Chasing the Boogeyman Read online

  My sister wasn’t exactly right about my reasoning for buying the scanner, but she wasn’t entirely wrong, either. I certainly wasn’t hoping for anything bad to happen… but I was waiting for something. I didn’t know what or when, but I undeniably felt expectant. I could feel it in the air all around me—a buzzing, almost electrical sensation of foreboding menace. As the long days of summer passed, the same haunting words surfaced in my mind time and again:

  There’s a storm coming.

  4

  Officer Aaron Hubbard was very familiar with the area surrounding Cedar Drive Elementary. His family had moved to Edgewood from Ohio when he was ten years old, and he’d attended the school for one year before graduating on to sixth grade at the middle school. As a teenager, he’d spent countless hours roaming the grassy fields around Cedar Drive, playing baseball, basketball and football, hide-and-seek and war and kick-the-can. He’d also had plenty of friends who’d lived in the military housing just up the hill and would often go there to hang out after the school day was finished. He’d even learned to drive a stick shift by practicing in his father’s five-speed Subaru on the one-and-a-half-mile road that looped around the elementary school, kindergarten building, and adjacent ball fields.

  On the night of Kacey Robinson’s disappearance, it was Officer Hubbard’s job to search his old stomping grounds. He circled the loop several times, slowing down and directing the spotlight attached to his cruiser at the usual areas of interest: doorways and windows lost in shadow, the pitch-black tree line that bordered the edge of the road across the way, behind a scattering of dumpsters, and in between several rows of parked buses.

  Everything looked in order, so he swung his cruiser into the elementary school parking lot and radioed Shirley Rafferty back at the station to let her know he was going to complete the remainder of his search on foot. He exited his vehicle, flashlight in hand, at 11:27 p.m.

  Officer Hubbard’s father, recently retired from the Maryland State Police after more than thirty years of service in nearby Cecil County, had made a point of teaching his son the finer points of conducting a night search on foot. Back in the late fifties, during his second year on the job, Mr. Hubbard had interrupted a burglary in progress at a warehouse loading dock and almost been killed. The academy covered this—and every other type of potential conflict scenario—in painstaking detail, but Mr. Hubbard wasn’t taking any chances. “The moment you set foot outside your cruiser, you’re exposed,” he’d lectured his only son. “And when you’re exposed, what else are you?”

  “You’re vulnerable,” his son would dutifully answer, trying his best to sound reassuring and confident. He knew his father worried about him, and he knew firsthand how that kind of worry could wear you down. All he had to do was look at his mother to see proof of that.

  You’re vulnerable. Those two words fluttered through Officer Hubbard’s mind as he slowly walked to the rear of the elementary school. He gripped his flashlight in his left hand, the bright beam cutting through the shadows ahead of him, and rested his right hand atop his holstered sidearm. He moved as stealthily as he could.

  After circling the building and tugging on several doors to confirm they were locked, Officer Hubbard trudged up the hill toward the baseball diamond and playground. Upgraded just a few years earlier, the ball field featured brand-new dugouts and an electronic scoreboard. Stretching out in foul-ball territory down the left-field line, the playground occupied nearly a full acre of open ground.

  Officer Hubbard flashed his light into the first-base dugout to make sure no one was hiding in there, and then cut across the pitcher’s mound to check out the opposing team’s bench area. When he found it empty, he eased himself out of the gate, trying not to make too much noise, and entered the playground.

  He swept the area with his flashlight beam and spotted the girl right away, lying at the bottom of the taller of two sliding boards. Her eyes were open and bulging. Her thin arms were crossed atop her chest, her bare feet dangling several inches above the ground.

  His father’s eternal warning rushed back at him: You’re vulnerable.

  Unholstering his weapon and scanning the darkness, Officer Hubbard keyed the radio unit hanging across his chest and informed Shirley that he’d found Kacey Robinson.

