“Could they be doing this?”
Chmielnicki permitted himself a small smile. “I know no Satanists personally. There are rumors of a group that meets in the woods, but nothing specific. They may or may not be involved. But, Woody, the Satanists are always among us. You yourself must know that, being a police officer.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Among the Gnostics two thousand years ago the forces of good and evil, light and dark, were evenly matched. Like the left and right hand fighting one another, neither could claim victory. That paradigm was replaced by a paradigm based on the circle. At the center is total goodness: Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed—take your pick. Spreading out in concentric circles are saints, religious figures, the charitable and philanthropic, and so on. Farther from the center, we find our friends and ourselves. We believe in what exists at the center, but, unluckily, we have our imperfections. Farther on we begin to find the ethically and morally compromised, the hedonistic, the gluttons, the lustful, the greedy—those driven only by appetite and ego, who use or destroy others to achieve their ends. Then, in the farthest circles, we find the Satanists, though they rarely call themselves Satanists. They may not even call themselves evil, but their pride and self-deception let them justify any barbarity. They prey on each other; prey on all the rest. What lets us resist them? Our resistance derives from a belief in what exists at the center: a collection of values often symbolized by a specific name—Jesus, Buddha, whatever. Those values let us live within a society and with ourselves; they’re what those farthest circles lack. Their only center is within themselves. They’re always among us, feeding on the rest. You may call them Satanists or something else. They have many names.”
As Woody listened, he tried to follow what Chmielnicki said, but it was difficult to think analytically because Chmielnicki irritated him. All this talk, maybe it was no more than a smoke screen. He decided to cut it short.
“What’s your shoe size?” he asked, thinking of the footprints found around Hartmann’s Ford Focus. But even Bobby was surprised by the question.
“Size nine-B. I expect you’ll be fingerprinting me as well?”
“Right you are.”
Chmielnicki gave another small smile. It seemed almost kindly. “You’re looking better than you did the other day, Woody. I’m glad of it.”
“Don’t start,” said Woody. “Just don’t start.”
• • •
As Woody and Bobby Anderson spoke to Chmielnicki, police officers were going through the three floors of You-You, talking to teachers and students alike. The officers had descriptions of the man and women who Jean Sawyer had seen with Nina, including her belief that one looked like a pug dog and the other like a greyhound. They also asked people what they knew about Wicca or any other neopagan group, as well as Satanists. Every man was asked his shoe size, and if it turned out to be 11D, or more or less, he was fingerprinted.
Of course several refused to answer, not because they were guilty or knew anything in particular but because they disliked being asked. These were whisked off to the police station, where they were fingerprinted and left in a holding cell to consider their options.
The information on each person’s driver’s license was taken down, as well as the names and addresses of others who taught or took classes. Again there were protests, but the nature of the crimes was such that the protests were ignored. If the person continued to protest, he or she was taken to police headquarters.
Finding the man who looked like a pug dog wasn’t difficult. A state police detective, Bruce Slovatsky, asked the secretary at the reception desk if Nina had taken a class and was told she had taken a class in Kundalini yoga during the summer and signed up for it again in September. The teacher, Sam Lazar, was in the building teaching a class at that moment. The secretary asked Slovatsky to wait until the class was over. Instead, he took Lazar to police headquarters. As he said to himself, He really does look like a pug dog. Eyes far apart, thin downturned lips, a square chin. On the way, Lazar gave Slovatsky the names of the women he had been with on that Saturday when they had had coffee and pastry with Nina at the Brewster Brew. Slovatsky made a call and the two women—both yoga students—were picked up, brought to police headquarters, and questioned by two female detectives.
