All Our Yesterdays (13 page)

“Conn Sheridan,” he said when the boy opened the door. He showed his badge. “Boston Police Department.” He smiled. “Nothing to be nervous about, just a routine investigation.”

The boy asked him in. He was an ordinary-looking boy. Pale blue eyes, round head, pale blond hair, pink face. Medium weight, medium height. Sturdy build.

Conn sat down on the edge of the bed. He took out a small notepad and opened it. He took out his stubby pencil. He didn’t need the notebook. He never forgot anything. He rarely wrote anything down. But it disarmed the people he talked to, and he always took it out. He looked down at it as if to refresh his memory.

“Thomas J. Winslow, Jr., right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Conn wrote it down just as if it were one name in many and he’d forget it if he didn’t.

“Parents’ names?”

Conn felt the phenomenon he had always felt when the stakes were mortal. He seemed to relax in upon himself. Like a hibernating animal whose metabolism slows to get it through the winter. His breath came easily and deeply. His shoulders and arms seemed supple, his spine relaxed. It was as if he were suddenly sensitized to the pull of gravity. The cop part of him seemed to be operating independently.

“My father is Thomas J. Winslow, Sr.,” the boy said. “My mother’s name is Hadley Winslow.”

Through the front window Conn could see the
river moving pleasantly eastward, flowing toward Boston Harbor where it would mingle with the Atlantic Ocean, into which, three thousand miles away, the River Liffey emptied.

“How old are you, Tom?”

“Eighteen.”

Four years older than Gus. Conn scribbled the age in his notebook, as if it were important.

“Both your parents alive?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Where do they live?”

The boy gave Conn an address on Beacon Hill.

“How come you don’t live at home?”

“I wanted the campus experience. My parents thought I should have it.”

Conn nodded.

“Brothers and sisters?”

“No, sir.”

“Only child.”

“Yes, sir.”

Conn smiled at him.

“Me too,” Conn said.

The boy seemed encouraged.

“What is this about, sir?”

Conn continued to smile.

“There was a murder, couple days ago. Found a girl dead in Charlestown, church basement.”

The pinkness in the boy’s face seemed to become blotchy. He started to speak and stopped and cleared his throat and tried again.

“Why are you asking
me
questions, sir?”

“Just routine background information,” he said kindly.

The boy nodded jerkily. He seemed nearly paralyzed. The cop part of Conn thought,
Un-huh!

“Routine stuff,” Conn said nicely. “Things I need to know.”

Conn leaned forward slightly and his voice became suddenly hard.

“Like did you shoot her before or after you bit her on the ass?”

The boy’s face was very pale. His mouth opened wider and Conn could hear him gasping as if he weren’t getting enough air. Then the boy stood up, took a step toward the door, and fainted.

Un-huh!

C
onn put his notebook away in his inside pocket, and squatted beside the boy. He felt the boy’s pulse. The pulse was strong. He checked to see if he’d swallowed his tongue. He hadn’t. Conn stood and looked thoughtfully around the room. His calm was so deep, it was almost lassitude. Methodically he began to search the room.

As Conn searched, the boy on the floor stirred and opened his eyes. Conn continued. The boy looked blankly at him. Conn was neat in his search. He picked things up and put them back, carefully. The boy edged himself toward the wall, and wormed into a sitting position with his back against the wall. He stared around the room for a moment, then focused on Conn.

Conn’s search technique was not linear. He had found over the years that most people hid things where you’d expect them to, so that it was more efficient to search a room in order of decreasing likelihood.

“What are you doing?” the boy said.

Conn didn’t answer him or look at him.

“What are you looking for?”

Conn lifted the mattress off the iron bed frame. There was a pair of small white cotton underpants on the spring. Conn picked them up and let the mattress
drop. He folded them carefully and slipped them into his coat pocket, and turned and looked at the boy.

“How did you get into Harvard?” Conn said.

The boy stared at him. The pallor was gone. He looked feverish. Conn smiled.

“I been a cop now twenty-four years,” Conn said. “And you are the stupidest fucking pervert I’ve ever met.”

“What do you mean? I don’t know what you mean.”

Conn shook his head sadly.

