When you dial 911 in the village of South Chatham, your call is not routed to the local police department. The local police department, you will recall, exists for the sole purpose of entrapping those unwary motorists who are not prescient enough to know that a speed limit can be fifty-five miles an hour one second, and thirty the next.
No, your call is instead routed to the New York State Police barracks down in Claverack, where the officer on duty answers in a businesslike voice, as he did that Friday afternoon, “Troopers. Harrington speaking. What’s the nature of your emergency?”
There was a brief silence on the line, followed by the somewhat shaky voice of what sounded like an older woman. “I want to report a, a crime,” she said. “To the authorities.”
“What sort of crime, ma’am?”
There was another brief silence, during which (at least on a recording of the call) an audible beep can be heard, warning the caller that the conversation was being monitored, and perhaps even preserved. The silence suggested that the woman wasn’t quite sure what to call the crime she was reporting, what label to affix to it. But then she seemed to find the words and proceeded to answer in a voice that was controlled, if somewhat less than steady.
“A case of child abuse,” she said.
“Physical abuse or sexual abuse?” asked Harrington, for whom life seemed to present few gray areas. But the either/or choice he presented apparently created no more difficulty for the caller than it had for Trooper Harrington.
“Sexual abuse,” she replied.
When asked about it months later, Emma Priestley would explain her response quite matter-of-factly. “Listen, I knew it was abuse the moment I set my eyes on that last photo. But I couldn’t really say it was physical abuse. I mean, it wasn’t like I saw him beating her, or noticed bruises on her body, or anything like that. On the other hand, you looked at that snapshot, and anyone with a pair of eyes in their head could see it was all about sex. So I said, ‘Sexual abuse.’ I mean, wouldn’t you of?”
And thus it was that, from the very beginning, the case against Stephen Barrow became one of abuse, and specifically of sexual abuse. Those were the first two words Trooper Timothy Harrington jotted down on the notepad in front of him as he sat at the duty station. They were the two words he listed in the box marked suspected offense on the investigation form he filled out just moments later. They were the two words he used in putting the job out over the air, when he asked the nearest available unit to respond to the Drug Mart in South Chatham and see the lady in the back room. And, for better or for worse, they were the two words that would be forever linked with the entire sordid affair.
It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon when Stephen Barrow shut down his computer, stepped outside, and climbed into his Jeep to begin the day’s second drive down to Hillsdale and his daughter’s school.
Despite the fact that the temperature was still well below freezing, the engine caught on the first try. This was hardly a testament to modern advances in ignition, or recent improvements in engine alloys. The Jeep was a 1983 CJ-7 Renegade, the kind they used to make before Ralph Nader or one of his friends discovered they were prone to roll over when cornering at speeds in excess of sixty-five. As far as Stephen Barrow was concerned, that finding posed no discernable risk for his family of two. While the Jeep’s odometer showed only 57,562 miles at the moment, it was the old kind of instrument, without a sixth wheel, so it simply reset after hitting 99,999 - something it had already done twice in its seventeen years. And the likelihood of the Jeep’s approaching (let alone exceeding) sixty-five miles an hour - while perhaps a theoretical possibility, if one were to simultaneously come upon a long, downhill straightaway and a gale-force tailwind - was so remote as to be safely ignored.
Then again, the fact that the engine caught on the first try was not entirely dumb luck, either. Rather, it was the product of many years of painstaking trial-and-error experimentation. When the mercury dipped below 30 degrees or so, the trick was to shut off any accessories (not that there were that many to shut off), floor the gas pedal once, holding it down for a generous count of “One-Mississippi,” release it, close your eyes, hold your breath, turn the key, and pray.
And, more often than not, it worked.
The truth was, Stephen Barrow loved his Jeep, and so did Penny. She loved its high seats, boxy shape, and noisy muffler. She especially loved it in the summer, when they could put the top down. When she’d first begun to read, somewhere around age four, she’d asked him what the long word stenciled on either side of the hood was.
