THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE Read online

  Burke had finished cleaning himself and joined Sara, sitting opposite Dojcsak. He sat with long legs outstretched, heavy soled “biker” boots laced on his feet, and arms folded across his broad chest, confident in and seemingly content with his casual appearance.

  He observed Pridmore, the fine blonde hair pulled back severely into a tail behind her head, the blue eyes arched over by a fluff of barely visible brows and the small but full mouth. Her commitment to full dress blues did little to enhance a figure that, while slight, Burke knew to be well toned. Many times he’d watched her jog along the river, powerful legs churning like pistons, clad only in short, tight, tights and leaving little to the imagination of a partner who’d already crafted in his mind a well defined image of how she might appear naked.

  Within weeks of her arrival, Burke had made an early advance. She’d cut him off with an abrupt, “You’re not my type, Chris.” He had replied, “Not now maybe, but eventually.” She said, “Not now, not ever,” leaving Burke to wonder over what type of man possibly could be, given that he thought he was all to any woman a man should be.

  Dorothy O’Rielly arrived precisely at eight, disengaged the call forward option on the telephone line and without being prompted began to ready the office for what she correctly perceived would be an escalation of activity from a level of subdued, to frantic.

  “A murder,” she lamented. “Here. Can you imagine if we lived in the city?” she said, unaware that with the killing of Missy Bitson, in Church Falls, the per-one-thousand population rate of murder among children had just exceeded that of New York.

  “The Bitsons are expecting us,” Dojcsak said after Dorothy had left. “I’m not looking forward to it, but it must be done. Sara, you ride shotgun with me. Eugene claims the family spent yesterday afternoon home, together. We’ll corroborate his story with the wife. They have a second daughter as well.”

  “Two,” Sara confirmed.

  “Yes,” Dojcsak agreed.

  “One fifteen, still living at home, the other in her twenties, living in New York,” she added for Christopher’s benefit.

  “How do you know this?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Small town, Chris. People talk. Apparently, she’s the reason Eugene Bitson and Maggie McMaster married in the first place.” Sara retrieved the coffee pot, pouring refills for all three.

  “It was gossip at the time,” Dojcsak recalled as if the memory were recent. “More like scandal. Rich white girl gets pregnant by black boy. Her father disowned her.”

  “Leland McMaster,” said Sara with a sigh and a shake of her head.

  Dojcsak said, “You know him.” It was not a question.

  “Who doesn’t? Bought the Jimmy from his dealership,” Sara replied, referring to the candy-apple Chevy pick-up truck she had purchased in the fall, taking advantage with hundreds of others in an attractive zero percent financing option. “Never again; creepy, as if he were molesting me with his eyes. Thought he’d creamed himself when I leaned over to check under the hood.”

  Dojcsak frowned. “He’s in his seventies, Sara.”

  “He’s a pervert, Ed. It’s not something you grow out of, I don’t think.”

  Dojcsak said, “Sara, you speak with the girl, the sister. I’d do it myself, but these days, with things the way they are, it wouldn’t be appropriate. Contact the child in New York, though she’s not a child anymore. Speak with her by telephone. If you think it’s necessary take a day to interview her face to face. For the time she’s been away, I can’t think she’ll be useful, but you never know.” Dojcsak rubbed his chin energetically. “For now, we concentrate on the victim; who she knew, where she went, what she did.”

  “She wasn’t raped?” Sara asked, seeking confirmation.

  “We won’t know until after the post mortem,” Chris replied. “From the look of her, I’d say not.”

  “She was the daughter of Maggie,” Dojcsak said. “You know what they say. The apple never falls far from the tree.”

  “Meaning what, Ed?” asked Pridmore.

  Dojcsak shrugged. “I’m only saying what we already know, Sara. She lied to her parents, about how she would spend the afternoon. She was well-developed.” Dojcsak recalled how Missy Bitson’s wet tee shirt clung to her breasts. “We should conduct our inquiries with an open mind.”

  “So long as it’s not a dirty one.”

  “You’re right. I apologize. I’m not passing judgment, but she was a pretty girl, provocatively dressed for her age. No bra, her belly showing to here”—he indicated with a gesture of a hand cutting across his upper abdomen—“and her navel pierced. You can’t ignore her behavior simply because you’re uncomfortable with it.”

  “It’s the style, Ed, the way she dressed; not a reflection on her character or her behavior.”

  “Maybe so, Sara,” Dojcsak said, “but it’s indicative of it. Recent studies prove me out.” Dojcsak went on to quote an article he had read recently in the New York Times. It stated young girls who are inclined to pierce their bodies are also predisposed to shoplift, use drugs and engage in pre-marital sex. “It’s a sad fact of the times that you really can judge a book by its cover.”

  “Are we investigating the victim or the perp?”

  “It’s murder, Sara; we investigate both.”

  “We’re not talking about a sex-trade worker, Ed.” Sara checked herself. “And if we were, it wouldn’t matter. Times haven’t changed that much. It’s not common for thirteen-year-olds to be having sex.” Dojcsak and Burke simply stared. For emphasis, Sara added, “Not willingly.”

