Diary of a Serial Killer

by Ed Gaffney

  “Being bitten by an animal is first,” Terry continued, grimly.

  Zack just shook his head, looked over his shoulder at his friend, then turned back to watch his son.

  “I’m just saying,” Terry persisted.

  Justin had reached what had to be the starting line. “Are you watching, Daddy?” he called up over his shoulder, one more time. Clearly, this was a moment that bore witnessing. “Because here I go!” Justin took what was intended to be a sprinter’s starting position, but looked rather like he was trying to place both his hands and his feet onto exactly the same blade of grass. Then he shouted, “On your marks, get set, go!” and with that took off toward the nearest chair, with Kermit barking delightedly at his heels.

  Stage One was a combination slalom- and twirling-type event which was apparently accomplished by circumnavigating each lawn chair in turn, but in alternating directions, while spinning like a top.

  Stage Two involved crawling under the picnic bench. But that task looked far easier than it turned out to be, for Justin had been so intent on circling the chairs at maximum velocity that he was now quite dizzy, and barely able to move in a straight line.

  “He looks a little drunk,” observed Terry.

  Zack ignored the comment.

  Apparently, Justin decided that he was less likely to fall off the surface of the earth if he simply gave in to the vertigo. Sinking to his hands and knees, he began to crawl toward the picnic bench. Kermit, now thoroughly confused, approached his friend cautiously, and planted a large, sloppy kiss right on Justin’s cheek. Justin giggled and protested, but to his credit, kept moving forward, finally making it under the bench to the other side.

  He got to his feet, somewhat steadier now, for the finale. He wiped his hands on his shirt. Then he screeched, “Yahhhhhhh!” and raced toward his personal finish line. Six steps later he was in the air, and then he landed, theatrically, but unharmed, face-first in the middle of the brown and yellow leaf pile.

  He scrambled to his feet, splashing dried maple and oak leaves everywhere, and cried out to Zack, “Did you see that, Daddy?”

  “I sure did, Justin man. It was awesome, buddy.”

  “Outstanding,” Terry chimed in. “Nothing ever like it in the history of sport.”

  “I know!” Justin agreed enthusiastically, as he grabbed the rake, and began preparing for his next attempt. “And now I’m going to do it again!”

  Zack and Terry turned from the window, and took seats facing each other. To Zack, the room was idyllic—high ceilings, spacious windows looking out toward New England woodlands.

  To Terry, it wasn’t a serious workplace. At his insistence, they had recently rented the more traditional office space in town. He needed to know the difference between going to work and going over to his friend’s house. Zack didn’t fully understand, but now that Justin was at school full-time, it was less important that Zack be home almost round the clock.

  “Take a look at this,” Terry said, passing a newspaper to Zack, pointing to a story on page one. “We might finally be catching a break.”

  Under the headline “New Springfield Shooter Strikes Again,” the article laid out the story of the discovery of the most recent victim. Once again, the killer had immobilized the victim with duct tape, shot her repeatedly with a .22 caliber handgun, and cut off her index finger.

  And then Zack finally read the line in the report that Terry had wanted him to see. “Lead investigator on the case, Springfield Police Detective Vera Demopolous, stated that similar to the circumstances surrounding the shooting of Corey Chatham, this killer has communicated with the police. Demopolous stated, however, that at this stage of the investigation, the content of the killer’s message is not being made public.”

  Terry had become romantically interested in Vera Demopolous about a year ago, but she had been involved with an assistant district attorney at the time. The A.D.A. had moved a few months ago to take a new job. Maybe Terry was going to get another chance.

  “So? How does this help Alan Lombardo?”

  “I don’t know,” Terry responded, “but I was thinking of calling Vera anyway, asking her to meet with us to talk about her investigation because of our connection to the original Springfield Shooter case.”

  The only other time they’d worked on a case with Detective Demopolous, they’d shared some information that had worked out to both their advantages. “Good thinking,” Zack said.

