A Winsome Murder (24 page)

As she had.

His daughter's face wormed its way back into his thoughts, but this time it wasn't the frightening face that filled his reflections, it wasn't the battered face that had been locked inside the casket, no. He was seeing her other face now.

Her child-face.

And he let it in.

… she was playing in the water, her saggy diaper dripping heavy between chubby knees. Splashing. He sensed a warmth of some sort widening within him, a certain softening of a part of himself that was still human. He saw his daughter's birth and remembered the first moment that he had seen her miniature hands and enormous eyes. Like a magic trick, this small thing suddenly appearing. How many quadrillions of tiny, minuscule things, he'd wondered then, had to have gone perfectly right for her to have turned out so … perfect. And he had thought then, also, of how easy it was for one thing, one infinitesimally almost-not-noticeable thing, to turn all that perfectness to ruin. One misstep, one “in the wrong place at the wrong time” moment and it was all gone—
poof
.

Like magic.

Like Lynnette.

Like Deborah Ellison.

He remembered then the beginning of it all. When he had first found Deborah. The drive that he and his wife had taken up to the Davis County prison to escort their daughter's body home. A long drive. No sound in the car. No words spoken. Profound silence. “Stop thinking about it,” his wife finally whispered. “There's nothing to do about it now.” But that's all he could think about. Nothing else existed. There
must
be something to do. There must. The thought gripped his mind and turned manic, a fanatical urging ever pecking at the cracking shell of his brain. Driving toward his dead daughter, the urging grew to a riot in his mind—and that's when it started, when his brain began to fester. For hours he had been watching an unchanging highway disappear beneath the front of his car, but now the road began to warp before
him, the asphalt softened and buckled, then liquefied and spilled sideways, blurring the road and his mind and his world into a measureless, roiling, ash-gray vagueness. For every mile driven closer to his daughter's body, something within his being rotted deeper and deeper.

This was the blighting of his mind.

By the time they arrived at the prison something in him had died, and some other thing had been born. He had changed. He could actually feel it, physically. He felt stronger, taller. He wondered if he looked different. His hands were thicker and felt heavier. Objects looked clearer, sharper. The barrage of thoughts had stopped, and something felt calmer now, because somehow he knew that he was about to do something. He did not know what it was yet, but still, there was comfort in the promise of it.

And then it was handed to him.

Literally.

After signing papers at the prison, an indifferent deputy slid a small box across his desk. It contained their daughter's personal effects. He took it and left the room. He and his wife sat on a steel bench in the hallway. He opened the box with his new hands. It felt clumsy in his grip. There were only a few things in the box: some money, two paperbacks, stamps, old letters, a magazine. He handed the letters to his wife and she shuffled through them, quietly, her face a featureless blank. Beneath the letters, he noticed envelopes addressed to other people that had never been mailed.

One of the envelopes was addressed to Deborah Ellison.

He opened it and saw his daughter's handwriting. It reminded him again that she was actually dead, and the festering in his mind swelled. His daughter had written about how terrible prison was, how withdrawal sucks, how she hoped to get her teeth fixed in the prison dental program, and that she was lonely and scared.

He could do nothing about that now.

But the thought came to him of what he would do.

He had Deborah Ellison's address.

In Chicago.

And that's when the circuit closed and his purpose became clear. His daughter had even put it down on paper for him and had it placed
in his hands. Yes, he would do something now. For his daughter. And he felt now a kind of peace settle over him, a murdering peace.

She had been his all-the-world.

And now she was gone.

And now he was gone.

There was nothing left of whoever he had once been.

C
oose kept up a steady eighty-five miles an hour down I-90 while Mangan called the Rockford SWAT team with the suspect's address. When they arrived at the entrance to Woodland Court, he saw that a perimeter had already been set up. They got out of the cruiser and buckled on their vests. An officer introduced himself and pointed out the incident commander who was at the back of an ambulance surrounded by a small group of EMTs. Coose and Mangan walked over and waited for the man to finish briefing the medical team.

