THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE (28 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

MAGGIE BITSON WAS
less surprised than disappointed to know Missy was having sex. She had suspected, though refrained from confronting the girl, less able to accept what it said about Missy than what it said about herself.

“I’ll fix lunch,” Maggie offered to Eugene, though it was only nine-thirty in the morning. The blood behind Maggie’s forehead boiled, burning like an overheated electrical transmission wire, circulating unwelcome images and irrepressible demons and thoughts. Every so often, Maggie pressed her fists to her eye sockets as if to prevent the negative energy escaping through her eyeballs. The dark, green-gray circles that appeared as a result of the effort made her resemble a raccoon, or a concentration camp survivor, depending on your perspective and experience.

“I’ll take it with me,” Eugene replied, thinking Maggie had meant for him to eat the lunch later while at work, though had he asked he would have realized she didn’t mean this at all.

“Will you be home for supper?” she wanted to know.

For days now he hadn’t been, instead locking the door to the video shop and making the short run across the street to the Big Top Diner after ordering his dinner in advance by telephone, returning to the store within minutes carrying a hot meal in an insulated Styrofoam container and eating alone at the service counter surrounded by a plethora of sex novelties; flavored, textured and multi-colored condoms; dildos varying in color and size; studded dog collars, cats-o-nine-tails, seductive lingerie, inflatable dolls, molded poly-urethane vaginas and chocolate novelties in the form of both female and male genitalia, the candy confections and sexy underwear selling briskly at Christmas, but especially so in the week preceding Valentine.

Eugene’s appetite was just now beginning to return to normal. Had he been home more often and less preoccupied with himself, he might have noted that not only had Maggie’s appetite not returned to normal, she had regained no appetite at all. If Eugene resembled a man turning himself inside out like a reversible skin—as Ed Dojcsak had imagined him on the day after the death of his daughter—less than one week later, in his wife, the process appeared to be almost complete.

Since the killing, the Reverend Cassie McMaster had been telephoning her sister at least twice daily and taking the fifteen-minute walk from the rectory after dinner each evening to sit with Maggie, usually for an hour but sometimes longer, huddling in the living room together, foreheads pressed close, voices low, as if conspiring. During these moments, Eugene watched television, alone: he did not complain, though the sight of the two women so deeply engaged was unnerving.

Since the killing of her sister, the whereabouts of Mandy Bitson had become less a concern for Maggie, if it had ever been a concern at all, as if in failing to protect Missy what hope was there for her elder sister? With the death of Missy, increasingly it appeared Maggie was willing to helplessly throw up her hands against the whims of tragic fate, as if to say “Que Sera, Sera, Whatever Will Be, Will Be”. (Even so, Maggie Bitson did not fancy herself a Doris Day.)

Ostensibly, the visits from Cassie were meant as comfort and support to Maggie. Eugene was happy for his wife to have the distraction and to remove the obligation from him. Though Cassie noted Maggie’s deteriorating physical appearance, she didn’t comment, believing it to be the next and necessary in another of the many crosses this child of Leland McMaster was obliged to bear. (Cassie sensed her own burden to be more from association than experience, subconsciously thankful thus far, for her, Maggie and Missy had done much of the heavy lifting.) As for Eugene, he was happy for Dr. Henry Bauer to increase the dosage of the sedative Maggie had been prescribed.

After seeing off Eugene, Maggie returned to the kitchen. Unless she was compelled to leave it either to relieve herself or to wash, (which was infrequently since Maggie was neither eating nor drinking much and insensate both to her appearance and the scent of her own body) it was here Maggie was spending much of her time.

Maggie moved to the refrigerator. Methodically, she began to remove the contents, subdividing them on the floor in related food groups in a way, she imagined, that resembled the shelf space at the Exxxotica Video: pre-cooked meals such as pasta sauce, casseroles, roasts and stews together on the one side, packaged grocery store items such as cheese and cold meats on the other, assorted vegetables and fruit in between. “
Anal, Bi, Homosexual and Mixed Race.
” Maggie giggled, reciting titles she had seen over the racks of videos in Eugene’s store. (She could not, after all, avoid the place altogether, could she?) “
Tit, Cunt, Cock, Cum.
” Maggie giggled self-consciously, checking to see she was not overheard, wondering why it was all men loved to hear women talk dirty.

