Chapter One: Life and Death ONE LIFE AND DEATH "He wanted to be seen. This was a performance." 1 The morning of Friday, June 3, 2022, dawned cloudy and unseasonably cool. I watched from my bedroom window as wisps of ground fog--a legion of restless ghosts haunting the predawn--drifted slowly across the dark surface of the pond before dissipating in the woods beyond. Even though I was lying snug beneath a blanket, the sight raised gooseflesh on my arms and sent a chill scampering across the back of my neck. Later, when the memory returned to me in the midst of a nightmare, I realized it had been an omen of what was yet to come. 2 The house I lived in with my wife, Kara, and my sons, Billy and Noah, was actually two houses in one. The original home--built in 1796 by Thomas Moore, a prominent miller and tanner, and soon after christened Mooresland Manor--was constructed of rough blocks of stone taken from a local quarry. A second, much larger section was added by Moore's eldest son, Eli, in 1841. As a result, the house had two foyers, two sets of stairs leading to the upper floors, and two front-facing living rooms. This was how 701 Southampton Road, Bel Air, Maryland (a mere fifteen-minute drive from Edgewood), became known as the House with Two Front Doors. The surrounding seven-acre property boasted a spring-fed pond, a meandering creek, an orchard, open fields, and woods. Geese, deer, foxes, and raccoons were regular visitors. A U-shaped driveway and low stone wall fronted the house, with nearly 150 yards of head-high wooden fencing running along the eastern border of the property, shielding the pond and side meadow from passing cars and pedestrians. A narrow strip of grass and a gravel shoulder separated the fence line from Southampton Road. It was there, leaning against a fire hydrant, that JJ--Billy's nine-month-old Bernese mountain dog--discovered the garbage bag. 3 A lot had changed in my world since the August 2021 publication of Chasing the Boogeyman . Most of it good, but not all of it. My oldest son, Billy, had recently graduated from Colby College in Maine and was once again living in his third-story attic bedroom, spending his days writing and editing fiction and working on various film projects. He'd listened dutifully to all the well-meaning warnings and lectures regarding how difficult it would be to follow in his old man's footsteps, but in the end, he'd ignored each and every one of them and forged ahead anyway. I was proud of him. He was working hard and had already earned considerably more success than his father had managed at that age. Billy's younger brother, Noah, had just completed his freshman year at the University of Virginia. He was spending the summer mowing grass at a golf course in Charlottesville and taking a four-credit statistics class. He'd recently moved into an apartment with three of his lacrosse teammates and together they were learning the finer points of cooking, cleaning, and figuring out how to find and hold on to a girlfriend. Kara and I FaceTimed and spoke on the telephone with Noah several times a week, but it wasn't the same as having him home. We missed him terribly. It didn't help matters that I was feeling homesick myself. The runaway success of Chasing the Boogeyman had led to a seemingly endless string of promotional appearances. Due to COVID restrictions, I'd spent most of the late summer and fall of 2021 participating in dozens of virtual book clubs. That hadn't been so bad. Wash my face, throw on a clean shirt, click a Zoom link, and spend an hour or two hawking books from the comfort of my own home. Easy enough. But then the holiday season arrived--just as COVID constraints were lifted--and the publicity machine shifted into high gear. Instead of lounging in my home office, talking to a computer screen, I was suddenly crisscrossing the country with a revolving cast of barely-old-enough-to-drink publicists assigned by my publicity director. In-person bookstore signings, radio and television interviews, early morning talk shows, bookfairs (never in my life had I ever imagined there were so many blasted bookfairs)--you name it, I did it. And to the publicists' credit, the hustle seemed to work. Chasing the Boogeyman stuck around on the hardcover bestseller lists for seventeen consecutive weeks--a rare occurrence these days unless your last name happens to be Grisham, King, or Patterson--and when it finally dropped off in mid-January, it didn't go very far. Retail sales remained surprisingly strong throughout the early quarter of 2022. The book surged into a fifth and sixth printing. Eventually, I ran out of bookfairs to attend and got to stay home for a couple of months, long enough to welcome a new puppy to the family and put the finishing touches on a manuscript I had started the previous summer. I even managed to regain a few pounds from Kara's home cooking. And then it felt like I blinked one morning, and the movie version of Chasing the Boogeyman hit U.S. theaters and pay-per-view channels--and off I went again. More red-eye flights and hotel rooms, more signings and interviews, and you guessed it, more bookfairs. In the past six weeks, I'd only been home long enough to sleep a handful of nights in my own bed--and it didn't look like that was going to change any time soon. With the movie scheduled for overseas release in mid-July, I was already preparing for a whirlwind promotional tour spanning much of Europe. Kara, who had recently purchased a brand-new set of luggage for the trip, was over-the-moon excited and counting down the days until we boarded the plane. I was not. I was dog-tired and moody as hell. Most days, shuffling around the house or my hotel room enveloped within a hazy, dark cloud of unshakable melancholy. Or as my dear departed father would have said: "walking around in a serious funk." Most likely, I was burned-out. I'd always been a loner by nature, and socializing with friends and strangers alike--even the wonderfully supportive group of readers I'd been blessed with--took a lot out of me. Being a writer had normally been such a solitary activity in my life. I sat by myself in an office with no windows and tapped away on my laptop. That was it; that was the job. But the landscape was different now, the stakes higher, and I was the first to admit that all the travel and publicity had worn me down--not only physically, but also mentally. Or maybe what I was feeling was just part of life, part of growing older and learning how to embrace the future and let go of the past--something I struggled with, even on my best days. All I knew was that despite my recent successes, the world felt somehow heavier. And with the exception of the ongoing horrors of the pandemic, I could honestly think of only one good reason for that. The previous fall, one of my best friends in the world, Carly Albright, had lost her husband to cancer. On the October morning he'd been diagnosed, Walter Scroggins was in perhaps the best shape of his life. He cycled and jogged several times a week and played eighteen holes of golf (he was a walker, too--no electric carts for Walter) and mixed doubles tennis on the weekends; he and Carly were even learning how to play pickleball and had recently joined a league at their gym. Six weeks later, he was