THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE Page 7

The police building was a two-level field stone structure located on the south side of the river. Constructed in eighteen sixty-two by Dutch immigrants to the region, it was jointly occupied by Dojcsak’s small force and a chapter of the town’s volunteer fire department.

  On the first level, the building contained two aging but adequately maintained pumper-trucks, equipped with the appropriate fire-fighting gear. Dojcsak’s office was located on the second level, together with a cubicle shared by Officers Sara Pridmore and Christopher Burke. A third office served as the local police detachment’s center of command.

  Dojcsak’s window overlooked the original Town Square, out over an expanse of yellow, still snow-flattened lawn and to the river beyond. The river was swollen now with runoff from the unusually harsh winter. Barely visible through still winter-naked trees was the recently developed town center, a triangle of new construction which included municipal offices, a community theater, and a commercial complex of over a dozen units housing shops, galleries, and a café serving espresso, latte, cappuccino, and various other exotic concoctions for which Dojcsak resented paying four dollars a cup. The local police detachment was scheduled to relocate to the new municipal facility by the end of the year, with Dojcsak’s current workplace converted to a museum.

  Initially, Dojcsak had complained to town council over the move, arguing that the cost and nuisance of the relocation was disproportionate to any possible benefit. Mayor Keith Chislett had explained to Dojcsak—as if speaking to a dull child—that as the village was expanding north, so must the hub of government activity. Dojcsak had complained of the price for take-out coffee and the cost of a restaurant meal on the north side of the bridge, to which His Worship the Mayor replied caustically, “If you’re arguing for a raise, Ed, take up a part-time job. The museum will be looking to hire wardens. With your experience, it should be no problem to qualify.” It was well known that Dojcsak and Chislett did not get along.

  In the office, the command center was presided over by Dorothy O’Rielly. Dorothy was a five-foot tall ball of tightly compressed energy, the human equivalent of Indian rubber. Possessed of the vigor of a hound, properly channeled, her intensity could be set to useful purpose. Misdirected, her zeal turned caustic, taking on a stridency that had the power to bruise. Though Dojcsak was grateful for the selflessness with which she contributed unasked to Luba’s convalescence, one evening a week and every second Sunday providing Rena respite from the unremitting burden of his youngest daughter’s care, toward him, she made no effort to conceal an observation that he was himself not up to the obligation.

  Dojcsak hauled his bulk the seventeen steps from first floor to second, along the narrow corridor to the makeshift dormitory where coffee, artificial whitener, paper filters, and the ten-cup coffee maker were kept. His stomach bubbled, cursing him for three cups at the crime scene, two cups at home and cautioning him against the dozen more to come. Dojcsak ignored the threat.

  Christopher Burke lay atop the sofa. Obviously, he had not returned home since parting with Dojcsak and Sara three hours earlier in the alley where the body had been discovered. The steady rise and fall of his broad chest and the shallow inhale and exhale of his breath indicated to Dojcsak his Deputy was still deep in sleep.

  Burke’s face was overcast, shadowed with beard, his dark hair pulled tight in curly knots around his square jaw and flat cheeks. If Dojcsak begrudged Burke anything, he sometimes begrudged him his good looks, jealous of the injustice that concentrates in some people all the best ones. Burke had the frigid appeal of a Greek God, Dojcsak thought, observing the younger man more closely. It was no wonder to the senior officer that women were attracted to him.

  As a young man girls hadn’t much liked Ed Dojcsak. In fairness, he supposed he hadn’t much liked them. As a child, Ed learned they could be cruel. Dojcsak’s height hadn’t caught up to his weight until he was in high school. Up to then, he’d paid a terrible price: humiliation bordering on despair. Afterward, it was a skin condition. By the time Ed Dojcsak could appreciate himself for the good-looking young man he was, it was too late for any chance at self-confidence or esteem, though at nineteen a new position with the police went a significant distance toward redressing the oversight.

