The Perfect Ghost (18 page)

PFO:
See what I mean?

TB:
Wouldn’t boyish pranks be something for the local police department?

PFO:
On the whole, sure, but you know, there are exceptions. Like, when stuff happened down the Kennedy Compound, the locals weren’t always the first ones to get the call. Can I freshen your glass?

TB:
As long as I’m not drinking alone.

PFO:
No chance of that. Where were we?

TB:
Your professional relationship with Garrett Malcolm.

PFO:
The Fire Department was the A.H.J., ’scuse me, the Authority Having Jurisdiction, not me, at the beginning. Small potatoes. They wanted a fireman standing by every performance—new rules, but Malcolm figured they were just being pains in the ass because of the fire that happened back when he was a kid, so he says okay, we don’t need the fire department all the time, just if the play uses fireworks and stuff. And then they went and did some show with fire and didn’t alert the department, and that was right around the time that nightclub in Providence, Rhode Island, blew up, and a hundred people died. So folks went nuts. I had a heart-to-heart with Malcolm and we fixed things, made sure he had a regular guy from the fire department there at every performance.

TB:
But that wasn’t the extent of the trouble?

PFO:
Not entirely. There was a certain element attracted by some of his shows. Now, let me say I have no trouble with crowds in general. The Cape Cod League, they’ve been a real asset, very supportive of the community. They hire your off-duty police officers, make sure there’s no inconvenience to local property owners. Most of the theater groups do the same. Nobody wants trouble.

TB:
It’s hard to associate big crowds of drunks with a summer Shakespeare festival.

PFO:
All I’m saying is they didn’t hire enough men to police their grounds. It’s not just Shakespeare there, either. They do other stuff, modern stuff. They hire big-time actors, movie stars. Stars draw a different kind of crowd, like rock-and-roll bands. And the neighbors—you know, people buy a house here, they’re paying up the wazzoo. What do they want? Quiet. They want calm. They want to ride a bike to the beach, have a picnic. They don’t want some Hollywood scene. ’Least they didn’t. The Cape is different now. I’m glad to be out of the whole thing, glad to be out of politics.

TB:
Would I be right in saying that your dispute with Malcolm was political?

PFO:
Whoa, you’re jumping to conclusions. I didn’t just pick on the man because I had nothing else to do.

TB:
Sorry.

PFO:
We had a runaway problem, what you might call a rash of runaways, late nineties, early oughts. Local kids, teenagers, mainly girls. It was like a contagious disease and we couldn’t locate the source of the infection. Now, most of them were fine, you know? Two weeks’ wonder, and then it turned out the kids who ran went to visit Aunt Lizzie in New Orleans and forgot to tell Mom, or got drunk, wrecked the car, and hitchhiked to Vermont.

TB:
How did Malcolm come into it?

PFO:
A few, well, maybe only a couple of the runaway girls auditioned for him, for that theater. I know that sounds pretty skimpy, but we were getting these letters. The real problem started with the letters, and I admit I may have been duped, my office may have been duped.

TB:
Anonymous letters?

PFO:
Right.

TB:
And this was around the same time as Malcolm’s divorce?

PFO:
I didn’t know that! I don’t follow any of that gossip shit. But I suppose I should have known better. Girls these days, they run after the men. But it didn’t seem right to me, using high school kids, call them theatrical apprentices, and get unpaid labor, you know? Shit, good thing I’m not running for office anymore, statement like that. I’m sure the kids learn a lotta useful skills. That’s the kinda thing I’m supposed to say.

TB:
And the girls who auditioned?

PFO:
I remember one girl, first to run off. Didn’t click as an actress, so decides she’ll be a model. Entered some online “contest,” and one of her friends drove her to New York City to meet some pervert going to put her on the front page soon as he checks out how she looks with no clothes on. She wasn’t more than thirteen, still in junior high.

TB:
She came back?

PFO:
I only wish she’d come back earlier, before I went and talked with Malcolm, but her father was pressing me, thought he was a big shot, you know how that is. Malcolm didn’t like being accused of anything and the timing was terrible for him, too. Turned out he was in the middle of trying to get some court order so he could visit his little girl.

TB:
And word got out that you interviewed him? That you suspected he had something to do with the girl’s disappearance?

PFO:
Yeah, word got out, not that my office put it out. But word leaked. I felt bad about it. And I think word leaked about what that young girl was up to, too, because when she came back her folks moved her to a private school with more rules than Marine boot camp. Things like that happen, and you can’t go treating every runaway like some big-time killing.

TB:
Like the Helga Forrester case.

PFO:
That drink need freshening?

TB:
Thanks, that would be great. Do you mind talking about the Forrester case? I understand it was the occasion for another run-in with Malcolm.

