Two months later…
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was the geographic hub and principal urban center of the Harrisburg, Lebanon, Strafford, and Carlisle, which included Dauphin, Cumberland, Lebanon and Perry Counties. Deena Hopping had never actually lived in Harrisburg but she knew it offered modern downtown condominiums and townhouses to historic homes in quiet neighborhoods on the beautiful Susquehanna River; after all it was Pennsylvania’s Capital City. That’s what you learn when your best friend is a real estate agent like Arlene Balleza.
The Ronald Reagan Federal Building and Courthouse at 228 Walnut Street in is a twelve-story court, low-rise facility located in the central business district of the city. The building, built in 1966, was named for former President Ronald Reagan and is owned by the General Services Administration. If the courthouse looked like a structure from abroad it was a result of its international architectural style with curtain style façade system and glass façade material.
The United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, a district level federal court with jurisdiction over approximately one half of Pennsylvania, was housed within the building. It was here that Deena Hopping entered.
Due to security concerns, there is at present a proposal to move federal offices and the United States Courthouse into a new modern building. Nearly four years ago it was announced that the General Services Administration that the current structure located in downtown, would be demolished and be replaced with a new federal courthouse building. They had only recently chosen the site at Sixth and Reily streets in midtown Harrisburg. Because of its proximity to vehicular traffic on all sides, some security analysts had listed the Harrisburg building as one of the least secure federal office buildings in the nation. Supporters of the site at Sixth and Reily, where there is now a parking lot, have said development there will support and expand the revitalization in Harrisburg’s midtown without requiring demolition of historic or otherwise important structures.
Deena would always commit to memory the first anguished moments of the first court appearance of Frank Marsden. Seeing him in a suit, freshly groomed, seated before a throng of people in the courtroom, Deena was afraid to look across at him, for fear that if one moment their eyes met, she may be sucked into his macabre nightmarish world. Who would ever have thought her life would have taken such a wretched turn so quickly?
It was not until the clerk of the court had called the room to attention and the judge entered that the chills began to run down her spine.
Deena closed her eyes very tight and clenched her fists, torn somewhere between anger and relief, then muttering inwardly a few mouths of thankful prayers, Deena allowed herself a sigh.
It was only after the judge took his place and started his session that Deena looked at Frank Marsden and realized that the person she was looking at she had never really seen before. It wasn’t the Frank Marsden whom she was led to believe was a real estate owner and sane person who was renting out his house to her. Now, the total impression he gave at that time was conventional. To see him one might have thought Frank Marsden was a bank teller or an insurance salesman or some other benign occupation.
As the testimony began and the horrid accounts of what the prosecution said Frank Marsden did to those seven women and one man in the basement of the house located at 1420 South Douty Street, the person that Deena Hopping thought Frank Marsden had been became truly unrecognizable.
It was Frank Marsden, of course, but the figure seated at the defendant’s table now bore scarcely any resemblance to that somewhat enigmatic and unremarkable figure Deena had first met only months prior.
On the contrary, the Pennsylvania visitors were not there to sample the cultural amenities that the current nor the proposed midtown location would provide. When Judge Nelson Shadwick and his entourage arrived at the courthouse well past mid-morning, they went straight to Room 335. Judge Edwina C. Doescher, the usual occupant, had abandoned the sunny, cheerful chamber and accommodatingly moved into smaller quarters next door so the Federal crew could be more comfortable.
While only about half as large as his usual courtroom, Room 335 was much cheerier. It should have put everyone in a happy mood. From the beginning, through, Judge Shadwick was out of sorts. Breezing into the building in a dark, striped suit, he was met, not with the anonymity he expected, but chaos. TV lights almost blinded him and still-photographer’s strobes winked in his face and lit up the courtroom.
It seemed to put Judge Shadwick in a bad mood for the entire day. He without doubt came down hard on the media. Calling an ad hoc news conference, he laid down the law from his seat on the bench.
“There will be no photos of any prospective jurors or those who may finally be chosen,” Shadwick barked. “You will not be permitted to follow them down the street or talk to them. We want an atmosphere of calmness and dignity. I will not let you—the media—interfere with this trial. Disobedience,” Shadwick warned, “will result in immediate banishment from this and all courtrooms in this building. I will keep you out as long your presence here will be totally wasted.”
To make his point, he called up a panel of prospective jurors corresponding exactly to the number of available seats: sixty-eight. Since there was, therefore, no room for the press to sit, they would have to go. When a reporter from the Delaware Coast Press asked if he would allow a pool representative to remain, Judge Shadwick turned a deaf ear. And when another reporter from Philadelphia protested, Shadwick angrily told him to go “file a suit.”
Deena had to allow herself to smile at the last comment. The media had made everyone’s lives in and around Strafford a living nightmare with their nonstop presence and persistent questioning of all the residents in town.
At long last the proceedings got started much to the happiness to all inside the courtroom. Deena, like everyone else, was sizzling. Even though the air conditioner was going full blast and the room was cool enough to serve as a meat locker, steam was rising off just about everyone’s brow. Shadwick was still fuming at the press, which was mad enough to throw all in attendance out of the courtroom.