Maggie did not need, but did not refuse, the post tragedy offerings of pre-prepared meals from neighbors and friends. She accepted them graciously, as if in exchange for a glimpse of the grieving mother. Maggie removed beverage cartons, emptying the contents down the drain of the kitchen sink, rinsing the containers, dividing them into groups to more efficiently accommodate the recycling program which had recently been started by the sanitation department in town: plastic, paper and tin carefully separated.

Ed Dojcsak had been yesterday, once more repeating his filthy accusation that Missy had been having sex; three times since the morning after her daughter’s death he’d come to the house, after Eugene had gone, spouting his dirty lies.

“No, Maggie,” he’d said, “the evidence doesn’t lie.”

Maggie had slapped his face the first time he’d said it, hard, so hard that for a moment she feared the mottled flesh might fall from his cheek.

“We
know
she was having
it
,” he said, or words to some such effect. “But we don’t know with
who
.”

Ultimately, under the weight of her own guilt-ridden subconscious, Maggie accepted Missy was having
it
; didn’t take her long to imagine with
who
.

Mandy entered the kitchen and said to her mother, “Cleaning the fridge, mom?” though since the death of her sister she had seen Maggie repeat the exercise a dozen or more times. Always removing then discarding, afterward scrubbing the interior of a refrigerator that already appeared to be spotlessly clean. (She should try giving herself a scrub, Mandy thought.) After satisfying herself the effort was satisfactory, Maggie telephoned the grocery with a list of items for delivery. By mid-afternoon her order would arrive and Maggie would bake and cook and butcher and braise, slice and dice and repackage and refreeze on her way to replenishing her food supply. By the time Eugene arrived home from the store, Maggie would have gone to bed, exhausted, sleeping soundly and appearing to her husband as if she hadn’t a concern in the world. To Eugene, the fridge was fully stocked, the house clean (even if around Maggie there was a slightly sour odor) and clearly, Dr. Bauer had acceded to Eugene’s request to up Maggie’s dosage of tranquillizing, mind-numbing medication.

At the rate her mother was going, Mandy wondered what would go first: the money or her mother’s mind, although she suspected the latter to have already left the building, as if having escaped through an open window. Mandy considered only briefly speaking with her father, decided against it, knowing he either was aware and didn’t care, or he would find out soon enough.

Besides, if her all knowing
Servant of God,
Aunt
Clueless
Cassie didn’t see it, who was Mandy to weigh in with her own two-cents worth? That and a dollar will get me a cup of coffee at the
Big Top Diner
, if not the recently commissioned Starbucks across town. Anyway, her mother was popping pills like cocktail peanuts and in the care of a qualified professional. Maybe her behavior was somehow therapeutic, the first step in boo-hooing over her dead daughter, who increasingly Mandy believed had screwed up more than her own life by getting herself killed.

“I’ll be late tonight, Mom. Don’t expect me before midnight.”

“That’s fine,” Maggie said, back turned to her daughter. “Have a nice time.”

“I don’t know where I’m going to or what I’m doing yet,” Mandy baited, pausing for her mother’s response. “Or even who with.”

I know she’s having it
, Maggie heard Dojcsak say in her mind,
I just don’t know with who
.

“Goodbye sweetheart,” Maggie said.

Under her breath, Mandy replied, “Yeah;
fuck you
, too.”

After Mandy left, Maggie continued cleaning but was thinking now, of her own mother. Helen McMaster had hit her when Maggie confessed to being pregnant, an open-hand slap that caught her high on the cheekbone, leaving a bruise. It was the first time either parent had raised a hand to her in anger.

“
Filthy slut,
” Helen had growled, as if the words had been forced to her lips from her diaphragm by a lifetime of humiliation and hurt. Maggie did not resent it; she accepted her mother’s justification. Helen apologized immediately but lacked the strength to acknowledge openly what Maggie suspected was the true source of her outburst.

Leland McMaster arrived home that evening, late, sensing only after his customary and solitary vodka martini something was amiss. Unable to speak for herself, Helen related on behalf of her daughter the details of Maggie’s predicament.

“How could this happen?” he asked Helen. “How could
you
let it happen? Have you not spoken to her about these things?” He pointed a finger to Maggie. “Surely to God,” he continued, blaming his wife, “you could have spoken to Henry. He would have prescribed something. An injection, or a pill.”

