The Perfect Ghost

by Linda Barnes

  Considering my impression of McKenna, CCtruthtelling.com was a surprisingly professional product—garish, but well-designed—and McKenna, to give him his due, gave the viewer an immediate eyeful of photos and screaming headlines: Unexpurgated tales of debauchery! Nude sunbathing! Drugs and lechery on luxury yachts! CCtruthtelling invited readers to submit their pix! Tell their stories! Advertise here! By Web standards, the site wasn’t a skin show, more an innuendo show, a malice fest. The lawsuit-protection question mark was invoked frequently. Ads for tattoo parlors, escort services, and other celebrity Web sites rimmed the screen.

  The Cape area boasted several souls who might qualify as celebrities in any jurisdiction, movie stars like Chris Cooper. Ben Affleck’s mother owned a house in Truro. Martin Sheen was occasionally spotted at area beaches. But at CCtruthtelling, anyone who dated a celebrity was a celebrity; a member of a pro sports team was a celebrity; a model was transformed into a celebrity if she appeared on the arm of a sports hero. Anyone who appeared on a reality-based TV show was a celebrity. A Barnstable girl who sang on American Idol was fair game for any cell phone photographer or tattletale ex-boyfriend. Any politician or ex-politician or family member of a politician signed up for lifelong harassment. The special “Catch a Kennedy” section was devoted to photos of any member of the famed political clan approaching or leaving their Hyannis Port estate. Since Garrett Malcolm was a superstar and anyone who worked with him was the goods, you, Teddy, would have been a first-class “get.”

  You called celebrity “fame’s shallow second cousin,” but I know you felt its lure. You never missed reading the daily “Names” section in The Boston Globe and when a publication date approached, you sent advance notice to the gossip mavens. You kept score. How many TV interviews did our book on movie fave Gemma Haley rate? More or fewer than the subject of our previous book? Forgive me, but I sometimes thought you were jealous of the celebs, miffed if not angry that TV hosts chose to interview them instead of you.

  Pages of CCtruthtelling, salaciously labeled first base, second base, and so on, were devoted to the Cape Cod Baseball League, picturing athletes embracing females in various stages of undress. If a girl dated a member of a Cape Cod League team, her photo—not a high school graduation shot, either, but a shot of her drunk in a gutter—was duly posted and her entire family publically demeaned. Pages devoted to Cape summer theater were, if anything, worse. Last summer’s “superstars” were relentlessly photographed: Kirsten Dunst! Dakota Fanning! Libby Beckwith! Orlando Bloom! Olivia Wilde!

  I had no idea so many famous and semifamous souls set foot on Cape Cod, all seemingly unaware that McKenna had them in his sights. I hadn’t noticed any photographic equipment through the tinted windows of the van, but McKenna was a wizard with a telephoto lens. Over half the photo credits were G. McKenna, and while the majority of photos weren’t obscene, they were lurid and nasty, the kind of shots that celebrated the awkward, drunken encounter, the bathing-suit bra prior to readjustment.

  I wondered if McKenna paid waiters in top-flight restaurants and chambermaids at ritzy inns to tip him off, or if he relied exclusively on volunteers. The site didn’t seem like much of a revenue source, but the ads must bring in something. I continued scrolling, searching, for mention of Brooklyn Pierce.

  I was embarrassed at how often I found myself staring at photos of overexposed flesh. It was like stopping at the side of the road to view debris from a train wreck, but I was unable to look away. I believe in freedom of the press, but I found myself questioning its limits. Glenn McKenna would say he was pushing the boundaries, no doubt. He probably had a dozen lawsuits pending. The Boston Herald is a tabloid, but compared to CCtruthtelling, it was The New York Times in the golden age of journalism.

  Which married actor spent the night with which beautiful actress? Who nuzzled his way-too-young gf at the Nauset Beach Club Thursday night? I slummed my way through CCtruthtelling, amazed by the level of innuendo, the lack of verified fact, the smutty speculation about people who were not celebrities at all, just ordinary folks who ought to enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy. Some shots must have been deliberately posed. And most of the females must be paid rather than amateur talent. If the girls in the photos were merely dates, earnest if misguided teens, wouldn’t at least one of them have grabbed Daddy’s shotgun, always supposing Daddy didn’t grab it first?

