Strangled - Brian McGrory [54]
When he collected himself, I asked, “All these many years later, the brass is still sensitive about it?”
He shot me another one of those looks that made me feel like the stupid kid at the fifth-grade science fair. You know how they say there’s no such thing as a dumb question? In Bob Walters’s presence, I was the exception to that rule — a living, breathing asker of the dumbest questions he’d ever heard.
Still, he contained himself and said, “Think about who’s where. One of the lead detectives on the case is now the police commissioner, and from what I hear from the few friends I still have on the force, he wants to be mayor. The U.S. senator from your state was the attorney general heading the Strangler investigation. These are just two guys who have staked their whole fucking careers on that one case. And they’re not done yet. Think, kid, think.”
I was, but to no avail. I said, “Tell me about your role. You headed up the investigation, right?”
He swallowed hard. His eyes were transforming right before my eyes, sharpening. He laughed softly and said, “Yes and no. A lot of people headed up that investigation. After DeSalvo confessed, there were probably forty people who claimed to have led the case, every one a fucking tactical genius. I was just one of them.”
I said, “Save your false modesty for your lovely wife. Tell me your role.”
He looked at me — both surprised and amused.
“I headed homicide at the time, so yeah, it was my case. The whole fucking world was coming down on us. Boston had four newspapers at the time, every one of them going crazy with this thing. The Phantom Fiend, the Boston Strangler, another woman dead, read all about it. Women were locking themselves indoors. The mayor was having fits. The Strangler didn’t care about city and county boundaries, and the other police departments and prosecutors were being real pricks.
“And then you’ve got the state attorney general, the most ambitious prick in the world, taking over the case and putting some sham group together called the Boston Strangler Commission, trying to make it all go away in the best possible way so he could have a campaign issue when he ran for president. And my own fucking cohorts in homicide were sticking knives in each other’s backs to get in the next day’s paper. The thing was a pure fucking disaster from the day the first broad was found strangled in Back Bay.”
He paused and took another long sip of water. He pivoted his head along the pillow again, looked at me, and said, “So you want to know my role? That was my role. Bring order to total fucking chaos. I thought I had succeeded until the day I failed, and when I failed, I failed big.”
He shut his eyes and seemed to rest for a moment. I stood in silence on the side of his bed. When he looked at me again, I asked, my tone softer now, “What’s got you laid up?”
“I’m old, kid. I’m old. That’s my problem. You’ll be old someday too, and it sucks.”
Before I could respond, he added, “And I have diabetes, which prevents me from walking. I haven’t even tried taking a step in a year. I get out of here maybe once a month in a wheelchair, when I can get someone over to carry me down the stairs. The doctors want to amputate both my legs. I’m on borrowed time down there. And I’ve got emphysema, which is what’s causing this fucking coughing all the time. I guess I’m on borrowed time everywhere.
“And I’ve got a miserable drunk of a wife who doesn’t give one flying fuck whether I’m dead or alive. You know what, never mind that. She’d much prefer if I was dead so she wouldn’t have to deal with all my bullshit. Kid, I hope your wife is someone special, because like I said, growing old sucks.”
I asked, “If not DeSalvo, then who’s the Strangler?”
“Nobody’s told you that already?”
“I haven’t really asked anyone until now. All respect intended, sir, you were the guy who knew the most back then, the detective that all the other cops looked up to.