The True Story of the Unsolved Brighton Falls Slayings

The True Story of the Unsolved
Brighton Falls Slayings
by Martha S. Paquette
It began with the hands. Right hands, severed neatly at the wrist.
They arrived on the granite steps of the police station in empty red
and white milk cartons stapled closed at the top, photos of missing children on the back— the whole package wrapped in brown
butcher’s paper, tied neatly with thin string like a box of pastry.
The medical examiner told the police to look for a surgeon or
a butcher, someone who knew bone and tendon. It was almost
as if he admired the killer’s technique, like there was something
beautiful about the cleanliness of the cuts, so perfect it was hard
to imagine the hands had ever been attached to anything; objects
all their own.
The killer kept the women alive for exactly four days after the
removal of the hands. He took good care of them, cauterized and
dressed their wounds, shot them full of morphine for pain, tended
to them like precious orchids.
On the fifth morning, he strangled them, then left their bodies
displayed in public places: the town green, a park, the front lawn
of the library. Each woman was naked except for her bandages—
brilliantly white, lovingly taped like perfect little cocoons at the
ends of their arms.
neptune’s last Victim
The first thing she does when she wakes up is check
her hands. She doesn’t know how long she’s been out. Hours?
Days? She’s on her back, blindfolded, arms up above her head
like a diver, bound to a metal pipe. Her hands are duct taped
together at the wrist— but they’re both still there.
Thank you, thank you, thank Jesus, sweet, sweet Mother Mary,
both her hands are there. She wiggles her fingers and remembers
a song her mother used to sing:
Where  is Thumbkin? Where  is Thumbkin?
Here I am, Here I am,
How are you today, sir,
Very well, I thank you,
Run away, Run away.
Her ankles are bound together tightly— more duct tape;  her
feet are full of pins and needles.
She hears Neptune breathing and it sounds almost mechanical, the rasping rhythm of it: in, out, in, out. Chug, chug, puff,
puff. I think I can, I think I can.
[4]  Jennifer McMahon
Neptune takes off the blindfold, and the light hurts her eyes.
All she sees is a dark silhouette above her and it’s not Neptune’s
face she sees inside it, but all faces: her mother’s, her father’s,
Luke the baker from the donut shop, her high school boyfriend
who never touched her, but liked to jerk off while she watched.
She sees the stained glass face of Jesus, the eyes of the woman
with no legs who used to beg for money outside of Denny’s
during the breakfast rush. All these faces are spinning like a top
on Neptune’s head and she has to close her eyes because if she
looks too long, she’ll get dizzy and throw up.
Neptune smiles down at her, teeth bright as a crescent moon.
She tries to turn her head, but her neck aches from their
struggle earlier, and she can only move a fraction of an inch before the pain brings her to a screeching halt. They seem to be in
some sort of warehouse. Cold cement floor. Curved metal walls
laced with electrical conduit. Boxes everywhere. Old machinery.
The place smells like a country fair— rotten fruit, grease, burned
sugar, hay.
“It didn’t need to be this way,” Neptune says, head shaking,
clicking tongue against teeth, scolding.
Neptune walks around her in a circle, whistling. It’s almost
a dance, with a little spring in each step, a little skip. Neptune’s
shoes are cheap imitation leather, scratched to shit, the tread
worn smooth helping them glide across the floor. All at once,
Neptune freezes, eyeing her a moment longer, then quits whistling, turns, and walks away. Footsteps echo on the cement floor.
The door closes with a heavy wooden thud. A bolt slides closed,
a lock is snapped.
Gone. For now.
The tools are all laid out on a tray nearby: clamps, rubber
tourniquet, scalpel, small saw, propane torch, metal trowel, rolls
The One IlefTbehInd  [5]
of gauze, thick surgical pads, heavy white tape. Neptune’s left
these things where she can see them. It’s all part of the game.
Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.
Stop, she tells herself. Don’t  panic. Think.
Tomorrow morning, another hand will show up inside a
milk carton on the steps of the police station. Only this time, it
will be her hand. She looks at the saw, swallows hard, and closes
her eyes.
Think, damn it.
She struggles with the tape around her wrists, but it’s no
good.
