by Ann Benson
“Guillemette, I cannot say—”
“I had thought to expect more of you.” Without so much as another word, I turned and left, my eyes full of tears at yet another betrayal.
I writhed and moaned the whole night through. I tossed relentlessly from side to side and soaked my sheets with sweat. On the next morn, court was convened for the sole purpose of declaring the guilt of Etienne Corrilaut, also called Poitou, and Henriet Griart, both servants to Baron Gilles de Rais, who were sentenced to death by burning. Both stared into the distance without focus; neither said one word in his own defense. They were remanded to the dark, filthy, cold dungeons in which they would remain for the brief duration of their misspent lives, while their shrewd and clever master slept in furs before a fire. Such is God’s justice, which is no justice at all.
chapter 38
The prosecutor Johannsen was kind enough to call me before the news broke.
“Sheila Carmichael filed a motion to reopen Jeff’s case based on the fact that you, as a supposed victim, were also involved with the investigation,” he told me.
“What?” I was dumbfounded. “I wasn’t a victim. Jeff is my son’s friend, not my son.”
“She contends that because you are an ‘intimate’ of his—she’s defining ‘friend of the family’ as an intimate—your vigor in going after Wilbur was more than it would otherwise have been. Enhanced, I think, was the word she used in the brief.”
“Good lord.”
“Apparently she found some obscure old case where the verdict was actually overturned because one of the cops who worked on a particular case could also be construed as one of the victims. The opinion cited biased excessive motivation on the part of the investigator.”
“It didn’t make a bit of difference. Even before Jeff became involved, I was into this case with everything I had.”
“I know that. But they’re absurdly careful in capital cases.”
“Is there a chance the verdict could be overturned?”
“Not all the verdicts.”
“So what’s the point, then?”
“It’s a negotiating trick.”
“What can she get for him?”
“His life.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
“My guess is that the judge will think it’s as crazy as we both do,” Johannsen said. “But you never can tell.”
“When will this be made public?”
“She won’t be filing for a few days yet—she said it was as a courtesy that she was letting me know.”
“Seems like a nonsensical move—you’d think it would be better to surprise you, catch you off guard.”
“Sheila likes conflict, I think. And she likes to feel like she’s in the middle of it all.”
I’d given Pete Moskal a promise that I would keep him informed of every development in regard to Wilbur. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts had not, in view of Durand’s death sentence, called for an extradition. I lay awake all that night thinking about what Johannsen had told me—what a travesty it would be if Wilbur walked. I would view it as a personal tragedy if he didn’t ride the lightning.
By the time the first thin light was sneaking through the blinds, I had decided to wait to call Moskal, to see how it developed.
I went into the division that day, something I hadn’t done in a while. The department had put me on light duty until further notice, but Fred had told me that it didn’t matter whether I came in or not—I would get my paycheck anyway. It was almost more difficult to stay away than to be there; I missed the place and the constant swirl of activity. Apparently the place missed me too, because when I came through the door, there was a rush of warm greetings.
After all the niceties were over, everyone went back to his or her own unshattered world. Everyone but Spence and Escobar.
“How you doing, Lany?” Escobar asked, with genuine concern. “You look a little tired.”
I had seen myself in the mirror that morning. A little tired was a kindness. “Not so good, Ben. I got a call from Johannsen last night.” I told them what he’d said.
“Shit,” Spence commented.
“Damn,” said Escobar.
“Yeah. It would really suck.”
We all sat in morbid silence for a little while, until I said to Spence, “Listen, I think I’d like to pay a little visit to Jesse Garamond. What do you think?”
He stared at me for a minute or two, not understanding.
“I think it’s time to get him out of there.”
“Lany, he’s a bad, bad guy. Leave it alone.”
“I want to go talk to him at least.”
He seemed uncertain but agreed to go. “All right, but I don’t like this.”
We took the same route to the prison. As we approached the billboard where I’d seen the dripping ad for They Eat Small Children There, I closed my eyes. I didn’t open them until I was sure we had passed it. It would be a different ad now, but my eyes would disregard the reality and see what they’d seen there before. It was too much for me to contemplate.
Spence had his gun, but mine was tucked in one of Fred’s desk drawers, where he’d put it when he took it away from me. “You won’t need it on light duty,” he’d said. At first I missed it, but in time I came to appreciate the restoration of my balance. I walked taller and felt lighter. One hip did not dip below the other. My back was no longer sore from compensating for its weight. The weapon would stay there until I went back to regular duty. We got through the entry checkpoint that much faster, which pleased me greatly. They didn’t pay any attention to the latex gloves I had tucked in my purse, because you can’t kill someone with them, unless you stuff them down his throat.
Just as we approached the cell, I turned to Spence. “I want to talk to him alone.”
He stopped dead and stared at me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lany. This is not a particularly sweet guy.”
“I’ll be all right. I just want a couple of minutes with him.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“Spence. Please. I need you to humor me right now. And I don’t want you hearing this conversation in case you ever get asked about it.”
