The Devil I Know: My Haunting Journey with Ronnie DeFeo and the True Story ofthe Amityville Murders Read Online Free Page B

followed Will and Jo to the bedroom, where he lay her down on the bed and stroked her hair, asking what happened. After a few minutes the sobs began to subside, and she was able, in brief gasps, to explain the vision that had accosted her.
    She had just slipped into the bath when she’d thought she heard us come through the door. But it couldn’t be us, since we’d only been gone a few minutes. There were noises coming from the kitchen—clattering of pots, spoons banging. Then voices, rising in tandem. Neither of the voices was ours, Jo realized. She had grabbed the robe and stepped out of the bath, still dripping, then sneaked toward the kitchen and peered into the dining area. That was when one of the figures turned: a woman, her face covered in blood, her eyes wild, saying she was coming back. That she was going to get her. Joanne had shut her eyes against the horror and ran.
    I asked Jo to describe the figure. Attractive, even through the blood, she said. Medium height, graying hair. Italian looking. Wearing a red dress and pearls.
    “Wait,” I said, and rushed to my office. I grabbed the DeFeo file Joanne had started to assemble and scoured the pictures she’d gathered so far. There it was. An agingbut beautiful Italian woman in a red dress and pearls. Louise DeFeo. Ronnie’s mother.
    The next morning, I went directly to my office and took out a sheet of paper. You can only ignore things for so long. I started to compose a note, but I was still dizzy, and too weak to finish. So I went back to bed.
    Every day I kept taking out the paper to write, and every day the pneumonia, which had returned, reminded me who was boss. Finally, after another week of cold sweats and a liquid diet, I felt strong enough. I got out of bed and sat at my desk. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say or why I was supposed to write this letter. I began anyway, because if I’ve learned only one lesson in all my years doing what I do, it’s this: at the end of the day, the only true guide you have is your own instincts.
    I stared at the paper, my own thoughts reflecting its blankness. The fever had mercifully broken a few days before, but now it had come back with a vengeance, and I was a tangle of mental cobwebs.
    Dear Mr. DeFeo
, I finally wrote.
    “Jackie?”
    I looked up to see Will in the doorway. Will is the kind of person who is almost always smiling out of nothing more than the feeling of wanting to smile. The expression on his face was far from a smile. I asked him what was wrong.
    “That day,” he said. “When you were on the canal.”
    “What about it?” I said.
    He walked over to my side. “I saw something. A big man. In a black coat. I saw him standing in our living room.”
    I looked back at the paper. My feeling of unease had taken root on the boat and wormed its way deeper and deeper through me while I scuffled with the virus. Now, the feeling was morphing into something else. Instead of someone felled by an unknown hand, I felt more like a creature quietly steeling itself for battle.
    What do you want?
I wrote.
What’s my part in this?
    “I’ve got the address.” Joanne was in the doorway, a piece of paper in her hand. “Green Haven Correctional Facility, in upper New York State,” she said. “Maximum security.”
    I added my name and phone number and handed her the letter. There was no need to write more. “Mail it,” I said.
    Uncle Ray, our permanent houseguest, is old-school Italian. For a sausage-and-pepper hero, he’d give you his unending loyalty. Uncle Ray isn’t really an uncle. He’s a friend of my brother’s. He started staying with us years ago, the initial arrangement a trade involving his caring for the pets—between his shifts at Whole Foods—and our providing him a roof and a bed. Even as our addresses changed, Uncle Ray always came with. It became a running joke whenever we considered a new place: where would Ray’s room be?
    Ray—fifty-five but still a perpetual teenager, still