All the Dying Children Read online

  Daly sipped a cup of black coffee as he sat at his cluttered desk, surrounded by leaning towers of discarded newspapers, court documents and press releases. As he logged onto his computer for the day to begin making police checks, he decided he would try to talk Richardson out of running a story for the weekend. There were still too many loose ends, and he had a feeling the story could be better with more time. But first, he would need to make another run at talking to Kimberly Foster’s family. It had been a few days since he last reached out to them, and while they were no doubt still grieving, they had some time to process the loss. By now they might be more inclined to talk. At the very least, Daly thought he needed to make them aware of what he knew and the possibility that it could become a story in the very near future. He didn’t want them to find out about it in the paper.

  On his way out of the newsroom, Daly walked passed the newsroom mailboxes and noticed a letter in his inbox. He reached in and picked up the letter, which was in a plain white envelope. It was addressed to him but did not have a return address. The words were handwritten in block letters.

  He slid a finger under the flap and pulled out a handwritten letter, also in block writing.

  “MR. DALY: YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CURIOUS CAT, DON’T YOU? BE VERY CAREFUL.”

  Daly dropped the note to a desk next to the mailboxes and took a step back. A chill came over him, sending an icy tingle up his spine. The most disturbing part of the message wasn’t in the text of the letter itself. It was reading his home address scribbled as a postscript at the bottom.

  As Daly tried to process what he had just read, his thoughts were interrupted by the squawk of the police scanner and a dispatcher’s clipped voice. There was a teenage girl on the Market Street Bridge, reported as a possible jumper. Daly picked up his coffee and took another sip as he listened, trying to decide whether to get over to the Susquehanna River. He figured it could just be a kid who stopped to look at the water as she was walking past. Even if the kid was a jumper, there was a fair chance she would back down without taking the plunge. In either case, it wouldn’t be news.

  But the next dispatch that came across told Daly it was definitely a story. Multiple callers were reporting the kid had hit the water. She plunged beneath the icy, murky waters churning beneath the towering bridge and vanished. Daly grabbed his coat and ran out the door, walking the few blocks to the water’s edge.

  When he got to the bridge, he saw a few police cars stopped on the east side, the officers staring intently downstream in hopes of spotting the victim. Sirens blared between the buildings of the city as firefighters raced to the next crossing, an old dilapidated railroad bridge where they hoped to catch the girl coming downstream.

  Daly walked up behind the policemen looking down to the river and used his iPhone to snap a photo from behind, with the river in the background. Then he started typing a web update to send back to the city desk. After sending back a few sentences saying police were responding to a report of a jumper on the bridge, he decided to go back and grab his car to head downstream. If the girl was going to be rescued, it wasn’t going to happen anywhere near the Market Street Bridge.

  * * *

  The body didn’t turn up at the next crossing. Firefighters took to the water, combing the shorelines between the expanses in small motor boats for hours before conceding that the kid was gone. The cold, murky waters of the Susquehanna River ensured that rescuers couldn’t see much of anything below the surface, and the swift current had likely carried the body miles downstream. When the river was ready to surrender its victim, the fish-eaten body would resurface, bloated and rotting.

  Daly waited to land a brief interview with the on-scene commander and then headed back to the newsroom, where he saw the paper’s city government reporter, Joe Reed, had sent him a Facebook link. More precisely, Joe had sent the link to Daly and their editor, John Richardson. The link took Daly to the page of an Emma Nguyen, a sixteen-year-old junior at Coughlin High School in Wilkes-Barre. The profile picture showed a smiling girl with glasses and long black hair, her tongue poked out and eyebrows raised.

  Her cover photo showed her wide-eyed and screaming on a roller coaster next to a boy who was similarly excited. The page contained selfies Emma had taken while dolled up in front of a mirror, her backside prominently on display. She had pictures with her friends at the Wyoming Valley Mall, trying to solve a corn maze, and of her kissing the boy from the roller coaster on the cheek while he wore an exaggerated look of surprise. One of her recent status updates contained a Graphics Interchange Format file detailing the various types of bitchface one could assume, if so inclined.

  It was normal teenage kid stuff. Except for the most recent post. As Daly read the morbid post, the number of “wow” and “sad” reactions below ticked upward steadily.

  “Are you OK?!” one of Emma’s friends wrote.

  “Call me!” wrote another.

  It was apparent to Daly that this was a suicide note, and that the body that would wash up downriver in Bloomsburg or Sunbury later in the spring would be that of Emma Nguyen. The note started off with an apology, as many of them do. Emma went on to explain how hard things had been on her. She had big plans to go to State College and study at Penn State, where she wanted to take the first steps to begin a career as a doctor. Then she got pregnant and that aspiration ground to a thorough halt. Emma figured she probably wouldn’t even be able to finish high school, let alone get all the way through medical school. And forget telling her parents about it. They would absolutely kill her.

  Instead, Emma decided to do the job herself. Toward the bottom of the note, the tone changed considerably, and Emma’s writing became less coherent. Daly knew what was coming even before he got to it. There on the page before him – for the whole world to see – were the same last words he’d seen before.

