Operation Wormwood

by Helen C. Escott

  The chief walked behind his big wooden desk and sat heavily in his chair. He called out to Sgt. Myra as he was leaving the office.

  “Sgt. Myra . . . Godspeed!”

  17

  Luke could feel his legs shaking. His mouth was dry. Sweat was trickling from his hair into his eyes. He had never walked into a room full of reporters before. I have walked into a room full of car accident victims covered in blood with limbs missing, he thought. This can’t be worse. He was wrong.

  The minute the door opened, a hush fell over the room. Instantly, all cameras and microphones were on him. He walked to the front, laid his notes on the podium, and looked out at the room full of media people. There were about fifty crammed into the hospital’s media centre. The PR team had grossly underestimated their attendance.

  “Good afternoon. Thank you for coming,” he began. He looked up at the room again. There were no smiles, no friendly faces. Just a room full of people sitting quietly, holding their microphones and monitoring their cameras. “My name is Dr. Luke Gillespie. I am an emergency medical specialist, and I have treated several patients with symptoms of this disease.”

  Reporters were busily writing down everything he said.

  “We currently have treated four patients with these symptoms. Two have passed away. I can’t give you any personal information on the patients due to doctor-patient privileges and hospital privacy policy.”

  He stopped to take a drink of water. “The symptoms include an unexplained weight loss, enlarged and swollen lymph nodes, chronic diarrhea, white spots in the mouth, and some had dark spots that appeared on their body, heavy nosebleeds, and chronic pain. They also complain of an unquenchable thirst. Not all patients have all of these symptoms. The two symptoms they all do have are heavy nosebleeds and an unquenchable thirst.”

  He finished with, “We are asking anyone who has those symptoms to go to the closest emergency department or to your doctor.” As soon as he finished, the rapid-fire questioning began. He was like a deer in the headlights.

  “What are you calling this disease? Is it Wormwood?”

  “There’s no name on it yet. It seems to be an accumulation of several diseases,” Luke answered.

  “Are all your patients male?”

  “No. One is female,” he said. His answer sent a shock wave through the room.

  “So, you’re saying one of the pedophiles is a woman?”

  “I am not saying anyone is a pedophile,” he sternly responded. “I said they are patients.”

  “Are the police questioning your patients?” A murmur of laughter could be heard when the reporter said “patients.”

  “You’ll have to ask them,” Luke quipped. He knew if he spent another moment at the podium he would explode. “Thank you for coming.” He bolted from the room as fast as he could.

  * * * * *

  Gillespie and Mrs. Furey sat in her office, both looking shell-shocked. “I am never doing that again,” he informed her. “I have to go do my rounds now and feel like I have been sucker-punched. I am afraid to look at my news feeds. I am turning my phone off.”

  “I know how you feel,” Mrs. Furey mumbled. “Why us? Why now? Why couldn’t this happen to a hospital in a bigger city with more resources? I am three months away from retirement. I just wanted to go quietly and end my career on a good note.”

  “I am twenty years from retirement, and I am afraid that I’ve ended my career at that podium.” Gillespie sighed.

  Luke was running through the last few days in his mind. “Maybe it’s because we are so isolated. This disease may have gone unnoticed in a larger city. The population of St. John’s is just a little over 200,000 people. There is not a huge transient population like there is in bigger cities. The only way to get off this island is by boat or plane. From a scientific point of view, it’s easier to do a case study here.”

  “So, you’re thinking God wants us to do a case study on the population of St. John’s?” questioned Mrs. Furey.

  “I think we need to stop bringing up God and deal with what we know—science,” responded Dr. Gillespie.

  “You’re right. It’s hard not to get caught up in the drama of God’s vengeance on pedophiles, isn’t it?”

  “Not when you’re a man of science. To answer the questions ‘why us and why now’ is not easy. Maybe because our population is so small it came to our attention quicker. It has nothing to do with God’s wrath on people. We simply found it first.”

  Mrs. Furey sighed. “Yet Father Cooke is selling it as God’s cure and punishment for pedophilia, and people are buying it by the pound.”

  “I hope Father Cooke realizes at some point that it is the height of cruelty to sell false hope.” Luke was exhausted. “There are victims of sexual assault who are now thinking God is on their side and handing out punishment to their abusers. What if the accused does not develop this disease or show any symptoms? Does the victim now become victimized by themselves? Questioning their own details of their horror?”

  Mrs. Furey sat back, pondering his questions. “I never thought about it from that angle. So, if victims don’t see any symptoms in their perpetrators when they focus on their trauma, does it prove them liars? This is going to be one big mess.”

  “Will victims spend time constantly reliving the horror of their molestation and rapes, hoping their attackers will suffer?” Dr. Gillespie stood up and headed toward the door. “I have to do my rounds. I can honestly tell you this is the first time I walked onto a ward and had security checking my ID and credentials. This hospital is starting to feel like a penitentiary.”

