The Chill of Night

by James Hayman

  ‘Smote? Is that the past tense of smite? Not smited?’

  ‘Smote is correct. Now please answer my question.’

  ‘Sorry. I can’t. I just needed to check something out. Why don’t we start over?’ He extended a hand. ‘Like I said, I’m McCabe. Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe.’

  ‘I recognize you. When the kids told me a cop was here, I figured it had to be you.’

  McCabe smiled and waved a hand, indicating his civilian clothes. ‘How’d they know?’

  ‘These kids can sniff out a cop a mile away.’

  Just like the kids in New York, McCabe thought. They always knew. Uniform or no uniform. Even when there was no color difference. ‘What makes your kids so good at it? Sniffing out cops, I mean.’

  ‘Experience. Most of them are runaways, throwaways, and other assorted leftovers from the societal scrap heap. They’ve been bullied, hassled, and chased down by guys in blue suits most of their lives.’

  ‘I haven’t worn a blue suit in a long time.’

  ‘It’s not the suit, McCabe. Trust me. They know. Anyway, I’ve been expecting you ever since I heard the news about Lainie.’

  Kelly pointed McCabe to one of the folding chairs. ‘Just dump those files on the pile over there.’ He slipped behind the desk and sat down and looked at McCabe. His eyes, even behind the glasses, were hard to ignore. They were even bluer and more intense than they’d seemed in the photo. They radiated energy. From what I hear he’s a hell of a charismatic guy, Maggie’d told him, a real charmer. His crooked nose looked like it’d been broken more than once. McCabe guessed a scrapper. Sort of like Cleary.

  ‘Ever do any boxing?’

  ‘Amateur. As a teenager back in Pittsburgh.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Not really. As you can see from the nose, guys tended to hit me more than I hit them.’

  ‘So what made you do it?’

  ‘I like defending myself. When I was young, people picked on me. One in particular. I wanted him to leave me alone.’

  ‘So you hit him?’

  ‘Just once. That’s all it took. He stopped.’

  ‘Picking on you?’

  ‘Yeah. Picking on me.’

  ‘Do I call you Father Jack?’

  ‘No. Just John. Or Jack, if you prefer. I’m not a priest anymore. Haven’t been for a long time.’

  ‘But you’re still a believer?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s different now. God sets the course by which I guide my life. The pope no longer does.’

  ‘Do most of your kids dress like the girl on the porch? The one who went to find you?’

  ‘What were you expecting? The Brady Bunch?’

  ‘She’s what? Fifteen years old?’

  ‘Tara’s sixteen.’

  ‘Sixteen, then. Any reason you let her hang out on the porch sucking on butts and looking like a Times Square hooker?’ Not the best way to start off with Kelly, but screw it. The girl was just a couple of years older than Casey. McCabe needed to get it off his chest.

  ‘Look, McCabe, if that’s where this conversation is going, why don’t you pick yourself up and go on back to Middle Street. My kids aren’t angels, and as a former street cop you ought to know that. A lot of them are vengeful, dirty, unrepentant sinners. All of them are wounded. I can’t change that in a day or a week or even a month. They tend to wear whatever they arrived in plus whatever appeals to them in the donation bags we get from the churches around town. Which, frankly, isn’t much.’

  McCabe knew he had pressed the wrong button. He also knew it was dumb. If he was going to get any more out of Kelly, he’d have to back off. Let the anger subside. At the moment Kelly was on a roll, and McCabe figured he was better off letting him finish.

  ‘If Tara looks like a hooker,’ said Kelly, ‘hey, guess what? You’re right. That’s how she survived for the last year or so, and I’ll bet if you asked, she’d tell you fucking strangers for money was better any day than fucking her father for nothing. Which is what he forced her to do most of her life. At least when he wasn’t beating her silly and telling her she was a worthless piece of shit. The good news is she’s stopped hooking. She’s starting to put her life together. She just hasn’t changed her clothes yet.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry. I shot my mouth off, and it wasn’t called for. So I’m sorry.’

