Free Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane Page A

seems, had consistently taunted Corwin Earle with vivid stories about what the good people of Dorchester do to baby-rapers. How Corwin wouldn’t be able to walk ten yards down Dorchester Avenue without getting his penis chopped off and stuffed in his mouth. Mr. Minton thinks Corwin Earle specifically chose Dorchester in which to pick up his homecoming present for the Tretts because he wanted to spit in Mr. Minton’s face.”
    “And where’s Corwin Earle now?” I asked.
    “Gone. Vanished. We’ve staked out his parents’ home in Marshfield, but so far, nothing. He left the pen in ataxi, took it to a strip club in Stoughton, and that’s the last anyone’s seen of him.”
    “And this Bobby Minton’s phone call or whatever—that’s all you have to tie Earle and the Tretts to Amanda?”
    “Pretty thin, huh?” Broussard said. “I told you we don’t have much. Chances are, Earle doesn’t have the balls for a straight kidnapping in an unknown neighborhood. Nothing in his sheet points toward it. The kids he molested were kids at a summer camp where he worked seven years ago. No violence, no forced captivity. He was probably just talking big for his cell mate.”
    “What about the Tretts?” Angie said.
    “Well, Roberta’s clean. The only felony she’s ever been convicted of was as an accessory-after-the-fact in a liquor store stickup in Lynn back in the late seventies. She did a year, completed her probation, and hasn’t spent so much as a night in county jail since.”
    “But Leon?”
    “Leon.” Broussard raised his eyebrows at Poole and whistled. “Leon’s bad, bad, bad. Convicted three times, accused twenty. Most cases were dropped when the victims refused to testify. And I don’t know if you know the logic regarding baby-rapers, but it’s the same for rats and roaches: You see one, there’s another hundred nearby. You catch a freak molesting a kid, you can bet there’s another thirty he’s never been bagged for if he’s halfway intelligent. So Leon, by our conservative estimates, has probably raped a good fifty kids. And he was living in Randolph and later in Holbrook when kids disappeared for good, so the feds and local cops have him at the head of their lists of suspects for those kids’ murders. Let you in on another aspect of Leon’s character—last time he was busted, Kingston P.D. found a shitload of automatic weapons buried near his house.”
    “Did he take a fall for them?” Angie asked.
    Broussard shook his head. “He was smart enough to bury them on his next-door neighbor’s property. Kingston P.D. knew the shit was his—his house was filled with NRA newsletters, gun manuals, The Turner Diaries , allthe usual well-armed paranoid’s paraphernalia—but they couldn’t prove it. Very little sticks to Leon. He’s very careful, and he knows how to drop out of sight.”
    “Apparently.” Angie said, with a bitter edge.
    Poole put a hand lightly on hers. “Keep the photos. Study them. And have your eyes open for any of the three. I doubt they’re involved—nothing points to it besides a convict’s theory—but they are the most prominent child-rapers in the area these days.”
    Angie smiled at Poole’s hand. “Okay.”
    Broussard lifted his silk tie and picked at some lint. “Who was Helene McCready with at the Filmore Sunday night?”
    “Dottie Mahew,” Angie said.
    “That all?”
    Neither Angie nor I spoke for a moment.
    “Remember,” Broussard said, “full disclosure.”
    “Skinny Ray Likanski,” I said.
    Broussard turned to Poole. “Tell me more about this guy, partner.”
    “The rascal,” Poole said. “And to think we had His Skinniness in our hands not an hour ago.” He shook his head. “Well, that’s a miss.”
    “How so?” I said.
    “Skinny Ray’s a professional lowlife. Learned from his daddy. He probably knows we’re looking for him, so he’s gone. Least for a while. Probably the only reason he told us you two were waving weapons around in the