“You kill someone, and you stash her in a place where you’d be an automatic prime suspect. And then you keep the one piece of evidence that will sizzle your ass. Did you want to get caught?”

The boy climbed to his feet, his back still against the wall His movements were slow. Conn knew how he felt. He remembered the claustrophobic weakness in his legs when they took him to Kilmainham Jail.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Conn sat on the boy’s desk, one foot on the floor, one foot on the desk chair. His coat was open and the butt of his service revolver showed. Conn nodded toward the bed.

“Sit down,” he said. The boy hesitated against the wall. Conn saw his eyes move toward the door. It was too far. He’d have to go right past Conn. Conn knew he had no strength for it. He nodded toward the bed.

“Sit,” Conn said.

The boy sat on the edge of the bed.

“You need a glass of water or anything?”

The boy shook his head.

“Tell me about it,” Conn said softly. Looking at Hadley’s son, the stillness seemed to fill him up, to
spread through every capillary. He felt quiet, and very steady.

“What?” the boy said. His eyes were red, and he couldn’t hold Conn’s gaze.

“About Maureen Burns,” Conn said softly. “About how you pulled down her pants and bit her on the ass and fucked her.”

The boy began to cry. Conn continued to speak softly. His voice sounded kind.

“And killed her,” Conn went on. “And where you did it. And why you dumped her in the church.”

The boy’s crying intensified.

“And what the teddy bear was for.”

Conn smiled encouragingly.

“Stuff like that,” he said.

The boy made no attempt to stifle the tears. He sat on the bed with his arms clutched in on himself, crying hard.

“You probably feel like you couldn’t help it,” Conn said. “Like you couldn’t stop and when it got under way and she was weak and struggling you probably didn’t want to stop because the feeling was there. Like a big surge, and then you bit her and that hurt and you fucked her and that hurt, and she was probably crying and then you were through and you didn’t want to hear her crying. That’s about how it went, isn’t it? Everybody always assumes that guys like you kill the victim to cover it up. But that’s not why, is it?”

The boy was sobbing, shoulders hunched, head down. Conn seemed not to hear him.

“You didn’t want to listen to what she’d say about what you did,” Conn said gently.

Then he was quiet and there was no sound in the
room but the boy’s hard crying. Conn waited, sitting perfectly still on the desk. The boy cried.

“I feel bad for you,” Conn said after a while. “You go along and everything is fine and then something happens. You didn’t plan it. You didn’t mean it. You didn’t really want it to happen. But it happens. Homicide in the commission of a felony. Murder one. Eighteen years old, and you’ll be put to death before you’re nineteen.”

The boy was rocking now. Hunched and crying, hands still locked between his knees, he bent far forward and back, and forward and back.

“Wasn’t what you had planned,” Conn said. “Was it?”

“I didn’t mean to,” the boy gasped.

“I know you didn’t,” Conn said. “None of us mean to. But it happens, and we’re stuck with it. How many little girls you molested?”

The boy shook his head.

Conn was patient. “Now don’t bullshit me, Tom. I can’t help you if you bullshit me.”

The boy, still rocking, nodded his head.

“So how many?” Conn said.

“There were three others,” the boy said. His voice was clogged and he spoke very fast. “That’s all. Just three. I never hurt them.”

“Good,” Conn said. “You know their names?”

The boy shook his head.

“They know you?” Conn said.

“No.”

Conn clasped his hands behind his head, and smiled.

“How nice,” he said.

There was something in Conn’s voice that the boy heard. He raised his head and looked at him.

“You got a place?” Conn said.

The boy nodded.

“Where?”

“Weston.”

“You kill her there?”

“Yes.” The boy’s voice was thick with crying, and barely audible.

“Let’s go take a look,” Conn said.

“Now?”

“Yeah, now. You’re in the machine now, kid, and the machine doesn’t care about you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You got one chance, Tom,” Conn said.

The boy stared at him.

“Maybe I can fix it.”

The boy waited.

“We’ll need to talk with your mother.”

“No.”

“You’ve forfeited the right to say yes or no, Tom. Get used to it.”

“You can fix it?”

Conn smiled at him.
A light in the darkness
.

“You can?”