  5

  Early the next morning, all four local television networks carried live footage from the playground. Kacey Robinson’s body had been removed by then, but there was still plenty to gawk at. More than a dozen uniformed officers and detectives remained at the scene, several crouched in the dirt sifting for clues, others standing around talking in small groups. Despite both access roads leading into Cedar Drive being closed to civilian traffic, a large crowd of lookie-loos gathered behind temporary barricades, many of them sipping morning coffees and smoking cigarettes. A handful snapped photographs with disposable cameras. They’d all walked there, many from the shoulder of Hanson Road, where they’d parked their cars, others from nearby homes.

  The handful of on-air news personalities—three women and one man—wore grave expressions on their faces and spoke in respectfully hushed tones. Although a sheriff’s department spokesman had provided a brief statement thirty minutes earlier, he’d declined to confirm the victim’s identity.

  Still, there was little doubt among the horde of onlookers and captivated television viewers watching from home. Word traveled fast in a small town like Edgewood.

  By the time dinner tables had been cleared and the evening news hit local airwaves, the tragic details had been confirmed:

  The deceased was officially identified as Kacey Lynn Robinson, fifteen years of age, resident of Edgewood, Maryland. Sometime between the hours of 10 p.m. and midnight, she’d been killed by an unknown assailant, and both the nature of her injuries and the positioning of her body—each of the networks was now using the word “posed”—bore striking resemblances to the case involving Natasha Gallagher.

  However, it wasn’t until the next morning that a lengthy article published in the Baltimore Sun revealed the true extent of the hideous crime. According to a police spokesman, Kacey Robinson exhibited numerous facial and head injuries, as well as defensive wounds on her hands and arms. She also suffered a deep bite mark on one of her breasts and her left ear had been severed. Official cause of death was strangulation.

  There was no mention of sexual assault. That would come later.

  6

  The weekly edition of the Aegis—released that Wednesday morning—brought news of an even darker nature. A bold headline screamed across the top of the front page:

  TWO LOCAL GIRLS DEAD—WAS IT THE BOOGEYMAN?

  Centered underneath were large black-and-white photographs of Kacey Robinson and Natasha Gallagher. Both girls were smiling. While the Gallagher family declined to comment for the article, Mrs. Robinson had plenty to say.

  “It happened back in May, during the last week of school,” she explained. “My two youngest daughters share a bedroom. Janie, my seven-year-old, has a big imagination and often has bad dreams, especially if she’s seen something unsettling on television.

  “She came into our bedroom in the middle of the night and told me and my husband that the boogeyman was trying to get into her window and could she please sleep the rest of the night with us. We told her there was no such thing as the boogeyman and it was just another nightmare, but we’d make an exception this time and let her stay.

  “The next morning at breakfast, she was back to her happy little self and even admitted that she’d been watching a crime show on television right before bedtime. I didn’t really think about it again after that—until I heard the news about Natasha Gallagher.

  “At that point, my husband called the police and told them the whole story. Detectives came out to the house later that day and searched the yard and checked for fingerprints. They didn’t find anything and told us that most likely we’d been right—that our daughter had probably just had a bad dream.

  “But what if all of
us are wrong and Janie’s right? What if someone really did try to break into her bedroom window that night? What if there really is a boogeyman… and he came back and got Kacey?”

  7

  The funeral was held on Saturday morning, and this time a steady rain fell from an ash-gray sky, distant thunder rumbling overhead. I didn’t go, but my parents did, sharing a ride with Norma and Bernie Gentile. I was fighting off a summer cold, so I slept in that morning, hung over on NyQuil and lemon-flavored throat lozenges. Besides, the Robinson children were much younger than me, and I didn’t know Mr. Robinson at all and just barely recognized his wife from the one summer I’d worked at a grocery store. Kara, who was tolerating my increasing chatter about the murders with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, said I was just making up excuses not to go, and she was probably right. Dammit.

