Surrender, New York

by Caleb Carr

  It was, all questions of taste and horror aside, a remarkable discovery: “Mummified,” Mike declared at length, scarcely able to whisper the word. And yet there was something of a sense of, one hesitates to say challenge, but at least of a forthcoming test of his own skills, in the tone of his hushed voice.

  “Yes,” I said, finding no other explanation imaginable.

  “ ‘Mummified’?” Pete echoed; and already, he sounded thankful that he’d gotten us to come to the house. “I don’t get it, there’s no wrapping on it, any of those bandages.”

  “Those are Egyptian mummies,” Mike answered quickly, continuing to examine the body. “And the bandages aren’t what mummified them. They held the body together over the centuries, and added a little extra protection from moisture. They may also have had some religious meaning, but opinions differ on that. But what actually mummified them was that priests and their family members would take them into the open desert and let them dry out, being careful to make sure that no scavengers got to them.”

  “You can mummify a body in lots of places,” I continued, as Mike grew more absorbed in the details of the body. “So long as it’s sealed tight and there’s next to no moisture in the air. An old attic would work, or…” And now I went around testing the windows of the room. “A basement, where the windows have been unintentionally sealed, and where nobody comes, anymore, not even to service the furnace.” I grabbed the work light and moved it about, poking the ceiling with my cane and getting a look, not at floor planks, but at subflooring made of particle board, and sealed around its edges and along the seams with the kind of noxious polyurethane spray foam used in the Seventies that has also become illegal in recent years. “Like right here. Or so the BCI boys would have us believe…”

  “That’s what I want to know about, and so does Steve,” Pete said. “See, when we went through this place the first time, we came down here, and we looked all around these bags of crap, to make sure that nothing was hidden behind them. And nothing was. Then we get the call to come and spell the BCI guards tonight—we had no idea why, they’ve got plenty of other people to do that kind of grunt work—and what do we find? A body that was not here yesterday. And I would swear to that.”

  “Unh-hunh,” I noised, paying as close attention to him as I could, which wasn’t easy: for the face of a body that has been mummified (especially recently) is a particularly horrifying yet transfixing sight, whatever the specific cause of its desiccation. The mouth is almost invariably pulled back, as in this case, into a perpetual grimace or even scream, a desperate plea, if not for help, at the very least for justice; while the eyes, on which the lids have been drawn not quite fully up, bear an expression of dull if enormous agony. The body tends to arch with the tightening of the skin over the torso, giving the appearance of a forever-frozen attempt to break free, both of the bonds of the immediate cause of torment and then, more permanently, of the sentence of premature death.

  And in this case, that death had been premature, indeed. Mummification can often make the age of a body as difficult to identify, on first look, as its true features; yet in this case, the simple proportions of the person we were studying dictated a child of no more than fourteen. The excellent condition of the teeth, indicating a life spent drinking fluoridated water, reinforced this notion, as did the dimensions of the skull more generally, especially in relation to the size of the eyes. The height could only be guessed at, but it could not have been much more than five feet, if that. All in all, a child, a child who had died, perhaps, as a result of some accident that had left him or her helpless in the place where mummification had taken place, or perhaps after being deliberately locked away in a space much like the one in which we were now standing.

  But of that specific space, it was already possible to say one thing with absolute certainty: it was not, in fact, the site of death, and when I was again able to speak, I went on to tell Pete as much.

  “But—what makes you say that?” he replied. “I mean, I want to agree with you, I’d like to think we’re not incompetent or crazy, but how can you be so sure?”

  “Think about it, Pete,” Mike said, knowing my thoughts and never pausing in his examination of the body. “What’s all around you? Garbage. What’s outside? No garbage. So it seems pretty likely that, whatever the Patricks were up to, they had only recently begun to throw their bags down here.”

  “It’s my guess,” I added, “although you’ll want to determine this after you demand a chance to question them yourselves, Pete, that they started throwing their garbage down here when the throwaway deaths became public knowledge, and they began getting death threats again. They were likely terrified, and weren’t going outside for any reason if they didn’t have to.”

