Lesser Evils

by Joe Flanagan

  He went through his notes page by page. Finally, he stood, looked at the other agents, and said, “Does anyone have anything else?”

  “Actually,” said Warren, “I do. I was married at one time. My wife was . . . is . . . an alcoholic. She walked out a few years ago. But she called me out of the blue the night before last. She wanted to meet with me. So I did. And she . . . I don’t know how to put this. She knows Dale Stasiak.”

  Baldesaro sat down.

  “She’s been around him and she knows a lot about him. She knows things that could put him away.”

  “How the hell can that be?

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know. It’s embarrassing—the implications.”

  Over the next half hour, the agents watched him intently as he spoke. Baldesaro said, “The place she mentioned in Boston . . .” He consulted his notes. “Wayson’s. She said they send checks up there?”

  “That’s right.”

  Baldesaro addressed his agents. “One of you get in touch with the Boston office and have someone go check it out. See if we can get tax records, business license, all the rest of it. Make sure it’s not done through official channels or it will get back to them that we’re poking around. Have Agent Coates do it. He’s good with that stuff.” He turned back to Warren. “Now, I want to back up a minute and go over something.” Baldesaro read from his notes. “She told you that Stasiak said you might be a problem?”

  “He said that Jenkins and I had been talking to the DA and that it could be a problem.”

  “Where was the place where you met her?”

  “In Eastham. A place called Sonny’s.”

  “And she left no phone number, no address, nothing?”

  “No.”

  “We have to find her. It’s critical. If she contacts you again tell her we’ll pick her up wherever she is. What’s her maiden name?”

  “Kittredge. Ava Kittredge.”

  Baldesaro spoke to the room. “Check utility company records for one Ava Kittredge. Check under Ava Warren, too. Then check town records in Eastham, Truro, Wellfleet, Chatham, see if we can get a last address or at least some trace of where she may have been. You never know. We might get lucky. Warren, we need to get you home. You need to be by your telephone in case she calls.”

  44

  Two days after Dr. Hawthorne’s visit to Nazareth Hall, Sister John Frances was walking down the back hallway leading to the kitchen when she heard a sound. She stopped at the foot of the stairs leading to the nuns’ living area. The weather had been strange all day, brilliant sunshine and tropical humidity alternating with angry purple cloud masses and a leaden breeze that threatened a downpour but gave way to blazing sunshine again. There was something aggressive about the weather, even in its fairer moments.

  Now, as she stood still in the hallway, the house darkened once more as a new disturbance formed in the sky and she heard a rattling sound emanating from the kitchen. She retraced her steps and looked in to find an unnaturally long-limbed man trying to open the patio doors. She did not enter the kitchen but peered around the edge of the doorway and watched him twist and shake the doorknob. Sister John Frances walked quickly through the silent house. The children were having their after-lunch nap, their heads resting on pillows on their desks. She found Sister Julia and motioned to her. “Come,” she said.

  They found the man still at the door, his back to them now, looking out over the yard and the children’s toys scattered about. They opened a window and spoke to him through the screen, startling him. “Can we help you?” said Sister John Frances.

  He gaped back at her. “Um, yes. I need to see whoever is in charge here.”

  “What do you want?”

  “It’s about Dr. Hawthorne.”

  The two women exchanged a look.

  “Reese Hawthorne. He was here a couple of days ago.”

  “What about him?” asked Sister John Frances. “And why were you trying this door a few moments ago? We have a front door, you know. And a doorbell.”

  “I don’t want to be seen.”

  “By whom?”

  “By Dr. Hawthorne.”

  “Dr. Hawthorne isn’t here. What’s this about?”

  “I’m working in the area. Shingling a house on Sea Street. I’m on my lunch break. I wanted to come by and warn you about Dr. Hawthorne.”

  The two nuns watched him through the screen.

  “He’s not who he says he is.”

  “What on earth do you mean?” said Sister John Frances.

  “I don’t know what he told you his business was. But I guarantee you he didn’t tell the truth.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I make it my business to know what Hawthorne is up to.”

  “Well, suppose you tell us why he was here, then.”

  He rearranged his limbs, a strange effect, as if they had only a rudimentary connection to his torso. His hair stood up in spiky formations, though it hadn’t rained, and he was wet with perspiration. “He wants to spend time with the kids, doesn’t he?”

  Sister John Frances said, “Who are you?”

  “Don’t have anything to do with him. That’s all I came here to say.”

  They noticed that his hands were trembling and beads of sweat stood out on his upper lip.

  Sister Julia said, “I’m calling the police.”

  The sounds of the children starting their afternoon classes reached them from down the hallway. Michael Warren appeared in the kitchen. “Sister Julia,” he said. “It’s time for reading.”

  The man looked through the patio doors at Mike. His Adam’s apple rose and fell and he seemed unable to compose an answer. Without taking his eyes off the boy, he said, “I need to go.”

