All Our Yesterdays

by Robert B. Parker

  “The blanket there when he found her?” Gus said.

  “Yes, sir. We checked her out—make sure it’s not a Malloy or an O’Brien—then put the blanket back like it was.” Gus lifted the blanket from the body. It was a young girl. Her head was on a small pillow. Her face was covered with dried blood. She was wearing a nightgown decorated with Winnie the Pooh characters. The nightgown was up around her waist. Tucked in her left arm was a teddy bear.

  “I think she was shot in the back of the head,” Rafferty said. “And the bullet exited through her left cheek. She was probably shot someplace else and brought here. There’s no blood on the pillow or the blanket. But what’s funny is there’s none on the pajamas. Means someone dressed her long enough afterwards so that she’d stopped bleeding.”

  Gus stared down at the girl.

  “Another thing,” Rafferty said. “There’s, ah, abrasions on her ass, like somebody bit her.”

  Gus felt as if everything in him had snapped shut.

  “How old you think she is, Captain? Twelve, thirteen?”

  Gus nodded. Very slowly took in air until he could breathe in no more. Then he let it out as slowly as he had inhaled.

  “Soon as you get the ME’s report, you let me know.”

  “Sure thing, Captain.”

  Gus didn’t drive back to headquarters. He drove instead to a bank in Milton, just off the expressway, went into the safe deposit room, and got a large manila envelope out of his drawer. He got back in the car and drove back up the expressway to Morrissey Boulevard, past B.C. High School to Day Boulevard and along Day to Carson Beach, where he parked. He sat in the parked car for a time with the envelope unopened in his lap, staring across the empty beach at the lead-toned ocean rolling slowly in. Far out the gray sky merged invisibly with the gray ocean so that there seemed no horizon.

  Gus drummed lightly with the fingers of his right hand on the top curve of the steering wheel. The waves on the beach were lethargic. They didn’t crest. There was no white showing; only the slow oily swell and decline as they trudged into shore and slid back out. The sky was low and getting darker. Soon it’s gonna rain, I can feel it. Soon it’s gonna rain, I can tell. Soon it’s gonna rain, and what are we gonna do?

  He bent open the little butterfly closer on the envelope and took out a somewhat faded eight-by-ten glossy photograph in glassine envelope. He took the picture from the glassine envelope and stared at it. It was a picture of a young girl with blood on her face and a teddy bear in her arm. She too had been bitten. He put the picture back in its glassine envelope and back in the big manila envelope, and took some documents out. He read the medical examiner’s report, the investigating officer’s report. He read the confession. He put everything back in the manila envelope and reclosed the metal fastener. He put the envelope on the car seat beside him as the first fat raindrop splatted onto the windshield, then another one the size of a quarter, and then nothing, and then more, until it was raining hard. Gus sat drumming lightly on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, as the rain sprawling across the windshield fused the outside world, and diminished reality to the interior of the car.

  Mary Alice

  Parnell Flaherty and Mary Alice Burke lay naked in the early evening on the big couch in Flaherty’s office at City Hall. The door was locked and the building was quiet around them.

  “Me,” Flaherty said, “Gus Sheridan. You got a buzz for married men, Mary Alice?”

  “Except the one I was married to,” Mary Alice said.

  “You balling anybody else?”

  “Me to know,” Mary Alice said. “You to find out.”

  Flaherty eased off the couch and stood and began to dress. Mary Alice continued to lie naked on the couch, watching him.

  “I may have to fire Chris Sheridan,” Flaherty said.

  Mary Alice shook her head.

  “Make you look even worse,” Mary Alice said. “Remember McGovern in 72, a thousand percent behind Tom Eagleton and then replaced him on the ticket?”

  “The papers are kicking the shit out of me,” Flaherty said. He was wearing red silk shorts. He put his white shirt on and began to button it, “We got to do something.”

  “What? Appoint somebody else? You know it won’t make any difference. Gus says it requires patience.”