  “But we don’t know that they started getting death threats,” Pete said, a bit confused. “I mean, not at this location.”

  “Yeah, but has anybody asked them?” I queried, my eyes still locked on the mummified child.

  Pete had to mull that one over. “Well—no, not that I’m aware of. Nobody had any reason to.”

  “Yeah, well,” Mike said from behind the body. “Now they do. So suppose you and Steve try it.”

  “I’d be happy to,” Pete answered. “If Steve or I could get a foot in the door. I was lucky to get away with photographing those documents.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “And maybe there’s another way to do it. But we need to get to the root of this whole stinking business—and we need to do it fast. This is pretty much an open declaration from the state: they’re going to do whatever’s necessary to pin this thing on Jimmy and Jeanette Patrick. But before they can bang the gavel down on that case and move on, making people think these deaths are over and done with, we’ve got to get some alternate answers, and bring them out into the public eye.”

  “Okay,” Mike announced at that moment, finally standing from behind the dead child’s chair. “Here’s what I can tell you: this is one ham-fisted attempt at a frame, Pete. First of all, like L.T. says, the boy—and it’s a boy, maybe thirteen to fifteen—didn’t die here. The reasoning behind that is simple: the Patricks have been tossing and stacking garbage down here for at least a fair period of time. That means opening the basement door. That means allowing whatever’s upstairs down here. Now, it’s not that the BCI were completely irrational when they cooked this one up—I mean, somebody told them, probably Nancy Grimes, that mummified bodies have been found in caves. So they look at this basement and think, ‘Hey, it looks like a cave.’ And if they’d been smart and removed the garbage first, it might’ve worked.” At that point Mike produced his digital camera, a piece of equipment that (whatever the hawkers of mobile phone cameras would like us to think) was capable of taking far higher resolution images, and in far more detail, than his phone. Blasting away with the rather blinding flash, he began a panoramic series of photos, not simply of the body, but of the basement as a whole.

  “You figure they still might try to remove it?” I asked.

  “Hey, they tried this stunt,” Mike answered disdainfully. “If I were them, and Pete repeated what we’re about to tell him, I’d just put the original guards back on and ditch the bags in a truck.”

  “And what are you about to tell me?” Pete said, very disappointed to be placed back in the role of student, but anxious to hear what was coming.

  “Well, look around you, Pete,” I said, holding up my cane and pulling out my cigarettes. “What do you see?”

  “Come on,” Pete declared, a little indignantly. “Don’t put me through the whole routine, just tell me, will you?”

  “You’re looking at bags of garbage…” I lit two cigarettes and walked over to hand one to Mike. “It’s now midsummer.” I picked up the work light, and walked to a pile of bags that was near the deputy. “In spring and summer, what do you get with garbage?”

  Pete watched as the answer began to materialize around the light of the lantern. “Of course!” he said, clapping a hand to his forehea
d. “Flies! And flies means maggots, right?”

  “Right,” Mike said, still taking pictures. “So between this place not being as low in oxygen or as cold as a deep cave or cavern, and the relatively pristine shape of the body, we can determine that he died somewhere else, and was brought here for this purpose.”

  “But how?” Pete said, wrestling with it. “Wouldn’t the body have basically fallen apart when they tried to move it?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “Not if he died recently enough. In the early stages of mummification, there is still some flexibility in the body, which is probably how they got him into the chair and tied him. And here’s where you can pull off a real coup, Pete: all of that means that we’re looking for a death that occurred—what’s it take, Mike, for mummification to really happen, and to be able to move the body without serious deterioration? Two months, three?”

  “Depends on the location,” Mike replied judiciously. “The drier the faster, but yeah, at least seventy to eighty days, give or take. No more than ninety, in this case.”

