Thief of Souls

by Ann Benson

  “It is. Been through a number of owners. None of them could seem to make the dollars work.”

  “Was it empty back then?”

  “No, but the first floor was vacant, that I do know. The second-floor tenants were in the process of moving out.”

  “Who found him?”

  “A work crew. They were replacing some split shingles on the outside of the house. The owner had told them they could put their equipment in there over the weekend. They quit around three on Friday afternoon. Michael was last seen around three-thirty. Monday morning these guys show up and—whammo—they get hit with the smell. One of the crew puked right where you’re standing. Gathering the evidence for this homicide was a really nasty job, let me tell you.”

  The remnants of a hasp were rusting in place on the hatch. “It wasn’t locked?”

  “The padlock had been broken, but the killer repositioned it so that it looked to be intact at a glance. Unfortunately, whatever prints there might have been on the padlock itself got messed up by the man who opened it on Monday. The hatch door was open when I got there; they didn’t close it again. First thing I did was call my patrol supervisor. Sergeant Sean O’Reilly.”

  Durand’s uncle.

  “Damn.”

  “Right. He came out in a flash and had me cordon off the area. He stepped over the puke and went into the space himself. All alone.”

  “Damn again.”

  “Yeah. And he was in there for a long time, maybe five minutes. I don’t know how the hell he stood it, but he did. He had me call in for evidence teams after he came out.”

  “Not during?”

  “No. He kept me busy with other stuff. Getting names from the work crew, things the detectives probably should have done. But he had me do it anyway.”

  The report stated that Michael Gallagher had been strangled with a nylon stocking—not panty hose, but an open-top thigh-high stocking that required a garter belt or panty girdle—as he was attacked. Totally anachronistic, even twenty years ago. Both of the boy’s own socks had been stuffed into his mouth, probably to stifle his screams. He’d been bound at the wrists and ankles, also with stockings, and flipped over so his belly was on the ground. He had been sodomized viciously, to the point where the ground beneath his groin was soaked with his blood. No traces of semen were found in the anus.

  But there were traces of latex discovered during the postmortem.

  “They never found a wrapper or a used condom anywhere?”

  “Nope. The guy must have taken them away with him.”

  This was a careful killer, at least about those details. An organized killer. “He picked a good spot to stash the body.”

  “Except that it was getting warm and the stink was going to ooze out in just a couple more days anyway.”

  “He probably wanted it to be found,” I said, “but not too soon.”

  The photos I’d seen in the file showed a carefully bound body in a tortured position. “I’ll bet this kid put up a fight.”

  “Probably.”

  “Which means that the killer would have been rushed. Maybe the reason you didn’t find any semen at all was that he didn’t finish the act.”

  “No way to tell, unfortunately. The only thing we can say for sure is that Michael Gallagher didn’t participate willingly. His hands and arms were all bruised and cut, God bless him. The guy who did this would be covered with bruises, if we got him fast enough. Trouble with bruises as evidence is that they fade.”

  “How was Sean O’Reilly during all of this? I mean, did he seem nervous, or anything like that?”

  “He just kept repeating what a shame this was, what a terrible shame, how the boy’s mother shouldn’t see him like that, all white with the blood having come out of him. And I remember thinking that he looked a little peaked himself, that he was pretty shook up. Sean was a real veteran; something like this shouldn’t have gotten to him to that degree. I’ll admit it was a bad scene, but I’d seen much worse and so had he—we had that train and bus collision a couple of years before, and there were body parts all over the place. He didn’t flinch for that. I did ask him if he was okay, and he said something about having had the flu.”

  Moskal went quiet for a moment and looked at his feet.

  “What else?”

  The tall detective sighed. He was deeply troubled and made no effort to hide it. “Sean came out of the shed with blood on his hands, which he kept trying to wipe off on a white handkerchief—we didn’t all carry gloves back in those days. We’re like a bunch of old hockey players: no helmets, if we grandfather the mandate. I asked him how it got there and he said he was just determining for himself that the Gallagher boy was really dead. Like there was any possibility that he wasn’t. We usually do that by pressing a finger on one of the pulse points. His hands were tied together, so Sean would have had to go for the neck. There was no blood on Michael Gallagher’s neck. According to the M.E., he bled out through the anus.”

  “Which meant that he was alive long enough after being sodomized for that to happen.”

  “Yeah. I hate to tell you how many times that thought has plowed through my brain in the middle of the night. I always wanted to know what part of him Sean O’Reilly touched. He probably messed up some evidence in there.”

  None of this was in any of the reports.

  “And another thing—the stockings. I mean, they were just not a Southie item. I remember when panty hose first came out, my mother and sister tossed all their stockings and garter belts right away. I hate to think how many years ago that was. For someone to be using them had to have some significance.”

  I flipped through the evidence photographs until I came upon the shot of the stockings. They were laid out lengthwise but lapped back in the middle once to accommodate the shape of the photographic field. Fully laid out, the photograph would have been unclear. The table surface showed through the beige gossamer.

  “Were they silk or nylon?”

  He stared at me. “I don’t know.”

  I studied the photograph again; something about the stockings was tweaking me.