They sat silent in the study. Cassie was in her room, presumably asleep. A fire burned in the hearth. Maggie considered taking a metal poker, heating it to red-hot and inserting it between her thighs, deep into her womb in an effort to expunge what in her mind she visualized as a boil, a festering wound. But she wouldn’t. Instead, she placed a hand possessively on her flat belly and said to herself,
I’ll hate you, but I’ll have you
. When it came, this child would be a scab on her virtue, the sore by which Maggie was destined to be forever defined; a testament, her adolescent mind reasoned then, to her own contemptibility.

Outside it had begun to snow. The forecast called for a foot overnight and into the morning; Maggie shuddered at the prospect they might be snowed in together. Refusing to meet her father’s eye, Maggie confirmed his presence by focusing on his shoe, then his pants cuff and finally the crease in his trouser leg, making its way inexorably from his ankle, to his knee, to his thigh, finally to the secret spot which compelled her to look, yet at the same time forced her to turn away.

Maggie thought to wake her sister, to suggest enthusiastically that in the morning Cassie remain sick in bed, preferably claiming it was again, for her, that time of the month, though Maggie knew Cassie was not of an age yet to have begun her monthly cycle. Mother knew, but would Dad?

“I’ll keep the baby,” she said now.

“You’re a child; not capable of making that decision,” said her father, refusing to meet her gaze.

“Perhaps it’s for the best, Leland,” said Helen.

“You’re not capable of making that decision either,” he said.

“I deserve it,” Maggie said, her voice rising, “the baby. It’s my fault. Why should the baby be made to pay?”

“Not your fault entirely, dear,” said Helen, eyes downcast, locked on the tight weave of her recently acquired Persian rug.

After a moment, Leland said, “It’s late. We won’t make any decision tonight that can’t wait till morning.”

They left the study together. At the top of the stairs they parted company, Helen to her room, Leland to his and Maggie, alone, to hers. The snow was falling more heavily now, the lawn, the winding front drive and the branches of the trees flanking it obscured beneath a blanket of pure, undisturbed whiteness. By tomorrow it would be soiled, moved off to the side by her father’s plough.

It was after one in the morning and just as Maggie was beginning to hope her condition might be grounds, on this night, for temporary respite, the door to her bedroom opened. Perhaps not, she decided. Returning to her bed, she lay on her side, knees pulled to her tummy, calculating the number of weeks before she might begin to show. Maggie wondered if with the unsightly weight gain, the inevitable swelling of her breasts and the widening of her hips, her body might finally be granted a more permanent reprieve.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

AFTER LEAVING
Cassie, Sara returned to the station via the local McDonald’s drive-thru, where she purchased a Super-Size order of French-fries and a regular Diet Coke. Her period was coming and Sara felt compelled to bulk up on the carbohydrates, though she resented the saturated fats. Since the murder, she’d been derelict in her duty to run ten miles daily along the river (in the morning before day shift, or in the early evening before night) and forty-five minutes on the Bow-Flex. Though she was not at risk of gaining weight, Sara’s appetite, her bowels and her ability to fall quickly to sleep at night and wake refreshed in the morning had been disrupted by the change to her routine.

While she wouldn’t characterize herself as an addict, Sara did have a fancy for McDonald fries. For a two-year stretch in the nineties, while he had been a stay at home dad and unemployed, her father had offered the treat to his youngest daughter—in exchange for her best behavior—to day-trips to the indoor mall, to the municipal swimming pool, to the park or wherever else he might take her to keep Sara distracted. At the age of thirty-eight, Matthew Pridmore had become a victim of corporate downsizing prior to the term ever having become popularized by the likes of the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times.

With her mother working and Sara attending school only half-days, her father became a surrogate companion. It accounted, she supposed, for her tomboyish athleticism and little boy cute good looks. The closeness continued until Sara reached her early teens, when, as if by sprouting breasts and pubic hair, the relationship changed, becoming somehow inappropriate, her father unwilling to encourage—though he did not openly
discourage
—a continued intimacy between them. Sara’s mystification at the shift in attitude and her mother’s subtle encouragement of it was among the reasons Sara left home to attend college at the age of seventeen, trailing by a full decade her elder twin-sisters. (Sara never forgot her mother’s words:
You shouldn’t be looking
, as if her father’s thoughts were somehow inappropriate.)

Sara parked her vehicle and before exiting brushed salt and an errant French-fry from her slacks. Dorothy O’Rielly was at her post, manning the telephone and steadfastly chipping away at a mound of paperwork she hadn’t been able to file during the week.

“On your own?” Sara asked.

“Trinity has a family,” Dorothy explained. “It wouldn’t be fair to bring her in on a Saturday. Besides, the telephone has been quiet.”

