THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE Read online

  To Sara, Dojcsak said, “Can I give you a lift home?”

  “It’s a short walk, Ed. I’ll hoof it.”

  “As you wish.”

  Leaving Sara with Burke, Dojcsak returned to his vehicle, thinking in twenty minutes he could be home, assemble a small overnight bag and, if he shaved and showered quickly, be back to the office before seven.

  CHURCH FALLS, SOMETIME IN THE SEVENTIES

  SIDNEY WOMACK CLOSED the file, opened it and closed it again, as if by doing so he might alter its contents. More than two weeks since the discovery of Shelly Hayden’s naked body in the swirling rapids below the Church Falls dam and Sidney was not even close to reaching his own conclusion in the child’s death. That day, the coroner’s inquest had released its own official verdict: death by misadventure. Womack was skeptical.

  Unable to determine a precise cause for either how the child found her way into the river or how she died, the coroner’s report suggested Shelly had plunged accidentally from the full seventy-five foot height of the Church Falls Bluff. She had taken the brunt of her impact with the water on the upper abdomen and chest, the force stopping her heart and causing her death. Her fully clothed body, the coroner postulated, remained swirling in the whirlpool at the base of the falls, possibly for days, before finally dislodging and becoming wedged in the rocks below the dam. During the time she was in the water, her lightweight summer clothing had been stripped from her body. There was no evidence to suggest either physical or sexual assault, or foul play. The injuries to the body were consistent with postmortem trauma, stated Graham Chislett.

  At the inquest, Womack had not been given an opportunity to rebut. Had he been, Sidney would have stated his own suspicion that Shelly was both naked and dead before entering the river. Sidney believed she was murdered on shore—by person or persons unknown—her body tossed into the Hudson to make it appear as if she’d drowned accidentally.

  Womack had no evidence to substantiate his charge, however in two years as County Sheriff he’d never seen the battered body of a drowning victim so completely stripped bare. He believed that Shelly was naked before entering the water and that she had, on that day, not been alone. When questioned, Chislett suggested that the victim’s clothing had cleared the whirlpool and the dam, making its way with the current through town and along the Hudson, down river.

  “All the way to Manhattan?” Womack remarked, derisively.

  “For all I know, all the way to the Jersey Shore,” Chislett had replied.

  “We would have found something, Graham, if not along the shoreline, something caught up in the rocks at the base of the dam.”

  “And if she were naked when she went into the river, Sidney? Where are her belongings? Explain me that. Did you conduct a thorough search of the surrounding woods?”

  Dissatisfied and feeling inadequate, Womack pressed. “What about asphyxiation, strangulation? We know she didn’t drown.”

  “You didn’t see the condition of the corpse, Sidney. It was disgusting. The girl resembled a fish too long out of the water: dead and peeling. Even if she had been strangled, or suffocated, there was no way for the Medical Examiner to prove that conclusion. He told me her flesh was like jam.” Chislett shivered involuntarily. In a huff, he turned his back on Sidney. “I’d like you to leave my home now, Sheriff. I have no more to say.” (Contrary to the braggadocio of his son, Graham did not tell Sidney to “Fuck-off”.)

  Despite questioning Shelly’s friends, Womack had been unable to determine her exact whereabouts on the day she disappeared. According to the girls, Shelly was to have been meeting with her mother later that afternoon, to drive to Albany for dinner with her father.

  She had last been seen in the company of a group of teenagers at the Big Top Diner—girls and boys. They had left together at three. The waitress recalled, because they’d had trouble settling their bill. Only three dollars seventy-five cents between them, she said, but one of the boys—who? she could not recall—had to rely on the dead girl to contribute his share. They were good kids really the waitress said, though she seemed to reconsider when recalling they had left her only a two-penny tip. They arrived as a group, they left as a group, the girls parting company from the boys on the sidewalk outside the diner, so far as she could recall.

  Womack rotated his chair ninety-degrees so that he faced outside. Restless, he stood and moved to the window. From his office he had a clear view across the Town Square, north over the river to the fields and the Adirondacks beyond. To his right, the Tongue Mountain Range was just visible, a splash of watercolor brushed with an errant stroke across the horizon. In autumn, the trees would erupt in a brief cacophony of color, an intermittent outburst in their transition from green to dead-brown.

  Womack propped open his office window with a hardcover copy of “The Catcher In The Rye” in the vain hope of catching a breeze that wasn’t there. The day was still and warm, with the cicadas buzzing like power saws in the trees by his window. Muted tones of random conversation floated from the Town Square below, the words indistinguishable but to his practiced ear the meaning transparent. Interesting, he mused, what could be gleaned from a tone of voice: hope, exasperation, happiness, and despair, proving conclusively that it isn’t what you say, but how you say it.

  Womack reached into the top left drawer of his desk, extracting a “Baby Ruth”. He removed the wrapper and observed his midriff, the bulge that during the past month had grown from a gentle swell. In two bites, he devoured the bar.

