The Unquiet-CP-6 (30 page)

“I assume you’re not testing my knowledge of biblical trivia,” he replied, “so I take it you’re referring to the Gilead community, and the ‘children of Gilead.’”

He gave me a potted history, similar to what I already knew, although he believed that the scale of the abuse was greater than had previously been suspected. “I’ve met some of the victims, so I know what I’m talking about. I think most of the people in Gilead knew what was happening to those children, and more of the men participated than was acknowledged at first. Then the families scattered after the bodies were found, and some of them were never heard from again. Others, though, cropped up in relation to other cases. One of the victims, the girl whose evidence led to the conviction of Mason Dubus, the man believed to be the ringleader of the abusers, did her best to keep track of them. A couple are in jail in other states, and the rest are dead. Dubus is the only one left alive, or the only one that we know of; even if others of whom we’re not aware have survived, they’re old, old men and women by now.”

“What happened to the children?”

“Some were taken away by their parents or guardians when the community disintegrated. We don’t know where they went. The ones that were rescued were put in foster homes. A couple were taken in by Good Will Hinckley.”

Good Will Hinckley was an institution close to I-95 that provided a home and school environment for kids aged twelve to twenty-one who had suffered molestation, were homeless, or had been affected by substance or alcohol abuse, whether directly or as the result of the addictions of a family member. It had been in existence since the late nineteenth century, and graduated nine or ten seniors every year who might otherwise have found themselves in jail, or in the ground. It was not surprising that some of the children of Gilead had ended up there. It was probably the best thing that could have occurred, under the circumstances.

“How could it have happened?” I asked. “I mean, the scale of it seems, well, almost incredible.”

“It was an isolated, secretive community in a state filled with isolated, secretive communities,”

said Christian. “From what we now know, it seems to have been the case that the principal families involved had known each other prior to their arrival at Gilead, and had worked together or maintained contact for a period of some years. In other words, there was already a structure in place that would have facilitated the kind of abuse that went on there. There was certainly a clear division between the four or five core families and those who arrived later: the women didn’t mix with one another, the children didn’t play with one another, and the men kept their distance as much as possible, apart from those occasions when work forced them together. The abusers knew exactly what they were doing, and were possibly even attuned to those who might share their tastes, so there was always new prey for them. It was a nightmare situation, but there was something about Gilead—bad luck, bad timing, bad location, or, hell, let’s call it a touch of evil and have done with it—that exacerbated it.

“You also have to take into account the fact that people weren’t as aware of child abuse issues then as we are now. It wasn’t until 1961 that a doctor named Henry Kempe wrote a paper called

‘The Battered Child Syndrome’ and started a revolution on child abuse, but that paper concentrated principally on physical abuse and, even in the early seventies, when I started my training, sexual abuse was hardly mentioned. Then came feminism, and people began talking to women and children about abuse. In 1978, Kempe published ‘Sexual Abuse: Another Hidden Pediatric Problem,’ and the realization that there was a real issue to be confronted probably stems from about then.

“Unfortunately, it could be said that the pendulum swung too far the other way. It created a climate of constant suspicion, because science hadn’t caught up with the desire to deal with the problem. There was enthusiasm, but not enough skepticism. It led to a backlash, and decreased reporting in the nineties, but now we seem to be approaching some kind of equilibrium, even if we still sometimes concentrate on sexual abuse at the expense of other kinds of abuse. It’s reckoned that twenty percent of children have been sexually abused by the time they reach adulthood, but the consequences of long-term neglect and physical abuse are actually much more severe. For example, a child who has been physically abused and neglected is much more likely to grow up to engage in criminal behavior than a child who has been sexually abused. Meanwhile, from data we know that sexual abusers of children are more likely to have been abused themselves, but most pedophiles have not been sexually abused. There,” he concluded.

“You got the lecture. Now why the curiosity about Gilead?”

