Chasing the Boogeyman

by Richard Chizmar

  Spotting a photo of a young Joshua Gallagher straddling a motorcycle in the driveway, the lieutenant seizes the opportunity to steer the conversation in his direction. Upon hearing her son’s name, Mrs. Gallagher immediately points to a photograph on the mantel. Her grandsons, she explains. Andrew and Phillip. They live in Pennsylvania but visit regularly with Joshua and his lovely wife, Samantha. The lieutenant takes a sip of tea and eases into a question about Joshua’s time at Penn State. A few minutes later, she has her answers.

  Joshua attended college on a wrestling scholarship, but shortly after injuring his shoulder, he decided that the rigors of being a Division One student-athlete were too time-consuming and stressful for his type A personality. After many sleepless nights, he quit the wrestling team and focused on his studies. Soon after, he picked up a part-time warehouse job to help with tuition payments. He also met a girl. Her name was Anna and she came from a wealthy family in the New York suburbs. For a time, they were inseparable. Then, before they knew it, it was the end of the spring semester and time to return to their respective hometowns for the summer. Joshua wanted to remain in Happy Valley to work and rent an apartment for the two of them to share. Anna didn’t—she missed her family and wanted to spend the summer at the shore with them. Joshua wasn’t happy, but they visited each other over the break and managed to make it work. Until the fall, when they both returned to campus, and a restless Joshua figured he’d had enough and it was time to see other people. Anna was utterly crushed. Unable to sleep or focus on her classwork, she eventually dropped out and returned to New York shortly before the Christmas break. Not long after, a depressed Joshua called home and explained to his parents that college wasn’t really in the cards for him. He was ready to just find a real job and get started on his life. His parents were disappointed, of course, but ultimately supported his decision.

  Now, at last, the lieutenant transitions to her final subject of the afternoon: Mr. Gallagher. Taking special care to be as sensitive as possible, she asks Mrs. Gallagher about her late husband’s state of mind following the loss of their daughter. As Mrs. Gallagher responds at length, Lieutenant McClernan takes copious notes: “At first, he was completely bereft, unable to function. We considered admitting him into the hospital, but by the morning of Natasha’s funeral, he seemed to rebound. We went to therapy together for a long time afterward and it seemed to be working. He was getting better, I’m sure of it. He even started playing golf again on the weekends. Then it all went downhill again. He began to have trouble sleeping, and then he started drinking every night to help him sleep, but that didn’t work either. It just made him angrier. I don’t know what set it off again, but it had to be something. He… changed. I tried to talk to him about it, but he wouldn’t let me in. And then he stopped going to counseling. Finally, as a last resort, I made plans to be away from the house one evening after dinner, and I sent Josh over to talk with him. But it didn’t help. He was furious that I went behind his back, and if anything, it got even worse after that. A few days later… he was gone. And in all these years, I’ve never figured out what was behind that whole downward slide of his.”

  On her way back to the barracks—red-eyed and sneezing, thanks to Mrs. Gallagher’s demon cats—the lieutenant calls information and gets the number for Penn State University’s administration office. Expecting to reach an answering service this late in the afternoon, she’s pleasantly surprised when a cheerful-sounding woman answers the phone. The lieutenant explains what she’s after and is promptly transferred to the registrar’s office. An equally cheerful woman takes down Joshua Gallagher’s name and social security number, as well as the lieutenant’s cell number, and promises to get back to her as soon as she locates the requested information.

  About to toss her cell phone onto the passenger seat and call it a day, Lieutenant McClernan changes her mind and punches in Frank Hapney’s home number, the only one she has on file for him. It’s 4:55 p.m., so she figures she has a fifty-fifty chance of catching him. This time she comes up a winner—Hapney picks up, and it sounds like he’s been drinking.

  Five minutes later, she has everything she needs.

