THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE Page 13

  The sky was now blue, without trace of last evening’s rain, the day clear with only a hint of malingering fog. It remained like fluffy pillows in the isolated dips and low-lying areas where the sun’s warmth had yet to penetrate. Glittering crystals of morning dew shivered like tear drops on the ground, clustering in shallow puddles on the Bitson walkway and front steps.

  Dojcsak was careful to avoid the damp and to keep his shoes dry. His feet were sore from the already long day, custom fit orthopedic footwear being a small comfort to his collapsed arches. At one hundred fifty dollars a pair, he begrudged the expense, relenting to try them under pressure from his wife and the podiatrist highly recommended by his next door neighbor and Rena’s closest friend, Kate, a registered nurse. It wouldn’t do to get the shoes wet. Or his feet, he thought absently.

  At Mrs. Bitson’s reluctant insistence, Dojcsak and Pridmore crossed the threshold from outside the home to in, leaving the damp of an early April morning on the front porch.

  Maggie had a flat face—like a pan Dojcsak noted—devoid of makeup and much too round. She had been pretty once, but there remained nothing of the girl in her. Prematurely gray, her hair was pulled back in a careless knot, exposing clearly the consequences of a perpetual frown: three deep creases traveling horizontally across her broad forehead from left temple to right. Her eyes were dull, unexpressive ovals straddling a nose that appeared like a careless afterthought between her cheeks. Maggie gave the impression of looking on life without really seeing it and while given the circumstances understandable, Dojcsak knew the spirit had abandoned her long ago, certainly before its time.

  From the foyer, Maggie ushered them through a narrow corridor, a cluttered artery joining front of the house to back. From above the doorway, a plaster crucifix stared down on them, sorrowful eyes challenging Dojcsak’s own. Though appearing ambivalent, Dojcsak suspected Jesus to be resentful of this fate, made to hang publicly from the cross like a side of beef. If the Bible is to be believed, Jesus was a man, and what man—Son of God or not—wouldn’t be?

  As they walked, Maggie struggled to make conversation, idle chatter about the brutal winter just passed and the oddity of a premature spring. But she was either inept at small talk or too traumatized by the magnitude of her loss to make polite if meaningless, conversation. She soon fell silent.

  Dojcsak was careful not to scuff the linoleum with the rubber heels of his heavy black shoes, unwilling to give the grieving mother further cause to resent his presence here. They moved beyond the formal living room, to the rear of the home and a sunroom overlooking a patch of untended lawn. The small yard was a tangled overgrowth of reckless weeds, owing as much to the unseasonably warm temperature, Dojcsak conceded, as to indifference.

  Maggie instructed Dojcsak and Pridmore to sit, he on a well-serviced but surprisingly comfortable sofa, she on a less accommodating straight back chair. “I’ll pour coffee. And I’ll fetch Eugene.” She said it like a question but left the room before either Pridmore or Dojcsak could respond.

  He watched as she shuffled to the kitchen, using her absence to organize his thoughts, to collect his impressions and to absorb a sense of the Bitsons through their domestic surroundings. Dojcsak believed much could be learned about a family from the way in which they converted a house into a home. Here, in this room, the atmosphere was decidedly family. It might have been a den, if Eugene Bitson required, or a sewing room, if Maggie were so inclined, but it was neither.

  The room was comfortably cramped, neat and clean if worn with over-use. A La-Z-Boy recliner sat in one corner, like an aging dowager, flanked by a reading lamp topped with an incongruously colored mauve shade. The gaudy lamp covering clashed with the tartan upholstery of the sofa onto which Dojcsak had settled his considerable bulk. Scattered over the hardwood flooring was a mud brown carpet. Observing the eclectic mix, Dojcsak wondered if the entire family might not be colorblind.