“Daniel Clay was interested in Gilead too. He created paintings of it. Someone told me that he even interviewed Mason Dubus, and he may have intended to write a book about what happened there. Then there’s the fact that his car was found abandoned in Jackman, and Gilead isn’t far from Jackman. It also appears that one of Clay’s former patients was abused at or near Gilead by men wearing bird masks. All of that strikes me as more than a series of coincidences.”

“Well, it’s probably not surprising that Clay was curious about Gilead,” said Christian. “Most people in our field who work in Maine have at some point examined the available material, and a number of them would have interviewed Dubus, myself included.” He thought for a moment. “I don’t recall any descriptions of Gilead in the case reports relating to Clay, although there were mentions of rural settings. Some of the children caught sight of trees, grass, dirt. There were similarities, too, in their descriptions of the place in which they were abused—bare walls, a mattress on the floor, that sort of thing—although most of the victims were blindfolded for much of the abuse, so we’re talking about snatched glimpses and nothing more.”

“Could these men have been drawn to Gilead because of what happened there in the past?” I asked.

“It’s possible,” said Christian. “I have a friend who works in the area of suicide prevention. He talks of ‘clusters of location,’ places that become sites of choice for suicide, largely because others have successfully committed suicide in those locations. One suicide facilitates another, or provides a stimulus for it. Equally, it might be that a place synonymous with the abuse of children could prove attractive to other abusers, but it would be quite a risk to take.”

“Could the risk have been part of the attraction?”

“Perhaps. I’ve been thinking a lot about this since you came to me. It’s an unusual case. It sounds like stranger abuse on a significant scale, which is itself out of the ordinary. Children, unlike adults, are rarely victimized by strangers. Intrafamilial abuse accounts for fifty percent of the acts perpetrated against girls, and ten to twenty percent of those against boys. Generally, too, nonincestuous abusers fall into one of six categories based on their degree of fixation, from those who have frequent nonsexual contact with children to sadistic offenders who rarely have nonsexual contact with them. They’re the kind who will typically view children unknown to them as victims, but the degree of violence inflicted on the children who mentioned the bird masks was minimal. In fact, only one child recalled being seriously physically injured, and she said the man who did it—he began choking her, to the point where she almost blacked out—was instantly rebuked by one of the others. That indicates a significant degree of control. These men weren’t ordinary abusers, not by any means. There was planning, cooperation, and, for want of a better word, restraint. Those elements make what happened particularly disturbing.”

“Are you sure that there have been no similar reports since Clay disappeared?”

“You mean reports of abuse that tally with those descriptions? Well, I’m as certain as I can be, given the information to hand. It was one of the reasons why suspicion fell on Clay, I suppose.”

“Could these men just have stopped abusing?”

“I don’t think so. It’s possible that some of them were jailed for other offenses, which would explain the cessation, but otherwise, no, I don’t believe that they have stopped abusing. These men are predatory pedophiles. Their pattern of abuse might have altered, but their urges will not have gone away.”

“Why would they have altered their pattern?”

“Something could have happened, something that frightened them or caused them to realize that they risked drawing more attention to themselves if they continued to abuse in this way.”

“Merrick’s daughter drew pictures of men with the heads of birds,” I said.

“And Merrick’s daughter is still missing,” said Christian, finishing my thought for me.

“The date of Clay’s disappearance coincided roughly with the period when Lucy Merrick was last seen,” I said. “And you’ve just told me that there were no more reports of children being abused by men in bird masks after that time.”

“None that I know of,” said Christian. “I told you before, though: there’s no easy way to track down those who might have been victims. It could be that such abuse did continue, but we didn’t hear about it.”

But the more I considered it, the more it made sense. There was a connection between Clay’s disappearance and that of Lucy Merrick, and perhaps a connection in turn between her disappearance and the fact that no other children had reported abuse by men masked as birds after that time.

“The death of a child: would that have been enough to frighten them, enough to make them stop what they were doing?” I asked.

“If it was accidental, then yes, possibly,” said Christian.

“And if it wasn’t?”

“Then we would be looking at something else: not child abusers but child killers.”