Frank Marsden’s attorney, a well respected defense lawyer from Virginia, named Kurt Sanson, was boiling because he did not like the look of the southern Pennsylvania panel, and Judge Shadwick had ignored his request to take the whole trial and its show on the road. On top of that, no one on the panel looked too excited about the prospect of spending half the upcoming year in Harrisburg when they could be in Washington, D.C. or Philadelphia.
Deena noticed that the only person in the courtroom who remained unruffled despite the turbulence surrounding the trial and media circus was the prosecutor, Saundra Thornsberry.
The proceeding began in earnest, finally. The first potential jurors were being called up for possible service before the court and the attorneys. It turned out to be a short-lived appearance for the jury pool. Within minutes most were dismissed by Sanson, using the first of his peremptory challenges. Since this was a new proceeding, both he and Thornsberry started over again with their allotments. Sanson was now down to eighteen. Looking puzzled but relieved, he seemed to Deena to be chewing his gum at sixty bites a minute.
Deena had no idea how boring a real trial was. It was nothing like she had seen on television or the movies.
Each lawyer, both prosecution and defense, began to use up their remaining peremptory. It wasn’t until the seventh venire man of the afternoon that both Sanson and Thornsberry found a juror they each could live with. Somewhat surprisingly, it was an outspoken male nurse married to a state trooper for over twenty years. At first this caused Sanson some concern. Tilting back in his chair and stroking his goatee with his left hand, he posed a carefully worded question.
“If a state trooper were to say something was black and somebody else said it was white, would you believe it was black because a state trooper said it?”
“I don’t think so,” he fired back. “I know some troopers who are color blind.”
His response drew laughter from those in attendance in the courtroom, including Deena. The response prompted another rebuke from Judge Shadwick. “This is not a comedy club, please contain your laughter.”
For a while it looked as though the nurse had stepped over the lines as an undesirable by admitting that his views could be influenced by his friends and family and even the media at times. On the contrary, Thornsberry led him out of the mire by eliciting his assurances that he could view the situation with an open mind.
Deena was beginning to believe that there was no chance of getting both the defense and the prosecution to agree on twelve jurors.
Over the next several hours many more prospective jurors came and went. At the rate that each was expending their peremptoriness; things were not looking good at selecting a jury for the trial.
Deena and the rest of those in attendance felt that this was supposed to be a great day for the community but instead it was turning into a blue day. Everyone was feeling the same, except for Frank Marsden. Of all those present, he was the only one who seemed to be enjoying himself. Clad in a different pair of pants but the same old jacket he had worn on several of his previous court appearances, he perched alertly at the defense table, his gray-green eyes sparkling and jumping anxiously. While Judge Shadwick plodded through his usual litany of questions in his best monotone voice, Frank Marsden rocked back and forth in a padded swivel chair that had replaced the wooden straight-back assigned to him in his prior appearances. Twice Frank Marsden laughed aloud, and several times he got into deep, energetic discussions with Sanson. When it came time for him to return to his cell for the night and the delight of most in the courtroom, Deena included, he even forgot to shuffle. Instead Frank Marsden tilted his head to the side and looked at Deena. It was then he smiled and she felt uneasy, almost ill.
It was as if he knew something she did not.
* * * *
Mike Leopold’s home was something right out of history of America. A shanty in the woods that looked like it belonged in the eighteenth century, nestled in a cute little spot in the wintry landscape where, despite its charming and picturesque appeal, dark and deadly creatures could lay within.
It consisted of a foundation of stones or a series of stone piles, but like those homes built this way if you use stones and expect your house to remain plumb where the winters are severe you must dig holes for them at least three feet deep in order to go below the frost-line. Gary Chapel noticed that Leopold needed to fill in those holes with broken stone, on top of which he could make a pile of stones to act as support for the sills; but the simplest method is to use posts of locust, cedar, or chestnut; or, if this is too much trouble, pack the dirt tightly, draining it well by making it slope away from the house in every direction, and laying the foundation sills on the level earth. In that case Mike Leopold needed better use the chestnut wood for the sills; spruce will rot very quickly in contact with the damp earth and pine will not last long under the same circumstances.
“I need to lay off the cold medication,” Chapel said as he parked in the rutted lane outside the shanty and followed a broken path in the snow to the front door. It was just a house—quaint, certainly—but a house in the woods and nothing more. In his five plus years with the department, he had been to many a backwoods cabin, cottage, or shanty in the forest just like this one. Mike Leopold’s was no different. Not at all.
He had left the courthouse earlier after feeling his time had been wasted sitting there watching the two lawyers argue over potential jurors. His forty-eight hours had nearly come and went.
Now, however, he had to deal with another possible fiasco—Mike Leopold.
On the tiny front porch, he rapped on the door just as he heard deep growls emanating from the other side of the door. Oh, right. Mike keeps dogs or mutts, mongrels or something. Presumably, he would keep them at bay.