  “Okay,” I continued. “Now, it’s obvious the BCI didn’t just have this kid mummifying, getting him ready for this purpose. And it’s also obvious that, unless they did a little grave robbing—”

  “Thought of that already,” Mike threw in. “But the condition’s too good. And there’s no evidence of burial, no specks of earth that would have been incidental to digging him up.”

  “Good,” I replied. “That means he was unidentified. I think we can assume, from the sound condition of the clothes, that they put them on him for this farce—”

  “Right again,” Mike said. “Found a tag from the Goodwill shop in Fraser, they definitely left it there on purpose: redressed him, to make it look local.”

  “Which means it wasn’t,” I explained further. “So that’s where you and Steve begin: you want to start looking around the state—I don’t think they would have dared to go outside it—for reports of an unidentified boy’s body going unclaimed. Recently. Start with the counties farthest from Burgoyne—Clinton, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Erie—and move in from there. They’re going to want to have covered their tracks by keeping it all very far apart.”

  “Try the ones that are also major Adirondack counties, Pete,” Mike said. “Including Hamilton, Essex, Franklin—that’s high country, there’d be a lot of seasonal homes with attics where this could happen, all secluded enough that people might not have noticed.” Mike began to put his camera away, and withdrew some envelopes and vials, to take whatever DNA samples he could easily get—hair, skin, fibers—from the body. Before doing so, however, he paused for a long moment, staring at the agonized face of the young boy and shaking his head. “Poor little guy. Probably wandered into some abandoned house, or maybe somebody’s vacation home, then went up to the attic and barred himself in. Or something fell and barred him in. I didn’t pull the pant legs up to see if there’s a break or sprain of some kind, I don’t want to take the chance—hang on.”

  Mike had caught sight of something, and as he cut the boy’s hands free he lifted one, then used one of his implements to begin scraping under the fingernails. “Jesus…” he eventually breathed.

  “What is it?” Pete asked.

  “Well…” Mike went on, in the same mournful tone. “I’d have to put it under the scope to be absolutely sure, but—look at those fingers. You can see it with the naked eye.” We did as instructed, as Mike grabbed a magnifying glass from his kit.

  “Stone,” I concluded. “Stone and…?”

  “And moss,” Mike answered, putting the magnifying glass to work. He moved over to pick up the other hand, and hissed out a pained reaction. “Man—two of the nails on this hand are gone completely…”

  I picked up on his thinking. “A cave?”

  “More than likely,” Mike replied, still observing and taking samples. “Or an obstruction. But I’d definitely start in the high counties first, Pete.”

  “But—what are you guys talking about, what happened to him?”

  “It looks,” I answered quietly, “as though the boy either fell or jumped into some hole.”

  “But—I mean, what’re you talking about, ‘jumped’? Why would he jump? And why would he bar himself into an attic?” Pete’s voice was wandering between sadness and horror, although he still had not guessed at just what we were thinking.

  And it was time to tell him. So, as quickly as I could, I revealed to him our belief that, as unlikely as it might sound on first hearing, the so-called throwaway murders were in fact all suicides, which had then been staged as murders, by some person or group who couldn’t afford to have so many suicides linked to him, her, or them. Pete resisted, of course, as any decent man not steeped in exposure to such machinations would; but when I explained our theory that the throwaways were being effectively sold, literally down the river, for profit to rich residents of New York City, he began to accept the notion. Only when I was finished did he bring up the kind of commonsensical point that I had come to expect from him:

  “But what about this kid?” he said. “He doesn’t exactly look like he was a suicide, if he was trying to claw his way out.”

  “His death may have been just an accident,” Mike answered. “Remember, his importance to whoever’s behind this frame—and we think it’s the BCI—is only that he’s dead and fits the profile. That’s why it’s so important to find out who he was.”

  “And think about the rest of the poor kid’s life,” I said, too clinically, I think, for the deputy’s liking. “If he fits the profile, he was on his own; or suppose he was in the foster program, and landed in some foster farm where they were only interested in him for the monthly check.”

