Mr. X

    The jury found Jansky guilty and recommended mercy. A week later, the judge spoke. Although the illegality of the defendant's actions could not be overlooked, neither should it be forgotten that Midwife Jansky had chosen infants whose mothers' conduct put them at risk. The judge wished also to take into account her record of service to the community. Therefore, he accepted the recommendations of the jury and sentenced the defendant to three years at Greenhaven Penitentiary, with possibility of parole after eighteen months.

    She stole four children and told their mothers they were dead, this Hazel Jansky. Because a judge and jury found that she had acted in the interests of the stolen children, she spent only eighteen months in jail. Hazel Jansky's photographs did not depict a person to whom one would entrust social policy. A compact blond in her mid- thirties, she glowered from the pages of theEcho with the irascibility of one who had learned that unrelenting crabbiness served her far better than cheerfulness and was not about to forget it.

    I thought the court had shared her contempt for her victims. If Hazel Jansky had sold the babies of middle-class mothers, she would still be in jail. And I wondered if the murdered woman and the one killed while driving drunk would have turned out differently had they not been told that their babies were stillborn.

    The next clipping, from theMilwaukee Journal and headeddouble murder in suburbia, introduced the unsolved homicides. Milwaukee County pathologists had discovered that Mr. and Mrs. William McClure, previously thought to be victims of the fire that had destroyed their house on Salisbury Road in the suburb of Elm Grove, had died as a result of multiple stab wounds. Their three-year-old daughter, Lisa McClure, had not, as originally supposed, perished from asphyxiation but from traumatic injury to the neck. Resident in

    Elm Grove for only six months, the couple had remained largely unknown to their neighbors, one of whom toldthe Journal reporter that Mr. McClure claimed to have moved from St. Louis tor business reasons. Missing from the scene was eight-year-old Robert McClure, Mr. McClure's nephew, who had been enrolled in the coming term's third-grade class at Elm Grove Elementary School. While not ruling out the possibility that the boy had been abducted by the assailants, police held out hope that he had escaped before his presence was noted. Efforts to reach the boy's parents had not been successful, but Elm Grove's chief of police, Thorston Lund, expressed confidence that they would soon be heard from.

    The next clipping was headedmystery of slain couple.

    The investigation into Wednesday's brutal triple murder and arson in Elm Grove took a surprising turn this morning with the announcement that two of the victims, William and Sally McClure, may have been living under assumed names. According to a confidential source in the Elm Grove Police Department, a routine background check has revealed that on at least two previous occasions the couple had given fictitious addresses.

    When purchasing the Salisbury Road property and again when enrolling eight-year-old Robert McClure, Mr. McClure's missing nephew, in Elm Grove Elementary School, the McClures listed their previous residence as 1650 Miraflores, San Juan, Puerto Rico, a nonexistent address. On Robert McClure's enrollment form, his previous school was given as St. Louis Country Day School, which has no record of his attendance.

    A high-ranking officer in the Elm Grove Police Department reports that the McClures purchased the Salisbury Road residence through the Statler Real Estate Agency by means of a cash payment. Thomas Statler, the president of the agency, says that a cash sale is unusual but not unprecedented in the Elm Grove area.

    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 . .