Dawson hung up.
Oh Lord, he thought. You sent him to me as an instrument of Your will. Now Satan’s gotten to him. Help me to set all of this aright. I only want to serve You.
He telephoned his pilot and ordered him to fuel the helicopter and have it at the landing pad behind the Greenwich house within the hour.
He dialed three numbers before he located Klinger. “There’s some trouble up north.”
“Serious?”
“Extremely serious. Can you be here in an hour?”
“Only if I drive like a maniac. Better make it an hour and a quarter. ”
“Get moving.”
Dawson hung up again.
Oh Lord, he thought, both of these men are infidels. I know that. But You sent them to me for Your own purposes, didn’t You? Don’t punish me for doing Your will, Lord.
He opened the lower right-hand drawer of the desk and took out a folder thick with papers.
The label on it said:
HARRISON-BODREI DETECTIVE AGENCY SUBJECT: OGDEN SALSBURY
Thanks to the Harrison-Bodrei Agency, he understood his partners almost better than they understood themselves. For the past fifteen years he had kept a constantly updated file on Ernst Klinger. The Salsbury dossier was comparatively new, begun only in January 1975; but it traced his life all the way back through his childhood, and it was undeniably complete. Having read it ten or twelve times, from cover to cover, Dawson felt that he should have anticipated the current crisis.
Ogden was neither stark-raving mad nor perfectly sound of mind. He was a pathological woman-hater. Yet periodically he indulged in lascivious sprees of whoring, using as many as seven or eight prostitutes during a single weekend. Occasionally, there was trouble.
To Dawson’s way of thinking, two of the reports in the file were more important, told more about Ogden, than all of the others combined. He withdrew the first of them from the folder and read it yet again.
A week past his eleventh birthday, Ogden was taken from his mother and made a ward of the court. Katherine Salsbury (widowed) and her lover, Howard Parker, were later convicted of child abuse, child molestation, and corrupting the morals of a minor. Mrs. Salsbury was sentenced to seven to ten years in the New Jersey Correctional Institution for Women. Upon her conviction, Ogden was transferred to the home of a neighbor, Mrs. Carrie Barger (now Peterson), where he became one of several foster children. This interview was conducted with Mrs. Carrie Peterson (now sixty-nine years old) in her home in Teaneck, New Jersey, on the morning of Wednesday, January 22, 1975. The subject was obviously intoxicated even at that early hour and sipped at a glass of “just plain orange juice” throughout the interview. The subject was not aware that she was being recorded.
Dawson had marked the sections of the report that most interested him. He skipped ahead to the third page.
AGENT: Living next door to Mrs. Salsbury, you must have witnessed a great many of those beatings.
MRS. PETERSON: Oh, yes. Oh, I should say. From the time that Ogden was old enough to walk, he was a target for her. That woman! The least little thing he did — whup! she beat him black and blue.
AGENT: Spanked him?
MRS. PETERSON: No, no. She hardly ever spanked. Had she only spanked! That wouldn’t have been so horrid. But that woman! She started out hitting him with her open hands. On the head and all about his sweet little face. As he got older she’d sometimes use her fists. She was a big woman, you know. She’d use her fists. And she’d pinch. Pinch his little arms… I cried many the time. He’d come over to play with my foster children, and he’d be a mess. His little arms would be spotted with bruises. Just spotted all over with bruises.
AGENT: Was she an alcoholic?
MRS. PETERSON: She drank. Some. But she wasn’t addicted to gin or anything. She was just mean. Naturally mean. And I don’t think she was too smart. Sometimes, very dim-witted people, when they get frustrated, they take it out on children. I’ve seen it before. Too often. Suffer the little children. Oh, they suffer so much, I tell you.
AGENT: She had a great many lovers?
MRS. PETERSON: Dozens. She was a vile woman. Very common-looking men. Always very common-looking. Dirty. Crude laborers. Her men drank a lot. Sometimes they’d stay with her as much as a year. More often it was a week or two, a month.
AGENT: This Howard Parker—
MRS. PETERSON: Him!
AGENT: How long was he with Mrs. Salsbury?
MRS. PETERSON: Nearly six months, I think, before the crime. What a horrible man. Horrible!
AGENT: Did you know what was happening in the Salsbury house when Parker was there?
MRS. PETERSON: Of course not! I’d have called the police at once! Of course the night of the crime — Ogden came to me. And then I did call the police.
AGENT: Do you mind talking about the crime?
MRS. PETERSON: It still upsets me. To think of it. What a horrible man! And that woman. To do that to a child.
AGENT: Parker was — bisexual?
MRS. PETERSON: He was what?
AGENT: He customarily had relations with both sexes. Is that right?
MRS. PETERSON: He raped a little boy! It’s… I don’t know. I just don’t know. Why did God make some people so wicked? I love children. Have all my life. Love them more than anything. I can’t understand a man like that Parker.
AGENT: Does it embarrass you to talk about the crime?
MRS. PETERSON: A little bit.
AGENT: If you can bear with me… It’s really important that you answer a few more questions.
MRS. PETERSON: If it’s for Ogden’s sake, like you said, I surely can. For Ogden’s sake. Although he never comes back to see me. You know that? After I took him in and raised him from the age of eleven. He just never comes back.
AGENT: The court records of that time were not properly explicit. Either that or the judge had some of the testimony altered to protect the boy’s reputation. I am not certain whether Mr. Parker subjected the boy to — you’ll excuse me, but it has to be said — to oral or anal intercourse.
MRS. PETERSON: That horrible man!
AGENT: Do you know which it was?
MRS. PETERSON: Both.
AGENT: I see.
MRS. PETERSON: With the mother watching. His mother watched! Can you imagine such a thing? Such a rotten thing? To do that to a defenseless child… What monsters they were!
AGENT: I didn’t mean to make you cry.
MRS. PETERSON: I’m not crying. Just a tear or two. It’s so sad. Don’t you think? So terribly sad. Suffer the little children.
AGENT: There’s no need to continue with—
MRS. PETERSON: Oh, but you said this was for Ogden’s sake, that you needed to ask all of this for Ogden’s sake. He was one of my children. Foster children. But I felt like they were my own. I loved them dearly. Loved all of them. Little dears, every one. So if it’s for Ogden’s sake… Well… For months, without anyone at all