  I’d received an acceptance letter in the mail the day before, notifying me of my first short fiction sale of the summer. The title of the story was “Roses and Raindrops,” about a series of mysterious killings in a small, rural town. The bad guys in this particular tale were supernatural in nature and always left behind a single red rose as a calling card. New Blood was the name of the magazine that had bought it. Over the past eighteen months I’d racked up nearly a dozen rejections trying to crack its glossy pages, so I should’ve been elated with the news. Instead, I hadn’t even mentioned it to anyone other than Kara. I was afraid they’d ask me what the story was about, and I’d be too ashamed to tell the truth.

  Later that morning, before my parents returned from Kacey Robinson’s service, I dragged myself out of bed and drove to the 7-Eleven on Willoughby Beach Road. I told myself I was only going there because I had a craving for a strawberry Slurpee, but I knew that wasn’t the truth. If there was one spot in Edgewood that assumed the role of the traditional small-town general store, it was this place. Only instead of the town elders crowding around an old-fashioned woodstove each morning to exchange the latest news and gossip, Edgewood’s crew of old-timers conducted their business at the rear of the store, in front of a long row of automatic coffee machines.

  On any given morning, there were usually anywhere from a half-to-a-baker’s-dozen men huddled back there, sipping on cups of steaming coffee and puffing on unfiltered cigarettes. Average age was in their sixties. Occupations ranged from electrician and attorney to retired professor and state trooper. There was a core group of regulars, three or four who never missed a day. Fred Anderson, Brian and Craig’s father, was one of them. He was always hanging around back there, and this morning was no exception.

  I said a quick hello to Mr. Anderson and pretended to have trouble working the Slurpee machine, eavesdropping the entire time. The main topic of conversation was the funeral service, since most of the men’s wives were in attendance. I took a good look at the group and wondered what it said about all of us that we were here, wasting our time in a 7-Eleven, while our better halves were honoring the memory of a fallen community member.

  Talk soon shifted to the ongoing police investigation and the possible identity of the killer. Most of the men present felt it was an outsider committing the murders, someone with a grudge against pretty young girls. Fred Anderson stridently disagreed. He believed it had to be a local, someone with intimate knowledge of the people and places in Edgewood.

  I secured a lid on my Slurpee and eased closer to the group. Feeling brave, I waited for a lull in the conversation, and then bit the bullet. I asked if they had any specific ideas about who the killer might be, a name. The place went silent—the you could hear a pin drop kind—and they all just stared at me like I had two heads sitting atop my shoulders. No one uttered a word. Nothing. Nervously swallowing a mouthful of strawberry Slurpee, I nodded awkwardly and went on my way to the cash register, my face burning with embarrassment.

  The big news came two days later, on Monday, when Channel 11 aired exclusive footage of a suspect being escorted into the sheriff’s station. As far as anyone knew, it was the first time a person of interest had been hauled downtown. The Channel 11 newswoman reported that the man’s name was Henry Thornton, age twenty-seven, of Havre de Grace. In addition to cutting grass and doing miscellaneous yard work for several of his neighbors, Thornton worked as a deliveryman for Domino’s Pizza franchises in both Aberdeen and Edgewood. On the night of Natasha Gallagher’s murder, Thornton had made late-night deliveries to both Hawthorne Drive and—the next block over—Harewood Drive.

  When pressed for a statement, State Trooper Seth Higgins said, “We’ve spoken with literally dozens of people who we believe may be helpful to our investigation. Mr. Thornton is just one of those individuals, and it’s unfortunate that the media has chosen to make such a big deal of it.”

  Even with news of a possible suspect in custody, people remained on edge. Two young girls had been violently murdered in the heart of downtown Edgewood, their bodies mutilated and grotesquely posed. Local newspapers jockeyed for attention—and increased sales—with garish, tabloid-style headlines:

  SERIAL KILLER LOOSE IN EDGEWOOD?

  THE BOOGEYMAN STRIKES AGAIN

  POLICE HAVE NO LUCK TRACKING DOWN VAN GOGH KILLER

  The television news stations were even less dignified in their frenzied pursuit of ratings. Breaking news segments interrupted regular programming throughout the day, and you could barely run out to the grocery store or gas station without a reporter ambushing you and shoving a microphone in your face. Before long, the entire town was caught up in it.

