Chasing the Boogeyman

by Richard Chizmar

  In the meantime, every inch of the one-acre lot of overgrown brush and uncut weeds on Sequoia Drive was relentlessly searched, as were all the surrounding yards and roadways. At the rear of the lot, behind the remnants of the old garage, a narrow path created by parallel rows of head-high shrubbery led to Holly Avenue, where the police believed the man had most likely parked his vehicle. Willoughby Beach Road, a quick escape route, waited a mere two blocks away.

  Detective Harper and a majority of the task force members felt re-energized and optimistic, thanks to Annie Riggs’s brave actions. After months of coming up empty, they not only now had a witness, but finally a piece of concrete evidence. Other police officials, however, those whose job security was left up to the whims of the voters, were less enthusiastic. Thousands of dollars and hundreds of man-hours had been expended to catch this monster, and the closest they’d been able to come was thanks to a five-foot-six, one-hundred-and-ten-pound field hockey player who’d just had her braces removed four months earlier.

  Speaking of Annie Riggs, she became a national celebrity overnight. The media hadn’t yet decided whether to crown her as “The Girl Who Beat the Boogeyman” or “The Lone Survivor,” so for now, they were calling her both. One out-of-state newspaper printed Annie’s junior class yearbook photo next to a photograph of the mask beneath a 36-point headline that read: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Closer to home, many of Annie’s friends and schoolmates had nicknamed her “Ripley” after Sigourney Weaver’s badass character in the Alien films. Many of those same friends and schoolmates spent the afternoon and evening relating personal stories about Annie on live television. So far, Annie’s parents had been flooded with requests from over one hundred media outlets, most notably CNN, the Associated Press, the New York Times, Newsweek, People, Entertainment Tonight, and the Tonight Show. They’d turned each and every one of them down, claiming their daughter needed to rest and recuperate from the ordeal.

  As dusk approached, the already steady volume of 911 calls saw a marked increase. A man behaving suspiciously was reported on Bayberry Drive. Several residents called in about a green pickup truck driving too slowly along Perry Avenue. Citizens spotted the masked man behind every tree and telephone pole, lurking in every dark corner of every backyard. Gunshots echoed throughout the town as jittery homeowners fired at shadows. It was a miracle no one was killed.

  I sat out on the front porch with my father for almost an hour and watched police cruisers speed up and down Hanson Road, many of them with their spotlights dancing across yards and behind parked cars. I stopped counting after thirty of them. That disconnected sensation of watching a movie rushed back at me, and I shared how I was feeling with my dad, explaining that I’d felt something similar on the night of my ride-along with Detective Harper. My father respectfully disagreed. He said it felt like we were actually in a movie. I had to admit he had a point.

  Earlier at dinner, even my dear mother had jumped into the fray. She’d been adamant that the police sketch was the spitting image of the thirty-year-old son belonging to the woman who cut her hair. His name was Vince, and he’d been in trouble before with the law. For what, she didn’t know, but she’d met him at the beauty salon on several occasions and was almost certain it was the same person. What she didn’t remember, though, was that I too had once met Vince, and based on my recollection, the guy looked nothing like the man in the sketch. Fortunately, to my father’s and my own great relief, we’d been able to talk her out of calling the tip-line and passing on her suspicions.

  Shortly after dinner, the phone rang. At first I didn’t think anything of it. There hadn’t been any more prank calls since the night my parents had gone to visit Carlos and Prissy Vargas—the night the Boogeyman had finally spoken to me. But then I saw the look come over my mother’s face after she lifted the receiver to her ear and said, “Hello,” and I knew something was wrong. She immediately slammed the phone back onto its cradle. My father and I stood there, staring at her, neither of us saying a word. She looked at us with fury in her eyes. “Your little prankster must be in a particularly good mood tonight,” she said. “All he did was laugh and laugh. I wonder why.” Before we could respond, she stomped upstairs, leaving us to do the dinner dishes.

  4

  The next day’s lunchtime newscasts were filled with one jaw-dropping misadventure after the other—all from the night before. Evidently, Detective Harper’s task force had had an interesting time of it.