“We've got a paramedic with us,” the commander was telling the crew, “but if this goes bad, we're going to need your help. Rule number one: get the good guys out first. Rule number two? See rule number one. That's the only protocol you need to remember. Okay?”

The EMTs, all of whom looked young and nervous, nodded.

“All right,” the commander said. He dismissed them and turned to Mangan and Coose. “Detective Mangan?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Captain John Pribyl.” He snugged his vest tighter. “Little hot today, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Follow me.”

Pribyl led Mangan and Coose down a wide residential street lined with nearly identical looking SUVs, their glossy black fenders gleaming in the low afternoon sun. A long row of Tudor cottages and Chicago-style bungalows ran along either side of the road, nestled in among the proper allotment of maples and oaks. Manicured lawns ran uninterrupted between the lots, occasionally broken up by short runs of hedges or azalea bushes. Sprinklers spun out whispery water-circles across yards. From the columned porches, American flags hung in abundance. A blue-and-orange football lay on a driveway, a bike on a lawn. It was all
clean and quiet and passive and American and not at all where you would expect to find a serial killer. Unfortunately, serial killers were never where Mangan expected them to be.

And thus I clothe my naked villainy

And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

“We cleared this block and the one behind,” Pribyl said. “Perimeter's secure, exits are covered.”

They continued walking. As the road bent slightly to the left, Pribyl stopped and pointed out Daniel Anderson's house. An ordinary, slightly above-middle-class home, well kept, two stories, a large front porch, a dormer perched high on the front peak of the roof. No car in the driveway, which skirted the side of the house.

“Front, back, and side doors are covered,” Pribyl said.

The three of them drew their weapons and took cover behind an SUV across the street. There was some glare off the upper windows of the house. It was late in the day, but the sun, at Mangan's back, was still bright. He thumbed off the safety of his Glock and leaned across the hood of the SUV. Pribyl whispered into his walkie-talkie. The SWAT units hidden across the road and around the yards were barely visible, their sniper rifles trained on the house.

I
nside his room, Daniel Anderson made sure his police scanner was set to all channels, and then returned to his computer. He double-clicked the Internet icon and typed in the words “Detective James Mangan Chicago.” He had just read about the man in the newspaper. He tapped the enter key. A lot of entries came up on the screen. Lots of awards. The Carter/Harrison Lambert Award for Distinguished Act of Bravery, the Cook County Medal of Honor, Cook County Distinguished Service Award, and the Unit Meritorious Performance Award.

Anderson clicked for images on the Google search and saw photos of the man at an awards ceremony, standing between other officers. He was stocky. Not very tall. He saw another photo where the man had his arm around a pretty woman in uniform. She was much younger than he was. He read the date above the photograph. It had been taken a few years earlier. He clicked the photo to enlarge it. In the teeny font of the credits below the picture he read the woman's name: Kathleen Mangan.

He considered this, and thought … how uncoincidental.

That this man should have a daughter.

This police man.

He wrote the name down, softly mouthing the word, “Kathleen … Kathleen …” He searched her name on the Internet. A few different Kathleen Mangans came up. One was a lawyer—no, no. He added
police officer
to her name and searched. There were a lot of Mangans, mostly men. He scrolled to the second page—
yes
—there she was.

Kathleen Mangan, 635 Stanwell Avenue, Milwaukee, WI
.

He went to Google Maps and typed in his destination. The police scanner on the shelf above crackled static, then voices. It always made so much noise. He turned the volume down and glanced out the window. He saw nothing. He returned to his computer and studied the blue highlighted route to Milwaukee.

Road trip.

D
aniel Anderson!” a megaphoned voice called out. “Daniel Anderson! This is the police! Come to the front door with your hands where we can see them!”

Mangan watched the house carefully from across the street.

“Daniel Anderson!” Pribyl said again. “This is the police! Come to the front door with your hands where we can see them!”

Nothing.

He lowered the megaphone and looked to Mangan. “Guess we're making a house call.”

Mangan agreed, asking, “Who's doing the knocking?”

“Be my guest,” Pribyl said. “On my go, okay?”

