Mr. X (45 page)

The story was dated March 3, 1965. Four months before my seventh birthday, my mother had opened the morning paper and discovered what she considered proof that she had delivered not a single child, but twins.

A day later, the
Echo
announced
BABY-SNATCHER MIDWIFE CONFESSES, DEFENDS ACTIONS.
Hazel Jansky had identified the four “black-market babies” and claimed to have acted in their interests by rescuing them from unfit mothers. Jansky had also named their purchasers, but efforts to trace the new parents had not been successful, “which,” reported the
Echo
, “has led to speculations that the purchases were made under false names.”

Her trial began in May and lasted three weeks. Of the four mothers whose children had been abducted and sold, one had been killed in a tavern brawl; another died in a drunken traffic accident that took two other lives; one disappeared without a trace; after hearing that her son was alive, the fourth complained that the defendant kept the money for herself instead of splitting it fifty-fifty.

The jury found Jansky guilty and recommended mercy. A week later, the judge spoke. Although the illegality of the defendant’s actions could not be overlooked, neither should it be forgotten that Midwife Jansky had chosen infants whose mothers’ conduct put them at risk. The judge wished also to take into account her record of service to the community. Therefore, he accepted the recommendations of the jury and sentenced the defendant to three years at Greenhaven Penitentiary, with possibility of parole after eighteen months.

She stole four children and told their mothers they were dead, this Hazel Jansky. Because a judge and jury found that she had
acted in the interests of the stolen children, she spent only eighteen months in jail. Hazel Jansky’s photographs did not depict a person to whom one would entrust social policy. A compact blond in her mid-thirties, she glowered from the pages of the
Echo
with the irascibility of one who had learned that unrelenting crabbiness served her far better than cheerfulness and was not about to forget it.

I thought the court had shared her contempt for her victims. If Hazel Jansky had sold the babies of middle-class mothers, she would still be in jail. And I wondered if the murdered woman and the one killed while driving drunk would have turned out differently had they not been told that their babies were stillborn.

The next clipping, from the
Milwaukee Journal
and headed
DOUBLE MURDER IN SUBURBIA,
introduced the unsolved homicides. Milwaukee County pathologists had discovered that Mr. and Mrs. William McClure, previously thought to be victims of the fire that had destroyed their house on Salisbury Road in the suburb of Elm Grove, had died as a result of multiple stab wounds. Their three-year-old daughter, Lisa McClure, had not, as originally supposed, perished from asphyxiation but from traumatic injury to the neck. Resident in Elm Grove for only six months, the couple had remained largely unknown to their neighbors, one of whom told the
Journal
reporter that Mr. McClure claimed to have moved from St. Louis for business reasons. Missing from the scene was eight-year-old Robert McClure, Mr. McClure’s nephew, who had been enrolled in the coming term’s third-grade class at Elm Grove Elementary School. While not ruling out the possibility that the boy had been abducted by the assailants, police held out hope that he had escaped before his presence was noted. Efforts to reach the boy’s parents had not been successful, but Elm Grove’s chief of police, Thorston Lund, expressed confidence that they would soon be heard from.

The next clipping was headed
MYSTERY OF SLAIN COUPLE
.

On the next page, the
Journal
announced
SLAIN ELM GROVE COUPLE HAD CRIMINAL BACKGROUND
.

In the next story, the
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
reported the murders in their Hennepin Avenue apartment of Philip and Leonida Dunbar, a retired couple described as “private” by their neighbors. Police expressed confidence that the guilty party would swiftly be apprehended.

POLICE STATION ENIGMA,
from Ottumwa, Iowa, described another sort of mystery. A police officer named Boyd Burns had noticed a boy of eleven or twelve loitering on the local fairgrounds and suspected him of being a runaway. When approached, the boy refused to give his name or home address. “He didn’t act like the normal runaway,” Burns said. “If anything, he acted cocky. I took him to the station house, sat him down, and told him his parents had to be worried half to death about him.”

When asked to turn out his pockets, the boy proved to be carrying more than four hundred dollars. Suspicious, Burns fingerprinted him, only to discover that the tips of his fingers were devoid of the ridges and whorls that make up individual prints. Questioned about this anomaly, the boy replied that he had no need of fingerprints.

“It was like he was making fun of me,” Burns said. “I asked him to give me his first name, anyhow, and he told me I could call him ‘Ottumwa Red.’ I have to say, that made me smile. I asked if he wanted anything to eat, and he said he wouldn’t mind a hamburger. So I sat him down in the Duty Office and told the half dozen guys there to keep an eye on him until I got back.” Burns walked to Burger Whopper, a block away. “Before I went in, I heard this big whooshing sound. I turned around and saw the whole station go dark for a couple of seconds.” He ran back.

The desk sergeant and the officers in the reception area lay groaning on the floor. Prisoners groaned in the holding cells. “My friends in the Duty Office, they were gone, vanished—the place looked like the
Marie-Célèste
. And the kid was gone, too.”

Asked for his opinion about what had happened, Burns said he believed the boy had been an alien being. “Like from another galaxy. One thing about earth people, they do have fingerprints. All I can say is, I’m glad the kid isn’t in Ottumwa anymore.”

A building had imploded in Lansing, Michigan, killing thirteen people. Three other couples had been slaughtered in their houses. On the next page was a clipping about the murder of two young women who had been hiking in Vermont. I turned off the light and fell into bed without bothering to take off my clothes.

61

Dream-ropes and dream-weights held me to the bed. Held captive in the mind of Mr. X, I saw a door mist into haze; I saw a knife blade, a dark-complected man rise frowning from a chair. When he opened the door, Mr. X flowed in and said, “Mr. Booker, you have something that belongs to me.”

Was that something me? No: the something was gone, it had already escaped.

Booker sank to his knees, and Mr. X glided behind him and slashed his throat.

No
, I thought,
that was Anscombe …

No, there was Frank Sinatra singing
“Fight … fight … fight it with … aaaaall of your might …”

It was not the spectacle of Mr. X savaging a man named Sylvan Booker that whirled me away, it was what happened when Frank Sinatra was singing and the air smelled like pine needles and the people were named …

A stuffed black cat and white rabbit lay tumbled on the floor. Into the mirror before me swam a misshapen figure shaking with malicious laughter. Horrified, I burst my ropes, threw off the weights, and woke up standing beside the bed with my hands flattened over my eyes.

62

The Russian doll gave me the detail that explained everything I was ready to understand. Nearly all the entries were dated within a day or two of June 25th. I had visited the murdered couples with Mr. X—I had
seen
them murdered. Star had collected these stories because she feared … that Robert was behind them? That Rinehart was? She thought that Robert had obliterated half a dozen policemen in Ottumwa, Iowa, and killed two young women hiking in Vermont. The newspapers had told her that her second son was loose in the world, wandering from one tragedy to another like a furious ghost.