  Verbatim.

  “They’re watching me always. Nothing can make it stop.”

  Any thought of putting off the story was now gone. Now the exact passage that Kimberly Foster had used in her very public video had been written in another suicide note on a public Facebook page.

  While Emma’s post would most likely not go viral like Kimberly’s video did, the Other Paper would surely see it. And someone over there was also certain to make the connection between the girls’ cryptic last words. He’d barely finished reading Emma’s suicide note when he noticed Richardson hovering over his desk, a sparkle of excitement gleaming in his eyes.

  “Did you see that email?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I’ll plan on filing something for tomorrow to make the connection between the three cases. I figure it’s out there already now. If we don’t report it, someone else will.”

  “Right,” Richardson said. “Why don’t you go back to Kowalski and see what he says about it. See if he knew Emma and if he knows anything about what’s going on. We’ll need to be careful with this. We don’t want to make him look like a suspect unless he gives something up. Let’s see what he says and we’ll decide whether to mention him or not.”

  Daly turned back to his computer and scrolled through Emma’s Facebook friends list, searching for David Kowalski or any other names that might stand out. She had a pretty extensive list – more than eight hundred people – but David was not among them. Next, Daly grabbed his cellphone and put in a call to Celeste Gonzalez, informing her about the latest death and Emma’s final statement to the world. Daly could hear a slight gasp on the other end of the phone as he relayed the information. He knew that now nothing would ever convince Celeste Gonzalez that her son took his own life. He asked her if the name Emma Nguyen sounded familiar, and texted her a picture he snapped from her Facebook page. Celeste was adamant she had never seen or heard about the girl.

  Thanking her for her time, Daly ended the call and set out to pay David Kowalski another visit.

  * * *

  The second meeting
with David Kowalski was less cordial than the first. Again, Daly had waited until school was out and David was likely to be home alone, and again he found him there without a parent in sight.

  “What do you want?” David asked coldly after swinging the front door open.

  “I got your note,” Daly said, squinting.

  Kowalski was the only potential suspect Daly had contacted since the case began, so he felt confident the note had been his. Accusing him was a gamble, but Daly figured if Kowalski had nothing to do with it he wouldn’t understand the comment anyway.

  “What note?” Kowalski stared back evenly, betraying nothing.

  Daly watched Kowalski hard for a long minute, trying to gauge the response. He didn’t know this kid well, but he appeared to be genuinely confused. Daly decided to change directions.

  “There was a suicide this morning. A girl jumped from the Market Street Bridge and is presumed dead,” Daly said.

  “So?” David asked, clearly annoyed at being disturbed for a second time.

  “She left a note on Facebook. She used the same phrase that Kimberly and Justin did. Word for word,” Daly paused to let the information sink in, closely watching David’s reaction. David just stared back, unblinking. He either had no idea what Daly was implying or he had one hell of a poker face.

  “Did you know Emma Nguyen?” Daly continued.

  “No, I don’t think so. Where did she go?”

  “Coughlin High.”

  “I don’t know anyone at Coughlin.”

  Daly pulled out his cellphone and punched in the password, pulling up Emma’s Facebook photo.

  “Are you sure you never saw her before?” he asked.

  David looked at the picture and shook his head, returning to meet Daly’s gaze. “I don’t know her,” he said.

  “Do you have any idea why these three would have said the same thing? You said before you thought you’d heard it before.”

  “I’m not sure. I thought maybe it sounded familiar. I know Kim was into poetry and stuff like that. She was into some pretty weird stuff when we were at camp. Maybe she got it from there.”

  “What kind of weird stuff?” Daly asked.

  “I don’t remember exactly. I know there was one about some rich guy everyone idolized. He killed himself. Maybe he was the inspiration,” Kowalski snickered.

  It sounded familiar, and Daly thought for a moment, trying to recall a poem he’d read years ago. Then it came to him, the iconic work by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

  So on we worked, and waited for the light,

  And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

  And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

  Went home and put a bullet through his head.

  “Was it ‘Richard Cory’?” Daly asked.

  “That might have been it. It was a while ago.”

  “But if Kim got the phrase from a poem, how would the others have known to use it?”

  “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Justin was all about that. He was doing everything he could to hook up with Kim. It was kind of pathetic if you ask me. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he started getting into poetry so he could get into something else, if you catch my drift.”

  “And Emma?” Daly asked, again seeking some sign of recognition or acknowledgment.

  He got nothing.

  “You’re the reporter,” David shot back. “Why don’t you find out?”

  CHAPTER 8

  Thursday, March 29, 2018

  2:07 p.m.

  The newsroom was humming, a soft murmur of reporters’ telephoned questions being answered by the sound of fingers feverishly tapping keyboards to transcribe quotes for news stories. Above, a muted flat-screen television was tuned to CNN as one host after another recapped the same story of the day, always over a “Breaking News” banner — no matter how long the story had been regurgitated. A printer whirred as it methodically spat out pages, collating and piling up copies of the news budget for the afternoon budget meeting, in which the editors would decide where to run stories in the next day’s edition.