gone. At the time, it'd felt as if a tornado had touched down out of nowhere and ravaged the lives of an amazing woman and her three beautiful daughters, and then up and blown away without a trace into the treetops. The rest of us had been left standing there dazed and confused, staring up at tranquil, baby blue skies, and wondering: Did that really just happen? And when it was over--after all the tears and hugs and Saran-wrapped casseroles; after the final black-clad mourner had shuffled out of the memorial service and into the parking lot and the heavy doors had closed and the lights dimmed, and the world went suddenly still and silent--what then could you possibly say to a woman who meant so much to you, to a woman who had just buried the beating heart of her entire universe? "I'm so sorry for your loss. I love you dearly and I'm here for you always." As it turned out, those were the exact same words pretty much every one else had said to Carly Albright on that dark and dreary day--and during all the days that followed. So tell me then, how in God's name could they have been the right words, the best words, I could muster? When it mattered most, how could they have even made the slightest bit of difference? No wonder it'd felt as if she were so disappointed in me. When everything was said and done, as autumn passed into winter and winter gave way to the promise of a new year, it felt as though I'd lost the both of them. Kara and I hadn't seen Carly since before the holidays, at a gift exchange dinner at a crowded Baltimore restaurant that had felt forced and hollow from the onset. Carly and I still spoke on the telephone, but only occasionally and rarely at length anymore. She was different now. Harder-edged. Always busy. Always trying to distract or forget. She often used the girls as an excuse for not having any free time, but how could I take issue with that? How could I blame her? The landscape of our relationship had shifted beneath our feet and we had become like strangers to each other. I knew this sort of thing happened all the time, but it made me sad to think about, so most days I tried not to. Most days, I tried not to think of her at all. Finally, and perhaps weighing most heavily of all upon my shoulders, was the shameful, secret notion that I was walking around every day feeling like an ungrateful prick. There's a scene in one of my favorite movies, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory , where Mr. Wonka says to his younger protégé, "But Charlie, don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted." "What happened?" Charlie asks. Mr. Wonka grins his impish grin and says, "He lived happily ever after." Happily ever after. God knows that should have been me. As a two-time cancer survivor by the time I was thirty, I've always climbed out of bed each morning embracing an overwhelming sense of gratitude--for Kara and the boys; our wonderful families and friends; our pack of dogs and our lovely home; the clean air to breathe and the warmth of sunshine on my face. If there was one thing I'd learned over the years, it was to take absolutely nothing for granted--including, of course, my career as a writer. From the time I was a boy, I'd always been a dreamer, but I'd never dreamed this big. Never once had I entertained the thought of cowriting books with Stephen King or hitting international bestseller lists or having my stories adapted into movies and television series. Hell, I'd never even imagined speaking at a bookfair. Yet it was happening. It was all coming true. So why then, Mr. Chizmar, all the doom and gloom and bitching and moaning? That's exactly what I was trying to figure out. And pretty much the only reason I was up and out the door so early on that chilly June morning, walking JJ on a leash instead of letting him scamper out the doggy door along with the rest of his siblings into the fenced-in backyard. I'd figured a good, strong dose of fresh air and exercise might help to clear my head. It might even help me to sleep better at night. That was the plan, anyway. 4 It had rained most of the week, and there were puddles scattered along the driveway and the shoulder of the road. The front yard was soggy and the grass needed to be cut. By the time we reached the fence post that marked the border of our property, my shoes and socks were soaked. JJ, of course, paid no mind to any of this. Tail wagging, nose hovering an inch or so above the ground, he dragged me onward along the fence line, stopping every so often to lift his leg and mark his territory. Still half-asleep, I yawned and let him lead the way. I was in no particular hurry, and the only notable thought bouncing around inside my head was a half-hearted debate involving what I was planning to eat for breakfast. A part of me was leaning toward a relatively healthy combination of cereal and fresh fruit. Maybe some yogurt. A much larger part was craving a cholesterol time bomb of bacon and eggs served with a side of biscuits and sausage gravy. And a sixteen-ounce Sprite to wash it all down. It wasn't a tough decision. I was trying to figure out where I could hide a big pot of sausage gravy from my wife when JJ suddenly skidded to a halt--and started growling. JJ was a lot of things--sixty-five pounds of fluffy cuteness, hilariously clumsy, endlessly hungry, and annoyingly energetic at bedtime--but a growler wasn't one of them. "What's wrong, JJ?" I asked, following his intense stare. There was a shiny black garbage bag leaning against a fire hydrant maybe twenty or thirty yards ahead of us. JJ growled louder and retreated a few steps. "C'mon, boy. It's okay. Let's go see." I gave the leash a gentle tug, trying to nudge him forward. He stared at me and refused to budge. "I'll give you a treat when we get home. C'mon, boy. You want a treat?" He tilted his head to the side and licked his lips, considering my offer. After a moment, once again betrayed by his stomach, he inched forward until he drew even with me. He whined and nuzzled my leg with his nose. The message was clear: he'd go with me if he had to, but he was no longer interested in leading the way. "Big chicken," I said, and started walking. "Scared of a bag of trash." Head hanging in shame, tail tucked between his legs, JJ followed reluctantly behind me. Southampton Road cut through the heart of Bel Air, and along with the frequent traffic came quite a bit of roadside litter. Kara and I may have felt as though we lived in the middle of nowhere with our little plot of land and our towering two-hundred-year-old trees, all safely hidden behind a tall fence, but in reality, we lived right smack-dab in the middle of town, not even a half mile away from a number of schools and grocery stores, not to mention 7-Eleven, Taco Bell, and Dunkin' Donuts. I had already picked up a couple of fast-food wrappers and an empty cigarette pack and stuffed them into the back pocket of my jeans to dispose of later. Other days, it might have been discarded beer cans or broken liquor bottles, windswept pieces of junk mail or cardboard pizza boxes, sunglasses with one of the lenses missing or a rain-swollen magazine. Even the occasional orphaned flip-flop or dented hubcap made its way into our yard. So I wasn't worried about the mysterious black bag that morning. Probably just a bunch of leaves , I thought. Most likely fell off the back of someone's truck. No big deal. Until I got closer--and then I knew better. The first thing I noticed was the smell. Faint in the crisp morning breeze, but still strong enough to detect from a distance of fifteen or twenty yards. A putrid, sickeningly sweet stench, like a basket of overripe fruit left out too long in the sun. I glanced around, hoping to find a dead squirrel or raccoon sprawled along the shoulder of the road, but there was only loose gravel and a ragged hunk of rubber from a flat tire. I took another step closer--and saw the flies. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, covering the black bag like a writhing second skin. I could hear their insistent buzzing, and it was only then that I realized JJ had started growling again. Louder this time, deeper, with the dark fur along the back of his neck raised in a rigid line and his teeth bared. I could see that it wasn't a normal garbage bag at all, but rather one of those oversized, industrial-strength bags that landscapers used to dispose of prickly brush and tree branches. Heavy-duty material so thick it was almost impossible to tear or puncture. Whatever was inside the bag appeared to be large and oddly shaped, the shiny plastic bulging outward at a myriad of awkward angles. The top of the bag was twisted shut and sealed with a knotted length of what looked like silver duct tape. At a glance, the bag looked to be airtight, but by this point I was certain that wasn't the case. Standing this close, the smell was like a charnel house. My eyes had begun to water. My stomach was doing jumping jacks. Backing up against the fence, I bent over with my hands on my knees and retched. Whimpering, JJ squeezed in behind me. When I was finished, I reached down and touched the cell phone in my pants pocket, confirming that it was there. My internal alarm system was blaring loud and clear inside my head, but I was still hesitant to jump the gun. I'd been the victim of stupid pranks before--targeted by either local teenagers bored on a Friday night or actual fans and/or critics who had traveled to my home from God knew where. Homemade burlap masks had been stuffed inside my mailbox and hung from the branches of trees in my front yard. Hopscotch grids had been chalked on the driveway. Handfuls of pennies tossed on the porch. FREE THE BOOGEYMAN had been spray-painted on the road in front of my house. And in a seeming tribute to my longtime friendship with Stephen King, PENNY-WISE RULES had once been scrawled in dripping red paint along a section of our fence. All of these incidents were intrusive and annoying, to be sure, but ultimately, they'd proved relatively harmless. But this time felt different. It smelled different. I thought about it for a moment longer, the buzzing of hungry flies growing steadily louder in my ears, and then I pulled out my phone and called an old friend. 5 A pair of Maryland state troopers--lights flashing, sirens off--were the first to arrive on the scene, pulling up from opposite directions. The first officer--the name tag on his uniform read PERKINS--briefly questioned me, scribbling down notes in a small spiral notepad, before donning gloves and carefully examining the black bag. Once he was finished, he immediately instructed the other trooper to block off the road and got on the radio. I had texted Kara as soon as I'd finished with my phone call, and explained what JJ and I had discovered. She'd quickly gotten dressed, came outside to retrieve the dog, and gated him in the backyard with the others. I could hear a chorus of impatient barking through the trees. Now Kara was back at my side, her tousled long brown hair defining the term "bed head," and looking none too pleased. Neither of us could hear what the trooper was saying into his radio mic, but the tone of his voice sounded urgent and excited. The news traveled fast after that. Before long, Southampton Road resembled a parking lot--with members of the Sheriff's Department, Maryland State Police, and Bel Air Police all vying for space. When the crime lab van finally showed up, a little after nine, no fewer than a half dozen cruisers had to be moved to let it through. Almost the entire length of fence, along with the narrow stretch of grass that ran in front of it, had been ringed with yellow police tape. A series of plastic screens had been erected around the black bag, shielding it from prying eyes, of which there were plenty. A large crowd had gathered across the street, and it felt as though each and every one of them was staring directly at Kara and me. Several people were holding up cell phones, taking photographs and videos. A young woman dressed in a tailored business suit, her long dark hair still wet from the shower, pointed a manicured finger in our direction. The older lady next to her shook her head with an air of polite disapproval. I could practically feel my wife's skin crawling from where I was standing. If there was one thing she despised, it was being the center of attention. Especially this kind of attention. We hadn't had more than a minute or two to talk in private before the detective showed up and started peppering us with questions, but I could already imagine Kara's angry voice when we got back to the house: " I told you, Rich. I knew something like this would happen. " I scanned the throng of onlookers--several kids on bicycles and skateboards were zipping up and down the sidewalk, a couple of late arrivals standing on the hill behind them dressed in bathrobes and sipping their morning coffee--and recognized some familiar faces. Ken Klein, from across the street, stood off to the side talking to Roy and Carol Spangler, from a few doors down. Not far from them, Penny Schutz--puffing on a cigarette, a neon-pink scarf wrapped around her permed hair--engaged in an animated conversation on her cell phone. I could only imagine what these people were saying about me now. "I told you there was something weird about that guy." "Did you see that detective grilling him? I bet you anything he's the prime suspect." "Whatever they're hiding behind those shields has to be bad, and it's no coincidence that it showed up in front of their house--" Kara nudged me in the arm. I followed her gaze and watched as a Channel 11 news van rounded the bend on Southampton. It braked to a stop behind a line of orange traffic cones and a tall blonde reporter and her cameraman exited the vehicle. "I'm surprised it took them this long," I said. Before Kara could respond, a black SUV with the Channel 13 logo on the door pulled up alongside the van. 6 A few minutes later, I heard a familiar voice behind me. "Make sure you get video of the crowd." I turned and Lieutenant Clara McClernan was talking to the detective I had spoken with earlier. As the officer in charge of Maryland State Police cold case files in 2019, Lieutenant McClernan was the one who discovered Joshua Gallagher's missing DNA file and started digging into his past. Once she'd gathered enough circumstantial evidence to indicate that Gallagher was her man, she'd immediately placed him under 24/7 surveillance and came up with a plan to attain a new DNA sample. The rest, as they say, was history. The lieutenant's