Lesser Evils Read online

  “I’d say he should borrow his money from a bank. What’s this guy’s name?”

  “Russell Weeks.”

  “Who’s got that one?”

  “The locals. Barnstable police. Lieutenant Warren. Do you know him?”

  Stasiak shook his head. “So what does Russell Weeks say?”

  “Not much. His wife is doing most of the talking. She’s a domestic over at the DuPont place in Oyster Harbors.”

  “DuPont?”

  “Right. Of DuPont chemical. Some lawyer they keep on retainer called my office. Apparently, the woman has been with the DuPonts for more than twenty years, so there’s a relationship there. I guess she went to Mrs. DuPont with her problem—or her husband’s problem—and they took up her case.”

  “Have they given you any names?”

  “Not yet. The husband didn’t even want to report it at first. He’s too scared to name names right now, but I think he’ll come around.”

  Stasiak sipped his drink and looked around the room, whether lost in thought or boredom, Elliott couldn’t tell.

  “We probably ought to take a look at that one, too,” Stasiak said.

  “Thank you. I was going to ask you if you would.”

  When they had finished their business, Elliott said goodbye, sneaking a glance at the mostly full pilsner glass. Stasiak ordered another martini and watched the evening come down over the sleepy airfield across the road. He left the VFW and drove east, down Cape toward his house in Wellfleet. It was dark now, and fog was coming in off the ocean, invading the woods and the hunched forms of the little towns.

  Stasiak thought about the parents of the missing boy—the Gilbrides. They had come up from Tennessee and were staying in a cottage in Truro. The boy disappeared around 10 A.M. Monday, July 9, three days ago. Stasiak had gone at the parents hard. He impounded their car, photographed them, and had his men showing their pictures at service stations, restaurants, and any other place where they might have been seen around the time of their son’s disappearance. In the end, he had to let them go but he still wanted to have a go at the mother. She had been so delicate the first time around that the most general questions set her off to sobbing and tearing her clothes. He understood they had a lawyer on the way from Knoxville. Stasiak wanted to get to her before they arrived but he didn’t think he was going to get the chance. If Elliott didn’t have the stomach for this, Stasiak would have to straighten him out. He knew how far he could go before a confession could be considered coerced. And he would tell Yost he didn’t give a shit about whatever niceties they operated by down here. He could tell him a few hair-raising tales that would change his thinking, like the discovery of the Derry child in a basement cistern in Worcester.

  He pulled into a small gravel lot where there was an A&W stand. But for Stasiak and his Ford, the lot was deserted. The A&W glowed orange and white, suffusing the fog around it with electric radiance so that it appeared enveloped in an aura. The kids who worked there had the sliding service windows open and he could hear them talking inside in dreamy, lackadaisical tones, like the voices of people who are just beginning to drift off to sleep.

  Stasiak walked over to a phone booth and shut the door behind him. He deposited a dime and dialed.

  “State police, Detective Heller.”

  “What’s the situation, Heller?”

  “The situation is good.”

  “Anything I need to know about?”

  “No. Everything is quiet.”

  “We need to find Russell Weeks,” Stasiak said.

  “Russell Weeks.”

  “Yeah, Russell Weeks and Mrs.Weeks. Are you familiar?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get in touch with Stevie.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  2

  The rented house where Warren lived with his son was a simple two bedroom A-frame in a hastily constructed postwar development called General Patton Drive. Intended as affordable housing for returning GIs, the neighborhood had gradually become a refuge for struggling families and feckless couples. It wasn’t like that in the beginning. Warren remembered the bright colored trim on the houses and the newly planted trees, emerald lawns, and crisp-edged walkways, the little neighborhood a declaration of promise and hope. He had been in the Pacific for three and a half years, and even now he remembered the joy and the expectation, even though things had gone so wrong. He recalled how fireflies made semaphore over the lawns on June evenings and the smell of pillowcases that had hung out all day in the fresh air. General Patton Drive was populated by young couples just starting their lives again after the war, but they had all gotten out and now he was here with Little Mike and he often felt like a huge explosion had gone off in his life, gutting it from the inside and leaving just the walls, a vacant hulk inside which he and the boy moved around as if in a dream.