  Residents who rarely locked their doors were now double- and triplechecking them numerous times a day. The sales of dead bolts and home security systems went through the roof. Residents paid to have peepholes installed in their front doors and added motion-detector spotlights around their houses. Gun sales spiked at sporting goods stores and pawnshops, as did frantic calls to 911.

  One Cherry Court resident—it was never confirmed, but word on the street was that it was Hugo Biermann, a retired naval officer—even booby-trapped the flower garden beneath his daughters’ bedroom windows with a pair of steel bear traps. Supposedly, this precaution led to a visit from a member of the sheriff’s department, and Biermann was forced to return the traps to his garage.

  Early the following week, I took a break from writing and met Carly Albright for lunch at Loughlin’s Pub. On my way to the restaurant, I passed a pair of camera crews shooting footage in the neighborhood. Kids on bicycles raced up and down the street, hooting and hollering, trying their best to get on the six o’clock news.

  Carly and I had been trading phone calls with increasing frequency, but this was the first time we’d made plans to actually meet in person. As usual, the bar and dining room were packed with military and civilian personnel from Edgewood Arsenal located just a quarter mile up the road. We sat at a small table in the corner and, with lowered voices, caught up on the latest developments.

  According to Carly, pizza deliveryman Henry Thornton had been released after more than six hours of questioning. For whatever reason, the police had become convinced of the man’s innocence within the first couple of hours and had spent the remaining time determining if he’d witnessed anything of importance on the night Natasha Gallagher had been killed. Unfortunately, he’d been of little help.

  Another theory the police were actively exploring, she told me, was the possibility that the killer was using the Edgewood train station to slip in and out of town. They were looking into train schedules and passenger ticketing to determine if there might be some kind of a pattern.

  Finally, after swearing me to secrecy and several false starts, Carly eventually revealed that the new number one suspect was Kacey Robinson’s ex-boyfriend, Johnathon Dail, a seventeen-year-old who’d been in trouble before for underage drinking and disturbing the peace. An odd pairing, they’d only dated for a few weeks during the school year before Kacey’s parents forced her to break it off. The boy lived with his aunt and uncle on the water at the end of Willoughby Beach Road, but neither had
seen him in almost two weeks. They believed he’d gone to Ocean City with friends, but couldn’t be certain. Police were actively searching for the boy.

  A short time later, Carly and I cut through the bar on our way out and caught the last thirty seconds of the lead story on the afternoon news. A tearful Riley Holt stood in front of her parents at the bottom of their driveway. “I just miss her so much,” the teen sobbed before the camera. “I wish every single day that she was still here. I wish I’d never left her alone…” With that, Riley broke down with emotion and the program cut back to a frowning anchorman.

  The next day, the public was introduced to the detective in charge of the investigation via a televised press conference held on the steps of the Harford County Sheriff’s Department. My first impression of the man was this: African American, late-forties/early-fifties, tall, stern (like a high school principal), confident, cheap Men’s Wearhouse suit.

  “Good morning,” he spoke into the microphone. “My name is Detective Sergeant Lyle Harper. I’m going to make a brief statement and that will be it for today. We will not be answering any follow-up questions.”

  Groans sounded from the members of the media in attendance. The detective immediately lifted his hands. “But I will be making another statement tomorrow or later this weekend, and will be happy to answer your questions then.”

  The detective cleared his throat before continuing. “Shortly before midnight, last Monday, June 20, the body of fifteen-year-old Kacey Robinson was discovered on the grounds of the Cedar Drive Elementary School. She had been reported missing by her parents earlier in the night at approximately 9:00 p.m. The coroner and investigating officers found striking similarities between the wounds suffered by Ms. Robinson and those of an earlier victim from the Edgewood area, fifteen-year-old Natasha Gallagher. In both cases, strangulation was determined as the cause of death, and the bodies appeared to have been purposely displayed in similar positions. However, several significant differences exist with these two cases.”