7
I rose from romantic dreams of Andrew Coyne only to fall immediately back into reality. The phone shrilled, I rolled over and grabbed the receiver. “Andrew?” I mumbled.
But, no. “Good morning, Maggie. Sorry to wake you.” Chief Betsy was calling to bring me up to date about the rapist. “Looks like we have a match on the perp’s description. There’s no doubt now that the two women were attacked by the same guy!”
I took a deep breath, then breathed it out. My mouth was fuzzy from last night’s red wine. “Well, it’s good to know there’s only one of them. What happens now, Chief?” I tried to veil my anxiety with the faux-calm voice I use whenever a home sale threatens to fall through.
“I spoke to the Mayor. He’s asked that Real Estate Agencies cancel all open houses in the river towns for the time being. He’s also agreed to call a meeting of area brokers to discuss safety precautions as we go forward. I’ll need your help in getting the names and phone numbers of officials at the Board of Realtors. The police will be contacting them.”
I rolled out of bed in my ruffled lavender pajamas. “I’ll get myself into the office right away. Claire’s a whiz on the Internet. I’ll have her pull up the list and bring it right over, Chief. Has any information been found linking this person to other attacks?”
She hesitated, then cleared her throat. “Confidentially, Maggie, the answer is yes, but don’t quote me, or I’ll deny saying that. The investigation has just begun and we can’t afford to screw it up!
“I’m total discretion,” I said, and headed for the bathroom.
Several days later, in a large conference room at the swanky Tarrytown Doubletree Hotel, the Hudson Hills Mayor and Village Trustees met with Chief Betsy, the CEO of the County Board of Realtors, and local brokers. We sat on the edges of our matching vinyl chairs, balancing identical coffee mugs, and listening with fascinated horror to the Chief’s briefing.
The main takeaway (and this was a sensible suggestion) was that all open houses should be manned by more than one agent, and that entrance should require personal identification. If someone refused to show their I.D., they should be turned away.
“There’s too much at stake not to take these precautions,” Chief Betsy told the crowd, “because, for good reasons, Real Estate is considered a ‘high-risk’ profession. Everyone has to then be accompanied throughout the interior of the house, even the basement. Not just to protect you and the homeowner from dangerous criminals like the rapist, but also from the average burglar who can use the open house as an opportunity to check out the place for valuables and then plan a robbery at a later date. When people are not accompanied during the tour of a home, sticky fingers can quickly pick up items in bedside drawers or credit cards and mobile phones mistakenly left exposed. The whole culture of open houses has to be rethought and updated. I hate to say it, but we may be living in a more dangerous time now. Even here, in Hudson Hills.”
After the meeting everyone was gung-ho, adjourning to the bar not so much for planning as for avid speculation. Many of my colleagues, however, focused only on the incident involving Grace Chung. Since the more serious attack had occurred across the river in another community, some agents dismissed the attacks as isolated incidents, the kind of thing that happened over there, not in safe places like the Westchester river villages. Despite the grimness of the facts on both occasions, we all seemed to be in denial.
8
A correctional psychiatrist’s primary mission is to assist offenders with rehabilitation and reintegration. Dr. Jane Hill had invested her time and energy working with Daniel Joseph Farrell in the Juvenile Detention facility where he was incarcerated. Her diagnosis, an anti-social personality disorder, was characterized by a complete lack of empathy and remorse for others. Since psychopathy was evident in a large percentage of all offenders in the American prison system, Dr. Hill did not find Daniel’s condition to be all that surprising, considering his early life experience.
The young inmate was intelligent and appealing, but his childhood had been marked by severe, brain-altering abuse. Dr. Hill hoped the intensive therapy he was receiving would at least grant him the ability to control his demons. This vulnerable young man desperately needed to experience friendship and affection once he left the prison system.
