Lesser Evils

by Joe Flanagan

  He watched the wind stir the grassy wastes outside his windshield. The chronology of the child murders unrolled before him. He didn’t need files or notes or photos. Gilbride, Lefgren, Crane, Stamper. He could see the details of their deaths in his mind’s eye—reed, sand, seaweed, pale flesh, splayed young limbs, the cloudy gel of an eyeball—like they were the grammar of a language he’d been born speaking.

  Stasiak remained in his car, concealed amid the low dunes and beach grass, and waited for word that Warren had been taken care of. In the meantime he thought about the killings, the entire string of events playing out in his head like a mathematical equation, the one variable being the priest and how he could be made to fit, how the numbers could be worked so the priest stood alone, distinct, on the opposite side of the equals sign.

  Father Boyle made the long journey back to his car, making careful mental notes on the terrain, placing a boulder in the path here, shoving a stick into the ground there so he could find the route again. He sped back in the direction of Hyannis on the darkened, deserted highway. When he pulled up in front of Warren’s house, he sat for a moment and tried to collect himself. He got out of the car and looked in the front windows. The view allowed him to see through the kitchen to the back door, which hung wide open, the night a solid mass of black in its frame. “Hello?” he called out. “Mr. Warren?” He walked through the kitchen and into the small dining area. Michael Warren was standing in the hallway to his right, holding a blanket. “Well, hello,” Father Boyle said to him.

  “Where’s my dad?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s Jane?”

  “I need you to come with me, Mike.” Sweat was pouring off the old priest’s face. He realized he was frightening the boy. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He put his hand out and moved toward Mike. “I want you to come with me.”

  Father Boyle headed for the Mid-Cape Highway and punched the accelerator when the road opened up before him. He looked over at Little Mike, who was cowering against the door, his blanket held to his chin. Father Boyle put a hand on his knee. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m scaring you, I know. It’s going to be all right.”

  Henry Sherman sat in what he liked to call his TV chair, his head turned so he could see over his shoulder out the window toward Bill Warren’s place. Three cars had pulled up there in the last hour or so. It was busier over there now than it ever was when Warren was head of the police department. Sherman knew Warren wasn’t home and he wondered if that babysitter was up to something, though it would have surprised him because he knew she was a nice kid. Sherman did wonder about the boy who went around the back of the house about half an hour ago, though. He guessed it was the babysitter’s boyfriend. And the last car, just a little while ago, the old fellow standing on Warren’s front step. He wondered if something had happened over there.

  Driving down a mostly deserted Route 28, Frank Semanica looked down at Jane Myrna crouched down on the floor on the passenger side. He had pulled over a short distance from Warren’s house and tied her hands with the cord from the stolen lamp in the trunk. He found a rag to stuff in her mouth and used the cord from the record player to secure the rag in place. Now, stopped at a red light, he ran his hand down her bare leg and listened to her pained whimpering, which aroused him fiercely.

  He drove toward Yarmouth, checking the motels as he went by, most of them closed for the season. The few that were still open were too well lit and close to the road. Just before the Yarmouth line, there was an extinguished neon sign made up of a set of letters arranged in a jaunty, irregular arch to form the word “Kismet.” As he pulled off the road, the sign came alive briefly, sluggishly, the gas in its tubes momentarily energized, glowing dully and going out again. At the far end of a drive flanked by untended hedges, he could see a dim light in the rental office.

  The woman behind the desk looked up at him, mildly surprised. She was wearing a pair of bifocals that she pushed up on her nose. “You open?” he asked.

  “Not supposed to be. We closed yesterday, officially.” She turned around and took a key off the board. “But if you want a room I’ll rent it to you. How many?”

  “Just me.”

  “For how long?”

  “Just tonight.”

  He found Jane twisted around on the floor of the car, her legs up on the seat, her face on the carpet. Semanica yanked her head up by the hair. “Don’t you try any shit like that again,” he said. “You kick my windows, I’ll cut you from your cunt to your chin.”

  Warren said good night to the mechanic and backed his car out of its space in front of the hangar. He hadn’t gone a quarter mile when a car pulled out in front of him and blocked the road. Warren stopped and put his car in reverse. When he turned to look out his back window, another car pulled out of the woods and blocked the road behind him. Two men emerged from the first car with guns drawn and another two were getting out of the second. The .45 Jenkins had given him was locked in a closet at home. He never anticipated that he would be caught out at 11 o’clock at night on the lonely road to Cameron’s.

  Warren got out of the car. As the men converged on him he recognized the state police sergeant, Heller. “What’s the problem?”

  “Let me see your hands,” said Heller.

  “What’s this about?”

  Heller holstered his revolver but didn’t say anything. Warren was aware of the others milling around him. Heller drifted out of his vision, somewhere behind him. “What do you people want?” Warren asked.

  Heller produced a length of wire, flung it over Warren’s head, crossed the ends and yanked them tight. Warren arched his back and kicked his legs as the wire cut into his flesh. Heller pulled with all his might.

