I hadn’t dressed up for the occasion (unless you counted gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt as a costume), but as usual Kara had pulled out all the stops. That was just one of the many things I loved about her. She embraced and celebrated life to the fullest extent. Whether it was dressing up as the cutest court jester you’ve ever seen (as she’d done this year) or taking weeks to find someone the perfect Christmas gift or pulling her car over to the side of the road to watch a winter sunset, Kara was able to find beauty and grace and meaning in so many everyday moments. If I was shadows and moonbeams and tales of death and horror, she was sunshine and laughter and the yellow brick road from The Wizard of Oz. We balanced each other.
Shortly after seven, Kara announced she was braving a return trip to the kitchen to grab refills on our drinks, and left me alone at the door. Within minutes, led by Darth Vader and Elvis Presley, the largest pack of the night streamed up the driveway, giggling, skipping, burping, and squeezed onto the porch. Elvis rang the doorbell. Taking the bowl with me, I stepped outside and began tossing handfuls of candy into pillowcases, grocery bags, and plastic pumpkins. As the horde of trick-or-treaters moved on amid a chorus of shouted thank-yous, I happened to glance across the street. A lone dark figure stood scarecrow-still on the sidewalk in front of the Hoffmans’ house. Too tall to be a child and making no attempt to conceal his presence, the man appeared to be watching me. Probably a bored dad waiting for his kid, I thought. Maybe even an undercover cop; they’re out in full force tonight. Or better yet, Detective Harper spying on me again.
I was about to turn away when a pickup truck swung around the corner of Tupelo, the beams of its headlights washing over the Hoffmans’ front yard. I saw him clearly then. It wasn’t Detective Harper.
The man was dressed in dark clothing, and he was wearing a mask—one that very much resembled the crudely made mask I’d recently seen on television and in the newspaper. My mouth went instantly dry, and I felt cold sweat break out along the back of my neck.
The stranger just stood there, motionless, arms at his side, staring.
A camera suddenly flashed at the bottom of the driveway, stealing away my attention. “Just one more,” a frazzled mother begged. The Incredible Hulk and Superman stuck out their tongues and struck a pose—and the camera flashed again. When I returned my gaze across the street, the masked man was gone.
“Everything okay?” Kara asked, arriving at the door with our drinks.
“All good,” I said, stepping inside. I took a long swig of lemonade and didn’t say a word about what I’d just seen. Probably just a prank, I told myself. Like the scene in Halloween II when one of the guys dresses up like Michael Myers.
As the night wore on, Kara and I assumed the role of gatekeepers at 920 Hanson Road, greeting late arrivals at the door and hugging departing guests goodbye. The Gentiles were the first to leave, hurrying next door to hand out full-size Baby Ruth candy bars, something they’d done ever since I was a little kid. Before they walked away, Mr. Bernie pulled a shiny silver dollar from his coat pocket and flipped it to me without a word. My uncle Ted—my father’s younger brother and still the biggest kid I’ve ever known—tried to give me a wedgie on his way out the door, but settled for a noogie, instead. Aunt Pat scolded him all the way back to their car. Shortly after seven thirty, Carly Albright, Mickey Mouse ears perched jauntily atop her head, stopped by and helped us hand out candy to the never-ending parade of trick-or-treaters. Listening to her and Kara catch up, a plate of spaghetti balanced in Carly’s lap, was my favorite part of the evening. It was easy to see why the two of them had once been so close.
Later, in bed, I realized that the Boogeyman hadn’t come up in conversation a single time that evening. I couldn’t remember the last time that’d happened with more than a few people gathered in the same room. Despite the unnerving incident that’d occurred earlier in the night—by then I’d mostly convinced myself it was just another stupid prank—this realization made me smile, and soon after, as I drifted off to sleep, those familiar haunting words—A storm is coming—resurfaced in my head… only this time, I found myself wondering if perhaps the storm hadn’t finally passed us by.
4
The next morning, I woke up feeling refreshed and energetic, ready to knock out a long session at the keyboard. I was working on a new story about a father and son. For a change, it wasn’t scary and wasn’t supposed to be. More than anything, it was a slice-of-life tale, capturing a moment in time that really meant something to me. I suspected that the story was about my own father, but it wasn’t exactly clear yet. I was anxious to find out.
I headed downstairs to grab a bowl of Wheaties to take back up to my desk, and knew that something horrible had happened the moment I saw my mother’s face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She looked away from me, staring out the kitchen window into the backyard. “A girl never made it home last night.”
5
Sixteen-year-old Cassidy Burch lived with her mother and younger sister in an end-of-row town house in the Courts of Harford Square. Her father, a truck driver, had been killed three years earlier in an accident on I-95. While diminutive in stature—five four and one-hundred-and-ten pounds—Cassidy had a bright smile and outgoing personality that filled up any room she chose to enter. A sophomore at Edgewood High School, Cassidy played junior varsity field hockey and was treasurer of the Latin Club. She worked hard in the classroom for her B average and held down a part-time job at Burger King on Route 40. Cassidy Burch had sparkling blue eyes and beautiful, long blond hair.
At around 5:30 p.m. on Halloween night, while her mother remained at home to hand out candy, Cassidy took her eleven-year-old sister, Maggie, trick-or-treating. Maggie was dressed as Buttercup from her favorite movie, The Princess Bride, which she’d seen three times last year at the theater. She looked every bit of a lovely princess, with her long, blond, braided hair and flowing homemade gown, and received many compliments. The sisters roamed the neighborhood for almost ninety minutes, filling two plastic pumpkins with treats before finally returning home.
While Buttercup began sorting her mountain of candy on the dining room table, Cassidy went upstairs to change clothes.
At 7:20 p.m., a car horn sounded in front of the Burches’ town house. Cassidy bounded down the stairs, her red velvet hooded cloak fanning out behind her like Wonder Woman’s cape. A mid-length gray skirt, white leggings, and black saddle shoes completing the picture, Little Red Riding Hood hugged her mother and sister goodbye and headed off to a party with her best friend, seventeen-year-old Cindy Gibbons.
It wasn’t really a party. Jessica Lepp had convinced her parents to allow her to have a small group of friends over—eight, maybe ten kids—with two conditions: no sleepovers because it was a school night, and everyone had to be out of the house by 10:45. Jessica’s mother insisted that she would not be to blame for any of the girls missing curfew. The Lepps lived on Larch Drive, a five-minute car ride from the Courts of Harford Square. Steep and winding, Larch Drive—at its highest point—bisected Hanson Road, a mere fifty yards up the street from my parents’ house.
Most of the girls wore costumes that night—a sexy vampire, a nerd with taped eyeglasses, Catwoman, and a pair of cheerleaders. They gathered in the Lepps’ basement and danced to ’70s disco and snacked on bags of pretzels and chips. After a while, Jessica put A Nightmare on Elm Street on the VCR, and they all crammed themselves onto the sofa and love seat, many of the girls—including Cassidy—covering their eyes during the scary parts. It was good old-fashioned, innocent fun. No boys, no drinking or smoking, no mean-spirited gossiping. Just a lot of giggling and the occasional belch from too much soda.
At 10:45, as promised, the girls began to leave. Cassidy and Cindy stayed after for a short time, helping their friend clean up pizza boxes, paper plates, and empty soda cans from the basement. Mrs. Lepp made a point of thanking them both and shooed them out the door at 10:55. From the front porch, she watched
them get into Cindy’s car and drive away.
At that exact same moment, Cassidy’s mother was sitting up in bed, a historical romance novel resting in her lap, staring at the alarm clock. As she watched the minutes tick by, Mrs. Burch listened for the sound of a car pulling up in front of the town house. She’d performed this same routine on many other nights, and it was never easy on her nerves. One day that girl will understand what it feels like to be a mom, she often thought, as she lay there worrying herself sick.
Watching the clock click over to 11:00, and still no Cassidy, she started chewing on her fingernails, a horrible habit she was determined to quit. Starting tomorrow.
At 11:02, Mrs. Burch heard a car door open, a few seconds of muffled rock music, and then the door slam closed. She exhaled a deep sigh of relief and returned her attention to the book she was reading. The heroine in the story was about to confront a gang of armed hooligans who were planning to ransack her family’s cabin, and Mrs. Burch was anxious to learn how it turned out.
She read to the bottom of the next page before realizing she hadn’t heard the sound of Cassidy’s key sliding into the lock, or the sound of the front door opening and closing, or the sound of the dead bolt being engaged.
Hopping out of bed like her feet were on fire, she hurried downstairs, calling out her daughter’s name. The foyer was empty, the interior light still on, and the front door was locked up tight. She swung it open and stepped out onto the porch, calling out Cassidy’s name again. No answer. She studied the length of well-lit parking lot on her right and scanned the dark expanse of empty field on her left. The night was silent. Nothing moved.
Hurrying back inside, Mrs. Burch found the cordless phone on the sofa where she’d left it earlier and called the Lepps. Jessica’s mother answered on the first ring and assured Mrs. Burch that she’d watched from her front porch no more than ten minutes ago as Cassidy and Cindy drove away. Maybe they stopped at the Stop and Shop for gas or something, she offered. Mrs. Burch thanked her and hung up.
Frantic now, she called the Gibbonses next. Cindy picked up right away, sounding out of breath. She told Mrs. Burch that she’d just gotten home after dropping off Cassidy and had hurried inside to answer the phone before it woke up her parents.
“You dropped her right in front of the house?” Mrs. Burch asked.
“What do you mean?” Cindy replied, confused. “I always do.”
“I know that, but… five minutes ago… that was you and Cassidy out front?”
“I mean, it might’ve been a little longer than five minutes, but yeah, I dropped her off and came straight home.”
“Did you see Cassidy after she got out of the car? Did you see anything at all?”
Cindy hesitated before answering. “I usually wait until she gets inside… but I think I just drove away this time. I didn’t want to be late ’cause of curfew.”
“And you didn’t see—”
“Wait a minute,” Cindy said, her voice rising. “Are you saying Cassidy didn’t get in the house? She’s not there with you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Oh my God!” Sounding upset now. “Oh my God. I think I better wake up my parents.”
“You do that, honey. I’m going to call the police.”
6
All this happened just down the road from where I was sleeping.
7
After a brief search, police discovered the body of Cassidy Burch at 2:27 a.m. at the Edgewood Memorial Gardens cemetery on Trimble Road. The rookie state trooper who found her not far from the main entrance initially believed he’d stumbled upon the scene of a Halloween prank, as the body was laid out in front of a headstone and surrounded by a number of still-lit jack-o’-lanterns. Partially dressed in her Little Red Riding Hood costume, Cassidy Burch had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled. Her left ear had been severed and was missing from the scene. Nearly a dozen bite marks covered her body, as if the killer had attacked in a frenzied bloodlust. One veteran trooper described it as “an act of madness.”
Cassidy Burch (Photo courtesy of Candice Burch)
Cassidy Burch (Photo courtesy of Candice Burch)
Edgewood Memorial Gardens (Photo courtesy of the author)
Police and detectives searching for evidence near the Burches’ Courts of Harford Square town house (Photo courtesy of Logan Reynolds)
ten Aftermath
“He likes how it feels to kill, and he’ll do it again if we don’t stop him.”
1
The town of Edgewood woke up the Tuesday morning after Halloween to a nightmare.
Breaking news broadcasts interrupted early morning talk shows on all four local television networks, and the grisly details of Cassidy Burch’s murder dominated drive-time airwaves on every local radio station. Anxious to share the news, neighbors rushed to pick up their telephones and gathered in small groups on porches and driveways. Many residents got in their cars and drove out to the cemetery but were turned away by police barricades blocking the lone entrance road. By midmorning, most everyone in town had heard: the Boogeyman was back.
After consoling my mother in the kitchen, I rushed upstairs and phoned Carly Albright. She was away from her desk, so I left a voice message, and she called right back. She was as stunned as I was with the news. I told her about the man in the mask I’d seen across the street from my house the night before, and she scolded me for not telling her earlier. Fortunately, she was in a hurry or I really would have gotten an earful. Speaking fast, she said she was about to head over to the high school to interview the principal and several faculty members. Classes for the day had been canceled for students, but teachers were still required to come in. We made plans to talk later that evening, and off she went.
The local noon news broadcast led with live footage of Detective Harper giving a brief statement just outside the cemetery’s front gate: “At this time, I can confirm that the body of sixteen-year-old Cassidy Burch was discovered earlier this morning on the grounds of the Edgewood Memorial Gardens.”
As the detective continued talking, the camera zoomed over his shoulder, focusing on a small group of officers walking among the headstones at the opposite end of the cemetery. Each of them carried a small bundle of red flags affixed to fifteen-inch wire stakes. Before the camera panned away, it captured one of the officers kneeling down and examining something on the ground at his feet, and then sticking a flag in the grass to mark the spot before moving on.
“We’d like to request that you extend to the Burch family sufficient time and privacy to grieve this tragic loss,” Detective Harper continued. “Task force members are currently pursuing a number of vital leads. We’ll have more information available later this evening. Thank you.”
I felt lost and restless the remainder of the afternoon. I couldn’t stop thinking about the man in the mask. It’d been around 7:00 p.m. when I first noticed him watching me from across the street. The police believed that Cassidy Burch was killed shortly after she was dropped off at around 11:00 p.m. Four hours. Had the Boogeyman paid me a visit last night, and then simply moved on down the road to stalk and kill his latest victim? The thought was almost too much to bear.
Unable to sit still for longer than a few minutes at a time, I knew trying to write was a lost cause and I didn’t trust myself enough to properly edit the handful of articles I had on hand for the magazine. After a while, I simply left and went for a drive. Avoiding the cemetery and Courts of Harford Square, I aimlessly circled the other half of Edgewood, cruising past the shopping center, 7-Eleven, and high school, where I spotted Carly’s car parked right out front in the visitors’ lot. After sitting in my car and staring into space for a half hour or so at the water’s edge by Flying Point Park, I topped off my gas tank at the Texaco station and did one final loop before heading back. Without even realizing I was doing it, I drove past the houses of the first three murder victims on my way home.
The evening news—which I watched
in the basement with my parents—offered few additional details about Cassidy Burch’s murder. Police were busy with their investigation and reluctant to speak on camera, especially since they had nothing new to add. Video footage showing nearly a dozen uniformed officers searching the grassy field next to the Burches’ town house soon gave way to a montage of Cassidy’s tearful friends and neighbors sharing personal anecdotes about the slain teenager. A dark-haired girl named Mallory held up a watercolor painting of a sunset, explaining that Cassidy had finished it in art class the year before and just recently surprised her with it as a birthday present. Another classmate, Lindsey, talked about how generous Cassidy was, always helping her out with her calculus homework, and how Cassidy doted on her little sister, Maggie. A middle-aged man, who lived in the same town house court as the Burches, echoed those kind thoughts, before adding that he believed Satanists were responsible for Cassidy’s death. He claimed to have witnessed gangs of drugged-up teenagers dressed all in black with upside-down crucifix earrings and pentagram tattoos on their arms roaming around at night. “They left that poor girl’s body in the boneyard. What more proof do the cops need?” I found it interesting that Cindy Gibbons, the girl who had dropped off Cassidy the night of her murder, never made an appearance on any of the networks. She also hadn’t returned any of Carly’s phone calls. Probably still too upset, I thought, changing the channel.
After a commercial break, the silver-haired anchor on Channel 11 gave the sheaf of papers he was holding a dramatic shuffle and began to run down a long list of what he called “breaking developments.” Effective immediately, a town-wide curfew of 9:00 p.m. would be strictly enforced. A number of bars and restaurants announced they were closing early, as well as several local retailers including Walmart, Baskin-Robbins, Radio Shack, and Santoni’s. In addition, all classes at Edgewood High School were canceled for the remainder of the week. The middle and elementary schools would remain open, but attendance would not be mandatory and would be left up to the discretion of each student’s parents or guardians. The high school announced tentative plans to reopen the following Wednesday, November 9—Tuesday was Election Day—and promised to bring in a staff of grief counselors to help students cope with the tragedy.
Chasing the Boogeyman Page 19