  Frank Hapney hasn’t seen or spoken with Joshua Gallagher in over a decade. He vaguely remembers the night of Natasha Gallagher’s murder and recalls speaking to the police later that week to verify Josh’s alibi, but he tells the lieutenant the same thing now that he told the detectives back then: He had too much to drink that night and passed out. He thinks he remembers Josh leaving around midnight, but it could’ve been a lot earlier or even a lot later. There’s just no way for him to be certain, especially after all these years. Finally, Lieutenant McClernan asks Hapney about Andersen’s Hardware and the eighteen months he and Joshua worked there together. “That’s right,” Hapney says, slurring his words. “I was pretty new, but Josh had already been there for a while when I first started, and he handled a lot of the deliveries. Some nights, he drove home one of those flatbed trucks with the metal side railings you can adjust, and other nights he took home a panel van. It all depended on what kind of load he was carrying that day.”

  Lieutenant McClernan falls asleep that night feeling good about number eight on her list. After all, there’s not a single thing about Joshua Gallagher that fits the Boogeyman’s profile—he’s too young at the time of the murders, lives in a town house with neighbors on either side of him, has no known ties to three of the four victims, and looks nothing like the police sketch of the killer. Plus, sororicide—the act of killing one’s own sister—is extremely rare when it comes to modern-age serial killers. If the lieutenant’s investigation continues in this current direction, then Joshua Gallagher will most likely prove an easy scratch-off, and she’ll move on to number nine on her list.

  And yet… a number of troubling issues have arisen with number eight that just won’t leave her alone.

  There’s the lack of a DNA sample, a questionable alibi, girl troubles, and easy access to a panel van. Not nearly enough to set off her internal alarm system, but definitely enough to sound a couple of loud, sporadic beeps. At the very least, an interesting pattern is beginning to emerge, and Lieutenant McClernan believes the next week or so will provide all the answers she’s looking for.

  But, as fate would have it, it happens even quicker than that.

  Two days later, Jennifer Schall, an administrator from Penn State University, returns McClernan’s phone call—and the lieutenant learns the truth about Joshua Gallagher’s early exit from college. After a stalking and harassment complaint was filed against Joshua in October 1985 by his ex-girlfriend Anna Garfield—who had broken up with Joshua, and not the other way around—he was placed on probation by the university and warned not to contact her again. When Ms. Garfield filed a second complaint in early December 1985, accusing him of breaking into her dorm room and vandalizing her personal belongings—an incident captured on video by the dorm’s hallway security cameras—Joshua Gallagher was summarily expelled from school and permanently barred from the university grounds. Campus security personnel asked Ms. Garfield if she’d like them to contact local police, but she declined and signed a release form stating as such. Because he was eighteen and considered a legal adult, the administration office didn’t bother to call Gallagher’s parents. A curt one-page letter of dismissal was mailed to the house.

  Interesting, Lieutenant McClernan thinks. After all these years, is Catherine Gallagher lying to protect her son? Or does she still not know the actual truth?

  The lieutenant thanks Jennifer Schall for the information and asks if Penn State keeps past student photos on file—perhaps from old yearbooks or student ID cards. She’d like to take a good look at Anna Garfield’s photograph. Jennifer says she’ll have to check and promises to get back to her.

  After giving Jennifer her email address and ending the call, the lieutenant immediately dials Reuter’s Machinery in Hanover and asks to speak with Joshua Gallagher’s supervisor. She realizes it’s a delicate situation
, and the last thing she wants to do is spook Gallagher, but her internal alarm is starting to beep a little louder now, and she needs to know the answer to one important question. After an almost five-minute hold, a gruff-sounding man picks up the extension. The lieutenant explains who she is and claims that she has an important question for Joshua Gallagher regarding his sister’s case. She understands he’s not at work today, but she’s wondering if they might know where she can reach him. The lieutenant isn’t at all shocked by the supervisor’s answer—and the volume of the alarm bells inside her head immediately cranks up another notch. It seems that Joshua Gallagher isn’t fishing for smallmouth on the Susquehanna, after all. In fact, he didn’t even bother to call in and take off work until earlier this very morning, when he complained that he was suffering from a severe bout of diarrhea and a temperature of 101.