Mangan nodded.

Pribyl radioed the rest of his team and Mangan saw them adjust their stances and steady their aims. Pribyl looked to Mangan and Coose, “You good?”

They both nodded.

“We'll take the front door,” Pribyl said. “One point of entry. SWAT covers the side and back from outside.” Pribyl took one last glance around, and then said, “All right then. Let's go.”

They sprinted across the yard and up the front steps, Coose and Mangan ducking to either side of their door. Pribyl and his men did the
same, and when they were set, Coose reached up and smacked the screen door hard.

“Police! Open up!” he yelled, banging. “Police!”

He opened the screen door and tried the doorknob. Locked.

Pribyl signaled to a SWAT member across the road who started for the house at a full run—battering ram in hand—and slammed it into the door, splintering it open. “
Clear!
” Mangan yelled, following the man in and moving left. Coose, was next, moving to his right, “
Clear!
” Pribyl and his men poured in next, searching and clearing all the rooms—“
Police! Police! Down!
”—first floor, second, attic—“
Down! Down!
”—in the basement, the crawl space, the closets. “
Police! Police! Down!
”

The screaming and ransacking went on for a long time before the adrenaline settled. Pribyl, his face flushed and wet, yelled for everyone to gather in the living room. A tense silence followed. He holstered his weapon and shrugged.

“Nobody home.”

C
aptain Pribyl went outside to brief the rest of the team and see if he could track down Daniel Anderson's wife. Mangan tugged on latex gloves and joined the CSI team flooding into the house. Coose and a few CSI techs headed up a steep set of stairs to the second floor. Mangan looked around the main area of the house. It was filthy. The living room had newspapers strewn about and dishes with half-eaten meals still on them. The TV was on, the sound muted. Half-filled drinking glasses with cigarette butts floating in them were scattered about the kitchen; the sink was filled with dirty dishes. The place looked abandoned, but there was a coffee pot on, still hot, and fresh milk in the fridge. “Hey, James,” Coose called down from the second floor. “Come on up here.”

Mangan hurried up the stairs, a bit winded when he reached the top.

Coose leaned out a doorway in the hallway. “In here.”

“What do you got?” Mangan asked, joining him.

“I think I'd call it evidence.”

The room was a small attic space which had been turned into a den, neatly kept compared with the rest of the house. A few books on the shelves, a file cabinet, a small couch, a coffee table with some magazines fanned out on it:
CHIP, PCWorld, Wired
. A desk was pushed up against
the wall facing the street, beneath the dormer window. There was a computer on the desk, and Coose was hovering behind a CSI tech who was working on it.

“Where's this evidence you're talking about?” Mangan asked.

Coose, busy watching the CSI tech, nodded to a stack of magazines on the desk. “The
American Forum
,” he said. “Every article by Jillian McClay.”

Neatly piled beside the computer, the magazines had been folded open to the articles. Mangan looked through them. Sentences and names had been highlighted and underlined, Post-it notes attached to some the pages, all of them well worn and dog-eared.

“There's more,” Coose said, stepping back. “Take a look.”

The CSI tech was running through the search history on the computer. The dropdown file looked like a prosecutor's dream: Michele Schaefer's contact info, the address of the Schaefer family farm, map searches of Winsome, Wesley Faber's address and his daughter's wedding announcement, her address in Waukegan, searches of the
American Forum
website, Mara Davies's bio, Jillian McClay's author website, and a dozen other entries all related to the murder victims.

“I think it'll hold up,” Coose said.

Mangan nodded. “We have to find him first.”

A glimmer of light caught Mangan's eye, just a flicker, and it drew his gaze to the window. It must have been open slightly because its gauzy white curtain fluttered gently. Something was dangling behind it. Mangan stepped closer and pushed a corner of the curtain aside. A thin monofilament fishing line was tied to the window lock. On the end of it hung a circular piece of metal. It twirled lazily, flashing the tiniest glints of sun. It was a single, large hoop earring. Identical to the one found at the Waukegan murder site.