  There was a dark line along the shaped back of the leg.

  “They have seams,” I said aloud.

  “What?”

  “Seams. Up the back. Very fifties. Betty Grable, remember? There were a couple of famous photographs of her wearing seamed stockings.”

  “So?”

  “So they went out of ordinary fashion in the very early sixties. Nurses and hookers still wore them, but that was about it. This guy would have had to go to some lengths to find them. Probably an exclusive hosiery store.”

  “Or a costume place.”

  “He was creating an illusion,” I said softly. Then, louder, I asked, “Do you happen to know what school Wilbur Durand went to when this took place?”

  “We had bussing then, so I can’t say right off the top of my head, but he would have been in high school. I honestly don’t know—you’d have to contact the school department. Good luck. You’ll need it.”

  There was nothing more to see. I’d soaked up the ambience of the scene. It was bright and sunny and there was a warm breeze that blew little strands of my hair into my face. But I was chilled to the bone.

  Patrick Gallagher invited us into the living room of his narrow row house and offered us coffee. Pete Moskal accepted; I declined.

  It had been twenty years, but still this man bore the emotional scars. I expressed my heartfelt condolences. He wanted to know why I, a Los Angeles cop, had an interest in a murder that took place twenty years prior, an entire nation away from my home turf.

  “I have a suspect in a child disappearance case in Los Angeles who once lived here.”

  “And you’re hoping to establish a link between them.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s Durand, isn’t it?”

  Pete Moskal got as far as saying We’re not at liberty when I overrode him with a firm yes. Everyone stared at everyone else for a few momen
ts, until Gallagher finally said, “I knew it. That son of a bitch, I knew it.” He pointed a finger at Moskal. “Didn’t I tell you? I told you he had something to do with it.”

  I leaped in. “Mr. Gallagher, I don’t know for sure that Durand is the man I’m looking for at this point. Please don’t jump to conclusions here. I told you that only because I need your total cooperation. I also need your discretion, at least until I have enough to arrest him. Otherwise he may get away. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what makes you think that Wilbur Durand killed your son.”

  “Because he was a pervert to begin with.”

  “A pervert.”

  “Yeah. He was a complete fag. And he had a motive.”

  “Which was . . .”

  “To get even with Aiden.”

  I looked at Moskal. “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Michael’s older brother,” Gallagher answered. “Durand took a shine to him in high school. Tried to talk him into doing all sorts of disgusting stuff. Aiden told him to shove off, even beat him up a couple of times.”

  “Mr. Gallagher, why didn’t you mention this when the police looked into your son’s death?”

  “Because Aiden didn’t tell me until a couple of years ago.”

  I was imagining the scene between father and son, the disappointment and the letdown, the terrible shock of being told something so dreadful. “May I ask why it came up then, after all that time?”

  Gallagher’s shoulders slumped. Moskal finally spoke. “Aiden was a firefighter. That building that collapsed in Boston, where so many guys were badly burned . . .”

  I remembered it. The story had made the national news. It always does when a firefighter is burned and later dies.

  Moskal and I were both drained and white-faced when we left the Gallagher house. There were things hanging unsaid like a fetid stench in the air, awful things that ought not to be vocalized by human beings. New wheels had been set in motion by Patrick Gallagher; it was up to Moskal and me to keep them rolling.

  “Kelly McGrath is expecting us in half an hour. It’s only a two-minute drive. You want to go back to the station?”

  “No,” I said. “I think we have some things to talk about. Let’s get to it.”

  “Okay,” he said. He brought the car to a stop at the curb. There was a small park—an empty lot that had been rejuvenated. I wondered if a house had been there, maybe one that had burned down. Kids on a roundabout were screaming with the carefree joy of childhood.

  I went first. “This is enough new evidence to reopen the Gallagher case.”

  “It is.”

  “And you’re going to go for it.”

  “I am.”

  “I need a little more time to gather evidence in Los Angeles. I’d like to ask you to wait, if you can see your way clear to that.”

  “I thought you might.”

  “I’ve got thirteen missing children. Maybe one of them is alive still.”

  “You know better than that.”

  I did but denied it. “There’s always hope.”

  The volume of the children’s voices went up suddenly. We both turned to look and saw that two of the kids, older boys, had jumped off and were pushing the roundabout as fast as they could. The little ones loved it.

  “Oh, to turn back time,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He was clearly not thinking of that but aching to rush it forward. “I could wait, but if he gets wind of you coming after him and takes off on me, I’m really gonna have a hard time with that.”

  “I can’t say for sure that he won’t. I can promise you that I’ll move as quickly as I can and I’ll be as discreet as possible. I’ve already called his studio looking for him. Someone may have told him that there were inquiries. For all I know, he may already have skipped town.”

  “If he has, I’ll retire right now and find him.”

  I believed he would.

  We reached a tentative agreement: I would have one week to get what I could, and then Moskal and I would talk again to assess the situation. If he was unsatisfied with my progress, he would move forward on his end. But until then he wouldn’t do anything official. At five minutes before teatime, we pulled up in front of Kelly McGrath’s row house.

