by R. G. Belsky
I’m not sure how long we played together on the game. It seemed like only a few minutes. But I realized afterward when I looked at my watch that it had been much longer.
“Do you have children, Clare?” Lucy/Linda asked.
“Uh, no, I never have.”
“Why not?”
“Too busy with my career, I guess.”
“Lots of women have successful careers and families these days. Maybe you should think about that.”
“I’m too old to be a mother,” I said.
“You’d make a good mother,” she said, pointing over to Audrey looking expectantly at me for my next move in the game. “I think you’d make a very good mother.”
“I need to get going,” I told her, not knowing what else to say. “I’ve got a long trip back to New York.”
I said a quick goodbye to her and to Audrey, then got into my rental car and drove away as fast as I could.
Before I pulled away, I looked back and saw them both standing at the open door, waving goodbye to me.
I waved goodbye back to them, too.
I wasn’t sure if I would ever come back.
CHAPTER 43
“WE’VE PUT TOGETHER a profile of the killer,” Scott Manning told me.
“Does it include his name?” I asked.
Manning looked confused.
“No. A psychological profile based on theories and FBI studies …”
“I know what an FBI profile is,” I said. “I was being sarcastic.”
He smiled now.
“Right, I forget about that little trait of yours.”
“I don’t believe in this profile stuff about unidentified serial killers. I think it’s bogus. You guys put out a profile packed with every little detail about a serial killer. He’s left handed; he walks with a slight limp; he’s married and a loving father at home, but he goes out and kills women because his mother didn’t love him enough or the female babysitter hit him for wetting the bed when he was growing up—or maybe because he saw Silence of the Lambs and thought it would be a swell idea to be like Buffalo Bill or Hannibal Lecter. Then, when you finally catch him, none of these things actually describe him. But you focus on one or two details that fall in the ballpark and play them up. Then you do another profile when the next serial killer case comes along. Me, I think profiles are a waste of time.”
“Do you want to hear what’s in this one?”
“Yes.”
I was sitting in front of Manning’s desk at FBI headquarters. He was wearing a light blue tweed sports jacket, open-collared blue shirt, and navy-colored slacks. His body looked fit even though he mostly sat behind a desk here at the FBI. He looked good. Not that it mattered to me, of course. There was a picture of his wife and their three children on his desk. His wife was attractive. His three children, too. I was fine with all that. Totally fine.
“The first thing we looked at was what this guy might do for a living,” Manning told me. “The murders happened in so many different locations around the country that our guy might well have a job where he travels around a lot. Like a traveling salesman or a truck driver or …”
“Or a military man who moves around from base to base,” I pointed out.
“Or a military man,” he said.
“Like Russell Danziger.”
“Lots of times the killer turns out to be an upstanding citizen, very successful—the last guy you’d suspect to be a murderer. People tend to think serial killers are all weirdos like David Berkowitz was as Son of Sam. But sometimes, they turn out to be seemingly normal people living normal lives. In this case, though, we believe the killer has repressed sexual feelings. That’s because of the personal way he kills his victims—stabbing with a knife or strangulation or with his own hands, rather than a gun.”
I told him how I’d found out Danziger was both emotionally and sexually repressed.
“Also, the guy is highly intelligent,” Manning continued, “methodical and intense. He’s managed to cover up these murders for a long time. He clearly thinks them out—before and after—even though the killings themselves are carried out with angry passion.”
“Highly intelligent,” I repeated. “Successful. Methodical and intense. Sexually repressed. Moved around the country a lot like a military man might have. Sounds to me a lot like Russell Danziger.”
“Many people could fit that description besides Danziger, Clare.”
“Russell Danziger is the only one on our radar right now.”
“All right, the profile does seem to fit Danziger.”
“Then why doesn’t the FBI question him?”
“We can’t question anyone—certainly not a man as important as Russell Danziger—based on a profile. Or because he once donated money to a town where a young woman was murdered. Or because some crazy old guy like Martin Barlow decided he was The Wanderer.”
“That crazy old guy is the reason you found out about all of these murders being connected,” I pointed out.
“Still, we need evidence before we can approach Danziger.”
“What about his DNA? Can’t you check that, too, see if it matches the DNA at the murder scenes?”
“We can’t demand a sample of Danziger’s DNA without confronting him with solid evidence linking him to the murders—solid evidence that we don’t have.”
“Maybe the Army has his DNA on file. I remembered doing a story a while back about how the military now collected DNA from all service members.”
“They do. But that’s for identification of body remains, especially in a war zone. Those DNA files are only available to law enforcement if we obtain a court order. To do that, we’d need the same kind of evidence required to get it from Danziger directly. Evidence, which again, we don’t have.”
I had another idea.
