Havoc-on-Hudson (3 page)

6

Danny Joe was stacking cans of Coke in the refrigerated cases by the supermarket’s check-out counters when he heard a customer tell the cashier her family was going on vacation for two weeks. He recognized her—she was a regular shopper. When she left the store, Danny Joe was ready. He dropped what he was doing and followed her on his
bike.

The next day, staying out of sight behind a neighbor’s garden shed, he watched as the family packed their SUV and took off. With the help of some tools from the store’s hardware aisle, he was going to get into the house that night. With its big wraparound porch and stained-glass windows, the place looked expensive. The thought of what goodies he’d find inside excited him, gave him something special to look forward to. He could hardly
wait.

When he left the market after work, it was dark outside. Danny Joe approached the house wearing a black hoodie and a carpenter’s apron with tools, cord, and plastic bags. Exploring the perimeter of the home with a penlight, he discovered a square-shaped metal vent built into the concrete foundation that probably led to a furnace room in the basement. He was tall and slender, and he could ease his way through the vent. Even better, the bolts holding the vent in place might have rusted out, and he could remove it without too much hassle. He’d try that first. If all else failed, he’d check out the windows and sliding doors at the back of the house. He needed money badly. If he could pick up enough sellable items here, he’d pay off the junkie who’d started threatening him. His pitiful earnings from the supermarket didn’t stretch that
far.

Danny Joe had to be real careful not to get caught this time around. He’d been in and out of jail for breaking and entering since he was nine years old. But last year had changed everything for him legally. Papa had come after him again. Danny Joe had cut him up pretty bad with the big carving knife. It felt real good, stabbing the creep in his gut. He’d only been thirteen when it happened. If he’d been any older, he’d have been sent to state prison for years. Papa survived, and the paramedics called the cops. The old creep didn’t press charges, but it was clear to the cops he’d been sexually abusing Danny Joe, and that’s why he’d grabbed the knife and gone after the old bastard. He was taken into custody anyhow, because of his long string of offenses as a juvenile delinq
uent.

So he served the maximum of a year in jail after the attack and then spent time in a half-way house. Rehabilitation, ha! His work at the supermarket was part of the rehab program and the Judge warned him if he got into trouble again he’d be spending a lot more time behind bars, so he better stay clean and away from the
shit.

“Yeah,” he’d said, to no one in particular, “let the damn Judge eat three squares on the lousy money I’m ear
ning!”

While Danny Joe was incarcerated, Papa had done him a big favor and died of kidney failure. After the years of sexual abuse and neglect he’d suffered, the boy felt nothing but disgust about his father’s death. Also, he swore that if he ever saw his mother again, he’d kill the bitch with his own hands, for leaving him in Papa’s care. She was no better than his
Papa.

Now, Danny Joe was able to slip through the vent and into the basement. He crept up to the main level of the house, picking up a couple of cell phones and an iPad from a desk on the way, dropping them into the plastic bag he’d hung on his tool belt. Then he tip-toed up a wide, carpeted staircase to the bedroom floor, where most people kept their cash and jew
elry.

At the landing he suddenly stopped and froze. Was that a TV set he heard? He hadn’t bargained for anyone being home. He knew he should get out of there as fast as he could, but he’d come this far and he wanted his re
ward.

The sound was coming from one of the bedrooms at the end of a long, dark hallway. He’d check it out. Maybe they’d just forgotten to turn the TV
off.

He crept toward the room. The door was ajar. He peered around it. A young girl lay asleep on top of a frilly pink bedspread, the TV on her nightstand illuminating the area around her
bed.

Oooh. Now he wasn’t scared. He slowly unwound some of the cord he was carrying and silently approached the bed. But she woke up before he even touched her, then started screaming and fighting him, making it impossible to tie her up. He ordered her to stop, but she kept kicking and punching, so he grabbed a small hammer from his belt and started hitting her with it, until she finally shut up and stopped fighting. Then, feeling empowered, he thought about raping her. He felt no remorse or pangs of conscience for what he did to the bloodied, unconscious girl on the pink quilt. While she continued to bleed profusely, a pool of blood soaking the bed linens around her, he pulled her nightie up over her bludgeoned
face.

During the break-in, Danny Joe had first listened for an alarm and was prepared to run if they had one, but all was quiet. He’d never even heard of a silent alarm, but one had been triggered by his entry into the basement. In a matter of minutes he was facing two cops with drawn
guns.

Although at the time of Danny Joe’s arrest, it was uncertain whether his twelve-year-old victim would survive, she did eventually recover from the brutal attack. She was the daughter of next-door neighbors, not a member of the vacationing family, and she was staying at the house to take care of their two cats. She’d been so proud to be allowed to do this as a favor to them, secure in the knowledge that her parents were directly across the yard if she needed
them.