  He was grateful for Jane Myrna, who he had hired to watch Mike over the summer and who somehow made his situation seem less desperate. It was not only her presence but the wake it made, the things she left behind, the slight scent of the soap she used, the little art projects with Mike, the hair band that was now sitting in plain view on the table where Warren had put it so that she would see it when she came on Monday, an act that seemed to want scrutiny even as he assured himself of its innocence.

  Warren stood in the kitchen at the back door in his T-shirt, smoking. He had ground beef patties sizzling in a frying pan on the burner for dinner, the grease spitting and coagulating on the counter. The house was so small that the living room was just a few steps away. Little Mike was on the floor in his Dr. Dentons, which he insisted on wearing even though he was too old for them. Warren watched him as he lay on his side, playing with his latest toy, the washing machine. He was alternately fascinated and dismayed by the things Mike came up with to amuse himself. They indicated an inventiveness that would never have the chance to develop and manic obsession. For the past few months, Mike had been fascinated by things involving laundry. He was underfoot when Warren did the wash, pestering his father to leave the lid open so he could sit on the kitchen counter and watch the water. He’d fashioned an agitator of sorts from the wheel of a broken Tonka truck affixed to the end of a long pencil, which he whirled around in a mason jar filled with soapy water and little strips of cloth. He occupied himself for hours this way.

  Warren looked down at the half smoked Chesterfield in his fingers, and then out over the clothesline and the oil tank. In some ways, staying here seemed like gratuitous penance, not only because of the declining neighborhood but because of the things that had happened here. But the rent was low and while Warren didn’t have much money, he was trying to put away enough in case there was some kind of operation or treatment that would help Mike. The doctors had told him that the boy’s mental retardation was a permanent birth defect, but they were coming up with new things all the time—like that new polio vaccine—and you never knew.

  A week earlier, Jane had told him about a place that was run by the Catholic Church and suggested that it might be a good alternative to public school. Warren knew about Nazareth Hall. He saw the kids sometimes when he drove past the building and he felt compelled to look away. Jane told him that there were professionals on the staff, psychiatrists and nuns who had done graduate work in developmental psychology and mental retardation. Some of them had clinical experience in hospitals. Warren told her he would think about it.

  The sun was going down in a milky haze just over the tops of the trees. A sound caught the air, a screech or a cry, it was hard to tell. It could have been a cat or a woman or a child. It occurred to Warren how difficult it was to find respite from the prevailing strain and watchfulness that he felt. He had spent his entire life around men, and for most of it held authority over them, but he did not feel comfortable in their midst. Marvin Holland, the Barnstable chief of police, had suffered a heart attac
k a month earlier. As the next ranking officer, Warren was acting in his place. The chief was sixty-five, and with a history of health problems, it was likely he wouldn’t be coming back to work. There was a good possibility that Warren would be appointed in his place, though there was the fact that he was not a native and had grown up in Boston. It made for the kind of provincial drama that people found irresistible. The subject of Marvin Holland and the chief’s position triggered in him an unpleasant alertness. He was wary, grasping, and anxious, the way ambition always made him. He felt unmoored.

  What did he want, he wondered. The future stirred like a big animal whose sleep has been disturbed. From the doorway where he stood, he looked into the darkness of the little house, where his police radio sat on the kitchen counter as silent as a stone.

