by R. G. Belsky
Maybe he knew about my past with Manning and was jealous.
Maybe he was upset because he was going to miss me so much while I was out of town.
Or maybe he did need to get back to work on the ratings numbers.
Sometimes I overthink this kind of stuff.
I went home, packed for my trip, ordered pizza, and finally fell asleep still wearing the same clothes I wore to work in front of the TV watching as Jimmy Fallon did his “thank-you letters” reading bit. I’d put on an expensive new dress yesterday morning in hopes of impressing either Manning or Weddle with how great it looked. But neither one mentioned it.
Now here I was all alone in my apartment.
Clare Carlson, media superstar.
All dressed up and eating pizza to go.
CHAPTER 37
UNLIKE ALL THE unfriendly FBI people I’d just left, Jeff Parkman—the police chief in Eckersville—seemed happy to see me again. Maybe that’s what happened when you were the top cop in a small town where serious crime hardly ever happened, except for one big high-profile murder case thirty years ago. You liked talking about that moment when this peaceful little town had a real, honest-to-goodness big crime.
I brought him up to speed on why I was there, but he already knew most of it because the FBI had contacted him before I got there.
“Any idea why the Becky Bluso murder doesn’t seem to be linked to any of the other murders they’re investigating?” I asked him.
“Any idea why it should be connected?”
“No.”
“So maybe it isn’t.”
“Let’s just theorize for a minute that there is a serial killer out there. Maybe Becky Bluso was his first kill. Then he goes on from there to carry out a series of other murders on young women like Bluso, without anyone ever connecting any of the crimes until now. Isn’t that possible?”
Parkman shrugged.
“I suppose. That would mean if we solve the Becky Bluso murder now, it would reveal the answer to who killed those other women.”
“Exactly. That’s why I’m here.”
“Only thing is, we’ve never been able to figure out who killed Becky Bluso for the past thirty years. What makes you think we can solve it now?”
“Better late than never.” I smiled.
Parkman went through the details of the crime again. Becky going on a shopping trip with her younger sister that day. Coming home to meet a girlfriend while the sister went off to the pool. The friend knocking on the door, finding it open, and then discovering Becky’s bloodied body in the upstairs bedroom. The friend running out of the house screaming. Police arriving to find the horrifying crime scene. Parkman even offered to take me back to the neighborhood if I wanted to see the inside of the house today. I did.
As we pulled up in front of the address, I thought again about what a peaceful neighborhood it seemed to be. All the houses looked alike, all the lawns were neatly trimmed, and all the people seemed to live quiet, uneventful lives. It was like a scene from a long-ago Norman Rockwell painting of middle America.
The woman who answered the door at what used to be the Bluso house didn’t seem surprised when Parkman said he wanted us to see the inside. She said they’d had other curiosity seekers in the past who stared—and sometimes even knocked on the door—at the most infamous crime site in Eckersville history. She said she hadn’t known about that when she bought the house, but she’d gotten used to the attention. She led us through inside where three children played and watched TV in the living room.
Then we went up the stairs to the bedroom where Becky’s friend had found her brutally murdered. There were bunk beds in the room now, and it turned out to be one of the bedrooms where two of the boys slept. There were toys and games and clothes scattered all around.
I wondered about what it was like living in a house where someone had died so horribly. Did the people here now worry about demons or ghosts or evil spirits haunting the place? On the other hand, a lot of people didn’t know what happened in their homes before they lived there. I sure had no idea who lived in my apartment before I got there. In any case, none of this helped me answer any of my questions about the Becky Bluso murder. Nothing more to see here.
When we got outside again, Parkman pointed to the house next door to the Blusos. “That’s where Ed Weiland, the neighbor who was at the barbecue with the Blusos the night before, lived back then. He was a widower with a son, Seth. Like I told you last time you were here, they had a lot of guns and knives and seemed a bit weird, people said. Both of them were questioned at the time as potential suspects, but nothing ever came of it. A lot of people were questioned as potential suspects, but nothing ever came of that either.”
Then he looked at another house on the block. “That’s where Teresa Lofton lived. She’s the friend that discovered Becky’s body. Imagine what that must have been like for a seventeen-year-old girl.”
I nodded.
“What happened to her?”
I figured she might be a good interview.
“Oh, she was so messed up by it all she had to drop out of school. I understand she underwent a lot of grief counseling and other therapy. The family moved away not long afterward. Too many memories here, I guess.”
I sighed.
“It was a long time ago,” Parkman said. “People die. Move away. Start different lives. Victims, suspects, potential leads, and witnesses. That’s why this cold case is so damned cold. Thirty years is a long time.”
On the way back to his office, he told me again about the sad history of the Bluso family after the murder. The younger sister dying from leukemia. The father gone with a heart attack. The death of the mother after that. “They seemed to be a cursed family,” he said, shaking his head sadly.
“What about the older sister?” I asked.