  In story number one, a longtime resident of Sunshine Avenue, down along the river, tossed a string of ladyfinger firecrackers into his backyard in an attempt to scare away a bunch of noisy geese. His neighbor, believing he’d just heard automatic gunfire, grabbed his .45 from an end-table drawer and ran outside to investigate. On his way, he tripped over a poolside lawn chair in the dark and accidentally shot himself in the leg. The neighbor with the pesky geese, hearing the gunshot and screams coming from next door, hopped the fence and used his shirt to tie a tourniquet around the man’s leg before calling for an ambulance. Pretty damn heroic, if you ask me.

  Story number two involved three local teenagers who’d gotten drunk off a stolen bottle of Jack Daniels and come up with the brilliant idea of fashioning their own versions of the killer’s mask and spreading out among their neighborhood to peer into people’s windows. Their little stunt resulted in a half-dozen phone calls to 911, including one from a frightened homeowner who feared he was having a heart attack, and a dangerous close call when another not-so-frightened homeowner, armed with a machete, charged into his backyard and nearly chopped one of the teenagers to pieces. The three boys—I found out later that the ringleader was none other than the younger brother of my not-so-dear old friend and volunteer fireman Kurt Reynolds—spent a long night in separate holding cells before their parents showed up at the station to bail them out.

  The third and most compelling story involved a state trooper on foot patrol not far from the Meyers House. Walking along Cherry Road, he’d quite literally stumbled upon a man wearing dark clothes emerging from a resident’s backyard. “I tripped over an uneven section of sidewalk,” he later told his supervisor, “and saw that my shoelace was loose. I bent down to retie it, and when I stood up again, there he was—a man coming out of the bushes no more than twenty feet in front of me. He saw me about the same time that I spotted him, and we both just stood there for a moment, staring at each other. I finally identified myself and ordered him to remain right where he was, but he took off down the street.”

  Radioing in for backup, the trooper engaged in a foot chase. The suspect cut through another backyard and the trooper followed. Over fences, around swimming pools, crashing through bushes and sprinting across empty streets. Twice, the trooper almost caught up with the mystery man, only to once again lose sight of him. Finally, in an unlit backyard, the trooper was forced to disengage after being unexpectedly attacked—not by the fleeing man, but by a chained-up German shepherd that almost made a meal out of both his legs. An exhausted-looking police spokeswoman seemed to go out of her way to point out that the suspect was most likely not the man they were searching for in connection with the attack on Annie Riggs. Little more than twenty-four hours had passed since the Riggs attack, and law enforcement was convinced that the would-be killer wouldn’t be so brazen as to try again so soon.

  “So then who the heck are they looking for?” my dad asked later that afternoon as we were putting away yard tools in the garage. “And in broad daylight?” I glanced across the street at the Hoffmans’ house just in time to see a pair of uniformed officers climb over the split-rail fence and disappear into our neighbors’ backyard.

  5

  My mother never learned how to drive. Growing up in a wealthy family in Quito, Ecuador—wealthy by local standards of the time, that is; quite a huge difference from our own country’s standards—she was escorted to school and wherever else she needed to go by the family’s driver. Later, in her twenties, after she met and married my father, in her word
s, she “just never got around to taking the test and getting a driver’s license.” Her inability to legally drive was something my siblings and I had a great deal of fun with in younger days, but she never seemed to mind. She took our frequent teasing in stride and got back at us by refusing to ride with anyone other than my father—except when faced with desperate circumstances, which was why she allowed me the honor of driving her to Santoni’s later that Sunday afternoon. My father was busy helping a neighbor, she needed additional ingredients for tonight’s dinner, and she clearly didn’t trust me to pick them up by myself.

  We walked side by side, up and down the grocery store aisles, filling the small basket I carried with whatever she pointed at on the shelves. In between stops, we said hello to what felt like the entire town of Edgewood. Between church, neighborhood activities, and monthly bingo nights at the community center, my mom was friendly with just about everyone. By the time we left the store thirty-five minutes later, we knew who in town was sick, who was pregnant, who was headed to what college in the fall, who’d just gotten a promotion at work, and who’d just gotten fired for the second time in as many months. I was exhausted.