  On the thirtieth of June, he had smoked what he promised to his wife would be his final cigarette, the day before Shelly Hayden disappeared and four days before her body was found. Womack bemoaned the weight gain and his poor timing but a promise was a promise. “More of you to love,” his wife reassured him. “Like making love to two men,” he’d said in return. “Or to someone else,” she teased.

  He sat. Returning his attention to the file, Womack reviewed his notes.

  During the evening of Shelly Hayden’s disappearance, he’d taken the time to question the teens with whom she had been seen earlier that day. The morning following the disappearance, State Troopers had assisted him in rousting a rag-tag group of transients who had established a makeshift community up river from town; a small collection of dilapidated house trailers and tents. Though they were dirty and Womack suspected they were using drugs, there was no evidence to suggest they were involved with the disappearance of the girl. To Womack, they seemed harmless, though worthy of oversight.

  Shelly’s mother had reported her missing the previous evening, at eight. At first, Womack had not been convinced, suspecting the woman of hysteria. After all, it’s a small town and not much happens in a small town. Despite assurances from the Sheriff that her daughter would surface (Womack unable to know at the time how prophetic would be his words) Shelly’s mother was not satisfied. Pressed, Womack had little choice but to follow up and initiate inquiries.

  By nine-thirty that evening he’d confirmed that Shelly had parted company with the girls on the sidewalk fronting the Big Top Diner, about the time they had separated from the boys. Shelly had claimed as her reason a previously scheduled engagement to drive to Albany with her mother, to meet for dinner with her dad, a claim disputed, subsequently, by Mrs. Hayden. By midnight, the child had neither reappeared nor telephoned home. Womack was compelled to notify the State Police.

  Three days after Shelly disappeared and the day after her body was discovered wedged among the rocks at the base of the Church Falls dam, Womack made a follow-up visit to the home of Leland and Neal McMaster.

  Earlier that same evening he had questioned Keith Chislett, Andy Pardoe, Seamus Mcteer, and Ed Dojcsak. Dojcsak was a distant cousin to Womack, twice removed and whose antecedents—Womack imagined—had immigrated to America from Czechoslovakia on the same boat as his own ancestors. Aside from a passing physical resemblance between the two, the blood bond was tenuous. Of the four boys, only Dojcsak had been willing to speak. Thoug
h he had not incriminated Leland McMaster, he said enough in an effort to protect him that Sidney became curious, if not yet suspicious.

  Sitting across from Leland, he asked, “You say you were with them, but not really.”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy replied. “I was just hanging out, you know, not sitting with anybody in particular. The others were sitting at a table, drinking Cokes and eating fries.”

  “Why didn’t you join them?” Womack asked.

  “I don’t know them all that well.”

  “You don’t know them all that well?”

  It may have been his tone, or perhaps his demeanor, but Leland recognized something in Womack that caused him to add, “Well, I do. Just some of them not all that well.”

  Womack asked, “Who do you know, who don’t you know, son?”

  Leland was tempted to reply: You’re not my fucking father. Instead, he pushed a hand through his long blonde hair as if it might help him to recall, and said, “Dojcsak, Chislett, Mcteer and Pardoe. The girls? None of them all that well.”

  “ Shelly Hayden?” Womack asked.

  “No, sir, not her. Only to see on the street, you know.”

  “They’re your friends; why didn’t you join them?” Womack repeated the question, patient.

  Leland McMaster bowed his head. From beneath a strand of blonde hair, he looked to his father. Leland McMaster Sr. had been present during the interview. He had asked neither if he could stay, nor if he should leave.

  “Well, you see, sir,” he said to Womack, hesitant, “I smoke. They didn’t want me smoking at the table.”

  “Hardly a crime, Sidney,” Leland Sr. said, speaking for the first time in defense of his son, puffing on his own filtered cigarette. “Boys smoke.”

  “And you?” Womack said, turning his attention to the younger brother. “Were you at the table with Shelly, or do you smoke too?”

  “Me?” said Neal, startled, as if he were surprised to be asked the question. “Smoke?”

  “Did you sit at a table with Shelly Hayden?” Womack repeated.

  “Me?” Neal said again. “Yeah, I guess so. I guess I did, sure.”

  Womack studied the boys. Leland shared his father’s height and good looks. At seventeen, his shoulders had yet to fill out, though his bone structure indicated he would inherit the Senior McMaster’s physique. He was articulate, well mannered, excelled both academically and at sport and was what most in this small town referred to as an altogether “fine young man”. By contrast, Neal suffered from poor grades and refused to be involved in the extracurricular activities that might help to redefine his reputation as an outcast. His stubby arms and legs were visibly too short for his torso, his dark hair trimmed in a bowl shape around his skull. Neal resembled a Neanderthal, an illustration from a poster on a science room wall; Cro-Magnon mans’ inevitable evolution to modern, with Neal McMaster constituting a living, missing link.

  “You didn’t sit together,” Womack said now, “but you left together, at three.”

