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Tuesday, December 17, 1985
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Midnight Horror Show Saturday, May 3, 1964
SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1964“Well my littleboils and ghouls, have you seen enough?” The rickety plywood stage in front of the screen creaked as he leant on the edge of a massive operating table. There was no moon that night at the drive-in, and with the projector now dark he was lit by only a few headlights from the first row. A smile spread over his face like a wound as he looked down at the group of us who’d pushed up as close as we could get.“Have you seen enough carnage?” He sneered.“No,” we said.“Have you seen enough suffering?” He demanded. His face was painted like a corpse, but his eyes, set deep in pools of black grease paint, were wild and crackling with life. He pounded his fists down on the table with every word like a revival preacher.“No,” we said.“Have you seen enough horror?” He teased. The blinking neon from the exit sign splashed blood red against the spider-web of scars running up the side of his face and the white shirt under his dusty black suit. He lock
Midnight Horror Show Tuesday, October 22, 1985
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1985A searing white flashof sound burned my dream away. In an instant, nothing remained but shadows and dread and shame. I’d swatted at my clock radio out of instinct, but the noise didn’t stop. As my brain struggled to catch up, I crawled over to the edge of the bed and read 4:21 a.m. in radium painted numbers. The dark of my room felt darker than it should, and there was a smell in the air I didn’t like. I picked up the telephone receiver from the edge of the nightstand.“Dave,” a familiar voice on the other end said gently. “We need you at 19 Halverson as soon as you can.”I looked at the clock again, and rubbed at the gunk that had settled in the corners of my eyes. “Okay, Chief.”“Leave your radio off ... It’s a bad one, Dave.”The line went dead and I hung up the receiver. I stumbled over to the shower in the dark and dunked my head under running water for a minute and then ran a comb through my hair and dug around for a clean looking
Midnight Horror Show Wednesday, October 23, 1985
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1985I had spent the rest of Tuesday and all of today checking through bank statements, business transactions, court records, and interviews with neighbors and associates for any thread of a possible motive. And I’d put all of our senior officers to the task of double-checking my work. We found nothing. Given the victim’s well-known wealth, robbery would have been a likely motive if the murder itself hadn’t been so bizarre. The Boyd’s house had been thoroughly checked for any signs of missing property anyway. There was none. Even the victim’s wallet, containing ninety-eight dollars in cash and two credit cards, was still in the back pocket of his pants. The violence of the murder and the way the body had been staged had me thinking it was some kind of thrill killing and that Boyd may have been chosen at random. I checked in with the sheriff’s office and State Patrol to see if the MO matched anything they’d seen. It hadn’t.Around the afternoon shift change, I g
Midnight Horror Show Thursday, October 24, 1985
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1985My clock radiosnapped to life at dawn, and I regretted my dinner selection immediately. I took a cold shower and resisted the temptation to add a little hair of the dog to the coffee and toast with peanut butter I made myself eat before leaving. I ran into Mrs. Walshans, the landlady, on my way out. She looked worried, and told me she heard shouting from my upstairs apartment in the middle of the night.I smiled as best I could that early. “Bad dreams, I guess.”Innovative Foods Incorporated bought out Boyd’s Quality Meats close to fifteen years ago. They kept on all the workers who wanted to stay, but never seemed to really expand and bring new jobs in the way that they’d promised. Still, IFI remained the steadiest employer in Mahigan County and they’d stayed when the other factories had left.The stench from outside the plant had long ago melted into the background of the town. On windy days, I’ve heard you can smell it as far as Keosauqua, but th
Midnight Horror Show Friday, October 25, 1985
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1985Watching the pallbearers carry Richard Boyd’s coffin to his grave reminded me uncomfortably of the five strong men who barely got his body down from his ceiling, and I wished I hadn’t come. I’d expected a big turnout and thought some new witness or maybe even a suspect might present themselves by showing up and acting strangely. No such luck.Reverend Fowler was saying something and everyone looked like they were listening, gazing earnestly at the glossy box as it was lowered into the ground with heavy white straps. The Reverend finished and people started drifting away. I thought I might follow them to make an appearance at the potluck at the Boyd house, but something caught my eye as I turned for my car. A quick blur moving a few yards away. The back of a head covered in a mess of black hair on top of a skinny frame that ducked into a bramble of dead trees at the edge of the cemetery.About ninety percent of this job is repeated, careful, diligent collecti
Midnight Horror Show Saturday, October 26, 1985
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1985After a detour to Doughnut Land for the biggest, blackest coffee they had, I headed for Lyles’ Auto Body & Collision. It was an unassuming multi-stall garage set a block or so back from Main. I pulled up and parked on the other side of the street, got out slowly with my coffee, and took a long look before going in further. The main garage was a slab of white cinder blocks with a double-striped border along the roofline in Hawkeye gold and black. One of the garage doors was open and I could see a pickup hoisted on the lift inside.The lot beside and behind the main building was ringed in by a worn chain link fence that someone had woven long strips of dirty white plastic through for privacy. They weren’t much help now since a huge chunk of the fence looked like it had been ripped loose and then hastily thrown back up and was held in place with bungee cords, snow chains, and duct tape. Whatever had knocked the fence down had pulled loose, or otherwise shr
