The Skeleton Crew by Deborah Halber Read Free Book Online Page B

Costa, who was convicted of the murders. At the time, no one imagined the intelligent, serious-looking young man with gold-framed glasses capable of such horrific crimes. Meads had known Tony Costa since the youth started spending summers in Provincetown with his aunt, a local resident, and Meads thought it was too bad the kid had married at nineteen and gotten mixed up in Provincetown’s drug scene.
    In fact, Meads had recruited Costa as a police informer for a drug bust. In return, Meads wrote a letter recommending early parole for Costa, who was serving six months in the Barnstable County Jail and House of Correction for nonpayment of child support and was due to get out in March 1969. Meads’s letter helped free Costa in November 1968.
    Two months later, Pat Walsh and Mary Anne Wysocki were dead.
    In May 1970, Costa was convicted and sentenced to life in prison at the former Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Walpole. Four years after his incarceration and two months before the Lady of the Dunes was found, Costa hung himself in his cell.
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    One of the things Jim Hankins recalled about the dunes was how, despite wide-open vistas of sand and sea, the dense vegetation—taller than a man in places—created a maze of secret nooks. No one, he imagined, had ever explored all of them.
    He had now arrived at such a spot, a protected cove where the victim was laid out on a blanket. She lay on her stomach, and both of her handshad been hacked off at the wrists, which had been jammed into the sand so it looked, according to several media reports, as if she were doing push-ups. Rangers and specially trained dogs who searched for her hands for four days found nothing. One side of her head was caved in. Her head had been dealt a terrific blow with a blunt instrument, and more than likely the blow had occurred while she was asleep or someone was lying next to her, Hankins said.
    I thought nature-loving Jim Hankins was deeply affronted that the killer, in addition to senselessly ending a life, had defiled a beautiful spot that he was charged with keeping pristine. I had taken him back almost four decades, but Hankins’s memories seemed clear. I sat at my desk, phone propped at my ear, typing as quietly as I could while Hankins’s words unfurled like a ribbon.
    â€œThe only instrument that could have been used to hack off her hands was an instrument carried by almost all dune buggies. It was common in all surplus stores; it was a handy tool for the camper. It was a folding shovel called an entrenching tool. It was a standard-issue item for anyone in the infantry; soldiers in World War II and Korea carried them.
    â€œIt was very sturdy, made out of heavy metal, semi-pointed, spade-like. The blade could be folded down on the handle, or it could be raised to a perpendicular like a hoe, or you could make it into a shovel with a straight handle around eighteen inches long. In hand-to-hand combat, you could use it to fight your enemy.
    â€œI still have a couple, as a matter of fact, and I use them quite often for gardening. We insisted that anyone who got a permit to drive on the beach carry certain equipment, such as a board to put their jack on—you can’t use a jack in the sand—and a shovel to dig out if you get stuck.
    â€œWe never knew how she got there. Throughout the dunes at that time there were well-defined sand trails where beach buggies and sand taxis—vehicles with four-wheel-drive capability—would haul as many as eight people. They would take visitors and people would go fishing out there.
    â€œShe could have been let out by dune buggy. It was very uncommon for people to be out in the dunes alone like that. It wasn’t unheard-of, but it wasn’t a common occurrence. It was quite possible she could have parked out in the visitor center or someone brought her. Or she couldactually have walked from town, or she could have come from the beach. They discovered from the