Favorite Sons (6 page)

“When we walked over near the creek, that's when Adrian found the maul, and we all spent another five minutes admiring it and Adrian washed it off in the creek. You and Pepper whizzed in the creek. So, all those events put us in the clearing at the precise moment that Petey was there. If we had gone to the glass house field, or if we had left when Pepper wanted to, or if Adrian hadn't washed the maul off in the stream, we'd probably never have run into Petey and none of this would have happened.”

“Maybe it was God's way of taking Petey Sanchez out of the mix before that goofy bastard could hurt someone else. It was only a matter of time before he killed or really hurt some kid, or burned up his entire family.”

“You don't know that. Only God knows that.”

“Exactly. Maybe that was his way of stopping it.”

“He doesn't work that way.”

“Well, he should. I know Petey didn't deserve to die, but he brought it on himself when he went after Adrian with that limb. Adrian was trying to protect all of us and he probably saved some little kid in the process.”

“I don't think he was trying to protect us. I think his temper got the best of him and he reacted.” Deak threw a nub of hot dog
bun into the fire. “You know, you've always looked at Adrian not as a friend, but as your hero, like he's bigger than life.”

“That's bullshit.”

“Is it? Would you be able to justify your silence if it hadn't been Adrian Nash who threw the rock? Would you take a chance like this if it had been some other kid who killed Petey and you saw it happen?” I shrugged. “I'll bet you wouldn't. And what if he hadn't been Petey? What if it was me up there in the weeds that Adrian killed instead of him? Would you tell then?”

“It wasn't you.”

“That isn't what I asked.”

“Of course I would tell someone.”

He went back to staring at the fire and roasting his second hot dog. “I'm not sure I believe that.”

We had just finished our hot dogs and thrown our roasting sticks into the flames when my mother and her friend Walter Deshay came out the back door and walked toward the fire. Walter was a widower who worked at an automobile parts store in Steubenville and kept a fishing boat on Catawba Island in Lake Erie. He had a round belly and thinning hair, and was forever pushing his wire-rim glasses up on his nose. They weren't dating, my mother stressed on several occasions. Rather, they were just “seeing each other.” They had been playing bingo at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Mingo Junction and probably stopped for a beer or two at Foggy's Tavern on the way home, as was their usual Tuesday night routine. “What's this I hear about Petey Sanchez?” she asked when she got close enough that I could see her face illuminated by the flames.

I shrugged. “They found him dead up on Chestnut Ridge, I guess.”

“It's all over the radio. How'd he die?”

“I don't know.” I was grateful for the orange glow the fire threw upon my face, camouflaging the red I felt creeping up around my ears, a common side effect when I lied.

“Denny Morelli told us about it after the game. He said someone might have shot him in the head,” Deak offered with a tone of surprising sincerity.

“Good heavens,” Walter said, pushing up his glasses.

“Why are you two out here?” my mom asked. I didn't understand the question. “Where am I supposed to be?” I asked.

“Inside. You don't know who killed Petey. There might be some nutcase running around.”

“Mom, really?”

“Don't you ‘Mom, really' me, mister. Clear up your stuff and get in the house. Dale Ray, you get in the car. I'll give you a ride home.”

“You don't have to do that, Mrs. Van Buren.”

“I'm well aware of what I have and don't have to do, Dale Ray. Get your butt in the car.”

Mom and Walter walked back into the house while we picked up our trash and scattered the still-burning ashes with an old spade that I kept in the garden for that purpose.

“Reverend Timlinson called me this afternoon. They need another counselor at the fourth- and fifth-grade church camp out at Bergholz,” Deak said. “I think I'm going to go over and help them out for the rest of the week and get away from this.”

“I think that's a good idea. What about Saturday? Will you be back? We have a double-header against Mount Pleasant.”

The engine on the Plymouth turned over and the headlights came on, illuminating the red brick street. He nodded. “I'll be back Friday evening, but I'm amazed that with everything flying around us you're still concerned about a baseball game.”

“It's two baseball games,” I said, offering some levity.

He walked to the car, shoulders stooped, without looking back.

