IF RUSSELL DANZIGER had been a difficult man for me to reach the first time I tried, it was going to be near-impossible for me to do this time.
He’d stormed out of my office in anger after I lured him there to surreptitiously get his DNA because I thought—wrongly, as it turned out—that he could be the The Wanderer serial killer.
Now he unexpectedly turned up in connection with the man who I suspected murdered the first victim, Becky Bluso. Except, that man could not be The Wanderer either because he died before the other murders took place.
I had absolutely no idea what any of this meant, but I knew that I needed to find out.
I told it all to Terri Hartwell who seemed as stunned as I was by Danziger’s links with Dale Blanchard and Eckersville.
“Danziger never said anything to you about Blanchard or Eckersville?” I asked.
“Not a word.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. He just happened to serve in the Army with the guy you had a romance with in high school? He just happened to donate a large amount of money to build a library in the town of Eckersville where you grew up? And now he works with you on your political campaign? That can’t all be a coincidence.”
I asked her how and when she’d first met Danziger.
“It was several years ago,” she said. “I was starting to do some media stuff, and he approached me one day about helping to manage my career. He was already successful at that point. He’d made a lot of money for himself and other people. I had no idea why he was interested in me, but I jumped at the chance.
“He was the one who helped me get the radio talk show gig. Then he got me big media exposure, big ratings, big money for it. After that, he convinced me to run for the district attorney job. He pulled all the strings and got me elected. Now I’m counting on him for the mayoral race. I owe a lot to Russell Danziger. A whole helluva lot.”
“Did he ever tell you why he decided to … well, pluck you from obscurity and make you a media and political star?” I asked.
“He said it was because I was so talented.”
“And you believed him?”
“What other reason could it have been?”
“Are you sure he wasn’t romantically interested in you?”
“Like I told you before, I don’t think Russell is romantically interested in anyone.”
“And he never mentioned anything about Eckersville or any of the people there, like Dale Blanchard?”
“I didn’t think he even knew I was from Eckersville. I always just said I grew up in a small Midwestern or Indiana town in my bio material. I never talked about Eckersville. Once I left there, I became Terri Hartwell. That’s the truth.”
I believed her. She hadn’t always told me the whole truth about everything, but then none of us really do. I was pretty sure this was all true though.
“We have to talk to Danziger,” I said.
“We?”
“You and me.”
“He’d never go for that. Not after what happened at your office last time.”
“You gotta try, we have no other choice.”
“Yeah, I know …” she sighed.
Terri Hartwell.
Dale Blanchard.
Eckersville, Indiana.
And now Russell Danziger.
None of this added up for me, no matter how many different ways I tried to approach it.
Terri Hartwell called me back later that day.
“We can meet with Russell Danziger at his apartment in an hour,” Hartwell said.
She gave me an address on Sutton Place and said she’d meet me out front.
“Damn, how did you pull this off so quickly?”
“I can be very persuasive.”
“What did you tell Danziger?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t tell him you were going to be with me.”
“Jeez …”
“It was the only way to do it, Clare.”
“Well, this should be interesting. Thanks, I guess.”
“I want to know the answers as much as you do,” Hartwell said.