He stood stiff and unyielding.
“Please,” I repeated.
Reluctantly, he said, “Okay.”
I sent Pete Moskal two articles from the Los Angeles Times, both clipped while I was wearing gloves. They had appeared about a month apart. I sealed the plain envelope in which I mailed them with a sponge and used a self-adhesive stamp. I did not put a return address on the envelope.
The first one read:
Convicted serial child-killer Wilbur Durand was found dead late last night in his cell at Los Angeles County Correctional Institution, the victim of an apparent homicide. Durand, formerly a noted Hollywood producer and special-effects expert, was incarcerated there last year after being found guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault on a minor child in the killing of Earl Jackson, age 12, the kidnap/rape of Jeffrey Samuels, age 13, and on numerous other counts. Attorney Sheila Carmichael, also his sister, was in the process of preparing a motion for the Samuels case to be reopened based on an obscure legal precedent regarding the involvement of a victim in the investigation of a crime. Samuels is a close personal friend of the son of Los Angeles police Detective Lorraine Dunbar, whose dogged investigation of a series of seemingly unconnected child disappearances led eventually to Durand’s arrest and conviction.
According to an unnamed prison source, Durand was stabbed multiple times in the abdomen and was then eviscerated. Prison officials have no suspects in the crime and say that the prison population has been unusually tight-lipped with information about the incident. “When something like this happens, there’s usually at least one guy who’s willing to come forward with information,” said the assistant warden. “But so far nobody’s saying anything in this case. We have no leads, no physical evidence, and, at this time, no suspects.”
Moskal knew all this. But the second article might not have been picked up by the national press, and I wanted him to see the two together. The second one read:
Jesse Garamond was released from Los Angeles County Correctional Institution in Lancaster today on orders from the Court of Appeals. He was convicted three years ago in the death of his nephew, who has subsequently been determined to be one of the victims of Wilbur Durand, who recently died in the same prison. Garamond’s conviction was unusual in that the nephew’s body was never found. Prosecutor James Johannsen says that sneakers confiscated from Durand’s work studio have been positively identified by the child’s mother as having belonged to her son. They were included among several other pairs of footwear that Durand kept as souvenirs of his victims. Based on this evidence, Johannsen requested that Garamond be released pending a new trial, at which time the charges are expected to be dropped. At the time of his conviction in the death of his nephew, Garamond was on parole after serving four years of a seven-year sentence on a previous conviction for child molestation unrelated to the Durand case.
Pete Moskal got Wilbur Durand back after all. He greeted his casket at Logan Airport.
The last time we’d stood in this spot on the Santa Monica Pier, Errol Erkinnen and I had watched three very lucky young boys cavort in the sand and listened to their exuberant cries. I had told him how much my son Evan liked to come here. This time there was only the gentle sound of the surf and a few errant seagulls, but if I closed my eyes and cleared my head, I could imagine Evan frolicking on the beach with his two sisters.
I smiled and let the sun caress my face. Doc, ever observant, saw it.
“It’s good to see you smile,” he said. “That’s real progress. Didn’t I tell you this day would come?”
“You did.”
“And that even better days will come after this.”
“I guess you were right.”
“Hey, that’s why they used to pay me the big bucks.”
He’d taken a leave of absence from the PD to write a book. The advance had been enough for him to take a full year. My suspicion was that it would be permanent; he would never go back.
I took hold of his hand and squeezed it. “Hey, I want to thank you for everything you’ve done to help me get through this.”
He gave me a little wink. “Just doing my job,” he said. “Or what used to be my job, anyway. What a world—who would have thought it would turn out like this.”
The sound of the surf was soothing. “You know, I didn’t really think Jesse Garamond would do it. He’s a scumbag, but he wasn’t a killer. At least he wasn’t before all this. I hate to admit it, but I’m really glad he did it.”
“Maybe Garamond wasn’t a killer, but my guess is that he’s probably always been a survivor. I don’t think it’s so terrible, for you to have wanted Durand to suffer.”
He had suffered. There was more than what was reported in the newspapers. Durand had suffered that certain “thing” the other prisoners did to child killers. Garamond had come up with it on his own; my only request was that whatever he did, he would try to get information about the location of the bodies before he did it. He would have gotten out in time, anyway; we were able to speed it up considerably. And Jesse wanted his revenge, because it was Wilbur Durand’s crime that got him thrown back in prison during his parole. He surely got it.
Doc didn’t know all the details; there was a silent agreement between us that I would tell him only enough to unburden myself. I don’t think he really wanted to know what happened in full detail.
“They found another body,” I said. “That makes nine so far.”
We would eventually find them all and return them to their families, based on what Jesse Garamond had dragged out of him while the knife was at his crotch.
