The Strangler (38 page)

“All night and day there’ll be people over to the house, talking us half to death, eating us out of house and home. We’ll all be fit for the loony bin before it’s over.”

“Okay, Ma.”

He stood and offered his elbow, which she took, and as they processed down the aisle she nodded at the two old parishioners who, she informed Michael in a stage whisper, were a drunk and a philanderer respectively, though the one still drank like a demon while the other’s philandering days were long behind him. The two of them together, she said, didn’t have enough sense to tie their own shoelaces. But the Lord is in no hurry to come collect His fools. Only the good ones like Joe He comes for. Only the good ones. “Only my Joe,” she whimpered, and Michael felt her weight on his arm and he stiffened his elbow to support her.

1963 and the first half of ’64 had been murderous years. Michael’s father, his brother, Amy, even Brendan Conroy—all dead. But they had not quite left. Michael had the feeling that any of them might wander into the room at any moment. They left their things around, too: Joe Senior’s coat still hung in the hall closet, Amy’s handwriting lingered in a notepad. When the newspapers were filled with the Gulf of Tonkin question, Michael wanted to hear Amy boil it all down with her cheerful cynicism. It came back to him that of course Amy was dead; the memory still carried a faint sting of surprise.

Yet life went on. The summer and fall of 1964 were strangely normal. In Michael’s presence, people pretended nothing had happened. They were determinedly cheery and superficial, until the merest mention of tragedy,
any
tragedy, started them stammering. The possibility that Michael might launch into a discussion of his losses terrified them. They would rather whistle past the graveyard—better yet, they would rather not acknowledge the graveyard at all. They wanted to go on pretending that murder could never touch them. The truth was, Michael felt hardly anything at all. He was as hard, or at least as numb, as a stone.

Michael felt no remorse for the blood on his own hands. The only question was: Could a man go from ordinary citizen to killer and back again? He assured himself that he could. Soldiers did it all the time. And if Michael were ever called upon to pass from citizen back to killer again? Well, he thought, soldiers did that, too, and so, if need be, could he.

So went 1964, or most of it.

On Christmas Eve, that desultory semi-holiday, Michael closed up his office in the middle of the afternoon. He had spent the day working, with no particular pleasure or urgency, on an eminent domain action: a few parcels around Scollay Square, which was already being razed to make way for a new “government center.” It was good, dull work. Michael made his way through the gloomy, nearly empty corridors of the State House.

At the Strangler Bureau, Tom Hart and a couple of the BPD Homicide detectives were lugging cardboard boxes out to the street.

“They’re shutting it down,” Hart said.

“Shutting down the Strangler Bureau? They haven’t even charged the guy, never mind tried him.”

“They’re not going to charge him. There isn’t going to be a trial.” Hart grabbed a box labeled
Feeney, J., 11/22/63,
and he hoisted it into Michael’s arms. “Here, make yourself useful.”

Hart took a box of his own and together they made their way out to the street.

“So,” Michael said, “the Boston Strangler is going to walk.”

“DeSalvo’s not going to walk. He’s doing life, on those rapes. He’ll be parole-eligible in ten years, but let’s face it: No parole board is ever going to release a guy who the whole world thinks is the Boston Strangler. DeSalvo is going to do life.”

“But if DeSalvo’s the wrong guy…?”

“If DeSalvo’s the wrong guy…I’d rather not think about it.”

“So what happens to the cases?”

“Nothing. They sit. Technically, if the A.G. does not want to pursue the case, it comes back to us. But realistically it would be impossible to convict anybody on these murders now. Where are you going to find a jury that doesn’t already ‘know’ DeSalvo is the Strangler? No prosecutor is going to touch it. The Strangler cases are closed.”

“So they wait till Christmas Eve to announce that the case against DeSalvo is going to be dropped. And hope no one notices.”

“The stranglings have stopped. If DeSalvo is the wrong guy, then the real Strangler has probably moved on. Or he’s in custody. No sense telling everyone the Strangler got away. It’d just start a panic.”

“Come on, Tom, listen to you. It’s politics.”

“No, it’s government.”

“What’s the difference?”

The detective thought it over. “There is none.”

They came out into the cold. Gray, sunless New England winter. Sunset coming earlier and earlier, daylight already beginning to dim in mid-afternoon.

“So what happens now, Tom?”

“Byron runs for governor or senator or whatever. DeSalvo sells his story to the movies. The rest of us just go about our business.”

“It’ll never work. They can’t keep it quiet forever.”

“The only one who could blow it up is DeSalvo. But he’d have to recant the confession, and he’s not going to do that. He’d rather be the Boston Strangler than be nobody at all.”

