by Susan Conant
The elderly relative of Jack’s? The retired exterminator who’d stupidly supplied Jack with the poison?
“Your Uncle George?” I asked.
“George Foley!” Gareth replied. He pointed across the street toward the brick wall of Harvard Yard. “Professor George Foley! My mother is a professor, too. So is Oscar Fisch. Oscar has been granted tenure. My mother has not.” In a bland conversational tone, he remarked, “My mother collects books about mayhem. She interests herself in the topic. It is her chosen field of study.” Once again, he lowered his voice. “Harvard maintains rat colonies for experimental purposes. At night, the rats are loose on the streets. Oscar Fisch knows all about it.”
“Well,” I said, groping for reality, “the psychology department probably has rats, but I don’t think they use them at the Business School. Isn’t that where Oscar Fisch teaches?”
Sounding disconcertingly sane, Gareth declared, “Oscar Fisch is a professional survivor. Oscar Fisch is high up in the recovery movement. Oscar Fisch runs groups.” He gave me a moment to appreciate the significance of the disclosure. Then he went on. “Jim Jones had groups, too. His groups all went to South America, and everyone drank Kool-Aid. Even the children.” As if reading from a natural-history text, he reported, “Rats are heavily distributed throughout the world.” Citing a reference, he added, “Uncle George says so.”
Since we seemed to be getting nowhere except deeper into lunacy, I finally took the initiative. “George Foley was a friend of your father’s, wasn’t he?”
Mistake! Gareth’s eyes blazed. “My father drank rat poison!” he shouted. Veering around to address the passersby, he roared at top volume, “My father drinks rat poison, and it’s better than he deserves, the stinking son of a bitch! His name is John Winter Andrews, and he collects rat poison! And then he drinks it! And he falls down on the floor, and rolls around, and coughs up blood and vomit! And then he never, never DIES!” The muscles in Gareth’s face were so tense that his head seemed to have ballooned. His arms were shaking. Brandishing the unopened bag of food I’d given him, he took a step toward me. Involuntarily, I backed away. Like a dog, he moved toward me. Again, I felt ashamed of seeing him as an animal.
“Rats!” he shouted, shaking the bag. “Oscar Fisch sent you with RATS!” Hurling the paper bag to the sidewalk, he lumbered toward me.
I turned tail. Groping in my pocket for the keys to my car, I bolted through the traffic, managed to get across Mass. Ave. without being hit, and ended up leaning on my Bronco for support. I dove into the car, threw myself in the driver’s seat, and locked the door. Just as I started the engine, Gareth began to pound on the rear window. I don’t know why it didn’t break. The shouting alone should have cracked glass. As Gareth hammered his fists on the side window and bellowed about rats, poison, Oscar Fisch, and the father who hadn’t died, I found a break in the traffic and tried to escape. Gareth chased my Bronco. Smack in the middle of Harvard Square, I got stuck at a red light. The rearview mirror gave me a nightmarish image of a shouting man dressed in a purple parka. Rage contorted his face. The light seemed to stay red for two or three hours. He reached the rear of my car. As his bare fist pounded the glass, the light turned green and the cars ahead of mine moved. The next traffic light was yellow. Sounding my horn at the pedestrians, I slammed my foot on the gas and narrowly missed hitting two kids. Only when I pulled into my own driveway did I make the connection. Desperate to escape, I could have killed those children: just like Hannah Duston.
CHAPTER 15
“Psychotic rage,” Rita diagnosed. “Now you understand why we want people like this to take their medication.”
I’d snagged her when she’d arrived home between patients to eat lunch and walk Willie. We were in my kitchen. Dressed for work in a gray wool skirt with a white silk shirt and a bright scarf, she was feeding herself tiny spoonfuls of low-fat raspberry yogurt. She looked utterly civilized. I felt better already.
“But why don’t they?” I asked. “I don’t understand why someone like that wouldn’t take his medication.”