  Dojcsak did not imagine Christopher Burke to have ever had the same problems.

  “Wake up, sunshine,” he said to Burke now, nudging the younger man. “Rise and shine.” He said it more urgently, fearing Burke might sleep the long day away. (And who could blame him, knowing as he probably did the hours before them held only grief, recrimination and despair?) Burke stirred. Dojcsak said, “You haven’t been home.”

  “And they say you’re no Colombo,” Burke said without malice, his bunched knuckles busily wiping the sleep from his eyes.

  “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. It’s morning. Duty calls. Shower and shave, I’ll make coffee. We have a long day ahead of us.”

  Burke stretched his long body, reached for his jacket and extracted a cigarette from a half empty pack. He ignited the tip with a disposable lighter and momentarily contemplated the flame.

  Inhaling deeply, he said, “Where’s Sara?”

  “Not here,” Dojcsak replied as if it should be obvious.

  “So, what’s the plan, my man?”

  Dojcsak shrugged. “We do our duty; we investigate the crime.” He spread coffee from a pre-measured packet to cover the filter he’d carefully placed in the basket of the coffee maker.

  “You’re not an experienced investigator, Ed; might be easier said than done.”

  Dismissing Burke’s skepticism, Dojcsak replied, “Our only responsibility is to the victim; to assemble facts and to determine motive, opportunity and means. That’s simple enough. How the State—or the good Lord for that matter—interpret and apply the evidence we collect is a matter for their conscience, not ours.”

  Unconvinced, Burke replied, “Haven’t got much to go on.”

  “It’s a small town, Christopher. How many child killers can there possibly be?”

  Burke agreed. Through a cloud of smoke he quoted Seamus Mcteer: “The possibilities are limited.”

  Coffee was ready. Dojcsak extracted two large mugs from an overhead cupboard, pouring for both Burke and himself. Burke ignited a second cigarette from the remains of the first.

  “You said last night you joined the police to be a policeman. Here’s your chance. Be a policeman. If you’re concerned with the larger issues, you should have studied law.”

  “It’s not the larger issues keeping me up at night, Ed, it’s my wife, and not in a way I appreciate. In another two months,” he lamented, “it will be the kid.”

  With an audible sigh, Dojcsak said, “I’m not an experienced investigator Christopher, but I do know that in a murder investigation the evidence that results in the apprehension and conviction of a suspect is usually gathered within the first twenty-four hours of the crime.”

  “CSI?” Burke asked.

  “Colombo,” Dojcsak said, eyeing a wall-mounted clock, “and in the case of Missy Bitson, we’ve squandered half our opportunity already.”

  Needing no further encouragement, Burke scrambled from the cot. Without thanking Dojcsak for coffee, he made for the bathroom to shower and to shave.

  …

  Dojcsak sat erect, back stiff in the functional but uncomfortable wood chair behind his desk, coffee mug in one large fist, telephone receiver in the other, cigarette burning from tobacco to ash in the ceramic ashtray by his elbow. The ashtray had been a gift from his daughter, Jenny, inscribed with her initials and the greeting, “Merry Christmas Daddy, 1990”, her fourth and perhaps—to the girl—final happy Christmas. Shortly thereafter, Luba had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, the parent’s reinforced devotion to the youngest child cheating the eldest of what consideration they had to spare.

  For Edward and Rena Dojcsak, Luba’s illness had devoured Jenny’s brilliance as a black hole might a star.

  Sunlight filtered like yellow ribbon through
the smudged glass panel of the six-pane window. Airborne particles of dust and debris wandered restlessly in and out of the shaft, invisible one moment; exposed like guilty schoolchildren the next. The sun glittered from the glazed surface of the colorful ashtray. Intended originally as a candy dish but Dojcsak partial to tobacco rather than to sweets, he ultimately utilized the memento as a receptacle to accommodate his most filthy habit. On her rare and infrequent visits to the station, Jenny said nothing to discourage her father’s ill-considered treatment of the keepsake, but her expression on seeing it for the first time being used this way suggested she thought it lamentable.

