by Henry Hack
“Experience, Frankie.”
“Okay, I surrender and I die anyway by lethal injection. You don’t have to shoot me and your conscience is clear.”
“You won’t die at all. New York and California have both abolished the death penalty once again. And as far as my conscience concerning you, Frankie, it will never be clear. I’m sorry, Frankie, I’m sorry for what I did to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Society failed you, Frankie, and I personally failed you. I thought seriously of taking you in – adopting you – when Angela took off. But I chickened out. I had a baby on the way and I didn’t want the responsibility of raising a ten year old, too.”
“Jesus,” Frankie whispered wiping a tear form his eye.
“It gets worse,” I said. “I knew from day one that Angela Chandler was not your real mother, and I chose not to tell you for what I then thought were good reasons.”
Frankie stared at me, anger flashing through his eyes, as he absorbed my revelations. He said, “If you had told me…”
“If I had told you maybe you wouldn’t have killed all those women. Maybe you wouldn’t be a wanted serial killer – a serial killer created by my stupidity. Go ahead, pick up your gun and blast away. I deserve it.”
“Danny, I would never kill you. No matter what you just told me, you’re one of the only people in my lousy life who ever showed me any decency. You cared for me. You saved my bicycle for me. You still have it you told me.”
“Yeah, Frankie, I do, and I always keep it clean and shiny. I guess that lessens my guilt a little bit.”
“Tell me again why you didn’t tell me about Angela.”
“You were nine years old and I didn’t want to crush your hopes that your mother would someday return.”
“I can understand that.”
“Okay, but when you came out of the Navy, that’s when I should have told you.”
“I know I asked about her, but I remember it was casually and it was before my search for her became an obsession. How could you have known what would happen?”
“I’m a goddamn Detective, that’s how I should have known. I’m supposed to understand human nature better than the average Joe.”
“What’s done is done,” Frankie said. “The question on the table is still what do we do now?”
Before I could answer that – not that I had an answer – Mike Havlek’s voice came over my earpiece. I pointed to it and put my finger to my lips. Havlek said, “How about a status update? Spider first.”
Spider said he was halfway through his building and should be completed in about fifteen minutes.”
“Danny?” Havlek said.
“Same here,” I said looking at Frankie and pushing the talk button on my lapel radio. “Almost halfway done. Probably another ten minutes.’’
After getting everyone’s status, Mike said that when we were done, assuming Frankie wasn’t located, we should all gravitate to the convent the search of which was only fractionally completed due to its many rooms and potential hostage situations. He also said that he requested assistance from the Southampton Town and Village Police Forces who we had previously notified to standby, and they were sending twenty officers to assist us.
“So, Danny, as I said, what now?”
“Same answer. Surrender to me.”
“I can’t do that. For the first time in my life I have a chance at real happiness. I want that chance. Goddammit! I deserve that chance!”
“You know,” I said with a smile, “when I saw you and your mother walking arm in arm across the grass I had an urge to get on the radio and call the whole thing off. ‘Guys,’ I wanted to say, ‘let’s leave these two people alone. They have surely suffered enough.’”
“But you didn’t, did you?”
“No. I’m a cop, and you are a serial killer.”
“Which may have been caused by you as you recently told me.”
“Okay, you won’t surrender to me. What’s your plan?”
“Wait the twenty minutes and leave. I’ll sneak out after dark.”
“Won’t work,” I said.
“Why not?”
I told him what Havlek said about all the extra cops. “Frankie, none of us are leaving until you are found. This church will get searched again and again.”
“You mentioned you were concerned about hostages. Suppose I take a hostage?”
“A nun?”
“No, Danny. You.”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“We walk out of here together, my gun pointed at your head. Your buddies produce my mother to join us. We get in my car, and with you driving, leave the scene. After we’re a safe distance away I let you out and disappear with Mommy to parts unknown.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“What do you mean? We’re gone. Free. Escaped.”
