THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE (38 page)

At the station, he planned to soak his body under a cold shower, consume half a dozen aspirin washed down by a gallon jug of ice water, and sleep, hoping for the best in the morning, expecting the worst.

This was the plan as Burke crossed the river. How had his life come to this, he lamented? He considered himself a reasonably intelligent and better than average looking college grad who had, until blowing his knee out in his sophomore year, harbored an unspoken ambition to play point guard in the NBA. At six-foot-four, Burke was just tall enough, blessed with an uncanny ability to consistently hit better than eighty per cent from the floor. Scouts considered him a lock to go second, maybe first round in the draft.

His knee and ambition for a career in professional sports shattered, after graduation Burke planned to take a year off. A year in which he planned to sow his wild oats, which he assumed would amount to the equivalent annual average output of the combined European Union. (This was substantial, according to the international agricultural trade statistics he had studied in his senior year at Cornell.) That was the plan. Instead, Burke accepted the position as Dojcsak’s deputy. He had never seriously intended to become a cop. Two years later, he married Sheila Marinos. He had never intended to marry either.

Burke altered his course away from the station, continuing along Main Street past the river and deeper into town. The air was cool, a bitter north wind that increased in velocity and sucked up moisture as it passed over the water. It hit Burke’s face like a refreshing, damp slap, keeping him awake. At this hour, the street was quiet, empty of either pedestrians or cars.

“Opportunity and preference,” he remembered a first year psych professor once saying about Freud’s attitude toward sex. “The only abnormal sexual behavior is no sexual behavior at all.”

The comment did not sit well with the female members of his class, less for what the professor said, Burke suspected, than for how he said it.

So why did he feel as if he needed to have a bath? (In the words of Sara Pridmore.) Earlier, with Dojcsak and Sara standing with him, he had viewed the photographs confiscated from Jordy’s bedroom. Excusing himself to the restroom, he discovered he was semi-erect. He passed it off as having waited too long to pee. Still, the images kept popping up in his head like targets in a carnival midway shooting gallery. It was
natural
to react in this way, Burke rationalized. The photos were provocative, meant to stimulate and to arouse. It was
not
a reflection on the sorry state of his sexuality that they had.

As if on autopilot, Burke made for the home of Renate St. Jacob’s. It was late, it was a school night, Renate would likely be asleep and Burke would have to be mindful not to wake her parent’s, but he would not be deterred, intent on proving—if only to himself—that Christopher Burke was
not
a pedophile.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

SARA TIMED
her arrival at the Medical Examiner’s office in Albany so as to avoid the congestion of early morning rush hour traffic by leaving Church Falls by car two hours before the sun was due to rise. An hour with Abby Friedman—from eight to nine—would leave her ample time to travel south on I Eighty Seven, from there to the Palisades Interstate Parkway and over the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan, arriving for lunch by one.

With the assistance of the New York Department of Labor, Sara had learned Evelyn Bitson was employed at
Tonic
, a jazz club located in the City’s lower east side. She had confirmed by telephone that the estranged daughter of Eugene and Maggie would be working a shift that Friday, tending bar on what was expected to be a routine, if not lackluster, end of the week afternoon.

“Nights are busy, afternoons slow,” said the manager, “so she should have time to talk before the rush. Sorry about her sister,” he had said, as if hearing of Missy’s death for the first time.

At the Medical Center, Sara parked her vehicle underground, in an empty space away from other cars, careful to keep it from harms way; other drivers who opened doors thoughtlessly with no regard to the quality of the automobile parked in the space next to them. Dojcsak had asked if the prospect of a long drive to New York bothered her. On the contrary, she had replied, I look forward to it.

He’d asked for her to attend the Medical Examiner’s office personally to collect the results from the DNA examination on specimens collected from the crime scene and Jordy’s bedroom, and if possible, though doubtful, the contents of Jordy’s hard drive.

In a case of this importance, Dojcsak was not prepared to compromise the chain of evidence. As to her visit with Evelyn, Dojcsak was unwilling to chance embarrassing revelations at the hands of a surprise witness called during a subsequent trial.

“She might not seem relevant, but possibly she is,” he had told Sara in a telephone conversation the evening before.

Sara arrived shortly before eight that day, as planned. The Medical Examiner was a natural beauty, but today—to Sara—she appeared to have slept through her alarm, missed her bus, to have accidentally spilled coffee on her blouse and been late for her first appointment. Had she asked, Abby would have confessed this much and more to Sara Pridmore.