  ‘Okay.’ Deep breath. Pause. ‘Apology accepted.’ Another deep breath. Another pause. ‘McCabe, you’ve got to understand our first job here is to get Tara and others like her off the streets and convince them their lives are worth saving, worth caring about. Fashion makeovers and smoking cessation, as important as they may be to you, are well down the line as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘You’re pretty passionate about all this.’

  ‘You noticed.’

  ‘Any truth to the rumor you were abused yourself as a kid?’

  ‘It’s not a rumor, and yeah, there’s truth to it. It’s not something I try to hide. I was fourteen, and I was raped by my parish priest. The first time it happened I told my old man, and all he did was beat the crap out of me for blaspheming the Holy Mother Church. So I figured I’d have to defend myself. Remember I told you how somebody picked on me? Well, the second time it happened I beat the crap out of the priest. He was bigger and older than me, but I gave him two black eyes and a bloody nose.’

  McCabe suppressed a smile. ‘What happened to you for that?’

  ‘Nothing. He couldn’t tell anyone what he’d done to deserve it. So he just told everyone, including the cops, that he’d been mugged on the street. Told them a couple of big black guys did it.’

  ‘Naturally. Doesn’t everyone?’

  ‘I suppose – but y’know what angered me then and still makes me angry now? Knocking the good father silly didn’t really change anything. He just kept on doing the same thing to other kids.’

  ‘Whatever possessed you to become a priest yourself?’

  ‘You mean aside from the fact that I felt I had a calling?’

  ‘Yeah. Aside from that.’

  ‘Like a lot of others, I had this cockamamie idea I could reform the institution from the inside. Didn’t take long to realize that idea was delusional. In those days, the institution wasn’t interested in reform. It was only interested in avoiding scandal, which it did for decades. It wasn’t until the Boston Globe turned the whole thing into national news that the Church really did anything to change. And by that time Sanctuary House was already up and running, and I was gone from the priesthood.’

  McCabe remembered the Globe series well. In January 2002, a team of investigative reporters from the paper broke the story of pedophile priests wide open, detailing the sins of hundreds of priests, the victimization of thousands of children. The country was shocked. McCabe wasn’t. He’d learned about priestly abuse decades earlier because he knew a kid who was one of its victims. He hadn’t thought about Edward Mullaney in a long time. Fourteen years old. Shy and serious. An altar boy. A pious believer, utterly powerless to resist the God-like figure in a turned-around collar who liked taking him on ‘outings.’ McCabe had often wondered what had become of Edward. He’d found out last year. That’s when he learned Mullaney had been convicted of raping an eight-year-old girl.

  ‘How many kids do you have living here?’

  ‘Depends. Anywhere from thirty, which is our legal capacity, up to sixty, which is about all we can stuff in. Kids who sleep on the street in the summer sleep here in January. Right now we’ve got them three and four to a room.’

  ‘They come and go?’

  ‘It’s not a prison. Kids are always welcome here. Any kid. If they leave, we don’t usually try to hunt them down. Although I have done that with a few I thought were a danger to themselves or to others. Even called you guys for help a few times.’

  ‘How long’s the average stay?’

  ‘Some come for one night and then disappear. Others
are here for weeks or months, which gives us a chance to work with them. We don’t turn anyone away, and we don’t kick anybody out unless they break our rules.’

  ‘Which are?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘We only have three, and, like I said, they don’t include a smoking ban. Number one’s no violence. Against yourself or anyone else. Number two’s no booze or drugs. Here or anywhere else. Number three, everyone has to show everyone else respect. Break a rule once and I’ll usually give you a second chance. Break it twice and you’re out. In return the kids get a place to sleep, food to eat, and an obligation to do some work to help keep this place running. Cooking. Cleaning. Shoveling snow. Plus an obligation to work with one of our counselors to develop a program to turn their lives around. We try to help them get jobs in town. Find permanent housing. Send them to school or tutor them for the GEDs. Thanks to our volunteers we can offer therapy to those who need it. Counseling for the others.’

