Chasing the Boogeyman

by Richard Chizmar

  Several times during the search, I stole sideways glances at Josh. I couldn’t imagine the courage it must have taken for him to be out here with the rest of us. Kara made a point of going over and saying hello and asking about his parents, but not me. I just left him alone and kept beating the bushes.

  Dusk soon fell, and after almost three hours in the woods, it grew too dark to see much of anything, so we gave up. To the best of my knowledge, none of the searchers found anything remotely connected to Madeline Wilcox’s disappearance. The only real excitement came when Jim Solomon discovered a brand-new box of .22 cartridges some kid had probably dropped a week earlier, and Frank Hapney accidentally kicked over a hornet’s nest and got stung a half-dozen times on his arms and legs.

  It was during the next morning’s search that several rumors began to spread. The first and least palatable was that Madeline Wilcox was having an affair with a married man, and the illicit relationship had led to her disappearance. Whether people believed it was the unidentified husband she was allegedly seeing who stole her away or the angry wife, I never heard.

  The most popular theory to make the rounds that day was the growing suspicion that Madeline Wilcox may have simply run away from home. Evidently, she’d done so several times before—once traveling as far south as North Carolina—and many townspeople were now convinced she’d done it yet again.

  “Think about it, Chiz,” Kurt Reynolds said, as a group of us trudged across an open field in a long human chain, five or six feet separating one person from the next. “The Boogeyman kills his victims and sets ’em up so someone finds ’em right away. This ain’t that. It’s already been something like thirty-six hours.”

  Kurt had graduated a year ahead of me and never was the sharpest stick in the bunch. Jimmy Cavanaugh had once sold him a baggie of pencil shavings for ten dollars, and Kurt had actually rolled it and smoked it. He was a volunteer fireman now, and his entire crew was participating in the search. Kara hadn’t been able to make it because of school, so I was stuck with this guy all morning. I loved Kara more than life itself, but right now the blame for my raging headache lay squarely in her lap.

  Lowering my voice, I asked, “What if we just haven’t found the body yet?”

  “Well now, that’s the thing, ain’t it? The Boogeyman wants us to find the bodies. Why would he start hiding ’em now?” He gave his odd-shaped head a vigorous shake. “No sirree. If she was dead, we’d a found her by now. She’s probably sitting on a beach somewhere with a cold beer in one hand and a fatty in the other.”

  Of course, I disagreed with my old friend’s expert criminal analysis, but I kept my opinion to myself. I knew better than to argue with this knucklehead. A short time later, when the opportunity presented itself, I pretended to lag behind the group and then stealthily shifted over a handful of spots in line. Instead of five or six feet separating Kurt and me, it was now more like thirty, and I couldn’t hear a single word the guy was saying. Miraculously, within a half hour, my headache was gone.

  Madeline Wilcox’s boyfriend must’ve been listening to the same scandalous rumors circulating about her disappearance. He was clean-cut and well-spoken, and when Channel 11 interviewed him that evening on the six o’clock news, he was plenty pissed off.

  “It’s ridiculous that we have people even considering such a thing, much less speaking openly about it. Not only ridiculous, but slanderous. All of our energy and resources, the police and community alike, should be focused on finding Maddy.”

  He narrowed his blue eyes at the camera. “I promise you she did not vanish on her own accord. She did not leave by choice. She was excited to go back to school and graduate, even more excited to apply for college. We’d just made plans the other day to go visit her sister at the beach…”

  Before the news cut away to commercial, a short video clip appeared onscreen showing a staggered group of searchers emerging from the woods behind the high school. The Channel 11 anchor confirmed what I’d surmised earlier—despite the strong turnout, none of the day’s searches had managed to unearth anything of interest. Staring at the television, I recognized Kurt Reynolds’s lopsided gait at the front of the crowd. He looked like one of George Romero’s shambling zombies from Night of the Living Dead. On his immediate left was Danny Earnshaw, one of my sister Nancy’s old classmates. He ran a successful law office on Route 40 now. Then I spotted my old baseball cap and gray Twilight Zone T-shirt in the crowd, and not far behind me—a surprise. I did a double-take and moved closer to the television screen to confirm what I was seeing. Walking at a brisk pace, almost catching up to me now, was Mr. Gallagher. He carried a long walking stick, and a bright orange floppy hat—one of those freebie giveaways from an Orioles game—was perched atop his head. I stared at him, wondering how we hadn’t managed to cross paths during the search, until a crying baby in a Pampers commercial took his place on the television.