“Please, sit,” she told Sara, extending her hand in welcome. There was only one available armchair opposite Friedman. Sara was required to remove file folders to gain clear access.

“Coffee?” Friedman offered.

Sara refused the offer. “I was up early. Had my fill on the road. Thank God for rest stops.”

“Yes,” agreed Friedman with a sheepish smile. “The facilities are at least clean, more than I can say for the service stations along the way. You won’t mind if I do, will you?”

Sara’s eyes strayed to Friedman’s soiled blouse. Friedman said, “Spilled my first cup.” She smiled at Sara with Chiclet perfect white teeth, reminding Sara of Chris Burke. Friedman ordered coffee through an intercom from an assistant. Within moments, she had a steaming
Bugs Bunny
mug firmly in her grasp.

“See if you can’t get it in your mouth, rather than on your top,” the assistant said good-naturedly before leaving them alone.

Abby Friedman sipped from her mug. To Pridmore, she looked to be about thirty years of age. Sara suspected she was as much as ten years more, knowing she had to have obtained a medical degree and some measure of on the job experience to earn her position here. Friedman spoke with a faint accent. Brought with her when she migrated to America from overseas? Sara didn’t ask.

“Do you have children?” Friedman asked now. Sara said she did not. “Well, not all it’s cracked up to be. You love them dearly, but sometimes they drive you mad. And don’t even get me started on teenagers, especially girls. Sometimes, I think I’m talking to myself,” Friedman said, thinking of an argument she’d had with her daughter that morning. “How is the investigation progressing?”

“An eyewitness would be helpful.”

Friedman sipped coffee, careful to maintain a firm grasp on her cup. Sara studied the room, the haphazard scatter of manila file folders across the doctor’s credenza and desk, the slide cultures piled high, one on top of each other on the loose fitting shelves along the wall, the cardboard cartons stacked a dozen high in two corners of the office as if they were competing for either attention or for space.
Chain of evidence
, Sara mused,
from this haphazard collection of disconnected links?

“Only Christmas gifts come in neatly wrapped packages, Officer,” Friedman said as if reading Sara’s mind. The Medical Examiner retrieved an envelope from the chaos that was her desktop, removed a computer print out and passed it to Pridmore.

Sara examined it for a moment before confessing, “What am I looking at?”

Friedman said, “DNA, a comparative analysis from a bloodstain retrieved from the crime scene and cross-referenced against a semen sample we lifted from the bed-sheet and the blood-stained tee shirt you supplied. We compared these three samples against a semen deposit extracted from the victim.”

“And?” Sara asked, pulse quickening.

“You may have a challenge.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Well,” said Friedman. “The blood collected in the alley belongs to the person whose blood is on the tee shirt you supplied. The DNA is also an exact match to the person who smeared his seed on the bed sheet you supplied.”

“Go on.”

“As well as semen on the bed sheet, we discovered a trace of vaginal fluid and pubic hair; both belong to the victim. There is a marked, though not exact, similarity between the DNA strand of both the female and the male donors. Not brother and sister or father and daughter, but blood relative. Cousins, probably first.”

Sara exhaled, audibly. “Jordy Bitson, her cousin. He’s the killer. I knew it. It makes sense, doesn’t it? He had sex with her in his bedroom that afternoon. Afterward, he buys food at McDonalds, romantic little shit that he is, which they eat—where?—we don’t know, yet. He walks Missy home, they argue, possibly about the fact he’s raping her, possibly about the fact she wants out of his perverted little games. They fight, he scrapes himself, dumps her in the trash bin to conceal her body. Not premeditated, but good enough for a charge of second degree.”

“A killer, an accomplice, a material witness? That, Officer Pridmore,” said Abby Friedman in a trademark evasion of responsibility, “is for the police to decide.” Then, lifting a well-manicured finger in the air in a calculated gesture of
Ah-ha
, she said, “This is, however, where, for you, the theory breaks down.”

“Oh?” Sara said, now hedging her enthusiasm.

“Let’s look
only
at the physical evidence for a moment,” Friedman said. “We suspect the victim was having sex with her cousin, Jordy, you say; the pictures you speak of are a powerful indictment. Also, from the physical evidence, we know they likely did it on top of those bed sheets. But the bed sheets don’t prove conclusively that they had sex the day the girl died.”