“Maybe,” Conn said. “First we’ll look at your place. Then I’ll talk with your mother.”

I
n the center of Weston, invisible from the street, accessible through a locked gate, at the end of a narrow dirt driveway hidden by foliage, balanced beneath overarching trees, on the edge of a thin brook that ran on down through town and emptied into the Charles River, the ornate little house was as singular and alone as if it had been clapped together in the wilderness. Wisteria coiled unchecked over much of the house. There was a cupola on the roof, and a tiny siege tower at the southeast corner. The windows were bright with colored glass, and the wooden bridge over the brook was elaborately scrolled.

Conn parked in front of the overgrown porch.

“Who’s this belong to?” Conn said.

“My dad,” the boy said. On the ride from Boston, the boy had begun to attach. He had stopped crying. Conn was his only hope, his savior. He put all his confidence in Conn.

“He never uses it?” Conn said.

“No. He foreclosed it during the Depression and couldn’t sell it, so he kept it. Then, when I got my license, my mom suggested I could use it as kind of a clubhouse. Place to keep my stuff.”

The boy unlocked the front door, and they went in. The big living room was dominated at the far end by a floor-to-ceiling fieldstone fireplace. There was an overstuffed chair and a huge sofa, organized around
the fireplace. There were half a dozen huge stuffed animals posed around the room. The floor was littered with fashion magazines and comic books. There was a half-empty bag of potato chips on the coffee table. On the fireplace mantel were two empty Coke bottles, and a half-wrapped Sky Bar. A Daisy Red Ryder model air rifle stood in a corner, near the fireplace. In a bookshelf built in beneath the front window were a collection of boys’ books by Joseph Altsheler and Albert Payson Terhune and John Tunis.

“You kill her here?” Conn said.

The boy nodded earnestly.

“Where’d you get the gun?”

“It’s my father’s.”

“What did you do with it afterwards?”

“I put it back.”

“Clean it?”

“I don’t know how.”

“If you don’t clean it after you use it you’ll eventually pit the barrel.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Conn didn’t say anything. The room was quiet. It had a closed-up, unoccupied smell, made thicker by the dampness of the stream that ran close to the foundation.

“You know why you killed her?”

“No.”

Conn nodded slowly, his eyes ranging over the silly room, a child’s idea of a hunting lodge.

“What was the teddy bear for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why’d you take her underpants?”

“I don’t know.” The boy was beginning to resent all these questions.

“Why’d you take her to the church?”

“I couldn’t leave her here,” the boy said with a faint hint of exasperation.
These things are self-evident
, his tone said.

“Why didn’t you just dump her on the side of the road?” Conn said.

“I don’t know.”

Conn put his hands into his back pockets and stood looking at the smallish blond boy. He had barely any beard.

“No. Of course you don’t,” Conn said.

T
he Winslows lived in a big brick town house behind a black wrought-iron fence on Beacon Hill, set back from Mt. Vernon Street by a brick courtyard. Conn took a business card from his pocket.

“Give this to your mother, and tell her I’ll see her alone,” Conn said.

“What if she’s not home?” her son said. His voice was thin and full of tremolo.

“I’ll wait,” Conn said.

A black maid let them in and showed Conn into the front room. It had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the courtyard to the street. There was a green marble fireplace with an ornate walnut mantel. There were books on the shelves and leather chairs. A walnut inlaid radio and record console stood against the far wall.

While he waited, Conn stood with his hands in his pockets looking out the window. The house seemed to hum with silence. Outside the window a middle-aged couple walked ordinarily by on Mt. Vernon Street. When he had first come to Boston he had looked up Thomas Winslow in the phone book. There were seven of them. He didn’t know the middle initial. And he had closed the phone book and put it away, the way a recovering alcoholic might put the unopened bottle back in the drawer. Now, standing in
her front room, he felt as if the bottom had fallen out of his soul and all of him was in danger of draining away. The magnolia trees in the courtyard had begun to bud up, but it was much too early in April for them to do more than that. They wouldn’t be showy until summer. By August they’d be nondescript. She would take a little while. She would have to deal with the shock of his name. He doubted the kid would tell her what he’d done, but here was a cop wanted to talk to her about him and that would distract her.