I talked about the case of the Golden State Killer in California that was in the news recently in which DNA had been used to identify the suspect decades after the murders. “They got a possible DNA match from a family member that had submitted it for a genealogy website. It was close enough that they started checking out this person’s relatives—and found him that way. Even if you can’t get Danziger’s DNA now, maybe you can see if the DNA from any of the crime sites matches someone related to him. That would be a start.”
“Danziger’s parents are dead. He’s an only child. No other living relatives show up anywhere.”
“You already checked?”
“I checked. I checked out all the possibilities. None of them will work.”
“What happens next then?”
“We’ve got another FBI team meeting scheduled for this afternoon to go over all of these findings.”
“Called by Gregory Wharton?”
“Of course.”
“Am I invited?”
“Does it matter?”
“No.”
“I’ll see you there.”
I picked up the printout of the profile and put it in my handbag. It was time to go. I looked over again at the picture of Manning’s wife and family. I wanted to say something about them, but I knew that wasn’t smart. I needed to go back to my office and do my job; let him do his job, too. This was going to be all business between us; we had agreed. For me to ask him about his marriage would be wrong and inappropriate. But, from long practice of saying wrong and inappropriate things, I asked him anyway.
“Good. We’ve been making progress. Slower between me and my kids. But we’re working at it. One day at a time, as they say. Thanks for asking.”
I nodded and pretended like that was the answer I was looking for.
“How about you?” he asked. “Are you seeing someone?”
“I am. A very nice guy. You’d like him.”
“Think you might get married again?”
“We’re taking it kind of slow at the moment. I want to make sure that this time it works out.”
“That makes sense.”
There was a long silence.
“Well, th
is is a bit awkward,” I finally said, standing up. “I better go now.”
“I’ll see you at the meeting this afternoon.”
“See you then,” I said.
CHAPTER 44
I HAD COME up with an idea. Not about The Wanderer or how to find him or even how to break the story. I was still confused by all that. No, my idea was about me and Gary Weddle. I shared it now with Weddle.
“We give ourselves a onetime mulligan,” I said.
“A mulligan?”
“Yes, like in golf when you get a free shot.”
“Actually, a mulligan isn’t a free shot. The shot before then is the free one. A mulligan means you don’t count that, only the second—or the mulligan—shot in your score. So technically …”
“Okay, so maybe mulligan isn’t the right word. Let’s say we give ourselves a free pass—one time only, at least for now—to do something without it counting. No consequences about it for either of us. Are you in?”
“Exactly what are we talking about here?”
“Sex.”
“I’m in.”
We were sitting in my office after the morning news meeting. Ostensibly talking about the big news stories we’d focus on for the day. But the subject of our conversation turned to him and me. And what we did with our “relationship” going forward.
I knew the safest approach was for Weddle and me to bide our time and wait until we weren’t working together anymore. That was the mature, logical, responsible approach. Except sex doesn’t always lead to mature, logical, and responsible outcomes.
The plan we eventually worked out went like this: We would spend one night together. We agreed not to tell anyone about it while Weddle was still working at Channel 10—even if things didn’t work out between us. The upshot—this could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. And, if it didn’t work, nothing would be lost, and there’d be no office scandal. That was my plan—a pretty good plan. Okay, it wasn’t a plan without flaws, I understood that. But I needed to do something here. Move forward. Weddle was eager, too.
“What happens if we have wild, wonderful, torrid sex and then can’t keep our hands off each other?” he said.
“That’s good, right?”
“How do we handle this if we don’t want to stop?”
“We’ll make up the rules as we go along.”
“I’m saying that could be a problem.”
“Sounds like a good problem to have.”
The day before we scheduled our nighttime tryst for was a long one for me. I sat in meetings with Weddle—talking about ratings and demographics and ad rates—as if everything were normal. Except I was fantasizing about how he would look naked. Maybe he was having the same thoughts about me. At least I hoped so.
I don’t think that anybody noticed anything. Except maybe for Maggie. She gave me a strange look a couple of times while Weddle and I were interacting. Not surprising. Maggie always picked up sexual signals. I thought she might ask me again about me and Weddle afterward, but she didn’t. Maybe she already knew.
At the end of the day, Weddle and I made a big point of leaving the office separately. Different times, different goodbyes to everyone. We even left by different doors. I went out through the front lobby of the building, and he went out the back door onto an adjoining street. We would meet for dinner after that and then … well, I was pretty sure what was going to happen.
An hour later, we were sitting at a secluded, romantic Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village. We ate pasta, drank wine, and made small talk the way people do when they’re eager to have sex, but not sure how to make the first move.
We talked about the big news events of the day. We talked about “The News Never Stops” and how that was going. We talked about the off-again, on-again relationship of Brett and Dani in the office. We talked about how intellectually challenged I thought Cassie O’Neal was. I told him stories about my early days as an on-air reporter, until Jack Faron decided I’d be better off behind the camera than in front of it. He told me stories about crazy TV people he’d worked with over the years.
