When we walk in, she is sobbing quietly. It’s understandable, but not a good sign for a promising interview.
“Ms. McCain, are you all right? Would you like something to drink?”
“I saw it happen. Please, can I go home?”
“I’m very sorry. No one should have to go through that. My name is Lieutenant Brock; I’m with the state police. What is important now is that we catch the person who did this. So we need your help right now; in these situations, time can be of the essence. I just have a few questions to ask you, and then I will have someone accompany you home.”
She nods. “Richard was about to say something, and then there was blood everywhere.”
“I understand,” I say. “Let’s start at the beginning. Can you tell me what happened from the moment you approached the station?”
She pauses for a short while, as if gathering herself, and then tells the story. She pulled into the station, waited a few seconds for the owner to come out to pump her gas, and then she watched his chest explode in blood.
“He had a look on his face,” she says. “It wasn’t like he was in pain, it was more confusion, as if he just thought it was strange, and he couldn’t understand what was happening. I will never forget that look.”
I ask her if she saw anything unusual before she got to the station, anything that seemed out of the ordinary. She says no, that it was just an ordinary day and an ordinary drive. “I still had half a tank, but I always get gas on Tuesdays.”
Her “Tuesday is gas day” revelation notwithstanding, there is not much to get from her. It’s not because she is shaken up; she didn’t see the shooter, which means she saw nothing that is important to us. Her story is identical to the witness reports at the tennis court and the hotel; they see the result of the shooter’s handiwork, but not the shooter.
I tell her to wait here and that I will have someone drive her home in her car, with another car following. When I leave the office, Nate is just about to enter it.
“There’s someone we need to talk to,” he says.
“I saw this SUV up on Cashen Road. It was just sitting there. Seemed strange to me.”
We’re talking to Robert Howell, a local resident who owns and operates the combination hotel and restaurant in town. When he heard about the shooting, he thought that what he had seen might be valuable.
“Maybe I should have done more,” he continues. “Richard was my friend. Richard was everybody’s friend.”
“What color was the SUV?”
“White. Maybe off-white.”
“Did you get a license plate? Do you know the make and model?”
He shakes his head. “No license plate, sorry. It never entered my mind. But it was a Ford Escape, probably five years old. I used to drive one myself; that’s why I knew.”
That’s the kind of car that Phelan has, the kind we’ve been showing photos of in the media. “Why did it seem strange to you?”
“Well, it’s not a road that’s used much,” he says. “I was only on it because an employee of mine had called in that her car wouldn’t start. So I went to pick her up. But you can drive on that road all day and not see another car.”
“So you saw it sitting there,” Nate says. “Why did it seem strange?”
“Just the fact that it was there. There’s nothing surrounding it; the only reason to leave a car there would be if it were disabled. But the hood wasn’t up or anything, and why not just call for help? And I didn’t see the driver walking anywhere. I mean, it wasn’t anything that was amazing, it just seemed a little strange, that’s all.”
“So you looked to see if there was a driver in the car?”
He nods. “Absolutely. I stopped, because I thought maybe they were having car trouble. I was going to offer to help. The car was locked. I looked inside, but there was no one inside, at least not that I could see.”
“We’d like you to take us there, please.”
“Sure.”
Nate takes Howell in our car; we bring four other officers with us, as well as a forensics team. It’s a five-minute drive, but it winds up and around a hill. Finally, Howell points. “It was up there, maybe fifteen feet past that tree.”
We stop and walk over to the spot he is talking about. There are some faint tire tracks there, but the road is dusty, and the tracks could have been left by any car that passed by.
Phelan left nothing physical behind; I didn’t expect that he would. But looking south, we can see that what he did leave us is his vantage point. About three hundred yards away, down a sloping hill, is Richard Decker’s gas station.
I call Nate over and point. “He could have gone down that incline toward those bushes,” I say. “He’d have an easy shot at the gas station, and no one could see him from the road unless they made it a point to go out of their way to look. Howell would have had no reason to do so.”
I ask Howell where the road leads to.
“Really nowhere,” he says. “At the end you can get on what they call the Widows Road. They named it that because they say that back in the day men went into the forest and never came out.”
“So there’s dense forest up there?”
He nods. “For sure. I mean once in a while people go in there to go camping and that kind of thing, but not too many. The only way to get in is to hike.”
“Are there trails cut out?”
“I don’t think so, but I’m not a hiker, so I could be wrong.”
We drop Howell back at the station, and then Nate and I head back home. “It fits in with what the general said. He can hide in there forever and live off the land. Plus he could have brought in a whole SUV load of supplies.”
Nate nods. “We need to check out the terrain. Maybe we can have choppers do surveillance.”
“The thing that puzzles me is the car. He used it to get here, and he used it to shoot the gas-station operator.”
“So?” Nate asks.
“So where the hell is it? Howell said there are no roads into the woods; we’ll check it out, but he’s probably right. And there sure as shit aren’t any parking lots. So where’s the car?”