  Headlights appeared at a bend in the road. Steve Tosca yelled out, “Someone’s coming.” Heller released his grip on the wire and let Warren fall to the ground. He lay there white and still. “Let’s get him out of here,” Heller said, and one of the men came over to help him carry Warren’s body to the car. “Stevie,” Heller called, “go out and stop that car.”

  The mechanic from Cameron’s boatyard rolled up on them suddenly. Steve Tosca leaned into the driver’s window. “Accident,” he said. “You have to go back the other way.”

  “Anyone hurt?”

  “Shaken up, that’s all.”

  The mechanic pointed. “That’s Bill Warren’s car. I know him.”

  Tosca put his hand on the roof of the mechanic’s car and leaned in close. “You should take off.”

  In Wellfleet, Father Boyle pulled over at a Dairy Queen that was getting ready to close down for the night. Shaky and sweating, he looked at Little Mike, who seemed tiny and frozen in the seat beside him. “How would you like an ice cream?” Father Boyle asked.

  “Are we going to find my dad?”

  Inside it was brightly lit, with colorful posters of floats, icecream cones, and sundaes mounted on the plate glass windows. It was ethereally quiet and smelled so good and wholesome that Father Boyle felt choked up. He looked down at Mike in his ill-fitting pajamas and the blanket he had taken with him. He wiped sweat off his forehead, then realized a droplet of it had appeared on the end of his nose. A young girl with a pixie haircut slid a napkin across the counter toward him and looked at Mike. “What would you like?” she asked. There must have been something about his appearance, he thought, or perhaps he had made some kind of strange utterance of which he was unaware, because the three customers in the place were looking at him and the girl behind the counter had now been joined by the manager.

  “You’ve never done speed, have you? I can tell just by looking at you you’ve never done speed.” Frank Semanica had tied Jane’s hands to an overhead beam that ran the length of the motel room. She stood there, weeping quietly. He walked over to the bureau and emptied the contents of his pockets on its surface. “You’re a fucking whore.” He sorted thro
ugh the coins and bills and found a small white envelope that he tore in two, looking inside both halves and throwing them on the floor. He sat on the edge of the bed. “Shit,” he said. “I don’t have a goddamn thing.”

  He picked up the telephone and called the Elbow Room. One of the men in the back answered. “What do you want, Frankie? We’re tallying up.”

  “Put George on.”

  “I don’t know where George is.”

  “Well, you better find him.” Semanica’s voice was rising with anger.

  “Frankie, it’s tally time. We’re busy.”

  “I need to talk to George.”

  “We got trouble?”

  “You will if I don’t talk to George.”

  “Do we need to lock up, or what? ’Cause if the cops come in right now, we got our pants down.”

  “Put George on right now.”

  A moment later, McCarthy came on the line. “What happened with Warren?”

  “He wasn’t home.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “A motel in Yarmouth somewhere. Hey, listen.” Semanica’s voice lowered to a confidential, almost embarrassed tone. “You got any more speed there?”

  McCarthy paused for a while. “Yeah, Frankie. I can get you some. What hotel?”

  “The Kismet.”

  “O.K. I’ll be over. Wait for me there.”

  47

  Jenkins sat in front of the television listening to the late news. He went to the telephone and called Warren but there was no answer. He tried again a few minutes later, but the phone just rang. It was unusual. He supposed it could be phone trouble, but Jenkins felt uneasy about it.

  The lights were on in Warren’s house when Jenkins drove up. He knocked on the front door but there was no answer. He looked in the windows but didn’t see anyone there. Jenkins tried the door and discovered it was slightly ajar. He went in, calling out Warren’s name. He looked in the two bedrooms but found nothing amiss. Mike’s bed was unmade and looked to have been slept in. He looked through the kitchen and then went to the back door. A hook that locked the screen door to a small eyebolt in the door trim was lying on the floor. Jenkins looked at the door itself. There were gouge marks where someone had inserted a tool of some kind and pried the hook out. On the floor by the front door Jenkins found a barrette with hair in it. More hair, he felt, than one ought to see in a barrette that had simply fallen out or been dropped. He picked it up and put it in his pocket, then went out on the front step. He looked around the silent street. As he was about to get in his car, there was a voice behind him. He put his hand on the butt of his pistol and turned.

  “Are you looking for Bill Warren?”

  It was an old guy in work pants and slippers and a heavy sweater thrown over his shoulders.

  “Who are you?”

  “Henry Sherman. I live across the street. Who are you?”

  “Barnstable police.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “I don’t know. Have you seen Warren?”

  “No, but it sure has been busy over here.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You’re the fourth car to pull up to this house in—I don’t know—a little over an hour.”

  “Did you see the others?”

  “Didn’t see the first one ’cause I thought it was Warren and I didn’t pay much attention. Then right after that one left, there was another one. There was a young fella went around the back of the house. It was a green Pontiac. Two-tone. I think it might have been the babysitter’s boyfriend.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  “Not really. Just a young guy from what I could see. Then just before you came, there was an old guy who I saw standing on the front step.”

  “An old guy?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t want to get in Warren’s business, but then you came up and I seen you going through the house. I figured something was up. I didn’t know you were a cop. You think something’s wrong?”

