Lesser Evils

by Joe Flanagan

  Cleve turned right into a wide break between the buildings. Warren and Jenkins made the turn and saw him headed toward the water. Some people were standing nearby, a small group looking at the lights on the harbor. Startled, they watched as Cleve ran past them and straight into the water. Warren yelled, “Stop that man!” To his amazement, two of the bystanders suddenly moved into action. They were about waist deep when they jumped on Cleve’s back. He went under and out of sight briefly. They all came up, thrashing. The bystanders got hold of his arms but he was a kicking, biting fury. Warren splashed out to them and joined the struggle and though Cleve launched ferocious bursts of resistance, they managed to drag him ashore.

  There was a crowd now, and they parted as a Provincetown police cruiser crawled toward the docks. The officers handcuffed Cleve and dragged him to the car. Jenkins turned to Warren and said, “I think you better make yourself scarce, being a civilian and all.” He handed Warren the keys to his car. “Go on back. I’ll get a ride from one of the locals. Do me a favor, though. Would you call Gladys and tell her I’m tied up?”

  “O.K.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I know more.”

  Warren sidled into the crowd and vanished.

  Detective Ferrell had just returned from his weekly run to the grocery store, setting his bags down in the kitchen of his rented apartment in South Yarmouth, when the phone rang.

  “Is this Detective Ferrell?” asked the voice on the other end.

  “It is. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Ed Jenkins. Barnstable police.”

  “What is it, Jenkins?”

  “Remember I told you about a Dr. Reese Hawthorne in Provincetown? The sexual deviance specialist?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m standing in his house right now and you need to get out here.”

  “Why?”

  “We’ve got the guy who did the murders. Are you there? Ferrell?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m here.”

  “Did you hear what I just said?”

  “Yes, and I’m at a loss for words. We’ve got the guy, Jenkins.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Not in custody, no, but we’ve got the guy. We know who he is.”

  “You need to come out here. We’ve got someone in custody. He was living in Hawthorne’s house.”

  There was a pause, and then Jenkins heard Ferrell sigh. “O.K. This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to come out there. Alone. I’m not going to say anything to anyone. And whatever the big discovery is you made out there, when it turns out to be unrelated, I’m not going to say anything about that, either. It’s a good thing I like you, Jenkins.”

  “You can tell anyone you damn well please. I just want to see your face when you see what we’ve got here.”

  53

  Hidden in a small duffel bag that had been stuffed into the lowest drawer of an old bureau in Dr. Hawthorne’s cellar, Jenkins and the Provincetown police found items of clothing belonging to several of the murdered boys. A bloodied T-shirt and a pair of shorts were found concealed in the floor joists.

  Their suspect, whose true name was Clyde Pommering, sat handcuffed in the kitchen, refusing to speak. Detective Ferrell entered the house, was directed to the cellar, where he met Jenkins, and said absolutely nothing while he examined the clothing. Jenkins watched him struggle with the shock of it, then went back upstairs, leaving Ferrell alone.

  Jenkins sat down across from Clyde Pommering. He was dripping wet, looking straight ahead, an impassive expression on his face. “Are you going to tell me why you’ve got the clothing of four murdered kids in your possession?”

  Pommering looked at Jenkins with wide, owllike eyes. The sound of Ferrell’s feet clumping slowly up the stairs reached them in the kitchen. Ferrell stood there and studied Pommering for a moment, then turned to Jenkins. “Come outside.”

  They stood in the darkness on the front lawn. A few neighbors were out in their yards, watching. “Christ,” Ferrell said. “How did you come on this?”

  “I told you . . .”

  “I mean the whole thing. From the start.”

  Standing in the window of a seventh-floor office building on Tremont Street, Karl Althaus looked out across downtown Boston. Seated at a table behind him were the corporate counsel for Luxor Laboratories, the company’s CEO, and its chief financial officer. Althaus turned from the glass and said, “I don’t know where Hawthorne is now.”

  “Would he have been prudent enough to remove company documents from the house before it was searched?”

  “I’m sure he would have.”

  “But we’re not certain. After all, he left in a hurry.”

  “And they’re looking for him,” said the CEO. “If he’s in trouble, he might trade information about Luxor for certain considerations in the other thing. Sit down, Karl. You’re making me nervous.”

  One of the lawyers said, “Tell us everything you know. In case all this starts coming back in our direction.”

  Althaus told them about his periodic trips to Cape Cod, acting as the liaison between Luxor and his old friend and colleague who was being paid to conduct illicit experiments with new drugs. Living at the house in Provincetown with the doctor was a man named Edgar Cleve. Hawthorne had discovered him through a research project he had been working on at Bridgewater State Hospital. Cleve was one of several patients to whom Hawthorne had administered an experimental anti-psychotic drug that Luxor was developing—seropromazine—though it showed little promise and they abandoned it. Hawthorne said he was treating Cleve, but it was often difficult to tell what the doctor’s relationship was with the patients he took in. Althaus happened to know that Cleve was not the first. There had been trouble when Hawthorne was working in New York, something to do with an offender he’d been keeping around. Althaus wasn’t clear on the details.