Rita shrugged. “I’ve heard people complain that when they do, they don’t feel like themselves, which may sound laughable, but I think there’s a sort of truth there, too. Sometimes, they’re too disorganized, cognitively, to remember or to follow through and do it. Even if they’re just supposed to have injections every week or two, sometimes it’s too much for them to get to the doctor’s office.”
“If they were sane enough to take their medication, they wouldn’t need it.”
She smiled. “More or less. Actually, less. Plenty of people do take their meds and function very well.”
“In dogs,” I said, “rage syndrome is—”
“Please!”
“I’m serious! It occurs in springer spaniels. It’s genetic. It’s well documented in springers, but it’s believed to occur in other breeds.”
“Well, in an individual like this Gareth, there’s undoubtedly some organic basis.”
“I was sort of wondering the opposite. I wondered whether he hadn’t been driven crazy by something to do with his father’s murder. Plus, for all that his mother is a professor, there’s something strange about her. She doesn’t quite connect. It’s also possible that she’s a sort of, uh, strange kind of kleptomaniac. And giving me that crime-scene picture of Jack’s body was really peculiar.”
Rita nodded. “And the daughter—”
“Brat’s eccentric,” I admitted. “She’s unusual. But when you’re with her, you don’t get that creepy feeling that you’re off in space somewhere. You don’t with Oscar, either—Claudia’s second husband, the one she’s married to now. That’s something else I don’t understand. Oscar is perfectly capable and focused. So why doesn’t he see to it that Gareth is . . . I don’t know. In a halfway house, maybe. Or a hospital? Rita, he really isn’t—”
“It isn’t as simple as that. These days, even for flagrantly psychotic people, the insurance companies don’t want to pay for anything except brief hospitalizations. The family probably couldn’t get Gareth hospitalized unless he was in the kind of state he ended up in today.”
“Rita, he is really violent. He could kill someone.”
“First of all, Holly, contrary to popular myth, most psychotic people aren’t like that. Most of them are absolutely no threat to anyone except themselves. And this guy scared the daylights out of you, but he didn’t actually do you any harm.”
“Because I ran away! And even before that, Rita, you should’ve seen him eating out of the trash! He was shoveling garbage into his mouth. There was something so sick and so pitiful about it. And he has all these crazy ideas about rats and poison. Meanwhile, he’s scavenging like a rat and probably getting botulism. I don’t know why someone doesn’t—”
“Holly, the family probably knows all that.” Rita ate a bite of yogurt. “They probably try. Most of these families do.”
“He’s had a haircut,” I conceded. “He’s not all that dirty. And his shoes and his parka look expensive.”
“Well, there you have it. The family probably does its best, but this guy can’t be easy to help. With someone as disturbed as this, there are no simple solutions.”
“I should never have mentioned his father.”
“Anything could have precipitated it.”
“Not just anything. His father really was murdered.”
After Rita left for her office, I tried to settle down to my own work. Gareth’s ranting about rats and poison seemed to haunt me. On inspiration, I consulted The Merck Veterinary Manual. It’s a fat book, and in addition to chapter after chapter about the ailments that afflict dogs, cats, livestock, marine mammals, fish, and all the rest, it has a long section about poisoning, because, of course, animals accidentally poison themselves much more often than human beings poison themselves or one another. Anyway, there were four dense paragraphs about sodium fluoroacetate, which came across as the answer to a poisoner’s prayers. It barely sounded real: no c
olor, no odor, no taste, soluble in water, and ultradeadly—the victim dying an agonizing death from either convulsions or heart failure. This incredibly dangerous stuff was banned for use on federal land and available only to certified, insured exterminators. The law required that it be mixed with black dye. According to the Manual, the dye was for identification, meaning, I guessed, that poisoners couldn’t go around insinuating it into lemonade or beer, but had to stick to drinks that were black already. Coffee, for instance.