“Renegade,” he’d told her.
“What’s renegade?”
“A renegade’s a sort of outlaw,” he’d said.
“Like a bad guy?” she’d wanted to know.
“Not necessarily. Just someone who’s, well, not part of the crowd.”
“Are we renegades?”
He’d smiled at the time. “Yes,” he’d said, “I suppose we’re renegades.”
And she’d said, “Neato.”
Now he pulled out of his driveway and onto the dirt road that would take him down to the county highway, making sure not to take the comer at over sixty-five.
When Trooper Timothy Harrington had depressed the SEND button on his radio and asked the nearest available unit to respond to the Drug Mart in South Chatham and see the lady in the back room, the nearest available unit had been a marked radio car being operated by Gregory Nye. Nye had been over in Ghent, the town just to the west of Chatham, looking at power equipment at Brook Cove Marine. (In an area that was landlocked, places with names like Brook Cove Marine tended to sell much more than boats. Depending on the season, you could find an assortment of lawn tractors, tillers, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, snow-blowers, and even an occasional log-splitter. When the call came in, Nye was in the midst of a heated debate with another customer over the relative merits of Husqvarna, McCulloch, and Stihl chainsaws. He declared a timeout, so that he could answer on his portable.)
“Nye here,” he told the dispatcher. “I’m headed that way.”
“What’s your ETA?” Harrington asked. Another unit was calling in, but they were up in Valatie, twelve or fifteen minutes away.
“No more than five minutes.”
There is a brief burst of static audible on the tape on which the exchange has been preserved. Then Nye can be heard saying, “Sex abuse, huh? Fuckin’ perp better not be there when I show up, sonofabitch knows what’s good for him.”
Two lessons are to be learned from Trooper Nye’s remark. First, it reveals a hostility toward sex abusers that is virtually universal, no matter the generic nature of the phrase. Second, absolutely no one - be he president, politician, or police officer - is immune from forgetting from time to time that the tape recorder is running. Though in Nye’s case, when his words were later replayed, transcribed and criticized, not only would he stand by his warning, he would wear it like a second badge.
As Gregory Nye drove the five-mile stretch of Route 66 from Ghent to South Chatham, itching for a confrontation with a sexual predator of Hannibal Lecter proportions, Stephen Barrow cruised south on the Taconic, his gaze divided between the roadway ahead of him and the temperature gauge on his dashboard. Of all the Jeep’s instruments, it was the most accurate. The speedometer cable was prone to freezing up and emitting a wailing noise of truly frightening proportions; the tachometer had given out a full two years ago; the oil pressure indicator took weeks off at a time for no discernable reason; and the fuel gauge tended to tell him more about the incline of the road at any given moment than the amount of gas left in the tank. But the temperature gauge was accurate, and it was that accuracy that Stephen relied on in making adjustments to the square of carpeting he’d draped over the car’s radiator. Without the carpet in place to block out some of the cold, the radiator failed to heat up sufficiently to warm the passenger compartment; with too much of the radiator surface covered, the coolant superheated and eventually boiled over.
At the momen
t, the little needle of the gauge hovered right around the 210-degree mark, just about perfect for both man and machine.
Stephen Barrow smiled - not only because of the small measure of satisfaction he allowed himself for solving one of life’s little challenges, but because of the broader realization that although it was cold outside, he was warm and dry and happy, his writing seemed to be going well, and he was on his way to pick up his daughter and spend the weekend with her. No doubt she would have colorful drawings to show him, new stories to amuse him with, important questions to ask him, and interesting sights to point out and share with him on the return trip home. If she wasn’t exactly adult company, she was pretty close, and in many ways she was even better.
Of course, Stephen Barrow had no inkling of the events that were taking place that moment back in the village of South Chatham. Totally oblivious to the firestorm that was even then being kindled and beginning to smolder, he drove on - silently counting his blessings while marveling at the gentle hills and graceful bends of the parkway spread out in front of him, with no greater concern in life than to glance from time to time at the temperature gauge on his dashboard.