  “Well, hopefully it is only a short-term thing. I know the cost of all these extra resources is driving my overhead through the roof.” Furey was exhausted herself. “I’m going to get started on writing new policy for our own employees on how to deal with this and remind them to stay professional. I do not want to hear of any patient being denied care because they have a bloody nose.”

  “There’s always one who makes everyone look bad. I don’t think you should worry about that. Our health care professionals are too overburdened with work to have time to deny anyone of anything.”

  Mrs. Furey sat in front of the computer, wondering where to start. Dr. Gillespie walked back to the ICU, also wondering where to start.

  18

  Sgt. Myra’s news conference was quick and to the point. “We cannot confirm that people with the alleged symptoms are pedophiles. I will refer your medical questions to the medical community. A high-level task force has been established to find answers. The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary will dedicate six police resources to it. To protect the integrity of the investigation, no further details can be released at this time.”

  The media had their talking head, a few good quotes, and a task force to keep tabs on. They dubbed it Operation Wrath of God. Sgt. Myra named it Operation Wormwood.

  A room was cleaned out next to the major crime unit adjacent to Sgt. Myra’s office. Four desks, computers, and other equipment were set up. The criminal analysts already had victim and perpetrator organizational charts on the wall. The door was closed in order to keep the looky-loos out.

  Sgt. Myra knew from experience that the criminal intelligence analysis would be the heart of the operation. He needed the best in the business for both operational and strategic support. The investigation was no longer a city file—they would now be looking at this on a provincial and national level. This would mean consulting with police forces across the country. To do that, the task force would have to be a joint forces operation and include members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who also shared the policing duties in the province.

  He chose an operational analyst from the RCMP and a strategic analyst from the RNC. Their main objectives would be to help the task force deal effectively with the volume of information, warn them of threats, a
nd support the operations activities and the investigation in general.

  Sgt. Myra wanted the operational analyst to focus on the disruption of any pedophile groups and any person or persons targeting them. She would identify any links between suspects and their involvement in this type of criminal activity and prepare profiles of known or suspected pedophiles.

  He instructed the strategic analyst to keep him informed, warn him of threats, and deal with any emerging sex crime issues. Her focus would be to identify the modus operandi of suspects and to keep track of crime trends, patterns, and emerging threats.

  The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary had one criminal profiler who was already overburdened with files. His office was situated close by, so Myra let him stay where he was, but his directive was clear: Build a profile of someone looking for vigilante justice; identify the top likely suspects, and then analyze the patterns that may predict future victims. He would be given access to all evidence collected and victim reports to develop the offender description. Myra wanted to know what personality traits, psychopathologies, and behavioural patterns to look for, as well as demographic variables such as age, race, and geographic location.

  Myra chose investigators from each force. He had already contacted the RNC and RCMP records departments to give them a heads-up. His task force investigators would be looking into historical sex crimes from the past five years that involved children as well as recent assaults. They would examine the outcome of the cases and health of the perpetrators. They had to re-interview witnesses and suspects, look at the evidence again, and write a report on each file. They would also consult with their major crime sections on current sex files. That information would be shared with the profiler and analysts, who would then start filling in the circles and squares.

  Sgt. Myra sat at his desk, putting together the information that would convince a judge to give him a search warrant. The warrant would allow him to go to the Department of Health and seize the files of people who had died from or who were suffering from symptoms of Wormwood and other specified evidence that would be relevant and material to his investigation.

  His focus this week, and the focus of his team, would be the two patients in intensive care at the Health Sciences Centre: the female principal, Mary Power, and the psychiatrist, Kevin Macy. He wanted everything on both of them. His team did not disappoint.

  Mary Power was sixty-one years old and had taught in coastal Labrador indigenous communities for thirty-five years. She had no family and lived alone. Neither the RCMP nor RNC had anything on her. She was completely clean. “No one is completely clean,” declared Sgt. Myra. He instructed the RCMP investigator to dig further. “Talk to other teachers she worked with. Find out who the RCMP detachment commanders were in the communities she taught in. Track them down and ask them about complaints, gossip, rumours.”

  The psychiatrist was a different story, the members of the task force warned him. He was a child psychiatrist who specialized in counselling abuse victims. “No victims have come forward concerning him, unless you count the one who can’t make a complaint,” one investigator warned him.

  Myra’s eyebrow went up. “One who can’t make a complaint?”

  The investigator explained that the child psychiatrist had been charged by the RNC with two criminal counts of possessing child pornography and mailing obscene matter, and two charges of smuggling and possession of prohibited goods contrary to sections 159 and 155 of the Customs Act by the Canada Border Services Agency. He explained the psychiatrist had ordered a child sex doll from China, and the possession of a sex doll depicting a child is illegal in Canada because it is a form of child pornography. The investigation began a year ago when CBSA officers at the International Mail Centre in Toronto intercepted his package. A police search of his home found the doll, which had not only been used but now had two broken legs from excessive and violent use. The psychiatrist was taken into custody and charged.

