Mary, Mary

disturbing database.
    This time, I searched for multiple homicides only. With that list compiled, I started wading through.
    A few of the more famous names jumped out right away: Susan Smith, who had drowned both her sons in 1994; Andrea Yates, who killed all five of her children after several years of struggling with psychosis and profound postpartum depression.
    The list went on and on. None of these female perpetrators could be considered the victims in their cases, but the dominance of severe mental-health issues was clear.
    Smith and Yates were both diagnosed with personality and clinical disorders. It was easy to imagine the same could be true of Mary Wagner, but a reliable diagnosis would take more time than we were likely to have together.
    That particular question was sidelined a few hours into my research.
    I clicked onto a new page and, sadly, found exactly what I was looking for.
    A triple homicide in Derby Line, Vermont, on August 2, 1983. All three victims were siblings:
    Beaulac, Brendan, 8
    Beaulac, Ashley, 5
    Constantine, Adam, 11 months.
    The killer, their mother, was a twenty-six-year-old woman, with the last name Constantine.
    First name,
Mary
.
    I cross-referenced the homicide report for local media coverage.
    It brought me to an article from a 1983
Caledonian-Record
in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
    There was also a grainy black-and-white trial photo of Mary Constantine, seated at a defendant’s table.
    Her face was thinner and younger, but the detached, stony expression was unmistakable, that look she had when she didn’t want to feel something, or had felt too much. Jesus.
    The woman I knew as Mary Wagner had killed her own children more than twenty years ago, and as far as she was concerned, it had never happened.
    I pushed back my chair and took a deep breath.
    Here I was, finally, at the center of the labyrinth. Now it was time to start finding my way back out.

Chapter 107
    “NINETEEN EIGHTY-THREE, HUH? Jeez, that’s not even
this century
. All right, hang on a second. I’ll try to help you out. If I can.”
    I sat through several minutes of tapping keys and riffling paper on the other end of the phone line.
    The tapper and riffler was an agent named Barry Medlar, of the Bureau’s Albany field office. He was the coordinator of Albany’s Crimes Against Children Unit. Every FBI office has a CAC unit, and Albany has oversight for Vermont. I wanted to get as close to the source as I possibly could.
    “Here we go,” Medlar said. “Hold on, here she is. . . .
    “Constantine, Mary. Triple homicide on August second, arrested on the tenth. Let me scroll the rest of this. Okay, here we go. Sentenced NGRI on February first of the following year, with a state-appointed attorney.”
    “Not guilty by reason of insanity,” I muttered.
    So she hadn’t been able to afford her own defense; no legal bells and whistles on her behalf. Not guilty by reason of insanity can be a tough plea to prove. It must have been a fairly clear-cut case for it to go that way.
    “Where did she end up?” I asked.
    “Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury, probably. I wouldn’t have any transfer records here, but that ward isn’t exactly overflowing. I can get you a name and number if you want to find out.”
    It was tempting to pull a little no-I-want-YOU-to-find-out attitude, but I preferred to make the calls myself anyway. I took down the number for Vermont State Hospital.
    “What about Mary Constantine’s MO?” I asked Medlar. “What have you got on the actual murders?”
    I heard more turning pages and then, “Unbelievable.”
    “What is it?”
    “Didn’t your Mary Smith use a Walther PPK out there in L.A.?”
    “Yeah, why?”
    “Ditto here. Walther PPK, never recovered, either. She must have dog-boned it.”
    I was scribbling notes furiously the whole time he talked. To say the least, he had me riveted.
    “All right, Agent Medlar, here’s what I need. Get me a contact for whatever Mary Constantine’s local police department would have been. I also want everything you’ve got on file there. Send whatever’s electronically available right now and fax the rest.
    “And I mean everything. I’m going to give you my cell number in case you find anything else worth mentioning. I’ll be on the move.”
    I stuffed some papers into my briefcase while I was still talking to Medlar.
    “One other thing. What airlines fly to Vermont, anyway?”

Chapter 108
    EIGHTEEN HOURS AND THREE THOUSAND MILES later, I