  Hawthorne was a prominent mind in the field of sexual deviance and Althaus believed he was investigating some therapeutic techniques with Cleve, but he also suspected that Hawthorne was keeping him as a curiosity, an accoutrement to his bohemian existence on Daggett Lane.

  Hawthorne was vague about Cleve’s tendencies, but there was an insinuation that he was dangerous, a subtle boast on the part of the doctor about his own capabilities. Hawthorne had given him the spare bedroom downstairs and engaged him in various therapeutic exercises. The doctor confided to Althaus that staying with him was a condition of Cleve’s freedom and intimated that he had either enough knowledge or enough influence to have Cleve incarcerated, which he held over his tenant—along with forced medications—as a means of behavior modification. Althaus suspected that while Cleve was initially grateful for the situation, he eventually bristled under the doctor’s authority and began asserting himself.

  Cleve occasionally worked on a fishing boat that did day runs out of Provincetown Harbor. He frequently wandered off on foot and came back dirty and hyperactive. Althaus asked Hawthorne what he thought his patient was up to and the doctor said that he was probably looking for work, but Althaus could see that Hawthorne was uneasy.

  It was about that time that Hawthorne tried to find some kind of artistic outlet for Cleve. He showed no interest in drawing or painting, but was mildly intrigued by collages. This devolved into defacing photographs of people in magazines, erasing their eyes and mouths and drawing pupils and teeth with a ballpoint pen. The effect was either comical or sinister, depending on his mood, which had a predominant tendency to the latter.

  Althaus was a bit startled during a subsequent visit when he saw that Cleve had introduced an X-ACTO knife to his magazine work. Althaus saw the pages wadded into balls, hurled across the porch, scribbled on and sliced with such a frenzy the tabletop was scarred. Hawthorne would choose one of the ruined magazines from a pile on the floor, lead Cleve into the study, and close the door so they could discuss what it meant.
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  Hawthorne let him borrow his car. The new freedom had a calming effect. He was gone much of the time, a yard job, a painting job, washing dishes at a restaurant. Hawthorne didn’t use the car much, seeing his patients there at the house on Daggett Lane. The child murders hit a crescendo in that month.

  And there was Althaus’s final visit to the house on Daggett Lane. Hawthorne was away in Boston at a psychiatric conference and he’d invited Althaus to use the house for the weekend. He came down to the kitchen in the morning and while gazing out the window, he saw a shower of earth erupt from the mass of untended hollyhocks growing by the stockade fence. Partially concealed by the growth, Cleve was hunched over a short spade. He straightened, dropped the shovel, then held up a pair of children’s shorts. He rubbed them on his chest and throat before he threw them down and picked up the spade again.

  Althaus stepped away from the window and that’s when he noticed the kitchen sink. The basin and faucets were stained with what he believed was blood.

  The CEO of Luxor said, “Why didn’t you come to us with this earlier?”

  “Because it was all speculation at the time.”

  “You saw blood in Hawthorne’s house in September. It’s November now.”

  “We don’t have another Hawthorne. You know that as well as I do. You know how valuable Hawthorne was to us. He couldn’t just be replaced by running an ad.”

  “Well we’re going to have to replace him. And in the meantime, hope he doesn’t lead them back to us. For purposes of the public record, Karl, your association with Hawthorne was strictly personal. Understand?” He spoke to everyone in the room. “If anyone is contacted by authorities, notify me immediately. All records of business with Dr. Hawthorne are to be destroyed.”

  In a guarded room at Massachusetts General Hospital, Stasiak lay in his bed, his one good eye staring, unfocused. His face had thinned, his once formidable mass reduced somehow under the childlike gown, light blue with jolly little geometric shapes dancing across the fabric. Lieutenant Colonel John Fitzgerald walked in. He was wearing civilian clothes, a suit and tie, beige overcoat, and carrying a gift-wrapped shaving kit. He stood at the foot of the bed and looked at Stasiak, whose eye moved to take him in. “How are you doing?” Fitzgerald said. Stasiak continued to look at him for a moment, then his eye shifted away.

  “I’m damn sorry about all of this,” Fitzgerald said. “Damn sorry.” He looked around the room. “I’m going to do everything I can for you but I told you to stop. When you went down there, I thought we all understood it was over and we were just going to sit back and count our money. I don’t know if you’ll ever talk again but if you do . . .” A nurse came in and removed the tray from beside Stasiak’s bed. Fitzgerald smiled at her. When she was gone, he said, “If you do, you’d better choose your words carefully.”

  He put the gift down on Stasiak’s end table. “You’re very vulnerable now. You’ll be easy to find. I know your mother and father still live in Charlestown. You want them to live out their golden years without any more heartbreak.” He looked around the room. “Well, that’s it for now. Keep your chin up.”

  Warren and his son spent the frigid autumn nights in their single beds with the woodstove hissing and ticking between them. They talked in the complete darkness up in the loft of the former barn, which was like a tree house, the upper branches of the big elms and the stars beyond visible through the large window in the gable. One night, they saw a shooting star arc through the black universe. Mike said, “Was that Sputnik?”

  “I don’t know,” Warren yawned. “Maybe it was a meteorite.”

