The murderer’s day begins.
This morose thought popped into my head like some aberrant, obsessive vision the next morning. It was 7 o’clock, God help me, and I was paying a return visit to Verasco’s trailer park.
I had found I-95 in my drunken state the night before and headed north a few miles toward West Palm before coming to my senses about driving all the way home. I turned around at the next exit and returned to the same motel, got four hours of restless sleep, then found myself staring at the ceiling and rehashing for the hundredth time the sad and frustrating details of the Madigan case.
Finally admitting that Morpheus had abandoned me, I showered and dressed quickly before second thoughts about additional sleep could take over. I’m not an early riser. In the lobby, complimentary coffee and doughnuts helped jump-start a few bleary-eyed guests who were either going fishing or catching a flight at nearby Fort Lauderdale International. A groggy overnight clerk, waiting for relief on the desk, munched on a doughnut while watching the morning news delivered by two insanely chirpy anchors. I sipped my coffee and felt sorry for them. Contempt might have been a more appropriate response, but today I could identify with anyone who had to get up at 4 a.m. to make a living.
At least this dynamic duo -- with their predictably idiotic inflections intact even at that hour -- had cushy television jobs. I’d recently read a groundbreaking magazine piece, soon to be a groundbreaking book, that eloquently punctured the myth that low-paying shit jobs with terrible hours were always preferable to welfare. It was the kind of journalism my newspaper couldn’t even approach; most newspapers couldn’t. Most magazines couldn’t.
A woman writer, testing the dubious underpinning of the Clinton administration’s plan to take people off welfare, had worked for two months in four different jobs in the food service industry and the hotel business in the Florida Keys. She told a harrowing story of how minimum wage work marginalized people, made them struggle so many hours for so little, made them sweat blood for a pittance.
A powerful piece. Its most indelible image was the writer’s early morning walks from the trailer park where she lived to one of the restaurants where she worked. The hash house sat on one of those edge-of-town (in this case, Key West) strips: fast food joints, motels, one or two high-rise hotels; tackiness thy name, as usual, is Florida. According to the writer, when she started her hard day’s walk to work, usually one or two other lone figures, carrying pathetic little lunch bags, trudged ahead of her toward similar hellish employment. It was a tableau so memorable it seemed journalistically irresponsible for someone not to have discovered it before. I wished it had been me; that kind of breakthrough article is not only enormously useful to the culture -- it justifies one’s existence.
When I finished my doughnut and coffee, I stepped out into the cool morning air, half expecting to see that scene replicated. It was the right hour and it was Florida. But the motel wasn’t that close to one of those godforsaken strips, and there wasn’t a trailer park in the immediate vicinity. I looked into darkness, the time just before dawn when the world still rested, more or less. On the local road running past the motel I saw the lights of big semis, crawling toward I-95, where they belonged.
I went back inside and checked out with the just-arrived dayside clerk, a young black woman whose boyfriend or husband had dropped her off as I watched in the darkness. She had said a polite good morning and it occurred to me that she was probably part of the barely solvent work force the magazine writer referred to; a motel clerk ranked only a shade better off than a waiter or hotel maid.
Then I drove to the trailer park. By the time I got there it was light, and that is when the phrase “the murderer’s day begins” came to me. I immediately knew its origins: since covering the Madigan case, and others of equal existential horror, I had often wondered about the post-murder psychology of killers. Assuming the Madigan killer or killers weren’t total sociopaths who felt nothing, what did they think of on the morning after? The way their victims looked as they died? The last words their victims uttered? The evasive action they’d taken to avoid detection? What their fugitive lives would now become? How they’d become killers?
The murderer’s day begins: I obviously came up with it because of the Madigan case. And the brilliant magazine piece and my presence -- awake -- at a Florida motel in the early morning hours also triggered it. But that was one of the good things about reporting that I’d recognized long ago: since you were not a captive of routine, chained to a desk for a designated period each day, you sometimes (the operative word) saw a situation in a fresh way, made connections not always made.