It took Trooper Gregory Nye even less than the five minutes he’d predicted to drive his cruiser from Brook Cove Marine in Ghent to the South Chatham Drug Mart. With dome lights flashing - regulations forbade him from using his siren on a nonpriority call; otherwise he no doubt would have - he passed six cars along the way, striking fear in the hearts of six drivers who’d been reckless enough to exceed the thirty-mile-per-hour speed limit.
A block from the Drug Mart, Nye turned off his dome lights, opting instead for stealth in his final approach. Evidently, it was his expectation to sneak up on the sex abuser and catch him in the act, though just what act he expected to catch him at remains somewhat less than clear.
What is clear is that upon his arrival, Trooper Nye entered by the front door and went directly to the checkout counter, where he found a clerk - the same elderly man who’d rung up the purchases of both Stephen Barrow and Theresa Mulholland earlier in the day.
“‘Scuse me,” said Nye. “I’m here to see the lady in the back.”
The clerk glanced up from his register, then looked the trooper up and down. “You mean Emma?” he asked.
“I mean,” said Nye, “whoever the lady in the back is.”
“I guess that would have to be Emma.”
“Then I’m here to see Emma,” Nye deadpanned.
The clerk pointed to the back of the store, where the prescription department was. “You want the door marked ‘Office,’” he explained.
The door was actually marked office - keep out. Not that the warning deterred Trooper Nye, who was quite accustomed to going where others might hesitate. Still, after knocking once, he used his left hand to turn the doorknob and push the door inward. His right hand he rested on the butt of his holstered weapon, a 9mm Glock semiautomatic pistol capable of discharging sixteen rounds in approximately five seconds.
Because you never knew when a sex abuser might turn violent.
What Nye found, of course, was only Emma Priestley, sitting next to a large machine of some sort (Nye was a stranger to the wonders of the ColorMaster 3000) and chain-smoking while awaiting the arrival of the authorities, as she thought of whoever might show up in response to her 911 call. In addition to Emma Priestley, Nye found a photograph, a color photograph of a naked Penny Barrow in a bathtub, mooning the camera.
If Nye was disappointed at the absence of a drooling, leering, violent sexual predator barricaded in the back room, he managed to contain his feelings. He studied the offending photograph, then turned his attention to the others that had come from the same roll of film. Included in those were other images of the same child, some clothed but several naked. And one or two of a man.
“This must be our perp,” said Nye.
“Our what?” asked Emma Priestley.
“Our perpetrator,” Nye explained. “Our sex abuser. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take these with me. Is that all right?”
“Whatever-” said Emma Priestley. She didn’t mean it as a completed thought, the way the younger generation was always using the word nowadays. She meant to follow it up with, “-you have to do,” or “-you think is best.” Only she hesitated slightly after the whatever, and it was as far as she got.
“Thanks,” said Nye, scooping the photos into the envelope that lay next to them on the table. “‘S. Barrow,’“ he read aloud, noting that there was a phone number written right beneath the name, in the same pen and handwriting. “This is evidence, too,” he explained. And with that, he turned, let himself out the door, and walked through the store and back out to his cruiser, leaving Emma Priestley to her chain-smoking.