  After a second, Terry looked back at his partner, and asked, “What?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I know you didn’t say anything. But you were thinking ‘Why doesn’t he ask her out,’ and I’m telling you that I will. I just want to make sure we aren’t on opposite sides of this case first.”

  Zack just looked his partner up and down, made note of how he always seemed to be dressed up these days, and smiled.

  “And don’t grin like you think I’m crazy, because that’s exactly what you were thinking.”

  “No I wasn’t. I just realized that I’m supposed to say, ‘Nice shoes.’”

  Terry glanced down at his feet, then shook his head, sighed, and looked back up at Zack. “I’ve owned these things for five years, you idiot.”

  Oops.

  Paul Merrone watched George Heinrich take another of the morphine pills and swallow it down with a beer. George was at lunch with his son, Neil. Well, Neil was eating lunch, anyway. George Heinrich barely ate anything anymore. Some ice cream, once in a while. And, of course, the morphine.

  “Dad, are you sure about this?” Neil had the face of a man way older than his forty-one years. He had been a good-looking kid when he was growing up. But his father’s sickness had really taken a toll on him. It looked like Neil was getting less sleep than his old man.

  Although that was impossible. Mr. Heinrich hadn’t slept more than an hour at a stretch for about the past three weeks.

  “The doctor said that the cancer spread into my bones. There’s nothing more we can do. Except try to make me more comfortable. Yeah. I’m real comfortable.” The old man started to laugh, but that just kicked off a coughing fit. Neil turned to Paul as if to ask what to do, but Paul just shrugged. The coughing fits were coming more and more frequently, and the only thing was to wait them out. This one was real bad.

  As the coughing subsided, Neil said, “Dad, I’m not sure what we should do.”

  When he caught his breath, Mr. Heinrich said, “That’s what I’m telling you, Neil. We aren’t going to be doing anything anymore. It’s all yours now. Officially.”

  The decision wasn’t exactly a surprise to Paul, but still, hearing the old man actually say the words out loud was kind of shocking.

  “I met with the lawyers the other day, and I signed all the papers. I don’t leave the house anymore. I don’t listen to the radio, I don’t watch TV, I don’t read the newspapers. I’m just staying here, enjoying my memories for as long as I can. You can talk to me anytime you want about work. But from now on, the business is yours. Do with it whatever you think is best.”

  Twenty years ago, if George had said that to Neil, Paul would have bet that the young man would have jumped for joy, and then hired a limo to drive him to the bank so he could get a bunch of money to do something else stupid.

  But from the look on Neil’s face now, you’d think somebody just told him, well, that his father was dying.

  Thirty-Four Seconds

  ZACK WILSON HAD LESS THAN THIRTY FEET TO go when the gunman seemed to realize there was something coming at him from his left. He wheeled, facing Zack head-on, and fired.

  Although the world was still in slow motion, Zack managed to plant his left foot and push off toward the right just as the sound of the gunshot reached his ears. One of the things that Navy SEAL had said at the bookstore was that the accuracy of handgun fire in movies and television was ridiculously overblown. The typical handgun was accurate only to about twenty feet. After that, it was dumb luck if somebody got hit by a
pistol.

  So Zack knew that he was outside the pistol’s realistic range, and figured that all he had to do was dodge right, and there’d be no way he’d get hit.

  Somehow, though, his momentum carried him so violently off to the side that he felt himself actually spinning in the air, and he was extremely surprised and embarrassed to land flat on his ass, with a considerable burning in his left leg.

  Damn. He must have pulled a muscle in his thigh. Maybe it was just a cramp. It didn’t matter. He had to get moving.

  But his leg felt really weird, so he looked down. The first thing he noticed was that his shoe had come off, and was lying a few feet from his right hand. He didn’t want to slide all over the place in his socks, so he grabbed it and started to put it back on, and that’s when he saw the dark stain spreading on his pant leg. He reached down and touched warm, sticky liquid, which promptly turned his left hand red.

