Bruce DeSilva - Cliff Walk

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because we’re on the same side.”

“Are we?”

“Neither of us is into snuff films, and I don’t like child pornographers and assassins any more than you do. So yeah, this time we are.”

He removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and softened his glare a little.

“Off the record?”

“Sure,” I said, and then counted off five seconds.

“What we’ve got,” he said, “are e-mails from twelve hundred and fifty-four perverts in the market for videos of adults raping children, five hundred and fourteen more who get hard watching kids diddle each other, and another seventy-six who asked specifically for videos of kids getting murdered after they’ve been violated.”

“That’s more than eighteen hundred people,” I said.

“It is.”

We looked at each other and shook our heads.

“Fuckin’ case is giving me nightmares,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

“If you ask me,” he said, “the killers performed a public service.”

“But you’ve still got to catch them.”

“Yeah, but then what? Arrest them or give them medals?”

“Why not both?”

Parisi closed his eyes, nodded, and seemed to doze off for a second.

“The e-mails,” I said. “Are they traceable?”

“Mostly not. My tech guy says the senders used some kind of cloaking software to mask their IP addresses, whatever that means.”

“ Mostly not?”

“Six of ’em were careless. That means their Internet providers should be able to tell us who they are.”

“They’ll be willing to do that?”

“Once they’re served with subpoenas, they will.”

“Gonna share the names when you get them?”

“No.”

“Got the ballistics report yet?” I asked, and counted off five seconds again.

“All three victims were shot once in the head with nine-millimeters,” Parisi said. “Two of the slugs were too damaged to make a comparison, and the intact slug doesn’t match anything on file. With no shell casings found at the scene, there’s no way to tell if more than one gun was used.”

“Maniella’s double was shot with a twenty-five-caliber pistol,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“Doesn’t really tell us anything.”

“It doesn’t,” he said. “Could be different shooters. Could be the same shooter with a different weapon.”

“Can you release the names of the three dead lowlifes yet?” I asked.

“The Winkler brothers, Martin and Joseph, and their cousin Molly Fitzgerald.”

“Part of the Winkler clan from Pawtucket?”

“Yeah. Both guys had records. Peeping and molestation as juvies. Larceny and narcotics distribution as adults. Molly didn’t have a sheet.”

“What else you got?” I asked, and then waited as he considered his reply.

“Neighbors said they saw five or six people coming and going from the apartment the last few weeks.”

“So two or three snuff filmmakers are still on the loose?”

“Looks that way.”

“Learn anything about the three kids found in the apartment?”

“Other than the fact that they’d been repeatedly raped?”

“Aw, fuck.”

“The girl,” Parisi said, “was a ten-year-old who ran away from home in Woonsocket last September. One of the boys was the nine-year-old who vanished on the way home from school in Dighton a couple of weeks ago. The other boy is another story entirely.”

“Oh?”

“The mother’s a heroin addict. Claimed her eight-year-old son was kidnapped from their hovel in Central Falls last month, but she’d never reported him missing.”

“Sounds fishy.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What did she say when you grilled her?”

“Stuck to her story for a couple of hours before she copped to selling the kid for four dime bags and three hundred in cash.”

“Jesus!”

“Yeah.”

“She ID the buyer?”

“All we got is a generic description-white male, average height, brown hair, no distinguishing marks. Showed her photos of the Winklers, but she was too addled to make an ID.”

“Did she know what the buyer wanted her kid for?”

“Says she didn’t. I don’t think she much cared.”

“You charging her?”

“With everything we can think of. Attila wants to put the bitch under the jail.”

“Give me a shovel,” I said, “and I’ll lend her a hand.”

The Sword of God arrived in pickup trucks-Fords, Chevys, and a couple of Toyotas. Most of them were already there at nine A.M. when I pulled Secretariat into the gravel parking lot off Herring Pond Road just north of the little mill town of Harrisville. I parked beside a red Chevy Silverado with a bumper sticker that read: “Gun Control Means Using Both Hands.”

It was a clear Sunday morning. The snow cover gathered light from the weak winter sun, magnified it, and hurled it back into the air. The effect was blinding. I plucked my sunglasses from the dash, put them on, and watched members of the congregation climb out of their cabs and greet one another with smiles, hugs, and handshakes.

The church was a converted Sinclair filling station, the two islands where the pumps had been now just parallel humps in the snow. The trademark green brontosaurus had been pulled down from the roof and left where it had fallen. In its place was a plain wooden cross. Out front, one of those portable signs with interchangeable letters sat in the bed of a rusted, 1960s-vintage Dodge flatbed that had probably been towed in. The sign read:

Sword of God Baptist Church

Today’s Service:

The Blessing of the Guns

The men and teenage boys who crunched through the snow toward the church door cradled a variety of long guns. I spotted military assault rifles, deer rifles with scopes affixed, and a couple of shotguns. A few of the women toted rifles, too. Not to be left out, the children, some as young as five or six, lugged what appeared to be Daisy air rifles.

I took my Nikon out of its case, rolled down my window, and snapped a few shots-just in case I decided to write about this. Then I took my grandfather’s gun out of the glove box, held it in my hands for a moment, and put it back. In the unlikely event of trouble, I’d be too outgunned for it to do me any good; and the.45 didn’t need blessing. It had already been washed in my family’s blood.

By the time I pushed through the door, most of the parishioners were already seated on folding metal chairs arranged in neat rows on an oil-stained concrete floor. I counted forty-two people in all. I knew one of them, a young guy who’d overdone it, strapping a bandolier across his chest in an attempt to blend in. I caught his eye, and he quickly turned away. I didn’t see an organ or a choir.

I took a seat in back just as Reverend Crenson walked through the door of what had probably been the garage’s office. He was dressed in black and carried what looked to be a Revolutionary War-vintage musket at port arms. He rested its rusted barrel against an oaken lectern that looked as though it had been scavenged from a school auditorium.

“Welcome, my brothers and sisters, to the house of God,” he said, overenunciating so the word came out “ GOD- duh.” He held out his hands palms up, commanding the congregation to rise, and led them in a spirited off-key rendition of all five verses of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Scalici’s hogs could have sung it better, but they were into power ballads and 1970s arena rock. The folding chairs clattered as the members of the congregation returned to their seats.

The order of service was reminiscent of what you might see in any Baptist church: hymn, invocation, pastoral prayer, offering, doxology, hymn, scripture reading, hymn, sermon, benediction, closing hymn. But content was something else again.