  The next day, Warren was in his office going over the call log from the midnight-to-eight shift when the two detectives came in. Ed Jenkins and Phil Dunleavy were tight-lipped and businesslike, and they offered no greeting as Jenkins took up a post leaning against a file cabinet and Dunleavy sat across the desk from Warren. Ed Jenkins was one of those small men whose comportment declares they are someone to be reckoned with. He had a bent nose, an aggressive set to his jaw, and he moved with the exaggerated confidence of someone whose stature makes him doubt himself. Jenkins could be foulmouthed and act the big city wise guy when he needed to, but in fact, Warren knew him to be modest and self-deprecating. Dunleavy was a big, rangy figure with narrow shoulders and a slight stoop in his posture. He had fine, receding blond hair going to white and an impassive face, a bit jowly and aristocratic-looking. Warren had worked with Jenkins and Dunleavy long enough to know they were skilled and dependable. At times, he felt overwhelmed running the department and he was grateful for their presence.

  A boy had been missing in Truro for four days. It was outside of Barnstable’s jurisdiction but Warren had called the Truro chief of police that morning to see if there was any information he could work on from this end. The chief was uncooperative, as expected. He had the state police working with him, and didn’t Warren have his own troubles over there?

  There was a stack of pictures of the child on the desk. A broad grin, freckles on the bridge of his nose, a crew cut with a cowlick in the front. The picture had been given out to all the patrols to post in grocery stores, on street corners, and on phone booths. Warren asked the two detectives, “Have you guys got anything at all figured on this kid?”

  “Just what we got on the teletype,” said Dunleavy. “That’s Truro’s thing. We weren’t even looking at it. Were we supposed to be looking at it?”

  “No. I was thinking we could help out if they’d give us some information to work with. I talked to their chief this morning.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing doing.”

  “He’s a horse’s ass,” said Jenkins.

  “If there’s anything new, they’re sitting on it,” Dunleavy said. “The kid probably wandered into a pond somewhere.”

  “They got the staties working on it, don’t they?” Jenkins said. “Let them figure it out. The Truro cops couldn’t find the kid if he was standing out in front of the station.”

  Warren turned the pictures of the child facedown. “What else?”

  “Russell Weeks,” Dunleavy said.

  The Weeks case had originated with a call from Elliott Yost, who had been contacted by an attorney for the DuPont family regarding the plight of a longtime domestic worker at their summer estate in Oyster Harbors.

  Miriam Weeks, a favorite of Lois DuPont, had approached her employer with a tale of woe regarding her husband’s financial indiscretions and a group of men from whom he’d borrowed a hundred and fifty dollars. Russell Weeks was taken from his home late one night, driven somewhere, and administered a severe beating. He packed a small bag and disappeared, leaving Mrs. Weeks and their nine-year-old daughter alone.

  Warren got this information during a meeting in the district attorney’s office with the Duponts’ attorney, who was skeptical of the story. Dunleavy and Jenkins had driven the winding roads of Marstons Mills in search of Russell Weeks’s haunts and acquaintances and turned up not much of anything. There were no reports of him consorting with outsiders or having borrowed one hundred and fifty dollars.

  Interviewing Miriam Weeks had proven elusive so far. She consented to a meeting with Warren through the Duponts’ attorney, but just the day before, Mrs. Weeks and her daughter also disappeared, leaving no word where they had gone.

  Warren drove out to their home. It was faintly dilapidated, weathered and worn just a little past the point of rural charm. He tried the side door and found it unlocked, which was not unusual in that part of town. There was a smell of sour milk, or rancid garbage. He called out and got no answer. The icebox hummed in its corner, a dishrag was hung over the faucet in the sink.

  An unfinished breakfast was on the kitchen table, the milk curdled in two bowls. A spoon lay on the floor, and a short distance away, near the cabinets, an overturned box of Maypo. He called out again but the house was silent.

  Dunleavy reached across Warren’s desk for the day’s patrol roster. “Russell Weeks took a powder,” he said. “Got tired of hearth and home and lit out for other pastures. If you ask me. Maybe he got into money trouble. Maybe. But either way, it’s a loser.”

  “Well the district attorney is very interested in it,” said Warren.

  “I’m sure he is. It’s not every day you get a call from the attorney for the DuPonts. Elliott wants to score some points.”

  “Weeks doesn’t have any family on the Cape?” Warren asked.