PFO:
I certainly never meant for that to happen. It was unfortunate. Especially, as it turned out, for me. But I didn’t just pick him out to be a victim of prosecutorial excess, although to read the papers you’d think I was as vindictive an SOB as walked the earth. You gotta understand what was going on then. The pressure I was under. Only had a handful of murders on the Cape, ever. And that one was a three-ring circus. Unmarried woman with a baby, and all the speculation about how the daddy had to be the killer. When I didn’t wrap it up in an hour and a half and run the credits, the whole place went nuts. Neighbors accusing neighbors, TV talking heads foaming at the mouth. Hadn’t been for that murder, I would still have my job. Terrible thing, to be thinking of your own reelection when that poor woman’s dead with her little child looking on, but I probably couldn’t have handled things worse if I’d sat down and made a list of ways to lose the election.

TB:
There was no indication that Malcolm knew the deceased, am I right?

PFO:
Just wait a minute. It wasn’t about that, it was about the DNA. Why don’t you just shut up and let me tell you about it?

TB:
Sorry.

PFO:
You can’t go badgering a witness. It was just a terrible time here. There were so many suspects, but nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. Folks like to come up with all these theories, even if they won’t hold water let alone beans, and there was some guy writing a tell-all book and everybody hinting they knew what was going on. We decided the best thing to do was use technology, use what we had, which was semen found on the body. We knew it wouldn’t be popular, but everybody was scared. There was a killer out there. People were buying guns, threatening their neighbors.

TB:
Whose idea was it to collect DNA samples from all the men on the Cape?

PFO:
The FBI. That’s right, the sainted FBI, but you woulda thought I’d come up with it in some kinda dream, no, make that some kinda séance I held with the devil himself. It was the FBI’s idea. They thought the killer had ties to the area. They suggested it, called it a global genetic canvass. We weren’t the first place to do it, or the only place. They solve crimes like that in England, in Germany, too. In 1994, I think it was, Germany, they took DNA samples from 16,000, maybe 17,000 men, and they got their killer, guy raped and murdered an eleven-year-old girl. They tried it in Baton Rouge, too, or someplace in Louisiana. If the Forrester woman had been killed in the summer, we wouldn’t have tried it, so many damned tourists on and off Cape, but in the winter this place shrinks down to nothing. Once we ruled out all the women and the kids, it seemed manageable. And not the whole Cape, either, just the three or four closest towns.

TB:
But there was trouble?

PFO:
We tried to keep it real low-key at first, asking people politely to volunteer when they came into town, at the supermarket, the garage, the sub shops, the post office, handing out swabs, taking information: name and address. And I’d like to point out that it worked. We found the guy and he’s in prison.

TB:
You brought Garrett Malcolm in for questioning. Did you do that with everybody who refused to give a DNA sample?

PFO:
Are you kidding? We had folks speed-dialing the American Civil Liberties Union.

TB:
But you brought Malcolm in.

PFO:
I do regret that.

TB:
You threatened him with a court order.

PFO:
One of my investigators exceeded his authority. He is no longer with the DA’s office. He was removed long before I lost the election.

TB:
Do you wish you’d handled things differently?

PFO:
Of course I do, but at the time there was nothing else I could have done. There was this reporter from some local rag beating the drum, beating the drum. Why don’t prominent citizens like Garrett Malcolm have to comply? Why don’t they get DNA from Garrett Malcolm? Never mind that the state lab had a backup about a thousand years long. Plus we had other options to go to, lots of areas we hadn’t investigated yet, like seasonal workers and stuff. You know, with celebrities, there’s no right way to handle it. No matter what you do, you’re too lenient or you’re coming on too strong, making an example out of them. I came down too hard, I brought Malcolm in, and I got tossed out of office for my trouble.

TB:
You link the two events.

PFO:
They were linked in the press. I was linked with saying something terrible about a great and wonderful man whose wife died of cancer, a man who donated money to political campaigns and local charities, a decent guy who, it turns out, wasn’t even on the Cape when Helga Forrester got killed.

TB:
He wasn’t here?

PFO:
He had an alibi, a good one.

TB:
So why do you suppose he refused to comply? The procedure wasn’t difficult.

PFO:
I’m a former district attorney, not a mind reader. I was trying to eliminate the gossip, that’s all. I hope he doesn’t still hold it against me. And I hope he reconciles with his daughter, too. Has he, do you know?

TB:
I don’t think so.

PFO:
Well, that’s too bad. I’d rather lose ten elections than lose contact with my kids. Wouldn’t you?

TB:
Haven’t got any. Kids.

PFO:
Oh, well. That’s okay though, you got books. Send ’em off in the world, see if they sink or swim, just like kids, huh? Think you’ll send me a copy of this one when it’s done? I’d like that.

TB:
I’ll make sure you’re on the list.

CHAPTER

twenty-seven

I felt angry on Malcolm’s behalf: unsubstantiated rumors weren’t our usual fare. When I’d listened to the tape for the first time, when I’d transcribed and essentially dismissed it, I’d wondered why you’d bothered interviewing a washed-up hack politician. Now, I felt I knew at least part of the answer: McKenna.