That chilling sentence, in any event, was all I came up with on my second visit to Point Southern. I found Verasco’s trailer again, grateful that the vigilant watchdog next door didn’t make an appearance. Maybe he was still asleep, dreaming of fresh, exposed legs. No one else was around either, man nor beast. Silence enveloped the park, a place that perhaps a couple of hundred people called home.
I saw no one on their way to work, no one staggering in from an all-night drunk. I did see a police cruiser and resisted the temptation to stroll over and ask the officer if he’d had any dealings with Verasco. I didn’t feel like explaining my business to a suspicious cop.
In fact, because I took up space in his sight line, I felt it necessary to knock on the door of the trailer I’d found the day before, though until I spotted the cop I’d pretty much decided there was no point in doing that again. But I tapped so lightly that it was unlikely I’d be heard, then shrugged and walked away, demonstrating satisfactorily to the cop, I hoped, that I had some mission.
As I approached my car, parked near the cop’s, he started his engine, breaking the morning silence, and drove off, moving slowly along the edge of the park. I followed him back to the main road, and when he took a right at a stop sign, I took a left, looking again for I-95, north to West Palm Beach. One of my first stops, early that afternoon, was Sandra Wilson’s. I called her from a pay phone at a gas station and told her I was coming, but she still seemed distracted when I arrived. I figured maybe she’d had a bad time at work. She worked part-time, in the mornings, as a paralegal with a Boynton Beach law firm.
She offered me a soda, as usual, and I declined. Also, as usual, she presented a different stage of her shifting long-term response to the tragic deaths in her family. Sandra’s new attitude: indifference, not inattention. She listened with minimal interest to the story of my encounter with Julie McAndrews, asking no questions, accepting my judgments with barely a flicker of skepticism or curiosity, showing no irritation at how long it took to tell her all this.
When I asked if she’d given up on the investigation, perhaps abandoned hope of finding Diane and Carolyn’s killer or killers, she confirmed it while denying it.
“It’s not that, it’s . . . “
“What, Sandra? What is it?”
“Well, you know how long it’s been. Why are you even asking me? Isn’t it obvious? For god’s sake, isn’t it clear to you what’s going on? It certainly is to me.” She shook her head, as if to jostle her thoughts into place. Her kitchen, I couldn’t help noticing, was spotless. No dishes stacked in the sink or sticky spots on the linoleum. Either she was recovering emotionally or, more likely, burying her grief in busy work.
“No, I wish it were,” I said. Her new attitude seemed more disheartening than the last stage -- intense grief ending in an outburst of tears.
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” she said in a voice devoid of emotion. “The police have other things to do -- don’t you watch television? I do. It seems they have a new case every day. I’m not blaming them that Diane and Carolyn aren’t priorities anymore. Why should they pursue a case that goes nowhere, why should they spin their wheels? I’ve just realized that -- I’ve just figured out what’s going on. And you know what?”
“What?”
“I feel a little better,” she said, thrusting her chin forward, sitting up just a bit taller. “I feel better not having any hope. I feel better moving through life like a zombie. I feel better not caring.”
“I don’t think you mean that, Sandra.”
“Yes, I do. Oh, yes, I do.” She stared at me directly, unflinching.
“Sandra, please. Look, can I tell you what I’ve picked up just in the last day or two? I think it may be a real break. I’m going to . . . “
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t want to hear it. The day you come here and tell me there’s been an arrest, then I’ll listen. I won’t listen now. I don’t care.”
“Sandra…”
“I don’t care.”
She held her stare, eyes burning, with a hostility that made me look away; it was almost as if somehow I had become complicitous in the murders. She was arguing her right to be indifferent. It was hardly my place to deprive her of that prerogative.
I said a few more words of by-now useless empathy and concern and left her alone again, coping through denial, functioning by not focusing, if that was possible, on the deaths of her sister and niece. But next time, perhaps, I might be able to deliver the kind of news that would make her listen. A pipe dream? Cautiously optimistic, I hoped not.
At Sunhaven Heights, the more things changed the more they remained the same, though spiffed up a little. The grounds crew had added some new shrubs and flowers near the office; a sign at the pool area said, “Closed for Renovations”; painters had swabbed a lighter shade of blue on the building next door to Diane’s apartment.