long auburn hair was tied up in a bun and she was dressed in civilian clothes. In all the years I'd known her, I'd never seen her out of uniform before. For some reason, I found it unsettling. The detective was a short, stocky Hispanic man with eyes as dark as midnight and an unruly mustache straight out of a period western. The entire time he'd questioned me, I couldn't stop staring at it. "And make sure we have someone stationed at each end of the road, taking down license plates." The detective gave her a nod and hurried off. "Sorry it took me so long to get here," McClernan said, looking our way. She gestured to the pantsuit she was wearing. "I've been stuck in court all morning." "I'm just glad you got my voice mail," I said. "I tried to phone you, but I was summoned back in by the judge." She glanced at my wife. "How you doing, Kara?" "I've been better," she said. The lieutenant made eye contact with one of the crime lab techs. She held up a finger and mouthed: One minute. "Why don't you two go back inside? I'll take a look around and come talk to you when I'm finished." Kara didn't need to be told twice. She mumbled a half-hearted "Thanks" and started walking toward the house, head down, avoiding the hungry stares of the neighbors across the street. "She's not happy," I said, watching her go. "Can't say I blame her." "I think she's been waiting for something like this to happen." "You think? She's made it pretty clear that she's not a fan of what we're doing." "So... what are the chances that's just a bag of deer trimmings over there? Someone hunting out of season." McClernan didn't answer. She just looked at me, her expression giving away nothing, something I still hadn't gotten used to over the past several years. "I mean, I'm going to feel awfully stupid if this is just another prank." "Let's wait and see," she said, and I could tell that my time was up. Before she could walk away, I blurted, "What about Gallagher?" "I checked on my way over. He's locked up tight. Exactly where he's supposed to be." "I wasn't really worried. I just thought maybe--" "Go inside, Rich. I'll come talk to you as soon as I can." And then she was gone. 7 By the time Lieutenant McClernan made good on her promise, it was nearly noon, and we had already entertained a parade of unexpected visitors. The doorbell rang for the first time around eleven. It was our postman--Ronald or Donald or maybe Dan; he'd told me his name at least a half dozen times, but I could never remember it--with an Amazon package that was too large to fit inside the mailbox. Normally, he'd leave that sort of thing on the front porch, but it quickly became obvious that he'd wanted to talk to us face-to-face and hopefully get the inside scoop on what was happening. Suffice to say, Kara sent him on his way unsatisfied. Doorbell ring number two was Ken Klein from up the hill on Runnymede. Ken was in charge of the neighborhood book club and an aspiring writer. Divorced, with adult children, he lived alone in a meticulously kept colonial. He made a point of intercepting me outside every couple of weeks to talk. I'd be mowing the lawn or taking the trash cans down to the curb, I'd turn around, and he'd be right there. Ken was a nice enough guy, but it never felt like a normal conversation with him. It always felt like an interview. Today was more of the same. Questions, one after the other. I finally told him that the police had ordered me not to say anything, and that seemed to do the trick. Our next-door neighbors Mike and Molly Peele--yes, just like the Mike & Molly television show, which I'd never actually watched--showed up next. And who could blame them? Minutes earlier, they'd returned home from the grocery store to find a circus in front of their house. The police had even denied them entry to their own driveway. Instead, they'd had to park on the shoulder across the street. The four of us sat at the granite island in the kitchen, and I filled them in the best I could while Kara apologized and fed them brownies still warm from the oven. Kara always baked when she was stressed. After twenty minutes or so, they'd gone home to put away their groceries, and I was left with the distinct impression that they hadn't believed I'd told them everything I knew. The final surprise visitor of the morning was Juliet McGirk, one of Kara's closet friends. Juliet and her husband, Ian, owned one of the largest working farms in Harford County and it just happened to be located about a mile down the road from us. The McGirks were good, hardworking people, kind and generous to a fault. Our children had gone to school together from kindergarten all the way up through high school, and the families had grown tight over the years. Juliet had heard about what was happening from a mutual friend--the backyard gossip mill already operating in full force--and driven her ATV to the intersection down the road and walked the rest of the way in. Knowing that Juliet came from a family of experienced hunters, I posed to her the same question I'd asked Lieutenant McClernan a short time earlier regarding the possibility of someone hunting deer out of season. Her answer was typically "McGirk"--which is to say gracefully forthright and devoid of unnecessary treacle. She'd immediately offered a dismissive shake of her head and said, "Not likely around here. I know you're hoping against hope, Rich, but I gotta tell you: I think that's a big old bag of bad news sitting out there in front of your house." As it turned out, she was right. 8 "I'm afraid I have some disturbing news." Lieutenant McClernan crossed her legs, a worn leather portfolio resting on her lap. The detective I'd spoken with earlier--the lieutenant had introduced him as Detective Sergeant Anthony Gonzalez--sat at the opposite end of the sofa. His posture was so uniformly rigid it made me uncomfortable. I wondered if he was doing it on purpose or if, perhaps, he was ex-military. You spend enough time hanging around with cops and you start thinking these things. "The bag you discovered on your property this morning contained human remains." Behind me, Kara made a groaning sound. She was sitting in my favorite reading chair by the window. I was perched on the ottoman at her feet. "We really can't share much more at the present time," McClernan continued. "All the evidence we have is being processed." I wasn't sure if I could trust my voice to speak. "Any idea when the bag was left there?" "That's something we're hoping you two can help us with." She gestured to her partner. "Detective Gonzalez spoke with several of your neighbors, but they didn't have much to offer." "Neither of your neighbors directly across the street have any prior knowledge of the bag," he said, consulting his notepad. "The Stevensons took their dog for a walk last night shortly before nine thirty. They don't believe the bag was present at that time, but it was dark, and they could've missed it. Mr. Stevenson left for work at seven this morning, but his regular route takes him in the opposite direction. Mrs. Stevenson is working from home today." He flipped to the next page. "Mr. and Mrs. Halliday were both in bed by nine o'clock last night. Their daughters are at the beach, so it's just the two of them. Mr. Halliday is almost positive the