by Lisa Gardner
“He tortured his victims,” D.D. said flatly, having been told that much by Phil. “Some of them took weeks to die.”
“But that’s not why his name came up in relation to these two murders, is it?”
“No, that’s not why.”
“The killer you’re investigating skinned his victims, correct? The Boston Globe didn’t provide many details, but based on your interest in Harry, I’m going to guess the skin was removed in long, thin strips. More to the point, you didn’t recover all the strips at the scene. Meaning the killer took some of the flesh with him. As a trophy. And now, based on what you’ve heard about Harry Day, you’re wondering if some of these strips aren’t preserved in glass vials, suspended in a special formaldehyde solution Harry perfected for just such a purpose.”
D.D. gave up standing, took a seat. She spread her hands before her, wincing as the unconscious gesture aggravated her left arm. “Gotta say, helluva coincidence. Two murderers, forty years apart, both with a fondness for excising and preserving their victims’ flesh. How many women do you think Harry killed?”
“He’s credited with eight.”
“The eight bodies they found at your house. What did the press nickname it at the time? House of Horrors, something like that?”
Adeline shrugged faintly. She had an impassive look on her face; D.D. had seen it before, on family members distancing themselves from terrible truths about people they should’ve known better. Or on the faces of victims, resolutely telling a story about something that surely happened to someone else.
“Harry’s trophy collection,” D.D. continued now. “I’m told the police recovered thirty-three glass jars containing pickled human skin. He’d hidden them beneath the floorboards of the bedroom closet.”
The doctor flinched.
“First dozen were small mason jars,” D.D. said, “but it appeared Harry got more sophisticated as time went on. Not only improved his formaldehyde solution, but moved into glass vials, like the kind used for perfume. And he labeled them. Not with names but some kind of random detail that must’ve meant something to him. Hair color, a place, an item of clothing. A unique but completely dehumanizing identifier for each specimen in his collection.”
The doctor flinched again.
“Did they ever finish identifying them?” Adeline asked. “I thought . . . I’d read a few years ago that a cold case team had the idea of analyzing the . . . preserved tissue . . . against a list of missing persons from the same time period. They were hoping to get DNA samples from surviving family members of some of the women who went missing in the late sixties, and look for matches.”
D.D. hadn’t heard that, but it made some sense. “Don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But it might explain why so many details from a forty-year-old case were in ViCAP.”
“They were going to look at open rape cases, as well. Many sexual sadist predators start with assault, correct? Their twisted fantasies escalate over time, taking them from voyeurs to rapists to killers. Meaning Harry’s total victim count is probably well more than eight.”
“Those were just the ones he kept close to home,” D.D. agreed. So he could spend more time with them, she almost added, but didn’t. Because serial murder was an escalating crime, and by that point in his homicidal career, Harry Day would’ve been an accomplished predator with an arsenal of tools, private work space and flexible schedule. Meaning if that one waitress hadn’t escaped . . .
Across from her, Adeline murmured: “Sooner or later, all adopted children fantasize about the true identity of their birth parents. My real mom and dad were royalty, but they had to send me away me at birth to protect me from an evil sorcerer who wanted to take over the kingdom, that sort of thing. My adoptive father was a geneticist. A good man but with a clinician’s heart. Let’s just say when I first asked him for the truth about my parents, he told me. And I had nightmares for the next ten years, incredibly vivid dreams where I would watch my own skin crack open and a monster burst forth.”
“Your adoptive father took you in as a baby?”
“When I was three and first diagnosed with congenital insensitivity to pain. He was one of the doctors who handled my case. Given my high-risk medical condition, he didn’t feel my needs could be adequately addressed by an inexperienced foster family. So he made arrangements to adopt me personally.”
“Lucky you.”
“Yes.”
“And your older sister? You said there were two of you?”
“She didn’t suffer from a rare genetic defect,” Adeline said simply. Which apparently, in her world, said it all.
“What about your birth mom?”
“She died six months after Harry, never speaking a word. She’d suffered some kind of mental breakdown and was in basically a catatonic state.”
“Do you think she knew what her husband had been doing?” D.D. asked. “Harry buried two bodies in the house. Ripped up floorboards, dumped them in the crawl space, covered them with lime. Can’t tell me it still didn’t smell.”
Adeline shook her head, her gaze fixed upon the glossy surface of her neatly organized desk. “I don’t know. My adoptive father had compiled a history on both of my birth parents. Family is legacy, and he wanted me to be prepared. I’ve studied the material a great deal over the years. There is significant documentation on Harry Day. The neighbors described him as engaging, clever, good with his hands. By all accounts, my parents didn’t socialize a great deal, but if you ran into Harry on the streets, he wouldn’t give you the cold shoulder or turn your hair on end. One of the neighbors, an elderly widow, even raved about what a nice young man he was, fixed a leaking window for her, helped out with a squeaky door. Wouldn’t even accept any money, just wanted a piece of her homemade apple pie. Of course, those are the types of stories that become nearly legendary after the fact, the cold killer with the kind heart. But to be honest, I don’t believe it.”
