by R. G. Belsky
I checked out everything she told me. Julie’s boss said she had done her work quietly and never caused any trouble. The dating service said it never monitored any of the on-line meetings—it was strictly one-on-one in cyberspace. The super of her building had never noticed anyone going in or out of Julie’s apartment.
I took notes on everything. By the time I was finished, my notebook was nearly full.
But none of it meant anything.
The next victim, Deborah Kaffee, had a boyfriend named Brad Weber, who worked as a bartender at a Queens restaurant not far from the neighborhood where she lived.
I went out there to see him.
“The police asked me all these same questions after Debbie was murdered,” he told me.
“I’m sure they did.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“They could have missed something.”
“And you’re going to figure it out, even if they didn’t?”
“Maybe.”
Weber shook his head disgustedly. It was early afternoon and there was only a handful of people in the bar. An old guy down at the end. A middle-aged woman by herself at a table. Two young guys drinking beer by the jukebox. And me. I was nursing a diet soda.
“The least you can do, if you’re going to tie up my time with this, is have a real drink,” Weber said. “You want a glass of wine or something?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
“What’s the matter—you don’t drink?”
“I did.”
“So what happened?”
“I stopped.”
“An alkie, huh? I should have figured.”
“Why?”
“You’ve got the look.”
“What look is that?”
“Like you want a drink.”
He laughed at his own joke.
“I can see you’re an astute observer of human behavior,” I said. I looked around the deserted bar. “I guess that’s why you’ve made such a success out of your own life.”
Weber just grunted and walked down the bar to see if the old man wanted another drink. He did. Weber poured it for him, then came back to me.
“Where were you on the night your girlfriend was murdered?” I asked.
“In other words, do I have an alibi?”
“Never answer a question with a question. It sounds defensive.”
“I was home watching television.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Weren’t the police suspicious about that?”
“A little bit, maybe, at first. But it didn’t matter once they linked Debbie’s death to the previous murders.”
He leaned across the bar and smiled at me. If my questions were bothering him, he didn’t show it. He seemed more amused.
“You’re missing the whole point, Shannon. The police say Debbie and the others were killed by the same person. Okay, let’s say it wasn’t Loverboy and it wasn’t totally random. If there is a reason for it, that reason has to be in the first murder—not the last. It’s not very likely our guy killed three people to set up the one with Debbie. It makes more sense that he got rid of the intended victim first, then did the others to cover up the real motive. The first murder, Shannon. That’s where you should be looking.”
He was right.
Barry Tischler and Theresa Anne Vinas.
I thought about that during the ride back to Manhattan.
I was going to have to go and talk to the Vinas girl’s mother. And Emily Tischler again too. I still couldn’t make up my mind about her. Was I missing something there? Was that wide-eyed, innocent routine all an act with Mrs. Tischler? Or Ms. Carpenter, or whatever the hell she was calling herself these days.
That was when I suddenly remembered something.
Emily Tischler had said, “I started out life as Emily Malandro, became Emily Carpenter and then Emily Tischler. Three name changes.”
Malandro.
The name had sounded familiar to me when she said it, but I didn’t think much about it.
I found a pay phone and dialed Emily Tischler’s number.
“Do you know how your mother died?” I asked when she came on the line. “Or anything about your father?”
“No. I was very young when it all happened. Why? Is it important?”
“Emily,” I said, “I think I know who killed your husband.”
Chapter 50
“The original Loverboy is dead,” I told Mitch Caruso. “So what are we looking for, then?”
“Someone with a different motive.”
“Exactly. Now, if you had a daughter whose husband was cheating on her, how would you feel about it?”
Caruso thought about that.
“I suppose I might want to kill him.”
We were in the squad room and I was leaning over Caruso’s desk. I know I probably sounded crazy, but I wasn’t. I’d finally figured it out.
“The Reverend Robert Fowler, who was Loverboy’s first victim a long time ago, had a daughter with his girlfriend, Linda Malandro. Linda died in the shooting. Afterward, he gave up the little girl for adoption. Are you with me so far?”
He nodded.
“Barry Tischler’s wife was adopted. Her real name is Malandro. She says her mother died when she was a little girl.”
“It could be just a coincidence,” Caruso insisted.
“I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Neither do I,” he said.
A little while later, I was with Caruso and Lieutenant Masters as the police converged on Fowler’s church in Queens. Sirens wailed and flashing red lights lit up the evening sky. But the church was dark. There was no sign of Fowler.
“He’s not in there,” a cop said.
“Are you sure?” Masters asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Another officer suddenly ran up. He was very excited.
“Lieutenant, I think you better see something.”
“What?”
“It’s in the basement.”
We followed him downstairs. There were two other cops standing in front of an open door.
“It’s a storage room,” one of them said. “It looks like Fowler kept it locked. We had to break the door down.”
Masters went in first, followed by me and Caruso.
