God's Spy (8 page)

celibate. But that doesn’t stop me from being attracted to Doctor
Dicanti,’ said Fowler, gesturing towards Paola, who couldn’t help
turning red. ‘So I know I am heterosexual, but I choose chastity
of my own free will. I’ve integrated sexuality into my personality,
although I don’t exercise it. Karosky’s case is very different. The
profound traumas of his infancy and childhood provoked a split
down the middle of his psyche. Karosky clearly rejected the part of
his being that is sexual and even violent. He both hates and loves
himself, simultaneously. This has resulted in outbreaks of violence, schizophrenia, and finally in the abuse of minors, duplicating his father’s abuse. In 986, during his pastoral year, Karosky had his first incident with a minor.
⁶
The victim was a young boy, fourteen years old, and there were kisses and petting but nothing else. We believe the minor did not consent to it. In any case, there’s no official proof that the bishop heard about this episode, and in the end he ordained Karosky as a priest. From that day on, Karosky had an unhealthy obsession with his hands. He washes them between thirty and forty
times a day and takes exceptional care of them.’
Pontiero searched hurriedly among the hundreds of macabre
photographs spread over the desk until he found the one he was
looking for and spun it through the air to Fowler. The priest made
an effortless two fingered catch, an elegant move that impressed. ‘Two hands, severed and washed, placed on a white cloth. In the
church, white cloth is a symbol of respect and reverence. There are
many references to it in the New Testament. As you know, Christ
was covered with a white shroud in his tomb.’
‘Not so white now,’ Troi jested.
‘I’m sure you would be delighted to apply your gadgets to the
shroud in question,’ Pontiero commented.
‘No doubt about that. Please continue, Fowler.’
‘A priest’s hands are sacred. With them he administers the sacraments. This fact stayed very firmly in Karosky’s mind, as we’ll see.
In 987 he worked at a school in Pittsburgh, where the first cases
of abuse took place. His victims were young boys aged between
eight and eleven. Karosky had never experienced any type of adult
consensual relationship, homosexual or heterosexual. When the
complaints began to reach his superiors, they did nothing at first.
Later they transferred him, from parish to parish. Very soon there
was a complaint of an attack on an altar boy, whom he struck in
the face, but still there were no lasting consequences . . . Finally he
arrived at the Institute.’
‘Do you think that if he’d begun to receive help earlier, things
would have turned out differently?’
Fowler’s whole body was tense, his hands twitching. ‘We never
helped him in the slightest. The only thing we achieved was to liberate the killer lurking inside him. And then we made it possible for
him to escape.’
‘It was that bad?’
‘Worse. When he arrived, he was a man overwhelmed as much
by his uncontrolled emotions as by his violent outbursts. He felt
remorse for his actions, though he denied them many times. He
was simply unable to control himself. But with the passage of
time, the wrong-headed treatments, and his close contact with the
dregs of the priesthood who lived alongside him at the institute,
Karosky turned into something much worse. He became cold and
ironic. The remorse disappeared. As you can see, he had blocked
out the most painful memories of his childhood. That alone turned
him into a pederast. But then came the disastrous regression
therapy . . .’
‘Why disastrous?’
‘It would have been better if the objective of this treatment had
been to give him some peace of mind. But I fear that Doctor Conroy
had a morbid, almost immoral curiosity for Karosky’s case. In similar
cases, the person doing the regression therapy normally attempts,
through hypnosis, to implant positive events in the memory of the
patient, urging them to let go of the worst things that happened.
Conroy prohibited this line of action. And not only did he record
Karosky; he forced him to listen to the tapes in which he begged his
mother, in a child’s voice, to leave him in peace.’
‘What sort of Mengele did they have running that place?’ Paola
was in shock.
‘Conroy was convinced that Karosky had to accept himself.
According to him, it was the only solution. He said Karosky had to
recognise that he’d had a difficult childhood and that he was a homosexual. As I told you before, Conroy used to decide his diagnosis
in advance and was then determined to squeeze the patient into it,
with a shoehorn if necessary. To top it all off, he subjected Karosky
to a cocktail of hormones, some of which were experimental, like
the variant of the contraceptive Depo-Covetan. Using this drug,
injected in abnormal doses, Conroy reduced Karosky’s level of
sexual response; but in doing so he increased his aggression. The
therapy went on and on, with no positive results. There were periods
in which Karosky did calm down, and Conroy interpreted this as
a sign that his therapy was succeeding – but they were just that:
periods. In the end it was nothing short of a chemical castration.