One of the women, Julie Turner, had a long, pointy face, and was tall, thin, and bony. The consensus was she looked like a greyhound, sort of. All three were relatively friendly and eager to help. Lazar and the two women said they knew Nina only from class, while the two women didn’t even know her last name. They had never seen her outside of class except for that one time in the Brewster Brew, though Lazar said he had also seen her twice on the street and once at the beach, maybe more, he couldn’t be sure. Although they knew of Wicca, the only Wiccan they knew personally was Sister Asherah. They expected there were others; they just didn’t think of it much. They knew no Satanists and had never heard anyone talk of Satanism. They found the whole idea too kinky. They explained where they had been at the times of the various incidents; they had their fingerprints taken. Sam Lazar’s shoe size was 10C. In each case, the interviews took about an hour as the questions were repeated. Their stories were pretty much the same. Julie Turner hardly remembered having coffee and pastry that day; she had coffee and pastry with lots of people.
Information about these three was fed into computers to see what more could be learned. But the results for everyone connected to You-You amounted to very little: a number of unpaid parking tickets, a warrant for two unpaid speeding tickets, a DUI five years earlier, an old shoplifting arrest, a drunk-and-disorderly suspended sentence, skipped child-support payments, a few bad credit ratings—these formed the extent of their bad behavior, if it could be called that. None of the fingerprints could be matched with the prints from the hospital nursery.
Nina’s friends were again contacted and asked what Nina had said about You-You—she liked it, the exercises wore you out, she thought her friends should take it, et cetera. Peggy Summers was shown pictures of Sam Lazar and the two women. She didn’t recognize them. She’d never been to You-You and had never taken any classes. “I can’t be bothered with that shit,” she said. “Get a life.”
The women whose names were given to detectives by Sister Asherah and Sister Isis were located and questioned. These gave the names of others, both men and women. Woody and Bobby Anderson assisted in the interviews as officers drove to Warwick, East Greenwich, Narragansett, Westerly, Stonington, and other towns. This took them all day and into the evening. The third Wiccan in Brewster, Sister Hathor—otherwise known as Beverly Arkun—was much like Sister Asherah and Sister Isis, except that outside of coven work she preferred to be called Beverly. A patrol car with a Brewster officer remained parked outside her house on Walcott Street on Tuesday night.
• • •
Baldo Bonaldo had had a complicated relationship with the Brewster Library ever since he had put his remote-controlled fart machine, with the twist-out speaker for increased bass volume, under Ginger Phelps’s chair. Ginger was a part-time research librarian and unlike Jill Franklin, who had also been a victim of the remote-controlled fart machine, she was humorless. She also worked at the Brewster Brew at the noon hour so Jean Sawyer could go home for lunch.
The small transmitter had a button that worked from fifty feet away, even through walls. With a repertoire of fifteen sounds, the fart machine had almost symphonic depth. Baldo had inflicted it on Ginger Phelps the previous March on a very busy Saturday. When the tuba-like sounds began to erupt from under the librarian’s chair there followed a sequence of disbelief, discomfort, and hysteria as Ginger tried to locate who was doing this to her. Seeing no one with a guilty smirk, she grabbed the machine, threw it on the floor, and stamped on it. Black plastic scattered in all directions.
A brief silence was at last interrupted by the words “Oh, no,” as Baldo realized she’d busted his good machine. Even so, he might have gotten away without more trouble
if he hadn’t gone to Ginger and asked to be reimbursed for the damage. He was still in fourth grade and had a deficient sense of causality.
In response, Ginger banned him from the library. “Get out and don’t come back!”
During the next months, delicate negotiations were conducted between the library and acting chief Fred Bonaldo as Fred tried to have his favorite son readmitted. As he said to whomever would listen, Baldo’s education was at stake.
At last the library, and Ginger Phelps, relented. The head librarian, Mary Michaels, was neither vindictive nor cruel. She was simply practical. Apart from the embarrassment, the fart machine was counterproductive to studious pursuits. A list of inevitable punishments—no TV for a year, no movies, fifty hours of community service at the library (sweeping, emptying wastebaskets)—was typed up and signed by Baldo, acting chief Bonaldo, Mary Michaels, and Ginger Phelps. Baldo was then readmitted.
But he wasn’t welcome; in fact, he was watched like a hawk. He was ten years old, with a dim sense of the future. A year of deprivation was beyond the scope of his imagination. Even next week was a vague quagmire of possibility and promise.
