Borderlines (26 page)

His voice was hard. “I tried, but she wasn’t very receptive. I thi her parents had her on too short a leash. Being open with people, herself, had pretty much been bred out of her.” Before leaving Natick, I stopped by the Police department. T Chief was a man whose Italian name was so complicated, I never d catch it. He was short, wiry, and nervous, with a quick smile and efficient manner.

He led me into his office, a spacious, well-lit affair with comfo able furniture and good lighting. I grimaced at the thought of the offi I’d occupied during the six-month leave of Brattleboro’s Chief, direcz over the ancient basement boiler that shook the pencils in the cup my desk.

“So you have no warrant? This is purely courtesy?” “That’s right.” He thought about my request for all of three seconds and th turned to his computer. “Bruce Wingate, right?” “Right.” He tapped away for a while, paused, tapped some more. I visu ized other computers across the state waking up to his knocks on th door, blinking a few times, and then pawing through their own fil Finally, he leaned back in his chair, his eyes on the screen. “Red tered as owning a Smith & Wesson 9 mm, purchased about eight ye; ago, and a Colt.38, purchased two months ago.”

I stared at him for a second, my mind suddenly crowded w voices. “No reports of anything stolen or lost?” “Nope.” %171 I thought about that for a moment. Wingate had told me he’d ticed the 9 mm was missing when he’d wanted to do some target actice two months ago.

He’d then changed that to three years ago. had struck me an odd mixup to make. Now I understood-the.38 d been bought two months ago, a fact he hadn’t wanted to reveal. I scratched my head. Also, he hadn’t said the 9 mm was missing; ‘d said he’d lost it. “Do you have any record of his reporting the loss theft of anything else of value?” The Chief leaned forward and tapped a few keys. “Not directly, his insurance company let us know, just in case they surfacedoks like someone broke into his car once a few years back; took the dio, a camera, a coat.” He paused and scrolled the screen. “His wife ported a lost ring last year; according to this, it came off her finger the cold and fell in the snow.

We never got any of it back.” What did that tell me? That he either lied about losing the 9 m-in which case, why did he buy a.38 to replace it?-or he feared at by reporting the loss, he’d get someone in trouble.

Someone he was ways protecting.

I found Mel Hamilton in his office, talking on the phone. From hat I could hear, he was still running the manhunt for Rennie, collectg additional troops from every barracks he could. He hung up and looked at me. His bloodshot eyes were resting on rk, tired pouches. “What’s up?” I handed him my report on the Natick trip. “No luck on Rennie, guess.” He just shook his head.

I then gave him the postcard Julie Wingate had written to Mrs. rissom and explained where I’d gotten it. “It’s a few years old, so the ndwriting may have changed a bit, but it might match the writing that envelope Wingate received the night he died. I want to dig into lie Wingate a little bit-background material. We may not have paid enough attention to her. Who have you been using for your background formation on the Order? Was that a single source?” He rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “No, but I know what %172 you’re after the human interest angle. What the hell’s her name? A Dartmouth prof, bit of a nut, according to Appleby… Kaufman, Ruth Kaufman.” “What department?”

“Religious Studies or Religion… Something like that. She has a degree in anthropology, too, but I don’t know how that plays in.” I wrote down her name. “How about a consultant shrink, someone you use for criminal profiling?” “Barb Barrett, out of Burlington. Good lady.

Maybe a little uptight ‘til you get to know her. The front desk’Il have their numbers.” I thanked him, picked up the numbers, drove to Potter’s office, and asked Flo if she could set up a teleconference between Burlington and Hanover, New Hampshire. Two hours later, the earliest convenient time to all parties, I had a phone in my hand and a blank note pad before me.

We introduced ourselves. It turned out the two professors didn’t know each other. Kaufman had a surprisingly low voice and a nice laugh; Barrett was more precise-professionally neutral, giving credence to Hamilton’s description. I explained what had led me to call them up, that I was faced with a town confronted with several violent deaths and torn by the presence of a cultlike organization. That the possibility existed that at least one member was involved. I then gave details of the Natural Order and of the situation in Gannet.

