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Saturday, November 9, 1985
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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, 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
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- Midnight Horror Show Tuesday, December 17, 1985
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- Midnight Horror Show Saturday, November 2, 1985
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