THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE Read online

  Dismissing the accumulation of paper on her desk, Friedman refilled her coffee cup, steadying her nerves against the onslaught of caffeine with which she would face the coming day. Her mind focused on Martha, an upcoming bat Mitzvah, a gift, and a visit to the Cloverdale Mall. Her thoughts were far from the scheduled autopsy at ten.

  She absently shuffled a slide journal from her desk to an adjoining bookcase, rattling the glass panels loosely confined within the four corners of a plastic rack. A toxicology analysis was due any day now, as it had been any day now since she first submitted the tissue samples over two weeks ago. Unnatural death, accident, suicide, murder: it was one and not the others. Imposed, self-inflicted, fortuitous. The Medical Examiner suspected, but in this case would not conclusively determine until the toxicology report arrived.

  Friedman telephoned the dry cleaner, hoping to retrieve her husband’s laundry this afternoon. On Monday, the cleaner locked its door to business at three. Barring complications, Abby would conclude the examination by two, allowing ample time to finish and afterward to collect her husband’s linen. He needed the shirts. Tomorrow, he would fly to Chicago to address a symposium of Chartered Public Accountants, scheduled to debate the impact of a projected federal budget deficit on future tax policy, and how that tax policy might affect the granting of foreign aid. Harry was concerned the current Administration might waffle on the issue of financial support to Israel, as much as they had done recently with political. (Damn that Benjamin Netanyahu, Abby thought privately.)

  After speaking with the laundry, Abby spoke with her mother. She was ill. All this mild weather after such cold, she explained, requesting from her daughter a prescription. The child suggested an appointment with her family doctor. The mother refused, as Abby knew she would. Friedman, the physician, relented, promising to supply something this evening, a harmless and sterile placebo to ease the old woman’s mind and that of Abby, permitting her mother to sleep.

  At precisely nine-thirty, the Medical Examiner returned her telephone to its cradle, poured fresh coffee and moved from her office to the autopsy room across the hall.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CASSIE MCMASTER WAS perceptive enough to appreciate the impact the murder of her niece would have on the community at large. Any murder, let alone that of a child, is an invitation to meddle, for complete strangers to strip the veneer from the apparently placid surface of otherwise troubled lives. In the coming weeks dirty linen would be laundered, revealing it to be irredeemably soiled.

  Cassie awaited the arrival of the police, her thoughts wandering to the bedroom window overlooking the front yard. She was relieved to see her small garden sprout to life in a rainbow bouquet of color; orange, purple, red and, what she believed to be but wasn’t quite sure, mustard yellow. Tulips, crocuses and daffodils, attractively if inexpertly planted in a spurt of nervous energy the weekend prior to Thanksgiving, less than forty-eight hours before the first snowfall. Throughout those long days, as the snow fell and settled first in drifts at the base of the red maple, later moving like a wave to the flowering hedgerow which framed her small lawn, Cassie had worried over the health of a garden which prior to this past year she had given scant consideration.

  Her concern was more than symbolic she decided one blustery day, rushing from her home in a fit of uncontrolled anxiety, foraging through a foot of powder to retrieve a single bulb in an effort to reassure herself that they hadn’t all succumbed to the storm. Her precipitous behavior had doomed the plant, she knew, but Cassie was encouraged in the realization the others would probably survive, despite the burden of their unforgiving circumstances.

  Cassie had occupied the rectory since returning to Church Falls, more than a decade after first leaving to take a degree in Religious Studies at Virginia’s William and Mary College. While supportive of Cassie’s decision at twenty-three to return to school and attend the university, Leland McMaster was less enthusiastic over her choice of major, hoping she might choose a degree in business with the intent, eventually, of becoming involved with the family automobile dealership. To her father’s dismay, Cassie had expressed little interest.

  “You belong here,” he’d said to her at the time. “I need you to reconsider.”

  “I won’t, dad,” she’d replied. “I need away from here. This place is like a crypt.”