  4

  A pair of local fishermen discovered Madeline Wilcox’s body beneath Ricker’s Bridge at approximately 8:23 a.m. on Friday, August 12—precisely forty-eight hours after she’d first been listed as a missing person.

  As they approached their regular fishing spot, both men initially believed they’d stumbled upon a homeless woman sleeping, or perhaps a drunken college girl passed out. They often found signs of partying under the bridge—empty beer cans and bottles, cigarette butts, the occasional used condom—and they figured the woman was most likely sleeping it off after a particularly wild night. Her back was propped up against the old stone foundation, long legs splayed out in front of her, and her hands rested peacefully atop her stomach. Then, as they drew closer, the men realized it wasn’t a woman at all—it was a teenage girl. Her open eyes were bulging, her neck was swollen and bruised, and she was naked below the waist. She didn’t appear to be breathing. That’s when they ran for help.

  Although the media wasn’t able to report many of the official details until the following day’s news cycle—by now, most members of the police department were in no mood to cooperate with journalists, local or otherwise—it didn’t really matter. Word spread like wildfire around the streets of Edgewood.

  Madeline Wilcox had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death. Investigators had found three deep bite marks scattered across her chest and torso. Like Natasha Gallagher and Kacey Robinson before her, Madeline’s left ear had been severed and her body posed after death. Once again, there was no sign of the missing ear at the crime scene. Red marks circled her wrists and ankles, evidence of ligatures that had been removed. The killer had hidden Madeline Wilcox away, abused and tortured her at his leisure, and then disposed of her body once he was sated.

  To make matters worse—if that were possible—the police now knew for certain that the killer was playing games with them. The area surrounding Ricker’s Bridge, including the shadowy confines located beneath its stone arch, had been thoroughly covered by the authorities on two separate occasions. The first time had occurred the morning of Madeline’s disappearance, within hours of her mother’s frantic phone call to 911. The second time had occurred the following afternoon, when nearly two dozen police cadets had been trucked in from the academy in downtown Baltimore to aid in the search.

  Both times the area had been deemed clear, which could only mean one thing. At some point, the killer had doubled back and purposely dumped the body beneath the bridge to send police a very clear message: I’m watching your every move and I’m smarter than all of you.

  5

  Law enforcement officials grew increasingly tight-lipped after the death of Madeline Wilcox. No longer able to deny the obvious, they privately acknowledged what three murders in the span of sixty days signified: Edgewood had a serial killer. And instead of closing in on the madman, they were falling further behind with each passing day. And now, the Boogeyman was laughing at them.

  Thus far, Carly had had no luck finding out if the perpetrator had left behind anything involving numbers. Her usual sources claim
ed they’d been stonewalled by their usual sources. I’d run into Detective Harper in the McDonald’s parking lot a couple days earlier, but he’d practically growled at me when I’d said hello. It wasn’t like I could just come out and ask him anyway. He had no idea I knew about the hopscotch grid and missing dog sign, and would most likely be angry as hell if he ever found out.

  Finally, eight long days after Madeline Wilcox’s body was found, a crack appeared in the police’s wall of secrecy, and Carly got the scoop we’d been waiting for.

  Each block of the mysterious hopscotch grid discovered after the first murder was filled in with the number three. The number that appeared most often on the missing dog poster found after the second murder was four. This time, in the course of conducting her autopsy, the coroner had discovered something peculiar lodged deep in Madeline Wilcox’s throat: five pennies.

  6

  Later that week, I stopped at 7-Eleven to grab a quick snack on my way home from the library. Chili dogs were on special—two for $1.99, including a small fountain drink. Lunch on a budget, as my father liked to say.