A condor suddenly appeared along the northern edge of the horizon. He swooped down toward the end of the pier and landed on a piling. The bird flapped its wings and rose up, then soared off free into the sunlit sky. I imagined a phoenix, the mythological representation of our urge toward perfection, which is the ultimate illusion. Beyond even Wilbur Durand.
thirty-nine
My fine son stayed by my side all through Monday, October 24. His comfort and company were the sweetest blessings I could have known, and much needed, for the morrow would bring the finish of the trial of Gilles de Rais, knight, Baron, Marshal of France, once the intimate of kings and dukes and bishops, now known more truthfully as a sodomite, murderer, eviscerator, and decapitator of children.
Though his death was welcomed, even craved, by many—myself among them—I felt the passing of each minute that remained to him as if it were my own life that was about to end. With each breath came the thought that there was one less in the finite allotment of breaths to be drawn. An indescribably cold fear gripped my innards and paralyzed me against any significant action. I should have been glad to know that Milord was about to die for the crimes he had committed against God, against nature, and above all, against innocent children, who always wanted to trust in the goodness of their betters.
I have come to understand, in these last hours of his life, that my own woe arises largely from blaming myself for his shortcomings. That distress has been present in my heart since the beginning of this ordeal—indeed, throughout Milord’s entire downslide—but I have not allowed it to possess me completely until now. There does not seem adequate penance for my failings, but I will try, for as long as I live, to do good works, to live cleanly, to offer succor and aid to small children, to distribute what alms I can so God will once again smile on me.
While he made his confession of these crimes in open court, Milord Gilles was quick to point to culpability of his childhood guardians. But a more perfect admission might have included his own shameless refusal to curb those desires he knew to be vile crimes against nature when they are only imagined and not actually enacted, as he had done. He said nothing in court of how he learned the art of sodomy from Jean de Craon by being the object of the old man’s lusts himself. Nor did he say anything about how he had cried hot bitter tears after each encounter with the old monster, almost always in my arms, though I did not understand the reason for those tears at the time. But I suppose that he, too, wanted to believe in the goodness of his betters, or in the case of Jean de Craon, those more powerful. He was no more likely to speak against his grandfather than Henriet was against Gilles himself.
Gilles professed throughout his life to have strong memories of his mother and father, though he was rarely in their presence before they died. He was so young when they departed this earth, both in the same month. They indulged him shamefully, by which excess I think they meant to ameliorate their frequent absences. The gifts, the allowances, the permissiveness—it was all very enticing to a young boy. Those are his memories, not the tears of abandonment. But these riches did him no good, of that I am certain.
On October 25 at the hour of Terce, the prosecutor Chapeillon stood in the upper hall of la Tour Neuve and requested that the proceedings be brought to a conclusion. The judges agreed that it should happen so.
“Gilles de Rais,” Jean de Malestroit said.
Trembling and ashen, Milord rose up.
“We find you guilty as charged with perfidious apostasy as well as of the dreadful invocation of demons. Do you understand these charges and our findings?”
With quiet shame, he said, “Yes, your Eminence.”
“We also find you guilty of committing and maliciously perpetrating the crime and unnatural vice of sodomy on children of both sexes. Do you understand these charges and our findings?”
“I do, my Lord Bishop. May God save me.”
“Gilles de Rais, you are hereby excommunicated from the holy Catholic Church and are forbidden to partake of her sacraments.”
I do not know why I was so surprised; it would all be part of the script. Perhaps Jean de Malestroit had insisted on the little drama that was unfolding, for the sake of appearanc
es. In any case, Milord played his role well. He fell immediately to his knees and, with devout tears and moaning, begged to be allowed to confess his sins to a priest so he might be absolved of them before dying.
Jean de Malestroit played his part well too; he was the stern denier of mercy, the rigid and upright defender of the true faith, at least for long enough to create the proper effect. With a great show of sentiment, he called forward Jean Jouvenal of the Carmelite order and bade him hear Milord’s confession, which was so passionately and sincerely offered that his Eminence had no choice but to reinstate Gilles de Rais to good standing in the church.
I wondered once again what treasure he had offered to bring this about.
But strangely, when word of this reached the encampments, there was little disapproval; as my son and I walked aimlessly among the crowds later that day, we heard very little grumbling and plenty of accord. These weary people, too, wanted desperately to believe in the goodness of their betters.
Later that afternoon, Milord was taken by guard to the nearby castle of Bouffay, where he confessed to his part in the debacle at Saint-Etienne-de-Mer-Morte. Pierre l’Hôpital made the final arrangements for him to pay his fine of fifty thousand ecus to the Duke of Brittany with a transfer of one of his few remaining properties. That having been settled, there was nothing left to do but to pronounce his sentence of death by hanging and burning, which would be carried out promptly at the eleventh hour on the morrow, October 26.
And then he asked publicly for the consideration to which Jean de Malestroit had already agreed:
“Please, Monsieur le President, I beg you to allow my servants Henriet and Poitou to view my death before theirs, else they may not know that I have been punished, and they must not die wondering if I might have somehow been spared that fate.”
It was agreed. Thereafter, the sentence of the secular court was given.