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The letter landed on the desk of twenty year veteran, Detective Robert Finnegan, third generation cop, Atlanta. Forty two, ten pounds overweight and divorced, his dark hair showed signs of lightening at the temples. What many women would call a mature, wise face, some perpetrators saw as only a rational intimidating glare. He was what he needed to be. A cop. Playing the roles that solved cases and brought closure to loved ones.
He read the letter over twice before he felt he was ready to do anything else. His first question was whether or not it was real. He did the math and back tracked the years to Alabama, the only detailed killing mentioned in the letter. He searched the data base of old homicides and found nothing. That was not a problem. It was normal for thirty year old cases to be still in a file drawer somewhere. He switched to newspapers. He found several murder listings for Atlanta newspapers. Hundreds actually. He printed out the list and went in search of the geek squad down in the basement. He wanted to know if a murder took place around the time the letter suggested it did. He brought them a copy of the letter and some snacks from the snack machine on the ground floor. A small offering to the the gods of cyber space. He needed a place to start. Until then, this was a cold case. He had a suspect but no idea if he had a crime.
No sooner had Finnegan returned to his desk than a call came from downstairs. A woman wanted to talk to him about the dead guy who had written the letter. He told the officer at the desk to bring the woman to the conference room on the second floor and he would meet her there.
She was an old woman. Seventies maybe. Her hair was straggly and so gray it was almost white. She wore it long, to her shoulders despite the prevailing fashion for older women being short hair. Everything about her bespoke a radical, rebellious life. He wondered if she was really seventy or had she just lived that hard a life. Her eyes were full of defiance and her demeanor said she did not like police or police stations. If she was here for something, it was important. He would bet his badge on that.
Finnegan saw that the woman was seated so he stood on the opposite side of the table to look down upon her position. Authority looking down on suspect. He viewed all strangers as suspects until proven otherwise. Especially those who came to him asking about dead guys claiming to be serial killers.
“Can I help you, Ma'am?” he tried to smile a friendly smile but it had been a long time since he felt friendly towards the public at large. She did not try to smile back.
“I came to find out about my boy.”
“Your boy?”
“Yes, they told me downstairs you found a man dead in the woods.”
“We find lots of men dead in woods.” Finnegan lied. “Happens all the time. How does this one interest you?”
“Like I said, he's my boy. At least I think he is. I need you to let me check him. See if he is him.”
“Well, since he is unidentified that can be arranged. If you don't mind my asking, what makes you think that he is your son?”
“I've been going from hospital to hospital. They said a body had been brought in from this station. Downstairs they told me you were the man in charge of letting me see him. I just want to check.”
“I see.” Finnegan was thinking about the letter. He wondered if he should mention it to her. Hadn't the writer said his mother had gone to prison or something?
“and your name is...” Finnegan fished.
“Brenda. Brenda Raposy.”
“He probably had a letter on him, too.” The woman spoke sharply and to the point, ignoring his searching for information tone. She was hunting. Focused. Her voice was much more virile than her body seemed. Hard living, he decided.
“If you've found it, you're probably scouring the country side trying to figure out if it is true, all the stuff he put in there.”
“There was a letter.” Finnegan began.
“Claiming he was a serial killer?” The woman smiled for the first time. Brenda. Finnegan wished she had not. It was a hard smile. The smile of a serial killer's mom, Finnegan thought.
“Well, yes.” Finnegan was unsure where all this was going.
“I can explain, if you'll let me.”
“Is your son a serial killer?” Finnegan was a no nonsense, get to the point man himself. Sometimes a direct question elicited a response that the person being questioned would have rather kept hidden. The woman didn't flinch. Never skipped a beat. Like an actress in a play who just watched her fellow actor trip over a prop, she just kept plugging ahead.
“Yes, sir.” The woman smiled again. Finnegan wished again she would not. It was not a friendly smile.
“Then what else would you have me do if not to...” he paused for the wording. “Scour the country side trying to ascertain the truth of all the letter claims?”
“Listen to me.”
“About what?”
“My son was a serial killer. Many, many years ago, when he was a boy. I guess three murders counts as a serial killer.”