Cosmetic alterations: no way existed to mask what had happened there, to camouflage the fact that two women had died at the hands of a cold-blooded killer, who raped the younger woman first, then executed both with bullets to their heads. Who had escaped, seemingly, without leaving a trace.
At the Madigan apartment, I knocked on the door, but the cop who now lived there didn’t answer. I went downstairs to the apartment of the woman who worked at the college, but again no answer. I wondered if she still lived there. She had seemed a little out of her element. Maybe the murders had motivated her to move; others had.
I considered knocking on Fred Granger’s door, but figured he was soaking up rays and guarding lives. On a hunch, I walked over to the tennis courts. I knew he played a lot and the weather that day was ideal, in the mid-80’s with a few clouds making a rare appearance, too early for afternoon thunderstorms.
To my surprise I recognized Granger in the far court, a lithe figure who went to the net well and had a crushing forehand. I learned this in a few minutes of watching from a distance. Granger was playing a young man seemingly less powerful, about the same age.
To avoid Granger spotting me immediately, I ducked inside the rental office and chatted a few minutes with one of the employees, a tough-looking blonde named Laura Hidalgo whose brain I’d picked earlier.
Laura was a reader of mysteries and -- inappropriately, I thought -- applied fictional theories to the murders that had happened in her own complex. Though she had to deal with people moving out, and with police inquiries about a real murder case, Laura still seemed to perceive the killings of Diane and Carolyn (whom she’d known only vaguely, but professed to have “liked a lot”) as having happened somewhere else, or in a book or a movie. Given her job, it was probably a necessary distancing, and Laura hardly operated on an acute emotional pitch, but I still found her coldness unsettling.
I’d gotten used to her, though, and we talked amiably about the weather, her tennis game, the improvements at the complex. I made a point of not bringing up the Madigan case, and she finally asked when I was going to.
“Well, I figured if there was something new you’d tell me,” I said. “Is there?”
“Nope. Nothing. In fact, I hardly think about it anymore. Does that make me a bad person, do you think?”
“Probably makes you a realist.”
“That’s me. Well, look, I’ve got to see a client. Nice of you to stop by. I’ll let you know if I hear anything, but I don’t expect to.”
I followed Laura out of her office. She drove off in one of those carts used to chauffeur clients around the complex. I glanced over at the tennis courts. The timing was perfect. I heard Granger’s opponent say, “That’s it,” after missing a shot, and within minutes they had picked up their gear and were walking toward me. I made my approach as casual as possible.
“Well, how’s the game, Fred?”
“What?” Granger didn’t seem to recognize me at first. Then he looked annoyed. “What the hell do you want?”
“Just chatting with a friend of mine who works here,” I lied.
“You gonna move here?” Granger smirked. “Hope it’s not near me.”
“Don’t worry. I’m quite comfortable where I am. Look, I’d like to ask you a quick question, if you don’t mind.”
“As you know, I do mind. Talk to my lawyer.” He brushed by me.
“Mr. Granger, do you know a guy named Verasco?”
He didn’t turn around and hardly missed a beat before saying over his shoulder: “Nope. Never heard of him. Have a nice day, asshole.”
“Thanks, same to you.”
Granger headed toward his apartment, tapping his racquet against the side of his leg as he walked. I headed to the Citizen.
I briefed the damn sheriff, somewhat against my better judgment.
Since Frank killed himself, Mathew had been absurdly and annoyingly solicitous of me, asking how I was doing in a way that suggested he actually cared, encouraging me to stay with the Madigan story because “you’re doing a good job,” not because he had a perverse commitment to the case, one of his misguided obsessions.
Despite my hostility to the sheriff, I had to admit to being gratified that he appreciated my work. I was doing a good job. I’d written at least a dozen stories about the Madigan case. Some were short daily stories -- updates on the investigation -- but getting that information had been the journalistic equivalent of yanking wisdom teeth. And we’d stayed ahead of what little competition there was.