  “I’m just trying to find him, that’s all. You say the guy who went around the back of the house was in a two-tone green car?”

  “A Pontiac, yes, sir. That’s why I noticed it, ’cause it was snazzy.”

  Jenkins got on the road and drove toward the center of town. He recalled tailing a two-tone green Pontiac out of the Elbow Room and chasing it around Harwich for the better part of an hour earlier in the summer. Jenkins drove through Hyannis, down deserted streets, the branches on the trees still and heavy, looking exhausted by the recent season. He drove down 132, over the railroad tracks, turned left at the textile factory, and pulled into the lot at the Elbow Room. At midnight, the place was packed. He rolled slowly past the cars, looking for the Pontiac, but didn’t see it. Jenkins parked at the outer edge of the lot, practically in the woods, in a place from which he could see both the back and side doors.

  Bobby Nevins met the cars at the Starlight. His step van was parked behind one of the cottages, out of sight. In the back seat of one of the cars was Warren, the ex-Barnstable cop, handcuffed and either unconscious or dead. Heller got out of the lead car. “Get him upstairs,” he said. They took him under the armpits and by the ankles and climbed the two flights to the apartment above the laundry room. Bobby followed with the tools and the oilcloth. As they struggled through the darkened kitchen, he said, “Is he dead?”

  “Makes no difference,” Tosca answered. “He will be soon.”

  They carried him through to the bathroom and laid him down in the tub. Tosca said, “Cut his clothes off, Bobby,” and went out into the apartment where Heller and the others were talking. “You guys go back to the Elbow Room,” Heller said. “See if Frank showed up there. If he didn’t, give Grady a call and let him know he’s probably on his way back up. He can take care of it there. One of you take Warren’s car up to Boston and see that it gets cut up. Any personal shit he’s got in there, get rid of it.”

  Heller followed them outside and down the stairs. He watched them drive off, then sat in his cruiser and radioed Stasiak. “State five seven to State zero nine.”

  “State zero nine.”

  “Detail one is 10-24.”

  From his observation point in the parking lot of the Elbow Room, Jenkins saw the side door open and a figure emerge. He was too far away to recognize, but Jenkins watched him climb into the blue Cadillac that was registered to George McCarthy. The detective started his engine and headed out in pursuit. On Route 28, the Cadillac suddenly pulled off at a darkened motel sign that he could not make out, a series of letters up high on a pair of poles. Jenkins shut his lights off before making the turn. There was a long drive that led toward the motel: twin ruts filled with white gravel, a strip of weeds growing up in the center. The woman in the rental office looked up as his car passed by. The long, single-story motel extended out along the edge of a dirt parking lot, with the woods pressed up close to the back of the place. Only one room was lit, and parked out front were the car he’d just been following and the green Pontiac.

  Jenkins drove back to the rental office and went inside. The woman watched him apprehensively. He produced his badge. “Barnstable police.”

  “I knew it.”

  “The room with the lights on back there. Who’s in there?”

  She looked at the register. “Frank Sinclair.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Like a hoodlum. Greasy. Kind of nervous.”

  Jenkins looked at the register. “Frank Sinclair, huh?” He spoke into his portable radio, calling Officer Welke’s call sign. “Easy nine, 10-95 at the following number.” He read the telephone number over the air. Welke confirmed, and a few minutes later the phone rang.

  “Welke, you know a place on 28 called the Kismet?”

  “No.”

  “About a mile over the Yarmouth line. Right-hand side if you’re e
astbound. It’s off the road a ways down a gravel drive.”

  “O.K. What do you need?”

  “I need you to get out here right now.”

  Before Welke could respond, there was a gunshot from the one occupied room.

  Frank Semanica opened the door just a crack and peered out. McCarthy didn’t like the way he looked. His eyes were crazy and he was half undressed. “What the hell, Frankie,” he said.

  “You bring it?”

  “Yeah. How about letting me in?”

  “I got a girl in here.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Why?”

  McCarthy had the gun in a holster at the small of his back, concealed under an oversized cabana shirt. “What happened with Warren?”

  “He wasn’t there.”

  “You’re in trouble, Frank.”

  He watched Semanica’s face contort with indignation. “What do you mean I’m in trouble?”

  “With Grady.”

  “Wait a fuckin’ minute.” McCarthy knew it would work. He watched him undo the chain on the door. McCarthy stepped into the room and saw the girl hanging by her wrists from the beam overhead, naked. McCarthy noted the cigarette burns on her arms and buttocks. She was shivering and had urinated on the carpet. “Who’s the girl?”

  “She was at Warren’s house. She’s going to tell me where he is.”

  “Where’s the kid?”

  “He wasn’t there. He’s with Warren. What do you mean Grady’s mad at me?”

  “Don’t you think maybe if Warren’s not there, you don’t go in the house, Frankie? Now we got this.” He gestured toward the girl.

  “She’s going to tell me where Warren is.”

  “And then what?”

  “I’ll take care of that. Don’t you worry. You got what I asked you about?”

  “Yeah.” McCarthy took a vial of capsules out of his pocket and handed them to Semanica. “This is a fuckin’ mess. What about the lady in the rental office?”