  ‘Permanent staff?’

  ‘Me and three counselors. One’s a young friar who’s been with me a couple of years. The other two are USM grad students studying social work. They’ll rotate out at the end of the semester and be replaced by others. We also have a number of volunteers.’

  ‘Lainie Goff one of them?’

  ‘Yes, Lainie was a volunteer. She was also on our board of trustees.’

  ‘Active?’

  ‘Very. This organization meant a lot to her.’

  ‘What was her role?’

  ‘She did some fund-raising. She was very good at that. She was also our attorney. Pro bono, of course.’

  ‘Yours or the kids’?’

  ‘Both. We get hassled by the powers that be all the time – the city, the child welfare agencies. She fended them off. Sometimes abusive parents want their children back. She fended them off as well. Lainie was a tough, smart, take-no-prisoners kind of lawyer. This is the kind of work she should have been doing full-time instead of slaving away in that corporate sinkhole.’

  ‘Palmer Milliken?’

  ‘Yes. She was better than that. A better lawyer. A better person, though she probably didn’t know it. The fourteen-hour days she spent there would have counted for a lot more if she’d spent them here.’

  ‘Why do you think she did it? Work there, I mean? Was it just for the money?’

  ‘Money was important to her. Too important in my view. See, the thing you’ve got to understand about Lainie is she was insecure. She always needed to prove she was the best. The smartest, the toughest, the sexiest, the most beautiful. Whatever. That’s what drove her. Still, no matter how well Lainie did, and she always did very well, somehow it was never good enough. Insecurity does terrible things to a person. It’s a sad thing to say, but I think the only time I ever saw her genuinely happy was when she was here working with the kids.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Strange, isn’t it? The tough-as-nails lawyer as surrogate mother. She always seemed to gravitate toward girls like Tara who’d come from sexual abuse situations. They trusted her. She seemed to have an intuitive understanding of what they’d been through.’

  She had a stepfather, but I don’t think she’d want him notified of anything. What Janie Archer said to him now made more sense. ‘Do you suppose Lainie went through an abusive childhood herself?’

  ‘I don’t know, but that’s what I’ve always thought. Work with these kids long enough and you learn they give off a certain vibe. You can feel it. I felt it in Lainie. I even asked her about it once or twice, but she never wanted to talk about it. She’s a very private person. Was a private person.’

  McCabe made a mental note to find out more about Wallace Albright. Find out if he was still alive, still in Maine, and maybe still abusing young girls.

  ‘Lainie only worked with the girls?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘If she was abused as a child, I think it fits. She saw males as the enemy. People to be used and manipulated but not to be trusted.’

  ‘She trusted you, didn’t she?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What was your relationship with her?’

  ‘We were close. As close as she ever let anyone get to her.’

  ‘Except for the kids?’

  ‘Yeah. Except for them.’

  ‘Were you intimate?’

  ‘You mean sexually?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘No. We weren’t intimate. Not sexually. Not in any other way either, except that we both cared about the kids. She was a private person and didn’t share much about her personal life.’

  ‘She was also a beautiful, sexy woman, and you’re not a priest anymore. Weren’t you ever tempted? Physically, I mean?’

  Kelly stared at him. ‘I’m otherwise involved.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Ever been to her apartment?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where were you last Tuesday night from about 9:00 p.m. till midnight?’

  Kelly smiled at the inference. ‘It would seem I’m a suspect.’

  ‘Everyone’s a suspect.’

  ‘Last Tuesday night I was where I am every Tuesday. Sitting right here writing grant proposals till about two in the morning.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I went to sleep.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There’s a staff bedroom upstairs. One member of the staff is always on premises. We rotate. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my nights.’

  ‘Anybody see you?’

  ‘Nobody any jury would ever believe.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Just a couple of street kids who banged on the door about midnight. They wanted beds. We didn’t have any, but it was too cold to let them sleep outside. So I gave them something to eat and let them sleep in the kitchen.’