Feeling slightly nauseated, I emptied my coffee cup into the sink, went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, changed into my heavy boots, and pulled on an old jacket and pigskin gloves. After checking the fenced yard for signs of anything even remotely suggestive of rodents, I let the dogs out. Then I went through the gate to the driveway, carefully closed the gate, and set to work on my wood.
The afternoon was, if anything, grayer, colder, windier, and nastier than the morning had been. The unsplit logs seemed to have propagated in my absence. Every piece resisted my wedge. In my effort to split one especially recalcitrant piece, I slammed my sledgehammer against the wedge, pounded my left index finger, and cursed. When Randall Carey showed up to offer me a book—Good Wives by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich—and a couple of photocopied articles about Hannah Duston, I was glad for an excuse to quit.
Remember the comic strip character called Tubby? Well, I’d have been willing to bet that Tubby had been Randall Carey’s childhood nickname. Not that Randall was fat—he wasn’t—but he was nonetheless round, as if he’d been drawn by an illustrator who preferred circles and curves to angles and straight lines. Today he had on khaki pants and a suede jacket that would be ruined if the dark sky let loose. He didn’t wear an ascot or carry a stout walking stick, but he looked as if he might have thought about both. In the fresh air, I caught a whiff of men’s cologne or aftershave. Bay rum? Isn’t that what English gentlemen pat on? In the movies, they do. The only artificial odors you ever smell on Steve are the manly scents of dog shampoo, Panolog cream, and chlorine bleach.
But Randall Carey knew about Hannah Duston. After stowing my sledgehammer, wedges, and ax under the little porch, I invited Randall in for coffee. When he accepted, I led him through the gate to the yard. As thrilled as ever to welcome a visitor, Rowdy and Kimi came bounding toward him. They know better than to jump on people except by invitation. Randall made the mistake of inadvertently issuing one. By then, I was carrying the book and the articles, and Randall’s hands were free. As the dogs happily charged up to him, he raised both arms in what I suppose was an unconscious expression of the wish to take immediate flight and soar far above the yard and the dogs. Rowdy and Kimi, however, recognized the signal even in the absence of the command that goes with it: Up! It’s a nifty trick. I raise my arms shoulder-high and tell the dogs “Up!” Rowdy and Kimi leap up and rest their beautiful snowshoe paws on my outstretched arms. Only now, of course, the dogs jumped on Randall Carey. He was not favorably impressed.
“Off!” I ordered. To Randall, I said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. Suede, of all things! I’m very sorry. They don’t normally do that. They thought you were giving them a signal. Dogs, down!” The dogs hit the ground.
Randall certainly noticed that the dogs were no longer depositing dirt on his jacket and digging their nails into the suede, and although he probably observed that the huge, sharp teeth and smiling jaws were no longer within immediate striking range of his throat, I somehow had the sense that he didn’t fully appreciate the perfection of those sphinxlike downs. He was busy brushing off the sleeves of the jacket.
“They haven’t torn the suede, have they?” I asked.
Eyeing the dogs, he shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
“They misunderstood,” I explained. Raising my arms, I said, “Up!” And the dogs sprang to their feet, rose on their hind legs, and placed their paws on my arms. Malamutes look especially athletic when their bodies are stretched up like that. Rowdy and Kimi’s white tails were wagging. “Good dogs. Okay! Off.” To Randall, I said, “You see? It was a misunderstanding. But I’m really very sorry. Come in and we’ll have some coffee.”
To prevent any additional miscommnunication, I put the dogs in my bedroom. Then I made a pot of French roast, offered to pay to have the jacket cleaned (he refused) and, as I’d done on my visit to Randall, assured him that I was the strong alpha leader of my little pack and that Rowdy and Kimi were friendly and gentle. “I train dogs,” I explained, gesturing to the dozens of leashes that hung on hooks on the kitchen door. He eyed the leashes with curiosity. I really own more than I need. Maybe he suspected me of having a few dozen additional dogs stashed somewhere, ready to do a real job on his jacket.
“I’m not afraid of dogs,” Randall informed me.
“Of course not.”