  In an opposite corner, a veneer wall unit supported a portable color television set and the obligatory—at least in homes containing children—DVR. The television set was on, tuned to an early morning talk show program. Dr. Phil, Dojcsak noted, speaking to the issue of fathers who sleep with their son’s wives. Was it incest? Ethically perhaps, but physiologically no, Dr. Phil argued. The studio audience agreed wholeheartedly.

  In the basement, the furnace rumbled, compensating for the previous evening’s sub-zero temperature by overheating the small room. In a vain attempt to relieve his discomfort, Dojcsak inserted a thick fore finger between shirt collar and skin. He wished he had water and regretted not having asked.

  The Bitson family’s collective memories were displayed here in this room, framed and in print; mother, father and daughters along with a medley, presumably, of assorted relatives and friends. Photographs filled the small room; on the wall unit; on the side-table; and on the walls. (Dojcsak’s own home contained only a handful of formal photographs with Rena, the children and himself, obtained in packages or on sale years ago from the local Sears. Early Polaroids of Jenny when she was young and Luba during the brief time she was healthy had been hidden away, as if for Rena and Ed Dojcsak, forgetting the good times made the bad more bearable.) Dojcsak counted twenty-two photos in all, arranged randomly, though if he were inclined Dojcsak was convinced he could map out a discernible, non-linear pattern.

  When it arrived, the coffee was steaming. As if they were guests, Maggie served cream and sugar on the side in separate, etched silver containers. Dojcsak accepted his coffee black, though with three heaping spoons of white sugar. Maggie offered sweets, an assortment of homemade biscuits. Having missed breakfast earlier, Dojcsak was inclined to indulge. He chose one, what he imagined to be a vanilla cream chocolate glazed éclair, then another, and another after that. Pridmore declined, eying Dojcsak reproachfully. She moved from her chair, inspecting the collection of family photographs.

  Maggie said, “Eugene will be along shortly, he’s cleaning himself up.” She sat herself at the opposite end of the sofa from Dojcsak. She regarded Pridmore warily as Sara freely handled the framed images, ignoring some, dwelling on others, at times smiling privately. After she’d settled herself, Maggie said, “It’s been a while, Ed.”

  “It has; too long. I’m sorry for the circumstances,” he conceded.

  “You wouldn’t be here otherwise.” Maggie shifted her weight, as if unable to keep still. “You look well,” she lied.

  “I feel well,” Dojcsak replied, indulging in his own small fantasy. “How are your mother and dad?”

  “Mom isn’t well; confined to a wheelchair now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Maggie shrugged, as if it was inevitable.

  “My father? He’ll outlive us all.” (Said it as if it were a regret.)

  “He’s expanding the shopping mall,” Dojcsak said, referring to the new construction presently under way at the Cloverdale Indoor Mall. “Adding new stores.”

  “Six, including a GAP,” Maggie said solemnly. “Missy was looking forward to it.”

  Dojcsak said, “It will need a traffic light. The intersection is deadly. Just last week we had a half dozen minor collisions,” he elaborated, as if it were his most pressing concern. He looked to Sara for confirmation.

  “How are Rena and the children?” Maggie asked.

  “Fine. Luba is holding her own, though we know she won’t improve.”

  “Is it easier, Ed, knowing in advance?”

  Understanding perfectly, Dojcsak replied, “No, not easier, I don’t think, just different. It allows you to amortize your grief.” He considered this, and added, “Like an ache, rather than a sharp pain. In a way, I suppose that makes it easier.”

  Maggie nodded her head in understanding. “I don’t suppose you’re ever fully prepared. I mean, however it happens, losing a child is not something you expect, is it? Not something you plan for.” Maggie looked from Dojcsak to Sara then back, as if challenging them to disagree. “They break your heart don’t t
hey, Ed? Children? You have them, you raise them, and then they break your heart.”

  Dojcsak concurred, thinking of Luba and Jen. “If there is anything we can do for the family, please say.”

  “Missy is dead; not much you can do now, is there.”

  It was a statement, simply made: not an accusation, yet Dojcsak was stung.

