by Liza Rodman
“That wasn’t there when I was here before,” Benson told Berrio, the hair again prickling on the back of his neck. He knew with a cold certainty that he had been watched when he first sighted the car. The woods he had known and loved his entire life felt suddenly sinister. All he wanted to do was run.
The men walked around the VW, and Berrio took down the plate number, noting that it was from Rhode Island. The doors were locked, and nothing appeared amiss, but when they looked through the windows to the interior, Benson was again filled with dread. It wasn’t that he saw anything obvious; it was just that he knew something had happened in that car.
The men parted and Berrio returned to the station, where he made a quick check to see if the car had been reported stolen; it hadn’t. Satisfied that the car had in fact merely run out of gas and would be reclaimed by its owner soon, Berrio went home for the night and watched The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on television.
The alert about the blue VW with Rhode Island plates and the two missing women that Officer Cook had written five days earlier in red ink in the Provincetown police log hadn’t been shared with the two policemen four miles down the road in Truro.
* * *
Meanwhile, Tony was itching to claim the VW in the woods. Pat didn’t need it anymore, he joked to himself. It’s just sitting there. Why not take it? Why let a perfectly good car rot in the woods? Besides, now that it had been spotted by that guy and his kids, Tony knew he had to move it or lose it.
Later that same night, Tony convinced two young kids whom he considered his loyal followers to help him get the car out of the woods and drive it to Boston. He’d figure out what to do with it from there.
* * *
Leonard Walsh called the Providence police every day, asking, no, begging, for information on Pat and Mary Anne, but still there was no word. Finally, on Monday, February 3, Providence police sergeant Edward Perry, frustrated with the lack of response from the Provincetown police, called the Massachusetts State Police barracks in West Yarmouth for assistance. Detective George Killen took the call.
Killen had earned the respect of his colleagues as well as his adversaries, many of whom called him “Old Stoneface.” Responsible for criminal investigations and prosecutions, Killen, like Perry and Craig in Providence, immediately sensed something was wrong with the missing women’s case; these women were no wayward hippies looking for an escape from their overbearing parents. These were two adult women with jobs, rents, and a practically new car. Killen called Chief Cheney Marshall in Provincetown, whom he’d known since they were teenagers, and hustled tips from tourists on the Provincetown pier. Marshall told him he’d follow up on the missing person report, but privately he was surprised that Killen was taking a personal interest; there were so many missing women, especially in vagrant-friendly Provincetown. Why these two? What he didn’t know was that Killen’s mother’s maiden name was Walsh, the same as Patricia’s.
The next day in Providence, Sergeant Perry issued a try-to-locate for the VW on the regional police teletype. Up in Boston, State Police detective lieutenant William Broderick was given the assignment to look around for the car. In his twenty years as a patrolman, Broderick had gained the reputation as a “knock ’em down, drag ’em out son of a bitch” cop, starting in 1952, when he was suspended for ninety days without pay for an unspecified infraction. But given that ninety days is far more than a slap on the wrist, then and now, it stands to reason whatever he did was high on the list of the state police’s in-house sins. By 1969, Broderick had been stabbed three times in the chest, had had his first heart attack, and had no compunction about drinking on the job. When the try-to-locate came in, the police had a tip that the car might be in the city’s Back Bay neighborhood.
“Jesus Christ,” Broderick grumbled as he headed out, “there’s gotta be ten thousand Volkswagens in that area.”
The detective knew it could be a long night of surveillance so he called his wife to say he’d be home late then stopped by a local package store for a six-pack of beer. For two hours he drove slowly up one street and down another through a rainstorm heavy enough to be mistaken for a hurricane, holding his beer in one hand and driving with the other. He had just crossed Gloucester Street and was heading west on Beacon when there it was: a blue VW bug with Rhode Island plate KV-978 parked in front of 415 Beacon Street.