“What happens when Mommy finds out you, her darling long lost son, is a multiple murderer? This is going to be all over the TV and the papers. And now she’ll be wanted too for aiding and abetting a felon. How long do you think you’ll last out there before you’re both hunted down and shot to shit like Bonny and Clyde?”
“Even a few days of happiness will be worth it,” he said.
“Okay, then,” I said. “I’m game. Let’s do it.”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Let me think this over a bit more.”
About ten seconds later the lights went out – my lights. I felt a brief pain in the back of my head and a fleeting sense of déjà vu – then nothing.
I woke up with a pounding headache. My face was on the table. When I opened my eyes I saw a puddle of blood spreading out beneath my face. I blinked a few times and began to raise my head, fighting the pain. I lightly touched the back of my head and my fingers came away sticky with blood. Frankie’s gun was gone, my gun was gone – and so was Frankie. What the hell had happened?
I staggered over to the sink and washed the blood from my nose which felt as if it were broken. I splashed cold water all over my face and then turned to try to see the back of my head in the small mirror. I couldn’t see the wound but my suit jacket collar and shoulders were heavily soaked with blood. I reached for my radio when my earpiece came to life with the sound of Sam Hervell’s voice screaming, “There he is! Now!”
The radio went dead and I heard several gun shots from outside the church, but at some distance away. I staggered out the front door of the church shielding my eyes from the brilliant sunshine. A lot of people were running in the direction of the convent including a few uniformed police officers. I followed the crowd and when they stopped I elbowed my way to the front and saw the rest of my team. They all stared, guns still drawn, at a wooden bench in front of them. Sister Audrey LaSalle sat there weeping. In her arms she held her son, Frankie Chandler, several bullet holes apparent in his head and body. There was no doubt he was dead. Suddenly Audrey cried out with a long, howling wail and then she screamed out, “You murderers! Look what you have done! You killed my only son! My baby! O, My God!
The heat, the pounding in my head, the pitiful sight in front of me assaulted my brain and I fell to the ground, almost unconscious. Noticing me for the first time, Spider rushed to my aid and sat me up. The police began dispersing the crowd and I noticed Allison Hayes snapping pictures. After Spider looked me over he said, “Jesus, you’re a mess. What the hell happened to you anyway?”
“Damned if I know, partner,” I said.
CHAPTER THIRTY
When I saw the appearance of twenty uniformed Southampton police officers double-timing it onto the grounds, I dialed Mike Havlek’s cell phone and asked what was going on. He told me he was busy and to continue sitting tight where I was. He said he’d call me when he had something to report. Give me a break! I wasn’t sitting anymore. I grabbed my Minolta and pocket recorder and double-timed myself right into the middle of the action.
I got the scoop and my pictures. They took Frankie Chandler to the morgue. They took Danny
Boyland to the hospital. They took Sister Audrey away in handcuffs. I was invited to the meeting at the Nassau Homicide squad set for ten o’clock the following morning. I headed back to my office to print my pictures and finish the story I had been working on for weeks. But I couldn’t really finish it until after the wrap-up. There were still a few unanswered questions, the main one being what the heck happened to Danny Boyland?
A tired-looking Danny Boyland, with fresh bandages on his broken nose and the rear of his shaved scalp sporting ten ugly stitches, listened with the rest of us as Agent Mike Havlek related his interview with Sister Audrey LaSalle at the Suffolk County Jail the previous afternoon and evening. “When the first shots were fired and everyone scattered for cover,” he said, “Sister Audrey saw Frankie head for the school after he pushed her to the ground. She immediately went to another entrance, found him and showed him the way down to the connecting tunnels. Before she came back upstairs she saw him head in the direction of the church and priest’s residence. She made her way to the convent and locked herself in her room, expecting us to come crashing through it at any minute.
“When nothing happened in the next few minutes she slipped out of her room and started looking for Frankie following his path through the tunnel into the church. When she got in the vicinity of the altar she heard voices coming from the back of it. She snuck up to the kitchen and saw you, Danny, talking with Frankie. Without hesitation she picked up one of those huge brass candlesticks that were standing in her vicinity and whacked you over the head.”