  “Gus isn’t running for the Senate,” Flaherty said. He put on his red tie with the tiny white dots, and stood in front of the dark window to knot it.

  “Gus says nothing will happen until they catch somebody in the act, and turn him,” Mary Alice said, “make him testify, and that will cause other people to turn and then it’ll unravel.”

  Flaherty finished his tie and sat down on the edge of the couch next to Mary Alice. He picked up his socks and put one on and paused and rubbed her thigh.

  “You still fucking Gus?” Flaherty said.

  “Yes,” Mary Alice said.

  “So how come you decided to fuck me too?”

  “You’re irresistible?”

  “I been irresistible for a long time.”

  Mary Alice shrugged and patted his hand on her thigh.

  “Gus’s attention is beginning to flag.”

  “So you decided to develop bench strength?” Flaherty said.

  Mary Alice smiled. “I suppose you could say it that way.”

  Flaherty laughed out loud. He bent over and put on his other sock and stood and got into his trousers. He was still laughing as he shrugged his shoulders into his bright suspenders.

  “I’m in fucking reserve,” he said.

  “In more ways than one,” Mary Alice said. “No offense.”

  Still standing, Flaherty slid his feet into his shoes, and put one foot up on the coffee table to tie the laces.

  “Hell, no,” Flaherty said. “I admire a practical person.” He shifted feet. “But why me?”

  “You’re irresistible?”

  “You don’t do things because you can’t resist,” Flaherty said as he straightened up.

  “I like strong men,” she said.

  “Ahh.”

  Flaherty slipped into his suit jacket. It was dark blue, a good suit, all his clothes were good, and he was built to wear clothes well. He checked himself in the dark window. “They talk about star fuckers. You’re a power fucker. You fuck a cop, it’s the homicide commander. You fuck a politician, it’s the mayor. Your father a power guy?”

  Mary Alice shrugged. “I don’t know my father,” she said.

  “But you’re always looking,” Flaherty said.

  “Sure, Daddy.”

  Flaherty looked down at Mary Alice lying calm and naked on the couch.

  “Well, you got the build for the work,” Flaherty said, “I’ll give you that.”

  He went to the bar and made himself a drink.

  “You want a little white wine or something, Mary Alice?”

  “White wine would be nice,” Mary Alice said.

  He poured her some and brought it to her.

  “You probably ought to get dressed,” he said.

  “Wham bam, thank you, ma’am?” Mary Alice said.

  “Hell, no. Didn’t I give you wine? Aren’t we having a drink together afterwards? It’s just that this is the Goddamned mayor’s office of the City of Boston, and there’s no good reason for you to be lying around in it buck naked, if you follow my thinking.”

  “I thought maybe you could have the City Council in, give those boys a treat.”

  “Get dressed, Mary Alice,” Flaherty said. There was no banter in his voice. Mary Alice swung her legs off the couch and sat up, and began to sort her clothes out of the tangle on the floor.

  “I’d hate to think macho man can’t get it up anymore,” Flaherty said. “Or is Gus just stepping out on you?” He rested his hips on the edge of his desk and sipped his Scotch on the rocks and watched her dress.

  “Gus has never had a problem with up,” Mary Alice said.

  “Another woman?”

  Mary Alice shrugged.
>
  “Well,” Flaherty said. “My gain.”

  “This shouldn’t mean more than it means,” Mary Alice said.

  “Long as it means we’ll do it again,” Flaherty said.

  “It probably means that,” Mary Alice said.

  “I wouldn’t want Gus to find this out,” Flaherty said.

  “I don’t think he’d care. Gus doesn’t care about much.”

  “Well, he’s trouble. I think sometimes that Gus is crazy.”

  Mary Alice was silent. Flaherty looked at her, his arms folded, his drink in his right hand.

  “You think he’s crazy?” Flaherty said.

  “I don’t know,” Mary Alice said. “Gus doesn’t say much.”