I laid out my opening question so that both of them might address it from their different vantage points. “What does an outfit like the Natural Order do to encourage a kid to join?” Barrett spoke first. “I’m not going to answer that until I know more about the Order.” “No problem; that’s why Dr. Kaufman’s here.” “Ruth, please. Unless I’m grading your papers, call me Ruth.” I noticed Barrett did not extend the same invitation. “I gather you’ve studied this… is it a cult, by the way?” “I have studied it, and no, I wouldn’t call it that, although technically, you could call the Catholic church a cult, or the Republican party, for that matter.” I laughed. Barrett did not. I started regretting I hadn’t done this In person.

Kaufman resumed. “But the word has negative connotations, involving rituals, psychological abuse, and a generally unappealing attitude.”

“Like Jonestown,” I interrupted.

“Right. I’ve studied The Natural Order for about three years now, %173

nd it’s a far tamer beast. It still carries a lot of cult baggage, but I’ve und it to be more benign somehow. Edward Sarris, the leader, is a irly typical megalomaniac-a man with a mission and he has surounded himself with a hierarchy in which only he holds the absolute ower. But there is a mitigating element to it all that softens the hard ngles.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“The environmental aspect, for one. Unlike many of these organiations, which proselytize themselves as alternatives to the establishent, the Order throws in the added backdrop of saving the world. their enemies are polluters and consumers, rather than religious blashemers. It’s an interesting, off-beat and curiously pragmatic choice. It ives Sarris’s group added appeal.” “Okay, but what about the down side? I mean, this isn’t Greeneace.” “Oh no, far from it. That’s the beauty of this group.

It’s either opelessly cynical or bizarrely idealistic; I suspect a little of both.

I do hink Sarris’s environmental concerns are quite genuine-he was once fully tenured professor with an activist background but I also think e found a way to practice them that makes him the master of a virtual arem. His contention is that humans do not mate for life; that they re designed, emotionally and biologically, to mate at random, as much or sex as for replication. So Sarris breaks up any shows of strong ffection, especially between male/female couples. He often takes a emporary fill-in role himself with the woman. As a male, he must have 0

pinch himself at night, wondering if this is a dream come true.” She chuckled a little at that. “The treatment of the children bolters this.

They are brought up by the group as a whole, rather than y their natural parents. That way, they are more easily influenced by he group ideology and are removed from the adult male/female bondng process. The children are continuously shuttled around from couple 0 couple for lodging. And, of course, the couples themselves are in onstant flux.

The idea is to reduce adult relationships to the purely exual or communal, as in working together for the common good.” “What about the other men? Where do they fit in?” “It’s like a pyramid, with Sarris at the top, holding power over hem all-males and females. Below him are what you might call lders or lieutenants, people who have stuck with him a long time and ave accumulated a certain amount of power, some of it official, some of.

Below them, you get a kind of new guys-old guys hazing relationhip, where people who have been inside awhile hold sway over the ewcomers.

Now the males higher in the hierarchy exercise control %174 over the lesser males by taking their women and by assigning menial tasks; the women, who are essentially without official status in this setting, achieve status by sleeping with powerful males, and supplanting one another in the process. It’s an incredibly complex society, almost entirely directed by interpersonal relationships rather than, say, competence, rank, or age, barring Sarris and a few of his inner circle.

It’s kind of like saying that only the blond can lead in a world of redheads. ‘Course, I’m trespassing here.” “How about it, Dr. Barrett?

Any arguments?” There was a small pause.

“I think it’s always misleading to superimpose our own values onto a personality like Mr. Sarris’s. People in his position-that is, leaders who live among their followers on a day-to-day basis-usually can’t afford our cynicism. It would trip them up sooner or later. What we see as opportunism might well be a form of spiritual expression.”

Kaufman laughed, which made me wince, but Barrett joined her. “I know, it’s a little hard to swallow, and it may not be true in this case. You disagree, Dr. Kaufman?” “No, no… Well, maybe a bit. I think a good part of him is just plain horny and self-serving.” “Okay,” I said once the laughter died down. “That takes care of Sarris.