Tuesday after school Hercel bicycled to the library through the rain and arrived sopping wet. Sympathetic librarians dried his hair with a towel and lent him a man’s sweatshirt out of the lost and found. His wet clothes were draped over radiators, where they steamed peacefully.
Hercel had been assigned to write a short paper for fifth grade—no more than two pages—using ten more vocabulary words—consequence, contumacious, despicable, dire, incoherent, melancholy, picturesque, solitary, tenebrous, vehement. He had chosen to write about the town’s founder, Wrestling Brewster, being eaten by wolves. His plan was to get rid of the vocabulary words all at once, giving him the chance to expand on his subject. With that in mind and with the aid of a dictionary he wrote his first sentence:
“In the tenebrous dark of a picturesque forest the despicable wolves crept from the melancholy bushes with incoherent growls.”
Having used five words at one go, Hercel felt giddily liberated. He celebrated with a trip to the drinking fountain. This was situated next to the staff lounge, in which were two coffeepots—decaf and regular. Between the drinking fountain and the door to the lounge, he found Baldo Bonaldo, who was wondering if he could get away with putting a powder into the coffeepots to cause the library staff “to burp uncontrollably,” as the little packet promised. Would they blame it on him? Baldo asked himself.
Seeing Hercel, Baldo drew him aside to ask his advice.
“You must be nuts,” said Hercel.
They discussed this in energetic whispers. Hercel reminded Baldo of what he had to lose. Baldo described the ferocity of his desire and his conviction that they’d never suspect him.
“They’ll think it was something they ate,” said Baldo.
“All of them?” Hercel asked.
“Burping’s not as bad as farting.”
“‘Uncontrollably’ means you can’t stop.”
Their discussion continued. Over the past few days, Baldo had become a better friend to Hercel than he’d been before. Although Hercel still didn’t understand him—this was one reason for the attraction—he saw Baldo as harmless, intelligent, and kind, as well as being in the thralls of an addiction. They agreed at last that Baldo would forgo the burp powder in the coffeepot if Hercel showed him a trick.
“But I can’t really control it,” said Hercel. “I don’t know how it works.”
“That’s okay,” said Baldo. “I mean, great!”
So they separated. Baldo also had a paper to write using ten vocabulary words, and he’d better get busy. Before Hercel returned to his work, he removed a yellow tennis ball from his backpack and set it on the table.
These were the facts that kept Hercel busy into the late afternoon:
On the morning of November 3, 1762, Wrestling Brewster set out toward Great Swamp to hunt deer. Winter was almost upon them, and he needed to top off the family larder. His friend Moses Clinton meant to go with him, but the previous evening Moses had twisted his ankle carrying wood and was unable to go. Known for his stubborn and contumacious nature, Wrestling Brewster set off by himself, armed with his musket. The results would prove dire.
When Brewster failed to return that night, the neighbors were alerted. Some felt they should set out in the dark; others said to wait till morning. They argued with one another as minutes slipped away. At last it was decided to wait till daybreak.
At sunrise, the men set off, following Wrestling Brewster’s solitary path into the forest. Then at the edge of Great Swamp they made a dreadful discovery. Brewster had been attacked by wolves. His clothes were shredded; his musket lay by his side; little was left but bones. Three wolves lay around him: one had been shot, two clubbed. The men gathered up Brewster’s remains as best they could and returned to the village.
Brewster was a deeply religious man and quick to censure his neighbors for their shortcomings. If someone failed to go to church, Brewster would appear at his door and escort him. Drinking, dancing, ribald singing led to the arrest of the guilty party. Because of this and because of his name—to wrestle with the Devil—the rumor began to circulate that the Devil had taken the shape of wolves and eaten him.
• • •
Around four o’clock Detective Bingo Schwartz entered the library, hoping to find Ronnie McBride. He was not optimistic, but at least he could ask Ginger Phelps and Mary Michaels when they had last seen him. Ronnie had not returned the previous night to the alcove at Crandall Investments. Bingo Schwartz had also searched Ronnie’s small house on Oak Street.
