"Anyhow . . . I was looking through his drawers when I came upon this big manila envelope hidden beneath his shirts. I opened it curious to see what was inside. Then I was shocked." Shoshana grimaces. "It was child porn."
The stuff was crude, she tells us, poorly printed, the photos poorly reproduced, and it was all so blatantly uncompromisingly obsceneâlewd, smutty, foul. And then, even as she sat down on his bed to study the material, she felt a terrible pain as if her stomach were suddenly tied in knots.
"I was appalled. Also bowled over by grief. I remember perching there on the side of his bed looking at that stuff, then realizing I was sobbing tears for the children in the pictures and for Tom that he could possess them. The thought that this might be his secret vice hurt me to the quick. 'So
this
is what my friend is into! So
this
is what he is!' "
Shoshana shakes her head. Watching her, I can feel her hurt and outrage. And, too, I gain a glimpse of what this revelation means: that Tom Jessup had been acting as Barbara Fulraine's agent provocateur in her quest to find the people who'd kidnapped and probably killed her daughter, Belle.
". . . I was still sitting there when he came in. He saw me on his bed, saw that horrible stuff in my hands. He came beside me, put his arm around me, begged me not to judge him too quickly, said there were things going on he hadn't been able to speak about. But now that I'd found his stash, he would tell me everything. But first I must promise never to tell anyone, not another living soul."
She promised, of course, and then he confided that he'd undertaken an undercover investigation on behalf of a wealthy woman, a Mrs. Fulraine, who'd hired him to tutor and coach her sons. This woman's daughter had been snatched by her au pair years before and never seen again. Because the au pair had performed in pornographic films, there was reason to believe pornographers had been behind the snatch. Tom told her that basically he was pretending to be a pedophile purchasing pedophiliac material, letting it be known to contacts he made along the way that he was interested in commissioning a home movie of a little blond girl performing sexual acts on adults.
It was a dangerous mission, first because the people he was meeting were extremely suspicious, and second, because, being a teacher, he was putting his career on the line. If the pornographers decided he was a penetration agent, they might kill him to keep him from talking. And if anyone connected with Hayes found out what he was doing, he'd probably be blackballed from teaching for life.
"But how can you do this?" Shoshana demanded. "Why you and not the cops? And who is this woman to you that you'd take such a risk for her?"
He lied to her then, told her the woman was paying him a large sum for his help. Also that the police had failed her and so had the private detectives she'd hired, and that she felt that on account of his manner and looks he had a better chance of getting inside than a pro.
"He told me the people he was meeting with, a couple in their forties, looked like ordinary folks leading conventional suburban lives. It bothered him that they didn't look as he'd expected, weren't the sleazy types you imagine when you think of
kiddie
porn. When he'd started his search, haunting the porn strip on
DaVinci
, he'd met his share of the latterâburly, bearded, intimidating guys who wore soiled
tanktops
and flaunted tattoos. But the couple he'd linked up with, serious purveyors of hardcore child porn, looked and talked like teaching assistants at Calista State.
"In fact they ran a legitimate business making promotional films. Their whole approach was highly professional. They asked him to describe exactly which acts he wished to see performed. Their manner appalled himâsympathetic smiles, soft, inquiring voices conveying their eagerness to create a customized filmed fantasy for his 'viewing pleasure.'
"They inquired whether he'd prefer moody lighting or hard, raw light; whether he wished the little girl's hair to be curly or straight; whether he wanted to see her eyes while she performed or would be content just to see the back of her head; whether the girl should act slutty and wear lipstick, or behave like a schoolgirl, stripping guilelessly out of a jumper or school uniform.
"After he made his initial deposit, ten thousand dollars supplied to him in cash by Mrs. Fulraine, he was shown an album of photos of underage girls from which he was to choose one to play the starring role. Hoping against hope, he asked if he could take the album home to study the pictures before making a decision. 'Sorry,' he was told, 'the casting album is super-sensitive; it never leaves the premises.'
"Casting album!