“Betty. She was two years older than Becky. Betty was away at college in Maine when the murder happened.”
“She still alive?”
“As far as I know. She wound up being a professor at a college in Maine. A place called Eaton College, as I remember. She was back here a few times—after the murder, of course, and then for all the funerals. But she’s never lived in Eckersville again since then. Too many bad memories here, I guess. Same as with the Loftons.”
I made a note to try to track down Betty Bluso—or whatever she called herself these days.
I figured maybe she could tell me something about Becky or her family or the rest of it that I’d missed so far. And she was the only person I knew how to find—so there was that, too.
We pulled up in front of the police station and got out. It was a nice new building with the new courthouse and new library and new government offices all attached. Parkman was proud of it and walked me around the grounds to show it off. I asked some questions and pretended like I cared. I figured it couldn’t hurt to keep this guy on my side. Besides, what the hell else did I have to do in Eckersville? It seemed to be a dead end.
But that’s the thing about being a good reporter. You keep asking questions, even if there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it. Because every once in a while, you get an answer that you weren’t expecting.
“Bet you haven’t had such interest in the Becky Bluso case for a long time, huh?” I asked Parkman. “First the woman newspaper reporter who did the article for the Fort Wayne paper. Then Marty Barlow, my friend from New York you told me was here. Followed by me. And now the FBI is all over it, too. All four of us wanting to know everything you knew about the Becky Bluso case. Weird, huh?”
“Well, there was the other guy before that, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, this was a few years ago. A guy asked me a lot of questions about the old Bluso case. He never told me why. But the mayor and other political leaders made a big thing out of me working with him in any way possible, so I did whatever I could. I even took him over for a tour of the Bluso house, like I did with you. Of course, I understand why everyone wanted
me to be so nice to him. After what he did for this town.”
I was confused. “What did he do for the town?”
“He made a huge financial contribution to build this library and help us put up this whole municipal complex you see here.”
Parkman pointed to a plaque in front of the library. It said:
“This library is dedicated to the town of Eckersville. A good place to read. A good place to learn. A good place to live.”
Underneath that was the name of the generous benefactor to the town.
The name of the man who had donated the money.
The name of the man who had made the library and this beautiful building in the center of Eckersville possible.
The name of the man who had been so interested in the Becky Bluso case.
The name was Russell Danziger.
CHAPTER 38
“RUSSELL DANZIGER?” MANNING asked. “The big-shot New York political operative? Is that who we’re talking about here?”
“Same one. I checked.”
I’d called Manning from the Indianapolis airport, while I was waiting to board a flight.
“Why would Russell Danziger donate such a big amount of money to the town of Eckersville?” Manning wanted to know.
“That’s my question, too.”
“Is Danziger from Eckersville?”
“No. And, as far as anyone is aware, he’s only been there one time. When he came to donate the money to build the library and—oh, by the way—ask a lot of questions about the old Becky Bluso murder case.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense for Danziger to do that.”
“There’s only one scenario where it does make sense.” I’d been thinking about this since leaving Eckersville. “Guilt. Danziger is guilty about something, so he tries to use money to assuage that guilt in the only way a man like him knows how to do—with money. But what is he guilty about? Becky Bluso’s murder. At least he’s very interested in it. Maybe because he was the one who murdered her a long time ago.”
“C’mon, Clare, you’re reaching here.”
“Do you have a better theory?”
“I don’t have any theory. I do know that Russell Danziger is one of the most powerful men in New York City—hell, one of the most powerful in the country—and there’s absolutely no evidence to indicate he had anything to do with killing the Bluso girl.”
“Then why did he donate all that money to the town? Why was he so interested in her murder?”
“There could be a lot of reasons.”
“Sure. And one of them is he killed the Bluso girl thirty years ago. Plus, maybe a lot more women. And years later, he gave the money to assuage his guilt over Bluso’s death. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it makes about as much sense as anything else in this case. Let’s check the towns where the other women died. Find out if Russell Danziger gave any money to them any time after the murders, too. If he did, then we’ll know we’re on the right track.”
“Okay, I’ll make some discreet checks on Danziger. But we have to tread carefully here. The guy’s got a lot of clout. Enough clout to deal with a curious journalist or even a curious FBI agent.”
“Understood.”
“Where are you now, anyway?”
“Getting ready to fly from Indianapolis to Portland, Maine.”
“What’s in Maine?”
“Becky Bluso’s older sister, Betty. She’s the only member of the Bluso family still alive. I think it’s worth it to interview her to find out if she remembers anything about her sister that might help.”
“Ask her if she ever knew Russell Danziger.” Manning laughed.
“Wow, I never thought of that. Thanks for the FBI crime-solving tip, J. Edgar Hoover.”
I’d tracked down Betty Bluso by googling her and Eaton College. That was the easy part. Getting her to agree to talk with me was tougher. She said she’d put that part of her life behind her a long time ago. But, when I said I was going to show up at her door one way or another, she agreed to see me.
