Chasing the Boogeyman Read online

  In a selfish attempt to distract myself from the family’s sorrow, I pretended to stretch and casually glanced around the church. Almost every pew was filled. I recognized dozens of familiar faces from the neighborhood (many of them wrinkled and fleshier, others thinner, all of them older), friends of my parents I hadn’t seen in years, former teachers and coaches, and a handful of old friends from high school—albeit none of the guys from my youthful inner circle. Most of them were gone now. The Cavanaughs had moved away to South Carolina right after Jeff finished high school. Brian Anderson was taking summer classes at college in West Virginia. I didn’t know what Craig was up to; none of us did. Steve Sines had joined the air force and was currently stationed up north in Maine. Carlos Vargas now lived outside Washington, D.C., where he’d just started working as an engineer. Tommy Noel and a handful of others were working full-time at the Arsenal. Most of the rest were scattered around the country like dandelion seeds in the wind. It suddenly made me sad to think about.

  I felt a bony elbow poke me in the rib cage and turned around to find my father staring at me with that familiar “pay attention” look etched across his face. I gave him a guilty nod and started listening to Father Francis again.

  But just before my father scolded me, I’d noticed two men I’d never seen before, sitting at the rear of the church. They wore dark suits and blank expressions on their faces. Their jutting chins pointed straight ahead toward Father Francis, but their eyes were actively scanning the crowd. Police, I immediately thought, a shiver tickling my shoulder blades. It made perfect sense. After all, didn’t killers often return to the scene of the crime, observing the damage they’d caused?

  8

  In the humidity-drenched summer days that followed Natasha Gallagher’s funeral, several intriguing developments began to take place.

  For reasons unknown, whenever I made a trip to the post office or Frank’s Pizza out on Route 40 or the grocery store on Edgewood Road to pick up something for my mom, I found myself driving the long way home. Instead of taking the Route 24 bypass off 40 or cruising a direct path down Hanson Road, I opted to go the back way, driving a series of less-traveled side streets, which inevitably led me straight to Hawthorne Drive—and right past the Gallaghers’ house.

  The first time I cruised by, Mr. Gallagher had just pulled into the driveway and was getting out of his car with a brown paper bag in his hand. Slumping down in the driver’s seat, I accelerated by the house. A large, bright red ribbon had been attached to a tree trunk in the Gallaghers’ front yard. Runners of yellow police tape blocked off a portion of the side yard beneath Natasha’s bedroom window. The next time I drove past, a couple of days later, both the ribbon and police tape were gone. By the following week, a homemade memorial of flowers and candles and photographs had taken its place at the base of the tree.

  I’m not entirely sure why I started driving by Natasha’s house. Human nature? Maybe. Morbid curiosity? Probably. Budding obsession? Definitely. I was ashamed to admit such a thing, but what else could it be? I filled my days and nights with stories and novels and movies that peered into the deep, dark wells of human evil. Hell, I wanted to make a career of such excursions. So, didn’t it make sense that those fascinations should transfer over to real life? I honestly wasn’t sure, and didn’t like to think about it.

  Around this time, I also started calling Carly Albright. She was a childhood friend of Kara’s—I knew her as a smart, cheerful girl who wore bright red eyeglasses and talked too loud—but we’d never been particularly close. The two of them had grown up right down the street from each other in Long Bar Harbor, a mostly waterfront community located just off Route 40, but they’d eventually grown apart when Carly’s family moved to a larger house in downtown Edgewood and Carly transferred to John Carroll, a private Bel Air Catholic high school, during her freshman year.

  Now, after graduating from Goucher College, Carly was back at home in Edgewood, living with her parents, and working for the Aegis. According to her, it was mostly busy work, writing community notices about yard sales and church bazaars and free first-aid clinics at the YMCA. Toss in the occasional obituary or high school sports piece, and you had one seriously bored rookie journalist.

  And that’s where my initial interest in Carly stemmed from—despite her misgivings, she was an actual working journalist. She was walking the walk and had access to the newsroom and the wire services and seasoned reporters who’d been covering big stories for decades. I was fascinated with the idea that she was only twenty-two years old and drawing a full-time paycheck from a real newspaper. Ironically, she shared similar feelings about me and my fancy degree from the University of Maryland (“You know they have one of the top three journalism programs in the entire country,” she once told me at a party), and even more so about my handful of short fiction sales. So, yes, you could say we had a bit of a mutual admiration society going on, and in the weeks to come, Carly would not only prove to be an invaluable source of information, but also grow to be a good and trusted friend.

  Not all the developments were of a personal nature. Much to the community’s relief, it’d been reported earlier in the week that Natasha Gallagher had not been sexually assaulted—before or after her murder. The time of death had also been narrowed down to shortly after midnight, indicating that she’d probably been taken from the house not long after she’d gone upstairs to bed.

  The subject of just how Natasha had been stolen away from her bedroom without her parents hearing sounds of a struggle, or any sounds at all for that matter, was now the number two question on everybody’s mind. Number one, of course, being: Who had committed this horrible crime?

