But then, every %170 once in a while, she’d tuTn out soTnctlting dark at’d pessiult’stic, Ii something out of a concentration camp, you know?
Introspective 1 ,”,FJ ~” “You keep any ofit?”’ “I wanted to, but she kept track of it; destroyed it all. She on brought the bland stuff home.” “Did you ever talk to her about all this?” He hesitated before answering, and I wondered again how mu< he wasn’t telling me. There was an edginess to the man, an element caution in his eyes. My instinct wasn’t to imagine the worst, howev~ for I’d seen the same expression in other teachers, especially the go’ ones. Their concern for their charges often overran pure educatio spilling over into the personal and becoming possessive. Their frustr tion with poor parenting often made surrogate parents of them, wi all the worries, despair, and occasional pride that entailed.
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