by Liza Rodman
“Yeah, duh,” Herbie said. “I need my bike back. Where’d you stash it?” He finally looked down at the clothes. “What the fuck, dude? You into wearing women’s clothing these days?” he laughed.1
Tony had known Herbie for years; just another one of his slightly loopy friends who could be trusted to forget what he was looking at as soon as he left the room. Tony wasn’t worried. At least not about Herbie.
“These two chicks split and left their clothes here, and now I gotta get rid of them,” Tony said.
Herbie didn’t ask why the women left the clothes or why it was upon Tony to get rid of them. Tony was always up to some whack-job scheme; this seemed like another, and Herbie was already bored. He came to get his bike and hopefully to get high, not to fold clothes.
“Well, I came to get my bike. I came yesterday, but you weren’t around,” Herbie said.
“Yeah, I got wasted on some acid and walked the beach all night.”
“Shit. Kind of a cold night for the beach, wasn’t it?” Herbie asked.
“I walk fast,” Tony said, reaching into a drawer. “Here, take some of these,” he said, ending the conversation.
Tony gave Herbie a handful of Nembutals, took a handful himself, then lit a pipe of hash. That should put Herbie off any possible scent. It did. Herbie left soon after.
Tony resumed his pacing around the pile. As he stared at the clothes, fragmented memories of the previous day kept swinging wildly through his vision, like a bad dream. He knew one thing: his work wasn’t done. Realizing he needed to focus, he took a hit of acid and decided I’d better go check it out Just to make sure.
Still carless, he asked another boarder at 5 Standish Street to take him out to Truro; the man dropped him off at the end of Hatch Road, and Tony walked the rest of the way into the woods. He got in a few hundred yards and saw Pat’s blue Volkswagen parked in a clearing in the woods. Fuck. Her car. Then, as he ran toward his old marijuana patch, he was struck dumb—a different human hand was sticking up from a pile of leaves. It was no dream.
He walked over to where the bodies were buried; Well, not buried, he could now see—just covered. He’d have to fix that. He went back to the VW and found it was out of gas. Oh, right… last night was cold, and I ran the engine to stay warm Shit. I’ll have to carry the tools over a quarter mile from the crypt, where they’ve been since September—since Susan.
Once back in the clearing with his tools, Tony put on a pair of gloves and laid out the ax, at least two more large hunting knives, and an industrial straight-edge razor tool and went to work. He’d learned from his previous “experiments” that there wouldn’t be too much blood—it took less than an hour for the blood to solidify into something like red Jell-O, so things wouldn’t be too messy. God how he hated a mess.
Tony was the only witness to the horrific scene that followed, but he admitted to being “fascinated” by dismembering bodies: “There is no comparison, you can’t say it’s like anything, because unless you actually experience it you don’t know what it’s like. It’s something that you just can’t experience normally. The LSD experience in looking at these things and going through this, it’s like being in another world completely.”2
After he had reduced both women to a pile of parts, he stood looking at the mess and was irritated; he realized all of it, all of them, wouldn’t fit into one grave. Thinking, Why the hell go to all the bother of digging another hole in this freezing-cold forest?, he instead decided to use one of his earlier graves for the “extra” parts. As he dug down into the old hole—he couldn’t remember which woman he’d put there—the smell of rotting flesh came out of the earth like a putrid gust of wind, hitting Tony with such force he vomited. He tried to breathe only through his mouth, but the cloying stench felt almost solid in his mouth; he could feel it on his teeth and knew it would linger on his skin and clothes for days, no matter how many showers he took. When he had dug down to where the shovel bit into the body, he jumped out and began haphazardly throwing Pat’s and Mary Anne’s various limbs into the two holes. Then he threw in Mary Anne’s and Pat’s clothing and boots, which he had reduced to shreds. Finally, he tossed in a purse. One purse! Had Patricia had a purse? Shit. Fuck. Where is Pat’s purse? He looked around at the darkening woods and shrugged. Ah, well, they’ll never find them out here anyway. The last thing he did before he covered the graves over was swallow the last of the drugs he’d stolen from Callis’s office, and then he threw the empty pill bottles in on top and covered the whole grisly mess with dirt and leaves.