We were both silent then. Christian made some notes on a pad. I watched the day begin to fade, the angle of the light through the blinds on the window changing as the sun began to set. The shadows looked like prison bars, and I was reminded again of Andy Kellog.

“Does Dubus still live in the state?” I asked.

“He has a place near Caratunk. It’s pretty isolated. He’s virtually a prisoner in his own home: he wears a satellite tracking device on his ankle, is medicated in an effort to subdue his sex drive, and is denied access to the Internet and cable television. Even his mail is monitored, and his telephone records are subject to examination as one of the conditions of his probation. Even though he’s old, he’s still a potential risk to children. You probably know that he served time for what happened at Gilead. He was subsequently incarcerated on three separate occasions for, off the top of my head, two counts of sexual assault, three counts of risk of injury to a minor, possession of child pornography, and a string of other offenses that all amounted to the same thing. He got twenty years the last time, suspended after ten with probation for life to ensure that he would be strictly monitored to the grave. Occasionally, graduate students or medical professionals will interview him. He makes a useful subject. He’s intelligent, and clearheaded for a man in his eighties, and he doesn’t mind talking. He doesn’t have a whole lot of other ways to pass the time, I suppose.”

“Interesting that he should have stayed so close to Gilead.” Caratunkwas only about thirty miles south of Gilead.

“I don’t think he ever left the state again once he got here,” said Christian. “When I interviewed him, he described Gilead as a kind of Eden. He had all the usual arguments at his fingertips: that children had a greater sexual awareness than we gave them credit for; that other societies and cultures looked more favorably on the union of children and adults; that the relationships at Gilead were loving, reciprocal ones. I hear variations on those themes all the time. With Dubus, though, I got the sense that he knew they were all a smoke screen. He understands what he is, and he enjoys it. There was never any hope that he might be rehabilitated. Now we just try to keep him under control and use him to discover more about the nature of men like him. In that sense, he’s been useful to us.”

“And the dead babies?”

“He blamed the women for that, although he wouldn’t name any names.”

“Did you believe him?”

“Not for a moment. He was the dominant male figure in the community. If he didn’t himself wield the weapon that killed those children, then he gave the order for their killing. But, as I’ve said, those were different times, and you don’t have to go very far back to find similar tales of the children of adulterous or incestuous relationships who conveniently die.

“Nevertheless, Dubus was still lucky to escape with his life when the people down in Jackman discovered what had been going on there. They might have had their suspicions, but when the bodies of the children were found, well, that changed everything. A lot of the buildings in the settlement were put to ruin. Only a couple were left standing, along with the shell of a halfcompleted church. Even those might be gone by now. I couldn’t say. I haven’t been up there in a long time, not since I was a student.”

There was a knock on his office door. The receptionist entered with a sheaf of messages and a cup of coffee for Christian.

“How would I get to talk to Mason Dubus?” I asked.

Christian took a huge draft of his coffee as he stood, his mind already moving on to other, more pressing matters, like bullish senators who valued votes over results.

“I can make a call to his probation officer,” he said, as he showed me out. “There shouldn’t be any problem with arranging a visit.”

When I got outside, the police car was gone. So too was the Nissan, but I saw it minutes later as I drove back to Scarborough. It was parked outside a doughnut shop, and through the window I thought I could see the children eating pink-and-yellow pastries from a box. The woman’s back was to me. Her shoulders were hunched, and I thought she might have been crying.

I had one more house call to make that day. I had been thinking about the tattoo that Andy Kellog had mentioned, and of Joe Long’s view that it might indicate someone who had served in the military, perhaps in an airborne division. I knew from experience that it was hard to track down that kind of information. The bulk of files pertaining to service records were kept at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, but even if I did have a way to gain access to its database, which would be difficult to begin with, the access would be useless without some clue as to the possible identity of the man in question. If I had some suspicions, then it was possible that I could find someone to pull the 201 file, but it would mean calling in favors from outside, and I wasn’t ready to do that yet. The Veterans Administration was also tight with information, and there weren’t many people willing to risk a federal job with a pension by slipping files under the table to an investigator.