Broderick knocked on the first-floor apartment door and then watched about twenty young men and women, thinking it was a drug bust, jump out the front windows in a cloud of marijuana smoke and run down Beacon. He told the young woman who answered that it wasn’t a bust; Broderick simply wanted to know who owned the car parked out front. She pointed him upstairs, where he found the apartment door ajar and, upon pushing it open, saw Vinnie Bonaviri and his girlfriend, Cathy Roche, having sex on the sofa.
Broderick cleared his throat. “I’ll wait ’til you’re finished.”
Vinnie and Cathy jumped up and grabbed for their clothes. Once dressed, Vinnie told Broderick it was his brother’s car but that he hadn’t seen him in a few days. With orders to watch but not impound, Broderick left the brownstone and returned early the next morning to continue his surveillance. Around noon, he saw a tall, dark, neatly dressed man with wire-rimmed glasses emerge from the building. Again, with no evidence of a crime, Broderick didn’t approach Tony, but he followed him as he got in the VW and drove to the Punch Bowl, a gay bar on Stuart Street near the old Hotel Statler (now the Boston Park Plaza), which Broderick had surveilled in the past.
Boston’s gay scene was vibrant but still underground in the late 1960s. Adjacent to the city’s infamous Combat Zone, there were entire blocks where bars and dance clubs catered exclusively to gay men and lesbians, and Tony knew where to find them. The Punch Bowl was one of them and was famous for its annual Beaux Arts Ball, where men sported chiffon gowns and the women wore tuxedos. But unlike in Provincetown, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, in Boston Tony was able to frequent the gay bars in anonymity. An hour later, Tony left the bar alone and returned to Beacon Street. Broderick stayed on his post, and later that same evening, he again spotted Tony leaving the apartment. Once again, Broderick followed him to the Punch Bowl and sat at the bar three stools down and watched Tony “play the guys, lead them on. But he always left alone.”1
The next morning, the car and its driver were gone. According to Broderick’s account of the incident, the initial try-to-locate bulletin inexplicably did not include that the VW belonged to two missing women from Rhode Island, or instructions to question the driver. Even more curiously, the report that the car had been located in Boston did not appear to reach either Providence or Provincetown, where police continued to search for the VW on the Outer Cape.
* * *
That same afternoon, Russell Norton was sitting in the Rhode Island College Student Union. Norton, Mary Anne’s friend, had hitched up from Provincetown to meet the women two weekends before, but he’d been unable to find them. They never showed at the Fo’clse as planned. Sitting at the Student Union on February 6, he overheard a man say that he’d met two Providence women at a rooming house in Provincetown. Norton ran to a pay phone and called Bob Turbidy with the information.
Immediately after Turbidy had returned from California on Thursday, January 30, he’d driven straight to Provincetown and asked at every inn and motel if anyone had seen the women. Not realizing the Standish Street Guest House was open, he drove right by it. Turbidy also spoke to Police Chief Marshall, who all but rolled his eyes at the distraught boyfriend’s concern, telling him she’d show up soon; they all do.
But when Turbidy called the station again on February 6 with Norton’s information that the two women had rented a room at 5 Standish Street, Marshall and sergeant Jimmy Meads sat up a little straighter in their chairs.
Meads called Patricia Morton, and she confirmed that the women had arrived on Friday the twenty-fourth for the weekend, but she hadn’t seen them leave; they’d left a note, which Mrs.
Morton told Meads she’d found on Sunday morning. She also volunteered that she had found another note on the women’s closet door asking them for a ride to Truro. That note was signed “Tony Costa.”
Tony Fucking Costa, Meads thought. That guy is trouble. His name just kept coming up; Callis had fingered him for the May 17 break-in and robbery at his medical offices; the owner of a lumberyard in Maine suspected him of stealing a list of expensive power tools; Bob Murray’s Drugstore and Adams Pharmacy burglaries had Costa written all over them; and Arnold Appliances reported a television and stereo missing after their padlock had been cleanly picked. Damn. Meads had known Tony and his family forever, and after Tony had been their snitch in the Von Utter bust, Meads had even vouched for the guy to get him out of jail early on his nonsupport rap. Reluctantly, Meads called Cecelia, telling her he needed to talk to Tony about two missing women who had stayed in the same rooming house.
