THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE (33 page)

“You know me better than that, Jen.”

“Do I?”

“Black or white, he’s a crummy influence. You said so yourself.”

“I’m sorry I ever opened my big mouth,” Jenny said. “I was jealous, you know, seeing shit that wasn’t really there.”

“Your words or his?”

“What does it matter? It’s true.”

The wind had risen in the trees, whistling through the branches. There was no moon and though the stars were distinct against the black sky, they were no competition to the mercury vapor lamps recently installed on the sidewalk along Dojcsak’s block. Sara recalled the fuss over the expenditure, often teasing Dojcsak privately, suggesting his neighborhood had benefited more from his position as County Sheriff rather than the absolute needs of the community. Although they were blocks from the river, the insistent din of water over the dam was audible even from here.

Jenny removed a cigarette, ignited and said, “Do you really believe it could be him?”

“It
could
be anybody, Jen, but yes, I really believe it might be him.”

“
Why
?”

“It fits. I shouldn’t tell you this, and keep it to yourself, but I’m hoping you’ll see sense. We know Missy was involved sexually, what we don’t know is with who, or if she was promiscuous or abused. From the condition of her body, we know she wasn’t raped, but according to her doctor and the Medical Examiner, she was no virgin. You tell me Jordy was obsessed, possessive of her. Missy spent time with her cousin Kendra, sleepovers, that sort of thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if it started at a very early age. You said so yourself, Jen, he had the opportunity to take advantage of her, introduce his little cousin to things he wasn’t supposed to.”

“Yeah, but so did her father, her uncle, her teachers, the mailman, the milkman…”

“Knock it off, Jen; you’re being silly.”

“Am I? Come on, Sara; don’t be naive. Half this town is screwing a blood relative. You don’t know it yet; you haven’t been here long enough. Missy could have been doing it with anybody; probably was.”

“Are you forgetting how I first met you?”

Jennifer bristled. “That was different,” she said. “It was my choice. I could have said no if I’d wanted.”

“You were wasted, Jen. Jordy knew it and took advantage of it by forcing his cock down your throat. That boy has girl issues that makes him dangerous.” (Involuntarily, Sara thought of Chris Burke.) “He doesn’t seem to work. Where does he get his money? I know he’s responsible for what’s been happening in town: the windows, the desecrated gravesites, the fire. I’ll lay odds he’s pushing drugs. I can prove it,” Sara lied. “But I’m not interested in any of that now.”

Sara waited for Jenny to speak, relent perhaps, and admit Jordy to be guilty of something,
anything
. But she remained silent.

“I admit it may have started innocently and snowballed from there. Missy may have wanted it to stop, but Jordy couldn’t,” said Sara, warming to the theory, pressing the younger woman. “He was addicted, obsessed with her. She wanted it to stop, he couldn’t, they fought, he killed her. It may have been accidental, Jen, but it’s still murder.”

“
Why are you telling me this
?” Jenny asked. “To protect me, or to
enlist
me.”

Sara blushed, thankful for the dark. “I’m not asking you to do anything. Just keep your ears open; call if you learn anything that could point me in the right direction. If that direction is away from Jordy and toward someone else, Jen, I’m cool with that. So be it.”

They had approached the short walkway leading to the Dojcsak front steps. Jenny glanced across the road to the home of Jordy Bitson, as if hoping to see him there.

Lately, Jordy had been spending more time with Missy, the two separating themselves from Jenny and their other friends for hours at a time, some days not showing up to be with them at all. Jordy was the de facto leader of the group and for Jenny his absence created a void, as if her solar system was suddenly without a sun.

If it was unnatural, it was not unreasonable for him be attracted to Missy. Jenny Dojcsak was a cow, an unattractive Sasquatch of a young woman who for years the boys had tormented or ignored. Rejected at an early age by her own father for a sister who was barley living, would soon die and worst of all, seemed to neither notice or to appreciate his attention, Jenny ceased to care, finding it easier to believe she could be wanted if she tried, rather than to try and to understand with certainty that she wasn’t, and never could be. For the affection of Jordy Bitson, Jenny knew she could never compete. With Missy dead, her image was codified, stenciled on Jordy’s brain like a tattoo. It would grow over time until the memory eclipsed the reality. Far from being a solution, Missy’s death seemed now to become an additional challenge in Jenny’s ongoing struggle to gain the attention and affection she deserved.

“What does Ed think?” Jenny asked Sara now.

“Your father needs to keep his options open.” Sara hedged. “He can’t think anything until we have something more tangible.”

Jenny crushed her cigarette beneath the heel of her boot. Without another word she turned toward the house. Sara watched as she reached the front door, noting that Dojcsak had not yet arrived home.

Before Jenny entered, Sara called out. “Tell your friend to see a doctor, Jen.” In the yellow overhead light, Sara could see Jenny’s confusion. “The girl was infected, Jen; HIV. If Jordy is so innocent, he has nothing to fear. If not, well, I guess the laugh’s on him, eh?”

Confusion gone, Jenny entered her home, an expression of hatred knotting her face. Across the street, the Bitson home was dark. Sara imagined Jordy sitting at the window, observing the conversation, twisting his fists anxiously, wanting but unable to overhear.

…

Inside her home, Jennifer Dojcsak telephoned Jordy Bitson: no answer. She left a message on his mobile. Next, she sent a text: no reply. Would Jordy be thankful for her loyalty, grateful and indebted? And if he wasn’t? Well then, Jenny thought viciously,
fuck him
.

…

Sara turned toward town, subconsciously hoping Dojcsak would appear from around the corner, recognize her and stop so they might talk.