* * *
Late that afternoon, a friend of Susan Perry’s and Avis’s, Paula Hoernig, and her friend, Larry, were driving back to Provincetown when they saw Tony hitchhiking in North Truro, headed back to Provincetown with a duffel bag over his shoulder. They stopped to pick him up. He was wearing dark sunglasses; his clothes were filthy and looked as if he’d been in them for days. When they dropped him off in town, Larry turned to Paula.
“Christ, that guy smelled disgusting, like rotten fish.”3
Paula had a head cold and couldn’t smell anything. But she thought the comment odd, since it seemed as if Tony was always taking a shower, sometimes as many as three or four a day, whenever she had visited his and Avis’s apartment. So why did he smell like rotten fish in the middle of winter?
When they dropped Tony off on the corner of Conant and Bradford Streets in Provincetown, he jogged up Conant to his mother’s apartment for Sunday dinner—5:00 p.m., as usual. His mother put dinner on the table like clockwork; that night’s was one of her staples—chicken in tomato sauce. After dinner, Tony and his son Peter, not yet six years old, went to the Laundromat to wash Tony’s clothes.
41 LIZA
After Louisa’s birthday was over and all our friends and their mothers had gone home, the house was quiet again. I followed Nana into the den, where she sat on the couch to knit and wait for Mom and Ron to get home from their dinner at the Red Coach Grill.
“It’s bedtime for you, missy,” she said, but she looked like the one who was about to fall asleep.
I kissed her cheek and headed upstairs.
I tiptoed into our room, where Louisa, Danny, and Jill were already fast asleep. I saw Louisa’s haul of presents was neatly stacked on the dresser. Gingerly stepping over Danny in his sleeping bag, I crept across the room and stood by the dresser, examining each gift.
Her gifts were always better than mine. I’d get socks and old-lady white underwear and maybe a pair of school shoes, but Louisa got the good stuff, including little Holly Berry, even though Mom gave her away. This year’s haul included a bendable Skipper with a full summer wardrobe for her days at the beach with Barbie; a matching hairbrush, comb, and mirror set, all in bright, shiny blue plastic; and, best of all, a bag of marbles. Careful not to upset the stack, I pulled the bag off the dresser and rolled each marble through my fingers. They looked to me like precious stones—mother of pearl, opal, even one that I was sure was a cloudy emerald.
I hated that Mom seemed to love Louisa so much more than me. Some days it felt so bad that I wished Louisa had been born to another family; then maybe Mom would give me all the stuff she gave to Louisa. And the love.
I pocketed the emerald marble, put the bag back on the dresser, and went downstairs. Nana was asleep on the couch. I grabbed my coat and hat and went out the back door, quietly shutting it behind me. It was a cold night, and I hadn’t thought to wear my boots or mittens. I walked around back and sat on the swing. As I swung back and forth, my hands getting numb holding the steel chain, I remembered that the first time Mom had really, really laid into me, it had to do with Louisa. It was early one Palm Sunday morning, and Louisa and I were kneeling in a “pew” that I had made out of the couch cushions, watching a church service on television. Suddenly Mom was standing in the door, her face creased with sleep and very angry that we’d woken her up. She looked over at a wastebasket that Louisa had put in the chair to make room for herself in the “pew.”
“Not me,” I said, happy it was true.
“Not me,” Louisa said.
Mom looked at me. “You must have done it, Liza. Your sister doesn’t lie.”
“She does too,” I said, because she did.
I never saw it coming and heard rather than felt the crack of Mom’s hand across my cheek.
“Your. Sister. Doesn’t. Lie.” Each word came with a slap. Finally, panting and standing over me with her hand still raised, poised to deliver another blow, Mom asked, “Have you had enough?”
I nodded, tears running down my cheeks.
“Good. Now put that goddamned wastebasket back where you found it and put these cushions back where they belong.”
