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All the Dying Children

Page 14

by James Halpin


  By the time he got back to his desk, Daly decided it was time to take another look at Soma. The app wasn’t easy to find in the App Store. He had to search for it by name and when it came up it had no reviews. Daly clicked onto the app’s detail page and got little more information. The seller was listed as Sleep Song LLC. The app hadn’t been updated in nearly a year and appeared to be very rudimentary. The logo was simply stock art of a pillow. When he clicked it open on his new iPhone, Daly was again struck by the fact that it appeared to have only one sound. No wonder nobody is downloading this app, he thought. It’s garbage.

  And yet.

  At least two of Dr. Radcliffe’s patients had used it. Daly popped a pair of earbuds in and clicked play on the app, trying to figure out its significance. All he heard was the low buzzing of static in his ears.

  Daly pulled out the earbuds.

  Screw it, he thought. Maybe Dr. Radcliffe is just a psychiatrist. Maybe his connection is just a coincidence. There are only so many psychiatrists around here. Is it really so hard to believe that a few troubled kids seeing the same shrink decided to off themselves?

  As Daly sat thinking, Richardson called him over to the editors’ cube. He wanted an update on the Nanticoke body. In his rush to get back and check into Soma, Daly had forgotten to let Richardson know what he found out at the scene.

  “It sounds like a straight-up suicide,” Daly said. “The father came home around ten-thirty and found the body. He’d apparently put dad’s shotgun to his mouth. The cops said it was a seventeen-year-old male and didn’t release a name. But I spoke to the father. It was David Kowalski.”

  “The same David Kowalski you’ve been talking to about the suicides?”

  “That would be the one,” Daly said. “I don’t know at this point if there’s a definite connection.”

  “Of course there’s a connection,” Richardson said. “Don’t you have a picture of him with his arms around the other two?”

  “Yeah, we do,” Daly said. “But we still don’t know what it means. Kowalski was connected to two of the other victims. I’ve also connected Vincent Gillespie to three of them and Dr. Marvin Radcliffe to three. If we go big on this now, all we’re doing is showing our hand to the Other Paper.”

  “We’re not doing a story saying anyone was murdered,” Richardson said. “And those names aren’t even going to appear in the same edition as this story – at least for now. But we need to get on record that another kid has died so that we can tie it all together when we figure out how it all connects.”

  Daly went back to his desk and dialed Wojcik’s number from his desk phone. Before he wrote up the story, he wanted to figure out if this one had landed on the county detectives’ radar.

  It took Wojcik a while to pick up, and when he did he sounded distracted.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Phil, it’s Erik Daly. I’m getting ready to write up a suicide that happened in Nanticoke this morning. David Kowalski, age seventeen. I wanted to touch base and see if you were looking into whether this might be connected to the others.”

  “Right now, all I can say is it’s an ongoing investigation,” Wojcik said.

  “Look, I’ve got a picture of him with his arms wrapped around Kim Foster and Justin Gonzalez,” Daly said. “Are you telling me you think that’s a coincidence?”

  “I’m telling you it’s an ongoing investigation,” Wojcik said, pausing for a long moment. “Can we go off the record for a minute?”

  “Sure,” Daly said.

  “Running that picture would be a mistake,” Wojcik said. “We’re getting close to making a move here. That picture is going to sound the alarm. I’m talking wholesale destruction of evidence. If that happens, we might not be able to get him.”

  “You know I’m not trying to screw you,” Daly said. “But I’ve got the competition to think about. Can you give me anything?”

  “Right now all I can say on the record is that we are looking into whether there could be a connection between the cases,” Wojcik said. “Here’s your quote: ‘It’s an ongoing investigation.’”

  “What’s that based on?” Daly asked. “Why do you think there could be a connection?”

  “I said we’re looking at whether there could be a connection. Off the record, I’ll tell you there were similarities in the note that David Kowalski left to the others,” Wojcik said.

  “He left a note?” Daly asked. “Did he use the same phrase as the others?”

  “This is absolutely not for publication. But yeah, he did,” Wojcik said.

  Daly hung up the phone, stunned. There was no doubt. Four deaths. Four matching sets of last words. There were too many similarities for it all to be a coincidence. Daly could hardly contain his excitement as he sped back over to the editors’ pod with the information. The scoop. Five minutes later, he was back at his desk, typing furiously.

  NANTICOKE — A 17-year-old Nanticoke boy died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot at home Thursday morning, according to police.

  Authorities did not immediately identify the teen, but his father told the Wilkes-Barre Observer he was David Kowalski, a student at Greater Nanticoke Area Senior High School. The father, Jeff Kowalski, said he had returned home around 10:30 a.m. when he discovered his son dead in a bedroom.

  “David had his issues, but he was a good kid,” Jeff Kowalski said. “I can’t believe he did this. He had so much to live for.”

  Detectives with the Luzerne County District Attorney’s Office confirmed they are looking into whether the death could be connected to a series of deaths in what appears to be a suicide cluster that has affected schools across the county.