“Maybe he’s not in the woods, but he wants us to think he is.”
“He’s playing with us,” I say. “He’s playing with us.”
The note is waiting for me when I get home.
It’s just a copy; this one was delivered to the office, and forensics has already had their hands on it. Once again they got nothing off it.
It was mailed from a mailbox about three miles from Richard Decker’s gas station, just up the road toward the New York border.
The note is longer than usual; Phelan is becoming less cryptic and more informative. It says:
“He’s pumped his last gallon. But I’m afraid one at a time isn’t getting it done. Too many victims left on the wall … so much to do, so little time.”
“He mailed it yesterday,” Jessie says. “Once again that means he knew exactly what he was going to do and was positive he’d be able to do it.”
I nod. “It also means that if he’s hiding out in the woods, he’s not afraid to come out. He could have sent the note today, before or after he shot Decker. But coming out twice didn’t bother him.”
“If he’s in there, then he has to have a way in and out by car. He’d have to be in deep enough to be able to avoid detection. So if he didn’t have the car in there, how is he getting to it so easily?”
“I wish there was some way of establishing communication,” I say. “He’s talking to me through these notes, but he’s not giving us a way to talk back.”
“You could talk through the media.”
I shake my head. “That could provoke him and get him to show off.”
“What do you think he’s getting out of this? Settling old scores? Or just the thrill of killing and getting away with it?”
“Could be both. Right now we only have a connection between Phelan and Brookings, so that could have been some kind of revenge thing. But
we have nothing on the others, except for Phelan’s ex-wife, at least not yet. Of course, if I could have made the Phelan-Brookings connection two years ago, there wouldn’t be any others.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Well, I’m just guessing here, because I can’t remember a goddamn thing, but if I had uncovered the connection back then, I would have nailed Phelan with it. I would have gone after him much harder, instead of just letting him walk.”
“He went to prison, Doug.”
“That had nothing to do with me, and all it did was give him time to plan all this. We covered his room and board while he decided on his victims.”
“Don’t go there.”
“Where?” I ask.
“To that place where you blame yourself for something that is not your fault.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“No, it’s not. But it is necessary. I have seen this movie; I know how it ends.”
She doesn’t have to spell it out more clearly. Last time I went to “that place,” I withdrew from the world to the point where I broke off my engagement to Jessie. That doesn’t feel possible this time, not to me, but I can certainly understand her viewing it differently.
Basically the only thing that gave me a fresh chance with her was getting shot and losing my memory. I’m going to try to avoid a repeat of that.
“I’m okay this time, Jessie. I can deal with it.”
“You’d better, or this time I’ll shoot you myself.”
“You’re a delicate flower,” I say.
“Thank you. Now get back to catching a mass murderer. That message was pretty clear.”
“Certainly was. And I have no doubt he wouldn’t hesitate to change his method of killing.”
“Are you sending teams into the woods to look for him?”
I’ve thought about it, but it doesn’t make sense right now, and I tell her so. “We don’t even know that he’s in there, and it’s not like there’s just one specific area. There are a whole bunch of forests up there. We wouldn’t have nearly the manpower to cover it, and based on his training, our people could probably walk right past him and not know it.”
“What about choppers?”
I nod. “We’ll probably try it, but those woods are dense. My guess is nothing will come of it.”
The phone rings and Jessie answers it. After listening for just a few seconds, she puts me on.
“Lieutenant, this is Sergeant Rankin. I’m manning the tip line, and we’ve got one you might want to hear. I could patch him through.”
“Okay, do so. But stay on the line after you do.”
In just a few seconds, I hear a click, and Rankin says, “Lieutenant, this is Mr. Scott Holman. Mr. Holman, tell the lieutenant what you told me.”
“Well, I was watching the press conference on television, the one that said Helen Mizell was one of the victims and that Danny Phelan was a suspect.”
“And?”
“Well, I didn’t know if you knew, and I thought I’d call to make sure, but Mrs. Mizell was a teacher, way back in the day, at Englewood High.”
This guy is taking a long time to get to the point. “And?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure Danny was in her class.”
I call Nate and tell him the news about Helen Mizell.
“Damn,” he says. “Between her and Brookings and his ex-wife, there must be these connections between Phelan and every victim. And some of them are weird. His high school teacher? Maybe she gave him a C, so he waits twenty-five years and kills her? When I had a teacher that gave me a C, my parents sent her flowers.”
“Jessie is confirming that this Holman guy is correct.”
“Should be easy enough for her to do,” he says. “He kills his high school teacher, and a guy he was in basic with? We are dealing with a major whacko.”
“As opposed to a normal, well-adjusted guy who hides in the trees and shoots people?” I ask.
As if on cue, Jessie calls and tells me that Holman, in fact, was right; Helen Mizell taught at Englewood High, and Phelan was there at the time. She hasn’t yet confirmed that he actually had her as a teacher, but that doesn’t matter. The simple fact of the connection has already exploded the coincidence meter.