  Seconds passed. The wood shifted in the stove with a soft clunk.

  “Maybe it was a Martian spaceship,” Warren said.

  “Maybe it was for us.”

  Warren looked up into the black, the rafters high above barely distinguishable. He spoke to his son. “What are you laughing at?”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “No?”

  “I’m just smiling.”

  “At what?”

  “At us, Dad.”

  In the morning, as Warren prepared breakfast, he saw James standing in the yard by the main house, talking with Ed Jenkins. He put his coat on and went outside. “There he is!” Jenkins said when he saw him. “I was just talking to Mr. Holbrooke here about the big renovation.”

  “And Thanksgiving,” James added. “Grayson and I were talking last night and we decided we’d like to have a big Thanksgiving celebration and have lots of people come. You and Mike of course, and Officer Jenkins and his family. We’ll decorate the house and we have a big table where everyone can sit—it hasn’t been used in years—and if the weather is nice, we can set it up outside and maybe have a bonfire.”

  Warren looked at Jenkins, who was nodding, noncommittal, a functional smile on his face with which Warren was very familiar.

  “You think about it, Officer Jenkins,” said James. “But let us know so we know how many are coming.”

  “All right.”

  “Now, would you like to see our shop? We don’t give the tour to just anyone, you know.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. That would be terrific.”

  James led the way toward the house. Jenkins turned to Warren. “I’ll catch you on the way out,” he said. “I gotta see this.”

  Warren was on his way back to the barn when a car pulled up and parked out front. He watched in astonishment as Fred Sibley got out. He spotted Warren and waved. They met in the yard. “Warren, how are you?” he said.

  “Surprised as hell. When did you get out?”

  “A couple of days ago. I was going to go on a weeklong bender but that’s not a good idea for me. How are you making out?”

  “I’m great. I’m glad to see you.”

  This took Sibley aback. “Well, yeah, I . . . Between the FBI and your ex-wife, the US attorney convinced a judge to get right on it. I understand she didn’t make it, your wife.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, she screwed them pretty good. Especially the bit about the place in Boston and the check-cashing scheme they had going. I guess you know the feds hit that and came up big. That was thanks to her.”

  Warren was silent.

  “You went through a hell of an ordeal, I understand,” Sibley said. “I’d like to hear about it sometime.”

  Warren shrugged. He crossed his hands in front of him.

  “You went head-to-head with Stasiak,” said Sibley.

  “I was lucky.”

  “I don’t know, Warren. You’re a New England stoic.”

  “Mr. Sibley, luck is the only reason I’m standing here right now.”

  Sibley’s eyes went off toward the barn. Warren turned to see Mike approaching.

  “Or something,” said Sibley. “I’ve heard about your son.”

  Warren detected a drop in Sibley’s tone of voice, an inflection that seemed to suggest this was a new, much less transparent subject.

  “Let’s leave that alone,” Warren said.

  “I’m a journalist. I don’t believe in fairy tales but they make for a hell of a story line.”

  “Speaking of which, what are you going to do? Hire on with another newspaper?”

  “There isn’t one on the East Coast that would hire me. I could go out West but these things have a way of following you around. I’m planning to write a book.”

  “What about?”

  “About Pope and Stasiak. About what happened here this summer. About you and Jenkins. Would you be willing to sit down with me and talk about it?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Sibley. That’s not the kind of thing . . .”

  Jane Myrna’s ’48 DeSoto pulled into the drive. Mike ran across the grass and into her arms. A young man got out with her, slender, good-looking. Jane was radiant
as she walked toward them, her hair parted on the side and pinned up in the back, a colorful scarf tied around her throat. She looked directly into Warren’s face as she approached, put her arms out, and hugged him. Warren stood stiffly with his arms by his sides, then brought them up and patted her clumsily on the back with his hands. He hadn’t seen her since just before everything happened. “Mr. Warren,” she whispered, her mouth close to his ear. He could smell her perfume. The house on General Patton Drive used to carry faint traces of it. It was like she was still there even when she had gone, bringing on spells of evening melancholy.

  “Jane, it’s so good to see you.”

  They talked, brought each other up-to-date on what had happened since they’d seen each other, avoiding the obviously painful. She introduced her fiancé, who embarrassed Warren by saying, “Sir, it’s an honor.”

  Jane said, “I’d love to spend some time with Mike. I’ve missed him.”

  “We’ll be living here now,” said Warren. “Any time you want to stop in, you’re welcome. We’d love to see you.”

  “I’ll be going back to work soon,” she said. “I’ll be seeing Mike in school. Right, Mike?”

  The boy had Fred Sibley off to the side, engaged in conversation. The journalist stood there with a slightly flummoxed expression.

  The side door to the house opened and Jenkins and James came out. Jane looked up, saw Jenkins, and her eyes welled with tears. “Hey!” he shouted, “look who’s here!”

  She talked to Jenkins for a long time, both of them in quiet voices, Jane frequently brushing tears away and wiping her nose. Sometimes she laughed at what Jenkins said. Watching them, Warren felt the same sensation he got when he used to pick up stray signs of her in the house: loneliness, loss, an invincible grey twilight before him.