“My God!” Caruso said as soon as he saw what was inside.
Clippings about Loverboy from over the years—the ’70s, ’80s and now—plastered the walls. They were all there. Linda Malandro. Danny Girabaldi. Kathleen DiLeonardo. Barry Tischler. Theresa Anne Vinas. Julie Blaumstein. Deborah Kaffee.
The killer’s trademark greeting—“I Love You to Death”—was painted in huge letters on the walls over the gruesome display.
There was also a big picture of Fowler crouching in a marksman’s stance and pointing a Bulldog .44 revolver at the camera.
No one spoke at first.
We just stood there, transfixed by the bizarre scene and the picture of the Reverend Robert Fowler.
“Loverboy,” I said softly.
Chapter 51
MANHUNT ON FOR ‘LOVERBOY’ SUSPECT
Exclusive
by Lucy Shannon
Police today were searching for a former victim of the infamous serial killer known as Loverboy—who they now believe has carried out a series of copycat murders.
He was identified as Robert Fowler, 44, minister of the Resurrection Baptist Church in Kew Gardens, Queens.
Fowler and his girlfriend, Linda Malandro, were the first victims of the original Loverboy, who opened fire on their car during the summer of 1978 at a secluded spot in upper Manhattan. Ms. Malandro died in the attack.
“Robert Fowler is now the prime suspect in the murders of Barry Tischler, Theresa Anne Vinas, Julie Blaumstein and Deborah Kaffee,” said Lt. William Masters of the newly re-formed Loverboy task force.
“We believe he has been killing people himself—and trying to make it look like Loverboy—as some sort of revenge
for what happened to him during the 1978 shooting.
“A warrant has been issued for his arrest on four counts of murder.”
The stunning announcement in the case came after a series of bizarre developments over the past few days, including the jailing and questioning of this reporter as a potential suspect.
The Blade has also learned that police now believe the original Loverboy, who murdered 13 people and wounded 8 others between 1978 and 1984, is definitely dead. Sources within the department confirmed this, but did not say how authorities were able to obtain the information.
Police converged last night on Fowler’s church, where they found a secret room filled with newspaper clippings, pictures and other materials about the Loverboy case.
“Fowler was clearly obsessed with Loverboy,” Lt. Masters said.
“Something inside him snapped, and it changed him from a Loverboy victim to a Loverboy clone. We won’t know why until we catch him.”
Police acted after a Blade investigation revealed that Fowler is the father of Emily Tischler, the widow of one of the new victims. Barry Tischler was naked in a parked car with teenager Theresa Anne Vinas at the time of his death.
Cops suspect that Fowler’s anger at Tischler over his infidelity—combined with his obsession about the Loverboy killings—is what set off the new wave of terror. . . .
I sat in the Blade newsroom reading my story, feeling pretty good about myself for the first time in a long while.
I’d cracked the case. Sure, I’d made a lot of mistakes along the way. And I could never undo what I’d done that terrible night with Jack Reagan twelve years ago. But in the end, everything was finally turning out all right. I’d confessed the secrets of my past to the police commissioner, who had some pretty heavy-duty secrets of his own. I’d figured out who the new Loverboy was. And I’d scooped the world with the story. Now all I had to do was wait until the police caught Fowler, and it would all be over.
Time to move on with the rest of my life.
“Best story ever?” Janet Wood said in a loud voice.
I looked over at her at the next desk. She was with Brian Tully and Karen Wolfe.
“Best since we’ve all worked here or best of all time?” Tully asked.
“All time.”
“Son of Sam,” he said.
“The preppie murderer,” Karen suggested. “Or maybe the Central Park jogger?”
“I vote for Loverboy,” Janet announced.
No one disagreed with her.
“There’s never been a story like this one,” she said to me. “Jesus, Lucy, you could win a Pulitzer for it. Even better, I think you deserve a place on the Wall of Fame at Headlines.”
“Me?”
“Absolutely.”
“Speech, speech!” Tully yelled.
I tried to think of something clever to say.
“I’ll drink to that,” I said finally.
They all stared at me.
“I’m just kidding.”
Barlow came by a little later to congratulate me too.
“I still don’t really understand why Fowler did it,” he said. “I mean, the guy was one of Loverboy’s victims, for chrissakes. How could he go out and cause the same kind of pain and anguish to other people as he suffered? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Who can understand what goes on in the mind of a mass murderer? Son of Sam. Dahmer. Bundy. Any of them. Fowler’s entire life was turned upside down by what happened to him that night in 1978. It ate at him for years, and finally pushed him over the edge. They say cops sometimes identify with the criminal they’re chasing. Or hostages with their kidnappers. Hell, the cops even thought that was what happened to me—that I’d become so obsessed with the case that maybe I was Loverboy. So why not one of the victims? Maybe it’s a very thin line between sanity and insanity for all of us.”
Barlow shook his head.
“It’s a sick, crazy world we live in, Lucy.”