  I pictured the blue van with the tinted windows. Not only must McKenna live in it, he must constantly move it. If he had a fixed abode, enraged fathers would line up to shoot him.

  I tore my eyes from the site when I realized I was scanning for photos of Malcolm, photos of the director with other women. I fled to the kitchen and gulped a glass of water, berated myself for that indulgent beer. While standing at the sink, just to do something with my left hand, I opened the drawer to the left, a junk drawer, the kind you find in any kitchen. The magnifying glass was the first item I saw.

  Relieved I hadn’t tossed McKenna’s folder in the trash along with the remnants of pizza, I perused it under the glass. The four letters I’d copied from the illegible missive were “oole.” “Islands District,” the words I’d picked out of the official-looking seal were part of the phrase “Office of the Cape and Islands District Attorney.” The letter thanked the sender for his timely warning concerning a local resident, one Garrett Malcolm.

  CHAPTER

  twenty-six

  Tape 132

  Patrick Fallon O’Toole

  4/2/10

  Teddy Blake: Thanks for making time to see me.

  Patrick Fallon O’Toole: Well, a person could say I’ve got time to burn now. Pleasure to meet you, read that book you wrote, the one with that actress, what’s her name, yeah, Gemma Haley. That was one helluva read, so I’m happy to cooperate. Retired man’s got nothing but time. They make any movies outa your books?

  TB: Not yet.

  PFO: Well, they ought to. Really, they should.

  TB: Thank you again. For the compliment as well as your time.

  PFO: Retired, unemployed, same difference. So, you’re writing about Garrett Malcolm this time? Let me say right off, I’ve got nothing but admiration for the man and his work, and I hope he doesn’t hold that old business against me. It was the job, and I had to do it.

  TB: I’m gathering background material.

  PFO: Okay, like I said, I’ve got the time. And probably, I mean if he’s in on this, if it’s an authorized biography—

  TB: It is. Actually, it’s an autobiography. In Malcolm’s own words.

  PFO: Bet he’ll have a few choice ones for me and not exactly printable, either. I go back a ways here, District Attorney better part of thirty years, knew the old man, Malcolm’s dad, Ralph, so I probably saw Garrett on stage before I ever met him, though Shakespeare’s not exactly my thing, went to opening nights every summer to keep the wife happy. She liked to get all dolled up. I’m more of a golfer, but my wife, she always wanted to see the shows, and it was a good thing I went, I suppose, got to mix with the people and all. Just not my kind of thing, watching grown-ups prancing around a stage, not that I don’t like a good Clint Eastwood movie, you know?

  TB: Can you zero in on your professional contact with Malcolm? When did that begin?

  PFO: I’m not gonna go back to when he was a kid. Statute of limitation, boys will be boys, and all that business. He and that cousin of his, the Foley boy, they got up to their share of high jinks, but if I had to write down every stupid thing I did when I was a teenager, that would be one helluva long list.

  TB: Mine, too.

  PFO: See what I mean?

  TB: Wouldn’t boyish pranks be something for the local police department?

  PFO: On the whole, sure, but you know, there are exceptions. Like, when stuff happened down the Kennedy Compound, the locals weren’t always the first ones to get the call. Can I freshen your glass?

  TB: As long as I’m not drinking alone.

  PFO: No chance of that. Where were we?
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  TB: Your professional relationship with Garrett Malcolm.

  PFO: The Fire Department was the A.H.J., ’scuse me, the Authority Having Jurisdiction, not me, at the beginning. Small potatoes. They wanted a fireman standing by every performance—new rules, but Malcolm figured they were just being pains in the ass because of the fire that happened back when he was a kid, so he says okay, we don’t need the fire department all the time, just if the play uses fireworks and stuff. And then they went and did some show with fire and didn’t alert the department, and that was right around the time that nightclub in Providence, Rhode Island, blew up, and a hundred people died. So folks went nuts. I had a heart-to-heart with Malcolm and we fixed things, made sure he had a regular guy from the fire department there at every performance.