“The elderly neighbor was making the story up?”
“No.” Adeline looked up, regarded D.D. flatly. “Harry was making himself up. That’s what superpredators do, right? Engage in camouflage. I suspect he probably had some poor girl chained to the workbench in his shop that same week. Ergo, he went out of his way to help a neighbor. So if the police did come sniffing around, they’d all get the same scoop: Harry Day, what a nice guy, why just the other day, he fixed my broken window . . .”
D.D. nodded. She’d run across the same phenomenon—the But He Seemed Like Such a Nice Guy killer—and she agreed with Adeline’s assessment. Psychopaths were never nice. They were just good at playing the part when it suited their needs.
Now D.D. pressed: “You still haven’t answered my question about your mom.”
“Because I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t. Even my adoptive father, who was an award-winning researcher, couldn’t find any information on her. She was a ghost. No extended family, no past. She migrated to Boston from somewhere in the Midwest; at least that’s what she told people. Her marriage certificate listed her maiden name as Davis, which, frankly, is too common to effectively trace. She never answered any of the police’s questions, and not even the neighbors seemed to know her. Anne Davis lived as a shadow. Then became a ghost.”
D.D. couldn’t help herself; she shivered slightly. “Maybe that just proves she knew what her husband was doing. Leading to the mental breakdown: survivor’s guilt.”
Adeline merely shrugged. “Irrelevant. As you know even better than I, Harry was the perfect psychopath, and that kind of predator is always the alpha. Even if Anne knew, there was nothing she could’ve done. Harry was the one in control.”
“Your father,” D.D. stated once again, for the sake of argument.
Adeline’s expression never changed. “Given that I suffer from a rare genetic condition, no one knows the potential pitfalls of DNA bett
er than I.”
D.D. found this intriguing. She leaned forward. “Did Harry have your same condition—is it possible he also couldn’t feel pain?”
“No. Congenital insensitivity to pain is caused by a double-recessive gene—meaning both parents must be carriers of the genetic mutation. Not to mention there are fewer than fifty cases known in the entire US, and half of the children diagnosed die before age three from heatstroke. Someone like me, grown to adulthood, with four fully functional limbs . . . I’m the exception, not the norm.”
“Why is that?”
“As part of the gene mutation, we can’t feel heat. Meaning we don’t sweat. For infants and toddlers, this is particularly dangerous. On a warm summer afternoon, their bodies can overheat to critical levels without them ever showing signs of distress. By the time the parents rush their listless baby to the hospital, it’s too late.”
D.D. couldn’t help herself. “So what do you during the summer?”
“Enjoy air-conditioning. Drink plenty of fluids. And I take my temperature multiple times a day. I can’t trust what I feel, Detective, which means I must rely on external diagnostics to tell me if my body is all right.”
“Melvin is useful,” D.D. murmured.
“Melvin is useful. I’ve never lain on a beach or walked in the full summer sun. I don’t even enter a shower without first checking the thermometer. And as for most athletic hobbies or fitness programs . . . It would be dangerous for someone like me to run or swim or play tennis or shoot hoops. I could blow out a knee, break an ankle, strain a shoulder and never be any the wiser. My health remains a matter of constant vigilance.”
D.D. nodded. She thought the good doctor spoke very matter-of-factly when describing a lifestyle that must actually feel very limiting and isolating. Forget never being picked for someone’s team in grade school; Adeline must have had to sit out the entire recess. Let alone never having the chance to walk hand in hand with a special someone on a sunny day. Or run hard and strong just because she felt like it. Or leap from point A to point B simply to see if she could make it.
A serious adult who no doubt grew up as a serious child, practicing constant vigilance. And realizing at a very young age that her rare condition inevitably set her apart, an outsider looking in.
Because Melvin wasn’t just useful. Melvin was common, pain being the great equalizer that brought everyone together.
“And your sister?” D.D. asked.
“She doesn’t share my condition.”
“So your adoptive father didn’t take her in.”
“No.”
“Must’ve pissed her off.”
“I was three, she was six, too young to understand, let alone get ‘pissed off.’”
“What happened to her?”
“She remained a ward of the state, bouncing around various foster homes.”
“You in touch with her?”
“Yes.”
“She got a name?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not going to give it to me?” D.D.’s keen investigator’s senses started to vibrate.
The doctor hesitated. “By the time I was fourteen, I was asking a lot of questions about my birth father. Unbeknownst to me, my adoptive father hired a private investigator to research all three members of my birth family. I’m guessing the PI was a retired Boston cop, as most of the information he gathered on my father was photocopies of the police reports. Maybe an old buddy on the force gave him access. Researching my mother proved more difficult, as I mentioned, and her file is thin. My sister . . .”
Dr. Glen paused.
“She would’ve been seventeen by then, I guess. Still a ward of the state. But even by that point, her file was thicker than my father’s, her exploits even more legendary.”
D.D. leaned forward, senses definitely humming.