Midnight Horror Show Sunday, October 27, 1985
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1985I was supposed to be off today, but I woke up early anyway. It was chilly outside and the sky was clear. I picked up the two copies of the Press Citizen that lay on the sidewalk, carried one of them back to Mrs. Walshan’s door on the ground floor and tossed the other one into the passenger seat of my car before pulling out into the street. I reached for the radio to check in with Dispatch, but then thought better of it. The night we found Boyd, the chief had told me to leave my radio off so none of the busybodies with scanners would butt in. News of the case was no secret anymore, but I had a feeling there were more people listening in for any tidbits and I knew the chief didn’t want to broadcast how little progress had been made.I drove out to the Doughnut Land and picked up a dozen assorted and took them into the station. “Any news?” I asked Sandy.Her eyes answered first. “Sorry,” she said.“Well, I brought doughnuts anyway.”I opened the box to let he
Midnight Horror Show Monday, October 28, 1985
MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1985“You know noneof this is enough, David.” Chief Hayes sat sunken into the chair behind his desk looking more tired than normal. “Not for an arrest. Not even for a warrant.” He sighed. “Circumstantial. All of it.”“I know,” I said. “But there’s too many connections to ignore.”“Sheriffs’ not going to like it,” he said.“It’s all we’ve got.”He stared at me and then back at my notes.“So, what are you going to do?”I leaned in and pulled my chair closer to his desk. “I’ve established his work schedule so I thought I’d go over to his house when he’s out but his mother is home.”“Donna West?”“That’s right. I thought I’d go over and talk with her. Say I was there to follow up with James about his statement. See if I can wait for him.”“And while you’re there?”“While I’m there I see what there is to see. Hear what Mrs. West may have to say. Get her on my side. When James comes home, maybe she’ll help convince him to come back to the station with me.
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Midnight Horror Show Tuesday, December 17, 1985
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1985The full confessionmade by John Skoger, a.k.a Paul Clements from Rockford, Illinois, was enough to satisfy the prosecutor, so Chief Hayes gave the official order to close the books on the case. I’d healed up, mostly, and gone back to work. A couple of guys held up the Fairway grocery store and then the Hardees, and Mills and I spent the first part of December tracking them down. When we got the cuffs on them, it felt like things had more or less gotten back to normal. So, on a quiet Tuesday, I gathered up all my notes and files on the Boyd case and the missing person’s pictures I’d taken from the old files and took them back over to City Hall.Those Skogers, or whoever they were, were nuts. That had to be all there was to it. However they pulled it off, and for whatever reason, everything that happened on that stage was all part of some kind of sick plan to murder James in front of a crowd, and they’d failed. Like Franklin had said, one of those Manso
Midnight Horror Show Saturday, November 9, 1985
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1985I was releasedafter a few more days in the hospital. The sky was clear and the sun was high. The Caprice had been totaled, but Mills had dropped off a marked patrol car for me to use. My chest hurt when I got in, but I set my jaw and turned the key. Then I headed straight for the Skoger place.It was deserted. Some yellow tape across the door of the house and the barn, but otherwise it was like it had been before. I ducked the tape line and went inside. I don’t know what I expected to find in there, but I didn’t see it. In the daylight, it was just an old abandoned house.Outside, the sun shown bright and it made the yellow ironwood leaves shimmer when the breeze came through. I made my way down to the tree line and fought to keep my breathing steady. A few yards into the woods and it got easier. Nothing looked like it did that night. The shadows were watered down and the trees were just trees. I walked deeper in, trying to retrace my steps, but it w
Midnight Horror Show Sunday, November 3, 1985
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1985Around eight o’clockthe nurse came back and she had the chief with her. She checked a few things and then left us alone.“How are you doing, Dave?” he asked.“Honestly?” I said. “I have to say I’ve been better.”Chief Hayes’s mustache curled up in a smile. He pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down. “This was bad business all around. No two ways about it,” he said. “But it’s over. You put an end to it. You’re alive, and that boy’s alive because of you.”“The nurse said he was in a coma,” I said.“He was,” said the chief. “He came out sometime last night.”“I need to see him,” I said. I tried to sit up, but the pain convinced me to lay back.“You will,” he said. “Just not for a while. They airlifted him to Iowa City. University Hospitals’ got specialists. Kid’s got pieces of that rifle slug embedded in his heart, and they aren’t equipped for that kind of thing around here.”“What about Roberts?”“What about him?” asked the chief.“Did you ge
Midnight Horror Show Saturday, November 2, 1985
