by Joe Flanagan
“That’s fine. Goodbye, hon. You be good for Father Boyle. Just bring him back if he acts up, Father.”
“I’m sure we’ll be O.K. We’ll see you later tonight, Mrs. Boggs.”
An hour later, Father Boyle pulled to the side of a gravel road deep in the woods down Cape. He got out of the car, went around the front, and opened the door for the boy. Father Boyle looked around, taking in his surroundings. There was, he thought, an unreality about late summer, an unhealthy, sulfury quality to the light. There were rustlings and unattractive noises in the trees; the leaves had turned a silvery shade of green, full of strange chlorophyll. He took Perry by the arm. “Come along,” he said. “This way.”
Warren paced off the late hours in the little house on General Patton Drive. His habit now was to stay up and keep himself occupied in any way he could and to do this until his eyes began to close. Lying in bed and waiting for sleep, the night seemed eternal.
Somewhere toward midnight, he was aware of a shadow beneath the light outside the front door. He waited for a knock but none came. He reached up on top of the refrigerator and took down the .38 snub nose he’d been keeping there. He unlocked the door and pulled it open, keeping the gun concealed down by his leg. Standing on the step was a man, about mid-thirties, well-dressed in a dark suit and gray tie. “William Warren?” the man asked.
“Who are you?”
“Special Agent Robert Baldesaro. FBI.”
“I need to see your credentials.”
“If you’re carrying a weapon, Mr. Warren, put it away.”
“Show me an ID.”
The man reached into his coat and took out a black leather wallet. He flipped it open to show a badge and a photograph. Warren scrutinized it in the porch light. His eyes scanned the street but it was empty. He couldn’t see where the man had parked his car. “What do you want?”
“I’d like to get in off this porch. Or have you turn out that light. It’s important that I’m not seen here.”
Warren shut off the light. He stepped back and pushed the door open. The agent’s eyes went to the pistol. “Are you expecting trouble?” he asked.
Warren didn’t answer. Baldesaro handed him the wallet. “Here, if you want to take a closer look.”
Warren took it from him and examined it. “What do you want?” he said.
“We need you to stay away from Dale Stasiak. We know you’re watching him. I’m telling you to stop.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to share some confidences with you, Mr. Warren. Others in my organization think it’s a mistake, but since I’m in charge, it’s my choice. I hope I’m not wrong.”
Warren locked the front door and motioned toward the living room. “Have a seat.”
“We have Captain Stasiak under surveillance. We’ve been down here since late July tailing him. As far as we know, he’s unaware of it, but with your involvement, you risk tipping him off. That’s why we need you to stop what you’re doing.”
“What’s your interest in Stasiak? “
“I’ll get to that. First I need to impress on you how important it is that you do as I say. There’ll be repercussions if you don’t.”
“Now, hold on.”
“Listen to me, Mr. Warren. This is very serious. I need your word.”
Warren walked slowly back to the kitchen. He put the pistol back up on top of the refrigerator. He turned and looked Baldesaro over. “You have it.”
“We’re trying to put together what’s going on down here. I believe you know things we want to know.”
“Does this involve the murders?”
“No.”
“Do you have people following me?”
“Yes. And you have others following you as well, as you may have noticed.” Baldesaro glanced around the house. “Are you in the middle of anything? I know you have a son.”
“No. He’s in bed.”
“You must be familiar with the Attanasio case. Dale Stasiak was a big part of it, as everyone knows. It never would have gotten off the ground without him. He’s a local, he grew up around these people and he had a whole network of informants that we never would have developed on our own. There were times when the Department of Justice was going to pull the plug on the investigation because it was taking too long and it wasn’t going anywhere. Stasiak pulled off a couple of last-minute miracles. He was a hero to us. Of course, he was a few other things, too, as we found out later. We had a lot of momentum going after Attanasio. So we decided to go after Grady Pope and the Irish but we couldn’t get a thing going. I assume you know who Grady Pope is.”
“I do.”
“Well, everything we tried to do—we tried bugs, wiretaps, everything—it failed. They were on to us every time. We couldn’t figure it out. So we started investigating some of our own. We didn’t want to suspect Stasiak but there were a limited number of people on the Pope investigation, far fewer than we had on Attanasio and that was intentional. We’ve figured out that Stasiak and another state trooper—Sergeant Heller—were behind our investigation going south. They were among a very few who had privileged information and we’ve documented their contact with Grady Pope’s people. It may go higher up the chain in the state police, but we don’t know.
“So we had a big meeting—all high-level state and federal guys—and basically accused Stasiak of corruption. John Fitzgerald, the head of the state police, said he’d look into it, but it never went anywhere. The whole thing turned into one hell of a mess.
“The US attorney thinks—and I agree with him—that there are factions in local politics who don’t want us bothering Grady Pope. Jack Kennedy’s stayed out of it. He’s big on organized crime, but for some reason, we can’t get his attention on this.
“So they wound up transferring Stasiak down here. That raised eyebrows. They tried to pass it off as a promotion, but it’s not a promotion. It was intended to get him out of sight.