bag wasn't there when he arrived home from work yesterday at six fifteen or so. Neither of them left the house this morning until they noticed all the commotion out front." I listened attentively to every word the detective was saying, but I still couldn't take my eyes off his damn mustache. It was getting ridiculous, and if the topic of our conversation hadn't been so somber, I might've found the whole thing funny. I felt like a middle school kid sitting in the front row of math class, staring at a humongous booger dangling from his teacher's nose. Any minute now I was going to lose it. "Is your son home?" he asked, rubbing his mustache with the tip of his thumb, and for a moment I was certain he was reading my mind. "Billy's working at a lacrosse camp. He left early this morning and won't be back until dinner." "I'll want to talk to him later. Would he have called or texted if he'd seen the bag when he left this morning?" "Probably not," I said. "But 95's in the opposite direction, so he wouldn't have gone that way." The detective wrote something in his notebook. Kara squeezed my shoulder. "What time did you pick up dinner last night?" "It was pretty late... maybe seven thirty, seven forty-five." "Did you notice anything at all unusual?" Gonzalez asked. I thought about it for a moment before answering, wanting to be sure. "Nothing I can remember." He looked at Kara next. "I spent all day working in the yard. I didn't see a thing." Consulting his notebook again. "Mr. Chizmar, when we spoke earlier, you mentioned that you and your wife have been the subject of frequent pranks related to Joshua Gallagher. Your wife even filed a complaint with the sheriff's department." "I wouldn't exactly say frequent, but yes, there have been some incidents." "Anything recent?" I turned around and looked at Kara. "Maybe a couple of months ago?" She shook her head. "Less than that. The mannequins. You were in Texas or Florida." "Mannequins?" the detective asked. "There was a chapter in Chasing the Boogeyman called 'The House of Mannequins' and--" "I'm familiar with your book, Mr. Chizmar." "Oh, okay..." Not I read your book . Or I enjoyed your book . Just I'm familiar with your book. Sensing that I was flustered, Kara swooped in to save me, something she'd been doing for as long as I could remember. "Someone hung a couple of mannequins on the fence in front of the pond. They were naked and splashed with red paint to make it look like blood. Pennies had been glued to their eyes." The detective scribbled away. When he was finished, he looked up at me. "Any recent threats?" "Not really. I get a lot of emails and letters from readers. Some are fans. Some not so much. Gallagher's groupies can get a little rough sometimes, but I usually just ignore them." "How rough?" McClernan asked. I shrugged. "Mainly just insults and name-calling. 'Your book sucks.' 'Your movie sucks.' 'Your whole family sucks.' That sort of thing. A few months ago, someone accused me of coercing Gallagher to make a false confession. Someone else claimed that I'd helped Gallagher kill the three Edgewood girls and set him up to take the blame." "You save all the emails?" Detective Gonzalez asked. "I do. I have a file. The letters, too." "I'll want to take a look at those." "The message board detectives and the true crime fanatics are the worst." Kara scooted to the edge of her chair. "I hate to say it but especially the ones who have lost someone." The detective looked up. "How so?" "They're pushy and rude and don't take no for an answer. A few of them even showed up at the house." "When was this?" McClernan asked. I could tell she was surprised I'd never mentioned it. "Sometime last fall," I said. "And again right before Christmas," Kara added. "Remember that older couple?" I nodded. "Most of them have good intentions. They're just a little... intense. They've read about how I'm the only person Gallagher's talking to, so they think I have all the answers. They're desperate for answers." Kara gave me a look. "It doesn't help that the movie makes it appear like you two were best friends growing up." There was a sudden buzzing sound and--in unison--all four of us checked our cell phones. "It's Noah," Kara said. "I better take this." She got up and walked out of the room. Detective Gonzalez looked at me. "Noah's your youngest son?" "Yes. He's spending the summer in Charlottesville." The detective glanced over his shoulder into the foyer. "I noticed when we came in that you have security cameras on your porch. Have either you or your wife reviewed the footage from last night?" "We haven't had time with so many people stopping by." It was the truth, but checking the cameras hadn't even crossed my mind. And it should have. I felt stupid. "Besides, none of the cameras reach the yard in front of the fence. Too far away." "They still could've picked up something important," Lieutenant McClernan said. The detective flipped the page of his notepad. "What do you say we take a look and find out?" 9 The digital footage didn't show much of interest. At least, not at first. At 9:33 p.m., a compact car with a lit-up Domino's Pizza sign attached to the roof slows down in front of the house, almost coming to a complete stop, before accelerating and going on its way. At 10:59 p.m., Mike and Molly's sheepdog, Leo, wanders by the front porch, sniffing the azalea bushes on either side of the stone walkway. Appearing to look directly into the camera, he lifts his leg and pees on Kara's favorite rosebush before trotting away toward the side yard. Most likely heading for a late-night dip in the pond. Twenty minutes later, he briefly reappears on his way home. At 1:13 a.m., a chubby raccoon strolls by with not a care in the world. At 2:37 a.m., a Bel Air police cruiser traveling east on Southampton Road swings into the left-hand entrance of the driveway and quickly reverses back onto the street. The officer behind the wheel--it's impossible to tell if it's a man or a woman--turns on the flashers and speeds off in the direction from which they just came. Detective Gonzalez noted all of this in his notepad. There were two moments on the video--11:44 p.m. and 3:24 a.m.--where a pedestrian appeared to walk along the street in front of the house. In both instances, the subjects were too far away and resembled little more than dark, misshapen blobs moving horizontally across the screen. Kara tried several times to zoom in, but that only made it worse. The problem with most doorbell cameras--because of their tiny lenses and restricted sight lines--was the further away you got from the camera's designated target area, the fewer details you were able to capture. In the foreground of Kara's laptop screen appeared a close-up view of our front porch and the winding stone walkway leading to the driveway. Everything here was captured in sharp definition. We could even glimpse a family of moths fluttering around the porch light. In the center of the screen was the upper portion of our U-shaped driveway and the majority of the lawn and trees--these images appeared in moderate detail, their edges somewhat softened and darkened by shadow. Finally, along the top portion of the screen was both of the driveway's dual entrances, separated by a low stone wall and lit by a pair of decorative