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1985When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a hospital bed. A nurse I didn’t recognize cheerfully read me a list of injuries I’d racked up, including a nice set of third-degree burns on both legs as it happens, and added in a ‘You’re lucky to be alive’ for good measure.“James?” I barked, and winced. Smoke inhalation. “What about James?”“The young man you saved?” she said. “He’s stabilized, but I’m afraid he’s in a coma.”“I need to see him!”“You need to rest,” she said. “The doctor is doing everything he can. He’s in good hands.”“Skoger,” I remembered. “I need the chief. Get me a phone! I need to—”“We were asked to phone the station as soon as you woke up,” she said. “I had one of the other nurses do that while we’ve been talking. I’m sure they’ll send someone over to check up on you, but they also told us to tell you that ‘all suspects are in custody’. Does that sound right?”“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it does.”The nurse left and told me to get some sle
Midnight Horror Show Thursday, October 31, 1985
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1985Daylight cracked throughthe trees, breaking up the twilight. I’d just left the latest in a long line of dead ends and was headed back to the station. Exhaustion barely scratched the surface of how I felt. The librarian was on her way in, and she offered a neighborly wave when she saw my car pass by. I lifted my fingers off the top of the steering wheel in reply. I wondered what she thought of all this. Will it just be another story she’ll classify and file away in one of those little drawers? Mel Roberts menaced the county for years and all she remembered was that he used to read Edgar Allen Poe stories to kids ...“Son of a bitch!”I yanked the wheel, throwing the car into a U-turn and put the pedal on the floor.“Comm, this is Two. Do you copy?”“Go ahead, Two.”“I need paramedics at the construction site for First United Church. Corner of 9thand Kietges. Hurry!”I drove back to the church, rushed inside, and down into t
Midnight Horror Show Wednesday, October 30, 1985
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1985In the morning, I drove out to the Doughnut Land for breakfast about a quarter after seven. Then I drove east on 32 for a while trying not to think. The sky was the same color as the highway, and as the white lines passed under the car, I wondered for a second what it would be like to tap the wheel to the left when the next semi came by. After the truck rumbled past, I took a large gulp from the Styrofoam cup, then slowed and made a U-turn back towards town as soon as the road was clear.When I phoned, I told the church’s receptionist that my name was “Carl Davidson” and that I had never been religious but felt something was lacking in my life and wanted to talk to the Reverend about it. Sometimes in this line of work you have to be a little deceptive to get people to admit things. The receptionist helpfully told me that Fowler had a meeting at the construction site of their new church but that he would be back at eleven o’clock and that she would be happy
Midnight Horror Show Tuesday, October 29, 1985
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1985And that wasthe last I could remember.I know I must’ve made it back to Fred’s car because I remember having breakfast with him at the dorm the next morning. It was the first time I drank coffee, and Fred had made a crack about it when mom and dad came to pick me up that afternoon and I laughed extra loud because I was relieved he didn’t tell them about the beer.The memory had come on so strong, I felt like I’d been blindsided. I was shaking a little, and my heart was racing. I put on my jacket and hauled all of the files under my arm as I slipped out back, down the alley, and to my car.The girl in the picture was named Pauline Merts. She’d just turned nineteen in February of 1964, and was still living with her parents in Fairfield. She disappeared two months later. Her parents said she had gone to her room earlier that night, but in the morning she was gone. Didn’t leave a note, didn’t pack a bag. How did she end up shivering in her underwear in f
Midnight Horror Show Saturday, May 3, 1964
SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1964I was fifteenin the spring of ‘64 and my parents had sent me to stay with my cousin Fred at his dorm for the weekend. My grades had been slacking and they thought a look at college life would motivate me to get my act together. Fred and I weren’t what I’d call close. He used to pick on me all the time when we were kids, and when I got to my teens I mostly managed to avoid him. But I was looking forward to the visit anyway. It was my first time away from home by myself.Fred was in his second year at Blackburn, and when my folks dropped me off he really seemed like he’d changed from the bully I remembered as a kid. He walked me around the campus and we goofed around a while until he had to go to class. He left me at the student union where I got a Coke and tried to blend in.“Change of plans, Davey,” he said, when he came back an hour or so later. “My roomie’s got a hot one lined up tonight, so we gotta make ourselves scarce till way after midnight. Though
Midnight Horror Show Tuesday, October 29, 1985
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1985The morning wasnot kind.A pounding headache and sour beer cotton mouth with a whiskey belch chaser. I lay in bed for a couple or forty minutes staring at the dust motes wafting in front of the window and slowly rolling over the events of the previous day. None of it made any more sense than it had yesterday. The chief effectively closed the Boyd case and, as far as he was concerned, Peter Graham was officially the Department of Natural Resources’ problem.Both were good calls. Neither was satisfying, but they were still sound, responsible decisions. Laying there listening to my head ring, I tried to convince myself to stay in bed until this all blows over. That’s what the chief wanted me to do. Rest. Take care of myself. Get my head right. But whenever I closed my eyes, I saw that field and those shadows. I was off the map. I didn’t know if I was going crazy or the rest of the world was. But I do know Boyd wasn’t killed by some drifter, Graham wasn’t