  After leaving Kowalski’s house feeling somewhat defeated, Daly knew that the kid’s name wouldn’t even appear in the same newspaper as the story about the deaths. David Kowalski was either an innocent kid or a master manipulator, but the result for Daly’s story would be the same. A quick conversation with John Richardson confirmed as much.

  But now Daly waited to learn the answer to a different question altogether: whether he was doing a story at all. After he had returned to the newsroom, Daly put in a call to Phil Wojcik to verify the victim’s identity. After all, he wasn’t about to base a story about a fatality on a teenage kid’s Facebook page.

  Wojcik confirmed the suspected victim was Emma Nguyen, age sixteen, who had last been seen leaving home on her way to school that morning. The body had not been recovered and the search was indefinitely suspended. Most likely someone would find it downriver in the coming days or weeks.

  Daly then asked again about the Facebook message and the apocalyptic last words the three victims shared.

  “My editor wants to run a story connecting the three victims with their last words. There’s three cases now, so it seems like way more than a coincidence.”

  “I thought I told you about that off the record,” Wojcik bristled.

  It was true that the information Wojcik gave off the record was the reason Daly was able to connect Justin to the others, but Daly had since independently verified the information with Celeste Gonzalez. To Daly’s thinking, there was no violation of the off-the-record agreement because he didn’t plan to attribute the information to Wojcik at all. As Daly explained his thought process to Wojcik, the detective grew increasingly irritated.

  “I gave that to you with the understanding you wouldn’t use it. If you run this story now, it could really fuck us,” Wojcik said.

  “So you are looking for a suspect?” Daly asked.

  “It’s an ongoing investigation,” Wojcik replied coldly.

  “Look, I’m just trying to figure out the lay of the land. If there’s a reason you want us to hold the story, I need to know it so I can explain it to my editors.”

  “Why should I tell you anything? I gave you something off the record and now you’re trying to screw me over by printing it.”

  Getting off-the-record information to guide a reporter’s questions and verify the facts through other sources is a big reason why reporters agree to go off the record in the first place, but Daly decided to let it go for now.

  “Look, if you tell me — off the record — why you don’t want us to print the story, I’ll see what we can do. Right now, my editor is planning on a story for A1 tomorrow.”

  Begrudgingly, Wojcik explained that he didn’t want a story because detectives were looking into the connection between the deaths. They didn’t know that there was someone behind the scenes coaxing the victims into suicide, but they were looking into the possibility. The last words and the connection at camp – at least between Kimberly and Justin – was enough to warrant a closer look.

  “I can’t tell you what to publish, but if you guys do a story now suggesting there could be a connection, it would really screw our investigation,” Wojcik said. “We don’t have a suspect, but if there is one he would disappear.”

  Afterward, Daly dutifully went to Richardson to convey the detective’s concerns. There were a few variables to consider here, not the least of which was that Wojcik was a good source. When the bodies fell, or the handcuffs snapped shut, Wojcik was usually good for some inside information that wasn’t in the court documents. At the very least he was usually good for a heads-up about when the perp would be making an appearance for an after-hours arraignment. Crossing him on a case like this could put Daly on his bad side, and that could mean preferential treatment for the guys at
the Other Paper across town.

  And, of course, the editors would also have to consider the merits of Wojcik’s argument, which was sound. If someone out there was urging teens to end their lives in dramatic fashion, the Observer certainly didn’t want to be responsible for tipping him off and allowing him to slip away. The last thing the editors would want would be the district attorney on the television news declaring that county detectives would have caught a serial child killer but for coverage in the Wilkes-Barre Observer that tipped him off and allowed him to escape.

  Then again, the editors also had to consider the public’s need to know. The parents of the Wyoming Valley were, at the moment, entirely ignorant of the possibility their children could be in danger. Without knowing that someone might be manipulating kids into suicide, parents would have no idea to keep closer tabs on their children. Daly felt the newspaper had an obligation to warn them, even if the police objected. Like the police, he couldn’t say for sure that someone was behind the suicides.

  But it was certainly starting to feel that way.

  As he waited for the editors to make a decision, Daly ran Emma’s name through the archive. Emma Nguyen, daughter of Plains Township residents Vu and Linh Nguyen, had been in a spelling bee a few years back, but Daly didn’t see much else on her.

  He decided to reach out to the Nguyens. Ordinarily, he would go in person for such an encounter, but it was getting late and he had a date to meet up with Lauren for dinner. He also suspected the Nguyens would have little interest in talking to a reporter just then. He dialed the digits but got no answer. He left a brief message, saying he was writing a story and wanted to talk about Emma. Then he clicked the phone down into his cradle.

  When the budget meeting broke up, the editors filed out of the glass-enclosed meeting room and headed to their desks to start reading copy. Richardson veered over to Daly’s desk on his way to the editors’ pod to deliver the verdict.