  On the sidewalk out front, I ran into Parker Sanders, an old friend who was two years behind me in school. He was on his way out the door with a Big Gulp in one hand and a bag of M&Ms in the other.

  “Eating healthy, I see.”

  “You know it,” he said. “Hey, I heard you guys are playing basketball again down at the high school.”

  “You should come on out.”

  “Tell Pruitt to call me next time you play. He still has my number.” Flipping me a wave, he climbed into his car.

  Fat chance of that happening, I thought, watching him drive away. Jeff Pruitt couldn’t stand the guy.

  My stomach growling, I turned to go inside and bumped into a man holding the door open for an exiting customer.

  “Sorry,” I said, backing up to give him space. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “No problem at all,” he said, continuing on his way to the parking lot.

  My mouth went instantly dry. I stood there, frozen, afraid to turn around and look. I’d only heard the mysterious caller’s voice one time, and only three words at that—“What was fast?”—but I was almost certain I’d just heard it a second time.

  Finally breaking my paralysis, I walked into the store and waited until I heard the heavy glass door close behind me, and then I risked a glance over my shoulder. The man appeared to be in his mid-thirties, tall and stocky, with short dark hair hidden beneath a faded Atlanta Braves baseball cap. He was sitting behind the wheel of a yellow Volkswagen Bug and was now wearing sunglasses. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or not. A moment later, he backed up and drove away.

  I should follow him. See where he lives.

  But my legs wouldn’t budge.

  My appetite for chili dogs gone, I paid for a Snickers and a carton of chocolate milk, and went home.

  7

  By the middle of August, most residents of Edgewood were in a state of full-fledged hysteria. Gun sales soared once again, and following a July lull, there was now a lengthy waiting list for the installation of home security systems. The Hair Cuttery in the mall and local beauty parlors were booked solid with appointment slots filled until late September—the media had been quick to point out that all three of the Boogeyman’s victims had beautiful manes of long, flowing hair, so now women of all ages were rushing out to get short haircuts. Almost overnight, at least within the cozy confines of Harford County, the Joan of Arc and Dorothy Hamill hairstyles of the ’70s were once again all the rage.

  And then there were those folks—their numbers seeming to increase with each passing day—who claimed that guns and security systems were of no help when it came to stopping the Boogeyman. Citing the horrific nature of the murders, along with the puzzling lack of evidence left behind, a small but vocal group of residents were now convinced that this serial killer was not a human being at all, but rather some kind of supernatural creature. “How else do you explain it?” one wide-eyed gentleman told a Channel 2 reporter live on the air. “These girls are being stolen away right out from under their parents’ noses, from the safety of their own homes and neighborhoods, brutally maimed and killed, and then returned for public viewing. Nothing human is capable of that kind of sleight of hand. Something else—something not of this world—is clearly at work here.”

  The very next afternoon, a woman wearing a pink terry-cloth bathrobe and curlers in her hair—“absolutely scandalous,” my mother commented at my side—told a news crew from Channel 13 that something had activated the motion detector spotlight in her backyard the night before. When she rushed to her upstairs bedroom window, she spotted a dark figure loping across the lawn. The woman claimed it was at least seven feet tall and had a single, pointed horn protruding from the center of its sloping forehead, and when it reached the privacy fence that encircled the backyard, it simply took flight and disappeared into the night sky. Of course, her husband had been sleeping at the time, and hadn’t seen a thing.

  Watching these lurid stories—and so many others like them—unfold daily on television, I couldn’t help but think: They’re just like scenes out of a horror movie… only this time, they’re absolutely real.