  ‘They have names?’

  ‘Sure. One calls himself Bennie. Male prostitute. Gives blow jobs for drug money. He’s about seventeen. He lived here for a while last year, but we had to bounce him out.’

  ‘Bennie have a last name?’

  ‘He says it’s Bennie Belmont, which may or may not be his real name. He’s a liar and a troublemaker. He broke the rules twice and then some. You might be able to find him if you prowl around the right bars. The other one said his name was Gerald R. McGill, which I know was phony.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Had to be. Unless he owns the funeral parlor across the street. Anyway, Bennie and Mr McGill left the next morning, and I haven’t seen either of them since.’

  ‘How about Friday, December twenty-third? Two days before Christmas. Where were you, say, around 9:00 P.M.?’

  Kelly thought for a minute. ‘At home. In my apartment. On Howard Street.’

  Howard Street was just a few blocks from McCabe’s place on the Eastern Prom. ‘Anybody with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My partner. We share the apartment.’

  ‘You’re gay?’

  ‘I’m gay.’

  ‘What’s your partner’s name?’

  ‘Edward Childs. People call him Teddy.’

  ‘Mr Childs will confirm you were together that night?’

  ‘I’m sure he will.’

  ‘There were just the two of you, home alone two days before Christmas? No parties to go to? No celebrations?’

  ‘We like it that way. We had dinner. Wrote some last-minute cards. Read. Went to bed.’

  ‘How long have you and Teddy been together?’

  ‘Eight years.’

  ‘Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill Lainie?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘You have any kids here who are mentally unstable?’

  ‘If you’re talking about emotional problems, anxiety, depression, stuff like that, it’s pretty near one hundred percent. If you’re talking about being bipolar or schizophrenic, we’ve had a few, but not many.
Mostly we’re not equipped to deal with it.’

  ‘Can you give me a list of the kids Lainie had closest contact with? We’ll need to interview them.’

  ‘You saying one of the kids might have done this?’

  ‘It’s possible, but I doubt it.’ McCabe knew a street kid leaving obscure messages from the Bible was more than unlikely, and the same kid driving a new BMW would be as conspicuous as an elephant dancing a waltz. ‘We just want to talk to them. Somebody may know something.’

  Kelly nodded. ‘How far back do you want to go?’

  ‘Since Goff started working with you.’

  ‘That’s over three years. Probably a dozen kids. Maybe more. You may have trouble finding some of them.’

  ‘We have resources. We’ll also want to interview the rest of the staff.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll e-mail you both lists as soon as we can put them together. What’s your e-mail?’

  McCabe handed Kelly his card, then asked, ‘You ever hear the name Abby Quinn?’

  ‘Of course. Abby lived here for about six months last year. She’s older than our usual profile, but her psychiatrist is also on the board, and he thought the experience would be good for her. We treated her as kind of an unpaid intern. She did a little of everything.’

  ‘What’s her psychiatrist’s name?’

  ‘Wolfe. Dr Richard Wolfe.’

  It amazed McCabe once again what a small town Portland was. You kept running into the same people everywhere. ‘How can Abby afford a fancy doctor like Wolfe?’

  ‘Medicare. Abby’s on disability. At least she was when she lived here.’

  ‘Was Dr Wolfe right? About Sanctuary House being good for her?’

  ‘I think so. Abby’s a diagnosed schizophrenic, but she stayed on her meds, did her chores, and tried hard to fit in. She did well.’

  ‘Why did she leave?’

  There was a slight hesitation before Kelly answered. ‘She was ready. It was time for her to go home.’

  ‘No other reason?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she ever meet Lainie?’

  ‘I don’t know. They may have bumped into each other once or twice. Lainie never worked with her. Only Dr Wolfe did that.’

  ‘Do you know where she is now?’

  ‘Harts Island, I imagine. That’s where she lives.’