I’d also written several major pieces: the putting-it-all-together story that ran as the centerpiece on Page 1 the Sunday after the murders; a long mother-daughter profile, recounting the Madigan women’s lives in New Hampshire, their hopes for new lives in Florida; a fear-and-loathing story about the impact the murders were having on other residents (especially women and apartment-dwellers); a profile of their New England hometown, quoting former friends and neighbors and employers (the sheriff paid for that trip, no questions asked); a story about the frustrations cops encounter in murder investigations after they’ve gone unsolved for a stretch of time. (The issue of prioritizing cases was worth exploring, though the cops were reluctant to do so; they liked to pretend that all cases were given equal time and resources, and were of equal consequence.)
But while I was patting my own back, I was also feeling like a shit. How could I feel good about anything while working at the newspaper that led Frank to kill himself? The sheriff clearly felt some residual guilt, too, or, at the very least, concern, about Frank’s death. Beyond all the bullshit he was apparently capable of recognizing the consequences of his behavior, and feeling some remorse.
Not extraordinary qualities for most of us non-sociopaths, but I knew the sheriff all too well. I knew what he was capable of, and especially about his last confrontation with Frank. Frank had been essentially right about him; Frank wasn’t some kid reporter, simultaneously paranoid and innocent about management, in the person of Mathew.
But any glimmer of humanity from the sheriff’s quarter, however self-serving, was welcome, though disconcerting at first. I also had reservations about telling him too much about the Madigan case, for fear of raising his expectations and then being unable to fulfill them, a potentially fatal error. (Statistically, I believe, this causes the demise of more investigative reporters in the country than any other factor.) Still, he was my editor, and I was making progress and, unfortunately, I needed his continued support.
So I told him about Verasco, about my two visits to the trailer park.
About the nasty drunk at the Oar and being run off the road in the middle of the night.
About Sandra Wilson. Imbued with his new sensitivity, he even seemed concerned about her. It was laughable. In the old days, that is when Frank was alive, he would have asked: Why in hell do you bother holding the hand of a victim’s family member? Where does that take us with the investigation? Isn’t it just touchy-feely bullshit? Do you think you’re a fucking social worker?
About returning to the murder scene.
I even reluctantly told him about my latest encounter with Fred Granger -- I questioned the solidity of my theory about Granger and didn’t want to be cross-examined. And sure enough, even in his new I’m-not-the-total-dickhead-you-think-I-am mode, the sheriff grilled me about Granger. But then -- consistent with his new persona -- he pulled back.
“So what have you got on him?,” the sheriff asked. “Why’d you ask him about Verasco?”
“Granger lives in the Madigan complex,” I explained. “And as I told you, his father just about convinced me he had nothing to do with the murders. But I think he knew of Carolyn Madigan, from when she lived with her mother, even if he didn’t know her personally.”
“So?”
“So that’s part of my theory.”
“Which is?”
“Look, Mathew,” I said, wondering if I’d already shared too much, “I’m not totally comfortable telling you this because I’m not sure I’ve got it right. But I’ll lay out the scenario if you like.”
“No, Jake, if you’re not ready at this point, I don’t think you should. I don’t want either of us to get locked into a theory that may be proven wrong, and I don’t want you going through contortions trying to prove something because you’ve laid it out for me and feel you have to prove it.”
Riiiiiiight. This was so obvious -- such a crystal clear expression of his anxiety about what had happened with Frank -- that I almost told the sheriff to knock off the bullshit and get real. Be his old asshole self. But of course that would have been a mistake.
I nodded. “All right, in that case, I’ll hold off.”
“I presume you’re telling me, though, that all this should lead somewhere, that you’re not just tilting at windmills.”
“Right, that’s safe to say.”
“Good, then I’ll talk to you later. I don’t have to tell you to keep focused, be careful, and good luck, okay?”
“Okay, right, Mathew, thanks.”
I retreated from the sheriff’s office. It occurred to me as I returned to my desk that I had just thanked the sheriff for his advice and friendly counsel. Good grief. Poor Frank. Talk about turning over in one’s grave . . . Frank would do a flip-flop like a fucking Florida fish.