“We suspect that what he’s doing down here is what he’d started up in Boston. He’s running interference for Grady Pope’s gambling and extortion enterprises. He makes sure no one gets in the way and everything operates smoothly. The murdered kids—that’s just a fluke. Perfect timing. Everyone is so caught up in that, they’re not paying attention to anything else. We’re going to want to talk to you at length about the Elbow Room. We’re aware of your investigation.”
“Do you know any of the people associated with the place?”
“George McCarthy we know. Steven Tosca. But that’s it. When Stasiak turned up down here, so did a lot of guys from the Boston area. But they were mostly people we had no knowledge of. That was intentional, I’m sure. Stasiak knew he might be watched, so he made sure everyone who came down here to start the operation was someone we’d never had in our sights. But everything you’re seeing with the Elbow Room and the other places, that’s the way they operate up in Boston. Stasiak makes sure the local police stay out of it. He probably provides muscle when they need it. And now we’re possibly talking about a hell of a lot more than gambling and extortion. We’re talking about murder.”
“You’re aware of the Weekses.”
“Yes. And we’ll talk about that.” Baldesaro looked at his watch. “It’s time for me to go. Can I use your phone?”
“It’s on the wall in the kitchen.”
The agent called a number and spoke into the phone. “I’m ready,” was all he said. He went to a window and looked out. “We’d like to do a formal debriefing with some other agents present. We’ll be in contact with you.”
A car rolled slowly down General Patton Drive and flashed its lights once. Baldesaro put his hand on the doorknob. “Listen,” he said. “I have to say this. You seem like a decent man but if you turn around and screw us on this, we’ll ruin you.”
“Don’t threaten me, Agent Baldesaro. It’s uncalled for and I don’t like it.”
“You either trust me or you don’t.”
“We’re trusting you.”
“Then I won’t let you down.”
When Mrs. Gonsalves saw the man in a suit and trench coat coming up the steps to the back porch, she was suddenly filled with uncertainty about what she’d done. For all her meddling, for all her snooping around, she really didn’t want to be in the middle of this. Mrs. Gonsalves kept trying to tell Father Keenan about Father Boyle, that he was not a good priest, that he shouldn’t be at St. Clement’s. He had secrets. She didn’t know what they were, but she knew there were secrets. Where did he go all the time? Father Boyle was gone entire nights now—entire nights—and no explanation of where he’d been.
In truth she doubted, when she called the state police, that they’d actually show up. Now the man was showing her a black wallet with a badge and a photograph inside. “I’m Detective James Ferrell, Massachusetts state police,” he said. She looked around the kitchen, her eyes wide, her hands smoothing the fabric of her apron.
“Are you Mrs. Gonsalves?”
Father Keenan must have heard the unfamiliar voice in the house because he soon appeared in the kitchen doorway. “How can I be of assistance?”
Ferrell said, “I understand a Father Terrence Boyle resides here.”
“Yes, but he’s not here at the moment. What is this in reference to?”
“Is there someplace we can talk?”
Father Keenan led the way into the parlor. Ferrell asked about Father Boyle’s habits, his movements, his mental state, his past. Father Keenan was torn over how much he should divulge. Some confidences were sacred, especially those between penitent and confessor, and he had served as Father Boyle’s confessor a number of times. And so he gave safe responses to Detective Ferrell’s questions. He omitted things and was troubled not only by this but by Father Boyle’s long absences, his secretive behavior.
Ferrell produced a sketchbook and specimen basket and put them on the coffee table between them. “These were found by a Boy Scout troop out in Truro, just off a fire road that goes to Head of the Meadow Beach. Father Boyle’s name is written in the book.”
Father Keenan examined the sketchbook.
“Can you confirm that’s his?”
“Yes.”
“And the basket here?”
“Yes.
“How often does he go down to the lower Cape?” Ferrell asked.
“I don’t know. He is a great admirer of nature. I know he goes all about, drawing, collecting specimens. But I can’t say for sure.”
“Is he someone who might hurt a child?”
“Never. Never.” Suddenly Father Keenan was fighting to maintain composure, suppressing the guilt and the fear and the uncertainty he felt until the detective was gone. Father Keenan then bid a curt goodbye to Mrs. Gonsalves, who watched him back his car out of the driveway. She busied herself around the house, distracted, trying to decide what to do. Suddenly there was a knock on the back door. Detective Ferrell was standing on the veranda. He smiled at her through the screen. “So do you want to talk?” he said.
40
Under a low gray sky the color of ash Warren and Jenkins drove west, passing the yellowing foliage, the woods suddenly bare in places, wet black branches showing like emerging skeletons. They drove past the buttoned-up marinas, seafood takeouts, and bicycle rentals of Wareham; Buzzards Bay’s tragic-looking main drag, three blocks long, bleak and colorless; and an hour outside of Hyannis, they arrived before the oppressive redbrick mass of Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
Jenkins had gone back to interrogate Charlie Vogel, who did no better corroborating his whereabouts the second time than he had the first. Shortly afterward, he cleared out of his apartment. Jenkins watched the building for two days with no sign of him. He was now in the awkward position of telling Dunleavy that he had an emergency on his hands, the result of an investigation that was done entirely in secret. They had to find Vogel but Jenkins hadn’t been able to bring himself to reveal his existence.