“She’s got a mean swing,” Danny said.
“After you went down,” Havlek continued, “she grabbed your Glock and she and Frankie ran through the tunnel and exited from the maintenance building which was nearest to Frankie’s car. However, they were observed by your partner, Spider Webb, and a couple of uniformed cops. The foot pursuit began and Frankie, using your gun as well as his own, decided to shoot it out with us near the west end of the campus. Of course he was overmatched and went down as several slugs hit him.”
“And just as he was falling into his mother’s arms I arrived on the scene,” I said. “Sister Audrey collapsed onto a bench cradling Frankie in her arms. And I got the picture.”
I produced a full-color 8 x 10 snapshot and held it up for all to see and they all immediately saw what I had captured – a modern Pieta. A woman in full clerical garb bent over her dead son, weeping. The resemblance to the famed sculpture by Michelangelo of Mary and her dead son, Jesus, was startling. There were a few moments of silence as everyone stared at my picture then Danny said, “There’s no way I can follow through on the assault charge against this poor woman.”
“Mike, how did she react when you told her the true story of Frankie Chandler?” Lieutenant Veltri asked.
“At first she refused to believe it, but we finally showed her enough evidence to convince her. The poor woman is suffering a tremendous amount of guilt, as you can well imagine.”
“I’m heading back to the office to prepare my first article for tomorrow’s paper,” I said. “And this picture will be on page one.”
“We’re having a press conference at headquarters at four this afternoon,” Veltri said. “We have to keep your competitors informed, too.”
“Allison,” Mike Havlek said, “After the press conference will you have some time to have a drink and maybe dinner with me?”
“I’d love to, Mike,” I said and then realized the squad pervert, that bastard Detective Bernie Gallagher, was leering at us with his patented lewd grin. “Does Lois Lane have a thing going with Superman? Be careful Lois, the Man of Steel might have a dick of steel. Could hurt.”
“Up yours, Bernie,” I said, “with a steel baseball bat.”
At least Bernie had reduced the gloomy mood in the squad room with his comment, but not by much.
My photo of Sister Audrey and Frankie did appear on page one the next day along with the first installment of a planned seven to eight part series titled, “The Short, Tragic Life of Frankie Chandler,” and it would be nationally syndicated.
True to his word, Danny Boyland did not press assault charges against Sister Audrey. Unfortunately, this proved to be a mistake – she hanged herself the next day in her room at St. John’s. Tragedy upon tragedy, but I now had another installment to add to the series and my editor assured me a Pulitzer Prize was “in the bag.”
Although I consider myself a tough reporter, this whole Frankie Chandler case had gotten me depressed. Why should my success depend on someone else’s downfall? But I guess that’s the way of the world and my mood lightened a bit as I stepped into the shower. Things would be better in a couple of hours. They had to be – I had another date with Superman.
The phones rang off the hook at the Chronicle right after the morning edition hit the stands with its half-page picture of the dead Frankie Chandler in his mother’s arms. I was inundated with requests for interviews from all the major networks, major news weekly magazines and cable news channels, all of which I politely declined until the series was over. I still had a lot of background work to research – I had to get the facts to detail the tragic part of Frankie’s short life.
I flew to Los Angeles with Mike Havlek and he introduced me to the members of the Task Force out there, and I interviewed them about their search for the serial killer. I also interviewed Frankie’s employers at the computer shop where he worked and took photos of the store and the outside of the apartment where Frankie had lived. I was able to talk with many of the women who Frankie had visited during his search for Angela. They had come forward when they read the story of his death in the Los Angeles Times. And I got the same story from everyone who had met and interacted with him – a bright, handsome young man surely destined for a successful life. A serial killer? No way. Never in a million years.