  “That’s right,” said Leland. “I left with Dojcsak—Ed. He’s always good for a few smokes and I’d run out.” Leland then added, “You won’t tell his parents will you?” as if that were the most egregious of their possible transgressions. “We walked down by the band shell, looking to help. It’s usually good for a couple bucks, but the workers had left early for the day.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone while you were there?”

  “People sure, but no one we knew.”

  “Strangers?”

  “Not exactly strangers, just no one we knew.”

  “Not the girl?” Womack asked.

  “No, sir, not the girl,” Leland said. “Though I hear she was popular.”

  “Oh? Popular how?” asked Sidney.

  “I shouldn’t say, sir, speak ill of the dead and all that.” It was a remark unbecoming of a seventeen going on eighteen-year-old. A clumsy effort by Leland, Sidney thought at the time, to disparage the victim.

  “You can’t hurt her now, Leland,” Womack said, “She’s already dead. It’s not my job to protect her reputation.”

  Satisfied, Leland continued. “It’s only what people say, what I hear, not what I know first hand. Apparently, the chick was no angel.”

  “No angel? What exactly does that mean, Leland? ‘No angel’.”

  “Don’t be dense, Sid,” answered the boy’s father. “It means she put out. It means you should look to her reputation, not to the boys.”

  Womack was forced, grudgingly, to agree. It reinforced the image of Shelly Hayden emerging in the whispers and asides now circulating among her neighbors and friends, to which Sidney—regretfully—was himself, not immune. So what if Leland Junior lied about how well he knew the girl? Given her reputation and now her death, it appeared as if half the male, teenage population in town might be compelled to lie about how well they were acquainted with Shelly Hayden. Womack uttered a silent curse, and asked, “You came straight home?”

  “Uh-huh, yes, sir,” Leland said. “Straight home.”

  “And you were home by when?”

  “By seven. Ed and I came back along the river. I stopped in town to grab a Pepsi before walking home, alone. That was at six. I got home maybe half an hour later—it takes that long to walk here from town—and made myself a sandwich. I hadn’t eaten at the restaurant. Sandwich spoiled my dinner.” He smiled. “Ask, Ed, he’ll tell you.”

  “Tell him about the boy,” Leland Senior said. His emphasis caused Womack to shudder reflexively and stiffen in anticipation.

  “The boy?” Womack asked Leland Junior.

  “C’mon, Dad. It’s not important, is it?”

  “Tell him,” said the father. “Let the man decide for himself. He’s the professional.” Professional uttered more in contradiction than affirmation.

  “What boy?” Womack wanted to know.

  “Drew Bitson,” Leland Junior replied.

  “What about him?” Womack said.

  “It’s not my nature to cause trouble, sir.”

  “Tell me about the boy, Leland,” Womack said, skeptical of the young man’s claim. To him, Leland McMaster Junior was trouble.

  ”Well, it’s just that he was there, too. You know, kind of hanging around. I’m not sure the girls were okay with that, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t; tell me. Why shouldn’t the girls be okay with it, Leland? Was Drew pestering them?”

  “Well, I wasn’t sitting at the table you know, as I said, but I could sense they were uncomfortable. He was smiling, you know, kind of goofy-like, as if something was funny. They weren’t.”

  Despite possessing what his wife described as the patience of wet paint waiting to dry, Womack snapped, “Don’t be cryptic; who wasn’t what, Leland?”

  “Smiling,” the boy said. “The girls weren’t smiling.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Before he could explain, the boy’s father crossed the floor to his son, placed a protective hand to Leland’s shoulder and said, “The boy is colored, Sidney, the girl is white. According to Lee, he was making off-color jokes. (Did Sidney detect a smirk, a faint twist of the lip suggesting McMaster was pleased at his turn of words?) The conclusion is as obvious as that. I’m sure Jimmy Cromwell would agree, if you were to ask,” McMaster said, invoking the name of the County Prosecutor.

  Womack could think of nothing more to say. Less than one hour after arriving, he was gone, the uneasy bubble in his stomach heating to a boil.

  On the evening of the disappearance, before they had a body, he had spoken with the boys individually, in their own homes. They each had given a similar account of the afternoon and their subsequent whereabouts after parting company with the girls at the diner. The story was simple, short on detail and indistinct, as he’d expect from a group of carefree teenagers on summer vacation, careless about the time and what they did with it. They’d left the Big Top Diner together, they’d left in pairs; they arrived home by six, or maybe it w
as closer to seven; Dojcsak left with Leland, Chislett left with Pardoe; Dojcsak paid, Leland was broke; Mcteer left on his own, or he left with the girls. Or perhaps it was the other way round?

  Call me if you think of anything else, Womack said that first night, doubtful the boys would. With the discovery of the corpse, however, an odd thing occurred. On his second visit, the accounts seemed to crystallize, become embellished with a richness of detail and exactitude lacking three days before, as if the boys had been seeking deliberately to account for their time, whereabouts, and activity. Under pressure from Sidney, Ed Dojcsak had confessed, “Lee may have known her. We all did, kind of. But he didn’t hurt her.”