  “Even to you?”

  Mary Alice shrugged. She was fully dressed now, and had begun to work on her face, holding her compact mirror carefully to catch the light.

  “Hiring his kid was your idea,” Flaherty said.

  “Um-hmm.”

  “You’re an interesting woman, Mary Alice.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  Gus

  “Your son said you needed to consult,” Dr. Kramer said. “I’m happy to do Chris a favor. But of course, as your son’s friend, I could not be your therapist.”

  “I’m not looking for a therapist,” Gus said.

  “If you were, or if in the future you are, I would be happy to refer you.”

  “Sure,” Gus said.

  Kramer smiled and sat back in his chair. He didn’t look like a shrink. He was a big man, nearly as big as Gus. He had sandy hair, and thick hands, and a sort of healthy outdoor look to him. Maybe that’s what shrinks looked like.

  “You probably know I’m a cop,” Gus said.

  Kramer nodded so slightly that Gus wasn’t sure if he nodded at all.

  “I’m looking for information on serial homicide.”

  Again the barely perceptible nod.

  “Say, as a young man, a guy commits a murder, and then he doesn’t do it anymore for years, might he do it again? The same way?”

  Kramer had his elbows on the arms of his swivel chair, his hands clasped resting on his chest, his chin lowered. Gus felt the completeness of Kramer’s attention.

  “Couple of things,” Kramer said. “First we have a hell of a lot better track record in explaining why people did what they did, than in predicting what they will do.”

  Gus nodded.

  “Second, why ask me? Certainly you have forensic psychiatrists available to you.”

  Gus nodded again.

  “Cops don’t have a hell of a lot of luck predicting either,” Gus said. “But I want to talk with you because Chris admires you.”

  Kramer said, “And?”

  Gus smiled. “And I want this to be informal, unofficial, and private.”

  “Confidentiality is not limitless, Captain Sheridan. It would depend on what you told me,” Kramer said.

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Gus said.

  “Yes,” Kramer said, and nodded for Gus to proceed.

  “Mr. X has a thing for young girls,” Gus said. “Mr. X isn’t all that old himself, maybe eighteen, twenty. He’s rich, good family, nice looking, seems to get along okay in the world. But he has a series of, ah, incidents with little girls, ten, twelve years old. Family breaks them up, hushes it up; but he keeps at it, and one day he kills one.”

  Kramer was motionless as he listened. He had no reaction to what he heard, that Gus could see, but Gus knew that he heard everything.

  “Homicide guy on the case solves it, gets a confession. But for his own reasons, he deep-sixes the confession, and lets the kid go free. Mr. X stays straight, at least he doesn’t kill anybody, for like forty years. And then one day, out of nowhere, he seems to have done it again.”

  “This past Monday,” Kramer said.

  “I don’t know,” Gus said. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Murder looks just like the one he got away with forty years ago.”

  “In what ways?” Kramer said.

  “About the same age, this kid the other day was thirteen. Shot in the same way. Bite marks on her buttocks. Teddy bear.”

  “Did he have sex with these children?”

  “Apparently. This recent victim was not a virgin.”

  “And the previous victim?”

  “He confessed to having sex with her.”

  “Was there some pressure from the detective who let him go, to stay on the straight and narrow, so to speak?” Kramer said.

  “Yeah. He kept the confession, used it as a hold on the family.”

  Kramer nodded slowly. He leaned back farther, letting his chair tilt against the spring. He rested one foot against the bottom drawer of his desk.

  “In his current life, were there any startling changes, any sudden and unusual pressures that preceded this killing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you describe them?”

  “Things were closing in on him,” Gus said.

  “The past murder?”

  “Not exactly,” Gus said. “He probably felt as if he were in financial, or legal, or physical danger, or some combination of all three. He probably also feared public disgrace.”

  Kramer smiled a little.

  “Then,” he said, “I guess it would be fair to say that things were closing in on him.”

  Gus nodded.