“Is my Tony in trouble?” Cecelia asked.
He told her no, simply that he hoped Tony might have information about two missing women’s whereabouts.
With nowhere else to look, and unaware that the car had been spotted in Truro and Boston, Meads instructed patrolman James Cook to once again head out to look for the VW. Maybe it had broken down somewhere and the women had abandoned it. As he drove out of Provincetown and south on Route 6, Cook saw Chief Berrio’s cruiser idling on the side of the road, pulled up alongside, and rolled down the window.
44 LIZA
Winter always felt lonely in West Bridgewater. It was just Mom, Louisa, and me in our little house, and I missed the freedom and fun of Provincetown. I also missed Tex; after Mom made me return his ruby ring, he kind of disappeared from my life. I occasionally saw him getting into or out of his family’s car, but he never looked toward our house, and eventually I stopped looking toward his.
Ever since we left the Cape in the fall, I’d been nervous, even more nervous than usual, and the eczema flared up from my fingers to my elbows. I didn’t know what it was about, but I thought it probably had to do with our having left Provincetown so suddenly; I hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to the few friends I made in school, and I didn’t want them to forget about me, the way townies always forgot the summer kids. But worst of all, I hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to Cecelia and Tony. I missed them both, and even though I didn’t do it as much once Mom bought the Bayberry Bend, I missed following Cecelia around while she worked. I loved helping keep her supply of toiletries and towels well stocked on the maid’s cart as she cleaned room to room and helping her fold the laundry warm and fresh from the dryer. As she worked, she told me stories about Tony and Vinnie and about how she grew up in Provincetown when Commercial Street was a dirt buggy path and the harbor was full of fishing trawlers and nets laid out on the wharves to dry in the sun. She talked so quietly I often had to bend toward her to hear her over the drone of the laundry machines. Sometimes I just let her talk, even if I couldn’t hear what she said, because her soft voice could lull me to sleep on top of the warm towels in the bin. I loved the clean tidiness of it all; shelves of perfectly folded towels and sheets, baskets of little square soaps and towers of neatly stacked toilet paper. There was peace in its order. The room was always toasty warm, and while on some days it must have been downright stifling, it never felt so; to me it was a cozy and safe place to hide.
As I looked out the window at cold, bleak West Bridgewater, I tried to imagine what Tony and Cecelia were looking at out their window.
45 THE FIRST BODY
“Christ! I can take you right to the car!” Chief Berrio told Officer Cook.
It was February 7, a full week since the car had been spotted in the woods by Carl Benson and two weeks since the Rhode Island women were last seen. Berrio was miffed to learn that Provincetown police had kept the information about the missing women and their car “all to themselves.” It only confirmed his worst opinions about the goings on “up there” in Helltown.
When Cook pulled up alongside Berrio’s cruiser, the chief was pleased to be the one to take the Provincetown cop right to the missing car in the woods. But it was gone.
“It was right there,” Berrio said to Cook, pointing to a small clearing.
They parked, got out of their cruisers, and walked west into the woods on the dirt road. Within a hundred yards, they found torn and scattered papers, including an insurance policy and registration with Patricia Walsh’s name on it. They looked at each other, each with a growing sense of dread; car owners are not in the habit of tearing up the registration and throwing it out the window. They also found an empty gas can.
“The note on the car said ‘Out of gas,’ ” Berrio told Cook as the two men stared down at the can on the ground.
When Cook returned to Provincetown with the report that Berrio had seen the car in the woods and that its registration and insurance papers had been found nearby, the police finally began to realize that Pat and Mary Anne hadn’t just wandered off on a girls’ weekend gone a little wild, that they hadn’t just walked away from the car and gotten lost in the woods, and that they hadn’t decided to just blow off work and school to party. They were missing and it was now apparent that their last known whereabouts was somewhere between Provincetown and the desolate Truro woods.