  If her demons hadn’t capitulated upon leaving home, for Cassie, they retreated to a place in her mind she considered manageable, if only marginally more bearable. For Cassie, her studies, the historic William and Mary campus, and the proximity of nearby Colonial Williamsburg proved the ideal salve with which to sooth what she had already defined to herself as the “scorched earth” landscape of her troubled past. Leland McMaster, she decided, raised children like Donald Rumsfeld waged war; like the city of Baghdad, Cassie remained permanently scarred.

  After graduation, Cassie accepted a placement with the Youth Section of the City of Washington’s Department of Social and Human Services, thinking her own past could help to initiate the healing process in others. Physician heal thy-self was never truer than when applied to this abortive effort. Less than a year after leaving William and Mary, Cassie returned to the security of school, receiving her Doctorate in Psychology and high praise for her dissertation, “Maladaptive Behavioral Conduct In The Nuclear Family Unit”.

  By this time in her life, Cassie had become more attuned to the greater concept of a world with higher purpose, than with the notion of simple, human failing. After leaving William and Mary for the final time, Cassie sought to be ordained as clergy to the Episcopalian Church. She understood that in doing so her decision to remain single would go unchallenged, and that the teachings of two thousand years of catholic and apostolic tradition, wrapped as it was in the cloak of the Anglican Communion, would present to her constituents a more palatable alternative than her own twisted definition on the state of how things are, and the reasons for them being that way. At almost forty years of age, Cassie was big on emotional abdication, if not spiritual, though the irony of being referred to as Mother was not lost on her.

  Upon reflection and contrary to her better instinct, Cassie returned inevitably to her roots. Living at the rectory on the south side of a river that in the spring ran too high, in the fall too low, which in winter sometimes froze over and during the summer into which fishermen dipped their poles, sometime during her thirty-fifth year Cassie McMaster concluded that in order to claim her future, inevitably she must re-claim her past.

  Inspecting her image a final time in a full-length bedside mirror, Cassie decided she was satisfied, though not entirely pleased, with her appearance. She had learned yesterday of her niece’s disappearance, assisted in the search and had later that evening been informed of the child’s death. Cassie had not returned to sleep after receiving her sister’s anguished call, had driven instead the short distance to Maggie’s home, hoping to be of comfort.

  On arriving, she moved to embrace Maggie. Her sister stepped back, raising her hand as if she were a traffic cop and said, “Don’t. Don’t you dare tell me this is God’s will. Don’t you dare tell me it’s part of His plan, or that she’s at peace and gone on to a better place. Don’t you try to rationalize this, Cassie McMaster; don’t you dare.” Maggie pulled at her hair with both hands, as if hoping to remove it entirely from her scalp. “This isn’t God’s will; this has nothing to do with Him. This is the work of people. Vile, stupid, venal, perverted, disgusting, bastard, fucking…” Maggie barked obscenities as if she were suffering from Tourette Syndrome. Seemingly having run out of superlatives, she spat, “People!” as if simple emphasis was now enough.

  Cassie moved to her sister; this time Maggie permitted an embrace, though she did not return the gesture. The State Trooper who had delivered home Eugene said, “Is there anything we can do…?”

  “Can you bring back my daughter?” Maggie snapped. The Trooper averted his gaze. “Then no. You may as well go.”

  Alone, Maggie confessed to
her sister, “This is my fault, Cassie.”

  “You’re a good mother, Mag; you did what you could.” A platitude, but what else had she to offer?

  “Not enough.”

  “You couldn’t have done more.” Ditto.

  Maggie was silent a moment before saying to her sister, “It’s what mother tells herself, you know. I’ve never forgiven her that excuse.”