She opens her eyes and they go back to the tools, the bandages, the saw with its row of tiny silver teeth.
She hears a moan to her left. Slowly, like an arthritic old
woman, she turns her head so that her left cheek rests on the
cool, damp floor.
“You!” she says, surprised but relieved.
The woman is taped to a cast iron pipe on the opposite side
of the warehouse. “I can get us out of this,” she promises. The
woman lifts her head, opens her swollen eyes.
The woman laughs, her split lip opening up, covering her
chin with blood. “We’re both dead, Dufrane,” she says, her voice
small and crackling, a fire that can’t get started.

PArTOne

excerpt from Neptune’s Hands:
The True Story of the Unsolved
Brighton Falls Slayings
by Martha S. Paquette
The year was 1985. Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” was pumping out of
every boom box. Kids were lined up to see Michael J. Fox in Back
to the Future. And in the sleepy little suburb of Brighton Falls,
Connecticut, Neptune was killing women.
Brighton Falls, northwest of Hartford and just south of the airport, was a farming community that had quickly given way to suburbia. The men who worked in the insurance high- rises in Hartford
moved their families to places like Brighton Falls, safe little bedroom communities with good schools, no crime, and fresh air.
Along Main Street were the most prominent shops: Luke’s Donuts, Wright’s Pharmacy, Ferraro’s Family Market, Parson’s Hardware, and The Duchess Bar and Grill. Tucked behind these shops,
on the cross streets, were the gray granite police and fire station, a
doll shop, Joanne’s House of Nuts, a cheese shop, two bookstores
(one that specialized in used romances), three churches, Talbots,
the Carriage Shop Fine Furnishings, Carvel Ice Cream, Barston’s
Dry Cleaning, and The End of the Leash pet shop.
Most of Brighton Falls itself was idyllic, but after you crossed
the river, left the waterfall and old mills turned into condos behind,
as you drove north on Airport Road, past the tented tobacco fields
and leaning barns, the road turned from two lanes into four. Here
were the strip malls, boarded- up factories, vacant lots, fast- food
restaurants, motels where you could pay by the week or the hour,
X- rated movie houses, used car dealers, and bars. This was what
the insurance executives considered no-man’s-land, an area they
carefully avoided on weekend outings in the station wagon. Here,
the noise and chaos of the large airport had spilled over and was
reaching dangerously toward suburbia.
Other than the occasional drunk and disorderly arrest at one
of the bars on Airport Road, the biggest crime the police had to
deal with in recent years had been the time the mayor’s son drank
too much at graduation, ran a red light, and led the police on an
across- town chase that ended when he drove his Mercedes into the
country club swimming pool. There hadn’t been a murder since
1946, and that had been a clear- cut case of a man shooting his
brother after catching him in bed with his wife.
There was nothing clear- cut about the Neptune killings.
His victims appeared to have nothing in common: an accountant with two kids; a waitress who worked the swing shift at the
Silver Spoon Diner; a film student from Wesleyan University; an
ex- model turned barfly. The police were dumbfounded.
In the end, everyone— the police, families of the victims, and
citizens of Brighton Falls— were left with more questions than answers. Why did Neptune cut off the right hands of his victims?
Why keep them alive for four days after leaving the hands in milk
cartons on the steps of the police station? And what was different
about his last victim, the glamorous has- been Vera Dufrane? Why
is it that her body was never found?
And perhaps the biggest question of all: was he just a drifter
passing through, or is he out there still, living among them? What
made him stop? And— the  people of Brighton Falls wonder each
night as they lock their doors— will he one day kill again?
Chapter 1
October 16, 2010
Rockland, Vermont
Im a gIn e t h a t y o u r h o u s e is on fire. You have exactly
one minute to grab what you can. What do you choose?
Tara turned over the little hourglass full of pink sand. Her
fingernails were painted cyanosis- blue, chipped in places. Her
face was pale, her lips bright red as she smiled, breathed the
word, Go.
Reggie tore down the front hall, skidding as she rounded the
corner to the narrow oak stairs, galloping up, one hand on the
curved snakelike rail, the other on the cool wall of damp stone.