  The boy had been shoved into the rotted out center of a large hollow stump, his legs and buttocks protruding, garish white in the gloomy wood, his pale flesh almost luminous against the dead brown-black of the tree. Stasiak stood there alone, the woods silent all around him. Behind him, two troopers came crashing through the woods in their high boots and utility belts. Stasiak turned to them as they arrived. “What’s the situation?” he said.

  One of the troopers said, “There’s a hell of a mob up there.”

  “Keep them back. I want them far away from here when we take this body out, understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jack Dowd came down the slope in his straw fedora and white short-sleeved shirt. He carried his camera around his neck and a large black bag by his side. Dowd froze in the pathway when he saw the legs sticking straight up out of the hollowed out stump. He gathered himself and continued on.

  Stasiak said, “There’s five stab wounds in the right rib cage. There’s a cut in his neck near his right ear but it doesn’t look fatal.”

  Dowd walked over and began examining the body. “I can’t imagine the kind of impulse that’s driving this,” he said as he peered into the trunk and tried to get a look at the boy’s face. “We live in strange times.”

  Stasiak said nothing.

  “I’m going to make way for your forensic people,” said Dowd. “I can’t see much, the way he’s positioned in this tree. I’ll take the body temperature and examine him further once the body’s out.” The pathologist picked his case up off the ground. “Oh. I’m ready to discuss the Weeks autopsies whenever you get the chance.”

  Jack Dowd moved around the small laboratory that served as his work space at the rear of Cape Cod Hospital. He opened the door to the morgue and looked in on the body of the latest victim. Remarkably violent, compared to the others.

  He jumped when he heard two dull thuds on the door. He opened it to find Ed Jenkins and Bill Warren standing outside. Jenkins edged into the opening before speaking, his hat down low over his eyes. “Hey, Jack. What do you know?”

  “Have you hea
rd?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I came over. They know who he is?”

  “Randall Stamper. Eight years old. From Sandwich.” Dowd closed the door behind them. “I could get in trouble for letting you in here. I suppose you want to see the body.”

  “Yeah,” said Jenkins.

  “Let me show you something,” said Dowd. He went to a refrigerated chest adjacent to the morgue and came out with a small metal box. Inside was an empty blood vial that contained a tiny shred of cotton mesh. “I found this attached to the small of the boy’s back. It’s going up to the state police lab for analysis but I ran a little test on it myself just a while ago. The fabric is saturated with amyl nitrite.”

  Dowd removed it with a set of tweezers and held it under a high-intensity light so they could see it. “Amyl nitrite is an inhalant,” he said. “It’s chemically related to nitroglycerin. I know it as isopropyl nitrite. It’s used for angina. Heart ailments. But it has other purposes as well.” He reached into the box and produced another vial. “They also picked up these tiny slivers of glass that are identical to the ones found on the Lefgren body. The FBI lab said they thought the fragments from Lefgren came from some kind of small lightbulb. These here look like the same type of glass except they have traces of amyl nitrite on them. My opinion is they’re from capsules.”

  He crossed the room, opened a cabinet, and searched until he produced a handful of capsules encased in cotton mesh. “Here. Like this.” They looked into Dowd’s outstretched hand. Jenkins said, “We raided a place in Providence once, a queer bar where we found a bunch of these. They use them for sexual purposes.”

  “What?” said Warren.

  “It’s—I don’t know, lieutenant—it’s supposed to be like getting an extra kick. Like a shot of whiskey or something.”

  “Amies,” said Jack Dowd.

  “Huh?”

  “Poppers.”

  Jenkins turned to the pathologist. “How do you know this, Jack? You must get around more than I thought.”

  “I’ve been in this job for thirty-seven years. You see all kinds of things.”

  Dr. Hawthorne looked at them through lowered eyelids as they stood on the porch of the house on Daggett Lane. “We just wanted to ask you a few more questions,” Warren said.

  “I understand there is a trend where the courts are becoming less tolerant of the police intruding on private citizens,” said Hawthorne. “I wonder what happened to that.”

  At the far end of the porch there was a table, and on it was a cigar box filled with stubs of crayons, scattered pieces of construction paper, and open copies of LIFE and Redbook whose pages were scribbled on and crumpled, as if done by a child having a tantrum. Some of the magazines had been cut with no apparent object except for cutting. Jenkins looked over at the table. Hawthorne followed his gaze and stiffened. “What do you want now?” he said.

  “We’ve discovered some discrepancies in some of the things you’ve told us,” said Warren.

  “Is that so?”

  “Charlie Vogel did come to you about his attraction to children.”

  “That’s not a discrepancy. That is called protecting a patient’s privacy.”

  “But you felt free to tell us he was depressed and had a drinking problem.”

  “Not quite the same thing, is it?”

  “It turns out you’ve done a lot of work in that field. Sexual deviance.”

  “I didn’t murder the little children, Officer Warren. Mr. Vogel didn’t either. And there is no crime in my not presenting you with a full CV. If there is, I would like you to direct me to the statute.”

  “Why did you conceal the fact that you’re a specialist in sex disorders?”

  “It causes discomfort.”