  Cassie now blinked away tears. Since early morning a savage web of irritated vessels had appeared, staining red the white of her normally clear eyes. Deep furrows pocked her skin. Despite a liberal application of foundation, Cassie’s complexion remained sallow; dull and lifeless, like wax. The persistent case of eczema—that for months had been held in abeyance with a variety of potions, lotions, ointments and creams—had returned, setting her fingers and knuckles ablaze. A navy blouse with high white collar and dark slacks concealed her ample bosom and long shapely legs, and were appropriate to the occasion, she concluded.

  The sound of an automobile pulling from the street into her drive, the closing of a car door, and the brittle snap of gravel under heel alerted Cassie to the arrival of Christopher Burke, the officer who had telephoned early that morning, requesting permission to interview the murder victim’s aunt, as if consent would hereinafter be required or could be denied.

  Passing a brush one final time through her waist length dark hair, Cassie moved purposefully from the bedroom to the foyer, to receive the police.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SEAMUS MCTEER SAT motionless at his desk, sipping Absolut vodka cut half and half with chamomile tea from a ceramic mug bearing the inscription, “The Voice of Our Community Since 1886”, a slogan that appeared as the masthead on the Weekly Sentinel-Tribune. He was oblivious to the rhythmic twitch that since morning had developed over his right eye, though painfully aware of the diarrhea that forced him to the men’s room a half-dozen times since leaving the crime scene.

  From the alley, Seamus had returned directly home, aroused, inspired, and—if he were honest—somewhat frightened. Unable to sleep, by four a.m. the morning after the murder, Seamus had showered, shaved, and prepared for himself a hearty breakfast of three eggs over easy, a link of four fried Jimmy Dean sausage, lightly buttered whole wheat toast and a half gallon pot of coffee—heavy on the sugar, light on the cream. With an appetite fueled by anxiety, but somehow immune to the gyrations of his nervous stomach, Seamus lamented that he might add fifty pounds before this was over—or lose, depending on whether he ate more than he could excrete.

  Leaving his home before dawn that morning, he arrived to the office of the Sentinel-Tribune shortly after six.

  “What to do, what to do,” he said aloud, to himself; part-time copywriter and production assistant Amy Anderson not scheduled to arrive before nine. It was Monday; the newspaper was due for distribution tomorrow. “What to do,” he said again, refilling his mug with a mixture of chamomile and Absolut.

  The Nikon digital was on his desk; the same camera that last evening Seamus carried suspended from the leather strap around his neck. He observed it intently, as if expecting it to speak. “J’ Accuse,” it would say if it did.

  Recoiling slightly as if it had, Seamus recovered. After a moment, he extended a chubby finger to trace the lines and gentle curve of the Nikon’s smooth, European design. The three gig memory card remained in the unit. Last evening, Seamus had been tempted to remove it, compelled by some impulse of uncharacteristic goodwill to extract the card, to smash it, and to discard the remains into the nearest storm drain. But he hadn’t, motivated instead by a more powerful urge to preserve the photographs he had taken prior to the arrival of the police. Seamus laughed.

  “That would have been it then, wouldn’t it have?” he said, as if speaking to the camera. “The game’d been over if either o’ the buggers had found you out, huh? Do not pass Go; do not collect two hundred dollars; go directly to jail; do not bend over in the shower.” Seamus giggled self-consciously.

  Draining the last of the chamomile and Absolut, he reached for the camera purposefully, as if deciding it would not bite. He booted his desktop, waited for the screen saver to appear and, after typing his password, connected the two devices. Two clicks later a dialogue box appeared, displaying the contents of the file. Seamus’ tongue was thick on the roof of his mouth. The cursor arrow flashed over the first of eight entries.

  “One click,” Seamus said, as if speaking to the computer screen. “One double click,” he corrected, his finger poised over the mouse.

  The breakfast in his stomach lurched, threatening at any moment to overwhelm him and erupt onto the keyboard. Seamus dragged the cursor arrow from the first entry, to the last, then slowly back, as if teasing himself.

  “Eeny, meeny, miney, moe,” he whispered, double clicking when the arrow settled on file number four. The processor hummed and before his eyes could adjust, an image of the dead child filled the screen.