  Since February, at least three other area teens have died of apparent self-inflicted causes. The cases began Feb. 10 when 16-year-old Kingston resident Justin Gonzalez hanged himself in the family garage.

  But it wasn’t until March 22 that the cases gained widespread attention with the death of Kimberly Foster, a 15-year-old cheerleader at Hanover Area High School who fatally shot herself while recording a Facebook Live video. The footage subsequently went viral.

  A week later, Emma Nguyen, a 16-year-old junior at Coughlin High School in Wilkes-Barre jumped from the Market Street Bridge and died after plunging into the Susquehanna River.

  In each of the previous three cases, the victims used similar phrases in notes left prior to their deaths, prompting authorities to question whether there was a connection. Investigators on Thursday would not comment publicly on whether David Kowalski left a note or used similar words in a message prior to his death.

  “We are looking into whether there could be a connection between the cases,” Detective Sgt. Phil Wojcik said. “It’s an ongoing investigation.”

  Daly clicked save on the file and then released it for Richardson to read and post to the website. He wanted to try to anticipate the cops’ next play and figure out when and where they might make their move. He already knew from his previous conversation with Wojcik that they were looking at Vincent Gillespie. He hoped he could convince someone to tip him off about when the arrest would go down.

  He grabbed his cellphone and pulled out the headphone jack as he prepared to get over to the courthouse and see if he could shake something loose from one of the cops or prosecutors wandering the corridors. As soon as the jack came out, his iPhone speakers blared a torrent of static. Daly realized he’d forgotten to shut down the Soma app.

  Shit, Daly thought. The battery on his phone had already been dwindling. Now he’d left an app running for the better part of an hour while he worked. Hopefully, he’d have a few minutes to charge it in the car between stops.

  He reached up to tap the stop button and end the static, but then hesitated. As he listened, the rushing, buzzing sound of the white noise seemed more than relaxing. It was almost hypnotic.

  Daly listened on for a few more
minutes and started to feel uneasy. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. But something didn’t feel right. He was starting to visualize patterns in the static. It was almost like the static was coming in waves and was changing from the steady buzz he’d heard earlier. He couldn’t tell if he was imaging it or not, it was so slight. But the thought sent a wave of goosebumps rising up his arms.

  Somewhere, behind the crunching static, Daly could swear he heard a voice.

  CHAPTER 18

  Friday, April 6, 2018

  9:51 a.m.

  Working for a small-town newspaper had its perks. In general, Daly had less oversight and more control over the process than he would at a major metro. He enjoyed being able to come in and, for the most part, decide what he was going to write about on a given day. But the limited staff also meant limited resources. The paper had a few photographers who were able to put together a decent web video, but nobody had any real expertise working with audio.

  Fortunately, Daly knew a guy. His roommate at King’s College, George Timmons, was a tried and true audiophile. When they met on move-in day, George had walked through the door just as Daly was putting an iHome docking station on his desk. After exchanging names, George hadn’t wasted a breath impugning the quality of the off-the-shelf device.

  “You don’t listen to music on that, do you?” he’d asked.

  Daly had a lifetime love of music and rarely drove for more than a block or two without something on the car stereo.

  But he couldn’t see the fuss about high-quality audio equipment. A set of mid-level headphones sounded just as good to him as any brand-name sets that cost two or three times as much.

  When he told George as much, his new roommate had stood there with a gap between his lips growing ever wider, until at last his eyebrows had come up and his face was frozen in a look of mock horror. He vowed to show Daly what was what. Over the next few years, they had spent nights sipping beers and listening to music together, talking women and arguing politics, sometimes until the sun came up. Daly had been forced to admit his iHome sounded pretty thin compared to George’s sound system – although his Klipsch speakers had undoubtedly cost exponentially more.

  After graduation, they hadn’t stayed in close touch. They were still friends on Facebook and would talk whenever they bumped into each other, but the end of college had sent them on separate paths.

  Daly had gone on to get married and to start a job in journalism. George had become an information-technology specialist with an insurance company.

  They simply grew apart, as friends often do.

  As he remembered his old friend George, Daly pulled out his cellphone and dialed the number. The call didn’t go through. Daly was ashamed to realize that he no longer had even a working phone number for a guy he’d spent nearly every day with during college.

  Daly logged onto Facebook and typed out a private message asking how things had been. He hit send and was about to close out the window when he saw a box pop up below his text. George was writing back.

  “Doing good bro. Same old stuff going on here. What’s up?”

  “I need some editing done on an audio file. Do you think you could help?” Daly wrote.

  “What, did you record yourself singing Mariah Carey?”

  “LOL, something like that,” Daly wrote back.

  “No editing in the world is going to fix that. But I’m free after work tonight if you want to stop by,” George wrote.

  “Thx. Sounds good. I’ll be by around 5,” Daly wrote.