  TB: But that wasn’t the extent of the trouble?

  PFO: Not entirely. There was a certain element attracted by some of his shows. Now, let me say I have no trouble with crowds in general. The Cape Cod League, they’ve been a real asset, very supportive of the community. They hire your off-duty police officers, make sure there’s no inconvenience to local property owners. Most of the theater groups do the same. Nobody wants trouble.

  TB: It’s hard to associate big crowds of drunks with a summer Shakespeare festival.

  PFO: All I’m saying is they didn’t hire enough men to police their grounds. It’s not just Shakespeare there, either. They do other stuff, modern stuff. They hire big-time actors, movie stars. Stars draw a different kind of crowd, like rock-and-roll bands. And the neighbors—you know, people buy a house here, they’re paying up the wazzoo. What do they want? Quiet. They want calm. They want to ride a bike to the beach, have a picnic. They don’t want some Hollywood scene. ’Least they didn’t. The Cape is different now. I’m glad to be out of the whole thing, glad to be out of politics.

  TB: Would I be right in saying that your dispute with Malcolm was political?

  PFO: Whoa, you’re jumping to conclusions. I didn’t just pick on the man because I had nothing else to do.

  TB: Sorry.

  PFO: We had a runaway problem, what you might call a rash of runaways, late nineties, early oughts. Local kids, teenagers, mainly girls. It was like a contagious disease and we couldn’t locate the source of the infection. Now, most of them were fine, you know? Two weeks’ wonder, and then it turned out the kids who ran went to visit Aunt Lizzie in New Orleans and forgot to tell Mom, or got drunk, wrecked the car, and hitchhiked to Vermont.

  TB: How did Malcolm come into it?

  PFO: A few, well, maybe only a couple of the runaway girls auditioned for him, for that theater. I know that sounds pretty skimpy, but we were getting these letters. The real problem started with the letters, and I admit I may have been duped, my office may have been duped.

  TB: Anonymous letters?

  PFO: Right.

  TB: And this was around the same time as Malcolm’s divorce?

  PFO: I didn’t know that! I don’t follow any of that gossip shit. But I suppose I should have known better. Girls these days, they run after the men. But it didn’t seem right to me, using high school kids, call them theatrical apprentices, and get unpaid labor, you know? Shit, good thing I’m not running for office anymore, statement like that. I’m sure the kids learn a lotta useful skills. That’s the kinda thing I’m supposed to say.

  TB: And the girls who auditioned?

  PFO: I remember one girl, first to run off. Didn’t click as an actress, so decides she’ll be a model. Entered some online “contest,” and one of her friends drove her to New York City to meet some pervert going to put her on the front page soon as he checks out how she looks with no clothes on. She wasn’t more than thirteen, still in junior high.

  TB: She came back?

  PFO: I only wish she’d come back earlier, before I went and talked with Malcolm, but her father was pressing me, thought he was a big shot, you know how that is. Malcolm didn’t like being accused of anything and the timing was terrible for him, too. Turned out he was in the middle of trying to get some court order so he could visit his little girl.

  TB: And word got out that you interviewed him? That you suspected he had something to do with the girl’s disappearance?

  PFO: Yeah, word got out, not that my office put it out. But word leaked. I felt bad about it. And I think word leaked about what that young girl was up to, too, because when she came back her folks moved her to a private school with more rules than Marine boot camp. Things like that happen, and you can’t go treating every runaway like some big-time killing.

  TB: Like the Helga Forrester case.

  PFO: That drink need freshening?

  TB: Thanks, that would be great. Do you mind talking about the Forrester case? I understand it was the occasion for another run-in with Malcolm.

  PFO: I certainly never meant for that to happen. It was unfortunate. Especially, as it turned out, for me. But I didn’t just pick him out to be a victim of prosecutorial excess, although to read the papers you’d think I was as vindictive an SOB as walked the earth. You gotta understand what was going on then. The pressure I was under. Only had a handful of murders on the Cape, ever. And that one was a three-ring circus. Unmarried woman with a baby, and all the speculation about how the daddy had to be the killer. When I didn’t wrap it up in an hour and a half and run the credits, the whole place went nuts. Neighbors accusing neighbors, TV talking heads foaming at the mouth. Hadn’t been for that murder, I would still have my job. Terrible thing, to be thinking of your own reelection when that poor woman’s dead with her little child looking on, but I probably couldn’t have handled things worse if I’d sat down and made a list of ways to lose the election.