  “Ja’sus,” Mcteer said, inhaling, drawing the word out. “Mapplethorpe, eat yer heart out.”

  Missy Bitson lay prone in the trash bin, dark-light skin contrasting sharply with her snug, white top. Her hair lay about her face, glistening like a halo. Her hands were upturned, fingers crooked in a come hither gesture: Come here big boy, show me what you got. Her thighs, parted, revealed the crotch seam of her blue jeans, faux-proxy to the real thing. Seamus trembled; the sensation traveled like warm fluid from his cerebellum to his loins.

  In the corner of the screen the time flashed eight twenty-two. Amy would soon arrive. Seamus reviewed the other entries on the disk for clarity and focus, ensuring each of the eight frames was consistent with the usual high standard his clients had come to expect from his work, reluctant to be drawn away. Shame, he thought to himself, that he wouldn’t be able to market the images locally.

  “Suicide,” he said. “Tha’ would be suicide,” he repeated, as if needing to hear it again.

  If Ed Dojcsak had worried the evening before over the photos appearing in the Sentinel-Tribune, he need not have; on the black market their commercial value to Seamus was immense. He removed the memory card from the Nikon, placing it in a locked drawer for safekeeping; it would return home with him later that evening where he would conceal it with the rest of his inventory, beneath a false bottom built into the hearth of his fireplace floor.

  The photos were a coup, the ultimate combination of adolescent erotica and violent death, and a decided escalation in the character of his work. Seamus mentally calculated their value while at the same time agonizing over a method for distribution. In the last month his network had been crippled, after thirty years virtually shut down by recent arrests and an ongoing investigation by the FBI. (The very technology that had allowed them so rapidly to expand now was being turned against them.)

  The network would be rebuilt, he knew, according to the immutable law of supply and demand. The investigation had, thus far, not implicated Seamus, but gone were intermediaries in Georgia, Kentucky, Alabama and Wisconsin, and throughout the State of New York—from Mineola to Jamestown; doctors, attorneys, politicians and civil servants, individuals with appetites and the means to indulge them.

  Even his Canadian contact hadn’t replied to Seamus’ latest offer of what he knew was first-rate material being created in the Philippines, children so young as to make even Seamus blush. With the U.S. Dollar rate of exchange being what it was, it was odd for him not to immediately respond.

  Seamus feared the worst. Church Falls was too small a market into which he could profitably sell; in fact, it was no market at all. Perhaps, he decided, his partner Jeremy Radigan would have a plan.

  Just as Seamus removed the key from the locked drawer, the glass panel separating his office from the outer foyer opened, allowing in a gust of cool, damp April morning air. Stooped, as if to re-tie his shoelace, Seamus raised his eyes to meet those of Amy Anderson, her pale skin flush with chill, her blond hair hanging loose in thin strands across her high forehead.

  �
��You’re early,” Seamus said, thinking back home Amy would be described as a cow.

  “Haven’t you heard? There’s been a murder,” Amy said, as if introducing an episode of City Confidential on A and E.

  “Oh, ay. Been at it since six, me ’self.”

  “And?”

  “An’ what, lass? First things first, isn’t it? I’m dyin’ for a cuppa’. Put the kettle on the hob, fix us a toddy and I’ll tell you, ‘An’ what.’”

  “Do they have any idea who killed her?”

  “Can’t say as they have, but I have a few ideas of my own, haven’t I?” he said, tapping a chubby finger to his freshly shaven skull. “Leave it to the Scottish meat pie to figure it out.”

  In one hand, Amy clutched a plastic sac containing lunch, together with a snack for midday. In the other was a paperback novel that, as was her custom, she would read while eating. As she moved, Amy’s hips heaved beneath her dark, stretch pants. Not for the first time in the years since she had been hired, Seamus thought nostalgically, be like fallin’ inta’ the Gran’ Canyon, that one. Amy moved close.