  “We know she left her cousin early,” Burke offered, “to meet with someone. Maybe she was snatched on her way to, or from, her rendezvous? By a stranger or a transient?”

  “No,” said Dojcsak. “I don’t buy it. That would suggest a spontaneity I’m not willing to accept. She knew her killer.” He repeated, “I think she knew her killer.”

  “The father,” suggested Burke as if he’d given it some thought, or no thought at all.

  Dojcsak said, “We’ll have a better idea when we interview the family.”

  “Sure,” Burke said, “but can we trust them to tell us the truth?”

  “There are enough hoodlums in this town that could be responsible,” Pridmore suggested, still rankled but willing for now, at least, to concede Dojcsak’s point. “Just ask the shop keepers that have had their stores trashed over the past four weeks. They might even be inclined to put forward a few potential prospects.”

  Teenage vandals—to most townsfolk and even to the local police, this was the presumption—had begun a campaign of random destruction on the south side of town. During the previous month, both public and private property had been vandalized. What had begun as vulgar epithets sprayed with paint on alley walls, had escalated to include rocks through plate glass windows in the retail shops fronting Main Street, the toppling of graveyard headstones at the Episcopal Church, and the overturning of civic monuments throughout the town. The insurrection had culminated two nights ago with a fire deliberately set in a recently vacated downtown tavern. Dojcsak suspected arson, but would await the final determination of the County Fire Marshall prior to issuing an accusation.

  The tenant, a half-breed Seneca Indian by the name of Ire (pronounced eerie) Bomberry had been charged recently with pedaling soft drugs through his children to their high school friends. Bomberry had been recently expelled from the Oneida Indian Reserve. Ire was what one Tribal Elder referred to as a “recidivist”, prone to illegal gaming and bouts of excess drink, which given the state of affairs, generally, on the reserve (with a rate of teen suicide and drug abuse more than twice the national average) was damning testimony indeed.

  The blaze had been stubborn and difficult to contain; undetected, it might have spread to engulf an entire block. Given the sorry condition of the neighborhood this might not have been a bad thing, if not for its potential, also, to take out a few dozen citizens with it.

  After a silent mom
ent, Dojcsak said to Pridmore, “Destruction of property is one thing, Sara, murder something else altogether, though the possibility can’t be ignored. Is the killing so soon after the fire the other night coincidence? Had she been involved with the rougher elements? Do you have any reason to believe she was?”

  Sara had been responsible for questioning the victimized merchants and pursuing any leads. After only a moments hesitation, she said, “Not that I know, though I think her cousin, Jordy, might be.”

  Burke said, “The black kid?”

  Sara said, “You know him?”

  “Scumbag. Who doesn’t?”

  “Anyway,” Sara continued, “I suspect the heightened police activity resulting from the killing will send the little hooligans to ground. I’m hoping so; I don’t need the aggravation.”

  To Burke, Dojcsak said, “Interview the victim’s aunt, Christopher. I want to know what she thinks of Eugene. Could he be responsible? What kind of relationship did he have with his daughters, his wife? Be blunt. After all, the eldest left home when she was sixteen, still only a child herself. Did Maggie confide to her sister? If so, what?”

  “Does Eugene’s interest in pornography extend beyond the Exxxotica, do you think, or is it just his business?” Sara asked.

  Burke nodded. “We’ll need a client list, Ed. Purchaser receipts, debit and credit cards. It’s a long shot, but it could be a customer. The body was dumped behind the store. Coincidence? And, we should check Eugene’s inventory. Even his laptop. Can we get Time Warner to release a log of his internet activity?”

  “For?” Ed asked.

  “You know, kiddy porn, snuff. Sick shit like that.”

  “Chris is right, Ed. We may learn a lot about Missy from her phone, when we find it, or her laptop. Does she have a Facebook page? Instagram? What does she tweet, what does she text and with who? There’s so many hook-up apps available to teenagers these days she could have been meeting with anyone.”

  Raising a hand as if to say Stop, Dojcsak said, “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s rule out Eugene and move on to other considerations from there. Jimmy Cromwell has committed his assistance and the assistance of the State Police. Let’s make the best of it, especially for the technical stuff.”

  “Cromwell has ordered a canvass of the neighborhood immediately surrounding the crime scene. The Troopers will interview possible witnesses and employees in the area of the shop, though only a few stores are open for business on Sunday. Most close by five.” He said it with a gesture of resignation. “And, Chris, I’ll want to speak with the cousin, Kendra. No reflection on you, but I’m not buying that she has no idea where Missy was off to when she left yesterday.”

  “What are we looking for, Ed?” asked Sara.

  Dojcsak shrugged. “A reasonable suspect?”

  “That covers a lot of ground, Ed; eighteen to eighty years of age, pees standing up.”

  Burke said, “Let’s not forget the half who squat, Sara. No reason her killer can’t be a girl.”

  Both Sara and Dojcsak conceded the point. There was no reason to linger further, their respective objectives clearly defined.

  “Bring the car around, Sara. You drive.” Dojcsak extracted keys from his coat and tossed them across the desk to Pridmore. “My eyes,” he said by way of explanation. “With the late night, I don’t trust my judgment.”

