The Coleridge Project: Chapter 4

To no surprise, Bill found a message waiting for him from Detective Chuck Boxer when he returned back to the Tribune offices in South Boston. When he called the Boston City detective, Boxer, without bothering with any pleasantries, demanded to know who the fuck leaked Hawes’s statement to him.

“Come on, Detective, I can’t tell you that. If you want to insist on asking, I’ll have to tell you it came from a bystander.”

“Fuck you it did. There weren’t any bystanders close enough to hear what she said.”

“That’s my story. If you’re going to insist, let’s just say that one of them could read lips. Maybe even had a pair of binoculars, or at least opera glasses.”

There was a dead silence from Boxer, and while Bill waited for a barrage in response to his ludicrous claim, he checked his emails. One of them had as its subject ‘insight into Gail Hawes and her mystery daughter.’ Curiously, the message’s return email address was left blank. Bill opened it. The message said:

You need to speak to Janet Larson. 418 Pleasant Street, Arlington. No thanks necessary. Just happy to help.–yer pal, G.

The street address given matched Gail Hawes’s apartment building. At the bottom of the message was a link to a newspaper article from a Raleigh, North Carolina newspaper. Boxer had said something, but Bill was too distracted to pay it any attention. He clicked on the link while asking the detective to repeat what he had said. Instead of the detective trying to tear Bill a new one for not giving up his source, Boxer was asking Bill what he thought.

“About what?” Bill asked, still too distracted from what he was looking at. The story that the link took him to was from three years earlier, and was about an eleven-year-old Smithfield girl named Jenny Larson whose body was discovered left in a ditch. His pulse quickened as his first thoughts were that Gail Hawes had had a daughter after all and that the baby was adopted by Janet Larson. As he scrolled through the article and saw a picture of Jenny’s parents, he realized that wasn’t the case—that this was something entirely different. Janet Larson looked like she could’ve almost been a twin of Gail Hawes.

“What the fuck do you think I’m asking about?” Boxer demanded angrily, interrupting Bill’s thoughts. His gruff voice showed some embarrassment as Boxer added, “Did you find anything that pointed to Hawes having a daughter? Maybe a kid that she gave up for adoption?”

“I don’t think that’s what happened,” Bill said. “I couldn’t find anyone who remembered her being pregnant.” As he talked, he scanned the article. At the time it was written there were no suspects for the girl’s murder, and it suggested that Jenny Larson had also been sexually abused with death caused by strangulation. The article had a picture taken several months before Jenny’s murder with her in a girl scout uniform, and as Bill looked at it his voice died in his throat. She was as thin as a stick, dirty blond hair, a shy smile, and near toothpick arms and legs. Bill stared silently at the picture before looking away and asking Boxer whether they’d sent Hawes to Bridgewater yet for a psychiatric evaluation. “If you haven’t you probably should,” Bill added.

“I don’t believe I asked your opinion about that,” Boxer said flatly, and then the connection went dead as he hung up.

Bill had no idea who G was, and he forwarded the email to the Tribune’s computer guy to see if he could get him a return email address. He reread the newspaper article, then did a search for more recent articles concerning Jenny Larson’s murder. He found one from a year ago which was about how the chief suspect for the murder, a John Gandre, was killed in an alleyway behind a bar. Bill got on the phone to the Smithfield police, and without too much trouble tracked down the investigating officer, who told him they had little doubt that Gandre had killed Jenny but the problem was they could never get enough evidence to arrest him. “Eventually justice caught up to him,” the detective told Bill.

“You’re sure he was your guy?”

“Yep.”

“No other suspects?”

“None. We closed the case once Gandre got what was coming to him.”

“Ever hear of Kent Forster?”

“Never heard that name before. Sorry.”

The detective begged off the phone, telling Bill he had to get back to work. After verifying that Janet Larson’s address was the same as what was given in the email, Bill got up to talk to Jack O’Donnell. He first knocked on Jack’s office door, then walked in and saw the city desk editor looking as harried as usual; his clothes rumpled, his shirt sleeves rolled up, the little hair he had left on his head in disarray. Jack O’Donnell had always put in long hours, but since the cutbacks, he’d been working seven days a week, in each morning by seven and usually not out at night until past midnight. His eyes were bloodshot and set deep within his fleshy face, and he gave Bill a confused stare over the intrusion.

“I’ve got tomorrow’s front-page for you,” Bill said.

He showed Jack the same article about Jenny Larson’s murder that he was sent. When Jack finished reading it, Bill told him how girl’s parents now lived in the same apartment building as Gail Hawes.

“The mother looks a lot like Hawes,” Jack observed as he chewed on the end of a pencil. He eyed Bill slowly. “What’s your take on this?”

“My guess, some sort of transference,” Bill said. “Hawes must’ve found out about Jenny Larson and identified strongly enough with Larson that she began thinking of the loss as her own. I don’t know why she would’ve pick Kent Forster. According to the police in North Carolina, the perpetrator was a local character who was killed last year in a knife fight. I’d like to spend a little bit of the Tribune’s money and consult with a psychologist about this.”

Jack blanched at that prospect. “Try the local universities first, see if you can find a psychology professor who’ll talk to you in exchange for getting his name in the paper. If you can’t find someone, try to keep the cost down, okay? And talk to this Janet Larson.”

“Will do.”

“Write me up two thousand words. You’ll be getting a front-page byline again. If that nut job third party candidate hadn’t spouted off about bombing North Korea and Iran you’d be getting the full front page.” A thin smile crept over Jack’s lip. “Transference, huh? Did you actually pick up a psychology book and do some research?”

“No reason to do that,” Bill said straight-faced. “Not when I can watch an old episode of In Treatment on HBO.” Bill nodded to O’Donnell, and left to find himself a psychologist.