  She wasn’t as elderly as I expected her to be. Early sixties maybe, petite, colored her hair dark auburn, kept herself trim and neat. We were seated in the parlor immediately; a tea service was already out on the coffee table with cups and spoons and lump sugar. Cream, but no lemon. On the piano were photographs of Kelly and a slightly older woman who might have been her twin.

  “Is that your sister, Maggie?” I asked as she passed a cup and saucer to me.

  “Yes,” she answered, crossing herself with a free hand. “Rest in peace.”

  “How long has she been gone?”

  “Oh, a very long time. Thirty-three years now.”

  She had died when Wilbur was seven years old. “Your sister was a governess in the Durand household?”

  She looked puzzled for a moment, then said, “Oh, yes, the little boy’s name was Durand, wasn’t it? I forgot. I always think of it as the Carmichael house. Well, they did too, that’s why. They never did like it that Patricia married that Frenchman. I mean, he was a Catholic and all, I just don’t understand how some people could be so narrow-minded. It seems to come with money if you ask me. So does cheapness, imagine that. Things might have gone better for her if her family had helped out a bit more.”

  I never asked another question.

  “Patricia wasn’t right, you know. She had a rough time of it with his birth, and the new marriage wasn’t working out to begin with. She got this terrible infection and had to have her womanly parts removed—you’ll forgive me for speaking like this in front of you, Detective Moskal. After that, her husband didn’t pay any attention to her at all. Pretty much left her on her own. He moved her to Brookline right after the baby was born because he said it was an up-and-coming place and a good investment. Well, Patricia hated it. She had no friends there, the church wasn’t as welcoming, and she just took to drinking to drown her troubles. The Carmichael kids—Sheila, Eileen, and Cullen—didn’t have as rough a time of it because they’d had her when she was right, and their father had been wonderful, God rest his soul. What a shame he died so young.

  “But Patricia just neglected poor little Wil something terrible. Maggie used to go by trolley out there every day to make sure Wilbur was getting fed and clothed decently—stayed over sometimes if the missus was sopped. We finally had to get a phone because Mrs. O’Day downstairs was getting a little bit tired of relaying her messages to me. Lots of times she would find his sheets soaked when she got there, and he’d have no clean clothes if she didn’t do the laundry. She would sometimes have to sober the missus up to take her to the bank so she could get money for groceries. Once or twice she bought groceries with her own money. But I put a stop to that. Bring the lad here, I told her, and we’ll give him a proper upbringing. But she didn’t want to interfere in a private family situation. She was like that.

  “No matter what she did, he was still a strange little boy. So quiet most of the time, but when he got his Irish up he was something to behold. His mother never disciplined him at all, and his father was gone by then. It was heartbreaking. But Maggie was keeping things decent for the boy—until she got sick, that is. He was six when she found the first lump. She didn’t go right away to the doctor, claimed it was nothing, but I think she was scared. By the time she went, it was really too late, though they took both her breasts anyway, I think to give her hope. It did buy her some time, but not much.

  “Wil’s granddad—Patricia and Sean’s father—he was the devil incarnate. Hated Maggie for what he said was interference in his daughter’s affairs. He should have been on his knees every day thanking her, for my money. The old bastard got absolutely livid if anyone said anything against Sean, though we all knew what sort he was. Never married, always around little bo
ys; the granddad wouldn’t hear a word of it, that Sean ought not to be allowed to have kids alone. He was a police officer and all, and I guess that made him a saint in his father’s eyes. Maggie would take Wil to see his gran and granddad because she thought it was only right that he should know them, even if his mother didn’t make the effort. Told me that he called her ‘that bloody wench’ right in front of the boy. ‘That bloody wench is ruining you,’ he would say, as if Maggie weren’t there. ‘That bloody wench is too soft on you.’

  “In all the time that Maggie took care of the boy, the grandma never tried to intercede against the granddad. I guess she was scared of him, with good reason. They say he knocked her around a time or two. Well, Maggie got herself all dressed up one day and called on the old lady at teatime, just like you’re doing right now, and told her everything that had been going on. Pleaded with her to take the children in. Eventually she talked her into it.

  “Maggie died about two months later, shortly after Wil and the other children were moved into the house by the beach. Wil didn’t do too well after that, I’m told—he lost the only person who loved him for himself. And after that, we used to see him with Sean a lot. It wasn’t right. Not tat tall.”

  All of this was spinning through my head as the train rattled and shook its way back to New York. High speed, maybe, but the ride could have been smoother. Nevertheless, I was happy to be on my way back. I had a lot of work to do; I had to find those museum tapes if I had any hope of nailing this guy. I needed a warrant to search his premises, both personal and professional. The report would have to be seamless. It would all be circumstantial, but it would have to do.

  On Sunday next I would have to call Detective Moskal again. If he was busy with his family that day, I might be able to stretch it to Monday. If I didn’t have what I needed, I was hoping he would listen to reason.

  Standing on the platform at South Station, Moskal had said to me, “I’ve always thought that Sean O’Reilly found something in that shed to implicate someone and that he took it out of there. If I’d been more insistent on following procedures, maybe all these kids wouldn’t be missing.”