The Dead Soul (30 page)

66

Sunday, September 14 - 9:00 A.M.

Jake had explained to Dawn in a text message that she needed to take Brendan, Mother Lucinda and maybe a sister or two, and drive to location number two. What Father John had told him about that rogue priest asking questions was too close for comfort. It was time to move.

Early that morning they left St. Catherine’s Convent in the Lynn Woods Reservation, coats over their heads, hustled into the cruiser. In that unmarked vehicle, they were driven south on I-95, past Wakefield, Reading and Lexington, onto Route 2, then down into the Walden Woods section of Concord. Father John owned a cabin near Walden Pond. It was given to him some thirty years ago by a man whose son Father had saved from a heroin overdose. The cabin was surrounded by over two hundred acres of preserved forest. If you didn’t know where it was, good luck.

Father John sent two state troopers Jake had called in up to the cabin. One walked the grounds to make sure a stray mailman wasn’t lurking in the bushes somewhere. The other guarded the end of the driveway. Both carried M-16s and pistols.

Dawn sat with Mother Lucinda on the back deck of the cabin. It was a gorgeous day. Birds chirped loudly, as it were spring. The wind blew in soft, gentle, warm drifts. A bright canopy of morning sun shone on their backs. Brendan played with a model plane. Colored. Picked wild flowers and gave them to Dawn and Mother.

Dawn felt safe here. The nuns were comforting.

“You’re very kind to come here with us, Mother. I appreciate your hospitality.”

Mother Lucinda smiled. Bowed her head, eyes closed.

“I don’t think the troopers are necessary way out here, Mother. But you must understand my husband. Before anything else, he is a police officer.”

“I do understand, Mrs. Cooper.” They both looked toward the driveway entrance. One trooper held his M-16 off to the side and paced the entrance to the driveway. His partner, roaming around the grounds, called on a walkie-talkie every once in a while to ask if everything was clear.

“I’m sure we’ll be able to leave in a day or two. Go back to our homes.”

Mother blinked here eyelids.

“Is Father John coming today?”

“I do not know.”

9:25 A.M.

Father John planned to meet up with Dawn. He told Jake he would watch after his family and decided the only way to fulfill that promise was to stand by their side. He packed an overnight bag and his hunting rifle, a .22 caliber gun his father had given him the day he turned eighteen. It was difficult getting rid of the gun. Nostalgia pulled it back every time the priest went to toss it. Placing it in the car, Father wondered why he was even bringing it. Was he going to actually shoot a man if the opportunity presented itself? Did the rifle even work?

He tossed his bag in the backseat. Placed the gun under the driver’s seat. Pulled up, looked left and right, then took off out of the rectory driveway.

From St. Paul’s, the cabin was an hour’s drive. A nice, quiet, relaxing ride into the heart of Massachusetts’ beautiful woodlands. The ride gave the priest time to consider all that had happened recently. He did not question what role God played in any of it. Yet knew there would come a time when Jake would pester him about this. Jake needed answers to the big questions. He would knock on the rectory door one day, ask Father John to resolve how a compassionate God could allow such a morally corrupted soul into the world. He would demand to know how a caring God could create a human being who scalped women and cut their legs off. “
And I don’t want to hear about free will, Father
.”

Two weeks ago, when Jake first heard Mo was possibly involved in a scandal going back all those years, during the Big Dig era, Jake showed up unexpectedly at the church. He was broken and bitter. He questioned his future, not to mention his faith. He and Father John sat outside on the front steps. Jake said he didn’t want to go inside. He was thinking of leaving the BPD and the Church. “Everything! Screw it. Maybe all of this,” he raged, meaning the Church, “is just a scam. Some ‘thing’ dreamed up by ancient men hungry for power and wealth.” They could hear kids yelling and having fun at the playground nearby. Cars whizzed by, beeped. Waved to the priest. “Nothing makes sense to me anymore, Father.”

“Jake, you need to let it all go. Just show up and not think about the big picture. That’s faith, son. If Mo broke laws, he will need to take responsibility. Same as you.”

“Come on, Father. We either believe or we don’t. Faith is measured by belief. It’s a gift—you’ve said it yourself. I lost that gift on the day that little girl stopped breathing underneath two feet of dirt. Maybe I never had it.”

Father John understood how Jake could fuse the two—and both, his faith and Mo included, had let him down.

“You’re here, Jake. You believe enough to sit with me and talk about it.”

“Where else would I go?”

“That’s fine. I understand that—”

Jake cut him off. “I need to not come here for a while. I hope you understand.”

