One local resident described Mr. McClure as "swarthy," but with no trace of a Puerto Rican accent. Sally McClure is said to speak with a "New York" accent. "Mr. McClure wasn't like the normal person from around here. He tried to be polite, but you wouldn't call him a friendly man."
In a statement issued today, Elm Grove's chief of police, Thorston Lund, speculated that the murders could he connected to Mr. McClure's past.
The child claimed to be the couple's nephew, eight-year-old Robert McClure, remains missing.
On the next page, theJournal announcedslain elm grove couple HAD CRIMINAL BACKGROUND.
At a press conference yesterday evening, police departments of Milwaukee and Elm Grove announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation identified William and Sally McClure, slain last Wednesday in their exclusive Salisbury Road residence, as Sylvan Booker and his common-law wife, Marilyn Felt, fugitives from criminal justice. Their two-year-old daughter, Lisa Booker, was identified as the third victim.
Agent Charles Twomey of the FBI's Milwaukee office announced that Booker and Felt had been under intensive investigation in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, area. "Arrests were expected imminently," said Agent Twomey. “It is our speculation that they were tipped off. They tried to run, but the wrong people caught up with them."
Agent Twomey could not account for the presence of eight-year-old "Robert McClure" in the household, and said, "We continue to see the boy as a valuable source of information."
In the next story, theMinneapolis 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 theMarie-Celeste. 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 inOttumwa 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 hadseen 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.
Robert had sent Ashleigh Ashton to the Motel Comfort because he had known I would be there. The next day, he had rescued me from life in prison by going to bed with her.
I felt as though I, too, were a kind of Russian doll, hiding secrets inside secrets that led to an unknowable mystery. Robert; Edward Rinehart. It was too much, I could not work it out. Neither could I continue to endanger Laurie Hatch. I decided to go out and walk the streets until weariness forced me back to bed.
When I stepped outside, a white sliver of my landlady's face disappeared behind the fold of a curtain. I closed the door with a loud, satisfying bang. I wanted a drink. Maybe three drinks.
Sounds of a commotion grew louder as I walked down Chester Street. All thetroublemakers in Hatchtown had not yet found their heels.Idid not want to be Robert's toy. I haled the idea that he had been maneuvering me, directing me, shaping my life. Well, why? I stopped walking, struck by the most obvious question imaginable.
The answer came when I remembered:"Mr. Booker, you have something that belongs to me."
Once a year, Mr. X had gone in search of Robert, my shadow. A connection of which I had known nothing had pulled me, the shadow's shadow, into the search. Star and Robert had met at least twice, in front of Biegelman's department store and outside Nettie's house; surely, there had been other meetings. Maybe she had somehow kept Mr. X at bay. Our birthday arrived on the day after her funeral, and Robert could not face the annual challenge alone. He had saved my life because he needed me.
I didn't need him. Robert could go to hell. It was fine with me if Mr. X erased him.
Brimming with rage, I took another step forward and realized that what I had missed all my life was the being I had just consigned to destruction. A tide of emotion I can only describe asyearning nearly brought me to my knees. Every cell in my body called out for reunion with its other, split-off self. All over again, more painfully for being an adult, I felt like an amputated half, bleeding for the want of what would make it whole.This is crazy, I said to myself.You felt like that when you were three years old.