All the Dying Children

by James Halpin

  No, Daly felt certain it was no coincidence. Something nefarious was at work. It had claimed the lives of three young kids — kids who seemed normal and appeared to be on the right track in life. Until they met Mr. Gillespie. Daly felt determined to find out what was going on. He wanted to look Gillespie in the eye and find out what he knew. Most of all, Daly wanted to expose him for what he was: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a snake in the grass, a stalking lion.

  A predator.

  A predator lurking in the shadows, watching and waiting for his next victim.

  But before he confronted Mr. Gillespie, Daly had one more bit of business to handle. Jack Foster had mentioned that other parents were upset with Mr. Gillespie because of the poems he was reading to students.

  Daly intended to find out what other concerns they had. He was hoping the president of the Hanover Area Junior Senior High School parent-teacher association would be able to shed some light on Mr. Gillespie.

  Judy Grant was a chubby woman with frizzy brown hair, thick, ominous eyebrows, and a square jaw. When Daly rang her bell, she’d come to the door with a suspicious scowl on her face that didn’t disappear when he identified himself as a reporter. She listened to Daly with her left hand draped across her chin and her right arm wrapped across her lumpy sweatshirt. But when Daly mentioned Mr. Gillespie, Judy Grant stepped back and held the door open. As PTA president, Mrs. Grant had a solemn duty to spread gossip to anyone willing to listen. And this was a subject she apparently very much liked to discuss.

  As Daly learned, Vincent Gillespie had come on as a substitute at the district the previous year. He was young and pretty recently out of college. Judy guessed he was in his late twenties.

  Mr. Gillespie’s appearance in the school landscape had gone mostly unnoticed until one day the previous May when Judy looked over the shoulder of her daughter Kyla and saw her reading a poem called “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg. Judy’s hackles immediately went up. The poem was nothing short of obscene, she said.

  “There’s talk of sex and homosexuals and drugs,” Judy said. “It’s not literature. It’s vulgar. And it’s inappropriate for kids in high school.”

  Mr. Gillespie, it seemed, had a tendency to get close to his students. More than one parent had complained about him texting students with reading recommendations. Most of it was legitimate literature, but he wasn’t recommending Mark Twain.

  Mr. Gillespie’s reading list was far more crude — and concerning — than that. Judy described him as a subversive. His book list suggested he was grooming children and trying to break down their inhibitions, rather than trying to educate them, she said.

  Some of the parents had taken their concerns to the school board a few months earlier. They had no proof of wrongdoing, only disagreements about his reading recommendations. Several of the parents presented text messages Mr. Gillespie had sent to their children. While the messages contained nothing incriminating, some board members had expressed concern about teachers texting students. They assured the parents it wasn’t against district policy, but it was frowned upon.

  Daly also learned that another parent had spoken to the board about Mr. Gillespie: Sarah Foster. Kim’s mother. Judging by Judy’s account of the meeting, Sarah Foster was more concerned about Mr. Gillespie than her husband had been. Sarah had also found Kim reading “Howl” along with other risqué works that she found unsuitable for her teenage daughter. She’d discovered Mr. Gillespie had been texting Kimberly, chatting with her about poetry and school. For Sarah Foster, the exchanges had seemed a little too familiar. A little too close. Mr. Gillespie sounded like a friend, not a teacher.

  But the most concerning part to Sarah was that Mr. Gillespie had been giving Kimberly things — presents. There was nothing big – a paperback or two and an app on her cellphone – but it was enough to make Sarah question the nature of the student-teacher relationship.

  In the end, the school board president said he would talk to Mr. Gillespie about the concerns, but said he couldn’t do much more. Nothing the parents had alleged was against school policy. Mr. Gillespie might be a bit unorthodox, but the board couldn’t fault him for trying to get kids to read, the president had said.

  “What was the app?” Daly asked. “That he put on her cellphone?”

  “Oh, just some white-noise app to help her sleep,” Judy said.