“The calls have slowed,” Sara said.

“To a trickle, since after the third day. Everyone knows Missy is dead, and how she died. We’re only taking information, not releasing it. No gossip. I imagine with nothing to gain by calling here, people don’t.”

Sara nodded her head in understanding. She asked Dorothy about the location of archived files. Dorothy indicated the office with a sweeping gesture of her hand. She said, “Not here; no room. Why do you ask?”

Sara related her brief conversation with Rena Dojcsak, that there may have been events in the past which might—or might not—be relevant to the killing of Missy Bitson.

“There was a girl, perhaps ten years ago, maybe twelve, but she was from out of town. Before that I couldn’t say. I only came here in ninety seven. If Ed thought it was important, I’m sure he would have said.”

She advised Sara that archived files—those predating nineteen ninety—were stored at the public library for safekeeping. When they relocated to their new offices in the municipal building across town, it was likely the files would be transferred to disk and made accessible electronically there.

At the library, Sara was directed to a lower level basement sanctuary—a utility closet really, Sara imagined—housing the complete archived files of the Warren County Sheriff’s Department, Church Falls Divisional Station. The room was musty, smelling of decayed cardboard and mold, with low-wattage overhead lighting that Sara was convinced would ruin her eyes.

The librarian advised that the files had
not
been transferred to disk but were stored, rather, hard copy by date, in boxes beginning with the year nineteen sixty-three, though within each separate box individual file folders were sorted in no particular order.

Sara blanched, regretting her initiative.

The librarian confessed, “Before sixty-three, I couldn’t tell you.”

Sara retrieved the first of the more than thirty containers, beginning her search with the year John F Kennedy died. She sat, making herself as comfortable as she could in the only seat available, a straight back wood chair. She rifled through manila file folders that were sorted alphabetically, which was no help to Sara since she had to review the incident sheet in each and every case to determine the nature of the crime. Soon, however, Sara got the knack of progressing more rapidly by focusing on the upper right corner of each report where there was a box titled
Nature of Offense
.

The years from sixty-three to sixty-nine moved quickly. The Sheriff at the time, a man by the name of John Riggins, seemed preoccupied in his official duty with no more serious an offence than petty theft, domestic disturbance, neighborly disputes and the odd D and D—Drunk and Disorderly. During his six-year tenure there had not been one incident of major or violent crime.

By the time Sheriff Sidney Womack inherited Riggins portfolio, Church Falls had developed into the kind of place where drugs, robbery and even assault with a deadly weapon, while not common, could nonetheless occur. In each file, Womack kept copious and careful notes. It slowed Sara’s progress considerably, but allowed her the detail she required to make or to dismiss any connection to the present, of the past.

The first such possibility came with the death of Shelly Hayden in nineteen seventy-one. Though ruled officially by the county coroner (the present Mayor’s father?) as being accidental, Sheriff Womack had included in his notes a suspicion that perhaps it had not been. Shelly fit the profile; thirteen years of age with a reputation for promiscuity.

No one had been either seriously suspected let alone charged with her death, though there had been concern regarding a group of young transients who during the summer had made impromptu camp by the river. There was a reference to a group of local teens, but to Sara the file seemed redacted, or deliberately expunged.

That a second girl, Frances Stoops, had been murdered was, at the time it happened, not open to debate. Her battered body had been discovered only months following that of the Hayden girl and like Shelly, Frances was young—fourteen years—and considered (according to Womack’s, again, abbreviated notes) even by her parents to be promiscuous. In this case, an arrest had been made. Drew Bitson had been arraigned only a day after Frances was discovered lying in a bloody heap on the banks of the Hudson.

Though Jimmy Cromwell had mounted a spirited prosecution, the charge ultimately was dismissed for lack of evidence. Apparently, a semen sample extracted from the victim did not match the blood type of the boy. Lacking at the time sophisticated DNA matching technology, there had been no follow-up investigation or subsequent arrest. In this case, Womack had made no mention of transients or a group of local teens.

Cassie was right; even though Drew Bitson had been charged, he hadn’t been convicted, which didn’t let his son Jordy off the hook.

Sara sat back, replaced the file and pressed a closed fist into each eye. There wasn’t a table on which to work and she had needed to set each folder in her lap while pouring through the documentation. Her slacks were filthy, the residue and stink of ages-old file paper clinging to the material like sawdust. Her hands were yellow, the finger tips gritty and dry. Her lower back ached from the strain of bending over and her buttocks burned.