Initially, Danny Joe’s hostility towards women interfered with Dr. Hill’s therapy. At one point, because of his obscene, misogynistic rantings, she seriously considered referring him to a male colleague. However, as he opened up more about his father’s mental instability and the sexual abuse he’d suffered at his father’s hands, she changed her mind. Dr. Hill’s patience and maternal warmth might allow Danny Joe to connect positively with her despite his pent-up anger.
Understandably, when his mother abandoned him, Danny Joe had experienced a sense of grievous loss. It was Dr. Hill’s hope that she could bring the boy to forgive Mother for abandoning him; that she could bring him to a therapeutic realization that fear and suffering, not lack of love, had driven Mother to leave him behind as she boarded that megasized bus to an uncertain future.
As far as Dr. Jane Hill was concerned, this boy was a victim, and she yearned to set him free. As she developed an unprofessional bond with the handsome youth, the compassion she felt for her patient became seriously misdirected. With a deeply-felt passion, she quoted Dr. Michael Fogel’s analysis on criminology to the Parole Board on Danny Joe’s behalf. “When you understand where this individual came from, what he was exposed to, and the environment in which he grew up, you can understand why he engaged in the behavior that he did.”
She was not unaware of tipping the balance between Danny Joe’s rights and public safety, but she believed he could make it on the outside. Before Danny Joe Farrell was truly capable of coping in society, she declared him to be fully rehabilitated—and he was freed.
9
Days, weeks, and finally months passed in the villages along the Hudson without incident. It being spring and the green buds bursting, many of us relaxed into our old careless routines, ignoring police warnings and continuing to hold open houses the way we always had. Several also told me they felt awkward asking for identification from potential customers. “Gotta do it,” I said, receiving only shrugs in response. After all, spring was the real-estate-brokers’ busy season.
Betsy confided that the perpetrator’s DNA matched previous attacks on brokers in other jurisdictions, and that the violence of the attacks on agents was escalating from one incident to the next. But, she’d said, the older files were still active and now police in several states were trying to connect the dots between attacks. They now knew this was larger than simply the Hudson Valley. But the Chief didn’t want that information bandied about—it could cause panic.
Given a terrifying long-ago experience, I could barely even think about the attacks without falling into a quiet fury. I became obsessed with the situation. What kind of mind could initiate such violence? What motivated these perverts? I was like a dog with a bone; I couldn’t leave it alone.
But Andrew was concerned. Following my meetings with the Mayor and the Chief, he insisted on accompanying me to open houses, when he could. With him at my side, I felt secure. His charm and cheerful manner elicited cooperation from the moment potential buyers came to the door of a public open house. At times his legal background also came in handy; we were a good team.
It had been a long winter, but, for Andrew and me, it had been an eventful one: we were now a couple. Each widowed, each used to privacy, we were happy to have workweeks, with their unpredictable hassles, to ourselves, but we shared most weekends happily alternating between his city apartment and my riverside home.
It was a rainy April weekend when Andrew brought up the issue of my safety again. In my large, cozy, shingled Victorian, we were sitting at the round oak kitchen table watching the rain pound against the large river-facing windows and eating boeuf bourguignon
with French bread from Abraham’s artisan bakery. Andrew sighed. “Isn’t there someone you could ask to accompany you to open houses on a regular basis? I know this is the busiest time of year for real estate, and I can’t be with you at every event.” He sighed again. “Wish I could.’’
I echoed his sighs. “Isn’t it absurd? After all, I haven’t signed up for the U. S. Special Forces or anything like that! I’m a real estate agent, for heaven’s sake! Shouldn’t I be able to go to work without having to worry about risking my life?”
Before he could respond, I went on, “Why is this guy after brokers? We’re not so bad! Some clients are disappointed after they lose a house in a bidding war, but that’s not the agent’s fault! Some freak out when they find a material defect after they close on a home. I don’t blame them, but that’s not down to the broker—the seller probably withheld the problem. There’s got to be a more compelling reason than real estate for this guy’s actions. This sounds much more personal.”