The blandness of that phrase made the transaction all the more horrifying. Better, he thought, to deal with the burly porn shop proprietors than this smarmy, cinema-savvy couple. And yet he desperately needed that album, for if it contained a photo of Mrs. Fulraine's stolen child, then everything he was going through would be justified."
He was now at the point, he told
Shoshaha
, where he had to choose a girl from the album and also make a large second payment. The couple was pressuring him. Just the previous week, they'd told him that the moment had passed when he could back out. "It's what we call pay-or-play," they explained.
"Tom told me he'd passed all this on to Mrs. Fulraine, told her he'd gone as far with it as he could. It was now up to her to bring in the police. But if for some reason she didn't or didn't provide the thirty-thousand dollar balance due on the film, then he would be in terrible trouble, for the couple had let him know that their backers could be pretty unpleasant when collecting an unpaid debt.
"I remember how, after we talked, we went out to the garage behind the house, sat against the back wall, and shared a joint. I don't think we ever felt closer. I was just so relieved he wasn't a pedophile it didn't occur to me to question his story. I remember we got really stoned, hugged one another, and then both of us wept."
I sit back. Tom's mysterious utterances to Susan Pettibone when she called him late at night suddenly start making sense: "Did he do it yet?"; "Putting an end to some really bad business"; "Finally done with"; and "I think there's going to be a fire." All this fits with the Times-Dispatch article about the house fire on Thistle Ridge, the two bound-to-the-bed bodies in the basement and "the sordid nature" of unspecified items found at the site. Suddenly various disparate thoughts I've had snap together into a pattern, like iron filings on a piece of paper suddenly arranging themselves when a magnet is passed beneath.
Shoshana continues: "I was in my room studying when I heard about the killings. It was a little after 6 P.M. One of the other kids in the house came rushing up the stairs. 'Tom Jessup's been killed!' he yelled. 'It's on TV. He and some society lady were shot together in a motel!'
"I ran downstairs. Everyone in the house had gathered in the living room. The scene on TV was chaotic. Reporters were shoving microphones into peoples' faces. A detective was being interviewed. He said the two were lovers, that their naked bodies had been found entwined, that they'd been meeting afternoons at the motel for months. Also that the woman was related to the family that owned Fulraine Steel and that the young man had been her sons' teacher at the exclusive Hayes School.
"I think that's when I started to go crazy." Shoshanna's voice is level-steady now. "I mean really crazy, not just nutty like before. I remember standing in the back of that room watching that incredible report, suddenly understanding that Tom had lied to me for months -that he
wasn't
gay,
never
had been, that he'd been involved with this woman, that they'd been
fucking
in some sleazy motel. Also that whatever he'd done for her with the child pornographers had been done not for money but for
love.
"I don't remember much after that . . . except that I didn't stay glued to the TV like everybody else. Instead I went right up to Tom's room, let myself in, went straight to his bureau, pulled out all the
kiddie
-porn material, gathered it all into a garbage bag, took it downstairs, then stuffed it into the trash pail outside the kitchen door.
"I think I was in some kind of trance state. Instinct took over. I felt this need to protect Tom, make sure no one could ever say that he was bad. Going into his room all those times I'd betrayed his trust, just as he'd betrayed mine with his lies. In some strange way, I felt I'd now squared our accounts. I couldn't hate him for his deception without also hating myself. But what I
could
do was protect him, protect his reputation, his good name."
Two days later, she suffered a complete mental collapse. She wept uncontrollably, refused to eat, screamed in the middle of the night, and in the morning couldn't bring herself to get out of bed. Someone in the house phoned her parents. Her father, an accountant, drove down from Detroit, packed up her stuff, helped her into his car, and drove her home. A week later on the advice of her family doctor, Shoshana Bach was admitted to the Rand-Barloff Clinic, a private mental hospital in Bloomfield Hills.