“The most telling report, which I never read until after my adoptive father’s death, comes from the social worker who came to my parents’ house that day. The one who took us into custody, then sought immediate medical treatment for my four-year-old sister. According to her, my sister’s back, arms and the inside of her legs were covered with dozens of thin lacerations. Some old, many new, but essentially her skin was striped continuously in long, even lines of dried blood.”
“He was cutting her,” D.D. filled in. “You believe Harry Day was cutting your sister.”
Adeline looked at her. “It’s not like she could’ve reached her own back.”
“Did he remove skin?”
“Not that the doctors reported. But then, he wouldn’t have to, right? Harry took trophies from his victims to remember them after they were gone. My sister wasn’t a kidnapped girl who eventually would have to be disposed of. She was his own daughter. The victim who was always available to him. No doubt the perfect ‘filler’ option in between other sport.”
D.D. studied Adeline. The doctor’s gaze remained direct, her expression controlled. But there was a tightness to her jaw that hadn’t been there before. The good doc was holding it together. But it was costing her.
D.D. asked the next logical question: “And you?”
“According to the hospital admittance papers, not a mark on me.”
“Harry abused her but not you.”
“Harry Day died one week prior to my first birthday. It might have proved interesting to see if the same still held true eight days later.”
“You think your age saved you. You were a baby. Whereas, the moment you turned one . . .”
Adeline shrugged. “We’ll never know.”
“Could it have been your condition?” D.D. wondered. “Maybe he did cut you. But you wouldn’t have cried, right? And that wouldn’t have been very satisfying to him.”
Adeline appeared surprised. “In all the years, I’ve never considered that.”
“Really? Seems an obvious thought.”
“It’s possible, I suppose, but not probable. We didn’t know about my condition yet. It wasn’t discovered until I was three. Then it was my sister who did the honors. She cut me.”
D.D. blinked. “Your sister, the six-year-old, cut you?”
“It’s what she knew. A learned behavior drilled into her night after night: Blood is love. And in her own way, my sister loves me.”
“I’m not attending any of your family reunions.”
“She took scissors to my arms. When I didn’t cry out, she cut deeper. Which might be further evidence my father couldn’t have known. I have a feeling his first instinct would’ve been to cut deeper as well, and I don’t bear those kinds of scars.”
“Okay.”
“So question of the day, Detective: Is evil born or made?”
“Nature versus nurture.”
“Exactly. What do you think?”
D.D. shook her head. “No need to choose; I’ve seen both.”
“Me, too. A good person can be warped into evil, and an evil person can be tempered by good.”
“So your point is?”
“None of that matters when it comes to my sister; she got screwed by both.”
“The daughter of a serial killer,” D.D. filled in, “already subjected to years of ritualistic abuse, then turned loose in the foster care system.” At which point, the light finally went on, and D.D. closed her eyes, not believing she hadn’t connected the dots sooner. To give herself some credit, the case was thirty years old, meaning she’d been a teenager herself at the time and not a work-obsessed detective. Still, given the notoriety . . .
“Shana Day,” D.D. stated out loud. “Your sister is Shana Day. Youngest convicted female murderer in Massachusetts, tried as an adult when she was only fourteen. Has spent the decades since picking off corrections officers and fellow inmates in the MCI. That Shana Day.” Then, another lightbulb moment: “She mutilated him, right? It’s been years s
ince I thought about the case, but right after she strangled the kid, she worked him over with a knife. Removed an ear. And strips of skin . . .” D.D. stared at Adeline, nearly dumbfounded by the implications. “Where’s your sister now?”
“Still a resident of the MCI, where she’ll spend the rest of her life.”
“I want to speak with her. Immediately.”
“You can try. She’s currently recovering in the prison’s medical ward, however. Recovering from her latest suicide attempt.”
“What’s her condition?”
“Stable. For now.” Adeline paused. “Next week will be the thirty-year anniversary of Donnie Johnson’s death. I gather Shana’s getting some unwelcome attention from it. At least one reporter has contacted the prison, wanting an interview.”
“Does she talk about the case?”
“Never.”
“What about friends, associates?” D.D.’s mind was already racing ahead. Shana might be behind bars, but it boggled D.D.’s mind how many convicted murderers carried out active social lives while supposedly imprisoned. They fell in love, got married. Why not seduce some burgeoning wannabe killer into finishing Daddy’s—or her own—life’s work?
But Adeline was shaking her head. “My sister suffers from severe antisocial personality disorder. Don’t get me wrong; she’s exceptionally smart and disturbingly clever. But she is not like my father. No elderly widow would ever let Shana inside the front door to repair a broken window. Nor does Shana herself have any interest in friends or followers.”
D.D. couldn’t help herself. “So your father is a serial killer, your sister is a proficient murderer—wait, she’s passed the triple victim mark, making her a serial killer in her own right—and you suffer from a rare congenital condition making it impossible for you to feel pain. That’s quite some gene pool.”
“Every bell curve has its outliers.”