  The police offered no answers—although, naturally, the most common theory pointed to Natasha knowing her assailant and leaving her bedroom voluntarily—and as the days passed, neither law enforcement officials nor the media provided any new information related to the murder.

  “It’s frustrating,” said Martha Blackburn, longtime Edgewood resident, when asked by a reporter from the Baltimore Sun. “All we get from them is ‘it’s an active investigation and we’re working around the clock pursuing various leads.’ Well, of course they are. One of our kids was murdered two weeks ago. What else are they going to do?

  “What we really want to know is, do they have any suspects? Was it someone from around here, or a stranger? Do they think he’ll do it again? I have three children of my own, you know…”

  Meanwhile, on the home front, my mother could barely stand to talk about what had happened—the handful of times she did take part in the conversation invariably ended with her tearing up and excusing herself to go lie down—but my father had his own theory. He believed the killer was someone Natasha knew in a cursory manner, meaning not well enough to go along with willingly, but just enough so that she didn’t cry out in alarm when the person first climbed through her bedroom window. “Probably someone who lives in a nearby town,” he explained, “but not an actual neighbor. Also, most likely someone young, close to your age, Rich.” He was convinced that, once inside her bedroom, the person used some type of chemical, like chloroform, to render Natasha unconscious, and then carried her out the window into the woods. He insisted that the police should be looking at people like the lifeguards from the YMCA pool or store clerks, and checking to see if Natasha had gone to any local summer camps and then investigating the counselors.

  I guess it was as good a theory as any—truthfully, better than most I’d heard—but there’d been no public mention of any kind of chemicals or drugs being detected during Natasha’s autopsy, and without having access to police reports, it was impossible to know for sure. The rest of it made a lot of sense, though. Most fifteen-year-olds live a vastly different life than what their parents see on a daily basis. Words unsaid, thoughts unexpressed, secrets both big and small—they were all just part of being a teenager.

  Although initially surprised that my father had given the idea so much careful thought, I later deci
ded that I shouldn’t have been. My father was the one who’d passed down his love of hard-boiled detective novels. This was the man who had a complete run of vintage Gold Medal paperbacks lined up on a bookshelf in the basement. He adored the old, black-and-white whodunits on television and often recorded them to watch again later.

  Before long, I even found myself wondering if perhaps my father had taken the long way home from work a time or two.

  9

  There was one rather fascinating item that, at the time, was never made public by either the police or the media. In fact, I wasn’t sure if anyone in the press even knew about it until a few weeks later when Carly spilled the beans and confirmed many of the details. I first heard about it from an acquaintance that was related to someone heavily involved with the ongoing investigation. One too many pitchers of Bud Light, and he just blurted it out. I was sworn to secrecy at the time, and kept my word, even after Carly separately confided in me. I just sat and listened to her and played dumb—something I discovered I had a particular talent for doing.

  The scoop was this: On the morning Natasha Gallagher’s body was discovered, several bystanders and police noticed something odd in front of the Gallaghers’ house. Someone had used blue chalk to draw a hopscotch grid on the sidewalk. Instead of the usual sequential numbering of one to ten, the person had drawn the number three inside each of the blocks. Detectives verified with Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher, as well as their daughter’s circle of friends, that Natasha hadn’t played hopscotch since before her tenth birthday. No chalk of any color was found in the Gallaghers’ garage or Natasha’s bedroom. It was also quickly confirmed that no young children lived within a four-house radius of the Gallaghers’ rancher, and those children who did reside farther away on the street all denied drawing the grid.

  The detectives believed with absolute certainty that neither Natasha Gallagher nor any other local child had drawn the hopscotch grid on the sidewalk.

  So, then, who did?

  And what, if anything, did it mean?

  Natasha Gallagher (Photo courtesy of Catherine Gallagher)

  Natasha Gallagher (Photo courtesy of Catherine Gallagher)

  The hopscotch grid found on the sidewalk in front of the Gallagher residence (Photo courtesy of Logan Reynolds)

  Gallagher residence crime scene (Photo courtesy of The Aegis)

  Damaged screen from Natasha Gallagher’s bedroom window (Photo courtesy of The Aegis)

  Wooded area behind the Gallagher residence (Photo courtesy of the author)

  Location where Natasha Gallagher’s body was discovered (Photo courtesy of the author)

  three Kacey

  “What if there really is a boogeyman?”

  1

  Kacey Robinson and Riley Holt, both fifteen, had been best friends since their days at Cedar Drive Elementary School. They grew up two blocks away from each other—Kacey in a sprawling rancher on Cherry Road, Riley in a two-story colonial on the corner of Bayberry and Tupelo—and many people meeting them for the first time believed them to be sisters. Both girls had long dark hair, big brown eyes, bright easy smiles, and even sunnier personalities. Kacey and Riley had made a pact when they were in middle school—after graduation, they’d both attend Clemson University (orange was Kacey’s favorite color) and travel the world together before starting their careers as veterinarians. After five years, they’d pool their savings and open up their own clinic. The girls’ favorite part of the year was summer vacation because they were allowed to stay up late and have sleepovers at each other’s houses. They watched movies and played board games and, just lately, talked a lot about boys and pretty clothes. Riley was an only child, and she adored the noisy but loving chaos that inhabited the Robinson home on a typical summer evening. Kacey had three siblings—a brother one year older and two younger sisters.