Father John put his arm around Jake’s shoulder. “If you don’t believe, Jake, then what I’m wearing, this tunic, the amice, alb, cincture and my normal everyday collar and blacks, it’s nothing more than a silly costume. This church is nothing more than a set. I must look like a fool to you.”

Jake walked away. The first time they spoke after that day was when Father John showed up at Jake’s house, unannounced.

As Father John came out of the memory, he took a sharp left off Route 2 and onto the entrance for Route 126. He was ready for the final descent into the Walden Pond State Preservation.

The priest wasn’t paying attention as he drove. Because if he had been, he would have certainly noticed an SUV, black with tinted windows, that had gotten on his tail as he left the church, trailing about a half-mile behind him.

67

Sunday, September 14 - 9:21 A.M.

Buster Turbach would have looked less like a redneck had he purchased himself a good set of dentures. Playing with his gums, as if grinding grass like a cow, didn’t help. His lower jaw poked outward, the front end of a surf board sawing back and forth.

Buster stood in a pumpkin patch, most of which had rotted into the ground because of a recent drought. He smacked at the roots of an old elm with an axe, stopping every so often to take off his hat and, with a hankie he kept in his back pocket, wipe his brow.

The dirt driveway left a trail of dust behind Jake’s Crown Vic. He drove the half-mile strip into a gravel lot in front of Buster’s white clapboarded farmhouse.

Buster walked toward Jake’s car as though he was expecting him.

“Mr. Cooper, I presume.” The farmer stuck out his hand.

“Detective Cooper, actually.”

Buster laughed. “Right. Okay. Let’s clear this up now. That big city crap won’t work with me out here, son. I have the info you want. Be glad to give it to you. Just don’t play any silly, city-slickin’ games with me. I’m a straight shooter.”

“Fair enough.” Jake sounded defeated. “I’m in no position to bargain.”

“Come on in then.” Buster took off his gloves and—like two chalkboard erasers—slapped the dust from them.

The storm door whined as Buster opened it ahead of Jake.

“Nice place you got here.”

“Wipe those feet, Cooper, would you?” Buster let the handle go and the spring swung the door back and slapped against the frame.

In the kitchen, magazines were stacked as if they were being distributed from Buster’s house. Dishes were piled in the stained sink. The cat litter box hadn’t been changed in, Jake guessed, weeks.

“Sit.” Buster had to clear off a chair. “What is it, exactly, that I can do for you, Detective?”

“Tell me about Stuart Micah. You worked up at Our Lady during his day?”

Buster sat back in his rocker. Took a deep breath. “Good ole Mr. Micah.” He explained how much the kids at Bainbridge liked Micah, trusted, and looked up to him. “He was just that kind of teacher. He knew what to say. They ate it up. He selected a group of kids as the years passed. Kids that, you know, were drawn to him more than the others.”

Jake tapped out notes on his iPhone as Buster spoke. Snapped Buster’s photo without the old man suspecting anything. Emailed it into the database as they spoke. Looked up every so often while he waited for a response. “How many kids we talking ‘bout, Buster?”

“Oh, I don’t know … five or six.”

“When did the problems begin?”

“Started with one kid, Alston Sinclair, or so he called himself. His real name was Corey Hatch. The kid talked about how he was from Rockefeller blood and his family would come to rescue him one day. He was delusional, but nice. Well, Micah saw that vulnerability in the boy. Exploited the hell out of it. The boy came forward but had a hard time explaining himself. No one believed him.”

“Did you?”

Buster picked up his pipe. Packed it. “Naw. I thought he was full of shit, to be honest. We all did.”

“What changed your mind?”

Buster smiled. Jake could see his pink gums, white tongue. A faint chime sound went off. Jake had his response from K-PAC.

“What was that there noise?”

“Just the phone.” Jake flashed the screen at him. “Somebody called me.”

“Well, two more kids came forward. Then that one kid, the Meyers boy, escaped. Disappeared. I started to go back and think about things. I started to look for—and you should appreciate this—clues.”

“Meyers. Cal mentioned him. What about this Meyers boy?” Jake allowed Buster to talk while he read the text report.

SUBJECT FROM BAINBRIDGE, ME,

WORKED FOR M.A.S. MAINTENANCE

FROM 1963 TO 2001. DOB: 7/6/1923.

SS# 002-45-8991. NO FELONIES.

“Rainn Meyers was a smart kid. Lots of potential. Much smarter than the others. Mr. Micah took a true liking to this one. The kid was fascinated with animals.”

Jake didn’t realize Buster was so observant. “Let me change the subject for a moment. What’d you say the name of the company you worked for was?”

“I never done said that. But it I worked for Masterson, Atlas and Stevenson Maintenance—at least that’s what it said on my check.” He laughed a phlegmy gurgle.

