The Midnight Hour

by R. G. Belsky

  “Sounds like a great guy.”

  “The only dissent came from Gallagher’s boss, Ohio Southern College president Mitchell Aldrich. Aldrich told police that Gallagher had seemed tense and worried about something in the days before his arrest. He said that Gallagher had been acting so irrationally that he spoke to him about getting some sort of psychological help.”

  “So what was Gallagher’s motive supposed to be for killing his family?”

  “That was never clear. They found some kind of hallucinatory drug in his system. The theory is he just went crazy.”

  “And there were no witnesses?”

  “Just the baby.”

  “What baby?”

  “There was a baby in a crib upstairs. Lauren Gallagher, she was four months old. She wasn’t touched by the killer. I guess he ran out of time or maybe he didn’t even know she was there.”

  “What happened to the baby?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wouldn’t the investigators who reopened the case years later have tried to track her down?

  “Why would they do that?”

  “She was at the scene of a mass murder.”

  “She was four months old, for chrissakes. What do you think she’s gonna do? Confess to the killings herself? Pick a suspect out of a lineup? It’s like the dog that was with Nicole Brown Simpson when she got stabbed. Yeah, the dog saw what happened; the dog knew whether O. J. did it or not. But what good did that do? The damn dog couldn’t tell anyone.”

  I nodded, writing down everything Sewell was telling me.

  “Anyway, years later, after Gallagher had been executed, all the new evidence started to turn up. The clincher, of course, was the DNA tests. New techniques showed that the victims’ DNA was on the bloody knife, along with Gallagher’s—and another person’s. Someone else had held that knife. The real killer.”

  “Jeez, nice police work.”

  “You can’t blame the cops. They worked with what they had at the time. Plus, from what I understand, they were under a lot of pressure to wrap it up quickly.”

  “Pressure from who?”

  “The college. Especially Aldrich, the president. He had a lot of clout around here back then. There were some feds involved in the investigation too. You gotta understand . . . nothing like this had ever happened in this town before. Everyone just wanted to get the case closed and move on. Look, it was a good bust at the time. Everything pointed to Gallagher. It didn’t work out the way everyone thought it would—and it’s a terrible shame they executed the wrong guy, but it’s easy to second guess an investigation once you know how it turned out in the end.”

  “Who was the police chief then?

  “Floyd Hammond. He died a long time ago.”

  “Anyone else from the force around?”

  “Hammond only had one full-time deputy. A guy named Larry Keller.”

  “Where’s he?”

  “He moved away not long after the murders.”

  “Anybody have any idea where this guy Keller is now?”

  “God, that was thirty years ago. He’s probably dead too. It’s been a long time.”

  • • •

  Before I left Sewell’s office he let me look through the original police file on the case. The 1985 file was remarkably concise and almost matter-of-fact in its confidence that the case had been solved. It really did seem like the cops were in a hurry to complete the investigation. I thought about how Sewell said the local police were under a lot of pressure from the college to wrap it up quickly. They’d called in state police and FBI too—which often happens when a small-town force needs help on a high-profile case like this—and everyone had zeroed in on Gallagher as the killer. Nobody ever questioned that until it was too late.

  There were photos of the crime scene too. They were tough to look at. I’d been to a lot of crime scenes, but this one looked especially bad. Kathleen Gallagher lying on the living room floor, covered in blood. Each of the two little girls, wearing matching children’s pajamas and murdered in another part of the house. Even now, thirty years later, the graphic photos seemed like a terrible invasion of these people’s last moments on earth.

  There were before pictures too. The two little girls dressed up for church, playing in the backyard, and opening Christmas gifts. Their mother, a pretty dark-haired woman wearing shorts and a halter top, waving to the camera at a backyard barbecue. The long-ago images reached out over time and grabbed me by the heart. I wondered who had killed these people. And what—if anything—it had to do with Dani Keegan’s murder thirty years later.

  CHAPTER 5

  Both the police report and Sewell had mentioned that federal authorities had been called in to help the tiny Logan Point police force during the investigation of the Gallagher murders. I knew an FBI agent named Bill Masterson who had given me some good tips back when I was covering 9/11 and other big stories in the years afterward. I hadn’t talked to him in a while; there hadn’t been many big stories for me in recent times.

  “What does this have to do with me?” Masterson asked when I got him on the phone and told him about the case.

  “Is there anything new on the Gallagher murders?”

  “Such as?”

  “Fresh developments in the investigation . . .”

  “They happened thirty years ago.”

  “I know.”

  “I wasn’t even with the bureau back then.”

  “So you haven’t heard anything?”

  “Heard what? Look, the bureau wasn’t even the lead investigator on this, we were just helping out the local authorities. Everyone got the wrong man. And the real killer apparently went free. But it was a long time ago, and these things happen. End of story. I’ve got a desk full of recent crimes from the past few months that are unsolved too. Those are the cases I’m investigating.”