Eventually, we ran out of small talk.
“Isn’t the uncertainty killing you?” I finally asked him.
“Uncertainty?”
“Sure. There’s always uncertainty the first time you have sex with someone. Wondering how it’s going to go. Good, great—or not so great. Sexual chemistry is such a tricky business. You never know what the results are going to be.”
“So, I guess it’s time to find out.” He smiled.
At that point, I wiped some marinara sauce off my lips with a napkin, took a big gulp of wine, and leaned over across the table to kiss him.
He kissed me back.
Everything was going according to plan. A few minutes later, we were getting ready to pay the bill. We’d decided to go to his place. I’d never been to his apartment. I wondered what it was like. My guess was it would be a lot like him. Messy, disorganized—with papers and clothes scattered around it. Weddle was definitely a kind of a klutz, but that was a lot of why he was so adorable. I wondered if he might be a bit of a klutz in bed. Either way, I was looking forward to finding out.
That’s when my cell phone rang.
I looked down and saw the call was from Scott Manning.
Jeez, talk about perfect timing.
“Where are you, Clare?” Manning asked when I picked up.
“I’m on a date.”
“You need to get down here to FBI headquarters right away.”
“What part of ‘I’m on a date’ didn’t you understand?”
“We caught a break on The Wanderer,” Manning said. “You’re gonna want to be here for this.”
CHAPTER 45
THERE IS ALWAYS a moment in a big story when something unexpected happens. You ask all the right questions, make all the logical moves—do everything a good journalist is supposed to do to break the story. And then, totally out of left field, an event blindsides you—for better or worse.
In this case it was better.
“There’s a potential new victim of The Wanderer,” Manning said. “A real estate broker named Dianna Colson in Boca Raton, Florida. She was attacked inside one of the houses she was showing nine years ago. No one was ever caught.”
“Is there a DNA match?” I asked.
“No relevant DNA in this case.”
“Then why do you think it’s the same guy?”
“We’ve got something better than the DNA. We’ve got an eyewitness. Dianna Colson herself.”
“She’s alive?”
“That’s right. She managed to get away. She’s alive and talking. Talking right now to our people from the Miami bureau in Florida.”
The FBI agents in Miami made a video of the interview with Dianna Colson. She was twenty-eight years old at the time of the attack, had long blond hair—very attractive—like the rest of the The Wanderer’s women victims. He clearly picked his targets on the basis of looks.
On June 16, 2011, Colson had received a phone call from a man asking to see a house she had listed for sale. The house was vacant, had been on the market for a while, and she was eager to show it to a prospective buyer.
But Colson said when she got to the house, no one was there. Or so she thought. Then, as she walked through the empty house to check on a few things, a man grabbed her from behind. She screamed, but he put his hand over her mouth. She tried to get away from him, but he was too strong for her. As she struggled to get free, he put a choke hold around her neck and dragged her up the stairs to one of the bedrooms. She gasped desperately for air from the choke hold, but he squeezed even tighter. So tightly that she eventually passed out.
She woke up, bound and gagged, on the bedroom floor. At first, she wondered if the intruder raped her. But she was still clothed—tied up, making it difficult to move.
Then she saw a figure in the room. He approached her with his right hand held high in the air. That’s when she saw the knife. It was a hu
ge knife. Like a butcher knife, she remembered thinking in terror. He leaned over her, the knife in midair as she screamed helplessly into the gag—and then plunged the knife downward toward her. But he didn’t stab her. He simply brought the knife down close to her, the blade stabbing the floor next to where she lay. Then he did it again. And again. She lost track of how many times he did this with that knife, convinced each thrust would be the one that would kill her. But then, each time, overwhelmed with relief—albeit temporary relief—when the knife didn’t stab her.
Was this some sort of kinky sex game, she remembered thinking to herself.
Then he left her alone in the room, saying he would be back soon to finish playing with her.
During this time, she managed to loosen one of the ropes binding her hands. He must have been in such a hurry that he hadn’t tied it tightly enough. From that, she managed to wriggle out of the rest of the ropes and remove the gag. She found an open window and jumped to the yard below. She ran away, screaming for help. A neighbor heard her and called the police.
When the police went into the house, the intruder was gone.
“Recorded as an unsolved attack,” Manning said. “No one ever linked it to any other cases. Nothing similar had occurred around Boca Raton around that time, and, of course, no one had any idea about the other women victims throughout the country. But, when we began digging into possible other cases involving The Wanderer, this popped up. Everything about it sounded like The Wanderer. Except this victim got away. She’s the only one who did. At least, the only one we know about.”
On the video, the agents showed Dianna Colson a series of photos.
Most of them mug shots of known sex offenders from the Miami area as well as a few others in the mix to make for an objective video lineup—one that would hold up in court if she identified her attacker. And, there was also one other photo—which Manning had insisted on—a photo of Russell Danziger.