“Your lungs are filling with smoke!” Tara called from down
below. “Your eyes are watering.”
Reggie gasped, jerked open the door to her room, her eyes
moving over the crammed bookshelves, the desk covered in
her sketches, the neatly made bed topped off with the quilt her
grandmother had made. She skimmed over all of this and went
right for the closet, moving toward it in slow motion, feeling
her way through the invisible smoke, stinging eyes clamped shut
The One IlefTbehInd  [13]
now. She reached for the sliding door and eased it open, the little
metal wheels rattling in their tracks. Reggie stepped forward,
fingers finding clothes hung on hangers. She reached up, felt for
the shelf.
“Hurry,” Tara whispered, right behind her now, her breath
warm and moist on Reggie’s neck. “You’re almost out of time.”
Reggie opened her eyes, took a gulp of fresh, cold,
October air. She was at home in Vermont. Not back at Monique’s Wish. And she was thirty- nine— not thirteen.
“Damn,” she said, the word a cloud of white smoke escaping
her mouth. She’d left the windows open again.
Wrapping the down comforter around her like a cape, she
slid out of bed and went right for the windows, pulling them
closed. The trees, vivid with oranges, yellows, and reds just last
week, were losing their brightness. The cold and wind of the
last three days had brought many of the leaves off the trees. Out
across the lake, a V of Canada geese headed south.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Reggie told them.
Then, in her next breath, she muttered, “Chickenshits.” She
squinted down at the lake, imagining it three months from now,
frozen solid and snow covered; a flat moonscape of white. It
wasn’t all that different from Ricker’s Pond, where her mother
had taught her to ice-  skate. Reggie could see it so clearly: her
mother in her green velvet coat and gold chiffon scarf soaring in graceful circles while Reggie wobbled and fell, the ice
popping beneath them. “Are you sure this is safe?” she’d asked
her mother, each time the ice made a sound. And her mother
had laughed. “Worry girl,” she’d teased, skating right into the
middle where the ice was the thinnest and holding her hands
out to Reggie. “Come on out here and show me what you’re
made of.”
[14]  Jennifer McMahon
Reggie shrugged off the memory, along with the heavy
down comforter. She quickly threw on a pair of jeans and a
sweater and headed down to the kitchen, her bare feet cool on
the wood floors.
She’d laid out the house so that she’d have a view of the lake
from almost any vantage point. As she descended the stairs, she
faced the large bank of windows on the south side that looked
out over her yard and meadow and down to Arrow Lake. It was
a little over half a mile from her house to the water’s edge, but
when she came down the stairs, she felt as if she could just step
out into the air and float across her living room, through the
windows, over the yard and field, and down to the lake. Sometimes she caught herself almost trying it—  leaning a little too far
forward, putting her foot too far ahead so that she nearly missed
the next step down. These were the moments that defined her
success as an architect: not the prizes, accolades, or the esteem
of her colleagues, but the way coming down her stairs made her
believe, just for a second, that she could turn into a bit of dandelion fluff and float down to the lake.
For a building to be successful, it had to be connected to the
landscape in a seamless way. It couldn’t just look like it had been
dropped there randomly, but like it had grown organically, been
shaped by the wind and the rain, cut from the mountains. The
rooms should flow not just from one into the other, but also into
the world beyond.
4 Walls  Magazinehad just named Reggie one of the top
green architects in the Northeast, and called the Snyder/Wellenstein house she’d designed in Stowe “a breathtaking display of
integrating architecture with nature; with the stream running
through the living room and the 120- year- old oak growing up
through all three floors, Dufrane has created a sustainable dwelling that blurs the lines between indoors and out.”
The One IlefTbehInd  [15]
Blurring the lines. That’s what Reggie was good at—  indoors/
outdoors; old/new; functional/ornamental—  she had a gift for
merging unlikely ideas and objects and creating something that
was somehow both and neither; something greater than the sum
of its parts.