“It’s like a museum,” he told Captain Brotman, who had put Bingo in charge of finding Ronnie. “It’s so clean you could eat off the floor. He’s got pictures of his dead wife all over the place. The bed’s immaculate, and it’s got ten teddy bears lined up across the head, right across the pillows. Weird. I felt they were staring at me.”
As Bingo approached Ginger’s desk, he hummed Boris’s final aria from Boris Godunov, the words of which began: “Farewell, my son, I am dying.” The rainy weather bothered his knee and he limped more than usual, but he wouldn’t use a cane. As he might say, “I refuse to be debased by the indignities of age.” Such remarks were another reason his wife disliked him. They struck her as operatic, as if Bingo were constantly quoting from librettos.
Although Bingo had been brought up in Warwick, he had known Ginger for many years. “Hey, Ginger, seen Ronnie lately?”
“McBride?” Ginger thought for a moment. “Not since Thursday. Why?”
“Just wanted to ask him a few questions.”
Ginger was sharp-witted and, besides, these were matters widely discussed in Brewster. “You think he saw poor Nina Lefebvre kidnapped off the street?”
Bingo decided not to answer. “How’d he seem when you saw him?”
“Same as ever, not too bad, not too good. He read the papers, left for a while, then came back and read the papers some more, then took a nap. Just like always.”
Bingo was going to ask at what time Ronnie usually left when a yellow tennis ball shot across the room, hit the farther wall, shot back in the opposite direction, hit the wall, shot up to the ceiling—at least twenty feet above the floor—hit the ceiling, and then shot down toward the floor. At this point, Bingo snatched it out of the air.
“Odd,” he said.
After the first bounce, Ginger had fastened her eyes on Baldo Bonaldo, but he had been staring at the ball with as much amazement as anyone else. Several people jumped to their feet, and old Mrs. Muldoon put her hands over her head.
“This has never happened before,” said Ginger.
“No, I suppose not.” Bingo put the yellow tennis ball in his coat pocket and left, humming more of Boris: “I have attained supreme power. . . .”
Half an hour later, Baldo casually strolled past Hercel’s table. “You’re scary, you’re really scary.”
Hercel
didn’t look up from his school report. “Pull my finger,” he said.
• • •
Tuesday afternoon Vicki Lefebvre drove to Brantley’s Funeral Home to talk to Ham Brantley about her daughter’s funeral. Nina’s body had not yet been released by the medical examiner’s office in Providence, but Vicki wanted to steal a march on her ex-husband, Harold Lefebvre, from whom she had been divorced for nearly five years. Vicki was afraid Harold would try to have the funeral and burial in Groton, where he lived, just out of spite, and Vicki felt that since she had had custody of Nina she should also have custody over the funeral service and burial.
Ham Brantley agreed. He and Vicki had known each other since grade school. They’d been friendly but not friends, because Vicki was uncomfortable that Hammy “lived with dead people,” as she described it. Later, in high school, she had been sure he even “touched” dead people, so she’d avoided dancing with him at sock hops and proms, because she was squeamish about having his hands “on her person,” as she said. Anyway, starting in tenth grade, Hammy had dated Jenny Genoways, who he’d eventually married. Jenny had evidently liked those cold clammy hands on her person, and Vicki concluded that different people liked different strokes, or whatever it was. After graduation, Vicki and Ham had become better friends, since all chance of physical contact was over and, in any case, Vicki wasn’t as squeamish as she used to be.
They sat in Brantley’s carefully restrained office, and Vicki told him what she would like.
“We’re really not churchgoers, Ham, though I was brought up Catholic. But there’s the way Nina died. The police say it’s suicide—I don’t believe it for a minute—but if Father Pete makes a fuss, he might refuse to do a service at Saint John’s.”
Brantley sat in a tall leather chair behind his mahogany desk in his three-piece suit. Although Vicki had never thought him particularly good-looking—his eyes were too close together—she now found him quite distinguished, with his silver hair combed back over his head and his pleasant, reassuring voice. Even his weight suited him, and he appeared, to her mind, not stout but robust and self-assured.
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