PREVIOUSLY
Susannah stopped at a few of the neighbor's homes, only one was living there at the time Todd did. "Yeah, I remember the Mannings," the now retired Mr. and Mrs. Richards each had said. "They kept to themselves, oh the woman was pleasant enough, would smile when she saw you, always wore those dark glasses, like some kind of a movie star. The husband was something else, never cracked a smile. They had a little boy, Tom I think his name was." "Todd." Susannah corrected. "No, I remember when he would be outside playing. His mother would call, "Tom, time to come in now, your daddy will be home soon." He would go running in like he was on fire, funny little fellow, use to talk to this imaginary friend all the time when he thought no one was there. I used to hear him when he would be hiding up in a tree near my property. No, it was Tom I'm sure of it," Mrs. Richards said. It's funny how children can change." "What do you mean?" Susannah asked. "Well as I said, Tom was quiet, shy, well behaved, then at about 14 or 15, I guess it was, he became a real troublemaker."
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Adam Beecher was a warm man, big and husky, like a bear, with a shock of white hair and a deep, warm voice.
"Hello, I'm Dr. Susannah Hanen, I spoke with you earlier."
"Hi, come on in, have a seat, can I get you some coffee or something?" Mr. Beecher said extending his hand.
Taking his hand Susannah said, "No thank you, I'm a little short on time, as I said on the phone I need to speak with you about Peter Manning."
"Well, sure, but he's been dead for several years, you know that right?"
"Yes, I do, I was wondering how much you knew about his relationship with his son, with Todd?"
"Well, Dr. Hanen, I'll tell you, Peter may have been my partner but I can't say we were friends. He was a cold SOB. I never even got to meet Todd, even when we had functions at the office and other employees brought their kids in, Peter never did. I don't think I ever heard him say a good word about that boy. Sometimes I would hear him talk to that child on the phone, and he never spoke to him without shouting, and calling the boy names, spoke the same way to his wife actual. I couldn't believe it when he mentioned that he got sole custody of the kid. I mean what kind of judge would let him raise that kid by himself, he must have had a screw loose."
"Did Peter ever mention what he said to get custody, how he proved Barbara was unfit?" Susannah asked.
"Peter never said much about any part of his private life, and if you didn't want to get on the bad side of that famous temper of his, you didn't ask. The only time I ever heard him say anything about his wife was after she died. I remember him sitting in his office, looking out the window, smoking one of those damn cigarettes he always had in his mouth or hand. He had said, more to himself than to me, 'Well at least that problem is solved.' I know they had been divorced for a long time when she died, but that was cold, even for Peter.
"How is Todd? I know he got into some trouble back in college. It made the paper here, too. I remember how embarrassed Peter was over that. Everyone here knew better than to ever ask him about Todd's troubles. Even later, when it was in the papers that his son was some kind of hero, you'd think he would have been proud of the boy, but his attitude was still the same. He never wanted to mention that kid."
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Well, Peter seems to be consistent, Susannah thought to herself as she drove away from Adam Beecher's office.
Her next stop was the library. She sat looking at microfilm of newspaper articles from January, 1984. January 3rd, and January 4th, nothing, then in the paper dated January 5, 1984, there was a small article, about a local girl who had been missing since January 2nd. There was a picture of a very pretty girl with long dark hair and a beautiful smile.
The article said, "Michelle Baker, age fourteen, was last seen leaving her home at approximately 10pm carrying a blue backpack and heading north. Judge Alfred Connor saw the girl when he was taking his trash out. At this time, police are treating it as a runaway. If you see this girl please call (312) 555-8765."
In the January 7th, paper there was another small article, "Parents of missing girl questioned. The parents of Michelle Baker, a ninth grade Chicago girl, missing since January 2nd, are being questioned in her disappearance. The parents claimed their daughter was happy at home and would never run away. The girl was last seen the night of the 2nd by a retired judge," and again they ran Michelle's picture. The January 10, 1984 paper had basically the same information, only now a $10,000 reward was being offered.
Susannah looked at the picture of the pretty, young girl and realized Todd was one of the last people to see her, and except for Sam, no one knows this. She checked the newspapers through September of 1984 and found no further mention, the story had just faded away.
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Susannah arrived at Kennedy Junior High School at 2:45pm. As she had done at Lincoln elementary, she headed for the records office, and once again had to wait while the old records were found.
Susannah noticed that throughout seventh and eighth grade Todd's grades were good, and the comments about him were pretty much the same as they had been in elementary school, but halfway into ninth grade his marks went down drastically. He started to fail everything. The comments ranged from disruptive to violent. Counseling had been recommended, but was refused by Todd's father.
Susannah saw that his homeroom teacher was also his English teacher, a Mrs. Lowell. Finding that she was still at Kennedy, Susannah went to her second floor classroom.
"Todd Manning, oh yes, I remember him, it would be pretty hard not to remember him," Mrs. Lowell said.
"Why is that?" Susannah asked.
"He was a student of mine in seventh grade, and then again in ninth grade. I'll tell you, to this day I can't believe it was the same boy, as a matter of fact I couldn't believe it was even the same boy that had been in my class before the Christmas holiday. I had never seen a student change that radically, so quickly," Mrs. Lowell said, shaking her head from side to side just thinking about it.
"How did he change? I mean what was he like before he came back from the holiday?" Susannah asked, even though she already knew what the answer would be.
"He had always been such a well behaved boy, quiet, funny sometimes though. He had this way of looking at things, books we read and such, many times his comments would crack everyone up, myself included, but mostly he was quiet. He would always choose to sit in the back of the room. He was a loner, although there was one girl he was friends with, that poor little girl who disappeared, what was her name?"
"Michelle Baker," Susannah offered.
"Yes, Michelle, poor child. I wonder what ever happened to her. They say she ran away but no one ever knew for sure. She and Todd were always together.
"I always suspected her disappearance was, at the very least, partially to blame for the change in Todd. Like I was saying, after Todd came back from the Christmas holiday he acted like a different child. He would shout out things in the middle of a lesson. He couldn't sit still, fidgeting in his chair, constantly.
"He would disrupt the class by getting up and leaving in the middle of it. He never had his assignments done on time. He failed many of his tests. He set the dumpster behind the school on fire. He once threw a book at a guidance counselor. He was always starting fights with the other boys, he would strike out at everyone. Some of the girls complained that he made sexual overtures to them. I'll tell you, for the most part, no one wanted to be around him."
"For the most part? Was he different sometimes?" Susannah inquired.
"That was the really strange part, some days he was, well, like his old self, only not exactly, more like an immature version of his old self. I'll tell you, I'm sure that boy must have gotten into drugs. I can't imagine what else would cause a child to change so drastically in just a few days."
Susannah next went to see Mr. Zucker, Todd's art teacher. His story pretty much matched Mrs. Lowell's with one major exception. Mr. Zucker told Susannah about one incident.
"Todd had been fairly good at drawing, but after 'he changed,' he no longer had any interest in it. He would turn in his work with nothing but a big X, drawn in black on the paper. One time the assignment was to draw a family member from memory. This time, Todd sat quietly and started to draw. Suddenly, he grabbed a black marker and started to scratch out what he had drawn, then it was as if he grabbed the paper out of his own hand, he cried out, 'No! No!' and ran out of the room. He seemed so upset, that I left the class and went to look for him.
"I found him in an empty classroom. He had crawled under the teacher's desk and was holding the picture and crying. I asked him what was wrong and he said 'the picture of my mommy got spoiled.' I remember it to this day because of the way he said it. He sounded like my three-year-old son. I bent down and put my arm around him, and the next thing I knew he pushed me over and said, 'If you ever put your hands on me again, I'll kill you.' Believe me, this time he didn't sound like my son. Then he got up, ripped the picture into shreds, and threw it in my face."
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As Susannah headed back to her car she knew that whoever this violent alter was, he was probably "born" on the night of Todd's fourteenth birthday. She started the drive to Judge Connor's house.
Michael Conner was a tall man in his forties. He had been reluctant to speak with Susannah, but finally agreed to give her a few minutes. "Dr. Hanen, I really don't have very much information to give you. As I told you on the phone, I did not even live in Chicago when this incident happened."
"Did your father ever speak to you about it, or your mother? Did she ever say anything?"
"My mother died in the spring of 1984, and all my father ever said was that he saw the girl that night, that he noticed her because it was so cold out. He didn't expect to see anyone walking about."
"Is it possible for me to speak with your father?" Susannah asked.
"I thought you knew, my father died last March. That is why I am living here. I am waiting for the house to be sold," Michael answered.
"Did your father leave behind any papers, or journals, or anything that mentioned the incident?"
"No, nothing like that. Dr. Hanen, as I said, I really know nothing about this, and my father never had much to say about that time, he had other things on his mind during the winter of 1984," Michael added.
"Other things?" Susannah asked, picking up on what he had just said.
"Yes, my mother had developed a reoccurrence of breast cancer in the summer of 1983. She first became sick in 1979, and they thought she had it licked, but then it came back again. She and my father were very much in love, even after many years of marriage, and this was devastating to him. He and my mother searched for alternative cures, which helped her when she first became sick in '79. His main concern was my mother, and paying for the treatments their insurance would not cover. They bought her five years.
"I'm sorry, but I imagine a runaway girl was not high on his list of priorities at that time. Now I don't mean to be rude, but I really have things I need to do."
Susannah knew that Michael Connor had just dismissed her. "All right, thank you for your time and if you find anything, or think of anything else, please call me," she said, giving him her cell phone and office number.
Susannah decided to make one more stop before going back to Llanview. She walked the few blocks between the Connor house and the house Michelle had lived in. Like the others in the neighborhood it was spacious and well kept. Susannah knew there would be no point in going to Michelle's house directly, as Michelle parents had moved away long ago. Susannah took the chance and went to the closest house to Michelle's.
"Who is it?" Called out a female voice, a woman of approximately thirty or so answered the door.
Feeling awkward, Susannah said, "You don't know me. My name is Dr. Susannah Hanen. I was wondering if you lived in this house in January of 1984?"
The woman looked through the locked screen door and apparently did not feel Susannah was a threat. "Yes I did, why?" She asked.
"Do you remember a young girl who lived in the house next door, a girl named Michelle Baker?"
The woman looked surprised, and then, opening up the door and stepping outside, she said, "Yes, of course I remember Michelle. We were friends."
"Were you and Michelle in the same grade?" Susannah asked, wondering if this woman knew Todd.
"No, Michelle went to public school and I went to parochial school and I was also one grade ahead of her, but we hung out together sometimes. She wasn't living here very long when she disappeared. You do know about that, don't you?" The woman asked.
"Yes, I know. The police thought she ran away from home. Do you think she ran away from home?" Susannah asked.
"You want to know something? I never believed that. Michelle had great parents. They were as nice as could be, a little strict, but really, nice, warm, you know. I never heard her say a bad word about them. I can't imagine her running away from them," the woman said.
"Then what do you think happened to Michelle?" Susannah asked.
"I don't know, that old judge said he saw her, but I think maybe someone took her or something. I mean she was very happy here. She said she liked it here much better than California, where she lived just before moving here. She said she had a boyfriend." Then, smiling to herself, the woman added, "She said she almost had a boyfriend, there was this boy at school that Michelle liked and hung out with. She said he was really nice, cute, but shy. She said he was just a friend, but hoped someday he would ask her out on a real date. Poor Michelle, I always wondered what really happened to her." Susannah thanked her and headed back to her car. She knew she had found out all she could on this trip.
Susannah went back to her room and left a message for Viki, telling her she would be back in Llanview in a few hours and would see Todd tomorrow. Susannah knew once she returned to Llanview her real work would begin.
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