Danny Joe was lucky he hadn’t killed her. As it stood, he was convicted of rape and aggravated assault and battery with a deadly weapon and sentenced to five years in state prison. That was the maximum for a youthful offender. He was fourteen years old at the time he was charged and wouldn’t be released from prison until he was twenty-one, serving extra time for disciplinary actions involving female correction offi
cers.

7

I rose from romantic dreams of Andrew Coyne only to fall immediately back into reality. The phone shrilled, I rolled over and grabbed the receiver. “Andrew?” I mumbled.

But, no. “Good morning, Maggie. Sorry to wake you.” Chief Betsy was calling to bring me up to date about the rapist. “Looks like we have a match on the perp’s description. There’s no doubt now that the two women were attacked by the same guy!”

I took a deep breath, then breathed it out. My mouth was fuzzy from last night’s red wine. “Well, it’s good to know there’s only one of them. What happens now, Chief?” I tried to veil my anxiety with the faux-calm voice I use whenever a home sale threatens to fall through.

“I spoke to the Mayor. He’s asked that Real Estate Agencies cancel all open houses in the river towns for the time being. He’s also agreed to call a meeting of area brokers to discuss safety precautions as we go forward. I’ll need your help in getting the names and phone numbers of officials at the Board of Realtors. The police will be contacting them.”

I rolled out of bed in my ruffled lavender pajamas. “I’ll get myself into the office right away. Claire’s a whiz on the Internet. I’ll have her pull up the list and bring it right over, Chief. Has any information been found linking this person to other attacks?”

She hesitated, then cleared her throat. “Confidentially, Maggie, the answer is yes, but don’t quote me, or I’ll deny saying that. The investigation has just begun and we can’t afford to screw it up!

“I’m total discretion,” I said, and headed for the bathroom.

Several days later, in a large conference room at the swanky Tarrytown Doubletree Hotel, the Hudson Hills Mayor and Village Trustees met with Chief Betsy, the CEO of the County Board of Realtors, and local brokers. We sat on the edges of our matching vinyl chairs, balancing identical coffee mugs, and listening with fascinated horror to the Chief’s briefing.

The main takeaway (and this was a sensible suggestion) was that all open houses should be manned by more than one agent, and that entrance should require personal identification. If someone refused to show their I.D., they should be turned away.

“There’s too much at stake not to take these precautions,” Chief Betsy told the crowd, “because, for good reasons, Real Estate is considered a ‘high-risk’ profession. Everyone has to then be accompanied throughout the interior of the house, even the basement. Not just to protect you and the homeowner from dangerous criminals like the rapist, but also from the average burglar who can use the open house as an opportunity to check out the place for valuables and then plan a robbery at a later date. When people are not accompanied during the tour of a home, sticky fingers can quickly pick up items in bedside drawers or credit cards and mobile phones mistakenly left exposed. The whole culture of open houses has to be rethought and updated. I hate to say it, but we may be living in a more dangerous time now. Even here, in Hudson Hills.”

After the meeting everyone was gung-ho, adjourning to the bar not so much for planning as for avid speculation. Many of my colleagues, however, focused only on the incident involving Grace Chung. Since the more serious attack had occurred across the river in another community, some agents dismissed the attacks as isolated incidents, the kind of thing that happened over there, not in safe places like the Westchester river villages. Despite the grimness of the facts on both occasions, we all seemed to be in denial.

8

A correctional psychiatrist’s primary mission is to assist offenders with rehabilitation and reintegration. Dr. Jane Hill had invested her time and energy working with Daniel Joseph Farrell in the Juvenile Detention facility where he was incarcerated. Her diagnosis, an anti-social personality disorder, was characterized by a complete lack of empathy and remorse for others. Since psychopathy was evident in a large percentage of all offenders in the American prison system, Dr. Hill did not find Daniel’s condition to be all that surprising, considering his early life experi
ence.

The young inmate was intelligent and appealing, but his childhood had been marked by severe, brain-altering abuse. Dr. Hill hoped the intensive therapy he was receiving would at least grant him the ability to control his demons. This vulnerable young man desperately needed to experience friendship and affection once he left the prison sy
stem.

Initially, Danny Joe’s hostility towards women interfered with Dr. Hill’s therapy. At one point, because of his obscene, misogynistic rantings, she seriously considered referring him to a male colleague. However, as he opened up more about his father’s mental instability and the sexual abuse he’d suffered at his father’s hands, she changed her mind. Dr. Hill’s patience and maternal warmth might allow Danny Joe to connect positively with her despite his pent-up a
nger.