  Maybe this handgun was better than the typical one, because Zack had been shot.

  And Zack really didn’t have time to be shot.

  At least not yet.

  He rolled over onto his stomach, and looked up, half expecting and half hoping to be facing the barrel of a gun. But the gunman hadn’t moved. He’d merely turned away from Zack. That was good news, because it allowed Zack to use one of the clerk’s chairs to pull, well, to try to pull himself up to his feet. The chair was on wheels, which made it kind of hard to steady. And that left leg really didn’t feel good at all.

  The bad news was that if the shooter had turned away from Zack, that meant he had turned his attention back toward the crowd of innocent people in the courtroom gallery.

  Including Justin.

  Screw the leg. Zack let go of the chair and started moving. He didn’t care. He’d hop, skip, jump, crawl, whatever. He’d make his way to that gun, and he would stop that madman from doing whatever it was he thought he was doing.

  But with the world in slow motion, and Zack crippled by the gunshot wound, the twenty or twenty-five feet still between them was going to take an eternity.

  Which, under the circumstances, was now probably less than thirty seconds.

  ELEVEN

  In many ways, the death of Kevin Spellman was the turning point in the saga of the Springfield Shooter. Before that bloody evening in February of 1983, many residents of western Massachusetts still believed that the murders of Robert Rath, Stewart and Betsy McCabe, and Julie Chang were unrelated. Sadly, the desperate and naïve hope that the Springfield metropolitan area was not being stalked by a vicious and cunning serial killer was to die along with Kevin Spellman, victim number five.

  February 10, 1983, was a dreary day. A low-pressure system was sitting over most of New England, and the temperature barely made it into the forties. A light but steady rain began to fall around noon, and it rained on and off for the next three days.

  But Kevin Spellman was not the kind of person to let inclement weather put him into a bad mood. According to his friends, Kevin was one of those people who almost always approached his job, and his life, with a positive attitude. He had, of course, a very different perspective than many of us. Because Kevin was legally blind.

  On the last morning of his life, Kevin arrived at work at his customary starting time of 6:30 A.M. According to that day’s sales receipts, business was good at the newspaper stand at the Amtrak train station in downtown Springfield. It seemed that more people than usual were buying expensive magazines, possibly thinking ahead to the spring.

  Amtrak ticket agent Wendy Gold saw Kevin leave that day at 4:45. She remembered calling out something like, “Stay dry!” to Kevin as he left for home.

  Of course she could not know that those would be the last words she ever uttered to her friend.

  Because well before the morning of February 11, a crazed, homicidal maniac with the soul of a demon would enter Kevin’s home, tape him to a coffee table in his living room, and shoot him six times, until he bled to death. If the note left at the scene is to be believed, the killer went out of his way to make sure that Kevin stayed alive during the attack for over an hour.

  And as if he was speaking directly to the people that doubted that their world had been invaded by a serial killer, the killer also took pains to claim responsibility for his previous four victims.

  The brutal truth was that the Springfield Shooter had struck again.

  As this book goes to press, there has been no arrest in the case of the Springfield Shooter. The families of the victims know no closure, and all residents of western Massachusetts know only terror and suspicion.

  The obvious question is who? Who could possibly do this? Who would deliberately disable, torture, maim, and ultimately kill normal people like they were animals or laboratory subjects? Robert Rath, Stewart and Elizabeth McCabe, Julie Chang, and Kevin Spellman were good people, people with families and friends, people with lives like the rest of us. People who are now nothing more than cold statistics, the first five entries on a list of victims that threatens to grow larger with each passing morning, with each phone that is left ringing, each doorbell that is left unanswered, every appointment that is not kept.

  Law enforcement experts in serial killers, psychologists, and psychiatrists have compiled a set of characteristics common to most of these monsters. Those personality traits, which, with careful study, and placed in the context of what is known about the first five murders of the Springfield Shooter, might lead to a profile which could look something like the following.