“Aren’t we being retentive, Doctor? You’re forgetting; I’ve seen the photographs. Believe me, the two were doing more than just heavy petting.”

“I don’t dispute she had intercourse on the day she was killed, Officer—I’m betting an hour, maybe two at the most, before death—but what I can say, unequivocally, is the victim did not have sexual relations with the person whose blood was found in the alley,
or
with the person
who stained the bed sheet, who we know to be her cousin Jordy.”

“Slow down, Doctor; now I’m totally confused. What is it you’re trying to say?”

“What I’m trying to say is, your victim had intercourse with someone, but not her cousin, at some point between the time she went missing and the time she was killed. The semen sample doesn’t match the boy.”

…

Sara telephoned Dojcsak collect from a pay phone on the street, unwilling to apply a long-distance charge to her escalating monthly cellular bill for which she was unlikely to be reimbursed. He was in the office with Burke.

“Nothing,” he said in response to Sara’s first question. “No trace of the boy yet, or Jeremy Radigan.”

Sara chewed frenetically at an inside corner of her lower lip, drawing blood. Jordy Bitson could be anywhere, she said; he had a two, perhaps a three-day head start. Is it possible to leave the country without a passport, Ed, Sara wondered? Did he have resources other than the four thousand-odd dollars they had confiscated from his room? Would the State Police be sufficiently motivated, now, to commit additional manpower to the search, given that DNA evidence linked Jordy to the crime scene, if not to the crime itself? If not Jordy, who had sex with Missy that day? An accomplice? What did Jordy do? More importantly, what did Jordy
see
?

“We won’t know until we have him custody, Sara,” Dojcsak said in a blanket reply to her inquiries. “Christopher has something for you.” In Church Falls, Dojcsak passed the receiver over to Burke.

“You have a letter, Sara, a package from Verizon. It arrived this morning addressed to
Officer Pridmore, Care of Warren County Sheriff’s Office
. Should I open it?”

Yes, Sara advised, having forgotten completely about her original request from the telephone company.

“Telephone records. Lots of them, going back twelve months.”

Sara explained to Christopher that for the time being only calls originating from Church Falls and outgoing to Mineola, and likewise originating from Mineola and back were relevant. Burke put her on speakerphone. There was a rustle of paper and after five minutes he said.

“You won’t believe this, Sara. The calls into, and originating from, Mineola are to and from the home of a David Radigan.”

“Jeremy’s father, brother?”

“Who knows?” Over the line, Sara could hear the sound from Burke shuffling more paper. “And get this, Sara.”

“What?”

“Dozens of calls placed from the home of Dave Radigan to the
Sentinel-Tribune
and the home of Seamus Mcteer, clustered in bunches over what looks to me like weekends going back a full year.” Burke breathed heavily. “Jesus, Sara. Do you know what this means?”

Sara said, “I imagine you’re going to tell me.”

“Think about it: Mineola and Jamestown, Brewton, Lehigh Acres, Vanceburg, Wisconsin Rapids, Montreal and Vancouver. I bet if we crosscheck the area codes on long distance calls made from Radigan’s place, Mcteer’s and the
Sentinel-Tribune
, we’ll find these scumbags have been talking to people all over the continent.”

In a way that begged to be contradicted, Sara asked, “Aren’t you getting carried away?”

“It’s like the newspaper article said, Sara.” Burke was gloating. A hundred miles away over a fiber optic cable, Sara sensed it. “Contact your
Dog
at the Bureau, cupcake. We’ve hit the kiddy porn lottery. This will be good for page one in
The New York Times
. Who says not much happens in a small town?”

Sara said, “Get me Ed, Chris.”

“I can’t; Ed is shaving.”

Jesus
, she muttered under her breath. Then, recalling a second set of records, she asked, “Chris, Missy’s cell phone records; I put in a request for those, too.”

A moment later, back on the line, Burke was saying, “Bitson to Dojcsak on the day of the murder; five minutes in duration. Not a minute later, Dojcsak back to Bitson; thirty seconds in duration. What’s up with that, do you think?”

But Sara didn’t respond; she couldn’t, the words caught on the windpipe at the back of her throat. At her end of the line, she’d dropped the receiver. Gripping the black telephone box tightly with both hands, she said to herself: Jenny, what did you do?
What in God’s name did you do?