  The lieutenant hangs up the phone and pulls out a manila folder containing Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher’s DNA profiles. Staring at the thirty-year-old printouts, she thinks back to the conversation in Catherine Gallagher’s living room and something that the older woman had said while paging through the photo album. The comment had struck the lieutenant as rather odd, but she didn’t say anything at the time because she didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the discussion. She knew from years of hard-won experience that once you stopped someone in the midst of talking about a particularly difficult subject, it was often impossible to get them started again.

  The lieutenant picks up the phone, locates the number she’s looking for in her notepad, and punches it in. Catherine Gallagher answers after the second ring and sounds genuinely pleased to hear from her. After exchanging pleasantries, Lieutenant McClernan gets right to it.

  “I was going through my notes earlier this morning,” she says, “and I came across a couple of things I wanted to clarify.”

  “Of course. Anything I can do to help.”

  She starts with a throwaway. “You mentioned that your daughter planned to take acting classes in college and move away after she graduated. I know you mentioned where, but I didn’t write it down. Was it New York or Los Angeles?”

  “Oh, it was New York,” Mrs. Gallagher says, a wistful tone seeping into her voice. “She always wanted to star in a Broadway play.”

  “That’s right. I remember now. Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  “I just have one more question for you, Mrs. Gallagher. When you were showing me photographs of your son and daughter, you commented a couple of times about their close resemblance to each other. I believe the word you used was ‘uncanny.’ ”

  There’s a lengthy pause before the older woman answers, and when she finally does, her voice sounds different. “Oh… did I say that?”

  “Yes, ma’am, you did. I even wrote it down in my notebook because it struck me as odd. The first time you mentioned it was after you showed me a photo of the two of them at the beach. They were very young, and I believe they were building a sandcastle. The second time was when we were looking at a photograph your husband took during a family visit to Penn State.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay, Mrs. Gallagher.” The lieutenant shuffles some papers to make it sound like she’s busy. “So, before I go, the question I have for you is this, and I need you to be honest with me. It’s very important right now that you tell me the truth.”

  “Okay.” Voice barely a whisper.

  “Your son, Joshua… he was adopted, wasn’t he?”

  The lieutenant hears a sharp intake of air on the other end of the line, and knows that her hunch is right.

  “Are you okay, Mrs. Gallagher?”

  “It was my husband’s decision not to tell Josh.”

  Lieutenant McClernan sits up in her chair and waits for Mrs. Gallagher to continue.

  “He didn’t want Josh to feel like an outsider once he grew up. He wanted him to feel like part of the family. And then, a few years later, when Natasha came along—a miracle baby, the doctors called her—and the two of them looked so much alike, it became even easier to keep the secret.”

  “No one else knows?”

  “My sister and an aunt and uncle back in South Carolina, but that’s it.”

  “Joshua still doesn’t know?”

  “No.” Starting to cry now. “We just wanted him to be happy…”

  After getting off the phone, Lieutenant McClernan scribbles Adopted—there would be no familial match along the bottom of Mrs. Gallagher’s DNA printout and returns it to the manila folder. She tosses it onto her desk and spends the rest of the morning going over Detective Harper’s notebooks. She’s already done this a half-dozen times, but thinks one more time can’t hurt. A few minutes past noon, she receives an email from Jennifer Schall at Penn State. A faded color photograph is attached. The lieutenant stares at the photo, heart and alarm bells thumping, and thinks, No wonder Josh was so hung up on her. Anna Garfield is a beautiful young woman with big brown eyes, full lips, a delicate aristocratic nose, and long, shimmering chestnut hair that falls well past her shoulders.

  Bingo.