Understandably, when his mother abandoned him, Danny Joe had experienced a sense of grievous loss. It was Dr. Hill’s hope that she could bring the boy to forgive Mother for abandoning him; that she could bring him to a therapeutic realization that fear and suffering, not lack of love, had driven Mother to leave him behind as she boarded that megasized bus to an uncertain fu
ture.

As far as Dr. Jane Hill was concerned, this boy was a victim, and she yearned to set him free. As she developed an unprofessional bond with the handsome youth, the compassion she felt for her patient became seriously misdirected. With a deeply-felt passion, she quoted Dr. Michael Fogel’s analysis on criminology to the Parole Board on Danny Joe’s behalf. “When you understand where this individual came from, what he was exposed to, and the environment in which he grew up, you can understand why he engaged in the behavior that he
did.”

She was not unaware of tipping the balance between Danny Joe’s rights and public safety, but she believed he could make it on the outside. Before Danny Joe Farrell was truly capable of coping in society, she declared him to be fully rehabilitated—and he was f
reed.

9

Days, weeks, and finally months passed in the villages along the Hudson without incident. It being spring and the green buds bursting, many of us relaxed into our old careless routines, ignoring police warnings and continuing to hold open houses the way we always had. Several also told me they felt awkward asking for identification from potential customers. “Gotta do it,” I said, receiving only shrugs in response. After all, spring was the real-estate-brokers’ busy season.

Betsy confided that the perpetrator’s DNA matched previous attacks on brokers in other jurisdictions, and that the violence of the attacks on agents was escalating from one incident to the next. But, she’d said, the older files were still active and now police in several states were trying to connect the dots between attacks. They now knew this was larger than simply the Hudson Valley. But the Chief didn’t want that information bandied about—it could cause panic.

Given a terrifying long-ago experience, I could barely even think about the attacks without falling into a quiet fury. I became obsessed with the situation. What kind of mind could initiate such violence? What motivated these perverts? I was like a dog with a bone; I couldn’t leave it alone.

But Andrew was concerned. Following my meetings with the Mayor and the Chief, he insisted on accompanying me to open houses, when he could. With him at my side, I felt secure. His charm and cheerful manner elicited cooperation from the moment potential buyers came to the door of a public open house. At times his legal background also came in handy; we were a good team.

It had been a long winter, but, for Andrew and me, it had been an eventful one: we were now a couple. Each widowed, each used to privacy, we were happy to have workweeks, with their unpredictable hassles, to ourselves, but we shared most weekends happily alternating between his city apartment and my riverside home.

It was a rainy April weekend when Andrew brought up the issue of my safety again. In my large, cozy, shingled Victorian, we were sitting at the round oak kitchen table watching the rain pound against the large river-facing windows and eating boeuf bourguignon with French bread from Abraham’s artisan bakery. Andrew sighed. “Isn’t there someone you could ask to accompany you to open houses on a regular basis? I know this is the busiest time of year for real estate, and I can’t be with you at every event.” He sighed again. “Wish I could.’’

I echoed his sighs. “Isn’t it absurd? After all, I haven’t signed up for the U. S. Special Forces or anything like that! I’m a real estate agent, for heaven’s sake! Shouldn’t I be able to go to work without having to worry about risking my life?”

Before he could respond, I went on, “Why is this guy after brokers? We’re not so bad! Some clients are disappointed after they lose a house in a bidding war, but that’s not the agent’s fault! Some freak out when they find a material defect after they close on a home. I don’t blame them, but that’s not down to the broker—the seller probably withheld the problem. There’s got to be a more compelling reason than real estate for this guy’s actions. This sounds much more personal.”

Andrew set down his glass of cabernet sauvignon. “Look, Maggie, the man’s got to be mentally ill. It’s some crazy obsession that’s driving him. It could be a crazed perception the guy has about real estate brokers that makes no sense at all.”

I pushed my half-eaten stew away. “I wish the police would give us more information.”

He followed suit, and sat with hands at his chin, fingers intertwined, gazing at me soberly. “And what would you do with the information if you had it?”

I could feel the anger rising again, but I wasn’t ready to confide in him just yet. I punted. “Well, for one thing, I’m curious about the guy’s background. Do you suppose he has a criminal record? Surely someone like that would have been in prison?”

“Maggie, I’m sure he must have left some prints or DNA at the crime scene across the river. They would immediately have checked the national database. If he had a rap sheet, they would know.”

He stood there, looming over me. “I’m not comfortable with you being so damn visible in this situation. You’re a real estate broker, not a detective. Let the professionals handle it. Chief Betsy has no right to encourage your …”

I knew he was about to say, “meddling,” so I spoke up before he could; I didn’t want to have to snap at him. “Oh, my love, not to worry. I’ll keep out of it, I promise, just so long as this madman stays away from my colleagues and our community!

“And, now, for dessert, darling, how about a slice of lemon torte—I baked it myself.”