  “So, did he sexually assault a child? Because Father Cooke is claiming that Wormwood only affects pedophiles,” inquired one of the analysts.

  “Not according to our investigation. Now, victims are coming forward all the time, so one may show up, but right now it’s only the child sex doll,” replied the investigator.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” protested Sgt. Myra. “It doesn’t fit the profile.” He looked at the analyst. “Read back Father Cooke’s statement to the public.”

  She flipped through the transcription of what they now referred to as “The Sermon on the Mount” and found the quote. “He says: ‘Wormwood affects anyone who molests a child. Take note that ‘‘‘molest’’’ does not just refer to the physical inappropriate touching of a child but the lustful thought of molesting a child by watching or creating child pornography. Their profession does not matter. Only the act of molestation matters. Remember, there are pedophiles who have not acted upon their urges. So, this disease does not affect them unless they act on it through their body or mind. Once a pedophile acts upon their urges, they will suffer by God’s Hand.’”

  Myra paced back and forth in the office. “So, the psychiatrist didn’t molest a child; he molested the child sex doll. So, his lustful thoughts of molesting a child and using child pornography is how he became a victim of Wormwood, if you go by Father Cooke’s theory. Even though he did not molest a child, he is still a pedophile, according to the law, and apparently according to God, if Cooke’s theory is true.” He thought for a moment. “We are not using Father’s Cooke’s information during this investigation. We need good, hard facts. If Macy is a victim of Wormwood, we need to find out how he got it and if it was a criminal act. We need to stop with the God crap.

  “Let’s get back to the law we know,” Myra stated. “The Canadian Criminal Code’s definition of child pornography includes any written material or visual representation that advocates or counsels sexual activity with a person under eighteen years of age.”

  “It is still child pornography even though no actual child was involved,” insisted the investigator. “He is pleading not guilty and says the doll is his right to free expression. The doll is legal in other countries, but not in Canada. Our law states that the possession of a sex doll is just another form of depicting a child for a sexual purpose and therefore would meet the criteria for child pornography.”

  “If he had used the doll in the USA, would he have nosebleeds?” queried the analyst.

  “The fact that he is using a child sex doll tells me he has an erotic attraction to prepubescent children no matter what country he is in,” warned the profiler. “Clinically, he is a pedophile. He is using the doll to surrogate and fuel his fantasies. That makes it dangerous for him to be counselling abuse victims or be close to children at all.”

  Myra picked up the psychiatrist’s file, knowing he would have to study it and the law surrounding it. “I will interview him myself,” he informed the two investigators. “In the meantime, get me something on Mary Power. My gut tells me she is not as pure as she pretends.”

  The team went back to their desks and the arduous task of digging deeper and deeper. Sgt. Myra gave another order. “Take your time. Take your breaks. Do what you must do to protect your own mental health from this sickening subject matter. I know you are all committed, and I know by the end you will be mentally exhausted, but I don’t want any one of you getting lost in what we are about to uncover. Stay removed from this file.”

  Sgt. Myra walked back to his office, knowing he would have a hard time following his own order.

  19

  Beyond the Sacred Heart Altar in the Basilica of St. John the Baptist stands the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima. The shrine was a gift from the Portuguese people to mark the centenary celebrations in 1955. Thousands of Portuguese fishermen formed a procession to the basilica from their ships docked at the St. John’s waterfront. It is believed by the devout that if you pray at this shrine, Our Lad
y of Fatima will answer your prayers.

  Father Charles Horan sat on the marble step in front of the shrine. He was curled up in a ball with his back toward Our Lady of Fatima. His arms were wrapped around his legs, and his head lay on his knees. His eyes were tightly closed as he prayed for guidance. He was so wrapped up in his own misery that he never noticed the dark form walking toward him until he felt someone sit next to him.

  His head bolted upright, exposing his tear-stained face.

  Sister Pius took some tissues from her pocket and handed them to him. Charles begin to wipe his tears, when suddenly a smile came across his lips and a chuckle came from his throat. She looked at him questioningly. He pointed toward the floor. The long black skirt to Sister Pius’s tunic had pulled up past her ankles when she sat next to him, unveiling a pair of white running shoes.

  “You do have feet!”

  “Of course I have feet!” she huffed. “How do you think I get around?”

  “Hovering,” he snorted back at her.

  They looked each other in the eye with an air of unsureness, then broke out laughing.

  “Shush.” She put her finger to her lips. “I don’t want to get thrown out!”

  They both laughed harder, knowing there was nothing either could do that would get them thrown out of the church.

  Sister Pius looked into his eyes again. She didn’t see the grown man sitting next to her. All she could see was the suffering of an orphaned twelve-year-old little boy who had stopped growing the day he smiled at Archbishop Keating. Her heart went out to him. She had watched over him since he first came to the orphanage. He showed no signs of physical abuse but always seemed distant. She figured he was a loner and Archbishop Keating kept him by his side to protect him. She had never understood the relationship until this past year, when she started putting things together. That was when she started hating Keating with a passion.