  The air was heavy in the small office, musty and close like the smell of old socks; too early in the season yet to open windows and to take advantage of the refreshing and premature spring breeze? With the boiler conspiring mysteriously with an imperfect thermostat to belch out great gusts of converted natural gas, the heat in the second story room was, for Dojcsak, intolerable. He drank water from a cooler, two glasses, hoping to slake his thirst.

  Three minutes after placing his first call of the morning, Dojcsak was connected to District Attorney Jimmy Cromwell, the man ultimately responsible for determining the disposition of the Missy Bitson investigation. He offered his condolences.

  “I know it’s a small town, Ed. You have my sympathies.” Dojcsak thanked him. “You also have my support. There’s no reason for me to believe you won’t do a thorough job or to call in the BCI,” he said, officially handing off the case to Dojcsak rather than the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

  Cromwell did offer the services of the State Police to assist in questioning and the Forensics Unit to assess physical evidence; Dojcsak accepted. He asked that Cromwell initiate inquiries into transients, rapists and pedophiles (or otherwise disreputable individuals) recently paroled or released from nearby correctional institutes and assigned to halfway homes and possibly at large or newly arrived to the area.

  “Do you suspect an outsider?” Cromwell asked. Dojcsak did not. “Then don’t waste your time, Ed. Look closer to home.”

  Dojcsak assured Cromwell that he would—without exception—pursue all possibilities.

  The post mortem was scheduled for ten that morning. The District Attorney would have his own people attend, as protocol required someone should.

  “Keep me in the loop, Ed,” he said. It was less a request than a demand. “No surprises.” Dojcsak promised to stay in touch and ten minutes later, he replaced the receiver.

  After speaking with Cromwell, Dojcsak removed an 8 ½ by 11-inch sheet of lined paper from a desk drawer and retrieved a ballpoint pen. In the top margin, from left to right horizontally across the page, he wrote in capital letters:

  MOTIVE/MEANS/OPPORTUNITY

  The argument could be made that anyone might have reason to kill Missy Bitson or, more significantly, have no reason at all. In Dojcsak’s mind it amounted to the same thing. The general lament, Who could do such a thing? works in reverse when applied to the murder of a child. After all, children are natural born victims aren’t they, always at the bottom of the proverbial shit rolls down hill, hill? Kids are the canvass on which big people are capable and often times only too willing to project their anger, frustration, humiliation, impotence, and fear; past and present, perceived and real.

  Ed Dojcsak instinctively understood that anyone and everyone could do such a thing.

  In truth, kids today—girls especially, and especially teenage girls—did little to mitigate the possibility of being victimized, dressing provocatively as they did in tight halters and low-slung jeans, leaving little to the imagination, conveying a message of willingness and availability if not in character, in appearance, sharing much too much of their thoughts and their bodies on social media.

  Dojcsak didn’t advocate the imposition of Burkha-style headwear or gowns, but did lament this creeping abandonment of propriety and shame. What use was saying, No with your words when the rest of you cried out, Yes? (Privately, Dojcsak thanked his good fortune. With his own daughters, at least, he did not have this concern.)

  As to means, the crime scene investigation uncovered no evidence of a weapon; no entry wound from either gunshot or blade: Missy had been manually dispatched. She was a slightly built girl; it followed that even a slightly built person might have committed the crime, female or male.

  Opportunity? Simple. Physics 101: acknowledge the impossibility of a body being in two places at one time and eliminate who it can be from whom it cannot. Dojcsak didn’t feel an obligation to produce an eyewitness, only a reasonable suspect lacking the benefit of an irrefutable alibi and against whom the circumstantial evidence was compelling.

  To Ed Dojcsak, the murder of Missy Bitson appeared to have the elements of an open and shut case.

  “Morning, Ed.” Sara Pridmore arrived unnoticed. Dojcsak neatly folded the paper on which he had been writing, placing it in his shirt pocket. “Grocery list?” Sara asked.