  “We’ve looked all over, lieutenant,” Jenkins said. “There was talk of a brother in New Hampshire, but so far we haven’t found him.”

  Warren flipped through the thin file on Russell Weeks. “What else have you guys got going?”

  “I’m due in court at 11:30,” Dunleavy said.

  Jenkins said, “I’m going out to that place on Phinney’s Lane that got broken into last night. Atomic Liquors.”

  Warren gathered up the photos of the missing boy. “When either of you gets a chance, swing out to Marstons Mills, see if you can find anything on the wife and daughter.” He slid the photos in their direction. “And take these and put them out at the front desk.”

  3

  In the morning, Father Boyle took his breviary and paced the veranda. There had been dreams the night before. From years of now disused practice, he said the first words of an act of contrition and then abandoned it. Prayer, or at least anything more strenuous than reciting the words, was a thirsty walk down an empty highway. He was bored by the featureless landscape of his soul, and sometimes the boredom threatened to turn into a kind of terror, like that experienced by the pioneers’ wives, who found themselves under the monstrous sky of the open prairie, who were undone by surreal horizons, relentless winds, and the weight of the void.

  Father Boyle suspected he had come to the end of a life of faith. He went through the world trying to do good, though he felt a charlatan and a fraud. He flipped through his breviary. He whistled into the chasm. When he looked at the sum of his years in religious life he was left with a sense of folly. He felt himself surrounded by old debris, the remnants of a discredited past among which he continued to live. He felt oppressed by the sentimental props and tired ritual. There seemed to be nothing left but a generally mystified feeling about the years when he burned from within. He could make no sense of that time and didn’t miss it so much anymore.

  Back in his room he had dozens of plant specimens lying about, drying on windowsills, laid in rows across the surface of his steamer trunk and tucked into the pages of the thick, musty botanical guides he had pilfered from the library. His hobby as an amateur naturalist gave him the happiness he supposed he should have gotten from his vocation. He dutifully visited the sick, aided the poor, and waited for God to appear a
t his bedside, but he would have preferred to be left alone with his sketchbooks and the mysteries of the woods and meadows.

  Why he continued with it—the cancer patients, the mentally ill, saying the Mass—he did not know. Father Keenan said it was because he had faith still, while he himself suspected it was nothing more than the comfort of the familiar. He put a finger in his mouth, probed the vacant space once occupied by one of his incisors, and wondered if he was headed for a nervous breakdown.

  Through the window screens he could hear the housekeeper’s voice in desultory conversation with Father Keenan. He entered the kitchen, murmured, “Good morning,” and went to the coffeepot.

  “Brother Terrance,” Father Keenan said. He sat at the table with the newspaper in front of him, dressed in the black short-sleeved shirt with a white collar. Mrs. Gonsalves, who had been leaning against the counter with her arms folded, went rummaging in the refrigerator. Father Keenan was a large man, what might have been described as beefy but now, at thirty-eight, was beginning to head toward portly. He had a great broad plain of a face and a full head of dark blond hair. His nose was flat, and in combination with a cleft lip that was so slight as to be barely noticeable, his face bore the impression of mild disfigurement. “What’s the word?” he said, as Father Boyle took a place at the table.

  “Not much, really. Going up the road in a bit.”

  Father Keenan paused for a moment. “Ah. Today is Thursday.”

  Nazareth Hall, a private school for retarded children, was about two hundred yards down South Street from the church. The priests referred to it as “up the road.”

  “Weren’t you over with the Knights of Columbus last night?” Father Boyle asked as he took a place at the table.

  “I was indeed.”

  “Jolly fellows, the knights.”

  “That they are.” Father Keenan chuckled as he raised his coffee cup to his lips, trying to suppress a laugh. He and Father Boyle had once gotten into a discussion about the Knights of Columbus that took an uncharacteristically irreverent turn. Father Keenan was judicious in his wording but he’d been hinting at them being dolts and boozers. Father Boyle had goaded him on, trying to get him to cross the line. It was a running joke with them now.