“But we are here now to say good-bye to him and to praise what we can praise. He was kind, he meant well, he had no meanness in him. How many can say that of themselves? He had the same mixture of qualities and failings found in all human beings. His greatest pleasures were in his friendships and in books, the novels that filled his spare moments. He was a gentle man, and in saying good-bye to him we should remember that and say good-bye with as much goodwill as we can muster. I want to close with two quotes that I came upon this fall in my history class. Both are from the emperor Marcus Aurelius. ‘An empty pageant; a stage play; flocks of sheep, herds of cattle; a brawl of spearmen; a bone flung among a pack of dogs; a crumb tossed into a pond of fish; ants, loaded and laboring; mice, scared and scampering; puppets, jerking on their strings—that is life. In the midst of it all you must take your stand, good-temperedly and without disdain.’”

As he paused, Hawthorne thought of yet another quote from Marcus Aurelius that had stayed with him over the weeks: “You may break your heart, but men will still go on as before.” He had first thought of it in relation to his wife and daughter, but now it had become one of his truths, as if Aurelius’s role were to fill the agnostic’s empty heaven. Aurelius offered consolation when there seemed none other to be had. Glancing up, he saw Kate watching him from the second row. He tried to smile and felt his awkwardness as a clumsy twisting of his lips.

“And here is the second quotation that gives me guidance and may be of help to you as well. ‘Be like the headland against which the waves break and break: it stands firm, until presently the watery tumult around it subsides once more to rest.’”

—

Leafing through an issue of Boston magazine, Detective Leo Flynn thought how it reflected a Boston he knew nothing about, or at least very little—the newly prosperous and yuppie Boston, the online Boston. The city was full of people without history, or whose histories were elsewhere. Was there anything in the magazine about Somerville, where Flynn had grown up and gone to school? Not likely—Somerville wasn’t upscale enough. Bean sprouts and exotic mushrooms were absent from its supermarkets. But even that was changing. The yuppie sprawl from Cambridge was making inroads. And soon there would be no one to remember Scollay Square and Mayor Curley or even Ted Williams. Flynn closed the magazine and tossed it back on the table.

It was Thursday morning and Flynn was in Concord waiting to see Otto Renfrew of the Division of Children, Youth, and Families of the New Hampshire Department of Social Services. Fourteen years earlier, Renfrew had been associate director of the Bass Vocational School for troubled boys in Derry. One of the boys had been Francis LaBrecque, who had trained as a baker. Flynn wanted to talk to LaBrecque but so far he had found no trace of him. But he knew that LaBrecque was who he was looking for. He knew LaBrecque was the Ice Pick Man.

The door to the inner office opened and a round bald head stuck itself through the widening crack. “We’ve got to make this as short as possible,” said Renfrew. “I have a lunch meeting.”

Leo Flynn smiled affably and pushed himself up out of his chair. The trouble with New Hampshire was that he had no clout. In Boston he could make Otto Renfrew come to police headquarters any time of the day or night. He could keep Renfrew waiting for an hour or two without even an old magazine to help pass the time.

“I’d be grateful for just a minute,” he said. “I’ll make it quick.”

But ten minutes later Flynn was still asking questions while Renfrew scratched his bald head and furtively looked at his watch.

“I wouldn’t say he was especially bad,” said Renfrew. “He was emotionally damaged and educationally handicapped. He was certainly angry but there was no evidence of bipolarity. Perhaps overactive would be a better word, at times even hyperactive.”

“So you wouldn’t say he was fucked up,” said Flynn, checking Renfrew’s reaction.

“Well, he’d been mandated to the school by the court, presumably because the public schools couldn’t control him—he had a ferocious temper—but I don’t remember any instances of criminal behavior. He was disorganized and sometimes violent, though not to the other boys. But he might break up furniture or smash windows. Once he saw that we’d take away his privileges, though, he tried harder to fit in. Many of the boys at Bass were there for sexual-behavior modification, but that wasn’t entirely true in LaBrecque’s case, although he’d been sexually abused. Basically, he seemed friendly, but his anger and then his secretiveness made him completely untrustworthy. I wasn’t sure we could do anything for him, apart from giving him meds, until he got caught up in baking.”

“Did he have friends?”

“Frank was very much a loner. He was always eager to help out and he did favors for the older boys, but if given the choice he preferred his own company. When I first met him, he did lots of little favors for me—helping me clean my office, wash my car. And I thought it would lead to a friendship of sorts but it never did. His sociability was just a way of keeping a close eye on what was going on. It existed to mask his fear.”

“Was he ever sexually abused at the school?”

Renfrew’s brow wrinkled. “There was an older boy who bullied him constantly, always giving him orders, making him run errands, knocking him around. Looking back on it, there probably was a sexual aspect. Once I caught him snapping LaBrecque with a wet towel in the showers, aiming for the genital area. I put a stop to it and reprimanded him. He accused LaBrecque of coming on to him, although LaBrecque denied it. LaBrecque was somewhat peculiar-looking, thin and with an extremely narrow face. He was teased a lot. In all likelihood that was one reason he tried to ingratiate himself with the other boys, just so he wouldn’t be picked on.”

“What happened to the boy who’d been bullying him?”

Renfrew moved his tongue across his upper teeth. His discomfort seemed to increase. “He was nearly killed.”

“By LaBrecque?”

“I don’t know, but I rather think so. The boy was attacked one night as he was leaving the gym. He was beaten with a two-by-four. He didn’t see who did it and lost consciousness. His shoulder and arm were broken. Some other boys came running up and the attacker fled. The police became involved and all the boys were questioned. But suspicion didn’t fall on LaBrecque. He denied any involvement, and there was nothing of the fighter about him. All his violence had been directed at inanimate objects. He even seemed to be improving—he was calmer and making an effort in his classes. I remember he came to my room to say what a shame it was that the boy had been attacked and offered to make him a cake. I saw no harm in it. LaBrecque had done so well in the kitchen that he had a few special privileges. The boy had been in the hospital but after a week he was brought back to the infirmary. So LaBrecque made his cake and delivered it to him. It had bright red frosting. Actually, I should have been more careful.”

“What about?”

“The cake was full of tacks. The boy got several in his mouth and got a scratch on his tongue. I went to find LaBrecque but he was gone. No one saw him leave. There was a fence around the property but it wasn’t high; we didn’t want the place to look like a jail. The police searched for him for weeks. Obviously, his disappearance suggested that he had attacked the boy. And the business with the tacks was disturbing. In any case, the police lost track of him. They found a man who’d given him a ride to Boston—but nothing after that.”

“What about his family?”

“They seemed pretty indifferent.”

“Didn’t they visit him?”

“Never, as far as I remember, and LaBrecque himself never spoke of them. His mother was dead. There was a younger sister he was close to, but she was hardly more than a child. And there was a brother but no one really took an interest. Actually, I have to take that back. There was a cousin who visited him a couple of times, quite a young man.”