“Far from it.”
“Of course.” After pouring coffee and offering cream and sugar, I took a seat opposite Randall at the kitchen table and thanked him for the material about Hannah Duston.
He inquired about the progress I was making with my research and asked what had aroused my interest in Hannah.
“My car broke down in the center of Haverhill, and I saw the statue.” I did not, of course, mention Rita’s five-hundred-dollar bet. Rather, I pulled out my folder of notes and photocopied material, and, succumbing to the low impulse to name-drop, casually mentioned that I was having tea with Professor Foley on Friday.
Randall rested a well-groomed hand on the Laurel Thatcher Ulrich book. He smiled. “Read this before you see him,” he advised.
I smiled back. “Oh, I always do my homework on time.”
“There’s a surprise buried in here.” He stroked the copy of Good Wives as if caressing a fat, sedate cat. “Let me know what you think of it. It’s always interesting to see how matters appear to the untutored eye.”
The untutored eye! Both of mine blinked. Soon thereafter Randall Carey left. He didn’t thank me for the coffee. As soon as he departed, I let the dogs loose. “If that man ever shows up again,” I told them, “dig your nails into his damned suede jacket. In fact, have it for lunch.”
I was, however, chagrined to discover that Randall Carey was right about Good Wives. The book revealed an unsettling connection that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich had made. As I’d known, Cotton Mather preached a sermon about Hannah Duston, who was in the church when he proclaimed her a savior of New England. Four years earlier, Mather had preached a sermon of condemnation about a woman named Elizabeth Emerson. The unmarried mother of one child, Elizabeth Emerson had given surreptitious birth to twins and promptly killed them. In 1693, she was convicted of murdering her newborn babies. Hannah Duston’s maiden name was Emerson. Hannah Duston and Elizabeth Emerson were sisters.
CHAPTER 16
The next morning, I put both dogs in the Bronco and set out for Haverhill. Before leaving Cambridge, I stopped to mail a small package to Oscar Fisch. Then I headed north. This time I got off at a different exit from the one I’d taken the day I’d met Hannah Duston. Just off the highway was a nursing home named in honor of Haverhill’s colonial heroine. Somehow, the name didn’t connote tender loving care.
By now, of course, I knew more about Hannah than I had at our first encounter, yet I felt almost eager to see her again. I’d also learned a bit about Haverhill and now saw it through what I insist on calling tutored eyes. The main drag was a wide thoroughfare lined with municipal and medical buildings in new brick that suggested old mills. I hoped that what the architects had had in mind was an appearance of uncompromising functionality. At the bottom of the hill, the street became a battered concrete bridge that spanned the Merrimack River. At one corner of the bridge was a defunct Woolworth’s, its bleak storefront windows barren except for a scanty display of red, white, and blue banners that weren’t quite flags. At the corner opposite the bygone five-and-dime was a small memorial to citizens of Haverhill who had died in Vietnam. Uphill was the G.A.R. Park, which, of course, memorialized the Civil War and also, as
you know, Hannah Duston, who had lived a few hundred years too early to serve in the War Between the States and wouldn’t have been allowed to enlist, anyway, on the grounds that women were the weaker sex.
During the drive, I’d cultivated a romantic vision of myself addressing a series of profound questions to the mute, memorialized Hannah. I’d also had in mind the practical plan of getting some good photographs to accompany whatever it was I was supposed to be writing. I had no trouble parking. Most of the spaces in a vast blacktopped lot near the G.A.R. Park were empty, and next to the park itself stretched a city block of vacant spots with expired meters. I pulled the Bronco to the curb, fed the meter, and got the dogs out, but soon returned them to their crates. There was at least as much broken glass underfoot as there was grass. A raw-concrete grandstand clearly intended for summer concerts and Fourth of July speeches had evidently served instead as the focal point for a spree of bottle-breaking. Its walls were spray-painted with initials and obscenities. Pigeons poked at the ground as if feeding on shards of glass. Rats with wings.
