Off the Deep End (16)
That’s when the FBI and local police announced we had a serial killer on our hands who liked adolescent boys. They suspected he was linked to three other similar crimes in Ohio and Illinois where boys had gone missing and been killed in a similar fashion. It looked like he was making his way undetected throughout the Midwest. They labeled him the Dog Snatcher—which never made sense to me, since he was snatching kids and not dogs—but it caught fire in the media, so that’s who he became.
They never had any leads. There wasn’t a shred of evidence on anything he delivered—phone, clothes, or body. Everything was always spotless and wiped clean. It mystified police and terrified us, especially since the Dog Snatcher was doing all this while everyone was watching. That was the most messed-up part in all of it. He was still getting away with it right under everyone else’s noses. He must be feeling invincible. That was dangerous.
Nobody knew what to do, and it wasn’t like we could just lock our kids inside even if we wanted to. That wasn’t any way to live, so we just went on with our lives as best we could without any kind of answers.
Until Billy.
He lived in a town only ninety miles away, which was entirely too close for any of us to feel safe any longer. Even though he ripped away our last shred of security, he was the first break in the case. Nobody else had ever been grabbed and gotten away.
Billy had been walking home from football practice around sunset when a man came out of the park and approached him with his dog. By then, all our kids had been schooled on what to do if they were approached by a stranger, and Billy was prepared. In fact, if you had to place bets on who was most likely to survive an attack, he was the kid you’d put your money on. Not only was he a black belt in jujitsu, but his mom was a badass prosecutor who taught free self-defense classes on the weekend to women in domestic violence shelters. She’d been dragging Billy to classes with her since he was in elementary school.
The man approached Billy and asked him for a waste bag for his dog, which instantly raised Billy’s suspicions, and he bolted. As he raced down Sycamore Street, the man jumped out from the alley and grabbed him from behind. Billy quickly spun and kicked him, then stabbed him in both eyes with his fingers. He sprayed him with the pepper spray that all our kids carried now. Then, he ran screaming for help. He didn’t stop until he got home. It was almost two miles.
He was a hero and gave investigators loads of helpful information they’d never had before. Important clues to the pathology of the killer. Our first hints as to what he was like or what his motives might have been. Investigators had always suspected he had a dog because that would make it easier to bond with kids, and their suspicions were confirmed. Billy said it was a cute dog, too, like a puppy. That was likely why the man had never spooked any of the children at first. The kids were too focused on the puppy.
He tried to approach Billy, but the moment he crossed the street, Billy picked up his pace. The Dog Snatcher must’ve taken a left on Seventh Street and cut through the alleyway because that’s where he tried to nab Billy. They interviewed Billy for weeks, and he made all the national headlines.
“Before I knew what was happening, there was a gun smashed into my back,” he reported as his mom stood beaming proudly behind him at every press conference. “And then I just did what my mama taught me to do. I jabbed him hard as I could in the eyes and took off running. I screamed at the top of my lungs the whole way.”
It was impossible not to be impressed with his bravery. Not only did he give us our first look into the Dog Snatcher’s methods, but he gave us the first glimpse into his appearance too. Billy worked diligently with a sketch artist, and within twenty-four hours, we had an idea of what the Dog Snatcher looked like. His face was printed on flyers and spread all over town. It was shown on every news station in the country. His baldness was the most striking feature about him. And it wasn’t just that he was bald—there wasn’t an ounce of hair on his face either. Not even eyebrows. Investigators explained that getting rid of all his hair was a sophisticated and cunning way not to leave any evidence on his victims or at the scene of the crime. It was likely that his entire body was shaved.
Billy deserved a reward. Without him, we wouldn’t know any of that. They should give him the money that they’d raised for Brady and Josh for what he did.
Things with the Dog Snatcher had been quiet ever since. It’d been almost seven months. Everyone had started believing he was gone for good or he’d at least gone into hiding for a while after his failed attempt with Billy. It was rare that we even heard anything about it in the news anymore.
But then seven days ago, my Isaac took Duke out for a walk and never came home.
I got an angry text from my elderly housebound neighbor that Duke was taking a dump in their front yard. Last time Duke had gotten out and gone over there, he’d done the same thing, and she’d shot him with a pellet gun. I’d run over there as fast as I could, and it’d never dawned on me that something might’ve happened to Isaac, because Duke liked to take off. It was one of his favorite games. But my worry peaked when he wasn’t home in an hour. By the time Mark got home from work at six, I was frantic.
They were crucifying us in the media. How could we possibly have let our child go outside by himself? Of all things—to walk a dog? Every headline was another version of the same. They felt sorry for those other boys, but nobody felt sorry for us. Everyone thought we should’ve known better.