lampposts, as well as a forty- or fifty-yard stretch of Southampton Road. The vast majority of this area was obscured in a blurry haze. "Can we try another camera?" Detective Gonzalez asked, not bothering to hide his impatience. Kara tapped away at the keyboard and hit Return. A narrow window opened in the upper right corner of the laptop screen--and most of our backyard appeared in crystal-clear clarity. "That's 4K right there," Lieutenant McClernan said, clearly impressed. "I had the security system installed after that business with the mannequins," Kara said. "There's a total of seven cameras. Two in front of the house, two in back, one on each side, and one on the garage." She leaned closer to the screen, biting her lip, something she'd always done when concentrating on a difficult task. "Now let's see if I can remember how to do this." A moment later, second and third overlapping windows popped up. The side yard by the pond and the front of the garage. A few more taps on the keyboard and all three images merged into one and disappeared. Then, a single large window bloomed at the center of the computer screen--and there was the bottom half of the front yard and Southampton Road beyond. Several uniformed officers stood in a group on the roadside. One was pointing at the house. The footage was so clear I could practically read the name tag on his uniform. "I should be able to pull up archived footage..." She swiped her thumb and a scroll bar appeared at the top of the screen. "What time are we looking for?" The detective consulted his notebook. "Try 11:44 p.m. first." Kara worked her magic--and the scene instantly changed from day to night. The time code at the lower left corner of the window read 11:42 p.m. The street was empty. Leaves stirred on a tree branch from a passing breeze. The seconds ticked away. A minute passed. And then another. Suddenly, there came a scraping sound in the distance, slowly gaining in volume, settling into a rhythm. A moment later, a jogger appeared from the right side of the screen. A middle-aged man, bald, dressed in red shorts and a baggy gray sweatshirt, moving slow and steady. "Recognize him?" McClernan asked. I shook my head. "No, I don't think so." "Not me," Kara said. The man jogged off-screen, and in my mind's eye, I pictured him continuing down the street. Another ten or fifteen seconds and he would pass the fire hydrant where I'd discovered the black bag. Was it already there waiting for me? "Try 3:24 next," the detective said. Kara pulled down the scroll bar again, typed in some numbers. The image on the screen jumped ahead to 3:27 a.m. "Too far." She typed again. 3:23 a.m. The road was silent and still. A tiny insect inspected the camera lens and then darted away. We waited. 3:24 a.m. More insects flitting around. The lonely call of a night bird. A faraway, muffled car engine. Then silence. 3:25 a.m. A dark figure suddenly appeared. Kara gasped and backed away from the laptop. The man walking along the shoulder of Southampton Road was dressed in dark clothing and wearing a burlap mask with the eyeholes cut out. Over his shoulder, he carried the black garbage bag. The man walked at an almost leisurely pace, staring at the house, as if he knew his journey was being recorded. And then he vanished off-screen. "I'm going to need a copy of this right away," Detective Gonzalez said, his voice thick with tension. He turned to Lieutenant McClernan. "Why not park by the woods and come in from the other end of the street by the traffic circle? There're no houses that way. No streetlights." "He wanted to be seen," she said. "This was a performance." 10 The rest of the day was a blur. Lieutenant McClernan sat inside with us, asking questions, for the better part of an hour. We went over the previous day and that morning's timelines again, and then she took down a detailed list of workers who had been at the house during the past several months. In addition to the security company Kara had hired, there was a home inspector from our insurance company, a roofing contractor, an HVAC man, the pool maintenance folks, and a couple of landscaping crews. I'd learned the hard way that owning an old house was a lot like owning a used speedboat: They're both loads of fun and real pretty to look at on sunny days, but they're also big-time money pits. The work never ends. While the three of us were talking in the family room, Detective Gonzalez and a pair of techs were busy working on the security camera footage in the kitchen. I could hear most of the conversation--snippets like "fixed analog" and "megapixels" and "digital WDR"--but I'll be damned if I understood a single word of it. Outside, a state trooper had been stationed at the bottom of the driveway to prevent members of the media and overzealous neighbors from bothering us. I knew it was just a matter of time before news of what was inside the black bag went public--and once that happened, it would be chaos. Billy arrived home shortly after six and immediately hammered us with questions. Earlier in the afternoon, Kara had left him a voice mail, filling him in on everything that had happened. He'd called both of our cell phones repeatedly during his drive home, but we'd turned off our ringers a couple hours earlier and missed the calls. By the time he walked in the breezeway door he was nearly bursting with anticipation; he reminded me a lot of myself in that regard, and as often was the case, I wrestled with whether that was a good thing. You could see the flush of excitement on his face when I told him that Detective Gonzalez wanted to ask him a couple of questions. As soon as dinner was finished, Billy hurried outside to see if he could track him down, but the detective had already left. A short time later, he went upstairs to take a shower and work on an essay for his Patreon page. We hadn't heard a peep from him since. The black bag--I could no longer think of it as a garbage bag now that I knew what had been stored inside it--had been taken away hours earlier. The runners of police tape remained in place along the fence and front yard. As dusk approached, there were still a half dozen uniformed officers and plainclothes detectives canvassing the area. The crowd of onlookers from this morning had finally dispersed shortly after noon, once they'd realized there wasn't going to be any kind of a grand reveal, only to be replaced later in the evening by an even larger group--mostly men and teenagers this time. News crews from Channel 45 and Channel 7 (a Washington, D.C., affiliate) remained at the scene, huddled inside their vans and trucks, eating soggy microwave dinners from 7-Eleven and Wawa, cursing their competition, most of whom were already back at the station or drinking cocktails at their favorite Towson watering holes after filing their live reports for the early broadcasts. As expected, the internet was abuzz with the news. True crime message boards, websites, and blogs--all ran rampant with speculation. Wannabe detectives and cyberspace lookie-loos flooded TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook. The evening news programs aired a number of tantalizing visuals--close-ups of the plastic shields blocking the view of the black bag; stone-faced police officers manning the roadblocks at either end of Southampton Road; and wide-angle, panning shots of the front of our house, which appeared rather ominous in the late afternoon shadows--but very little information of note. In a now viral video clip, Lieutenant McClernan confirmed that a mysterious object had been discovered on the property of a Southampton Road residence and promised "more details as soon as they become available." Stephanie Stevenson, our neighbor across the street, was interviewed live by a Channel 13 reporter and went out of her way to emphasize that "nothing like this has ever happened around here before. This is normally a very peaceful neighborhood." Surprisingly, our name was never mentioned during the broadcast. That would change soon enough. 