Andrew set down his glass of cabernet sauvignon. “Look, Maggie, the man’s got to be mentally ill. It’s some crazy obsession that’s driving him. It could be a crazed perception the guy has about real estate brokers that makes no sense at all.”
I pushed my half-eaten stew away. “I wish the police would give us more information.”
He followed suit, and sat with hands at his chin, fingers intertwined, gazing at me soberly. “And what would you do with the information if you had it?”
I could feel the anger rising again, but I wasn’t ready to confide in him just yet. I punted. “Well, for one thing, I’m curious about the guy’s background. Do you suppose he has a criminal record? Surely someone like that would have been in prison?”
“Maggie, I’m sure he must have left some prints or DNA at the crime scene across the river. They would immediately have checked the national database. If he had a rap sheet, they would know.”
He stood there, looming over me. “I’m not comfortable with you being so damn visible in this situation. You’re a real estate broker, not a detective. Let the professionals handle it. Chief Betsy has no right to encourage your …”
I knew he was about to say, “meddling,” so I spoke up before he could; I didn’t want to have to snap at him. “Oh, my love, not to worry. I’ll keep out of it, I promise, just so long as this madman stays away from my colleagues and our community!
“And, now, for dessert, darling, how about a slice of lemon torte—I baked it myself.”
10
It was a day before his twenty-second birthday, a cold, blustery January morning, when Danny Joe Farrell was paroled. He walked out of that depressing stone and brick building, wrapping the gray wool Salvation Army scarf around his neck and chin, and he didn’t look back. As a free man for the first time in almost eight years, he breathed in the life-affirming frigid air with gusto.
“What now?” he wondered. When he’d left Juvenile Detention, a pale clerk had handed him seventy-five dollars and a folder of instructions. He could temporarily go to a shelter for ex-cons, or the State would pay for two weeks at a motel. The clerk had also highlighted in yellow the name of a job adviser at a state-run facility in Ossining, New York. Danny Joe decided to head in that direction, since there was a shelter in an adjoining building, and he wouldn’t have the hassle of finding a place to stay for the night. “I ain’t staying at any motel!” he declared.
From the upstate facility, he took a bus to Penn Station in New York City. Agape at the crowds and the tall buildings, Danny Joe walked across town to Grand Central Station, where he boarded a northbound Hudson-line train. According to the map, the shelter and his adviser’s office were located down the street from the station, in close proximity to Sing Sing. Getting off the train and following the pamphlet’s direction, he could see the prison’s massive structure silhouetted on the distant skyline. “Hey, maybe that’s gonna be my next home,” he muttered wryly, laughing at his own joke. “Gimme a cell with a river view!”
Early the next morning, he walked into his advisor’s office building and passed through security. He was surprised to see crowds of men and women lining up for various services. He could almost smell the desperation and hopelessness. Cops at the ready, occupied every corner of the large, open space. Danny Joe could smell the threat of violence, too; where he’d spent the last nine years, that odor was always in the air. Danny Joe peered overhead at the signs: there were lines for Employment, Clothes/Shoes, Dormitories, EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), Showers, and Legal Aid.
He was nervous, now, and still rubbing his hands together from the bitter cold outside. Looking around, however, he felt his anxiety slowly dissipate. He knew these people. The people in this massive room were his people; they were family, the only family he’d ever really had in this fucked-up world.
11
A few months later, after local brokers had all but forgotten the possible threat of a psychopath in our midst, out of the clear blue sky a catastrophic event occurred in Hudson Hills.
It began innocently enough. Late on a midsummer afternoon, I’d scheduled an appointment with a young couple from Manhattan. The 4:37 from Grand Central was due, my Mercedes was idling in front of the Hudson Hills train station, and I stood next to it awaiting my clients. The day was fine, unusual for July, and I gazed out over the river, enjoying the vista and the occasional breeze. Then my phone rang. I looked at the readout: Claire.
“Hi, what’s up, Clairsey?”