  “What if someone uncovered some kind of new evidence on the Gallagher murders?”

  “Do you have something?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Well, if you do, then we’ll investigate that too. Okay?”

  I knew it would be a long shot, but I figured it was worth a try.

  “So after all this time this is the case you call me up to ask about?” Masterson asked.

  “Sadly, you’re one of the few law enforcement sources I still have these days.”

  “How about your wife? I heard she was a real big shot in the DA’s office.”

  “Ex-wife.”

  “What happened?”

  “We decided to follow different paths in life.”

  “She dumped you, huh?”

  “Well, that’s another way of describing it.”

  “Now why in the world would she want to walk away from a sweetheart like you?”

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “Are we finished here?” Masterson asked.

  • • •

  I spent the rest of the day trying to track down information about any of the people that had been around when Thomas Gallagher’s family was murdered: Mitchell Aldrich, president of the college; the student who Gallagher was supposed to tutor that night, but said never showed up. His name was Nicholas Faron. Then there was Larry Keller, the deputy who had been at the crime scene; Nancy Lehrman, the librarian on duty the night of the murders; and Ike Montrose, the owner of the tavern where Tom Gallagher told police he’d gone that night.

  Aldrich was easy. He’d stayed on as president of Ohio Southern until 1988, getting a lot of publicity for himself and the school as a forward-thinking educational leader. Aldrich had such a high profile that there was even speculation he might run for political office someday. But he never did. Instead, he went into private enterprise—starting up his own real estate investment firm. He struck it rich building motels, shopping malls, and housing projects
around the country and now had offices in New York City, Los Angeles, and Houston. There was even a story about him bidding against Donald Trump for some big casino in Atlantic City. Mitchell Aldrich had come a long way from Logan Point, Ohio. I wrote down the address and number of his New York City office.

  Nicholas Faron had died in 1997 in a hotel fire. An article in the Toledo Blade said, “Faron had worked as a salesman for a computer firm in Toledo and was attending a business conference in Cleveland at the time of his death. He was thirty-four.”

  Larry Keller, the deputy, was a mystery. He’d joined the Cincinnati police force after leaving Logan Point, but also left Cincinnati after several years on the job. That was the last anyone ever heard of him. He could be retired now, he could be selling cars, or he could be dead.

  Nancy Lehrman and Ike Montrose still lived in Logan Point. Lauren Gallagher, the baby that survived the bloodbath, had disappeared into the child welfare system after the murders. There was no sign of her I could find.

  • • •

  I punched in a familiar number on my cell phone.

  When my ex-wife came on the line I asked, “Will you marry me?”

  “I already did.”

  “Again.”

  “The first time wasn’t that great.”

  “So then the bar is set pretty low for this time.”

  She chuckled. I always could make Susan laugh. Even during the bad times. That’s probably the main reason we still had a relationship. Whatever that relationship was.

  “Gil, this is the tenth time this month you’ve asked me to marry you.”

  “Too much?”

  “It might be a bit of overkill.”

  “I’m persistent.”

  “There’s a fine line between persistence and an obsessed stalker.”

  “You got something against obsessed stalkers?”

  “They’re okay—but I wouldn’t want to marry one.”

  “Yeah, it makes breaking up so hard to do.”

  She laughed again. At least she wasn’t mad at me. Since I didn’t think she was going to say yes to my marriage proposal, I decided to plunge ahead with the other reason I called.

  “Could you use some of that fancy tax-payer-funded, law enforcement stuff in your office to help me track down a couple of people?”

  “Helping you do your job is what I live for.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “What do you need, Gil?”

  I looked down at the notes I’d made.

  “There was a baby named Lauren Gallagher who survived a mass murder of her family in Logan Point, Ohio, in 1985. See if you can find any record of what happened to her. Also, a deputy named Lawrence Keller who was with the Logan Point police force at the time of the killing. And check out the death of a guy named Nicholas Faron in a Cleveland hotel fire in 1997, too.”

  I gave her whatever details I had on all of them.

  “Why do you care about something that happened in 1985?” Susan asked.

  “I’m working on what I think could be a big story.”

  “Of course you are,” she said and hung up.

  CHAPTER 6

  I called both Nancy Lehrman and Ike Montrose, and they agreed to talk to me.

  Lehrman was the librarian on duty at the Ohio Southern library the night of the murders. She had retired a few years ago. I met with Lehrman at her house a few blocks from the campus. She served me tea and chocolate chip cookies as we talked.

  “What happened that night back in 1985?” I asked.

  “Oh, gosh, it was so long ago. I still think about it though. Tom Gallagher and that poor family of his. I used to feel guilty about the small role I played in it. But then I realized I couldn’t have done anything different. I just told the truth.”