  * * *

  George Timmons lived in a narrow white house in Wilkes-Barre’s Heights section. The house was well-kept, but like much of the neighborhood it was old and showing its age. At a distance it appeared in good shape, but closer inspection revealed the white paint was beginning to crack. A pane or two of old glass that had cracked long ago had been left unchecked. Small pockets of rust reached out from under the eaves like fingers from the earth trying to reclaim its resources.

  Daly threw his car into park and stepped out, holding a twelve-pack of Yuengling Lager to share with his host. He climbed the drooping staircase to the porch and rang the bell.

  “Hey,” George said as he opened the door, extending his hand. “How’s it going?”

  “What’s up, man?” Daly said, clapping George’s palm. “It’s been a while.”

  “Too long,” George said. “Come on in.”

  Almost immediately, Daly could tell George was still single. The living room was sparse but tastefully decorated with modern furnishings. But there were no plants, no soft colors, no family photos. Instead, the walls were adorned with framed posters for Pink Floyd and Metallica. One corner of the room was devoted almost exclusively to a bar lined with no fewer than four dozen bottles of booze. A large banner for the Philadelphia Eagles was on display on the wall above the TV.

  It was a man cave, not a home.

  They sat down at the kitchen table. George popped the tops off a couple of the beers and they spent the next hour catching up. It had been more than a decade since they had last seen each other at length, and they had a lot to talk about. Based on a few passing conversations and Facebook posts, they knew the broad strokes of each other’s lives, but there was still much they had missed.

  It turned out that George had almost gotten married, but things had fallen apart not long before. The woman, Jennifer, was a sales representative who seemed a perfect complement for him. She was smart, funny and loved music. He had met her on a Friday night when he was spinning records at a local nightclub. During his entire show, Jennifer had stood at the front of the room, watching him and swaying gently to the beat.

  Things had been going great until George found out she was swaying to another beat as well. The wedding had only been a few months off when he found out. He dropped her on the spot.

  “Hey, if she doesn’t want to be with me, she can go,” George said. “I’m not going to fight for someone who doesn’t respect me.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Daly said. “I would have done the same thing. But hey, better to find out then rather than after you tied the knot, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” George said, taking another sip of beer. “So what was it that you needed? It must be pretty important for you to reach out after all this time and meet me the same day.”

  Daly hoped George was just riffing him. Otherwise, he’d feel guilty. He didn’t want his friend to think he was using him.

  “Have you heard about the suicide cluster?” Daly asked. “We’ve had four high school kids kill themselves in a pretty short time.”

  “Yeah, I read about it in the paper,” George said.

  “Well, I think I’ve got something that might be connected to it,” Daly said.

  “Connected?” George asked. “How?”

  Daly filled George in on his reporting over the past few weeks and how he had come to believe that the deaths were not random. Someone was instigating them to do it, and he thought he had narrowed it down to one of two people: Vincent Gillespie or Dr. Marvin Radcliffe. He explained that he had almost settled on Gillespie when David Kowalski died and threw a wrench in that theory.

  “Which is where you come in,” Daly said. “Radcliffe has apparently been recommending this app – Soma – to help some of the kids sleep. It seems pretty low budget and doesn’t look like it’s gotten much use.”

  “So?” George asked.

  “Well, when I first listened to it, it just sounded like static,” Daly said. “But after a while … I don’t know. I could swear I heard something. Like a voice.”

  “What, like a subliminal message?” George scoffed.

  “I’m not sure. But something was there,” Daly said.

  “All right. Let me see what I can do,” George said.

  He walked toward the back of the house to what was probably once a dining r
oom. Now, it was George Timmons’ personal sound studio, complete with tower speakers and dual turntables.

  George woke up his computer and loaded up some sound editing software that would let him reduce the level of the static to see if any other tracks were playing in the background. Daly unlocked his iPhone and loaded the app. When he clicked play, the sound of static filled the room. They listened for a minute before George turned to Daly.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t just your imagination?” he laughed.

  “I don’t think so. Something was behind the static. I just couldn’t hear what,” Daly said.

  “All right. Well, let me see it,” George said.

  He plugged a headphones jack into the iPhone and the hiss of the static disappeared. With a click of the mouse, an equalizer appeared on the screen, displaying the continuous, unflinching peaks of the static coming from the phone. George put the phone down and slumped down in an office chair, reaching for his beer on the way.

  “What now?” Daly asked.

  “Now, we wait,” George said. “Right now it doesn’t look like there are any other signatures. If something comes up, I’ll hit record and then we can use noise reduction to manipulate the recording so we can hear what it is.”

  Daly dropped to another seat and took a long sip of beer. The last time, it had been more than an hour before he noticed something in the sound. It sounded like it could be a while.

  He asked to borrow George’s phone and called Lauren to let her know he wouldn’t be home for dinner. She was still at her friend Jessica’s house, where she spent most of her recent afternoons, and sounded happy to be able to stay there for dinner. The near-nightly outings to Leopold’s Pizzeria at first seemed to be a blessing, but after a few weeks, Daly and Lauren both found themselves craving a home-cooked meal.

 

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