Still foggy headed and desperately in need of caffeine, Reggie cleaned out the little stainless-steel espresso pot, then filled
it with water and coffee and set it on the gas stove, turning the
knob to start the flame. Her kitchen was a cook’s dream (though
honestly, Reggie didn’t do much cooking and subsisted largely
on raw vegetables, cheese and crackers, and espresso)— right
down to the huge counter-  hogging Italian espresso machine
that Reggie only used when she was entertaining. She preferred
the small stovetop pot she’d owned since college. It was simple
to use and quietly elegant— the epitome of good design.
The water came to a boil. The coffee bubbled, filling the
kitchen with its rich, earthy scent.
Reggie checked her watch: 7:15. She’d go out to the office,
do some brainstorming for the new project, go for a run around
the lake, shower, and do some more sketches. She looked back at
her watch, catching it change to 7:16.
Imagine that your house is on fire. You have exactly one minute to
grab what you can. What do you chose?
Reggie glanced around the house, feeling that old panic rising up inside her. Then she took in a breath and answered her
old friend out loud. “Nothing, Tara. I choose nothing.” Her chest
loosened. Muscles relaxed. Tara didn’t have that kind of power
over her anymore.
Reggie wasn’t thirteen. She understood that objects could
be replaced. And she didn’t own all that much. Losing the house
would be a crushing blow, but it could be rebuilt. She owned
very little furniture. Her closet was only half full. Her sometime
[16]  Jennifer McMahon
boyfriend Len teased her: “It isn’t normal for a successful adult
to be able to fit everything they own in the back of a pickup
truck.” He’d say it with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of
his worn Carhartts, a boyish smirk on his face that brought out
the little dimple in his right cheek. Len lived alone in an old
rambling farmhouse, every room stuffed full of books and art
and furniture that didn’t quite match.
“It’s the gypsy in me,” she’d tell him, leaning in to kiss his
cheek.
“Gypsy, hell,” he’d scoff. “You live like a criminal on the run.”
Triple espresso in hand, Reggie went back upstairs, slid her feet into her clogs, and opened the door to the
bridge that led to her tree house office. She took in a breath of
cool, sharp air. She smelled woodsmoke, damp leaves, the apples
rotting on the ground in the abandoned orchard on the east side
of her property. It was a perfect mid- October day. The fifteenfoot suspension bridge swayed slightly under her, and she walked
slowly at first, the yard and driveway below her, Arrow Lake
off in the distance. Charlie’s Bridge, she called it, though Charlie
didn’t even know it existed. And she’d never told anyone the
bridge’s secret name or the story behind it. What would she say?
I named it after a boy who once told me building a bridge like this was
impossible.
The phone in her office was ringing. She raced across the last
couple of yards, the espresso dangerously close to spilling.
She opened the door, which was never locked—  the only
way in was to cross the bridge from the inside of her house or to
scale twenty- five feet up the oak tree the office was built around.
The office was twelve feet across and circular, the tree trunk at
the center and windows on all sides. Len called it “the control
tower.”
The One IlefTbehInd  [17]
She had a computer desk and a wooden drafting table. There
was a small bulletin board with notes for her latest project, a
reminder to call a client, and the astrology chart Len had done
for her pinned to it. She didn’t believe in clutter or in holding
on to things that didn’t have significant meaning, so her bookcase held only the books that she referred to again and again,
the ones that had influenced her: The Poetics of Space, A Pattern
Language, The Timeless Way  of  Building, Design with Nature, Notes
on the Synthesis of Form,as well as a small collection of nature
guides. Tucked here and there among the books were Reggie’s
other great source of inspiration: bird nests, shells, pinecones,
interestingly shaped stones, a round paper wasp nest, milkweed
pods, acorns, and beechnuts.
Reggie went for the phone on her desk, stumbling and
splashing hot espresso over her hand.
Shit! What was she in such a hurry for? Who did she expect to hear on the other end? Charlie? Not very likely. The
last time they’d spoken was when they bumped into each other
accidently at the grocery store just before they’d both graduated
from separate high schools. Tara, maybe, teasing her, telling her
she had sixty seconds to gather everything she cared about?
No. What she really thought was that it wasHimagain.