  The blood in Daly’s veins turned to ice. A chill shuttered up his back. It seemed David Kowalski wasn’t the only one who had been using white noise to fall asleep.

  “Was it called Soma?” Daly asked.

  “Why, yes,” Judy said. “How did you guess that?”

  * * *

  Nestled along the banks of the muddy Susquehanna River, midway between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, Pittston had been, in its heyday, a mining hub that brought scores of immigrants to the region, swelling the population of the city in the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, mines and coal fields in the Pittston area served as the backdrop for photographer Lewis Hine’s work for the National Child Labor Committee — haunting black-and-white images of soot-covered boys that led to child labor reforms across the country.

  When the Susquehanna River broke through the roof of the River Slope Mine in nearby Jenkins Township on January 22, 1959, the waters killed twelve miners along with coal mining in Northeastern Pennsylvania in what came to be known as the Knox Mine disaster.

  The collapse of coal mining brought hard times to the region. The population dropped. The owners of Pittston’s Main Street businesses boarded up their shops. Tight-knit rows of miner’s houses began showing rust and wood rot.

  But starting in the mid-1990s, city officials began a push to revitalize a downtown in disrepair. Local leaders began pushing public art and festivals. Riverfront condominiums rose up. Businesses opened their doors.

  What once had been a bleak and despairing main drag had been transformed into a bustling business district lined with bright murals and polished, inviting facades. As Daly made his way down it, he wondered what Mr. Gillespie would have to say to him. He guessed it wouldn’t be much. But he was hoping Mr. Gillespie’s eyes might give away something more.

  Daly’s global-positioning app directed him to a small house a few blocks off Main Street. The house had relatively new roof shingles and a fresh coat of paint. The lawn had been cleared of autumn leaves, and the grass seemed trimmed. It was a well-maintained yard. Over the front steps, a Philadelphia Eagles flag drifted gently in the breeze.

  Daly turned off his car engine and got ready for the ambush. Most likely, Mr. Gillespie wouldn’t want to comment. But sometimes people who don’t want to comment blurt something out before slamming the door in a reporter’s face. When that happens, the reporter has to be ready to catch it.

  With his notebook and recorder in hand, Daly walked up the cracked sidewalk to the door and hit the buzzer. In all his years covering crime, Daly had seen doors slammed in his face and been threatened, but no one had ever actually gotten violent because of him knocking on a door. Then again, this would be the first time Daly had ever directly confronted a possible child molester who could be connected to three deaths.

  Anything was possible.

  When the door, opened, Daly saw the same face that had been smiling on Mr. Gillespie’s Facebook page. The shirt and tie had been replaced by a Penn State sweatshirt. The smile had been usurped by a wary gaze.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Mr. Gillespie, I’m a reporter with the Wilkes-Barre Observer. I’m working on a story about a series of deaths we’ve had in local high schools recently. Your name has come up as being connected to the students from school. And some of the allegations I’ve heard are very serious.”

  As Daly spoke, the disinterested look Mr. Gillespie had on his face upon answering the door melted away. His gaze turned to a steely eyed expression of hate. Throughout his career, Daly had come acr
oss many killers. Some he’d even personally interviewed in their new accommodations at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility. Most of them displayed something that other people didn’t have – some sort of an aura or demeanor or quality. Daly couldn’t quite put his finger on it. The domestic killers – guys who shot their wives in a fit of rage or shook their crying babies to death in the middle of the night – usually didn’t have it. They were mostly regular people who snapped and made bad choices in the heat of the moment. But something about the hardened killers set them apart from everybody else. It wasn’t just the coldness in their gaze or the way they carried themselves as they shuffled along the courthouse corridors in chains. They exuded an aura that seemed to say they took what they wanted, whenever they wanted. And nobody would stand in their way.

  That same vibe hit Daly now.

  As Mr. Gillespie leaned out the front door, staring Daly down, Daly could tell from the look in his eye that he was not a kind man.

  He was ruthless. He was a predator. Maybe even a killer.

  “You came to my house to accuse me?” Mr. Gillespie said. “Get the hell off my property. Now.”