  As we were walking across the parking lot, I noticed someone standing on the sidewalk in front of the bank, peering at us from behind a light pole. A tall man, he was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. When the man realized I was staring at him, he quickly turned away and disappeared around the corner. I wasn’t 100 percent certain, but pretty damn close: the man spying on us was Detective Harper.

  On our way out of the parking lot, I drove past the bank and took a closer look. The detective—if it had indeed been him—was nowhere in sight. Why in the hell would he have been watching me? Or had he been staking out the shopping center and it was just a coincidence that I came along?

  That night, while lying in bed, I watched as the eleven o’clock news came on television. The news anchor introduced her opening story, and of course, it was related to local hero Annie Riggs and the ongoing hunt for the Boogeyman. As Detective Harper’s forlorn face flashed onscreen and his deep baritone voice filled my bedroom, I picked up the remote control, turned off the TV, and went to sleep.

  6

  By the time September rolled around, I had fallen into a new routine. After a goodnight phone call with Kara, I’d work on the magazine—mostly reading the slush pile, proofreading, and laying out ads—until I could no longer keep my eyes open. It was usually after midnight when I turned off my desk lamp and crawled into bed. Most mornings, I awoke around eight thirty. Some days, depending on the weather and my mood, I’d go for a run or shoot some hoops, and then come home and shower and get to writing. Other days, I’d start off slow and easy, reading a couple chapters in bed before heading downstairs, still dressed in my pajamas, for a bowl of cereal and the morning paper.

  On Wednesday, September 14, my mother knocked on my bedroom door at 7:25 a.m., waking me from a deep slumber. Even if I hadn’t glanced at the alarm clock and seen how early it was, I would’ve known by the expression on her face that it was important.

  “Carly’s on the phone,” she said, reaching out with the cordless. “She asked me to wake you. She sounds upset.”

  I took the phone. “Hello?”

  “You need to come here right now,” Carly said, voice shaking.

  “Where’s here?” I asked, yawning.

  “My house. Please hurry.”

  And then she hung up.

  7

  Carly lived with her parents on the other side of Edgewood Meadows, about halfway between the library and the high school. It took me less than ten minutes to get dressed, find my car keys, and speed to her house.

  When I pulled up, she was sitting on the front porch, chin resting on her folded hands. Her eyes were puffy and red.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked as soon as I got out of the car.

  She struggled to her feet, looking so exhausted and childlike I suddenly wanted to hug her. “Last night, right after I turned off the lights to go to sleep, I heard something at my window again.” She looked around like maybe her neighbors were standing outside on their lawns eavesdropping. Seemingly content that no one was listening, she went on. “I was too scared to even get up and check it out this time. The room was dark, the window was dark, and for a second I was sure someone was hiding under my bed and they were going to reach up and grab me.” She started coughing, covering her mouth with a hand that was shaking.

  “Take your time,” I said.

  “A couple minutes later, I heard the same noise—a scraping sound, like someone was trying to pry off the screen—and I knew I wasn’t imagining it. I pulled the blanket up to my eyes and just laid there. I couldn’t move; couldn’t open my mouth to call out to my parents; couldn’t do anything. I was completely frozen. After a while the scraping noise went away… but it was at least three or four hours before I finally closed my eyes and fell asleep.”

  I glanced at the side of the house. “Why don’t you wait here and I’ll go check out your window?”

  Shaking her head, she said, “I already did that. I didn’t find anything.”

  “Okay, then how about we go grab something to eat, and afterwards I’ll drop you off back here and you can try to catch up on some sleep?”

  “Listen to me… I didn’t find anything on the window, but a little later, when I came outside to go to work, this was waiting for me.”

  She stepped aside then, giving me a clear look behind her. In the center of the front porch, inches away from the Albrights’ MARYLAND IS FOR CRABS doormat, someone had drawn a sad face in blue chalk. Right underneath it were three numbers: 666.