  Her story was pretty much the same as I’d heard before. She never saw Thomas Gallagher that night. No reason she should have. She was the head librarian on duty, so she had other things to do besides stand at the counter and check in books that were being returned. That’s what she told the police the next day. She also told them there was no record in the library’s files of Gallagher returning any books that night. Based, in part, on her testimony, the police were able to tear apart Gallagher’s alibi.

  Then, during a remodeling of the library several years later, workmen found a card that proved Gallagher had indeed returned several library books that night. The card had slipped down behind a counter against the wall next to a filing cabinet and had gone unnoticed for all that time. Lehrman reported the discovery to authorities, but it was too late by then, of course, to save Gallagher.

  “No one remembers actually seeing Gallagher at the library that night, though?” I asked.

  “No, but they wouldn’t have had to see him. There was a drop-off return counter at the library. You could leave books there without dealing with anybody. Then they’d be recorded later. We were very organized in those days, even before there were computers.”

  “Except you lost the card,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, we did. Mistakes happen. They happen to everyone. Of course, most of the time they’re quickly forgotten about. In this case, our mistake played a part in a man being executed for a crime that it now appears he didn’t commit. Our losing that card that night was just such an incredible piece of bad luck for Mr. Gallagher.”

  I liked Nancy Lehrman. I think she liked me, too. Or at least she liked having someone to relive her memories with. She talked about her time at the school with great affection and reverence.

  “Ohio Southern was a very exciting place back when this all happened. For many years, we’d been this small, backwoods school—living in the shadow of bigger schools like Ohio State down the road in Columbus. But suddenly we were being talked about, people were noticing us. Lots of new grant money was rolling in. Expansion was happening all over our campus—more classrooms, more student housing, more faculty. This was all new and different for us.”

  “Was Mitchell Aldrich behind all of this change?”

  “Yes, I guess you could say that. He was a very dynamic figure. And very good at getting publicity.” She smiled. “For the school. And for himself too. Of course, not everyone agreed with the things he was doing.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, there was a group of professors who were trying to form a faculty union. They felt that Aldrich was more interested in building up his own reputation than helping the college. They wanted more emphasis on improving the curriculum and academic standards, not just the physical aspects of the campus. There were also allegations about Aldrich diverting funds for his own use.”

  “So who were the professors that didn’t like Aldrich?”

  “Well, Tom Gallagher was one of them. Actually, he was the leader. The one trying to start the faculty union movement. He and Aldrich went at it head-to-head on almost every issue. Tom wanted an independent monitor brought in to oversee all the spending being done by the president’s office. Aldrich said he’d resign before he’d ever agree to something like that. It got pretty nasty.”

  “What happened after Gallagher was arrested?”

  “The faculty movement fell apart.”

  “And Mitchell Aldrich got to do what he wanted.”

  “Pretty much.”

  • • •

  The next person I went to see was the owner of the Union Tavern, the bar where Thomas Gallagher told police he’d gone on the night that his family was murdered.

  Amazingly enough, Ike Montrose still tended bar there.

  “I own the place, I run it, and I pour the drinks for my customers,” Montrose explained to me. “I’ve been doing it that way for thirty-eight years. I don’t see any reason to change now.”

  He was a big man, maybe six-foot-four, and weighing nearly 250-pounds, who looked to be in his late sixties.

&nb
sp; “You don’t remember Tom Gallagher being here, like he said?” I asked him.

  “That’s what I told the cops then, and nothing has changed.”

  “How about the other bartender?”

  “Jerry Lassiter? He told me when I asked him that he never saw Gallagher either.”

  “Where is Lassiter now?”

  “Oh, God, I don’t know. I fired him a few months after all this happened. He left town, and I never heard from him again.”

  “Why’d you fire him?”

  “He was a terrible bartender. I found out later he had a whole drug-dealing business going on the side, which is probably why he didn’t have his mind on working for me most of the time. He was selling the stuff from behind my bar. I could have lost my license. So I gave him his walking papers. Do you know what the son-va-bitch did then?”

  “What?”

  “He spiked my goddamned drink.”

  “Huh?”

  “He gave me a free sample of his wares as a going away gift. Dropped some acid—LSD—into something I was drinking. Jesus, I didn’t know what hit me. I was out of my mind for a while, practically crawling the walls in this place. Lassiter, he’s just laughing the whole time and telling me how this bad trip is something to remember him by. I found out later he’d done that before too. Dropped some hallucinogenic drug into the drink of somebody that he didn’t like or thought was too uptight—just to see what happened. The guy was a real asshole. I was glad to see him go.”

  “So he could have put something into Thomas Gallagher’s drink that night?”

  “I guess, if Gallagher was here.”

  “The police said Gallagher was high on drugs when he was arrested. That’s how it could have happened.”

  “Even if it did happen, so what? All it does is give a reason why Gallagher snapped that night and killed his family. He got zonked out on some drug and had a helluva bad trip. But they’re all still dead.”

  “The police don’t think he did it anymore.”

  Montrose shrugged. “Me, I still figure the professor was guilty. He had plenty of reasons.”