11 Later that night, while Kara took a bath, I sat outside in the backyard with the dogs. All day long, I'd been waiting for her to get angry--to cry or yell or throw something and to blame me for the man in the mask whose image we'd captured on camera--but so far that hadn't happened. Instead, she seemed almost numb. I couldn't blame her. That's exactly how I was feeling. Even the dogs sensed that something was wrong. They were particularly skittish and needy, pooling around my ankles, barking at every random sound and movement. Nighttime was a busy time in the pitch-dark fields and woods behind our house. Lots of deer and foxes on the move. Geese arguing over at the pond. The pups were used to it and normally minded their own business. But not tonight--they were agitated. JJ, the star of this morning's misadventure, was the youngest and the largest of the pack. His three siblings--Cujo, Ripley, and Odie, in order of seniority--were tiny little things. Doodle-something-or-others. Stuffed animals come to life. If they stood on their hind legs, they could just about nuzzle my kneecap. Something moved in the darkness down by the springhouse and all four of them charged off in that direction, a cacophony of barking and growling piercing the night. I begrudgingly got up from the lawn chair in which I was sitting and walked closer for a better look. As I approached the far corner of the fenced-in portion of our yard, the growling intensified, and I turned on the flashlight on my cell phone. The springhouse had been built over two hundred years ago--making it the oldest such structure in all of Harford County--and it was haunted by the restless spirit of an ancient witch. At least, that's what I told the boys after we moved in. They'd never really bought the story, but somewhere along the line, I'd started believing it myself. One of the hazards of my job. Now, I was fairly terrified of the place. As I shone the flashlight beam at the low-ceilinged doorway and along the stone walls and slanted roof, I caught a glimpse of something pale and round hovering in the shadows. To my tired eyes, it looked a lot like a man's face--or a mask. And it was staring right at me. For one breathless moment, standing there alone in the darkness, I was reminded of a long-ago night outside the Meyers House in Edgewood, when my friend Jimmy Cavanaugh and I had almost certainly witnessed the Boogeyman fleeing swiftly into the night. Startled, I jerked backward and immediately tripped over an exposed tree root, fell onto my ass, and dropped my cell phone. By the time I found it in the high grass and stood up again, the face--which I was 90 percent certain I'd imagined--was gone. "What a dumbass," I whispered to the dogs, grateful they couldn't tattle on me. I switched off the flashlight and started back toward the house--and that's when my phone rang. I glanced at the glowing screen: UNKNOWN CALLER. Probably too late for a reporter, but if it was, I was hanging up. "Hello?" There was a loud beep and then a familiar automated voice came on the line. "I have a collect call from the Cumberland Penitentiary from inmate..." "Josh Gallagher." "... will you accept the charges?" I stopped walking. Even after all this time, it was always the same. My palms went instantly sweaty. My heart started thumping inside my chest. "Yes." Another beep, then: " I hear you had some trouble at home today ." "You could say that." " I want to assure you I had nothing to do with it ." A brief hesitation. "I know that." " Do you? " "Yes." " And how is your lovely wife? " "My wife is none of your business." " I don't blame you for being in a foul mood. Today must've been very upsetting for all of you ." "How much do you know?" " I'd say I know a bit more than what the local news is sharing at this point ." " How do you know?" " C'mon, now, Rich. You know I have my sources ." "I have to go." " Come see me. We have lots to talk about ." I ended the call and went inside. 12 CRIME TIME MESSAGE BOARD Thread: Somethin's up in Boogeyman Land!!! Started: June 3, 2022 Page 1 of 36 luciouslolita you guys hear the news?? hella cops at chizmar's house today. and I mean alllll day. they found something in his yard Ricky Thunder Any guesses on what it was? Doc Watson Dead body. Parker Lowe murder weapon MisterBones Publicity stunt for the movie. Those MFers have no shame. Serena I go to summer school with a girl who lives in the neighborhood across the street. One of her friends said it was a bomb. Her little brother says it was a duffel bag. Martina Roth Whatever it was, it's gone now. I just drove by his house like ten minutes ago! 13 Kara and I were upstairs getting ready for bed when a "Breaking News" chyron flashed on the television screen, interrupting tonight's episode of MasterChef Junior . When the intro music faded and the lead anchor--a heavily Botoxed Harrison Ford lookalike--glanced up from the sheaf of papers he was holding and said, " Grisly news today for one local Bel Air family. Earlier this morning, human remains were discovered on the Southampton Road property of Richard and Kara Chizmar, " Kara nearly spit a mouthful of toothpaste all over the TV. Instead, it showered the curtains behind it and slowly dribbled into a puddle on the hardwood floor. " Richard Chizmar is a New York Times bestselling true crime author of numerous books focusing on Joshua Gallagher, also known as the Edgewood Boogeyman. Gallagher was responsible for the murders of four young women during the summer and fall of 1988. Thanks to DNA samples recovered from a crime scene, Gallagher was finally arrested in September 2019 and has since admitted to the additional murders of more than... " "I hate this so much," Kara said, sitting down on the bed. She looked like she wanted to cry. I sat beside her. "It'll be okay." " A former neighbor and childhood family friend of Gallagher's, Richard Chizmar remains the only journalist the confessed serial killer has spoken with since his arrest. In a deal struck with detectives from the Maryland State Police, Gallagher agreed to reveal details of additional unknown victims in exchange for exclusive interview sessions with Chizmar. This controversial arrangement sparked an outcry among..." "You keep saying that, but how do you know it'll be okay?" she asked. "You don't." My pale face suddenly appeared in front of a tangle of microphones on the television screen. There was a small hole in the sleeve of my T-shirt--somewhere in heaven, my poor mother was having a fit--and I looked a little manic with my hair