Twenty more boxes; already it was near on five o’clock. And what had she accomplished? Precious little, she decided. Two dead girls: one a death by likely misadventure, the other an obvious homicide with a credible, though unindictable, suspect. Sara didn’t believe in coincidence, but was it significant? After thirty years, probably not, but it was inconsistent. She would give it till the end of the decade and perhaps, on another day, run a check in neighboring counties.

As Sara stood to retrieve another box, a hand came down on her shoulder. Sara had been preoccupied and not heard anyone approach from behind. She started, uttering a high-pitched whelp, like a puppy dog. Ed Dojcsak stood behind her, his beefy frame backlit by a bright fluorescent light in the outer hallway.

“Sorry,” he said. “I startled you.”

“No, Ed,” Sara replied testily, “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Didn’t mean to. Thought you’d hear me coming down the stairs.”

Her heart still pounding, Sara said, “Well, I didn’t. What are you doing here?”

“I spoke to Dorothy. She told me you were here. Something about wanting to search through past files?”

Inexplicably, Sara felt guilty, as if her initiative were a reflection on his skill. “It was something Rena said.”

“Rena, my wife?”

“She’s the only Rena I know, Ed.” Sara was testy, still trembling, and unwilling yet to let Dojcsak so easily off the hook. Dojcsak moved around her and into the small storage space. To her, he smelled strongly of tobacco and beer.

“So, this is where they keep them. I’ve never been,” he said as if speaking of a visit to Walt Disney World. “Did you find anything useful?” Dojcsak continued to eye the stacked containers, placing his face inches away as if only by doing so could he make out the type on the labels.

“Apparently, Missy Bitson is not the first girl in Church Falls to go missing and turn up dead.”

“Oh?”

“Shelly Hayden and Frances Stoops. Do the names mean anything to you, Ed?”

Dojcsak answered right away. “Shelly Hayden got herself killed by falling off a high cliff. Frances Stoops was murdered. I was in high school.”

“You didn’t think it was important enough to mention? I mean, after the death of Missy Bitson?”

“Maybe over a beer.” Dojcsak chuckled, his chest rattling with the effort. He removed a package of cigarettes from his breast pocket and was about to light up when Sara said, “I wouldn’t, Ed. This stuff is as dry as tinder.” Dojcsak replaced the package. He said, “It was thirty years ago, Sara.
Over
thirty-years. There was never any real evidence to suggest who killed Frances, and as for Shelly, only my cousin ever thought it was anything but an accident.”

“Your cousin?”

“Sid Womack.” Dojcsak grinned. “C’mon, Sara. How do you think I got this job?”

“You
inherited
it?”

“Anyway,” he said, referring to the files, “How far along are you?”

Sara had finally stopped trembling and smiled. “Nineteen seventy-seven. I was planning on working through to seventy-nine when you showed up.”

“Nineteen seventy-nine,” Dojcsak said. “Year of the Disco Queen.”

“The disco who?”

“Donna Summer,” Dojcsak replied. “
The Disco Queen
. She must have had three, maybe four top ten hits that year. You’re too young to remember. Probably weren’t even born.”

“I take it you weren’t a fan.”

Dojcsak acknowledged with a nod of his head. “But she was easy on the eyes.”

“What about Drew Bitson? He was arraigned.”

“Released for lack of evidence, Sara. And believe me, back then Jimmy Cromwell was not a champion of the movement for civil rights. If there had been enough to convict, he would have. Drew has made a decent life for himself here, which, after what he went through, is a credit to him.”

“And his son?”

“Jordy,” Dojcsak mused, pulling his fingers across his cheeks. “That’s another matter and one we must discuss. You know what they say, Sara: the apple never falls far from the tree.”

“Don’t know it’s what
they
say, Ed, but sure is what you’ve been saying lately.”

“If the answer is staring you in the face, Sara, why make the investigation more difficult than it needs to be?”

“And you think it is, staring us in the face?”

“Well,” said Dojcsak, “it isn’t staring out at us from down here.” He gestured toward the files.

“You don’t think I should I come back Monday?” Sara asked, secretly hoping for a reprieve.

“I wouldn’t bother. I joined the force right out of high school, in seventy-two. From seventy-nine until now, I’ve been in charge. If there was anything relevant here, I would have let you and Christopher know. Come, Sara, let me buy you a beer; you must be parched from the parchment. The solution to Missy’s death is in the present, not in the past.”