  The Springfield Shooter might well be an educated man—even a man of letters. Perhaps an educator, maybe a high school writing teacher or even a college English professor. He could be someone who has access to a great deal of wealth. He is by no means poor.

  The monster is likely to live alone, or at least without adult companionship. If he was married, he is now divorced, or separated, or his wife has died. Perhaps at his hand.

  If he has always been single, it is because he is and was unable or unwilling to make the commitment to enter into matrimony.

  The Springfield Shooter is also likely to be an abuser—not just of his victims, but of himself. He is probably an active alcoholic, or a drug addict, or some combination of both. He is undoubtedly gravely mentally ill, but he does not and will not seek help. He is arrogant, selfish, and righteous. When confronted with his crimes, he will be defensive and combative, and he will deny everything.

  He could well suffer from a physical impairment of some kind, such as deafness, or perhaps an injury or malady that leaves him with a visible physical abnormality. Perhaps he walks with a limp.

  Diary of a Serial Killer, by Russell Crane, Pages 149–151, 334–335

  By the time that Stephanie reached her father’s home, everything had been set up for that evening’s broadcast. He was seated in a chair in his living room, which had been moved from its original position so that it was now in front of a bookcase. A young woman was standing to Malcolm’s left, apparently discussing with him some document that was attached to the clipboard she was holding. On Malcolm’s right side was a small table, on which a glass of water was resting.

  The rest of the room was more crowded and chaotic than Stephanie had ever seen it. A large video camera had been set up on a tripod about six feet away from her father’s chair. There were an amazing number of gigantic lights hanging from stands all over the place, and the oriental rug that Stephanie had used twenty years ago for somersault practice was tangled with thick, black electrical cords.

  Whatever space wasn’t taken up by all of this equipment was jam-packed with people, half of them talking on headsets or cell phones.

  The idea that her father was cool with this wholesale invasion of his space was mind-blowing. Especially since it was all because of an interview about the Springfield Shooter. Talk about a loaded subject for her father. Steph wound her way around five people and finally reached him, only to have the lights go on all at once, and someone shout, “Sixty seconds!”

  B
efore she could even say a word, the woman with the clipboard seized Steph by the arm, and moved with her off to the adjacent dining room, where a monitor had been set up, showing what was being aired to the rest of the country on tonight’s edition of Public Forum. “He’ll do fine,” Clipboard Lady whispered.

  Easy for her to say. Her father hadn’t spent the better part of the last twenty-five years drinking and flirting with a series of nervous breakdowns. There had been times when just a casual mention of the Springfield Shooter was enough to send Steph’s father into a raving fit. The idea that Malcolm had agreed to talk about it on national TV, even in a one-on-one setting, was nerve-wracking.

  Just then, someone back in the living room shouted, “Settle. Thirty seconds to feed!” And at the same moment, the television screen switched from a commercial to the face of Leif Samuelson, sitting in his studio somewhere in New York, or Los Angeles, or wherever. Behind him, a graphic displaying the words “The Springfield Shooter: Act II” in horror-movie lettering, was prominently displayed. Leif smiled into the camera, and began to speak.

  “Welcome back. Over twenty years ago, the city of Springfield, Massachusetts was plunged into a nightmare of terror and suspicion. During the twenty-one-month period from July 1982 to March 1984 a serial killer known as the Springfield Shooter, in a coldly calculated homicidal frenzy, selected and then murdered nine people in their homes. He used duct tape to disable and bind his victims, and then he shot them, repeatedly, with a small-caliber handgun, and watched them suffer and die. To add insult to injury, this twisted individual cut off a finger from his victims, as a sick kind of trophy.”

  A different camera angle was displayed, and Samuelson appeared in profile, close up. Then he dramatically turned to face the screen. The graphic had disappeared, but a banner across the bottom of the screen now displayed the words, Is the Springfield Shooter still at large?