They had as many questions now about Dr. Reese Hawthorne as they did about Charlie Vogel. If Hawthorne was a specialist in sexual disorders, why had he concealed it? Why, knowing they were pursuing a child murderer, had Hawthorne not mentioned the fact that he was a specialist in this type of behavior? “We’ve had how many shrinks come out of the woodwork to offer their help with this,” Jenkins said. “People from as far away as California. And here’s this guy right in our midst—a specialist in sexual psychosis—and he doesn’t even come forward.”
Warren and Jenkins had discovered other things about Dr. Hawthorne as well. He was a faculty member of Columbia University and had served on the staff at Bellevue Hospital. Through an extended string of contacts Warren had through his tenure with the Barnstable police, he located a detective in the New York police department’s twenty-third precinct who was willing to do some footwork. He discovered that in 1954, Hawthorne was the subject of a professional review at Bellevue. Shortly afterward, the editor of Endocrinology and Sexual Deviance found his way to Boston and set up a private practice on Beacon Hill. He published several papers—Cultural Relativism and Sexual Practice, Causal Postulates of Sexuopathology, Fetishism and Sexual Imprinting, Basal Frontotemporal Profile of Five Sex Offenders—and joined the staff of Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The New York detective suspected that both Bellevue and Columbia University were stonewalling him on the subject of Dr. Hawthorne, but he couldn’t prove it.
They signed in at the reception desk and took the elevator to the fourth floor, where they found Dr. John Fulton, head of psychiatry.
“We’re here to ask you about a doctor on your staff,” Warren said. “Reese Hawthorne.”
“He’s no longer on staff.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“He went on to other work. What is this about?”
“It’s related to the child murders on the Cape,” said Warren. “But that’s as specific as I can get with you.”
“Dr. Hawthorne was here for two years or so. But I can’t release any information without his consent. We have regulations on that sort of thing. Protocols we have to follow as a state institution.”
Jenkins said, “If we have to go and get a subpoena and come back here with it, I’ve got no problem with that.”
Fulton stared at them, his elbows on his desk, his shoulders hunched forward. “You’re asking me to divulge confidential information.”
“Not talking to us is not really an option, doctor,” Jenkins said.
“We’re not interested in making trouble for you,” Warren said. “We only want to know a few things about Hawthorne.”
“But a subpoena? Is there a way around this?”
Jenkins said, “Sure. Tell us about Dr. Hawthorne.”
“Dr. Hawthorne . . . became a problem.”
“A problem how?”
“There was a degree of unprofessionalism in his methods.”
“Can you be specific?”
“Gentlemen, I’m afraid . . .”
“We need the context.” Warren said. “All of it.”
Fulton removed his glasses, folded them, and set them off to the side. “We started running a study in the fall of ’55. We were looking at a population of adult men who exhibited deviant sexual preferences. Paraphilia is what we call it. That’s a universe of sexual behavior that includes bondage, sadism, masochism, bestiality, various fetishes . . . The paraphilic continuum. Paraphiles by definition are not necessarily pedophiles, but the reverse is true. Pedophilia falls under the general class of behaviors we call paraphilia. It was a risky thing to undertake, so we were kind of . . . circumspect when we did it.”
“What was the big secret?” Jenk
ins asked.
“This isn’t like polio or tuberculosis, detective. The sympathy factor is zero with these disorders. That’s why we tried to keep a very low profile with this study. There was public money involved and I don’t think the public would have been too pleased to find out how it was being spent.”
“What they don’t know won’t hurt them?”
“What they don’t know will hurt them, as you’re seeing for yourself with this case. It’s important work, as unpleasant as it may be. Everyone wants to lock these men up and forget about them. That’s not a solution. We need to understand it. We need to see if a rapist, for example, is made by some biochemical component or lack thereof, if there is any physiological commonality among men who molest children, if the solution lies in a particular psychoanalytic approach.
“Anyway, we didn’t announce the study. We didn’t publish anything in the journals. We partnered with the VA in Brockton. We supplied some of the test population from our patients here and the VA supplied the rest. Others came from private practices with which some of the doctors are associated.
“At any rate, the study was discovered by the local representative here to the State House. We had a situation where taxpayer money was being used to conduct a study that most people would find . . . unnecessary. Repulsive, even. Given the highly emotional reaction people have—rightly—to things like rape and molestation, the study would have been difficult to defend. But we believed in it. We still do. But our local representative somehow got wind of the project, and he told us to shut it down immediately. He was afraid he’d be politically damaged if people found out about what we were doing. This institution is a political albatross that he hasn’t been able to get rid of because the state needs it and no other jurisdiction wants it. Every few years the surrounding towns start a petition to have it moved or closed down. We’ve always been told that our representative receives certain favors for not raising a fuss about it in the State House. So he’s found himself defending this place to his own constituents. Now, if it was discovered that we were using their tax dollars to study a bunch of sex criminals . . . It would look like he wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in his own backyard.