  “Was there any hope of safety?” Kramer said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Were the mechanisms of safety in his control?”

  “No.”

  They were both quiet while Kramer thought about what he’d heard.

  “Ritualized behavior,” he said, “which is what you have described, devolves from an attempt to control circumstances which would otherwise overwhelm you. When confronted with something fearful, for instance, and beyond control, a child will create a fantasy which grants him at least the illusion of control.”

  Kramer paused and looked at Gus. Gus knew he was wording this carefully so that the uninitiated cop could follow it.

  Gus nodded.

  “The fantasy becomes life sustaining, so that in instances when the fantasy is threatened by reality, it must be defended. And when one is enacting a fantasy the danger is great, because reality will almost certainly clash with fantasy.”

  Kramer paused again to let Gus digest the information.

  “Fear is the mother of ritual,” Gus said.

  Kramer made a faint nod that hinted of approval.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So if Mr. X is, say, fantasizing about little girls,” Gus said, “and then finds himself actually having sex with little girls, the actuality may scare him.”

  “Most fantasies, enacted, are less rewarding than they were as fantasies,” Kramer said.

  “So X might have been having sex with a kid forty years ago and some aspect of it scared him. And then he either didn’t have sex with kids again, or he did but nothing scared him.”

  “Possible,” Kramer said. “Though you have to understand that he has never not been scared. That’s why he has the fantasy. It’s when the fantasy is threatened.”

  “Would there have been other kids?”

  “I know too little,” Kramer said. “The human condition is too various.”

  “I know that,” Gus said. “Give me a guess.”

  Kramer shrugged. “The fear that drew him to little girls might have continued to draw him. He may have been violent only under special circumstances.”

  “Something the girls did?”

  “Not necessarily. People who defend themselves with ritual resort to it when there is external pressure. It doesn’t have to be something about the little girls.”

  Gus nodded again, slowly.

  “Except that it happens to them, it may have nothing to do with the girls,” Gus said.

  “Yes. The pressure of his situation could have driven him to seek a little girl again and, when he did whatever made him kill the first one, may have
made him kill this one. Do you know why he killed the first girl?”

  “No.”

  Kramer looked quietly at Gus for a while.

  “Your son holds you in high regard,” he said. “And he is not a fool. But I cannot conspire with you to conceal several murders. In due course I will need to know that you’ve acted.”

  Gus nodded. He sat for another long moment, and then he stood and put his hand out.

  “Thanks for your help.”

  Kramer stood and returned the handshake.

  “May I ask you a question?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “I asked you if Mr. X had the means to control his safety and you said no.”

  Gus nodded.

  “Do you know who controls those means?” Kramer said.

  “Me,” Gus said.

  Gus

  They were in one of the chintz-and-maple bedrooms at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge. Gus lay on the bed, his head propped on the pillows. In the bathroom the shower was running. Then it shut off. In another five minutes Laura came out of the bathroom naked except for a pair of high heeled shoes. She stood at the foot of the bed with her legs apart like a fashion model, her head cocked and her hands on her hips. She was wearing lipstick, he noticed, and her hair was carefully brushed.

  “So what do you think?” she said.

  Gus looked carefully at her, running his eyes the full length of her, and smiled and silently applauded. She turned slowly so he could see all sides. There was an adjustable mirror attached to the dresser, and she tilted it so that she could examine herself full length in it, as she turned.

  “All that tennis may have paid off,” she said. She completed her turn and faced Gus again.

  “You don’t mind me posing, do you?”

  “I like it,” Gus said.

  “Tom and L…” She shook her head and shrugged.

  “Tom didn’t like to see you naked?” Gus said.

  “No.”

  “That’s sort of unusual, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what’s usual, Gus,” Laura said. “I’ve only known Tom and now you. Are you usual?”

  “I think so,” Gus said. “What was Tom’s objection?”

  She shook her head quickly, as if she didn’t like the conversation.