sticking out from underneath my baseball cap and my too-wide eyes blinking in the glare of the camera lights. Over my shoulder, you could see Lieutenant McClernan and Detective Gonzalez standing next to each other at the mouth of the driveway. Kara used the remote to turn up the volume. "... once the investigation is concluded. Until then we have the utmost confidence in local law enforcement authorities." A reporter off-screen asked, " Do you think this morning's incident is connected in any way to the Boogeyman ?" My facial expression remained unchanged; I'd been expecting the question. " Joshua Gallagher is locked up in federal prison where he belongs. I don't see how it could be related ." "Mr. Chizmar! Mr. Chizmar! When did you find--" "I don't know why you talked to them," Kara said. "To get ahead of the story." I took her hand in mine. "McClernan thought it was the smart thing to do." "Did she also tell you to lie to their faces? C'mon, Rich--what we saw on the security footage is most definitely related to Joshua Gallagher. Hell, it might as well have been him." "McClernan said it's still too early to determine if it's a copycat or--" "What else could it be?" I shrugged. "A bad joke. Maybe someone stole a cadaver from a lab somewhere." "And dressed up as the Boogeyman and delivered it to our front yard in the middle of the night?" She shook her head. "I warned you something like this would happen. You write about this stuff long enough and you go on television and radio and talk about it, and you never know who's watching or listening. It's like you've become a magnet for psychos." "This is the first time anything like this has happened." "But it's been building," she said, her voice rising. "All the pranks and the hate mail. The weirdos who show up at your signings and post on all those message boards. Why can't you see that? Why can't you see that you're allowing Joshua Gallagher to control our lives?" "And how am I doing that?" "The book... the movie... the phone calls... the goddamn visits to the prison... it's like all that darkness is seeping inside of you. You've lost weight. You don't sleep. I'm worried about you--and so are the boys." "Which is exactly why I took a break to work on Looking Back . You know that." Inspired by the positive feedback I'd received regarding the autobiographical opening chapters of Chasing the Boogeyman --in which I reminisced about my idyllic coming of age in an all-American suburb--I'd spent the past six months, most of it in hotel rooms and diners, completing Edgewood: Looking Back , a nostalgic memoir focusing on the innocence and wonder of my childhood years. Both my agent and my publisher had been stridently opposed to the idea and had tried their best to talk me out of it--"No one's going to pay you six figures to write about you and your friends back when you were snot-nosed little kids, not with Joshua Gallagher waiting in the wings"--but in the end I'd held firm. The next Boogeyman book would have to wait. Kara was right; I needed to give my soul a rest from the shadows and spend a little more time basking in the sunshine. Besides, it wasn't as if anyone else was going to beat me to the story. "Then tell me this: Why do you keep talking to him? You have enough interview transcripts to write a dozen books. Why not make a clean break of it?" I looked at her. "You know why." "It's been almost three years and he's given up exactly three bodies. It's not worth it." "Tell the victims' families that." It was a cheap shot, but I felt cornered. "I feel for those families, I really do," she said, refusing to take the bait. "But I feel a whole lot more for my own family." "It won't be like this forever." "Won't it?" she said, and I could see tears forming in the corners of her eyes. "Do you realize that Joshua Gallagher has been a part of your life almost as long as I have?" I raised my hands in the air. "For Chrissakes, it's not a competition." "I know you, Rich. I know how your brain works. You won't stop trying to understand what happened--trying to understand him --until it's too late. It's almost like you blame some part of yourself for what happened. He's all you've thought about since the day he was arrested." "That's not true. I couldn't care less if I under--" "Just be quiet for once in your life and listen to me... it's time to get off this crazy ride." Most of the anger had leaked out of her voice. "Someone left fucking body parts in our yard last night. If that doesn't convince you it's time to walk away, then nothing will." I scooted closer to her on the bed. "Hey. It's going to turn out to be another stupid prank. Just wait and see." "You know what? I don't even care anymore." She laughed bitterly. "Isn't that terrible? I just want you far away from all of it." I took the remote control from her hand. "Let's just try to get some sleep. We'll both feel better in the morning." "I don't need sleep." She leaned over and hugged me tight. "I need you , you big dummy. And so do the boys." "I need you back," I whispered. Both of our faces were wet with tears. "And I hear you. I do. I promise I'll be care--" The doorbell rang downstairs. Kara and I held on to each other, both of us holding our breath, afraid to move, unwilling to let the world steal this moment away from us. The doorbell rang again. 14 When I looked out the peephole and saw Lieutenant McClernan standing on the front porch, my first instinct was to turn around and go back to bed. We'd had enough bad news for one day. Whatever she needed to say could surely wait until tomorrow morning. Instead, I took a deep breath and opened the door. "I'm really sorry to bother you so late." She didn't wait for an invitation. Stepping past me, she walked into the foyer. I closed the door behind us. "What's wrong?" I asked. "We've identified the body and I wanted you to hear the news from me first." "Okay." I glanced up the stairs and saw Kara waiting there, listening. "Do you know what yesterday's date was?" I thought about it. "Second of June." "And do you know the significance of that date?" Nothing came to mind, so I shook my head. "Yesterday was exactly thirty-four years since Natasha Gallagher was murdered. To the day ." I felt an invisible band tighten around my chest. "Jesus, that's right." "Someone circled the date on the calendar and spent last night cleaning up Joshua Gallagher's unfinished business. And I don't think they're done yet." "What do you mean, unfinished business?" I could hear Kara coming down the stairs behind me. "The remains you found on your property this morning belong to Anne Taylor Riggs, age fifty-one, resident of Willoughby Beach Road in Edgewood. She was reported missing last night by her..." The lieutenant was still talking, I could see her lips moving, but I could no longer hear what she was saying. The room had begun to spin. The floor tilted beneath my bare feet. Anne Taylor Riggs. Anne Riggs. Annie Riggs. I remembered her. Seventeen years old. Long, wavy hair. Freckles. Annie Riggs. Edgewood High School class president. Field hockey team captain. The girl with the pepper spray. And the sole survivor of Joshua's Gallagher's 1988 killing spree. Annie Riggs. Unfinished business. Excerpted from Becoming the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