Y
ou didn't sleep late in the home of Miriam Van Buren. Mom had grown up on a dairy farm and believed sleeping until 5 a.m. was a luxury. She didn't have to be at the post office until 7 a.m., and it was only a two-minute walk from our house, but she would get up, shower, eat, read the paper, and work around the house until it was time to leave. She would call up the stairs at a quarter before seven. If I wasn't in the kitchen by ten 'til, she would march upstairs, building a little froth with each step, grab hold of the little toe on my left foot, and twist it until my right foot was on the floor and I was hopping and yelping.

When she called up the morning after the body of Petey Sanchez had been discovered, I was already awake and awaiting her call. Spread on the kitchen table was the morning Wheeling
Intelligencer.
I was anxious to see what had been written about Petey, but I stuck to my morning routine and poured a bowl of raisin bran cereal and snagged the sports page. I feigned interest in the baseball box scores until she put fifteen dollars on the table with a list printed on an index card of groceries she wanted from Connell's Market, reminded me to clean the gutters, and headed out the door. When I heard the front door close, I waited a few minutes, then began flipping through the
Intelligencer
's local news section. The story was on page five, a four-paragraph brief under a one-column headline:

Boy's Body Found;
Foul Play Suspected

The body of a 17-year-old mentally retarded boy was discovered in a wooded area west of Crystalton yesterday afternoon by a woman picking berries, according to Jefferson County Sheriff Sky Kelso.

Kelso identified the boy as Peter Eugene Sanchez of 117 River Street, Crystalton. Kelso said relatives had not seen the boy since late Sunday, but had not reported him missing.

Kelso said Sanchez died of head trauma and “not the type you receive from a fall.” When asked if Sanchez had been murdered, Kelso said, “It's not much of a stretch to suspect foul play,” but he would not release further details. The boy appeared to have been dead “at least 24 hours, but we'll know more after the autopsy,” Kelso said.

The body was sent to the Allegheny County Coroner's Office in Pittsburgh for the autopsy. Kelso said the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department is working on the case in conjunction with the Crystalton Police Department.

My ass puckered at the thought of the sheriff's department investigating the case. The Crystalton Police Department consisted of Errol Durkin and two full-time patrolmen—Errol's brother Flip and Bobby Joe Wyatt—and seven or eight auxiliary officers who worked a couple shifts a month. The thought of them solving a murder case was laughable, but I didn't find the sheriff's department as humorous. Sky Kelso was a former U.S. Army military policeman who liked to see his photograph in the paper and personally showed up at every big crime scene in the county. Kelso had a capable staff and full-time detectives that he would turn loose and ride herd over, because he knew that solved crimes made for happy voters.

Connell's Market opened at eight. Before I left the house I reminded myself that just because someone looked at me didn't mean they were thinking that I was part of a murder conspiracy. I walked into the store about twenty after eight to find my third-grade teacher, Florence “Bulldog” Kearns, standing at the checkout counter with her usual scowl, from which she earned her nickname,
chatting with Jewel Connell. As I neared the counter, Miss Kearns halted her conversation with Jewel in mid-sentence and zeroed in on me with the cold, gray eyes that had terrified Crystalton third-graders for generations. “What do you know about this affair with Pete Sanchez?” she asked.

I was prepared. This was little Crystalton, and I knew that all anyone would be talking about was Petey's death. I had steeled myself against acting paranoid. I shrugged and said, “I guess he died of some kind of head injury.”

“Well, I know that much,” Miss Kearns said. “Have you heard anything else?”

“Just what I read in the morning paper.”

When it was apparent that I could contribute no additional information about Petey, she dismissed me as quickly as she had in the third grade when I became stumped on a multiplication problem.

