Chasing the Boogeyman

by Richard Chizmar

  When Hank returned to the van, he slapped the newspaper down on the dash in front of Leroy and said, “This ain’t good.” On the front page was a photograph of the bank they’d robbed two days earlier. In the background, on the sidewalk, lay two crumpled bodies.

  And just like that, I remembered.

  Searching my desk for his business card, I picked up the phone and called Detective Harper.

  3

  Surprisingly, he wasn’t angry with me. In fact, he didn’t call me Joe Hardy even once.

  I started by describing the incident that’d occurred in front of my house on Halloween night. The man dressed in black, staring at me from across the street. A pickup truck turning the corner and its headlights giving me a good look at the mask the man was wearing.

  I told him that while I’d initially been unnerved by the sighting, especially since Cassidy Burch had been murdered later that same night, I also figured it was just another teenager playing a prank—like the kids who’d gotten into trouble a month or so earlier for scaring people in their houses. That’s why I hadn’t reported it.

  But something about that night had stuck in my mind, even now, five weeks later. I just couldn’t remember what it was—until this morning.

  The woman who had taken the photographs at the bottom of my driveway had been facing in the direction of the man wearing the mask. Depending on how wide she’d framed her photos, there was a decent chance the man would be visible in the background.

  All Detective Harper had to do now was find out who the Incredible Hulk and Superman were.

  4

  It only took a day.

  Sending his men door-to-door along Hanson Road and the surrounding area, Detective Harper was able to track down the woman’s identity and address. Her name was Marion Caples, and she lived with her husband and six-year-old son, Bradley, aka the Incredible Hulk, at the bottom of Harewood Drive. Superman was seven-year-old Todd Richardson, her next-door neighbor’s son.

  Marion Caples hadn’t yet sent in the film from Halloween night to be developed, so Detective Harper had the police lab take care of that task on her behalf. The first photograph came out blurry and off-center, which was most likely why I’d heard Mrs. Caples beg the kids for “just one more.” The second photo, however, was a 100 percent bull’s-eye. You couldn’t have asked for better timing. While the Hulk and Superman showed off their muscles and cherry lollipop–stained tongues in the foreground, the man in the mask, awash in the truck’s headlights, stood in clear profile behind them.

  Initially, Detective Harper claimed he wasn’t going to be able to show us the photograph because of the ongoing nature of the investigation. But once Carly reminded him that we’d promised our confidentiality in exchange for more information, he’d relented. That girl was turning into one hell of a reporter.

  The photo he slid across his desk the next afternoon was an eight-by-ten enlargement, full-color, and crystal clear. I didn’t say much while we were at the station house, but when Carly and I got back in the car, the first words out of my mouth were: “It was him. Don’t ask me how I know, but I do.”

  thirteen Questions

  “He turned and saw the outline of the killer’s white mask floating closer in the darkness…”

  1

  On Wednesday, December 14, the town of Edgewood opened its eyes in surprise to six inches of fresh snow on the ground. Schools canceled classes for the day, and many residents called out of work or went in late. The overnight forecast had merely called for a 50 percent chance of flurries, so none of the roads had been treated with salt, and even the plows had gotten a late start. By 10:00 a.m., most streets were still covered. It was a wet snow, perfect for making snowballs, and by late morning, an epic battle was raging on Tupelo Drive. On one side of the road, three boys stood tall behind a chest-high wall of packed snow; on the other side of the road, nearest to my house, five smaller kids mounted valiant charge after charge, only to be mercilessly pummeled and turned back each time. They’d sound a collective retreat, regroup behind a snow-covered car in my neighbor’s driveway, reload with a new batch of ammunition, and bravely launch another attack upon the fortress. I watched the whole thing unfold from the safety of my bedroom window for a while, and wistfully thought I’d give just about anything in the world to go outside and join them.

  It had been six uneventful weeks since Halloween night and the murder of Cassidy Burch. According to Detective Harper’s most recent press conference on the first of the month, the task force was pursuing a number of leads and working closely with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to maintain the highest level of safety within the community. Whatever that meant. All I knew was that I’d definitely noticed fewer patrol cars driving around town since Thanksgiving. My father had mentioned the same thing to me just the day before.

  Since the holiday, two additional suspects had been brought in for questioning. The first was a thirty-nine-year-old bus driver from the high school, whose daily pickup and drop-off route included two of the murdered girls’ homes. The second was a twenty-six-year-old former Harford Mall security guard who lived with his mother on Hornbeam Road. Several recent harassment complaints had been filed against the man by shoppers—all teenage girls with long hair—and the mall had fired him just after Black Friday.

  Carly Albright covered both stories for the Aegis and told me that nothing ever came of them. The bus driver had alibis for each of the four murders and the ex-security guard had long, stringy blond hair that didn’t match the police sketch, as well as a disability involving his right hand from a long-ago automobile accident. Law enforcement determined there was absolutely no chance this man could’ve strangled anyone.

  Detective Harper hadn’t brought up the photograph from Halloween night again, and I hadn’t asked about it. I kept expecting to see the image pop up in the newspaper or on one of the nightly newscasts, but so far it hadn’t made an appearance or even a mention.

  While running errands one afternoon with my mother, I’d noticed the beauty parlor next door to Radio Shack seemed particularly busy. I immediately thought, Here we go again, but my mom assured me it was only because of the holiday season and she had it on good authority that the “short hair craze” in Edgewood was over. Around that same time, Carly spoke with Joe French at the pawnshop and he told her that no one was buying guns anymore either. I thought that was good news.

  Something else had changed in the six weeks since Halloween night: in all that time, we’d only received one prank call. Whereas before, the calls had begun to slowly dwindle, now they’d practically stopped altogether. I couldn’t even remember the last time it’d happened. The week before Thanksgiving, perhaps.

  Time seemed to move faster in December, the lure of the holidays and a brand-new year dragging us along with its inexorable pull.

  On Friday, December 16, came a momentous occasion in my life. A UPS truck pulled up to the curb in front of 920 Hanson Road, and I helped the driver unload twenty heavy boxes into the garage. At long last, the debut issue of Cemetery Dance was a reality. One thousand copies. Forty-eight pages. Several goddamn typos, despite a half-dozen rounds of proofreading.

  My father and Kara and I spent the weekend stuffing four hundred subscriber copies into manila envelopes and packing an additional three hundred and fifty copies into various-sized boxes for comic book stores. It would prove to be the first of hundreds of times the three of us worked side by side in pursuit of my big dreams, but I would never forget the feeling of this particular moment.

  The following week, it snowed again, and on December 21, I celebrated my twenty-third birthday with Kara and my parents and my sister Mary and her family. Mom baked my favorite chocolate cake with chocolate icing for dessert, and I made a secret wish before blowing out the candles.

  Later that evening, Kara and I met Carly Albright and the man who was soon to become her boyfriend—a first-year state trooper from Baltimore County—to grab a drink and exchange Christmas
gifts. I’m not much of a bar-hopper, but seeing Carly smiling and laughing with someone who really seemed to care about her was the cherry on top of a wonderful night. Before we said our goodbyes, Carly gave me an engraved fountain pen “to sign contracts and autographs once you’re famous,” and I gave her a fancy Sony mini-recorder to help her with her interviews. Miraculously, none of us had brought up the Boogeyman that entire evening.

  Early the next morning, Kara and I drove down Route 40 to White Marsh Mall to try and finish our Christmas shopping. Evidently, we weren’t the only ones who’d woken up with that bright idea. The place was a zoo.

  While navigating the throngs of shoppers swarming both the first- and second-level concourses, I began to experience that same eerie sensation of feeling watched, the first time it’d happened in a long time. The next hour passed in a blur of continuous glances over my shoulder and having to say, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” to my obviously frustrated fiancée. But no matter how irritated she became with me, I didn’t tell her the truth, because I didn’t want her to worry.

