WEDNESDAY evening I came home from work and found three pieces of paper sitting on the kitchen table. They were photocopies of articles from the Toledo
DEADLY DUO KILLS SIX, KIDNAPS HEIRESS
Huge Ransom Demanded
The article told the story of Alice McMartin, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the Detroit millionaire Byron McMartin. On the evening of November 27, Alice was abducted at gunpoint from her father's estate in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The kidnappers, dressed as police officers, with badges, service revolvers, and truncheons, bluffed their way into the house shortly before 8:00 p.m. A security camera filmed them as they handcuffed six of the McMartins' household employees -- four security guards, a maid, and a chauffeur -- with their arms behind their backs before making them kneel with their faces against a wall. The kidnappers then took turns shooting their victims in the back of the head, using the security guards' own revolvers.
Byron McMartin and his wife discovered their daughter's absence, as well as the six corpses, when they returned home from a social function just after ten o'clock. The article quoted an unidentified source as saying that the kidnappers had left a ransom note behind, demanding as much as $4.8 million in unmarked bills.
The second article, like the first, came from the
HEIRESS' BODY ID'D BY FEDS
Father Loses Daughter, Ransom
This article was datelined 'Sandusky, OH, Dec. 8,' and it told how Alice McMartin's gagged and handcuffed corpse had been pulled out of Lake Erie three days before by a local fisherman. The body had apparently been in the water for some time, because the FBI needed the young woman's dental records to confirm her identity. She'd been shot in the back of the head before being dumped into the lake, probably within twenty-four hours of her abduction.
A ransom had been paid, the article said, after the FBI told Alice's father that it would help them catch the kidnappers.
The final article was from page 3 of the
It began:
FBI ID's McMARTIN KIDNAPPERS
Detroit, Dec. 14 (AP) -- Using a security camera's film of the November 27 kidnapping of Alice McMartin, the daughter of the millionaire and former paper cup manufacturer Byron McMartin, during which six employees of the McMartin estate were murdered, the FBI has established the identity of two suspects and begun a nationwide manhunt for them.
The two men, identified as Stephen Bokovsky, 26, and Vernon Bokovsky, 35, both of Flint, Michigan, are brothers.
The FBI, acting on a hunch that one or both of the kidnappers were former employees of Mr. McMartin, searched through thousands of personnel files, trying to match employee photographs with the grainy, low-quality images taken from the security camera. A match came when they opened the younger Bokovsky's file. He'd worked as a gardener on the McMartin estate in the summer of 1984.
Vernon Bokovsky, the elder brother, was identified after FBI agents interviewed the brothers' parents, Georgina and Cyrus Bokovsky, of Flint. The two suspects reportedly stayed with their parents throughout the month of November. Cyrus Bokovsky, reached by phone, told a
Vernon had been paroled from the Milan Correctional Facility in 1986 after serving seven years of a twenty- five-year sentence for the 1977 murder of a neighbor in a dispute over the sale of a car. The FBI expressed confidence in their ability to track down and apprehend the suspects. 'Now that we've ID'd them,' one of the agents said, 'it's only a matter of time before we bring them in. They can run all they want, but sooner or later, whether it's next week or next year, we'll get them.'
The article ended with a quote from the same agent, expressing outrage at the brutality of the brothers' crime:
'It was coldly methodical,' Agent Teil said. 'It's clear that these guys had planned it out with extreme care. They weren't killing out of panic. The thing you come away with after watching the film is how calm they were. They knew exactly what they were doing.'
Teil speculated that they murdered the six McMartin employees to eliminate the possibility of Stephen Bokovsky being recognized.
'They saw it as tying up loose ends,' he said. 'Fortunately for us they forgot about the camera.'
I went back to the first article and read it again. Then I reread the other two articles. Included with the third one were three photographs. The first was a head-and-shoulders shot of Stephen Bokovsky. It was from his employee ID at the McMartin estate. He was small, dark haired, with a thin-lipped smile. His eyes were sunken and tired looking.
The second photo was of Vernon. It was a mug shot, from when he'd been in jail. He was bearded, intense, his jaw clenched tightly, as if he were in pain. He was much bigger than Stephen. They didn't look like brothers.
The third photo was a magnified image from the estate's security camera. It showed Stephen aiming down his arm at the back of a kneeling man's head.
I glanced around the kitchen. There was a pot on the stove, making bubbling sounds. It smelled like beef stew. Sarah was upstairs, with the baby. I could hear her, the low hum of her voice. It sounded like she was reading out loud. Her knitting was across from me on the table in a messy pile, the long needles pointing straight up into the air, like a booby trap.
I reread the articles again. When I finished, I went upstairs.
SARAH was in the bathroom, taking a bath with Amanda. She looked up when I came in, glancing quickly at the photocopies in my hand. I could tell that she was pleased with her discovery. Her face was radiant, triumphant. She grinned at me.
The bathroom was full of steam. I shut the door behind me and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet, loosening my tie.
Amanda was lying on her back in the warm water, smiling broadly, kept afloat by Sarah's thighs. Sarah was leaning forward, her hands clasped behind the baby's head. One of Amanda's little feet was pressed up against her breast, denting it slightly.
Sarah was making up a story for Amanda. She paused only briefly when I arrived, then continued, picking up where she'd left off.
'The queen was very mad,' she said, rocking the baby a little in the water. 'She stormed out of the ballroom, casting angry looks from side to side. The king ran after her, his whole court following at a distance. 'Beloved!' he yelled. 'Forgive me!' He ran out into the street, glancing this way and that. 'Beloved!' he yelled. 'Beloved!' He sent