  No threat of calling the police, Daly noted. Mr. Gillespie didn’t seem the type to waste taxpayer dollars on such a matter. He struck Daly as the kind of guy who handled trouble himself.

  Daly went back to his car, switching off his recorder on the way. For the story, a simple “he declined to comment” will be sufficient, Daly thought.

  As a journalist, Daly made every effort to stay impartial. He didn’t comment on political posts on Facebook, nor did he “like” pages about sensitive topics. Crime reporters don’t usually have to deal too much with the politics – everybody hates crime – but still he tried to be fair. When he wrote about an arrest, he always tried to reach out to the defendant, if possible, to give him or her a chance to comment. He prided himself on being fair and had built up a reputation for being honest and trustworthy as a result.

  But as he sat in his car, getting ready to go back to the newsroom, Daly felt a growing rage inside of himself as he thought about the dead kids. In the months leading up to their deaths, Mr. Gillespie had been molesting at least one of them. In all likelihood, he had been doing something with Justin Gonzalez, too. And it was sounding more and more likely that Kim Foster was involved with Mr. Gillespie somehow as well.

  Daly wasn’t a man who usually saw things in black and white. There were at least two sides to every story. Usually, both of them had some merit. As Daly saw it, his job as a reporter was to grasp the nuance and present a balanced picture for his readers.

  But right now, Daly was having trouble finding any nuance for Mr. Gillespie. What kind of a man could molest children? What kind of a man could play some sort of role – directly or indirectly, Daly still didn’t know – in their deaths?

  This wasn’t a story with two sides. This was a story about a depraved monster who was using and discarding children for his own pleasure.

  Forget the nuance. Forget impartiality. This piece of shit needed to go down.

  CHAPTER 16

  Thursday, April 5, 2018

  4:12 a.m.

  In the darkness of the room at the Mountain Motor Lodge, Daly’s eyes flashed open. For a moment, he looked around wildly, uncomprehending.

  It was always the same after the dream. Beads of sweat collected on his head. His tee-shirt felt damp and had acquired the dull, musky odor of sweat. His eyes darted back and forth, trying to make out his surroundings in the dark. From the front window of the hotel room, the faint glow of the neon lights sliced like razors through small cracks in the curtains. To one side, Daly could hear Lauren breathing the steady rhythm of a girl at peace.

  All was well at the Mountain Motor Lodge.

  As Daly was lying down in the darkness, afraid any movement would wake Lauren, he tried to remember what had happened. It had been the dream again, of course, but it had somehow changed again. As he slowly regained consciousness, he tried to grasp the fleeting thoughts that had been his dream, knowing that if they escaped now he would never remember.

  He could still picture the same desert motor lodge on the side of a dusty highway, and could still see Ed and Barbara Thompson sitting by the pool, sipping cocktails without a care in the world. Lauren was still the seventeen-year-old senior she had been the last time, but now she was down by the pool with her grandparents.

  Rather than being in the bathroom this time around, Daly found himself down by the pool as well. And he had one terrifying thought.

  Jessica was in the room by herself.

  From down by the pool, Daly looked up to the room to see if anything appeared out of place. The faded off-white curtain was still closed in the window. The door was shut.

  But Daly could feel something was wrong. He didn’t know exactly what. He just knew something was wrong.

  He climbed the stairs to the second-floor balcony, eyes fixed on the door to the room. When he got there, he found the door was not fully shut, as it initially appeared from downstairs. The faded and scuffed red door had not been latched, and had drifted slightly open in the gentle, hot breeze. A sliver of darkness peered out into the unforgiving desert sun.

  Slowly, he put his hand to the door and pushed, bathing the room in the sun’s golden glow. There was no gas can, and when he looked at his own hands there was no gun. But near the bed, where the shadow of the room still held fast against the encroaching sunlight, he could see Jessica’s legs lying motionless.