She spent a year there recovering her sanity and sense of self. She underwent a regime of electroshock treatments and intensive individual and group psychotherapy. She took classes in pottery making and expressive dance, also took up croquet and became clinic champion. She met a young man her age, equally fragile, and embarked upon an affair. The best part of the year were her sessions with Dr. Deborah Barloff, a Jungian analyst, daughter of the clinic director, who helped her work through her feelings of guilt and betrayal while providing her with a feminist perspective, a prism through which she eventually came to view herself as attractive and her alleged "inadequacy" as bogus.
When she left Rand-Barloff, she felt rebornâarmed with a strong identity, ready to resume her studies. She returned to Calista State, completed her doctorate, wrote her dissertation on the metaphor of mirror and mirroring in the novels of Jane Austen, the Brontës, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf. When she was thirty-one, she published her first book,
Dickinson and Plath: Studies in Alienation
, a seminal work of feminist criticism that led to her appointment as a tenured professor at C.S.
Shoshana stops, peers at me, then at Mace. "I know what you're thinking. Why didn't I come forward with what I knew about Tom and child pornography?"
She shrugs. "It didn't seem relevant. My old housemates kept me abreast of the rumors, that Tom had been part of a love-triangle and that it was Mrs. Fulraine's other boyfriend, a gangster, who'd killed them out of jealousy. That seemed as good an explanation as any. I was trying to forget about Tom, put him out of my mind. I told Tom's story to Dr. Barloff, asked her advice on whether I should break my pledge of secrecy. We discussed it in terms of trust and betrayal, how I was possibly setting up an ethical dilemma as a way of holding onto my anger at Tom, not allowing myself to let him go. I came to understand that I'd used Tom just as he'd used me, as a crutch against the bitter melancholy of my loneliness. What good would it have done to bring all that out? And how did I even know he'd told me the truth? He hadn't given me any names or addresses. He'd lied to me about being gay, so maybe he'd also lied to me about this. Finally, I'd have to explain why I'd destroyed all the evidence. It didn't seem worth the trouble, especially when I learned that the alleged killer had been killed himself."
She spreads her hands, a gesture of completion, a signal she's told us everything she knows.
Mace nods. "This Dr. Barloffâis she still in practice?"
"Very much so. I spoke with her just a couple months ago."
"Would you be willing to sign a form releasing her from patient-doctor privilege?"
"Of course I'll sign it. You can ask Dr. Barloff anything you like." Shoshana sighs. "So . . . it wasn't the gangster who killed them, is that what you're saying?"
Mace tells her he'll fax over the release form as soon as he gets back to his office.
"Gentlemen," She rises. "I must get back to work." She gestures at my sketchbook. "May I?"
I show her my sketch.
She peers at it for a moment. "Interesting," she says. "A taut face, a little wan, I'd say . . . but I do like the eyes, sparkling yet full of anguish. . . ."
M
ace and I walk over to Leland Avenue, the main street that bisects the campus, then into a dark coffeehouse appropriately named Café Noir. As soon as we sit down, I show him the Thistle Ridge fire story I photocopied at the library. As he reads it, I explain how I believe it fits with Susan
Pettibone's
account of her final call to Tom and now
Shoshana's
account or Tom's confession.
Mace stares at me quizzically. "You think Cody burned these people out?"
"Jürgen says he thinks Jack knew about Barbara's affair with Tom, that he may even have been all right with it. He also says Jack was working hard on finding out what happened to Belle Fulraine and that around the time of Flamingo he told Jürgen he was finally getting close. Suppose Barbara passed on Tom's information to Cody, who then administered what Jürgen calls 'Jack's own kind of justice.' Make sense?"
Mace shakes his head. "I'll look into this fire story, see what we got on it." He squints at me. "Gotta hand it to you, David, you're quite the investigator . . . even if it turns out you're wrong. But suppose you're right, what then? How does this connect with Flamingo? Were Fulraine and Jessup killed for revenge by the porn couple's backers?" He runs a hand through his hair. "I'll tell you, I'm having trouble with all this. A possible connection to some other horrible crime committed just a couple days beforeâhow the hell did that get by me?"