  A short time later, we stopped in the food court for slices of pizza and sodas, and saw Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher in line at the soft pretzel stand. I was pleasantly surprised by how different Mr. Gallagher looked. He was at least ten or fifteen pounds heavier than the last time I’d seen him, and a healthy color had returned to his face. He’d also started wearing glasses and was holding his wife’s hand. I decided not to bother them and didn’t say hello.

  Later still, our shopping finally completed, we ran into Mike Meredith in the parking lot. We’d graduated high school and played lacrosse together. The best goalie I’d ever teamed with, he was also one of the weirdest guys I knew. For that reason, I didn’t even bother asking him why his hair was dyed green. Mike was also quite the talker, which is what led to him sharing the news.

  “You haven’t heard?” he asked.

  “Heard what?”

  “Whoa, okay. You really haven’t heard?” he asked again, eyes flashing wide.

  “Mike, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Last night… the neighborhood watch.”

  “What about it?”

  “Oh, man. It was a shitshow, Chiz.”

  “How so?”

  He shook his head. “It was bad, my friend. No more neighborhood watch, that’s for sure.”

  And then he told us what happened.

  2

  At approximately 11:15 p.m. on Wednesday night, Mel Fullerton, Ronnie Finley, and Mark Stratton—all members of the Edgewood Neighborhood Watch—were driving in Mel’s oversized pickup along Perry Avenue, directly across the street from the high school. It was pretty cold out, and both Mel and Ronnie had spiked their coffee with bourbon. They’d also brought along a twelve-pack of Budweiser, the empties of which they’d dumped about an hour earlier along a dark stretch of Willoughby Beach Road. Their “shift” was set to end in fifteen minutes, and they were tired and grumpy, especially Mel, who’d been in a particularly foul mood the whole time.

  They’d just made a left-hand turn onto Hornbeam Road and were heading up the long, sloping hill toward the library and shopping center when someone dressed in dark clothing darted across the road directly in front of the pickup and disappeared into a culvert on the opposite side of the street.

  Mel immediately slammed on the brakes and flung open the driver’s door, stumbling out onto the road. The other two men followed, Ronnie sprinting down the grassy hill into the culvert, his boots splashing in the shallow, running water.

  “Mark, you watch that side,” Mel had ordered, pointing to his left, “in case he crawls into the drainage pipe and tries to double back!”

  Without a word, Mark had headed off into the darkness, the beam of his flashlight bouncing over the frozen ground.

  Mel sidestepped his way down the hill, taking his time so he wouldn’t fall. He’d known he was drunk, but hadn’t realized how badly until he’d gotten out of the truck. He was breathing heavily, and vapor clouded the air in front of his fleshy face. “Ronnie!” he called into the night.

  A barking dog in the distance answered him.

  Mel reached the bottom of the rise, and just as his ears registered the sound of running water gurgling over rocks, his foot slipped on one of those rocks, and down he went, sprawling onto his backside in the frigid stream.

  “Son of a bitch!” he screamed, pushing himself back to his feet and almost falling again. “Ronnie, where the hell are you?!”

  No answer—not even the dog this time.

  “You okay, boss?” Mark had called out from the other end of the drainage pipe that ran underneath the road.

  Great, Mel thought, probably saw the whole damn thing, and he’ll sure as shit be running his mouth tomorrow morning at the diner. “I’m fine,” he said. “Where the hell did Ronnie get to?”

  “Beats me.”

  Mel heard footsteps behind him then, coming down the hill on the opposite side of the stream, slow and stealthy, and if it was Ronnie, why hadn’t he said something by now?

  Already scared, he turned and saw the outline of the killer’s white mask floating closer in the darkness, footsteps coming faster now.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and fumbled out the .38 he’d stashed there before he’d left his house. Lifting it chest-high, he commanded, “Stop right there!” and then jerked the trigger three times, boom boom boom.

  “What the hell was that?!” Mark yelled.

  “I got him!” Mel answered. “I got the Boogeyman!”