  Pridmore followed Burke from the office, down the stairwell, out the door and across the lot to where both the police cruiser and Dojcsak’s Crown Victoria were parked. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t mind the drive, perhaps enjoy the opportunity to settle into the vehicle’s plush leather interior and experience the pleasure of quadraphonic surround sound, though Dojcsak’s choice in music was not her own; a selection from the fifties, sixties and seventies, even a two disk Cole Porter Songbook featuring the vocals of a young Ella Fitzgerald, as if Ed was stuck in a time warp from which he was either unwilling or unable to emerge.

  From his cruiser, Burke turned to Sara. He raised his hand and flashed a dazzling smile with his porcelain perfect white teeth before departing in a cloud of loose gravel and dust. Pridmore eyed his departure cautiously, thinking that his parents must have put a fortune into that pie-hole.

  …

  Dojcsak remained in the office after they left. He sat two minutes smoking, finished the last of the brewed coffee, and silently passed gas. He did not think about the alley; he did not think about the girl. After a short while, he rubbed a meaty palm across his chin, deciding he needed to shave, to retreat to the bathroom on this floor and to scrape his face. At eight twenty-five, Ed Dojcsak left his office and walked down the hall to fetch his razor.

  CHAPTER SIX

  WITH DOJCSAK GONE, Rena proceeded with her chores. She thought: Why should Ed, of all people, believe he has as good a chance of solving the crime as Angelique? Modern forensics was no match against the mysteries and sheer power of psychic intuition. Rena believed this firmly and unconditionally; had done for going on ten years, since Angelique first had declared, contrary to the dire prognostications of Luba’s doctors and the empirical certainty of scientific fact, her daughter would survive into her teens. Rena hadn’t confessed this forecast to Ed, in the early years out of a desire not to offer false hope, and, after Luba had turned thirteen, unwilling to risk that his skepticism might potentially impair the power of the psychic’s positive prediction.

  Rena would telephone Angelique this afternoon, she decided, to get from her a better sense of who might possibly be responsible. She would love nothing more than to visit, to discuss the murder first hand, either in the store front shop or perhaps in the sitting room of the psychic’s second story apartment overlooking Church Falls’s main drag, over Chinese green tea and the uniquely flavored miniature almond paste biscuits favored by Angelique. (When asked about the peculiar but not unpleasant tasting novelties, Angelique declared: “Sugar and spice, Rena, an appropriate blend of both is necessary to make my cookies—and life—bearable”, though at times Rena imagined the headiness with which she departed the premises to be weighted more toward spice.) An oversize wrought iron sign depicting the all-seeing mystic eyeball hung suspended from a heavy chain outside the portico, marking the location of the shop, and was what at first had attracted Rena to the place.

  But it wasn’t a day on which Rena could reasonably depend on relief from Dorothy O’Rielly, who would be busy at the station. Kate Bouey was working a seven in the morning to seven in the evening twelve-hour shift. Rena could telephone Sandy Belak, the public health nurse who called once weekly on the family to monitor the status of Luba’s medication, but Sandy had other patients and with the recent cut back in home health-care funding it was unlikely she would take time to perform what ultimately was no more than babysitting. Jenny was unreliable; she would be no use.

  Rena rinsed cups, deposited the evidence of her husband’s filthy addiction into the waste bin beneath the kitchen counter and drained what remained of the morning pot of coffee. Sheila Burke had telephoned last evening, wanting to talk. Pregnancy, hormones and her husband Christopher’s marauding libido were playing havoc with the young woman’s fragile emotions; boo-hoo, Rena thought, Sheila needs a shoulder to cry on. Who doesn’t?

  But Rena Dojcsak had troubles of her own. Though she no longer was obsessed over the state of her failing marriage or the prognosis for her dying daughter, Rena didn’t have the surplus emotional energy required to obsess over the trouble of others, either. Not that she was unsympathetic; simply believed herself unfit to offer either heartfelt commiseration or meaningful advice to her friends, given the state of her own sorry existence.

  Careful not to wake Jen, Rena ran the upright along the carpet and lower hallway, leaving the second story and bedrooms for the afternoon. Luba would sleep fitfully until woken, undisturbed by either her mother’s movement or the rhythmic whine of the Hoover; in her daughter’s constant struggle for breath, Rena imagined these to be small annoyances.

  She and Ed
had been married eight years prior to deciding on a family. The couple was careful to ensure Ed was reasonably well established in his position as Warren County Sheriff, a job he’d come into by default on the resignation of his cousin. Though Ed had been Sidney Womack’s deputy, it came nonetheless as a surprise to everyone when he ran uncontested in the County election. After Jenny arrived, Rena happily resigned her own position and the second income she enjoyed as a substitute teacher at the local high, devoting herself full-time to the raising of her child.

  With a combination of savings and debt, they were just able to purchase a home on the more affordable if less fashionable south side of the Hudson River, though from their rear yard they did partially overlook the waterway as it flowed in the direction of New York City, on its way out of town. (In later years, Rena came to regard the river in the way others regard high-altitude, jet-plane vapor trails; with longing, as if she were somehow being left behind on a journey somewhere, anywhere, but here.)