  TB: There was no indication that Malcolm knew the deceased, am I right?

  PFO: Just wait a minute. It wasn’t about that, it was about the DNA. Why don’t you just shut up and let me tell you about it?

  TB: Sorry.

  PFO: You can’t go badgering a witness. It was just a terrible time here. There were so many suspects, but nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. Folks like to come up with all these theories, even if they won’t hold water let alone beans, and there was some guy writing a tell-all book and everybody hinting they knew what was going on. We decided the best thing to do was use technology, use what we had, which was semen found on the body. We knew it wouldn’t be popular, but everybody was scared. There was a killer out there. People were buying guns, threatening their neighbors.

  TB: Whose idea was it to collect DNA samples from all the men on the Cape?

  PFO: The FBI. That’s right, the sainted FBI, but you woulda thought I’d come up with it in some kinda dream, no, make that some kinda séance I held with the devil himself. It was the FBI’s idea. They thought the killer had ties to the area. They suggested it, called it a global genetic canvass. We weren’t the first place to do it, or the only place. They solve crimes like that in England, in Germany, too. In 1994, I think it was, Germany, they took DNA samples from 16,000, maybe 17,000 men, and they got their killer, guy raped and murdered an eleven-year-old girl. They tried it in Baton Rouge, too, or someplace in Louisiana. If the Forrester woman had been killed in the summer, we wouldn’t have tried it, so many damned tourists on and off Cape, but in the winter this place shrinks down to nothing. Once we ruled out all the women and the kids, it seemed manageable. And not the whole Cape, either, just the three or four closest towns.

  TB: But there was trouble?

  PFO: We tried to keep it real low-key at first, asking people politely to volunteer when they came into town, at the supermarket, the garage, the sub shops, the post office, handing out swabs, taking information: name and address. And I’d like to point out that it worked. We found the guy and he’s in prison.

  TB: You brought Garrett Malcolm in for questioning. Did you do that with everybody who refused to give a DNA sample?

  PFO: Are you kidding? We had folks speed-dialing the American Civil Liberties Union.

  TB: But
you brought Malcolm in.

  PFO: I do regret that.

  TB: You threatened him with a court order.

  PFO: One of my investigators exceeded his authority. He is no longer with the DA’s office. He was removed long before I lost the election.

  TB: Do you wish you’d handled things differently?

  PFO: Of course I do, but at the time there was nothing else I could have done. There was this reporter from some local rag beating the drum, beating the drum. Why don’t prominent citizens like Garrett Malcolm have to comply? Why don’t they get DNA from Garrett Malcolm? Never mind that the state lab had a backup about a thousand years long. Plus we had other options to go to, lots of areas we hadn’t investigated yet, like seasonal workers and stuff. You know, with celebrities, there’s no right way to handle it. No matter what you do, you’re too lenient or you’re coming on too strong, making an example out of them. I came down too hard, I brought Malcolm in, and I got tossed out of office for my trouble.

  TB: You link the two events.

  PFO: They were linked in the press. I was linked with saying something terrible about a great and wonderful man whose wife died of cancer, a man who donated money to political campaigns and local charities, a decent guy who, it turns out, wasn’t even on the Cape when Helga Forrester got killed.

  TB: He wasn’t here?

  PFO: He had an alibi, a good one.

  TB: So why do you suppose he refused to comply? The procedure wasn’t difficult.

  PFO: I’m a former district attorney, not a mind reader. I was trying to eliminate the gossip, that’s all. I hope he doesn’t still hold it against me. And I hope he reconciles with his daughter, too. Has he, do you know?

  TB: I don’t think so.

  PFO: Well, that’s too bad. I’d rather lose ten elections than lose contact with my kids. Wouldn’t you?