  “Of sorts,” Dojcsak said, lifting his shaggy brows.

  Sara contemplated him from the doorway, coffee mug in one hand, the other resting casually on the butt of her holstered nine-millimeter standard issue automatic. As always, when on duty, Sara dressed in a uniform of standard issue dark blue trousers, white jersey (with an even number of ten brass buttons, Dojcsak noted, six vertically aligned through the center of her torso, two on pockets over each breast, and two more used to fasten the epaulets on Sara’s shoulders), thick-soled, spit-polished black walking shoes and a peaked baseball style cap with the insignia of the Warren County Sheriff’s department sewn over the bill. Her blond hair trailed through an opening at the back of her cap, like a horse’s tail.

  Pridmore jogged daily and exercised religiously. By consuming a diet limited to fruit, vegetables, and protein, (grudgingly relenting to a craving for carbohydrates only one week of each month) she maintained a child-like physique. Less than two years out of NYSU and less than one on the job, Dojcsak also understood, even if Sara hadn’t said, that Church Falls was not her first choice for a career in law enforcement and would not likely remain her final destination. Having been rejected for lack of openings by the State Police, he knew her to be on a short-list there, with an application also pending at the FBI.

  “Coffee’s great.” Sara raised her mug in a mock toast. “Not too strong, not too weak. How are you doing, Ed? Have you slept? Have you had breakfast, or is that it?” She indicated the cigarette smoldering in the ashtray by his side, removing her cap and fastening it through a utility loop in her trousers. Dojcsak braced himself. “You look like shit, Ed, like ca-ca,” Sara said, not entirely without compassion or justification.

  The white of Dojcsak’s eyes ran red with fatigue, as if he wasn’t sleeping or was sleeping too much, his cheeks stained purple-pink with the evidence of excessive drink. In the year since Sara’s arrival, his belly and upper abdomen had thickened noticeably and he was smoking more heavily. She approached the desk, snatched Dojcsak’s cigarette and crushed it in the dish. She paused to sip coffee while a defiant Dojcsak ignited another.

  “What are you doing to yourself?” she asked rhetorically, sounding too much to Dojcsak like Doctor Henry Bauer. “I’ve watched you carry on this way for a year. Are you going to stop, or will you follow Luba into an early grave?”

  Sara regretted the comment immediately upon making it but the truth of her words prevented a credible retraction.

  Dojcsak said, “You sound like my doctor; or my wife.” (In fact, Rena had stopped asking or caring about his condition. Dojcsak had overheard the conversation the previous day between Rena and Kate.)

  Since joining the police, Sara Pridmore had insinuated herself subtly and uninvited into the private affairs of her superior officer, dropping by to visit unannounced and unasked to inquire on the progress of his youngest child. She had also adopted a protective attitude toward Dojcsak’s eldest, the responsibility that in their preoccupation with the health of Luba, her parent
s had forsaken.

  Sara first met Jennifer Dojcsak in a back alley, at two in the morning, face buried between the thighs of the black, pierced, and tattooed Jordy Bitson, incoherent with alcohol or worse, possessing no identification and refusing or unable to give her name. It was not until Dojcsak arrived to retrieve his daughter later that evening that Pridmore became aware of the connection.

  Dojcsak imagined Sara wanted to save the world. He appreciated her enthusiasm but wished she’d get on with it and leave him and his family to themselves.

  “Seriously, Ed, you look like shit.”

  “We all have our crosses to bear, Sara.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “Not yet,” he said, “I’ll let you know.” Then, “Are you finished?”

  “For today. Have you spoken with the victim’s mother?”

  “Only with Eugene.”

  Though Eugene had appeared overwhelmed by the death of his child, suspicion from the community would fall immediately upon him. This is to be expected, Dojcsak explained to Sara. Rather than defend against it, they should move quickly either to prove or to disprove his guilt.