I wiped my eyes and nose on the sleeve of my nightgown and put the wastebasket and cushions back. As I edged by her through the doorway, she gave the back of my head one final smack. “And stop your crying, or I’ll really give you something to cry about.”
Sitting on the swing, I shivered with the misery of it all—winter, the pile of wonderful presents that weren’t mine, and now a shameful guilt for wishing Louisa hadn’t been born. I got off the swing and went back inside, longing for the summer.
It wasn’t even February, and I was already dreaming of getting back to Provincetown.
42 MISSING
Robert Turbidy hung up the phone and smiled. In his conversation with Pat, his “unofficial fiancée,” he told her of a “special surprise” but didn’t tell her what it was. She asked if he’d made her another suede pocketbook. No, it wasn’t another purse. She’d have to be patient. He was so brimming with love and desire after their weeks apart, he couldn’t wait to show her the surprise. Two days later, on Saturday, January 25, he left the tattoo parlor and looked down at his shoulder: PAT in big, bold, capital letters. Straightforward and honest, just like her. He felt such a singular elation that he could have danced down the street.1 On Monday, he finally left California and pointed the nose of his VW bus east, toward home and toward her, and smiled all over again.
Bob Turbidy had served three years in the US Navy as a legal officer, and when he retired from duty had returned to his native Providence and fallen in love with Patricia Walsh. Together, they had traveled the United States in his VW bus, camping their way across the country and back. They loved the freedom of the road and hoped to join President Kennedy’s VISTA service program and teach school on the Navajo reservation in Northern Arizona.
But when he failed to reach Pat on the phone Sunday night, January 26, he started to get nervous. She had specifically told him in their last phone conversation on Thursday that she’d return Sunday from a girls’ weekend in Provincetown because she had to be at work first thing Monday morning. By Monday night, he was frantic and called Pat’s father, Leonard Walsh, from a phone booth by the side of the road to see if he or his wife had heard from Pat. They hadn’t. With three days of travel still ahead of him, Turbidy had trouble avoiding a speeding ticket as he raced home.
When Leonard Walsh hung up the phone from Bob Turbidy, he immediately called the Massachusetts State Police to see if any accidents had been reported involving a blue late-model VW Beetle with Rhode Island plates. No, the police told him, there was no report of any accident or breakdown of a car fitting that description. The next morning, Tuesday, January 28, before he left for work, Walsh called the Providence police saying their daughter had been scheduled to return from a weekend in Provincetown on Sunday but that she hadn’t shown up for work Monday morning, which was out of character for the responsible, levelheaded young woman. Like many police departments across the country, Providence officials brushed off the parents’ concern, citing the growing number of young women who went missing only later to be found after a drug- or alcohol-induced adventure. They assured Leonard and Catherine Walsh that they shouldn’t worry. This kind of thing happens all the time. Their daughter would show up, eventually. Unwilling, perhaps unable to sit and wait, Leonard walked the few short blocks down to the police station on his lunch hour, where he made sure a missing person report was officially filed.
At the station, Sergeant Horace Craig reassured the anguished father that nearly every single missing person report ended up being something totally benign: flat tire, no pay phone, miscommunication. Something. He sent Leonard Walsh on his way with a pat on the back and a promise to call as soon as he heard anything about the women in the pale blue VW bug.
When Lt. Craig watched Leonard Walsh’s sad, stooped shoulders head down the front stairs of the station, he said to his partner, Sergeant Edward Perry, “I don’t like the look of this one.” He didn’t like the fact that two stable, mature women with jobs and no history of vagrancy or substance abuse vanished into thin air on a weekend girls’ trip to Cape Cod. Perry agreed and picked up the phone to call the Provincetown police, giving them a description of Patricia, her friend Mary Anne Wysocki, and the VW Beetle with Rhode Island plates.
Provincetown patrolman James Cook took the call. He was fighting the flu, groggy with cold medicine, but nonetheless spent the afternoon driving the narrow streets from one end of Provincetown to the other looking for the car. He found no trace of it. He made a note of the missing women and their car in the police logbook in red ink to make sure “no one would miss it,” and then went home to bed.
