I’d like to think that my instincts belong with the former group, but my circumstances have thrust me toward the latter. I’d like to think that at my core, in my heart, I’m a trusting person, wanting to believe the words and respect the actions of those around me. But in my more self-aware moments, I know this not to be true. I didn’t get into this bizarre profession of words and news to write day after day that government is basically good, that businesses will always do what’s right, that people, left to their own devices, will always take proper care of one another.
No, in my advancing age, I’m as distrustful at anyone else — which is not to be confused with being untrustworthy. But who knows, maybe I’ve become that as well.
But never do I remember being more distrustful in my entire wary life than I was at that exact moment, driving through the Nevada desert in the direction of McCarran International Airport and a US Airways Boeing 757 that would return me to a place I may not have been ready to go.
I didn’t trust the Boston Police and other various government officials who said that Albert DeSalvo, long ago dead, was the Boston Strangler, responsible for the deaths of eleven women more than forty years ago who were identified as part of the Strangler spree, in addition to two other murders that he confessed to as well. I didn’t trust the same police who were telling me that this recent string of deaths was the result of a fame-seeking copycat killer.
I didn’t trust the sitting senior senator from Massachusetts, who built his career on his success in “solving” the Strangler case so long ago. I didn’t trust the current police commissioner for the same reason.
I didn’t trust the people I usually trust, and that may have hurt the most. I didn’t trust women, mostly in the form of Maggie Kane, who walked out on a marriage before it ever began. Of course, I was about to do the same, but that somehow seems beside the point.
I didn’t trust Peter Martin and publisher Justine Steele to do the right thing — not after they were browbeaten by city officials into not running the Phantom Fiend’s written assertion that the new strangler was the same as the old strangler.
I didn’t trust Vinny Mongillo. I didn’t think I’d ever say those words, except maybe in regard to leaving him alone with some really expensive food. But why on God’s good earth had he not told me that his mother was a strangling victim all those years ago?
And I wasn’t so sure I trusted myself anymore. The great Edgar Sullivan was dead because of me. So was some guy on the Public Garden who I never even knew. And here I was, ambling along, herking and jerking my way through a story that had no clear end. Was the Boston Strangler ultimately planning on confessing to me? Did he intend to kill another ten women, bringing his total this time around to what it had been before? How was this thing going to be resolved, and what role could I play in hastening a resolution?
And I certainly didn’t trust that anything good was about to happen, not as I listened on my cell phone to the aforementioned Peter Martin explain to me that the Phantom Fiend had reached out to me again in his most foreboding note yet, this one in the form of an e-mail to my Boston Record account. In the hours after Edgar’s death, Martin was wise enough to hire a security consultant, which had people monitoring my e-mail account, my U.S. mail, my house, and the newsroom. Thank God I didn’t live a life of secret fetishes, constantly communicating online with big-breasted blond amputees, because I would suddenly have a lot of explaining to do.
That consultant, in turn, read the e-mail and forwarded it on to Martin, who, in turn, read it to me, and it went exactly like this: “Mr. Flynn, you didn’t honor the one, simple request I made of you, to publish my words in the way I asked you to. I thought you were better than this. For that, there will be swift and severe consequences. People will suffer for your gutlessness. You will suffer with them. You may personally pick up a package at six o’clock tonight at the corner of Winter Street and Winter Place. The Phantom Fiend.”
I swallowed hard as I listened to every dreadful word. The Phantom didn’t seem to be a killer prone to hyperbole — i.e., see the word killer. Once he’s willing to kill beautiful young women, there’s not a whole lot that’s really worth exaggerating about. And now he was informing me that I, along with some nameless people, presumably other young women, would suffer from my gutlessness. I was half tempted to buy an advertisement in my cowardly little paper to let him know that I desperately wanted to run his words exactly in the way he had written them. Gutless my ass.
I said to Martin, “This doesn’t bode well on pretty much any level.” It was really all I had to say. There was no “I told you so” necessary. It wouldn’t get me anywhere different than I already was, and I knew that immediately.
Martin was so upset that his voice was on the brink of quavering when he said, “Maybe it’s not really him. Maybe this is the other side of the equation, the side that wants to see you dead.”
I replied, “That doesn’t add up.” I didn’t really intend to keep this mathematical metaphor going, but I did nonetheless. “I don’t think the other side would know that we didn’t print something from the Phantom that we were asked to print. That is, unless you and Justine spread the word around a little too far.”
No, I was just about certain that, unlike that deadly debacle on the Boston Public Garden, this was the real thing.
Silence. It was rare for Peter Martin to offer a flawed analysis like that, rarer still for him to be at a loss for words. Maybe this thing was taking a harder toll on him than I realized.
So I said, trying to present at least the veneer of calm, “This presents us with a bunch of problems, most that we don’t know about yet, but some that we do. First and foremost is that I’m not going to be back in Boston in time for that six o’clock pickup.” The clock on the rental car dashboard read 2:06, which meant 5:06 p.m. in Boston. I don’t know if I could have gotten there on the space shuttle, not that I’d be willing to fly on that thing anyway.
Martin said, “I’ve directed the security consultant to reply to the sender from your account, in your name, that you’re out of town until later tonight and you won’t be able to make the six o’clock rendezvous. He’s doing that as we speak.”
Okay, this was reassuring now, to hear Martin talk again like a man in control of a situation, like he usually is. I heard a muffled sound, as if he put his palm over the phone, then he got back on the line and said, “Buck, our new security guy, wants to know what time you’re back on the ground.”
I wondered if Buck would have put his life on the line for me like Edgar Sullivan did, and quickly decided he would not. Maybe it was irrational for me to dislike him, even disdain him, without yet knowing him, but I did. I mean, give me a break on the name: What the fuck is Buck?
“Twelve-thirty. What’s the e-mail address the Phantom’s using?”
More muffled sounds, then, “PFBoston@yahoo.com.”
I asked, “Any chance the origin can be chased and linked to a computer somewhere?”
Martin answered, “Highly unlikely, but Buck’s working on it.”
I was about to ask for funeral arrangements for Edgar when Martin shot out, “Hold on, here, Buck says we have a response. I’m going to make this easier and put you on speakerphone, Jack.”
He pressed a button, because suddenly I could hear a low humming sound, like when you place a shell against your ear at the beach. Martin said, “Jack, I’ve got Buck here. Buck, this is Jack on the phone.”