Missy had eaten on the day of her murder, Sara thought now,
as a couple
,
Dojcsak said, prior to being killed. According to the cash register receipt, the other half of the couple had a healthy appetite. Despite two days during which both Pridmore and Burke had questioned the staff at the fast food outlet, no one recalled having either served or seen Missy Bitson. They had distributed flyers with the victim’s photo, asking anyone who might have seen her that day to please come forward. They had posted photocopies on grocery and convenience store bulletin boards among the items to sell, help wanted, and help for hire notices. They had canvassed and asked questions from one end of town to the other, but on the day she died no one could recall having seen Missy Bitson, let alone having seen her in the company of someone else.

Sara knew from experience (or was it from the movies?) if you aren’t getting the right answer, perhaps you’re asking the wrong question. The evidence showed Missy had eaten the Bacon Double Cheeseburger; from the autopsy, this much was conclusive, but not where she had eaten it. The meal could have been purchased, brought to her, and consumed by Missy elsewhere, off site of the fast food outlet. Missy hadn’t been observed at the McDonalds that afternoon, Sara hypothesized, because maybe Missy had not been there. So far as Sara knew, no one had bothered to ask about Jordy Bitson: certainly not her.

The
Big Top Diner
was still serving when Sara reached the center of town, the kitchen not yet closed though the restaurant was empty. Sara entered, seating herself alone at one of only a few clean tables. Others were dirty, littered with cups, glasses, and soiled cutlery and dinner plates. Sara recognized the remnants of meatloaf in a pool of congealed brown gravy, a slice of blueberry pie only partially consumed, filthy ashtrays, bread-rolls half-eaten, and pats of butter separating into oil. Nevertheless, the lone waitress sat at a corner table reading a copy of the
Sentinel-Tribune
, drinking coffee, puffing greedily on a cigarette, allowing her eyes to wander occasionally to the coverage on Fox News.

Resentfully, she made her way toward Sara, menu in one clenched fist, a glass of ice water in the other.
Oh boy
, thought Sara, is she happy to see me. On the bright side, she would escape without having to leave a large tip, if she left one at all.

“Kitchen still open?” Sara asked.

The waitress placed the menu and the ice water on the table in front of Sara. She looked over her shoulder to a glowering dark man wearing a white, soiled apron and standing behind a stainless steel serving rack, above which was suspended a row of heat-lamps.

“Everything but the liver,” he said, his eyes fixed to the television screen. “And any steak, well-done. Don’t do breakfast after dinner, either,” he added petulantly, almost as an afterthought. His accent was heavy, possibly East Indian. Sara was tempted to solicit an opinion on the ongoing hostilities in the Middle East, deciding quickly that whatever his thoughts on geopolitics, his attitude, at this moment, would be influenced more by the nuisance of Sara’s late arrival rather than the prospect of Americans bombing Iraq.

Instead, without looking at the menu, Sara said, “I’ll make it easy; Cob Salad and a decaf coffee. If it’s fresh brewed.”

“You were expecting what? Instant?” the waitress quipped before walking away.

The
Big Top Diner
was a Church Falls institution, still operating after almost fifty years in business. Once family owned, it had changed hands a dozen times in the past decade, passing from one buyer to the next in a succession of operators with little or no experience of the business, but possessing the minimum required cash down payment needed to prompt the establishment to change hands. Its trade was mainly local, the tourists and visitors who in summer passed through the village in droves preferring to take their meals in the finer restaurants located north of the river. But the food was agreeable and agreeably priced, even if the service was not, and to Sara preferable to returning home and the inconvenience at this late hour of preparing a meal for one.

Earlier, she had stopped by her apartment to leave food out for
Bollocks
, the tri-colored Calico whose flatter than typical face made it appear as if he had chased after one too many parked cars. The cat was fat, inactive with age, shedding fur in clumps and was a disinterested companion; failing an unexpected catastrophe, Sara would not be missed.

Seated away from the window, preferring to remain anonymous from the thinning pedestrian traffic now passing along the sidewalk, Sara collected her thoughts, though if she were honest she would admit to herself that her thoughts veered in only one direction; Jordy Bitson. How could they not? There was something unnatural about the relationship he shared with his cousin. Jenny had done more than hint at it and if pressed, Sara believed Mandy would spill too. Sara hated to say it, and wouldn’t aloud, but Bitson was a little scumbag—Christopher’s word for him, not hers—who she, Burke and Dojcsak all believed responsible for the vandalism and who they suspected was pushing drugs at the local high school as proxy to the native American Ire Bomberry, who himself had more than once been charged but never convicted of trafficking in a controlled substance.

In Burke’s first year on the force, before Sara’s arrival, Chris had been made responsible for making a connection between the two, but the investigation had gone no where and was soon dropped. “Slippery little cock-sucker is hard to pin down,” Burke had said at the time.

Pulling her mobile from her hip, Sara decided to phone him. It was Sheila who answered.

“He’s not here,” she said. “What makes you think he would be, at home with his pregnant wife?” emphasis on
pregnant,
and on
wife
.

“My mistake,” Sara said, hoping to disconnect before Sheila gained momentum. She knew from Dojcsak’s wife Rena, the depth of her asperity toward her spouse.

“No, Sara,
my
mistake, for having married him in the first place.”

“I’d rather not do this, Sheila. If you have problems, you should take it up with Chris.”

“Oh, right,” Sheila replied, “his failings as a husband are my problem, his failings as a cop yours. As if the two aren’t related.” Sheila hung up before Sara could respond.

Next, she tried Burke’s cellular. “Where are you?” she asked.