60 Karosky is now incapable of having an erection, and the frustration is destroying him.’

‘When did you first come into contact with him?’
‘I spoke with him frequently when I arrived at the institute in 99. Between us we established a relationship with a certain level of trust, but it collapsed later on. I’ll tell you about that in a minute, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Fifteen days after his arrival at the institute, the powers that be decided to give Karosky a penile plethysmograph – that’s a test where the penis is connected to a measuring device by means of electrodes in order to measure the sexual response to various stimuli.’
‘I’m familiar with that test,’ Paola said, like someone who had just heard about an outbreak of the Ebola virus.
‘Anyway, he took it very badly. During the session he was shown terrible images; they really went too far.’
‘Meaning . . .?’
‘Images of paedophilia.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Karosky reacted violently, and seriously wounded the specialist running the machine. The attendants finally managed to restrain him; otherwise he would have killed the guy. In the wake of that episode Conroy should have recognised that Karosky was beyond treatment and sent him off to a mental hospital. But he didn’t do it. Instead he hired two security guards, and ordered them not to take their eyes off Karosky; then he started subjecting him to the regression therapy. That coincided with my arrival at the institute. As the months went by, Karosky gradually withdrew into himself. His outbursts of anger disappeared. Conroy attributed this to a significant change in his personality and decided to reduce the watch on him. Then, one night, Karosky forced the lock on his room - they used to lock him in at certain times, as a precautionary measure - and he lopped off the hands of a priest who slept in the same wing. He told everyone that the priest was an impure man and that he had seen him touching another priest in an “improper” manner. While the guards ran towards the cell where the priest was howling in pain, Karosky was busy washing his victim’s hands under the nozzle of the shower.’
‘The same modus operandi. As far as I’m concerned, that removes the last shred of doubt,’ Paola said.
‘To my amazement – and fury – Conroy didn’t report the incident to the police. The mutilated priest received compensation and a team of doctors in California managed to reattach his hands, although he had much less movement in them than before. In the middle of all this, Conroy ordered security to be stepped up and built a six-by-ten-foot isolation cell. This was where Karosky lived until he escaped from the institute. Session by session, Conroy was failing and Karosky was evolving into the monster he is today. I wrote several letters to the cardinal, explaining the problem. I never received an answer. In 999 Karosky escaped from his cell and committed his first known murder: Father Peter Selznick.
‘We heard about that here, but it was said to be a suicide.’
‘Not true. Karosky escaped from his cell by forcing the lock with a ballpoint pen and then he used a metal shank he had sharpened in his cell to cut out Selznick’s tongue and lips. He also sliced off Selznick’s penis and forced him to eat it. It took Selznick three hours to die, yet nobody knew anything about it until the next morning.’
‘What did Conroy say?’
‘He officially defined the episode as a “setback”, and managed to cover it up by coercing the county judge and the sheriff to issue a ruling of suicide.’
‘And they went along with it? – just like that?’ Pontiero asked.
‘They were both Catholics. I think Conroy manipulated them by appealing to their duty to protect the Church. But even if he didn’t want to admit it, my boss was very much afraid. He watched as Karosky’s mind slipped away from him, as if it were absorbing his will day by day. In spite of this, he refused on repeated occasions to report the incidents to a higher level, no doubt for fear of losing his position. I wrote more letters to the archdiocese, but they wouldn’t listen to me. I talked with Karosky and couldn’t find even a hint of remorse. Finally I realised he’d become someone completely different. That was when all contact between us broke down and it was the last time I spoke to him. I can’t lie: the beast locked up in that cell scared me. And Karosky stayed right where he was, at the institute. They set up cameras, hired more guards – until one night, in June 000, he disappeared. Just like that.’
‘And Conroy? – how did he react?’
‘He was traumatised. He began to drink even more. On the third week his liver gave out and he died. A pity.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Pontiero said.