When we were finished in L.A., Mike flew back to his home base in Quantico and I flew back to New York. After putting the finishing touches on another two installments of my series to run in the next few days, I drove upstate to the State School for Boys and interviewed the headmaster, Mr. Eglund, who was now approaching retirement age. Eglund told me nothing I had not already known, and when I pressed him on the sodomy issue, either at his school or at the various foster homes Frankie had been in, he claimed total ignorance of such awful occurrences, acting horrified that I would even bring up such a terrible subject.
At the Hammond’s farm I fared no better. Jethro Hammond refused to let me speak with his current crop of four foster children claiming “they aren’t even the same ones who lived here when the Chandler boy was here.” He also refused to give me the names of the children who were there at that time citing privacy concerns. “Maybe Eglund will give the names to you,” he said, “and if there’s nothing else you want to ask, we’ll say good-bye.”
The entire interview took place at their front door which he now closed in my face. Mrs. Hammond, who had stood behind her husband, never said a word, and all Jethro had told me was that Frankie was there only a short time and he returned him to the Home after the fire in the barn. He would elaborate no further.
My next stop at the Jonas farm proved to be a waste of time also. Vicky Jonas had remarried not too long after the untimely death of her husband. She told me she had to return Frankie to the Home after Harold’s death because she needed an older man to help her run the farm. She said, “I really hated to lose him, he was such a nice, handsome boy, but I really had no choice.” The way she said it with a wistful, sultry voice made my reporter’s instincts wonder what had on gone on when Frankie was here, but no more information was forthcoming from the glamorous Vicky Jonas.
I located Margaret Ryan, now Mrs. Margaret Anderson, happily married with a two-year old child and another on the way. And of all of Frankie’s trials and tribulations his brief time with the Ryan’s was the most heart rending. It was his only real chance at happiness during his entire childhood, and it was crushed by the untimely and unexpected death of Mike
Ryan, Margaret’s father. Margaret related the story of her all too brief time with Frankie, and she finished saying, “I almost had another brother once again.” She then burst into tears – and so did this hardened crime reporter.
I called Wally Mason and Pam Saunders, but they could add little to what I already knew from Danny and their case files. Navy personnel could give me no more pertinent information other than Frankie had an unblemished record during his four years of service and received an honorable discharge. I finished typing the next to the last installment of my series and looked up to see a messenger drop a big bouquet of red and white roses on my desk. I inhaled their sweet fragrance as I read the card – Hey, Lois, I miss you. When can I get to see the ace investigative reporter again? Love you, Superman. Two dozen roses plus those last two important words – Love you. Wow!
I called Mike right away and thanked him for the flowers and promised I would fly down to D.C. to be with him as soon as I finished the last of the series in a couple of days. “Terrific,” he said. “Let me know exactly when you’re coming in and I’ll pick you up at Reagan airport and I’ll reserve a good restaurant for dinner.”
“Sounds great,” I said. “Oh, could you reserve a motel for me for a couple of nights, too?”
“I was thinking you might like to stay with me at my place? It will save you a few bucks.”
“Only if you plan to treat me real super, Superman.”
“Yes, indeed, Miss Lane. That’s exactly what I plan to do.”
I finished up the series as planned and it was a tremendous success and syndicated in hundreds of newspapers including all the biggest ones. I did all the TV and magazine interviews I could stand and leafed through the dozens of job offers I had received since the story first hit. I selected the one from the Washington Post to pursue, of course, because that was where my future husband lived and worked. I was at the peak of my professional career and personal life, but one thing kept bothering me – Danny Boyland. The Chandler case had affected him deeply and I couldn’t get him out of my mind as I winged my way to Washington. Frankie’s blue bike, which featured prominently throughout my series, still rested in Danny’s garage, a constant reminder of the guilt he felt over Frankie’s life and death. I promised myself to call him, and have Mike call him, regularly to see how he was doing. And we would invite him and several other Homicide Squad detectives to our wedding, excluding the lecherous Bernie Gallagher. Bernie’s last words to me when he found out Mike and I were to be married were, “Hey, Lois, you should get a big horseshoe magnet and place it around your snapper. That way the Man of Steel with the dick of steel can’t possibly miss the entrance to the promised land.”