I had asked Nate to assign detectives to do a deep dive on the late Mrs. Mizell. We’ll talk to any family we can find, including the two sons who apparently had little to do with their mother. Any friends, and especially former fellow teachers, will be on our radar as well. It is not likely to help us catch Phelan, but will help with motive.
I call Nate back. “Anything on Brookings?” I ask, since we’ve done the same deep dive on him.
“I was just checking. Our people talked to three other guys in the same basic-training unit. None of them remember any problems between Brookings and Phelan; two of them didn’t remember Phelan at all.”
I suggest that we start chopper runs over the woods north of Sussex; Nate agrees but thinks it unlikely that Phelan would be in an area where he’d be exposed to surveillance.
I feel the same way, but ask, “What’s the downside? You got anything else to do with the choppers?” I know he understands this without my pointing it out, but I think I just like saying the word “choppers.”
Nate goes off to get Bradley’s authorization; even though Nate and I like to talk about choppers, we don’t have any actual authority over them. Meanwhile, I’m heading to Scott Holman’s house to talk about Helen Mizell.
Holman lives in Leonia, on a cul-de-sac, in a house with a manicured lawn. It defines suburbia and comfortable family living; my guess is that the Holmans have two-point-two children, one-point-one of whom has a dance recital and the other one-point-one plays Little League baseball.
I can see that in the back is a swing set and an aboveground pool, further confirming my assessment. I’m not judging it critically; for all I know there will come a point in the future that I might want the same thing. I don’t know how far distant in the future that will be because I don’t know how many decades it will take Jessie to trust me enough to marry me. And then by the time she would be willing to bear my child, her biological clock would have long ago stopped ticking.
I ring the bell and in less than a second I hear a dog’s barking. It sounds like high-pitched yapping, and when the door opens I understand why. Holman is standing there holding a little white fur-ball that can’t be more than five pounds. Bobo could literally have this dog for lunch and get most of him stuck between his teeth.
Holman smiles. “Sorry, Bruiser doesn’t like strangers,” he says.
“That dog is named Bruiser?”
He nods. “We were going for incongruity.”
“You achieved it.”
He laughs and invites me in. He offers me something to drink, and when I ask for water, he goes off and comes back with the water and without Bruiser.
Once we’re settled in, I say, “Thanks for calling in; we appreciate it.”
“No problem. I was a little bit freaked out about it, and I figured maybe you didn’t know.”
“Can you remember anything about either Helen Mizell or Danny Phelan, especially any issues between them, that might be helpful to us?”
He shakes his head. “I’ve been wracking my brain, but I can’t come up with anything. I think I had her for one class, and I don’t even know if Danny was in it. It’s been a while, longer than I want to admit.”
“What recollections do you have of each of them, separate from each other?”
“Well, Mrs. Mizell, she taught English Lit and was considered a tough grader, so no one wanted to get into her class. She also talked really low, very hard to hear, so we called her Hollerin’ Helen.”
I say, “There goes that incongruity thing again.”
He laughs. “Right … I guess I haven’t grown much over the years. Anyway, I didn’t know her much at all, but I knew Danny reasonably well. I mean we weren’t best friends or anything, but we had a lot of frie
nds in common. And we were both on the baseball team. He was a good guy. Low key, funny, but pretty tough. I think most of the kids liked him, but they wouldn’t have wanted to mess with him.”
“Can you think of people he might have had disagreements with? Maybe got into fights with, verbal or physical?”
“Not really. Like I said, he was a good guy. I was really surprised when I heard about him going to jail for the drug stuff, and this latest thing, this just blew me away. I mean, I know you never really know about people. I’ve seen the neighbors on TV who say, ‘Gee, I never imagined he would kill all those people with a hatchet; he seemed so nice and quiet.’ But with Danny, it’s really a surprise.”
“Are there people you are in touch with, from back in high school, who might also have associated with Phelan?”
“Sure.”
“We might like to talk to them. If you could make a list, with contact information if you have it.”
“Boy, did you come to the right place.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re having our twenty-fifth reunion Friday night at the Colonnade Restaurant in Park Ridge, they’ve got like a ballroom there. I’m one of the chairmen of the committee, so I have contact information for almost everyone in the class.”
“Can you send me an electronic copy?”
“I’ll send you everything I’ve got on the reunion, including all the contact info,” he says, and I give him my email address. Then I thank him and get up to leave.
“I’m sure you deal with this all the time,” he says. “But for a guy like me, with a family, it’s scary. Makes me feel vulnerable.”
“You’ll be fine; you’ve got Bruiser.”
Deirdre Clemons probably experienced three or four seconds of abject terror.
A librarian in a rural area about eight miles north of Sussex, she always left work promptly at 6:00 P.M., and this day was no exception. She could have left earlier; there were literally no patrons there at the closing hour, but her job called for her to stay there until six, so that’s what she did.
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