She’d been getting the calls for years, first at home, then college, then in every apartment and house she’d ever lived in. He
never said a word. But she could hear him breathing, could almost feel the puffs of fetid moisture touch her good ear as he
inhaled, then exhaled, each breath mocking her, saying, I know
how to find you. And somehow, she knew, she just knew, that it
was Neptune. And one of these days, he might actually open
his mouth and speak. She let herself imagine it: his voice rushing through the phone like water, washing over her, through her.
Maybe he’d tell her the one thing she’d always wanted to know:
[18]  Jennifer McMahon
what he’d done with her mother, why she was the only victim
whose body was never found. The others had been displayed so
publicly, but all they ever found of Vera was her right hand.
What was it that made Vera different?
“Hello?” Reggie stammered.
Say something, damn it, she willed. Don’t just breathe this time.
“Regina? It’s Lorraine.”
“Oh. Good morning,” Reggie said through gritted teeth. She
set down the small ceramic cup and shook her stinging hand,
pissed that she’d burned herself hurrying for Lorraine. Why the
hell was her aunt phoning at this hour? Usually she called each
Sunday at five. And Reggie often managed to be out. (Or at least
pretended to be— lurking in a corner, glass of pinot noir in hand,
hiding like a child, as if the red eye on the answering machine
could see her as she listened to her aunt’s disembodied voice.)
“I just got a call from a social worker down in Massachusetts.” This was typical of Lorraine—  getting right down to business— no useless preamble about the weather or any silly “all’s
well here, how are you?” There was a long pause while Reggie
waited for her to continue. But she didn’t.
“Let me guess,” Reggie said. “She heard what a disturbed
and traumatized family we were and was offering her ser vices?”
Reggie could almost see Lorraine rolling her eyes, looking
over the top of her glasses and down her nose, disapproving.
Lorraine standing in the kitchen with its faded wallpaper, her
hair pulled back in a bun so tight it pulled the wrinkles from her
forehead. And she’d be wearing Grandpa Andre’s old fishing vest,
of course, stained and reeking of decades of dead trout.
Reggie picked up the cup of espresso again and took a sip.
“No, Regina. It seems they’ve found your mother. Alive.”
Reggie spat out the coffee, dropped the cup onto the floor,
The One IlefTbehInd  [19]
watching it fall in slow motion, dark espresso splattering the
sustainably harvested floorboards.
It wasn’t possible. Her mother was dead. They all knew it.
They’d had a memorial ser vice twenty- five years ago. Reggie
could still remember the hordes of reporters outside; the way
the preacher smelled of booze; and how Lorraine’s voice shook
when she read the Dickinson poem “Because I Could Not Stop
for Death.”
At last Reggie whispered, “What?”
“They’re quite sure it’s her,” Lorraine said, voice calm and
matter- of- fact. “Apparently she’s been in and out of a homeless
shelter there for the past two years.”
“But how can . . . How do they know?”
“She told them. She’s missing her right hand. Finally the police took her fingerprints— they’re a match.”
Reggie’s heart did a slow, cold drop into her stomach. She
closed her eyes and saw it so clearly this time: her mother out
on Ricker’s Pond, moving across the ice, doing a perfect figure
eight. Then she held out her hand to Reggie and they skated
together in the middle of the pond, laughing, cheeks red, their
breath making little clouds as the ice shifted and groaned beneath them like a living thing.
“There’s something else,” Lorraine said, her voice crisp and
businesslike as ever. “Your mother’s in the hospital. She’s had
a cough for some time and finally consented to a chest X-  ray.
They suspected pneumonia or TB. They found a large mass.
Cancer. She may not have much time.”
Now Reggie was speechless, trying to digest one insane piece
of news after the next. It all felt like a cruel trick. Your mother’s
alive. But she’s dying.
She sank down onto the floor, sitting in spilled coffee.
[20]  Jennifer McMahon
“I want you to drive down to Massachusetts and get her, Regina. I want you to bring her back to Monique’s Wish.”
“Me?”
“I don’t drive much these days. Cataracts.”
“But I— ” Reggie stammered.
“I need you to do this,” Lorraine said. Then as if sensing
Reggie’s hesitation, she added, “Your mother needs you.”
Reggie pushed her hair back, fingers finding the scars.
“Okay,” she said.
Home. She was going back home.