  “For who?” said Jenkins. “You?”

  “No, others.”

  Warren said, “Knowing we came here to ask about the murders—sex murders—you didn’t think to mention it.”

  “You didn’t come here asking for advice, you came asking about Charles Vogel. And now, for some reason, you’re here asking about me. Are you under the impression that I know something about these murders? I can’t think of a bigger waste of time.”

  “While we’re on the subject,” said Warren, “who do you suppose this guy is, doctor, if you had to make an educated guess? He’s a loner, single, right?”

  “Not necessarily. Married men carry a Pandora’s box of frustrations. You’d be surprised the things they get up to, married men.” He glanced at Jenkins’s wedding band, then looked at Jenkins and smiled.

  Warren said, “I understand you were the subject of a review when you worked at Bellevue Hospital. Do you mind if I ask what that was about?”

  “What mystery are you chasing here? Why are you in my home?”

  Jenkins said, “Care to answer the question?”

  “My background is no concern of yours.”

  Warren said, “We understand there was a review and then you left New York not long afterward.”

  “I left New York for a better situation in Boston. And there are many different kinds of reviews: Performance, tender of position, application for research, ward management, et cetera, et cetera. But I doubt you’re aware of that.”

  Jenkins said, “I think you’re full of shit.”

  “Those cheap tactics are not going to work with me. You are impotent here, Mr. Jenkins, and you fail to realize it. You should grasp the concept of impotence. It has a strong phallic association.” He turned to Warren. “And you, so solemn and regal. You look very much like Tyrone Power. Has anyone ever told you that?”

  Jenkins glanced again at the crayons, the X-ACTO knife, and mangled paper on the table. “You got kids?”

  “Let’s please get to the point of all this. I do have the right to ask you to leave my home, which I am about to do, so cut to the chase.”

  “We understand you used to work at Bridgewater State Hospital.”

  Hawthorne folded his arms and raised his chin a little.

  “Can you tell us why you left?”

  “I decided to devote my time to my private practice. Why are you rooting through my employment history?”

  “You aroused interest,” said Warren.

  “In what way?”

  “In the things you chose not to say.”

  “Look. I’m under no obligation to give you every last detail about myself and I resent the implications you’re making. If I have to retain the services of my attorney to stop this harassment, I will do so.”

  Jenkins said, “You live here in P-town year-round?”

  “This is my summerhouse. I have an apartment on Beacon Hill.”

  “A summerhouse,” Jenkins said. “A place on Beacon Hill. Must be nice.”

  “It is nice, Mr. Jenkins, very nice. It’s every bit as nice as you imagine it to be. Now, we’re done here. Goodbye. And if you come here again, I’ll call my attorney.”

  Hawthorne closed the screen door and latched it. Jenkins and Warren walked back to their car. Neither said anything, each stealing looks back at the house. “Asshole,” Jenkins muttered.

  As they drove away from Provincetown, Warren said, “What do you make of those capsules Jack Dowd showed us?”

  “Maybe our killer’s got heart trouble,” Jenkins said. “Maybe it’s something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I know they’re used for sexual purposes, but in this case, maybe it’s the act of killing that’s the thrill. He pops one as he’s killing the kid. It’s not for the sex. Or it’s mixed up with the sex. One or the other. What’s your sense of this Hawthorne character?”

  “Hard to say. But I’m thinking you should turn it over to Stasiak. They can put more resources on it.”

  Jenkins shook his head. “I’m not doing that. Then they’ll know I’ve been freelancing
on this thing. They wouldn’t give me the time of day anyway. I’d never get an appointment with Phil or whatever I have to do nowadays to speak to him.”

  45

  Father Boyle looked out over the countryside, a low savanna studded with ragged shrubs and scrubby wooded islands that stood in the open like primitive fortresses. It was nearly dark, the final traces of pink disappearing rapidly from the western horizon. He walked in the direction of the Atlantic.

  Once again, he reflected on how odd it was that he could not find the site of the experience he had out here in early summer. He had replayed the events of that night again and again in his mind in the subsequent weeks: The sudden appearance of the light, its materializing right before him at the edge of the hollow in the meadow—there was never a question of whether or not he had actually seen it.

  All the details of that night were forced into the background by one particular thing, and that was the feeling that came over him as the thing perched at the edge of the hollow. It was an extraordinary peace, a sudden sense of well-being, not only in the moment, lying there in the grass, but in his past and in his future as well, all in order and right and blessed, a sense of himself moving smoothly over the continuum of his own life, as though over a silken surface, and finding everything satisfactory, absent regret or fear, only a gladness with which he turned his face to the light and tried to recognize the figure moving within its bright, glowing center. The experience was so intense and profound, he had to ask himself the question: Was it something of the Divine he had beheld?

  Low ridges descended into small plains, which were dotted with shallow depressions like craters filled with grass. Wild blackberry and raspberry bushes grew on the slopes in thickets. Somewhere in himself, he felt a quickening, a sense of recognition. It was here. He had found it.