“Andrew called. He knows you have an appointment now, didn’t want to interrupt you. He says he’s going to be in town, tonight—has a meeting at Town Hall at 8 p.m. with the Architectural Review Board. You free for dinner after that? What should I tell him?”
“Yeah, okay. I can do that.” I felt the little thrill of happiness Andrew’s attentions always brings. “I’m only showing the Mullers one house, and that won’t take long. Those town meetings are usually over by nine-thirty or ten. Tell him I’ll wait at my office for him with some dinner from The Station Café. Bye!”
“But …”
I heard the train rumbling into the station and hung up on Claire before she could begin adding complications to the plans.
I’d been showing houses to the Mullers for at least five months, and they’d been waffling the entire time. I knew that if they didn’t settle on a home in Westchester very soon, they’d have to renew their existing lease in the City for another year. That would be unfortunate for everyone.
Me, especially; I really wanted to make that sale.
But, then, an interesting new listing had come on the market. I hadn’t previewed it yet, but after studying the property information I felt this might be what they’d been hoping to find.
Sue Muller was red-haired, petite, and very pregnant. I mean, just about ten-months pregnant. She grinned at me. “This is it,” she bubbled. “I just know it is! Can’t wait to see it!”
“Nesting,” her lawyer husband, David, mouthed at me, as Sue slid carefully into the Mercedes’ front passenger seat.
Located on a quiet, tree-lined country lane, the newly-listed house, a rambling, gray-shingled Colonial, sat on almost an acre of beautiful shrubs and trees with a gently sloping, manicured lawn. I try not to do a hard sell, but when I saw the place, my gentle, motherly smile automatically beamed: Oh, what an idyllic setting for raising a family!
Sue was starry-eyed. David was grinning big, like Papa Bear approaching his rocking chair and porridge. All good signs. I could almost feel the closing check being deposited in my bank account with a satisfying little ka-ching. The owners had already moved, so the house had been staged for marketing purposes, as vacant homes are often harder to sell. Oohing and aahing, Sue grabbed David’s arm as they preceded me up the flagstone path to the front door.
I’d picked up the house key, clearly marked, from the listing office. Now I smiled my most domestic smile at the yo
ung couple, and inserted it into the upper lock. It went in easily. I winked at the ecstatic Sue, and turned the key to the right. It wouldn’t move. Damn! A twist of the wrist, and I turned it to the left. Nothing.
Keys, the bane of our existence, can also be a broker’s worst nightmare. I smiled at my clients again, took the key out of the lock, then reinserted it and turned, hard, turned it the other way. It wouldn’t budge in either direction.
And I’d persuaded these folks to cancel their evening plans in order to see this place!
I gave them the shit-eating grin all real-estate agents learn in kindergarten. Sometimes the listing agent will carry the original key, or know the trick of working with a finicky lockset on a listing. I called Marcy on her cell phone, getting only her recording—puhleeze leave a message. “Call me,” I said. “Call me NOW!”
The pregnant customer suddenly looked as if she were in pain. “Really, Maggie, Sue said through her teeth. “How could you let this happen? If this house looks as good on the inside as it does on the outside, we’ll bid on it right here and now. But if we don’t get to see the interior this afternoon, we can’t bid. By tomorrow there’ll be multiple bids—a million of them. We’ll lose out!” A tear rolled down her left cheek. Then another. “And I just have to raise our baby in this house!”
“Yes, Sue is right,” David added. “This is the house for us. We’re ready to make a decision. This location is so close to the train station. We wouldn’t even need two cars!”
And it’s just two blocks from the very best school,” Sue wailed. She was in full spate, now.
I took both her hands in mine and gave a reassuring squeeze. “Believe me, I’ll get you into this house or die trying.”
From the trunk of my Mercedes, I grabbed a can of WD40 and applied oil to the lock, but the damn key still wouldn’t budge. A newly minted key is sometimes the source of the problem. I bent down and tried to smooth it on the concrete steps. Nope. No luck.
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