“A few years in Walpole will cure him of that.”

“Maybe.” Hart slid his box into the back seat of an unmarked cruiser, then relieved Michael of his box. “Merry Christmas, Mike.”

“Merry Christmas, Tom. Let’s hope the guy coming down the chimney tonight is Santa.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry. Whoever the Strangler is, he’s probably skipped town. He hasn’t made many mistakes. I bet he’s someplace far away, someplace no one is looking for him.”

“There’s no way this stays quiet. No way in the world.”

“Michael,” Hart said, “this isn’t the world. This is Boston.”

“Hey, you wanna see something cool?”

Michael was staring at
The Tonight Show,
a Christmas Eve special with Gila Golan and Woody Allen. He had been watching long enough that his eyes were glazed. His crossed feet, in sneakers, were on the coffee table.

“Hey,” Ricky repeated, urging him to wake up, “wanna see something cool?”

They were slouched at opposite ends of the couch. On the cushion between them was a green glass ashtray.

Michael said without turning, “Yeah. What?”

“Get your coat. We got to go for a drive.”

“Oh, forget it. I thought you were just gonna—Forget it. I’m going home. The hell time is it?”

“Twelve-thirty.”

“I’m going home, Rick. It’s been a long day. I’ve had enough.” Michael swigged from his bottle of beer and sat up.

They would both need a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow was Christmas, and Margaret was determined to snow them all under with presents and food and self-conscious cheer so they would not think about Joe. The tree, next to the TV, was over-trimmed, over-lit, over-everything. Ricky advised that no one look directly into it, for fear of burning the retinas.

“Forget it, Ricky. Mum’s a loon. She wants us back here at eight. You probably don’t even remember what eight in the morning looks like.”

“Am I missing anything?”

“Not really.”

“Come on, then. Sleep when you get old, right?”

“You know what you look like when you look like that? A mouse. Anyone ever tell you that? Beady little mouse.”

“Come on, big brother, don’t be a fag. Get your coat. I want to show you something.”

“Some other time.”

“No, it’s gotta be now. It’s a Christmas thing.”

“A Christmas thing. What do you know from Christmas?”

“I’ll show ya.”

They drove into town, Ricky at the wheel. At Park Street, near the State House, he pulled over. “Come on,” Ricky said.

They strolled into the Common, hands jammed deep in their pockets to hide them from the cold. The trees were loosely strung with long saggy strings of Christmas lights that swayed in the wind like women’s necklaces.

At the Nativity scene, Ricky took a quick glance around, then stepped into the manger and grabbed the figurine of the baby Jesus out of His straw bed.

“The fuck are you doing? Put that back.”

“Just wait, Mikey.”

“You can’t take that. It’s…God.”

“Would you relax. It’s not God. It’s just a little statue. God is within you.”

“No, He’s not. He’s in your hand. Now put Him back.”

“Come on. Don’t be such a baby.”

Michael looked up at the sky to address the Lord. “I have no part of this.”

They walked back to the car with the statue stuffed inside Ricky’s coat.

“You know,” Michael said, “I think there’s a special part of hell for people who do this.”

“Yeah, okay, Mikey. Whatever. Come on, get in.”

Inside the car, Ricky took the statue out again and looked it over, front and back.

“What do we do now, Rick? Make a sacrifice to Beelzebub?”

“Something like that.”

Ricky wrapped his hands firmly around the baby’s torso and with a swift up-down he smashed the back of its head on the dashboard. The head snapped off neatly. It rolled on the floor at Michael’s feet.

“What the f—What are you doing? Look what you did!”

“Put out your hands, Mike.”

“Holy shit! Ricky!”

“Put out your hands.”

When Michael did not respond, Ricky wedged the statue between his legs to hold it upright, then cupped Michael’s hands together. He tipped the statue and poured from its open neck. Stones. Cold and heavy and rough-edged in Michael’s palms.

“Jesus saves.” Ricky smirked.

Michael lifted his hands to see better in the light. Diamonds.

coda

Ypsilanti, Michigan. August 8, 1967.

It might be a deer, all hulked up and leathery and melting with rot, or a dog. Animals are always going and getting killed around here, like stupes, as they flash across Geddes and LaForge Roads from one farm field to another then off into the trees. The carcass is small for a deer, though, and big for a dog. And it’s too far from the road to have been launched here by a car, so it must have been put in this spot, just like, set down in this weedy place near the sagging foundation of a farmhouse and a silo. But why here? This spot is a hangout. A stand of box elder trees shields it from the road. Kids park here to drink and make out. They prowl around the old foundation, toss their beer cans and cigarette butts into it. Why dump a deer carcass here? A joke? A stink bomb?