  “We’ll need to ask you some questions, Mrs. Bitson.” This came from Sara, still standing. “They may seem insensitive, even intrusive, but please understand that they are necessary. I can’t say that it will be either painless or quick. In fact, for you and your family, I doubt it will be either. We’re sorry for that.”

  Maggie observed Sara, her eyes seeming to take a moment to focus. “Can it be any more insensitive or intrusive than it already is?”

  Dojcsak asked, “Was Missy seeing anyone, Maggie? We know she left her cousin at three, but wasn’t expected home until five. It leaves two hours unaccounted for during which she must have had other plans.”

  Maggie shrugged, raising her coffee cup to her lips. Her fingernails were ragged, as if she had been gnawing at them with her teeth. Her hand trembled as she returned the cup to its saucer. She told them Missy was sociable, involved in school, extracurricular activities, and with the Church. The Bitsons are Episcopalian. The Church permits the ordination of women. As if they might not understand, Maggie explained. “They allow female Priests.”

  Cassie, Maggie’s sister, presided over the local parish and Missy thought she might like that, to follow in her aunt’s footsteps. They were similar, the two, in spirit and beauty. “But then, you know that.” Maggie shifted her gaze between Dojcsak and Sara.

  Pridmore flushed, conscious of the warmth rising from the obscurity of her shirt collar, to her forehead and to her cheeks. She searched Maggie’s face for implied meaning or guile. Finding none, she simply nodded. Recalling the victim’s bare midriff, sculpted breasts and pierced naval, Dojcsak felt conspicuous now for having noticed.

  “Mandy is cute,” Maggie admitted of her elder daughter. “Though if she’s not careful, she’ll take after me.” She opened her arms as if holding herself up to display.

  “Any interests outside of church or the school?” asked Sara, attempting to regain control of the interrogation.

  “She danced,” said Maggie.

  “In a group?”

  “Ballet and modern jazz. Missy was built for it,” Maggie added, referring, Sara imagined, to the victim’s lean and willowy frame.

  “Was she taking classes?”

  “From Marie Radigan, at her studio. Each Monday morning they were excused from regular gym, the girls who Marie thought had potential. She was getting them ready for the stage, she said, for tryouts with the theater. They use local girls you know, for small parts mostly, but sometimes for bigger roles. This summer Missy is—was—going to play The Debutante in ‘Lady Be Good’. She’d been rehearsing since before Christmas, perfecting her routines.”

  “You say Missy was sociable, Mrs. Bitson. How?” As Maggie talked, Sara scribbled her replies in a notebook.

  “She had friends.”

  “Boys?” Dojcsak asked.

  “Of course, boys. She was an attractive girl.” Maggie gazed at Dojcsak as if it were an accusation.

  “Boys, plural,” Dojcsak stated. (Did Sara sense a degree of vindication in his tone?)

  The furrows in Maggie’s brow deepened as if they had been freshly ploughed. She pondered his implication, deep-set oval eyes inscrutable, analyzing Dojcsak for an underlying suggestion of impropriety or innuendo. To himself, Dojcsak thought: The apple never falls far.

  “She wasn’t a nun.”

  “Was she in the habit of bringing the boys home, Mrs. Bitson, to the house? To meet your husband or you?” Sara said, tempted to ask Maggie if her daughter was a virgin. She refrained, knowing it would reinforce Dojcsak’s already low opinion of the girl.

  Maggie answered noncommittally. “No.”

  “Never?”

  “Never.”

  Dojcsak said, “Did she talk about who she might be seeing? Mention any names?”

  “No.”

  With less patience, he said, “She left your niece to meet someone, Maggie. She lied to you. This much we know. Isn’t it possible she was meeting a boy?”

  “Anything is possible, Ed.”

  “It would be helpful to know who. It would help to account for her time after leaving her cousin’s home. If nothing else, it could help to fix a more exact time of her”—he was going to say death; instead he said—“disappearance.”