‘Anyway, I ran the institution on a temporary basis while they looked for a suitable replacement. The archdiocese didn’t trust me, I suppose on account of my continual complaints about my superior. I was in charge for barely a month, but I made the most of it. I restructured the staffing as quickly as I could, hired professional personnel and drew up new programmes for the patients. Many of those were never put into practice but others were, so it was worth the effort. I sent a concise report to an old contact of mine at VICAP by the name of Kelly Sanders. The suspect’s profile and the unpunished murder of Selznick really disturbed her. She gave an agent the job of bringing Karosky in. Came up with nothing.’
‘That’s it? He just disappeared?’ Paola had a hard time believing it.
‘Disappeared into thin air. In 00 it was thought he had resurfaced, after there was a murder with partial mutilation in Albany, New York. But it wasn’t him. Most people gave him up for dead, but fortunately someone logged his profile into the computer. I found a spot at a soup kitchen at a charity in Spanish Harlem in New York City. I worked there for several years, until just a few days ago. Then an old boss contacted me on behalf of the service. I thought they wanted me to be a military chaplain again. I was informed that there appeared to be signs that Karosky was back on the scene again after his long silence. So here I am. I’ve brought you a dossier with all the pertinent documentation I pulled together on Karosky in the five years I worked with him.’ Fowler let the heavy file flop onto the table. ‘There are emails relating to the hormones I told you about, transcriptions of his therapy sessions, an article in a magazine that mentions him, letters from psychiatrists, reports . . . It’s all yours, Doctor Dicanti. Ask me anything you’re not sure of.’
Paola stretched her hand across the table to pick up the thick pile of papers; even opening the dossier made her feel uneasy. Attached to the first page was a photograph of Karosky. He had pale white skin, straight brown hair, grey eyes. In the years she’d spent studying the empty husks, void of human sentiment, that made up a serial killer, she’d learned to recognise the vacant look behind the predator’s eyes. These were men to whom killing came as naturally as eating a meal. There is only one thing in nature remotely similar to that look: the eyes of the white shark. They look without seeing. It is unique, and terrifying.
And there was that look again, in Father Karosky’s eyes.
‘Shocking, no?’ said Fowler, studying Paola’s reaction. ‘This man has something in his bearing, in his movements – something indefinable. At first he passes unnoticed, but when – how shall I put it? – his entire personality is alight . . . it’s terrible.‘
‘And captivating, no?’
‘Yes.’
Dicanti passed the photograph to Pontiero and to Troi, both of whom leaned over to get a better look at the killer’s face.
‘What scares you more, padre – physical danger or to look that man directly in the eyes and feel yourself scrutinised, stripped, as if he were a member of a superior race?’
Fowler stared at the photo a second time. His mouth was slightly open. ‘My guess is that you know the answer already.’
‘Over the course of my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview three serial killers. All three produced the sensation in me I just described, and other people better than you or I have felt it too. But it’s a bogus sensation, padre, and we mustn’t forget one thing: those men are all failures, not prophets. Human waste. They don’t deserve even the least iota of compassion.’

Report on the synthetic pro-gestational hormone 1789 (injectable progestin)
Commercial name:
Depo-Covetan
Report classification:
Confidential, encrypted

To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
CC:
[email protected]
Subject:
CONFIDENTIAL: Report on SPH 789
Date:
7 March 997, . a.m.
Attachment:
Inf#_SPH789.pdf

Dear Marcus:
Attached is an advance copy of the report you asked about. The analysis carried out in the ALFA-area field studies has

shown serious irregularities in menstrual flow, sleep disruption, vertigo, and possible internal hemorrhaging. The report describes serious cases of hypertension, thrombosis and cardiac disease. There has also been an increase in a specific minor problem: .% of the patients have developed fibromyalgia, a side effect not observed in the previous version.

If you compare the report with that of version 786, which we are currently marketing in the United States and Europe, side effects have been reduced by .9%. If our risk analysis is correct, we can estimate a maximum of $ million dollars will be spent on legal damages. Therefore, we are staying within our guidelines, that is to say, an amount less than 7% of profits.