Stone Cold Dead, James Ziskin [best ebook reader android .txt] 📗

investigated the Ted Russell thing and said he couldn’t stop thinking of the girl. He said she was so cute and mischievous. That’s what gets his motor running, it seems. He likes young girls, but only the ones with the devil in their smile. That’s how he put it.”

“He didn’t like me at all. I was convinced he didn’t like girls, but it turns out I was too old for him.”

Frank shook his head. “I feel sorry for guys like him.”

“What?”

“Not like that,” he said. “A deviant may be able to stop himself from committing these ‘abominations against God,’ as Brossard put it. But he can’t help having the urges in the first place. They just come to him. From Satan, he says.”

“So he was beguiled by a fifteen-year-old temptress,” I said sarcastically. “How did it all play out?”

“Like I said, he became obsessed with her. Tried to talk to her at school, sent some notes asking to meet her, called her down to his office on the slightest pretext, phoned her at home a few times. She asked him for money, and he refused. Then, on the day she disappeared, he saw her from his office window getting off the bus in the parking lot. He watched her talking to a boy, then the bus drove off. She loitered around for a few minutes, and she left the parking lot. He had the idea he could give her a lift home. He swears he had no other intentions but to give her a ride.” Frank wiped his dry mouth. “He saw her get into a taxi on Mill Street, and he followed in his car.”

“Then the cab dumped her on the side of the road, and the vulture swooped in.”

“That’s about right,” said Frank. “He drove her to the snow hills and tried to get friendly with her. She wasn’t interested. But the devil had taken control of his mind, he said. He touched her, fondled her, reached under her dress and . . .” Frank stopped. “Well, you get the picture. She slapped him hard and called him names, then managed to pull away and jump out of the car. She ran through the woods alongside the hills. That must have been when she lost her gloves. He chased after her, caught her in the woods near the clearing on the other side. She screamed and he put his hand over her mouth to shut her up. When she went limp, he kissed her, and she screamed again. He grabbed her by the neck, and she was dead before he realized what he was doing.”

I listened with horror. I had known that she’d been strangled, of course, but the sheriff’s hoarse-voiced narrative brought it painfully to life. I took a sip of water, cleared my throat, and wiped my eyes.

“Then he buried her in the snow?” I asked.

Frank nodded. “Brossard had the superintendent’s banquet that evening, and it was getting late. He couldn’t dispose of the body at that moment, so he buried her in the snow, thinking he would come back later that night to move her.”

“But he forgot the lunch box.”

“Exactly. He was quite drunk when he returned to the hills after the banquet. ‘The devil had commandeered my soul,’ he kept saying. Over and over. None of it was his fault. It was the devil. He grabbed the body but forgot the lunch box.”

“And then he drove to the Mill Street Bridge?”

“He had the idea of dumping her in the river because the ground was too hard to dig. He knew the snow would melt by spring, exposing the body, and he thought why not flush her down the river instead. She’d end up miles from here by the time someone found her. So he drove down to the river near Lock 11. But the river was frozen, so he doubled back to New Holland. He saw the river running under the Mill Street Bridge and, in his drunken, possessed state, thought that was his best option. It was late. The town was asleep, and it would only take a minute to toss the body over.”

“And that’s when Officer Palumbo came across him.”

“Missed him dumping the body in the river by a couple minutes, according to Brossard.”

We fell silent for a while, both lost in melancholy thoughts or hopeless disgust for all mankind. Finally, Frank spoke.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said. “How did you figure out that Darleen left her gum under the seat?”

“It came to me in a dream. Well, sort of,” I said. “I’d been racking my brain, reviewing the timeline, and thinking of everything I knew about Darleen, including my one meeting with her. Over and over, I went back to that time she’d helped me in the girls’ room at the basketball game, trying to remember every last detail. Then, in the calm of my dream, she was there, smiling at me with the braces and the black gum. Everyone said she was always chewing that black gum: her teachers, her friends, even her mother. And when she was done with it, she would stick it wherever was handy–under desks, mostly. Even under the shelf in her locker. It just occurred to me in a moment of clarity that she was just as likely as not to be chewing gum when Brossard picked her up. It was a guess.”

Frank whistled. “Damn good guess, Ellie.”

“What’s the DA’s plan?” I asked, blushing a bit, but delighting in his praise nonetheless.

“He’s thinking voluntary manslaughter, attempted rape, and battery. Probably a few more. He’s working on it.”

“And Dick Metzger?”

Frank shook his head. “Nothing for now. He denies it, and there’s no witness, no victim to level an accusation.”

“Can’t you bash his head into the car door again?”

He smiled sadly, then turned serious. “Listen, Ellie, about Metzger. Brossard says he never called your house.”

“I see. But still no proof to charge Metzger?”

“I’m afraid not. Tell you what, though. I’m going to have one of