  “What are we going to do?” she said, starting to cry.

  Never taking my eyes off the chalk drawing: “I think it’s time we called Detective Harper.”

  8

  As expected, he wasn’t pleased.

  First, Harper read us the riot act for sticking our noses where they didn’t belong and potentially mucking up an active investigation. Next, he explained in meticulous detail why the hopscotch grid, pet poster, and pennies were critical pieces of evidence that the public could not, under any circumstances, be made aware of. Finally, he made us promise that we wouldn’t breathe a word of it to anyone, going on and on in that scary cop voice of his about how we were jeopardizing all the hard work his troopers had done.

  “And to think I trusted you,” he said, glaring in my direction. “I won’t make that mistake again.” Standing there on the front lawn, I wished I could disappear.

  And that, as it turned out, was the easy part.

  The hard part came when it was time for Carly to call her father at work—before one of the neighbors beat her to the punch—and explain why there was a Crime Lab van parked in their driveway and a team of detectives swarming all over their front porch and side yard. Her dad, surprisingly calm considering the news, immediately phoned her mom, and they were both parked at the curb within thirty minutes. Mrs. Albright wasn’t nearly as chill. If looks could kill, I’d be a dead man. After giving Carly a hug and making sure she was okay, she went inside with her daughter to talk to Detective Harper. Before the door closed, I overheard Mr. Albright telling the detective that it had been dark when they’d left for work that morning, and neither of them had noticed the chalk drawing on the porch.

  It got even more difficult later that morning when it was my turn to pick up the phone and tell my parents what had happened. Suffice to say, there were unpleasant words exchanged (many of them muttered in unintelligible Spanish) and more than a few frightened tears.

  To make matters worse—if that were possible—Carly’s mom emerged from the house a short time later and made it painfully clear that she wasn’t happy with me, either. As far as she was concerned, my selfish curiosity had contributed to making her daughter the target of a sadistic serial killer who’d already tortured and murdered three young girls. And now he knew where the Albrights lived.

  For the second time
that morning, I was dragged behind the woodshed by my ears and given a verbal lashing. “I had a feeling you’d be trouble,” Mrs. Albright snapped, waggling a finger in my face. “Carly’s working hard to build a respectable career and she doesn’t need some horror junkie dragging her into this mess. And you have a fiancée… you shouldn’t even be hanging around with my daughter.”

  Despite her shaky condition earlier that morning, Carly stepped up to the plate and took one for the team. Big-time. I was so damn proud of her. First, she went after Detective Harper: “I was the one who worked my inside sources for information about the investigation. Richard had nothing to do with that.” When Detective Harper pressed Carly to reveal those anonymous sources, she refused, citing standards of confidentiality. She also held firm and claimed we were well within our rights to pursue our own journalistic investigation as long as it didn’t interfere with any of the work the police were doing. Then it was her mom’s turn: “And how dare you speak to my friend like that. I’m a grown woman perfectly capable of deciding whom I work and spend time with. As for his fiancée, her name is Kara, and I adore her. Not once has Richard acted like anything less than a gentleman.”

  Did I mention how proud I was of her?

  Once the dust had settled, surprising news awaited us. Although Carly hadn’t found anything of interest in the side yard earlier that morning, the detectives sure as hell did. A narrow flowerbed bordered by small round stones ran along the entire length of the left side of the Albrights’ rancher. The ground there had been mulched, but summer storms had washed much of it away. In a bare patch of topsoil, directly beneath Carly’s bedroom window, detectives discovered a near perfect boot imprint. A lab technician immediately set to work, taking photographs of the imprint from every available angle. After confirming with Carly and her parents that no one in the family owned a pair of boots with that particular tread pattern, a second technician—using a small bucket of water, a bag of powdery dental stone, and some type of spray fixative—made a casting impression of the boot imprint. I’d witnessed the procedure a number of times before on television—usually performed by professional Bigfoot hunters in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest—but I’d never observed it in person. The whole process was fascinating, and despite the gloomy mood of the day, I found myself wishing that my father had been there with me.