  Still holding the gun in front of him, Mel splashed his way across the culvert.

  At the same time, an out-of-breath Mark appeared above him, leaning over the guardrail. Spotting the crumpled body on the hillside, he whispered, “Holy shit.”

  Mel bent over, slowly reaching out with his free hand to unmask the killer, already thinking about what he was going to do with all that reward money, when a scattering of clouds swam free of the moon—and Mel Fullerton realized that there was no mask and he’d just shot and killed Ronnie Finley, his best friend in the world, and he was going away for a very long time.

  3

  It felt like I blinked, and Christmas and New Year’s were ghosts in the rearview mirror. That’s how quickly those next two weeks passed.

  Knowing what was ahead of us, Kara and I stayed in on New Year’s Eve and watched Dick Clark’s midnight countdown on television. My parents had gone to bed earlier, and cuddling under a blanket on the basement sofa, it felt just like old times back when we were dating in high school. I dropped Kara off around 12:30 a.m. and was home snoring in bed before one.

  The next evening wasn’t nearly as serene. A bunch of the guys—led by Jimmy Cavanaugh and Brian Anderson, both of whom had flown into town earlier that afternoon—showed up at the house and dragged me away for my bachelor party. There soon followed spirited rounds of bowling and poker and too many pitchers of Loughlin’s Pub beer to count. After we closed the place down, we got it into our heads that it would be a good idea to throw snowballs at cars out on Route 24. None of us were in any condition to drive, so we walked the mile and a half. It was almost 2:30 a.m. by the time we got in position along the tree line and traffic was sparse. Finally, headlights approached, traveling east and moving at high speed. Calling on years of experience, we waited until just the right moment and, carefully timing our throws, we all fired our snowballs. Splat splat splat—three of them hit home! Before we could even begin to celebrate our success, the car screeched to a sudden halt in the middle of the highway and switched on its flashing lights and siren. As luck would have it, we’d just nailed a Harford County Sheriff’s cruiser. The driver banged a tight U-turn and started speeding down the wrong side of the highway in our direction. We immediately dropped our remaining snowballs and fled into the woods, barely managing to escape.

  The next morning, I woke up in my parents’ basement, surrounded by eight of my closest friends. Brian Anderson was s
hirtless, his chest and shoulders a patchwork of scrapes and scratches he’d suffered during our hasty retreat. One of Jimmy Cavanaugh’s sideburns had been mysteriously shaved off and he was missing both of his shoes. Steve Sines, who had made the trip from Maine, had a beauty of a black eye, but no one could remember where in the hell it came from.

  As for the guest of honor, I woke up wearing a cardboard box on my head that just hours earlier had housed a twelve-pack of Bud Light. One of my friends—to this day, none of the bastards will own up to it—had drawn a penis on my forehead with permanent magic marker. My poor mom almost fainted when she saw it. And as if the hazy memories of that night weren’t enough, I had several Polaroids to commemorate the special occasion. I kept them hidden inside a desk drawer.

  4

  On Wednesday, January 4, the big day finally arrived: in front of 125 cherished family members and friends, with my nervous father standing at my side as best man, Kara and I exchanged our wedding vows. The ceremony and reception were every bit as wonderful as we’d hoped for, and seeing everyone together in one grand room—laughing, dancing, celebrating—was a precious gift Kara and I knew we’d always carry with us. It was the happiest day of my life—but unfortunately short-lived.

  Thanks to the early start of Kara’s winter semester, there was no time for a real honeymoon. Instead, we spent an amazing weekend in a cabin retreat tucked away in the snowy mountains of West Virginia before returning home to pack up my stuff and move into our new apartment in Roland Park, a forty-five-minute drive from Edgewood and only a handful of blocks away from Johns Hopkins.

  By mid-January we’d settled into our new routines: Kara spent most of her mornings and afternoons on campus, except for Fridays when she only had one early class, and I kept myself busy back at the apartment, writing new stories and working on the second issue of the magazine.