Now what about the people he recruits?” “That covers a lot of territory,” Barrett hesitated. “Well, try it in general terms first, and then I’ll get very specific, down to one person, in fact.” “Okay…”

There was a moment’s silence as she collected her thoughts.

“The kind of people we’re talking about, the ones that stick it out in a cult, or whatever you want to call this group, tend to seek an authoritarian environment, be it military service, or a state hospital, or a cult. The irony is that they’re often looking for exactly what they’ve run away from at home.” I perked up at that. “From authoritarian parents, you mean. “Stern, overprotective, or downright abusive parents. In any case, the kids you’re talking about-although they aren’t all kids often come from stifling homes, homes in which the parents exercise absolute control over their children. These kids, as a result, yearn for independence, but are incapable of making decisions on their own. So they run from home and head for a life on the streets, or to outfits like The Order, places where they can just be, without having to be responsible, and where they can focus on an authority figure-orderly, street cop, drill sergeant, cult leader, whatever-who is not their parent. Indeed, cult recruiters often comb the streets for just these types.” %175 “And the college campuses.” “Yes, there, too, but for slightly different types. The college reuits share many of the same characteristics as the people I mentioned, they’re less apparent-the mental illness aspects have often been dden by other, more socially acceptable sobriquets, like ‘high-strung,’ oody’.

“Or ‘uptight,’” I said, remembering Petrovic’s word for Julie.

“Precisely. The higher educated, wealthier elements of our society e sometimes far more deluded and dishonest about these things than e street people.” “Okay, I have a specific person in mind, a single child-a girl.

e’s in her early twenties, is now in the Order, and her parents have me looking for her. From what I could interpret from people who ew her in high school and before, it sounds like life at home was ffocating: She didn’t have friends; her father was constantly hovering er her, and she had chronic headaches and explosive temper tanmns, times when she would just flip out. Her art teacher said she was tremely moody, sometimes painting normal scenes, sometimes turng out what he called concentration-camp art, which she then appartly destroyed. “She even stabbed herself once. In fact, that was interesting. The teacher witnessed that-and called the ambulance-and he seemed imply that the self-stabbing calmed her down. Can you make anying of that?” “Not legally.” “This is off the record; just the three of us.” There was a heavy sigh at the other end. “I almost hate to say Nothing. On the face of it, without knowing this girl or anything more bout her, I’d guess you might be dealing with a borderline personality. hat’s a very strong ‘might,’ by the way. I have no way of knowing for re. I’m merely going by the vague signposts you described.” “What’s a borderline personality?” “A pretty unpleasant type, actually. It’s a little unclear whether ey develop or are born with their personality disorder, but their rimary driving force is rage.

“Sounds charming,” Kaufman said softly.

“Hardly. Your mention of the violent temper tantrums would fit ere, as would the headaches and the suffocating, isolated home life.

hey are often hyperactive, difficult to manage and impulsive, and hen their fuse is lit, they blow sky-high.” “Doesn’t sound like someone like that would last three days in a ult.” I also had never heard any mention of hyperactivity in Julie; in %176 fact, my reading had been that she was unusually repressed and quiet.

“On the contrary; a cult might be just the place. Borderlines are not happy with their condition. Their lives are often solely directed at finding a solution. But without proper guidance, they’re likely to seek help from strong disciplinarians. You remember when the solution to a ‘problem child’ was to send it off to the French Foreign Legion or the Marines? The old ‘They’ll straighten you out’ school? Often the borderline himself will try to apply the same sort of medicine. They have the sense that since they can’t control their own rage, they ought to find an environment that will do it for them.” “So how do they function?” Kaufman asked, by now thoroughly caught up in the conversation. “Request regular beatings? Sounds like they’re in search of accommodating sadists.” “Quite the contrary. They internalize their rage. Usually the peopIe around them haven’t the slightest idea that they are half-consumed with anger. Remember, having chosen their surroundings, they try to conform; they follow the rules and regulations precisely and often stand out as exemplary citizens. The cost of all this is on the inside. They hate themselves growing up, they’ve often been told repeatedly that they’re bad, even ‘evil’ and so once in place in their chosen society, they often turn their rage on themselves, sometimes even cutting themselves again and again as self-punishment.