  “I know of no one special,” Maggie said. “I don’t,” she reiterated, as if she herself was unconvinced.

  “Was Missy having trouble at school? With other girls?” Sara asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “She wasn’t being bullied, was she?”

  Maggie said, “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, Mrs. Bitson, it’s not. In fact, it’s entirely plausible. It might have occurred online. Did she have a Facebook page that you know of?”

  Maggie stared, nonplussed. “What’s Facebook?”

  Eugene Bitson entered the room just then. If he had been able to take even temporary refuge overnight from the horrific image of his dead daughter, it was not apparent from the deep, dark pools into which his eyes had receded, or in his expression and the lines that appeared like cracked asphalt across the surface of his skin. He appeared to be retreating within himself, turning his body inside out like a reversible skin. Dojcsak shuddered. He moved aside as Eugene turned to the sofa and dropped like a lump in the vacant space beside his wife. He settled a whiskered chin in the palm of a large, calloused hand and sat silent, like a casual observer waiting for someone else to begin.

  Dojcsak recalled Bitson as a bright and athletic eighteen-year-old, destined for college, a higher education and perhaps—like his elder brother, Drew—a career in professional basketball, his chosen sport. He’d married the former Maggie McMaster in a civil ceremony, two months later dropping out of the local high school, scuttling any chance he might have had for a post secondary degree. Six months later, Maggie gave birth to a child, the first of three, a daughter and the victim’s eldest sister now estranged and living in New York.

  From that time on, Eugene held a series of manual and factory labor jobs, never regaining an opportunity to realize his full potential. He opened the Exxxotica three years earlier in response, he once claimed almost grudgingly to Dojcsak, to forced unemployment. He was a responsible, if not entirely respectable, corporate citizen and Dojcsak made it part of his regular routine to monitor, though not to harass, the Exxxotica and its motley trade, ensuring they were of legal age, if not mental capacity, to partake in the assorted novelties on offer and that the hours of operation for the store were strictly observed.

  Dojcsak watched Eugene now, deciding there no longer remained a boy within the man he had grown to become. In that, Dojcsak decided, Eugene and Maggie made a perfect pair.

  Eugene extracted a cigarette from a package concealed in a breast pocket of his tattered house robe. Despite a disapproving glance from his wife, he ignited, inhaled and offered the package to Dojcsak. Instinctively, Dojcsak accepted, dragging a finger across his cheek, inspecting the stubble that had sprouted from his chin since he had last shaved. He was aware of needing a toothbrush and needing water. Dojcsak’s tongue was thick, his throat dry like dust.

  “Missy had a birthday coming up, was going to be fourteen.” Eugene startled everyone with the sound of his own voice, though none more than himself. “Now she won’t.” He said it as if realizing it for the first time.

  Watching him smoke, Sara thought: his hands are like the roots of a small tree; large and dark, the knuckles gnarled and the nails thick and uneven like bark. They were ugly hands, she decided, but were they responsible for the death of his daughter? Other than the fact he was her father, Pridmore saw nothing yet to recommend him.

  “Where were you y
esterday, Eugene?” asked Dojcsak. “From the time Missy went missing to the time she was found? Have to ask, you’re the girl’s father.”

  “So that’s it? I’m her father, I’m a suspect?”

  “For now, at the top of our list. To avoid speculation, it’s best we clear you first.”

  Eugene said, “Alright, Ed. If that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  “Way it has to be, Eugene. Talk to me before this gets into the hands of the State Police.”

  “Alright, alright. I was here, home, with Maggie, watching the TV.” He turned to his wife. A film of sweat appeared across his brow. Dojcsak himself was feeling clammy, so he did not regard this with suspicion.

  “He was, Ed. Watching the basketball while I did the wash. I was in and out, but he never left the TV.” She thought for a moment and as if it were important, added, “Only to fetch a beer.”