  He stepped through the doorway, allowing his eyes to relax as they entered the shadowy room. On the bed, he could see Jessica’s playful smile projected upward. Her eyes gazed blankly toward the ceiling. That patch of drywall – not Daly or Lauren – had been the last thing she ever saw. As he moved closer to the bed, he could see the blood on the pillows and headboard. He began to weep. There was no murder to cover up this time. No crushing, overwhelming sense of guilt. Just sorrow for his beautiful, departed wife.

  This had been uncharted territory for the dream. For years, Daly had awakened in a fit of terror or anger or shame at the thoughts that tormented him in the darkest hours of night. Now, seeing Jessica on the bed without feeling the guilt that came with holding the gun, Daly didn’t know how to react. He stood there for a moment in a daze, confused about what to do next.

  He decided to head back to the pool and tell the Thompsons what had become of their baby girl. He turned toward the door and his eye caught the flash of movement in the corner of the room. He stopped in his tracks. Looking to the darkened corner, Daly saw the outline of a figure standing there. He stood paralyzed with fear for a long moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the cave-like light at the periphery of the room. Then he was able to make out that the figure was a man.

  Holding a gun.

  “Hello, Mr. Gillespie,” Daly said.

  Then he woke up.

  * * *

  Sleep was elusive after the dream. It always was. For a while, Daly lay in his bed, tossing, as though the problem were his physical comfort. Every time he rotated, he grew more frustrated. After more than an hour, he decided it was useless and abandoned hope of falling back asleep. He tossed the sheet back, put his feet on the ground and went over to a coffee machine he’d picked up at Walmart to start a pot.

  He moved quietly in the dark, mindful about waking Lauren so early in the morning. But as soon as the coffeemaker began hissing and gurgling on the desk, Lauren’s sheets began rustling. As she leaned up on her elbow, a tuft of hair fell over her glazed, half-closed eyes.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Early,” Daly said. “I’m sorry to wake you. Go back to sleep.”

  “I will when you do,” Lauren said. “Was it the dream again?”

  In the dull blue light, Daly nodded his head. “It was. But it’s different. It’s changing. For the first time in four
teen years, it’s changing.”

  “What changed?” Lauren asked.

  “There was someone else there. Someone new. Someone who … who couldn’t have been there,” Daly said.

  “Who was it?”

  “A bad guy. At least, I think he’s a bad guy. I don’t really want to get into it,” Daly said, reaching for the television remote control on the nightstand.

  The local morning news was already on. Daly sat back against the headboard of his bed and sipped the bitter black coffee from a cheap mug. The weatherman was barely able to contain his excitement about the possibility of more snow over the weekend. It was already a couple of weeks into spring, but the cold and snow had not gotten the memo. Neither that nor the ungodly hour of day seemed to have put a damper on the weatherman’s spirits.

  Daly rose out of bed and walked to the window, peeling back the drab curtains to reveal the beginning of another gray, damp day. Light fog hung in the pine trees across the highway, giving them a mystical aura. Now and then, the headlights of a passing car flashed across the wet black pavement, but it was still early and traffic was light. Somewhere in the misty woods, a cardinal called out under the pre-dawn sky.

  Such days made Daly feel somber and reflective. As he took another sip of coffee, he couldn’t help but think about the kids whose deaths had consumed his life over the past few weeks. They all seemed like normal kids. Kids who flirted and fretted over tests. Kids who played and laughed. Kids who had just barely begun life when it was all taken away from them.

  But while they each seemed normal, none of them was living a storybook life. Under the surface, they each had their own demons to fight. There was darkness behind the light, and each of them was working actively to stifle it. Kim Foster was a happy, well-liked cheerleader. She was also borderline anorexic. Justin Gonzalez was a church-going boy who loved his family. A family who couldn’t bear the thought of him being himself. He chose a life of lies and secrecy rather than to demand they accept him for who he was. And Emma Nguyen had been smart and would probably have had no trouble getting into a top-notch medical school. Her family believed in her and would have footed the bill. But she couldn’t even bring herself to tell them about her dying shame — her own baby.