Mortal Danger

of a much younger Daniel Tavares. He appeared to be in his early twenties and had only one tattoo—the one of Pegasus, with “Danny” written above it. His facial expression was one of anxiety, even fear. It was the same man, all right—but the young Daniel had been fairly attractive at six feet tall and 180 pounds; now he weighed sixty pounds more than that, and he had aged significantly. At forty-one, he looked well over fifty.
    As Benson perused the file, he saw that Daniel had indeed killed his mother, forty-six-year-old Ann Tavares, in their home in Somerset, Massachusetts—just a stone’s throw from Fall River, the city where Lizzie Borden had gone on trial for the murder of her father and stepmother ninety-nine years earlier.
    Lizzie resided at 92 Second Street and Daniel at 31 Winslow. Both crimes happened on blistering hot days; August 4, 1892, for the Borden hatchet murders, and July 11, 1991, for Ann Tavares’s homicide by kitchen knife. Most people believe that Lizzie, twenty-four, was found guilty, but she wasn’t. She was acquitted after a sensational trial and died at age sixty-seven in 1927.
    Ann Tavares’s crime scene was just as full of scarletliquid as the Borden bloodbath. Or, Benson thought, as the Maucks’ home.
    Daniel Tavares was the youngest child of four born to Ann and Daniel Tavares Sr., joining three older sisters. He was spoiled and indulged by his mother, a Laundromat manager, who doted on him, particularly after she and her husband split up when Danny was less than two years old. In his early twenties, he often found work as a disc jockey at local clubs and for weddings and other festive occasions. He was a minor local celebrity.
    He was also a drug addict and a mental patient who mixed alcohol with physician-prescribed antipsychotics, mood elevators, and even drugs to help with some of the side effects of the former. He added cocaine, Valium, and almost anything else he could get his hands on. He took Prolixin, an antipsychotic drug designed for bipolar patients; doxepin, an antidepressive; and Artane, to alleviate uncontrollable trembling caused by the other two drugs.
    Given that, it was difficult to know which came first: his bizarre behavior after ingesting drugs or his mental illness, which he compromised by his illegal drug addictions and heavy drinking.
    He apparently hadn’t changed his dangerous ways in two decades. And it was almost impossible to know whether to believe any of his wild stories. Even so, he hadn’t had much trouble getting dates, as rude as he could sometimes be, or as peculiar as his behavior was. There were young women in Massachusetts who had found him exciting.
     
    On Thursday, July 11, 1991, Somerset, Massachusetts, smelled of honeysuckle, melting asphalt, and the sea wind that blew off the bays, rivers, and ponds that snaked from the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast corner of the state. As the sun began to set, shade trees would become cooling canopies, and weathermen promised the temperature would drop to the upper sixties and clouds would overcast the area by midnight.
    Daniel Tavares asked two sisters who shared his surname—but to whom he was not related—to go to the Kokomo Club in Tiverton, Rhode Island, just across the state line. Stephanie and Heather Tavares agreed to go with him. Stephanie had known him for two months, but she’d dated him for only a week before she heard that he had two children by two different young women. Stephanie thought a romantic relationship with Danny would be too complicated so they’d agreed to remain only friends.
    When Daniel arrived at Heather’s apartment, her babysitter, Joey Lynn, noticed that “he didn’t look good.” Heather snatched off his sunglasses and saw that his eyes were red and the pupils were dilated.
    “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
    “I’ve been drinking and I took nine Valiums,” he said, “because Tracy [an ex-girlfriend] is taking me to court, and I won’t be able to see my son anymore.”
    The sisters noted that he was acting strange and that he wasn’t “walking right.”
    At least he wasn’t driving—Danny didn’t drive. He said a friend was picking them up.
    While Heather and Stephanie were in the bathroom fixing their hair and putting the final touches on their makeup,Joey Lynn watched Danny reach into Stephanie’s and Heather’s purses and count out money from their wallets, and then stick it into various sections of his own billfold. When the