  “That’d be my guess,” Mike said. “Even in this condition, you can tell there wasn’t much to him. Malnourished, I mean. You find that, with a lot of fosters from those farms.”

  “Okay,” I went on. “So he finds a high cave, enters it, starts exploring some hole, and gets stuck. Then, when the terror of his situation really sets in, he tries to claw his way out. An accident—but one that the BCI can use.”

  “I can’t believe it,” the deputy murmured; although it was clear from his face that he did.

  “Well, one thing’s for sure.” Mike sighed out the obvious but terrible conclusion as he exhaled a large cloud of smoke: “This does not tell a happy story. And then to get used by the cops like this…”

  There was little to add to Mike’s final indictment; at least, not down in that wretched basement. I needed to begin to tie up loose ends by making a couple of phone calls, and so climbed the stairs back into the sea of filth that was the house. I was almost certain, now, that at least some if not most of the Patricks’ recent slovenliness had been caused by their genuine fear that their lives were in danger: a fear prompted not by paranoid fantasies but by death threats made by their current neighbors, who, like Lucas, got too much of what they thought was criminal psychology from television, and held to the belief that child molesters, once punished and freed, will always slip back into their sly and sinister ways.

  It is true, of course, that it is nearly impossible to erase the urges that motivate such offenders: for they are almost always rooted in childhood abuse that they themselves have suffered, and in the confusion of these early, perverse notions of intimacy with later romantic and sexual urges. Well, so what? comes the all-too-common answer from people who want child abusers disemboweled, or at the very least lethally injected. Plenty of people suffer abuse as children, without abusing children as adults. And this is not only true, it makes for what is known on the idiot box as “compelling television.” Yet what is also true—what many in my field first began to suspect in the late 1890s and early twentieth century, when Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, in New York City, and his colleague Dr. Adolf Meyer, more nationally, began to seriously work with and classify abused children—is that nearly all sexual offenders, and especially child abusers, can and do learn to control the actions that grow out o
f such urges. Thus the infamous recidivism rate among them is actually fairly low—vastly lower, for example, than among thieves, burglars, and illegal weapons traffickers, and only slightly higher than the tiny number of murderers who kill again after incarceration.

  It has never been very hard to understand all this, even if one has not done (as most of us who choose to enter criminal psychiatry and psychology as a profession are required to do) a residency of some kind at a state mental facility, where all save the most violent and lethal child abusers usually end up. “We make of such men and women,” Dr. Kreizler wrote, in the same final journal that I had slowly been sharing with my criminal psychology students during that summer, “living reminders and repositories of all the hidden evils that we commit when we close ranks to live among each other as a society. And having made them such, we feel that we can expunge the fact of their crimes and the manners in which they resonate within so many of our own lives by killing them—an easy enough act, because, what with our failure to find a way to reach and converse with them, they cannot defend themselves in any coherent way. But the day is coming, and it is not far off, when we will find the keys that allow them to participate in conversations about their abysmal acts, candidly and without fear, and tell us what planted such unnatural desires in what must have been their young souls.”

  He was right, of course: those conversations now go on every day with imprisoned child abusers, most to good effect. But again, how can one expect the average television writer to turn such statements into “compelling television”? Statistics, after all, serve not public education, but the least common denominator; and so long as any child abusers are repeat offenders, it is far easier to sell the public on the notion of a race of child-stalking pseudo-vampires, who, the minute that they are unchained, will all thirst once again for the souls of our most defenseless citizens. Such myths, propagated throughout the media, go on to inform the attitudes of most prospective jury members, which is to say most Americans. Indeed, as I stood in the Patricks’ living room, I found myself staring at that one item of expense in the room: ironically, their television, the very instrument through which the myths and misconceptions that the Bureau of Criminal Investigation was hoping to exploit in order to lock the couple away forever were propagated; their television, hooked up to a small grey satellite dish outside, for which the Patricks, choosing not to maintain even their indoor plumbing, had nonetheless found some way to pay.