A boy sidles toward the thing. He is fifteen and burned brown from working his father’s farm all summer. He wears a T-shirt and cutoffs and a filthy Tigers cap with the visor pulled down so low that he has to raise his chin just to see where in the hell he’s going. He rotates his chest, unconsciously, so that his left shoulder is slightly forward, as if he means to sneak up on the deer.

At a distance of twenty feet the air is foul, even out in the open like this. The dungy stink of decay. The carcass is old. It is manuring, crumbling in the summer heat.

Another mystery: The boy was here just a week ago—this place is next to his family’s farm, the fields run right on up to it—and he did not see a carcass here, though you could hardly miss it now. So if the animal was moved here recently, it must have been good and rotten already. Who would touch it then?

Closer now, the boy can hear the flies buzz. They are swarming, excited. They hop up and down on the carcass, they jerk around in the air. Their electric
zzzzzzz
harmonizes with the grumble of a tractor off somewheres, and that is the sound of summer, of hot afternoons, that insect-buzz coming in waves.

Standing over the carcass, though, all the boy can hear is the hum of flies. The black surface of the carcass is seething with them. He can’t see the thing clearly.

The head is misshapen, melted. It seems to have collapsed like some sodden, rotting, black piece of fruit. The flies are clumped thick on it, feasting on the sweet meat inside. The boy gazes at the head a moment until a shape at its center, a little flower of whorls, becomes a recognizable shape—a human ear—and the boy is sprinting, startled, back across the field.

Then the cops come. Sheriffs from Washtenaw County and state police from the Ypsilanti barracks and someone over from Eastern Michigan University where a coed went missing about a month earlier. They close off the roads. They comb through the weeds until they turn up a baggy orange dress and a torn bra and a sandal.

These are sensible men. They have daughters and granddaughters, and they do not like to look at the body—it lies at the center of all this activity; it cannot be moved until the M.E. arrives to handle it—because when they look at the shape on the ground, they see that it is a girl. She lies on her side, nude, her face turned down toward the earth. Once their minds have made this picture, the black carcass seems all the more ghoulish. (It is missing both feet and one forearm. Its chest is riddled with thirty stab wounds.) So they hang back from the corpse. Tight-lipped, they turn their backs to it. They gather on the road to have a smoke and wait while the search continues and the M.E. makes his way over.

A quarter mile away, at the periphery of this scene, well away from the body itself, away from the charged atmosphere, a cruiser is parked across the road and a young deputy directs traffic away.

A car rolls up to this roadblock. The windows are open. The driver is a man, mid-twenties. In the afternoon heat, his blond hair is matted and his cheeks flushed. He wears a damp shirt. The temperature is near eighty-five. “What’s going on?” he says.

“You’ll have to turn it around, sir. Road’s closed.”

“What happened?”

“There was a murder.”

“A murder! Oh my God. What happened?”

“They don’t know yet.”

“A murder! Is it that girl, from E.M.U.?”

“What makes you say it’s a girl?”

“What do you mean? She’s been missing, the poor girl. It’s in all the papers.”

“Well, like I told you, they don’t know.”

“How’m I gonna get back to Ann Arbor?”

There is a distinct honk in the man’s voice, a nasal foreign accent,
Ann AH-buh,
which catches the deputy’s attention. He walks to the back of the car. Massachusetts plates.

“You mind if I ask what you’re doing here today, sir?”

“Heading back to school. I’m at U of M.”

“May I see your license?”

“My license? What’d I do?”

“Just routine, sir.”

“Routine.” The young man makes a skeptical smirk. He knows he’s being harassed but he is willing to play along. The cops are hopped up about a murder in town. It’s understandable. He gets his wallet out of a back pocket, and the license out of the wallet.

The deputy reads,
Kurt Lindstrom, 50 Symphony Road, Boston.
“This license is expired.”

“Is it? I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized. I moved here pretty recently. So much to do, you know? So much paperwork. Guess I’ll need to get a Michigan license.”

The deputy considers, then he relents and offers the guy a friendly little smile, and hands the license back. Today there are bigger fish to fry. “Take care of it right away.”

“Oh, I will. Thank you, Officer.”

“You’re from Boston?”

“That’s right. Ever been?”

“No.”

“Well, you should go someday. Not in winter, though. It’s murder.”

“Alright, then. I won’t.”

“Good, well,” Lindstrom holds up his expired driver’s license, “thanks for the break. I’ll take care of this, I’m gonna get right on it.”

“Welcome to Michigan, sir.”

Lindstrom executes a cautious three-point turn. But before he drives off, he stops to share a last thought with the deputy. “Hope they catch the bastard that did this.”