“Only three?” Finnegan was interested in the woman now. She was bringing him details. He loved details.
“Yes.” The woman shifted in her seat. “All three men were his fathers.”
“Three fathers?” Finnegan gave her his best, I-Don't-Follow look.
“I married three times. Each one ended with a dead husband. The last one was so suspicious the police accused me. I was arrested but never charged. In the investigation they discovered my son had done the actual poisoning of his third stepfather. They were looking so hard at me and the fact that all three of my husbands had died that they uncovered my son had killed all three of them.”
“Your son?” Finnegan tried to hold his skepticism in.
“Yes. Apparently Daniel, that's my son's name, was mad at them for things they had done. Done to him. And to me, too, I guess.”
“I see,” Finnegan said but he really didn't.
“The men were abusive and lazy and good for nothings anyway.” The woman explained it away.
“And... Daniel Killed all of them?” Finnegan was having as much trouble putting a name with the serial killer's letter as he was with a little boy killing three of his mother's men friends. This case was getting more strange by the minute. First an uncovered serial killer and now a known serial killer masquerading as a little boy.
“And all of this was proved in a court?” Finnegan asked.
“Yes. In Alabama. We moved here after the trial to try and get away from the bad press he had received. People would ride slowly by our house hoping to get a look at the little boy murderer.”
“He didn't go to jail?” Finnegan thought that it was strange to just let the boy walk free if he had done these things. He was obviously a proven menace to society.
“No, the judge ordered that he get a couple months of intensive psychiatric treatment and then be released into my custody. After that he was to attend weekly psychiatric counseling. I agreed to never marry again and thereby was relieving my son of any further need to kill, according to the judge. The judge said he would not send a fourteen year old boy to prison if he could help it and he believed that my not marrying would stop the need for Daniel to protect himself in such a violent way. He was only fourteen at the trial and obviously still very messed up over things. He had been eleven when my second husband was killed and five when my first husband was murdered.”
“Five?” Finnegan was aghast. How did a five year old kill a grown man?
So he asked it.
“How did a five year old kill a grown man?” Finnegan was starting to believe something was wrong with this picture. His tone of voice said as much, too.
“We're not sure. The autopsy was inconclusive and all Daniel would say is that there was plastic wrapped around his face. There was no way to confirm any of his words because the death of my first husband, who was not Daniel's real father, was not investigated as a murder. The doc said he just had a heart attack, even though he was only twenty three. No evidence was collected.”
??
?No, there wouldn't be. Still, very strange.”
“What?” The woman was eying the cop suspiciously.
“That a five year old would know how to murder someone.”
“TV, I guess,” was all she was going to add to it. “Like I said, it was eight years later when we were asking him the details. The things he said did not make a lot of sense.”
“And a jury convicted him of murder in all three cases?”
“No. Only the last one. They found him guilty of murdering his last stepfather with poison in his coffee. Like I said, originally I was arrested but they soon listened to what Daniel was saying. I was not even home when the poison was put in the coffee. He was the only other person in the house at the time, so they started looking at him. It only took a few minutes for him to confess. He's very trusting. He expected the officers to understand.”
“This is totally amazing.”
“I'll agree that it is not a normal story to tell. And I'm sure you can understand my desire to handle this as quietly as possible, no fuss, if I can determine that it was my son you have brought in.”
“Uh – certainly.” Finnegan was stunned by the story he just heard. Never in his life had he ever dreamed such a convoluted drama would play out around him. But, here it was, sitting right in front of him.
“I will make the proper phone calls and and the personnel at the morgue will see to your needs there.” Finnegan tried to add a reassuring smile but was not so sure he succeeded. The woman looked at him more like he had denied her request than just acceding to it.
“Thank you, Detective.” She got up, grabbed up her large purse and made her way back out of the conference room. He directed her to turn left where she would find the stairs.
He watched her leave and thought immediately that this was not over. Something was wrong. Children serial killers was something from the movies. There had never been a child serial killer in history. A murderer maybe. But not a calculating serial killer. A child might lash out but he did not keep lashing out. It was more a cry for help than a desire to kill. Finnegan had trouble believing the woman's story. He did not want to believe it. He had work to do.