Down in Yarmouth at the State Police barracks, George Killen had still not been informed that the car had been spotted in Truro or Boston. When Provincetown police called with the news that Truro Police Chief Berrio had actually seen the car one week earlier, Killen too got a sick feeling in his gut and brought in Detective Bernie Flynn, one of his best detectives, to spearhead what was finally an investigation.
Detective Flynn was a good-looking man, blond and blue-eyed, with the cocky swagger of someone totally at ease in his own skin. He had served as a seaman second class in the Coast Guard during World War II, after which he attended the State Police Academy, where he graduated at the top of his 1946 class. After graduation, he’d joined the New Bedford Police and was respected by just about every man he worked with as a “hellava cop” and a tenacious investigator who didn’t mind kicking down the occasional door.
“If you want to be a nice guy, maybe you should get into another line of work” was Flynn’s motto.
In 1966, when he was offered the chance to work with George Killen at the State Police barracks in Yarmouth, he jumped at it, and he became the stereotypical “bad cop” to Killen’s “good cop.” They were a tough pair to outfox.
When the call came that the missing VW had been spotted (but astoundingly, still not any information about the car itself having been located in Boston), Killen organized a small army to finally search the Truro woods.
* * *
The Outer Cape is famous for a dazzling quality of light that is like no other place on Earth. Some of the magic has to do with the land being surrounded by water, but it’s also because that far north of the equator, the sunlight enters the atmosphere at a low angle. Both factors combine to leave everything it bathes both softer and more defined. For centuries writers, poets, and fine artists have been trying to capture its essence. Some have succeeded, but most have only sketched its truth. That’s no reflection of their talent, because no matter how beautiful the words or stunning the painting, Provincetown’s light has to be experienced.
The light is one thing, but there is also the way everything smells. Those people lucky enough to have experienced the Cape at its best—and most would agree it’s sometime in the late days of summer when everything has finally been toasted by the sun—know that simply walking on the beach through the tall seagrass and rose hip bushes to the ocean, the air redolent with life, is almost as good as it gets. If in that moment someone was asked to choose between being able to see or smell, they would linger over their decision, realizing the temptation to forsake sight for even one breath of Cape Cod in August. Those aromas are as lush as any rain forest, as sweet as any rose garden, as distinct as any memory the body holds. Anyone who spent
a week in summer camp on the Cape can be transported back to that spare cabin in the woods with a single waft of a pine forest on a rainy day.
Winter alters the Cape, but it doesn’t entirely rob it of magic. Gone are the soft, warm scents of suntan oil and sand, replaced by a crisp, almost cruel cold. And while the seagrass and rose hips bend toward the ground and seagulls turn their backs to a bitter wind, the pine trees thrive through the long, dark months of winter, remaining tall over the hibernation at their feet. While their sap may drain into the roots and soil until the first warmth of spring, their needles remain fragrant through the coldest month, the harshest storm. And on any particular winter day on the Outer Cape, if one is blessed enough to take a walk in the woods on a clear, cold, windless day, they will realize the air and ocean and trees all talk the same language and declare We are alive. Even in the depths of winter: we are alive.
It was on such a cold February morning with bright, piercing sun that a small army of men found themselves in a thick forest of pine and scrub oak, searching for what they feared they might find. Most of the men knew these woods; they had grown up there, boys exploring its dark recesses, playing tag through the trees, daring one another to go a little bit farther into the dark shadows, and then, stealing their first kiss in its lovers’ lane. And now here they were, grown men—park rangers, firemen, members of the Truro Rescue Squad, and state and local police—all called to the woods to search for two missing Rhode Island women.
With Killen calling the shots from State Police headquarters, Chief Berrio was the de facto leader of the search, and he strutted through the woods, eager to assume the role; it was his town, after all, and he’d actually seen the car. And while no one relished finding any bodies, his little hamlet of Truro rarely garnered such attention, aside from tourists who got lost looking for the National Seashore. Watching him lean on a shovel and pose for the police photographer, Provincetown Police Chief Marshall remarked, “That guy’s as useless as a tit on a bull.”