“Jasper, quiet!” a man’s voice commanded and the noise from within instantly subsided. A second later Mike himself opened the door. “Detective.” Wearing an old, tattered cardigan sweater over thick sweats and a black turtleneck, he offered the slightest of smiles. “I had hoped that you may stop by.” He stepped out of the doorway and inclined his head, a wisp of graying hair showing prominently on the side of his head. “Please, come in.”
The dog, Jasper, lay on a padded bed near an antique-looking and dusty sofa. A fire burned brightly in the hearth. Every window ledge and end table was covered with pots of small, trailing plants that were brown and drooping, and softly burning candles, dripping wax.
“It’s about time you came to talk to me.” Leopold waved Chapel into his seat and the dog, watching every movement, didn’t rouse.
“I’m taking a chance in listening to your tall tales about monsters, Mr. Leopold.”
“Does that mean that you don’t believe me? Then that makes me ask why are you even here?”
“I didn’t come here to argue.”
“What do you want from me?” asked Leopold.
“I want you to tell me about the monster who you claim lives in the basement of your former childhood house on Douty Street.”
Mike Leopold stared out the window, where the tiny flames of the candles reflected on the panes and ice outside. “Do you really want to hear about the monster? Or have you come to make fun of me like everyone else has in this town since that night of the fire?”
“Please, just tell me what you th—I mean—what is in the basement.”
“I first saw the monster a month or so before the fire. But I heard it before that. It talked to me inside my head…it asked me to do things for it.”
A frisson of disbelief tickled the thin little hairs on Chapel’s nape. “What type of things did it want you to do?”
“Bring it things.”
“What things?”
Leopold turned to face the detective again and her pale eyes cut straight to Chapel’s soul. “Animals.”
“Where did you get these animals? Did you kill them?”
“No. It wanted them alive. I set traps in the backyard, caught squirrels, brought home stray dogs, and looked for other ways to bring it animals.”
Detective Gary Chapel held up his hand. “Now, wait a minute—what did this…”
“Monster.” Leopold could see that Chapel was having a hard time in saying the word.
“Okay, monster—what did it do with these animals?”
“It would at first cover them with this horrible smelling slime,” Leopold explained. “Then, well, it would…”
“What?”
“It devoured them.”
Chapel shook his head. “This sounds crazy, Mr. Leopold.”
“I know. But I am telling you the truth!”
“It sounds to me that all you are doing is trying to justify your actions of killing animals as a kid,” Chapel said.
“No, no…you got it all wrong…I didn’t kill anything or anyone. I wanted to kill the monster and lord knows I tried…”
“The fire?”
“Yes, I started the fire that burned down my house,” Leopold replied with tears in his eyes.
“And killed your family,” Chapel added callously.
“No. My family was already dead. The monster had prepared them by covering them in its slime. You see they were dead or dying at the least. I saved them from a far worse fate.”
On the floor beside Leopold, the mongrel dog stretched and yawned, large, yellow teeth showing before Jasper closed his golden eyes and slept again, his breath whistling softly through her nostrils.
“Okay, let me get this straight. Your family, your mother, father, and brother and sister, were all covered in this slime by the monster, right? This means they were dead or to be eaten?”
“They couldn’t move or talk. They were dead, disappearing inside the slime.”
Almost as if he were in a self-imposed trance, Leopold stared into the fire, then started talking about seeing a tentacle. Gary Chapel tried to press him when he trailed off, but Leopold could give nothing more concrete: no more descriptions, details, or features of the monster.
Nothing to make Detective Chapel believe Mike Leopold’s story.
Leopold at a snail’s pace surfaced and said, “You need to stop the monster,” which only fueled Chapel’s feelings of disbelief and anxiety.
“You know about the arrest and crimes of Frank Marsden who was living in the basement of that house, correct?” Detective Chapel asked.
“Yes. But he isn’t the monster.”
“Okay, say there is a monster in the basement…why didn’t we find it when we, the police, searched the basement, Mr. Leopold?”
“It lives under the basement, below ground, detective.”
Chapel stared blankly at Leopold as thoughts and images of the filled in hole ran through his mind. “There was an area of the basement floor that looked as if it could have been a hole once.”
“Did you unearth it?” Leopold’s face lit up.
“No. We had all the evidence we needed to prove our case against Marsden.”
“Except the bodies of those women, right?” Leopold said.
“Correct.”
“Listen, Detective Chapel, you need to open that hole and kill the monster inside it. The disappearances won’t stop; the killings are not over…”
“I don’t know…”
Leopold went to stand before Chapel. “You know I speak the truth, don’t you? Deep down inside you know that this isn’t over. I feel it too! Have there been more disappearances?”
“Yes, but nothing too close to Strafford.”
Chapel’s cell phone rang. “Hello, yes…okay…I see…all right I’m on my way.”
After hanging up he looked at Leopold. “Mr. Leopold I will take a look again at the basement and that hole. That is all I can promise right now.”
“Fair enough I just hope you do find that thing and kill it before it kills someone else’s family,” Leopold said calmly.
With that Detective Gary Chapel made his way out.