“Great. Continue. What happened next?”

Buster sparked his Bic. Brought it down on top of the packed tobacco. Took a deep pull from his pipe. Smelled like vanilla. A heavy, thick cloud of blue tinted smoke hung there between the two of them. Buster reminded Jake of a character from “Hee-Haw,” a variety show he used to watch with Casey when they were kids. “Well, this Meyers boy, he was ultra-religious when he showed up. I think, and you’ll have to go back and check the file, but I think, well, he done come from St. Paul’s, down in your neck of the woods.”

“What ’d you say?”

Buster got up and took two cans of Narragansett beer out of the fridge. Jake thought it was kind of early, but what the heck, he didn’t want to insult the guy.

“Yeah … St. Paul’s Church in South Boston, I believe. That be it. Why, mean something to you, Detective?”

“Ah, yes, actually, it does.” Jake took a pull from his beer. The taste reminded him of being a kid, drinking hot hose water that had been sitting in the summer sun all day.

“There came a time when Micah became unnerved when he heard or saw that the Meyers boy and one of the sisters was talking. Micah would stop class in the middle if he saw Meyers talking to anyone in an authority position. Run over. ‘What are you two talking about?’ The Meyers boy, he would turn and run, lock himself in the bathroom. Or take off into the woods.”

“How old was the kid then, Buster?”

“Oh, Meyers must have been maybe sixteen by then. No one wanted to believe him. He started telling these crazy stories of being taken down into some basement at night by Mr. Micah. Finally, a priest came in to talk to the child. Thought he might have been possessed.” Buster rolled his eyes. “Sat him down, got his entire story. It was awful. No one wanted to hear it. This is, what, I don’t know, early eighties? Things was different. People didn’t talk about that stuff like they does today.

“So the kid, you know, he spins this wild yarn. Then he lifts up a pant leg one day and there they are, these fuzzy scars. Never forget-m. The kid’s own initials carved on the meaty portion of his calves. Must have been burned in there or something. It was frightening to look at. Had the texture of nightcrawlers.”

Jake was overwhelmed by this detail.

Buster continued. “No one believed him still. We thought he did it to himself.”

“No kidding. Did you?”

“Yep. Some time later, everyone’s asleep, the boy packs a bag and takes off.”

“Gone?”

“Like a raccoon shooed away from a garbage can with a rock.”

Okay …

“Any idea where he went?”

“Well, this is where that file comes into play—the one Cal—what a bastard he is, friggin’ wannabe sheriff—wouldn’t let you see. Howard Charles Markmann. Old Howard lived by himself about three miles south of the orphanage. They found him three days later when the neighborhood mailman reported an odd odor coming from the kitchen.”

Jake stood. “Continue … please, I need to make a call.”

“Take a moment and make your call.”

Jake dialed Matikas. He was gone. “Ing, tell Ray to check out the name Rainn Meyers with the post office. See if you can nail down a postal carrier by that name. Meyers is our guy. I want him taken into custody immediately.”

Jake paced as he apologized to Buster and asked him to continue.

“Howard Charles Markmann, a good man, God-fearing. You know what I mean.”

“I do, Buster.”

“Well, that Charlie worked hard all his life. Retired. Wife passed on. Lived alone. Someone took a pickaxe to him. Sheriff found a rabbit’s foot there on scene.”

“And?”

“I saw the Meyers boy with the same little relic. You know the kids how they had those lucky rabbits feets, all purple colored and stuff. The Meyers boy liked to tie his to a belt loop.”

“That’s some story, Buster.”

“I ain’t got to the best part yet. Later, clearing out Meyers’s room, cleaning, checking inside walls and underneath floorboards, I find this box.” Buster got up, walked over to the closet. He returned with a cigar box, old and tattered. “This one here.” He handed it to Jake. “Don’t tell Cal I done kept it.”

“Smells.”

“The Meyers boy. He kept his little treasures in there.”

“ ‘Treasures,’ Buster?” Jake had a here we go look on his face.

“Animal parts. Squirrel legs. Rabbit legs. Cat legs. You name it. After killing the animals, he must have kept them as some sort of souvenir. He dyed them all a whitish blonde by pouring bleach on the fur. Things began to make sense after that. I used to find dead animals all over the property—many of them missing limbs.”

“Question, Buster. Does Markmann have any family still livin’ up there by the old orphanage?”

Buster pondered the question. “You know what, as a matter a fact, he does. Brother. Name’s Louis. We called him Loopy Louie.”

“White hair? Feels pretty protective of the old building?”

“Uh-huh. He bought the old place after his brother was killed. No one never knew why.”