I had Artie Connell slice me a half-pound of turkey breast and an equal amount of mild cheddar at the deli counter, then pushed a little shopping cart around the store, picking up the milk, eggs, bread, and the other odds and ends on the list while I eavesdropped on the conversation at the counter. According to Mrs. Connell, Gladys Hoefer had driven out to Overlook Park on Chestnut Ridge to pick blackberries and raspberries to make preserves. Overlook Park is a small township park with a few picnic tables on the north side of New Alexandria Pike where the road crosses over Chestnut Ridge, just before the bridge that spans the Little Seneca Creek. Mrs. Connell said Mrs. Hoefer had a bad hip and had “absolutely no business” climbing those hills and looking for berries when she could buy a nice size bag of frozen berries right there at the market for only sixty-nine cents.

“Gladys never uses frozen berries in her preserves,” Miss Kearns said.

Be that as it may, Mrs. Connell said that Mrs. Hoefer pulled her car into an area of the Overlook shaded by a grove of shagbark hickories, tied the string of her big straw hat under her chin, and went to the clearing on the south side of New Alexandria Pike to pick the wild berries. She made her way around the edge of the clearing where the berries are the most plentiful and noticed a
cloud of blowflies swarming near the path that empties out behind the elementary school. Mrs. Hoefer assumed there was a dead animal in the weeds—the place is loaded with groundhog holes and it's no place for someone with a bad hip—and she stayed clear of the swarm. She had been up there several hours and her bucket was nearly three-quarters full and she was getting tired—Mrs. Connell assumed her hip was hurting her, too, but of course Gladys would never admit that—so she headed back toward her car. That's when she saw the tennis shoes protruding from the weeds. At first, it didn't register that the shoes were attached to legs, which were directly under the swarming flies. She crept closer, and when she got a glimpse of a swollen, pale hand lying alongside a pair of cut-off blue jeans and a slight whiff of rotting flesh, she ran for her car.

“She ran?” Miss Kearns questioned.

“That's what she said, but I don't think she could with that bad hip and all.”

By the time I made my way back to the counter, the tale of Gladys Hoefer's discovery had ceased and the two women had been joined by a young man who did not look a lot older than me. He was carrying a pad and pencil and had a startled look on his face after having been told, “Don't you even think about putting my name in that newspaper,” by the humorless Miss Kearns.

He looked at me and asked, “Did you know the Sanchez boy?”

“Why do you want to know?” I asked.

He pulled a laminated badge from his shirt pocket and held it out for my inspection. “I'm Reggie Fuschea. I'm a reporter for the
Steubenville Herald-Star.
I'm writing a story about the murder and I'm looking for a little color, you know, someone who can tell me a little bit about this Peter Sanchez. Can I ask you a few questions?”

“I guess.”

This earned another hateful stare from Miss Kearns, who wrapped her bag of groceries in a chubby arm and headed for the door. Mrs. Connell rang up my purchases.

“Did you know Peter?”

“We all called him Petey. Crystalton's a small town; everyone knew Petey.”

“You were close friends with him?”

“No, I just knew him. He was older than me—a couple of years, maybe three. We weren't friends or anything. I just knew who he was.”

“So, a young, mentally retarded boy is murdered in a small town. I'll bet Crystalton is pretty broken up over this, huh?”

“I don't really know, Mr. Fuschea. I haven't talked to anyone. But, you're right, this is a small town and everyone knows everyone else. We all know the Sanchez family, and I'm sure there's a lot of sympathy for them right now.”

“Great,” he said, and got my name and age. He tucked his pad and pencil into his hip pocket and fetched a bottle of chocolate milk from the stand-up cooler. As I paid for my groceries, Fuschea asked, “Who did this Sanchez kid chum around with? Can you point me to some of his friends who might talk to me?”

“To be real honest, Petey was kind of a loner. He didn't have a lot of friends, at least none that I knew of. I don't remember ever seeing him pal around with anyone, so I don't think I can help you with that.”

“Okay, thanks,” he said as I left the store to begin cleaning our gutters. I spent most of the day on the roof, cleaning fly ash, maple saplings, and two dried-up starlings out of the gutters. I did a particularly fine job, wanting to stay busy and avoid conversations about Petey.

I received a valuable lesson that day in talking to newspaper reporters. Don't say anything around them that you don't want to see in print. When he put his pad and pencil away, I assumed the interview was over. It wasn't. When that afternoon's
Herald-Star
landed on the doorstep, the headline read: