Chapter Seven
Seven
The Abel Haggerty Murder Tour left Sundays at eleven a.m. from a side street adjacent to the New England Aquarium.
There had been no more arms, no announcements about the first two I’d planted, no nothing.
While I’m sure the severed limbs had been intended to upset me, the waiting was proving to be far more agonizing.
My Sunday mornings were usually reserved for Painting Pots, but so was almost every other day, including yesterday and probably tomorrow. I had a slightly more pressing extracurricular activity for once.
I convinced Porter to call in sick so I could bring him along.
I knew he would add a levity to the experience and keep me sane.
I needed someone to carry the small talk.
I needed to observe at first, not reveal too much.
I could count on Porter to fill silences and keep the guy talking.
Plus, this would buy me some time before Porter would start hounding me to go out with him again.
We walked past seven kiosks for other tours before I saw him. Waiting between two generic city tours, he stood alone, holding a sign with the same ridiculous van-and-devil graphic, forcing an inviting smile on passing tourists.
We made eye contact and he lowered the sign. “Hey!” He waved.
“Do you know him?” asked Porter.
“I met him once.”
“Twist.” Porter elbowed me in the side. “Thirsty—”
“Don’t say it!” I reciprocated with an elbow to his side.
Dominic ditched his sign against the curb as we approached.
“Hey,” he repeated. “Sorry, I don’t think you told me your name the other day.”
“Gwen. Dominic, right?”
He smiled, extending his hand to mine. “Yeah.” His fingers were icicles.
“I’m Porter.” My accomplice inserted himself and Dominic dropped my hand for his. “Holy shit, your hands are cold.”
“Oh, sorry.” Dominic recoiled and rubbed his hand against his tight jeans. “I’ve been out here for a few hours trying to drum up business.”
“And…?” Porter made a scene of looking around for other customers.
“And I’m so glad you guys showed up.” Dominic landed the setup. “Shall we go?”
“To the deathmobile.” Porter pointed with fervor in no particular direction.
Dominic reached down for his sign, waiting for my answer.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
The black van was parked two blocks away in a loading zone.
“Shotgun,” Porter yelled as he picked up his pace.
His enthusiasm was exceeding expectations.
He loved true crime podcasts and documentaries, but mostly the Serial and Making a Murderer type that were part of the zeitgeist. This was literally just a van in an alley, so the hullabaloo was a bit much.
Dominic opened the van door for me and I climbed onto the bench seat.
Porter was already buckled in and ready.
Dominic walked around the van and got into the driver’s seat.
He grabbed at his hair, jerking it up like he was styling it, but then just left it pointing in all directions.
He adjusted the rearview mirror, wiggling it back and forth before returning it to its original position.
“Welcome to the Abel Haggerty Murder Tour,” he began. “My name is Dominic and I will be your tour guide.”
“We know,” said Porter.
“The tour is a little over five hours. We will be visiting many of the crime scenes as well as the Haggerty home outside of Worcester.”
“Worcester?” Porter lifted his sunglasses as he turned around to glare at me, apparently his enthusiasm knowing bounds and those bounds being the turnpike.
I shrugged like I’d had no idea we’d have to drive so far. How would Gwen Tanner know where Abel Haggerty had lived?
Dominic flipped open the center console and slid out two thin bound packets. He handed one to Porter and then turned to give me mine. “Here you go.”
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s visuals to look at during the tour.”
Porter started flipping through the pages.
“Hey,” Dominic snapped. “No skipping ahead. Turn to page one.”
He eased the van out onto the street as I turned the cover over to reveal page one as instructed.
It was a staged family photo—the kind you get done at Sears.
Of course, it was my family. I was a toddler with bouncy blonde pigtails, that shade of blonde that toddlers grow out of, and a chubby round face.
I sat on my mother’s lap, with a huge smile revealing my Tic Tac teeth.
My father stood behind my mother with his hand on her shoulder, his beard much shorter and better maintained back then.
They both stared directly at the same spot, slightly off-camera, neither one of them smiling.
Honestly, it would have been better to set the mood for the tour if Dominic had cropped me out.
Once we turned out of the alley and onto a congested city street, Dominic started his script. “This is the Haggerty family in 1998. Abel; his wife, Reanne; and their daughter, Marin. You can see the evil behind their eyes.”
“Not the kid,” said Porter. “She’s grinning so hard she’s gonna shit her pants.”
I laughed. They had no idea it was me. Well, Porter had no idea. My gut was telling me Dominic was just as clueless, but my brain told me not to buy it so easily.
“Fun fact,” said Dominic. “Reanne Haggerty was just released from prison.”
That was a fun fact. This is so fun. Let’s talk more about me shitting my pants.
“Did she kill anyone?” Porter asked, not taking his eyes off the picture.
“The story is no,” said Dominic.
The answer is no, I thought.
“But you think she did?” Porter inferred.
“I wonder how you stay with a man all those years, knowing what he was doing, helping him, if you weren’t into it.”
“Probably the sex,” said Porter. “Can you imagine? Most men come home from work and are like, I filed some files today, and then they climb on top of their sad, clumsy wives and are like, hump-hump-done. This guy probably came home all like, There’s a body in the trunk, let’s cut it up and get freaky. ”
“They actually didn’t dismember any of the bodies,” Dominic corrected him—a little on the nose given the recent severed arms at my doorstep.
“You’re missing my point,” said Porter.
“How many people did he kill?” I asked from the back seat, eager to get off the topic of my parents having sex.
“Eight—that he was convicted for,” said Dominic. “There’s really no way to know. He didn’t have a signature style. They were able to prove six without a doubt and then pinned a couple more unsolved murders on him.”
“What do you think?” asked Porter.
“Oh man…” Dominic stalled as he considered his words. “It’s hard to say. It’s hard to know what’s true and what a person wants you to think is true.”
“Deep,” teased Porter, and Dominic raised his eyebrows, playing into how coy he was attempting to be. I’m sure it was all theater, but that didn’t leave me feeling any more patient about the whole thing.
I wanted to lunge forward, hook my arm around Dominic’s neck, and demand he tell me everything he knew. Wait, my father’s voice echoed in my brain. Don’t do the work for your enemy. Let him reveal himself. Let him pull his own trigger.
It was another of my father’s old adages.
He had many, and most of them had found a way to stick with me all these years, popping into my head for one reason or another, usually accompanying a memory.
This one in particular I remembered my father saying to me as were walking the halls of my elementary school, on our way to a meeting with my third-grade teacher, a man I despised, a man I wanted my father to do something about. (Not that something.)
We sat in a stuffy conference room in the school office as he complained to my father that I had a real lip.
He rattled off examples and my father only stared at the man, uttering an occasional mmm.
The teacher’s frustration grew to a point where I thought steam might shoot from his ears. Then my father finally spoke.
“What are you suggesting I do? Smack her?”
It was so unsettling to the teacher, making him realize that he, and only he, had become so angry and aggressive in a conversation about an eight-year-old girl.
He turned on a dime, reduced the significance of my lip, and even apologized.
I thought my father was so cool in that moment—an all-American hero.
It was those times, away from anything sinister, when my dad knew just what to do and I was in awe.
It had made everything about him more digestible.
Dominic slowed the van to a crawl. “Go ahead and turn the page.”
“Whoa,” exhaled Porter as he saw the next picture.
I followed suit and was blessed with the first of what would be many crime scene photos on this tour.
A young woman in revealing clothing was sprawled across the pavement.
There was dark red blood coming from her nose and mouth.
Her lace top was slashed to pieces, soaked in the same red.
She’d been brutally killed by my father—my supposed hero.
“This is Amanda Fallon, street name Fountain,” said Dominic.
“She was a sex worker?” asked Porter.
“Likely, from what they could gather asking around. She lived on the streets. Not a lot of information beyond that. She was one of Abel’s later victims. He killed her only two weeks before he was arrested.”
“Allegedly,” I said.
“No, this one’s good. They found her missing earring in his house.”
I looked closer at the photo. I remembered this one. The recent ones were easier to remember. “How many times was she stabbed?” I asked.
“Twelve,” answered Dominic.