in their faces, the hint of an otherworldly pleasure no one could know. Heavy-lidded toddlers whose jaws hung open, as if they’d never shaken off the sleep of the womb.

  He looked out at them and knew immediately that what had happened with Perry Boggs had upset them. They were very still and wide-eyed. Father Boyle said to them, “My friends.”

  “Children,” Sister Julia said, and they rose up in unison. This was their moment, the part they liked the most, when they called out his name and welcomed him into their midst. It made him feel exposed and shabby. It undid him every time. And they called out in distorted voices, slurred and nasal, a compromised singsong of neurological damage: “Good morning, Father Boyle!”

  8

  Warren and Dunleavy got into an unmarked and headed out to Yarmouth to meet Stasiak. The state police barracks was a strictly functional redbrick building composed of a central administrative block with a dormitory wing on either side. Sprinklers were running on the front lawn, where there was a flagpole flying both the American flag and a flag bearing the seal of the state of Massachusetts.

  At the front desk, they were met by a sergeant who asked to see their credentials and then led them to Stasiak’s office. Stasiak was seated at his desk, waiting. Warren and Dunleavy introduced themselves. The walls were crowded with framed photographs and newspaper and magazine articles. Headlines from the front pages of the Globe, the Herald, and the New York Times announced, “North End Raid Uncovers Hub Mob Link”; “Suffolk DA Delivers Multi-Count Indictment on Boston Syndicate Figures”; “Fed-State Task Force Exposes Attanasio Empire.” In photographs, Warren saw someone who looked like Stasiak standing with Senator and Jacqueline Kennedy. There were group photographs with men in state police uniform and with others in civilian clothes who had the look of federal agents—camera shy, reluctant to smile, frozen in the lens in the midst of an unwanted moment of frivolity.

  Without offering a greeting, Stasiak said, “What can you tell me about the Lefgren boy?”

  Warren said, “We know he was strangled. You’ll see in the photographs what look like bite marks in his genital area.”

  Dunleavy handed the photos over the desk.

  Warren described the course of the investigation so far while Stasiak looked quickly through the pictures without expression. He cut Warren off mid-sentence.

  “Besides his shorts, was there any physical evidence?”

  “Our technicians used a vacuum to see if they could draw any fibers or other material off the boy’s skin. We’re waiting for an analysis to see what they picked up.”

  It looked as if a grin were starting to form on Stasiak’s face.

  “We took a blood sample from the vagrant who found the body.”

  “Do you have any biological material to compare it to? Material that does not belong to the boy.”

  Warren looked at him, surprised by the tone of the question, but Stasiak had his head down, writing. “None at this point.”

  Stasiak questioned them at length about the crime scene, about the Lefgren family, the neighborhood, about lists and information from the work they’d already done.

  “What do you know about the Gilbride case?” Dunleavy asked.

  Stasiak let out a sigh, as though he were tired of discussing it. “Well, what do you want to know? Badly decomposed body in the water . . . ah . . . I don’t know. Cause of death unknown.”

  Dunleavy and Warren waited. Stasiak stacked the photographs and put them back in the envelope. He looked up at them and said, “That’s about it. We’re working on it. We’ll stay in touch.”

  “What about the boy’s arms being tied behind his back?” said Warren. “Have you spoken with Elliott Yost?”

  “Elliott. Yes, indeed. I have spoken with him.”

  “Elliott and I had a conversation yesterday in which he told me, among other things, that your department and mine are to cooperate. He said specifically that he wanted us to work together to see if there is a connection between the two cases.”

  “That’s a sensible idea. He has lots of sensible ideas, Elliott.”

  “Elliott told me more about your case than you have so far, captain.”

  “You’re accusing me of being uncooperative?”

  “You don’t seem too eager to share information with us.”

  Stasiak rolled his chair back and looked out the window. “Let’s see. The boy’s family is from Tennessee. They were vacationing here. He wandered off. We find him eight days later in a pond.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to get the name for you. And yes, his arms were tied behind his back. I left that out. My apologies.”

  “How were they tied?” Dunleavy had his pen and notebook out.

  “What do you mean, how?”

  “With what? What did they use?”

  Stasiak rubbed one of his eyelids with an index finger. “With his shirt.”

  “We’d like to see photos,” Dunleavy said.

  “Right. I’ll get you photos.”

  “Crime scene, morgue, whatever you have. Do you have interview notes?”

  “Not really. We only found the body yesterday.”

  Warren said, “But you’ve been investigating the disappearance for a week.”

  “Let me see what I can find. So, is that it?”

  “No,” said Warren. “That’s
not it. We’re supposed to be working together on this. But you obviously have no intention of doing so.”

  Stasiak wheeled back to his desk and put his hands on its surface. He spoke as if finished with diplomatic conversation. “We don’t know a goddamn thing about this right now. The kid was in the water. Arms tied. Obviously, that didn’t happen by accident, so yeah. Homicide. We interviewed the parents and we don’t believe they had anything to do with it. Was he molested? We’ll probably never know, since the soft tissue is falling off like he’s just spent eight days in a crock pot. That’s it. That’s all we have. You people have to let us get up to speed and take a fucking breath and you can come back at us later.”

  Dunleavy and Warren were staring at him from the other side of the desk.

  “You can have these back,” Stasiak said, sliding the photographs toward them.

  “You’ll get us your interview notes?” Warren asked.

  “When I can get something together, yes. I’ll get them to you.”

  “And pictures.”

  “Right. Pictures. Is there anything else, gentlemen? Because I have one hell of a lot of work to get done.”

  Warren said, “I take it you have the photographs here.”

  Stasiak reached down and opened a desk drawer. He took out a stack of photographs in an opaque envelope and handed them to Dunleavy.

  “They can’t leave the premises.”

  “What?” said Dunleavy.

  Stasiak repeated the words, a little louder this time.

  “Well, it would be helpful if we could take them back and study them.”

  Stasiak sat there with his arms folded. “I have a meeting with my detectives in ten minutes,” he said. “Look all you want, but the pictures stay here.”

  Warren looked off to the side in exasperation, then turned back and faced Stasiak. When he spoke, there was an edge to his voice, a hard, accusatory quality that transformed the meeting into the confrontation it had been threatening to become. “Do you have any intention whatsoever of assisting us?”