  The lieutenant gets up from her desk and knocks on Captain Bradford’s office door. Quickly filling him in on all the details, she leaves her captain to contact the sheriff in Harford County and returns to her desk to call the York County detective squad. York, as well as nearby Lancaster and Adams Counties, comes up a zero. No known teenage girls with long hair have been strangled to death over the past ten years. No severed ears or bite marks or posed crime scenes.

  But once the detectives expand the search to include an additional half-dozen counties, they immediately get a hit.

  Two years ago, to the northwest in Juniata County, the body of a seventeen-year-old girl with long blond hair was found strangled to death. The victim, Sheila Rafferty, had what resembled a single bite mark on her left shoulder, but the coroner couldn’t be certain because the girl had been in the river for so long. Fishermen had stumbled upon her body in shallow water along the rocky banks of the Susquehanna.

  Things are clicking into place now. And fast.

  When Joshua Gallagher arrives at the Maryland State Police barracks two days later, he’s already the subject of around-the-clock surveillance. He doesn’t make a move without detectives knowing exactly what he’s doing. Lieutenant McClernan greets Gallagher in the lobby and invites him to sit in the lone chair in front of her desk. They speak for approximately thirty minutes. The lieutenant’s demeanor is relaxed and friendly. She asks no difficult questions. Gallagher slumps in his seat, almost appearing to be bored at times. His voice is steady, his responses brief and to the point. At one point, he actually yawns.

  A few minutes before they wrap it up, the lieutenant begins to fidget with a small hoop earring dangling from her left ear. Across the room, Detective Janet Ellis sees this signal and immediately gets up from her desk, carrying a manila file folder. Her long brown hair cascades halfway down her back, a clear violation of department regulations. She approaches Lieutenant McClernan’s desk and, flashing Joshua Gallagher a friendly smile, says, “Sorry to interrupt, Lieutenant, but here’s the file you asked for.”

  “Thanks so much, Anna,” the lieutenant responds, taking the folder.

  Joshua Gallagher immediately scoots upright in his chair and struggles to avert his eyes from Detective Ellis as she makes her way back to her desk. Lieutenant McClernan opens the folder and pretends to read what’s inside. Peering over the top of the file, she watches the struggle on Gallagher’s face. After another thirty seconds or so, she closes the folder and finishes up the conversation.

  As Joshua Gallagher walks across the barracks parking lot, Lieutenant McClernan sits behind her desk, staring at the armrests of the chair Gallagher just vacated—and the glistening sheen of perspiration he left behind. Slipping on gloves, the lieutenant gets up, sliding a swab out of the sterile tube in which it’s stored, and takes careful samples from each of the armrests.
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  6

  There will be no trial. No flashing cameras outside the courthouse. No dramatic televised proceedings. No daily glimpses of the monster. The Boogeyman. Joshua Gallagher.

  He admits all of it, and then some. The four Edgewood girls in 1988, including his own sister, and three others—one in 2001 in western Maryland, and two more in 2006 and 2018 in Pennsylvania.

  And the police believe there are even more.

  7

  On Monday, December 2, 2019, I’m sitting behind my desk in my home office, printing the day’s pages, when my cell phone begins to ring. I glance at the caller ID: MD STATE POL. Curious, I answer. “Hello?”

  “Is this Richard Chizmar?” A woman’s voice.

  “Yes, it is. Who’s calling?”

  “This is Lieutenant McClernan, Maryland State Police.”

  “I know who you are,” I say. “I’ve seen a lot of you lately.”

  She laughs. Not a cheerful sound. “I’m pretty sick of myself, too.”

  “I didn’t mean that at all.”

  “Listen,” she says, getting right to it. “I have an unusual proposition to run by you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s my understanding that you’re writing a new book about the Joshua Gallagher case.”

  “Is that a question?” I ask, unsure of where this is going.

  “No.”

  I wait for more, but she doesn’t say anything. “I’ve been offered a contract to revise the original manuscript and write a new afterword.”