  Even with what had happened just eighteen days earlier, Riley wasn’t worried when she rang the Robinsons’ doorbell at a few minutes past 9:00 p.m. on Monday, June 20, 1988. In fact, she was in a particularly fine mood because she was planning on spending the night at her friend’s house and they were going to make popcorn and watch Grease for what had to be their fiftieth time. They both had major crushes on John Travolta.

  “Hey, there,” a smiling Mr. Robinson said, opening the front door and finding Riley, standing on the porch, a pink L.L.Bean knapsack slung over one shoulder. His smile faltered a little when he glanced behind Riley. “Kacey isn’t with you?”

  “She was,” Riley answered. “We were watching TV and playing cards at my house, but then we headed over here.”

  Mr. Robinson put out his hands, palms up, as if to say: Well, then, where in the heck is she?

  Riley giggled. “I forgot my glasses and had to run home to get them,” she said. “When I got back outside, she wasn’t there anymore. I just figured she walked the rest of the way by herself.”

  Mr. Robinson turned and leaned back into the doorway. “Honey! Is Kacey here?”

  Mrs. Robinson’s muffled voice came from somewhere inside the house: “Don’t think so!” Then, after a brief pause: “Janie says she went to Riley’s!”

  Mr. Robinson turned back to Riley and shrugged his shoulders. “She’s not here.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Could she have stopped at someone else’s house on the way? Maybe Lily’s?”

  “I guess so, but we had plans for tonight. Just me and her.”

  A strange look came over his face. “Where was she when you ran back inside for your glasses?”

  “Like two houses down from mine,” Riley answered. “Right in front of the Crofts’. I was only gone for like three or four minutes.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone else? No one driving by or walking around?” Mr. Robinson was talking faster now, his voice growing louder.

  “No,” she said quickly. “I mean… I don’t think so. I wasn’t really paying attention or anything.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God, you don’t think someone—”

  “I don’t know what I think,” Mr. Robinson said, walking off the porch and peering up and down the dark neighborhood. There were no cars moving on the street. Not a person in sight. Somewhere far away, a dog was barking.

  “Maybe we should call the police,” Riley said.

  “Not yet.” Mr. Robinson cut across the yard and began jogging in the direction of Riley’s house. Over his shoulder: “Go inside and tell my wife I’m going to look for Kacey. Tell her to send David in the car.”

  Riley nodded her head, beginning to cry, and as she walked into the house, she heard Mr. Robinson shouting Kacey’s name.

  2

  Mr. Robinson’s Harley-Davidson T-shirt was drenched with sweat and he was gasping for breath by the time he reached the Holts’ driveway. It wasn’t that far from his own house, maybe a quarter mile or so, but he was out of shape and had practically sprinted the entire way.

  There’d been no sign of his daughter anywhere.

  Now he was scared.

  “Kacey!” he shouted again, cupping his hands around his mouth. The barking dog was his only answer.

  He turned and started back toward his house, moving slower now, taking a closer look at his surroundings. So many damn rows of shrubbery, he later told the police. So many fences and trees for someone to hide behind.

  “Shit,” he suddenly said aloud to the empty street. “I should’ve knocked on the Holts’ door. Maybe she went back there looking for Riley…”

  The words died in his throat when he saw it. Up ahead, maybe twenty feet in the distance, framed in a pale circle of light from an overhead streetlamp, was a shoe.

  He quickly closed the distance and picked it up, not thinking about the police or tampering with evidence or much of anything at all, just picturing his daughter’s sweet face and praying he was wrong.

  But he wasn’t.

  It was Kacey’s bright green Chuck Taylor high-top sneaker, the one for her left foot, the reason they’d started calling h
er their little Irish leprechaun. Clutching his daughter’s shoe against his chest, Mr. Robinson took off running for home.

  3

  The Baliko brothers lived right down the street from Kacey Robinson, and I learned most of what happened that night from Alex, the older of the two. Alex’s father was a close friend of Mr. Robinson’s—they often went fishing and crabbing together and bowled in the same league every other Friday night—and he’d gotten the details directly from Mr. Robinson. The story was shared with Alex a few days later on their way to the hardware store, and Alex told me he’d never seen his dad look or sound so wrecked. It really frightened him at the time.

  I heard the rest of the details of that night from Carly Albright, various media reports, and the actual radio calls between the state police and sheriff’s department.

  A week earlier, I’d used a 25 percent–off coupon my father had lying around to purchase a police scanner from Radio Shack in the Edgewood Shopping Plaza. I mostly listened at night while I was writing. My sister Mary, a surprise dinner guest earlier that same week, claimed it was ghoulish and that I was subconsciously hoping for something else bad to happen, like those reporters on the Weather Channel during hurricane season. “They don’t even bother to hide their excitement,” she complained. “It’s gross.”