* * *
While they waited for word from Patricia, the Walshes paced their tidy living room. They didn’t dare leave their house; they might miss a phone call or a knock at the door telling them their daughter was fine, the car had broken down on a remote road, the women had hunkered down in the cold, thankful that Pat kept a bedspread in the trunk. They had taught Pat to “prepare for anything on the road,” especially during winter in New England. They’ll be home soon, chilled to the bone but fine! Just fine! Perhaps Catherine Walsh made what felt like her millionth promise to God; I won’t even get mad that she caused her father and me such worry. But in the endless nights after Pat’s disappearance, it could only have been torture for the Walshes, not knowing where their little girl was, and that likely kept them staring at the ceiling, their hearts pounding in their ears; Where are you, Pat?
In the Wysocki apartment it probably was even worse. When the police failed to find a trace of their daughter, the couple had hired a private investigator. But the man was so incompetent or just plain lazy that after knocking on only a few motel doors on Commercial Street and not finding where Pat and Mary Anne had stayed, he reported to the Wysockis that “the girls never went to Provincetown.”2 Perhaps because the Wysockis and Walshes were not of the same social status and had never been to each other’s houses for dinner, they didn’t join forces to find their daughters. Instead, the Walshes waited in their home while the Wysockis waited alone in theirs, an attic apartment on Superior Street near Providence’s old Highway 6. The waiting turned them from middle-aged to elderly practically overnight. Mary Anne was Walter and Martha Wysocki’s only child, their only hope for an old age surrounded by grandchildren at Thanksgiving dinners and noisy Christmas mornings. And with every passing day, they probably felt not age but death creep into their bones and backs and hearts. She is gone, the empty apartment around them whispered. Gone.
43 TONY
The Rhode Island women had been missing a week when, on February 2, Carl Benson, who lived just across Old Country Road from the Pine Grove Cemetery in Truro, piled his two children into the family car for a drive into town to get the Sunday newspaper. Rather than taking the long way around on the main road, he took a shortcut through the cemetery and the Truro woods on an old fire road.
“Daddy, what’s that car doing there?” asked his son from the back seat.
Indeed, thought Benson, as he spied a blue Volkswagen Beetle parked just off the dirt road in a small clearing of trees. Pulling alongside the bug, he stopped and got out of his car for a closer look. As he walked slowly around the VW, noticing its Rhode Island license plates, he felt
the hair on the back of his neck rise, and a prickle of nerves rush through his stomach. Suddenly, he thought he heard footsteps and then someone running through the woods. He spun around, his eyes searching through the thick trees; he felt like he was being watched. He looked over at his car and saw his two children, their faces large through the window, and quickly walked back to where it idled.
“What is it?” his daughter asked.
“Nothing,” Benson said, his heart pounding. “Let’s go get the paper.” He tried not to push the gas pedal to the floor, because he wanted more than anything to get the hell out of those woods.
“Daddy! Don’t go so fast,” his children cried from the back seat.
Benson reluctantly eased his foot off the gas and slowed the car over the rutted road.
After getting the paper, he dropped the children at home and immediately drove to the Truro police station to report the abandoned car.
Chief Harold Berrio was on duty that Sunday. He was half of the two-man force that he had formed in Truro twenty years before, creating the town’s first police department. Stocky and good-natured, Berrio was what might have been considered old-school; he called homosexuals “floozies” and women “broads” and thought every person under thirty was a dirty hippie and a wastrel. And even though Truro bordered Provincetown, Berrio disapproved of all the “funny business” that went on in the town just to the north because it was filled with so many of those very same dirty hippies and drugged-out wastrels. There was a reason, he thought, why Provincetown was sometimes called Helltown.
Berrio took Benson’s report of the abandoned car and then asked if he would take him to the spot. Benson agreed and when the men drove into the woods where the car was parked, they found a note on the windshield. “Out of gas” was scribbled in red Magic Marker on a piece of torn, brown paper; it looked like a piece of a grocery bag.