Stephen Barrow arrived at his daughter’s school early, as he always did. He was a firm believer in allowing extra time for unforeseen events - traffic jams, flat tires, mechanical breakdowns, and random acts of God or Nature. It was one of the things that had driven his wife - make that ex-wife - crazy. As much as Stephen had always insisted on being on time for things, Ada had been equally devoted to arriving late. She loved the dash down the airport corridor, the grand entrance at the dinner party, the challenge of finding the last two seats in the darkened movie theater. Toward the end of the marriage, things had actually gotten to the point where they’d begun to take separate cabs to the airport. Stephen would arrive at the gate a full hour early, a relaxed smile on his face, a copy of The New York Times tucked under his arm, a large container of Pepsi in one hand. He would sip the Pepsi and work his way through the paper, then board the plane as soon as his row was announced. He’d locate his window seat, stow his carry-on luggage, find one of those little pillows, buckle his seat belt, and enjoy the view. There’d be other planes landing or taking off, fuel trucks topping up tanks, and baggage handlers working conveyor-belt loaders. Then, just when he was figuring she’d finally cut things too close, a sweating, out-of-breath Ada would come lurching up the aisle and collapse into the seat beside him, even as the flight attendants secured the doors for takeoff.
He made no apologies for his obsessive behavior. It was simply that he so much preferred doing things in a relaxed way, rather than suffering the anxiety that came with last-minute rushing, that he was willing to pay the small price of waiting once he’d arrived. And that was particularly the case when it came to picking up his daughter, or getting her somewhere she had to be. The last thing he wanted was for her to miss the beginning of some activity, or be sitting forlornly on some stoop, wondering if he’d forgotten all about her.
Today, as always, there were no traffic jams: such things were unheard of in the area, except on summer weekends at county fair times. There were no flat tires, no mechanical breakdowns, no random acts of God or Nature. And a full twenty minutes after he’d parked outside the Hillsdale Day Center, Stephen heard the sounds of squealing children, looked up from his New York Times, and spotted his daughter exchanging desperate good-bye hugs with classmates she wouldn’t be seeing again for a full two days. Finally prying herself away from the last clinging embrace, she headed his way. Stephen pushed the passenger door of the Renegade open for her, but he didn’t get out to help her in; he’d made the mistake of doing that once, but only once.
“Daddeee,” she’d said, “I can get in myself. God, how embarrassing!”
She’d been five at the time.
Now he waited while she buckled her seat belt - something else she insisted on doing herself - before pulling out of the parking lot and onto Route 22.
“So,” he asked her, “what did you learn today?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “But most human beans are made of water.”
Stephen thought about that for a moment. He knew better than to laugh, as he had, for example, the time she’d confessed she’d dropped a thermometer and all the Jupiter had spilled out. Penny had a wonderful sense of humor, but she hadn’t yet fully developed the
capacity to laugh at her own mistakes.
“Could it be,” he asked her gently, “that human beings are mostly made of water?”
“Didn’t I just say that?” she shot back, already unrolling a painting for his inspection.
“I guess you did.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to learn to pay more attention,” she warned him, “if you ever want to make it to second grade. Here’s a picture I made for you. It’s called ‘The Meaning of the Universe.’“
With the evidence from the South Chatham Drug Mart firmly in hand, Trooper Gregory Nye radioed the barracks in Claverack for instructions.
“What have you got?” The voice was that of Timothy Harrington, the same trooper who’d dispatched him on the job half an hour earlier.
“Pornography,” Nye replied. “Child pornography.”
“Stand by,” Harrington told him.
Nearly five minutes went by before Harrington came back on the air with instructions. “Lieutenant Coffey says for you to give him a call on the land line.”
“Ten-four,” Nye acknowledged. “The land line” was police speak for the telephone. No one knows quite why they don’t just call it the telephone, which admittedly takes longer to say, but only by one syllable; were that the extent of the problem, phone might be the solution. But police jargon traces many of its terms to the military, a not-so-surprising development, in view of the fact that historically, police departments have drawn heavily upon the military for a variety of things, from infrastructure and tactical planning to recruits.
In any event, Nye soon found a land line and called Lieutenant Coffey, who had apparently deemed the subject matter too delicate to discuss over the air. You never knew who had scanners these days and might be listening in.
“What have you got?” Coffey wanted to know. It was the exact same question Harrington had asked Nye not ten minutes earlier.
“Photographs,” Nye told him. “A little girl, looks to be about seven or eight.”
Best Intentions Page 4