I met her in her office later that day in the faculty building of Eaton College, a small school just outside Portland on the Maine coast. She was an attractive woman of about fifty—she’d been a few years older than Becky—and you could see a lot of the same beauty I’d seen in the pictures of her dead sister.
Her name was Fulger now, and she said her husband was a history professor at the college. She taught English literature and had written several nonfiction books on the topic. They had no children—their choice, she said—but did have two dogs, a cat, and even a horse at the house they owned not far from the college.
It sounded like a nice life, and I was sorry I had to interrupt it with something so disturbing as her sister’s murder.
“I was gone when it happened,” she told me. “I came home afterward for the funeral and all the rest of the grieving. But it wasn’t for long. I’d enjoyed my time away at college, and all I wanted to do was get back. Eckersville was never a particularly interesting place for me when I was growing up and then—after what happened to Becky—I wanted to stay away from it as much as possible.
“My parents never got over it. My younger sister, Bonnie, was the most affected. She blamed herself for leaving Becky alone at the house after their shopping trip. Which was crazy, but she kept talking about it until the day she died. I’m the only one left in the family now. I try to put it all out of my mind. But I suppose I’ll never be able to accomplish that. I’ll live with the memory of what happened to Becky until the day I die.
“The worst part—for my parents, for Bonnie, and for me—was not understanding why. Why would someone take the life of a beautiful young girl like Becky in such a brutal fashion? If they’d caught someone for the murder, maybe all of us could have experienced some kind of closure. But that never happened. And I don’t expect it ever to happen now, no matter how much you dig into it, Ms. Carlson. Not after all this time.”
We talked about the possible suspects Parkman had mentioned to me. Guys at school who were interested in Becky. The girl who might have had a lesbian crush on her. The next-door neighbor at the barbecue the night before and his son.
“Ed Weiland and his son, Seth,” she said when I mentioned the last two. “They always gave me the creeps. Especially the kid. He was good-looking, but I don’t know … creepy. They were friends of my parents because they were our neighbors, and we spent a lot of time together with them. But Seth—I guess if I had to pick someone from back then who might have done it—would have to be on that list. But then he died, so I guess any secrets he had about Becky died with him a long time ago.”
“Anyone else you ever suspected?”
She started to say something, but then stopped. I could tell she was hesitant about answering. Which made me even more interested in what she had to say.
“I think Becky might have been seeing someone,” she said finally.
“She had a boyfriend she’d been dating. The police questioned him, according to the accounts I read. But he had an alibi for that day. He was away at a summer camp. They cleared him.”
“No, I mean someone else.”
“Who?”
“I’m not sure. But she was interested in someone. She wouldn’t talk about it much the last time I saw her, right before I went back to college at the end of the summer. But she did say he was older than her. And that even though he wasn’t available to her now, she was going to change that soon.”
“Older? Could she have been talking about Ed Weiland, the next-door neighbor?”
“No, she’d never have been with anyone like him. I think she meant someone a year or two ahead of her in school. She mentioned something about him graduating recently.”
“Could that have been Seth Weiland, the son?”
“No, he was in the same class as Becky.”
“Then who?”
“I have no idea.” She shrugged. “Not that it matters, I suppose. The police questioned pretty much every
guy in town after she was killed. They never found evidence linking any of them to Becky’s death.”
I waited until the end to ask her the most important question in my mind right now.
“Did you ever know anyone named Russell Danziger?”
“Who’s that?”
“He donated a lot of money to the town of Eckersville.”
“What does that have to do with Becky?”
“I was hoping you might know.”
“Know what?”
“If your sister ever mentioned the name of Russell Danziger to you before she was killed?”
“I never heard of him.”
I was disappointed by her answer, but not surprised. I knew going in that the whole Danziger thing was a long shot. Maybe Manning was right. I still had no idea why Danziger had donated all that money to the town of Eckersville. But that didn’t mean he’d killed Becky Bluso or anyone else.
Before I left, Betty showed me a picture of the whole Bluso family at a barbecue in their backyard. It was old, tattered, and frayed. She said it was taken July 4th that summer, a few weeks before Becky was murdered. They were all smiling and happy and looked as if all was right in their world. None of them had any inkling of the tragedy that lay ahead. Happy memories before everything went bad for the Bluso family.
Betty Bluso had spent her life since then trying to forget about all those memories from back in Eckersville.
And now I had opened up the painful wound for her all over again.
I left her like that sitting in her office and staring at that picture.
Sometimes being a journalist is not a fun job.
CHAPTER 39
THE PROBLEM WAS I was still flying blind on this story. I didn’t exactly know where I was on it, where I was going, or what any of it meant. All I had was a list of possibly related murders from Marty that had seemed unbelievable, but turned out to be true. And now this mysterious revelation about Russell Danziger and one of the murder locations. Except that murder was the one that didn’t seem to link up in any way with all the others. None of it fit together.