I smiled. “If it wasn’t, it would make filling up a newspaper every day a lot tougher, wouldn’t it?”
I hung around for a while after that, even after nearly everyone else had gone home. I wanted to savor the moment. The feeling of triumph. It had been a long time. Too long.
I looked around the city room. There was only a handful of people there now. A few copyeditors. A night rewrite man on the city desk. Someone answering the phones. But I swear I could feel the magic of the place again. Just like I did that first day when I walked in there as a wide-eyed kid from Ohio.
Maybe my love affair with newspapers wasn’t dead after all.
Not yet.
I heard somebody walk up behind me. At first I thought it was somebody else who wanted to congratulate me. Or maybe one of the copyeditors with a question about my story for the last editions.
But it wasn’t.
It was Robert Fowler.
He was standing at my desk. He had a crazed look on his face, a copy of my front-page article in one hand and a Bulldog .44 revolver in the other. The gun was pointed right at me.
“You screwed it up, Shannon,” Fowler said. “You really screwed it up.”
Chapter 52
“The police are hunting everywhere for you,” I told him.
I tried to keep my voice as calm as possible.
“That doesn’t matter now,” he said.
Then the Reverend Robert Fowler smiled. A scary smile.
A familiar old expression suddenly ran through my head: I’m locked inside a room with a madman.
“We’re going to do an interview,” Fowler said.
“What kind of an interview?”
“For your newspaper.”
I still wasn’t sure what he meant.
“I’m giving you the story, Shannon.”
“Why?” I asked.
“For posterity.”
“And after that?”
“We wait.”
“For what?”
“The will of God.”
The handful of other people still in the office realized something was wrong now. They were staring at Fowler and me.
“Are you all right, Lucy?” someone asked.
“Not exactly.”
“What’s going on over there?”
“This is the Reverend Robert Fowler.”
“You mean the one who . . . ?”
“The Loverboy killer,” I said.
Fowler kept the gun pointed at me. He paid no attention to any of them. It was like he and I were the only two people in the world at that moment.
“I’m calling the police,” one of the guys on the copy desk said.
“That’s a good plan,” I told him.
Fowler said he wanted me to use a tape recorder. I kept a small microcassette in my purse. I dug it out now and set it up on my desk. I pressed the record button.
“Now what?” I asked.
“We do the interview,” he said.
“You’ll tell me everything?”
“I have nothing to lose anymore.”
And that was just what we did.
An interview.
The interview of a lifetime.
“Did you kill Barry Tischler?” I asked him.
“Barry Tischler was a creep.”
“So you murdered him?”
“Yes.”
“And Theresa Anne Vinas?”
“She was in the car with him.”
I took a deep breath.
“Did you do it because Tischler was cheating on his wife—your daughter, Emily?”
Fowler’s face curled up in disgust. “Tischler was a rich, spoiled punk who used people up and threw them away.”
“I know that,” I said.
“Well, I wasn’t going to let him do it with my daughter.”
I shook my head.
“Emily’s barely your daughter—she doesn’t even know you exist.”
“That’s not true!”
“You haven’t seen Emily since you gave her up for adoption
eighteen years ago.”
“She doesn’t know about me, but I’ve followed everything that’s happened to her. She’s all I have left that matters to me in this world. All that’s left of Linda. Of our love . . .”
I still didn’t get what he was saying. It didn’t make sense.
“But why kill the others?”
“They had to die.”
“Why? Tischler was the one you wanted to kill. Why didn’t you just stop with him and his teenage girlfriend?”
“I thought you’d understand,” he said. “You of all people.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted the publicity.”
He leaned closer to me now. The gun was only inches away.
“Eighteen years ago, a lunatic called Loverboy shot me and killed the woman I loved,” Fowler said. “He was never caught or punished. The case was eventually closed, and people went on with their lives. Nobody cared about it for years. Nobody but me. I had no life to get on with. Loverboy took that away from me. Then one day they started doing a movie about it here. All of a sudden, people were writing stories about Loverboy and talking about him again. That gave me the idea. I knew what I had to do.”
“Kill Barry Tischler and blame it on Loverboy,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“And you knew the media would make a big deal out of it again.”
“That’s what you do, isn’t it? You sensationalize everything. Well, I wanted it sensationalized. I wanted people to start looking again for the guy who took away my Linda—he’s gotten away with it all these years. And I wanted that bum Tischler dead. So I killed two birds with one stone.”
“But you’re a minister,” I said. “A man of God. You’re supposed to pray for people, not murder them.”
“I tried prayer for a long time. It didn’t work.”
He gestured toward the gun in his hand. “This did.”
“What about the other victims besides Tischler?” I asked.
“The Vinas girl was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Julie Blaumstein . . . well, that was the will of God.”
“How about Deborah Kaffee, the last one you killed? Was that God’s will too?”
“I told you—I had to make it look like it was Loverboy.”