  The next morning, Carly called and asked me to stop by the newspaper office. An un-aired video from a Channel 11 newscast had been making the rounds there, and she wanted me to take a look. Once I arrived, she escorted me into the break room where a television and VCR sat atop an old wooden desk that had seen better days. The room smelled of coffee and cologne and stale cigarette smoke. Carly pressed play, and a familiar face flashed onto the screen: Blanche Waters, the elderly African American woman who lived just around the corner from my parents. I’d cut her grass and shoveled snow off her driveway from the time I was twelve until I’d left for college. Leaning on her cane, she looked like a child standing next to the reporter. “My granddaddy used to tell the story of Henry Lee Jones, a runaway slave who struck a deal with the devil. In exchange for helping Henry and his family escape north, the devil demanded that Henry kill the plantation owner’s ten-year-old daughter, a sweet-natured girl who’d never once hurt a soul.” Mrs. Waters sneezed and proceeded to give her nose a good, long honking with a balled-up handkerchief. Once she was finished, she gave the hankie a careful inspection, and then unceremoniously stuffed it back into the pocket of her blouse. The reporter holding the microphone glanced at the camera and raised his bushy eyebrows in amusement. The old woman continued: “Henry Lee did the deed that very night, strangling the girl to death in her bed, but it turned out the devil had tricked him. Oh, he kept the first part of the bargain, all right; he helped Henry and his family make safe passage. But then he pulled a fast one, cursing Henry Lee with eternal life and an unquenchable bloodthirst for innocent young White girls. Not long after, Henry’s wife took their two children and fled in the middle of the night, and they were never heard from again. Legend has it that Henry Lee Jones is still out there to this day, possessed by the devil’s hateful rage, roaming the countryside and strangling young girls to death. My granddaddy’s long gone to the grave by now, bless his gentle soul, but I believe he was speaking the truth.” She turned then and stared directly into the camera. “Henry Lee Jones has come to Edgewood, and he’s hungry. How else, with so many Blacks and Hispanics residing here, do you explain three dead White girls?” The videotape ended then.

  “Jesus,” I said, looking up at Carly.

  “Can you imagine if they’d put that on the evening news?”

  I shook my head. “I’m actually a little surprised they didn’t.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’m glad my parents will never see it. They adore Mrs. Waters. Hell, I do too. I’ve known her since I was a kid.” I sighed. “At least, I thought I knew her.”

  Carly picked up the remote and turned off the television. “I think we’re going to find out very quickly just how much we don’t know in this town.”

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  In the days following the death of Madeline Wilcox, the national press invaded Edgewood in full force, with news teams coming from as far away as Florida, Chicago, Boston, and Canada. It wasn’t unusual to take an afternoon drive and see residents on one side of the street talking to a camera crew, and residents on the opposite side of the street being interviewed by police detectives. Law enforcement and media helicopters circling overhead soon became an everyday occurrence.

  Parents from neighboring towns in Harford County had no compunctions—moral or otherwise—about forbidding their children from setting foot in Edgewood, especially after dark, propping up the murders as incontrovertible proof that “the town is a dangerous cesspool of sin and degradation, populated by noneducated, low-income drug abusers.” Those stinging words came from the bright red lips of a big-haired woman named Kemper Billington, who just happened to be the vice president of Fallston High School’s PTA, during a live interview with a Channel 11 news team. Adding fuel to the fire, the Aegis ran a particularly offensive editorial regarding the burgeoning budget costs of the police investigation, drawing more than a dozen irate letters to the editor—including one from Aegis employee Carly Albright—and scores of subscription cancellations.

  The cycle of gossip continued unabated. Just as they had after the first two murders, rumors once again began to run rampant throughout the town, the most colorful involving a theory that there was a satanic cult operating just below the surface of Harford County society. Stories of cows and dogs being mysteriously and brutally slaughtered dominated late-night conversations, as did one particularly gruesome tale about an alleged grave-robbing incident that’d taken place at Edgewood Memorial Gardens earlier in the summer. The murders of the three young Edgewood girls were now being attributed to a new wave of initiation rites for the cult’s Satanic High Council. Alleged members of the council included the chief of police, the vice principal at Edgewood Middle School, and the captain of the varsity cheerleading squad’s well-endowed stepmother. A late-night anonymous phone call made to the tip-line informed police where they could find a makeshift altar deep in the woods behind the shopping center. A team of detectives checked it out and came away thoroughly unimpressed.