Missing Girls- In Truth Is Justice

by Larry Crane

  POLICE: Who was the girl?

  SMITH: Victoria Zielinski.1

  “He partly recalls,” Marcella jeered. “It’s only a day and a half after she was found dead. Already, he’s making up stories. Every detail had to be seared into his cerebral cortex. ‘Partly, I do,’ he says. Give me a break.”

  “What do you think? He’s going to spill his guts all over the place? He’s protecting himself,” Gavin said.

  “At this point, he’s assumed to be totally innocent. Why lie?” Marcella asked. “Anyway, listen to what he says.” She read more from the book:

  SMITH: I intended to keep going on home. She waved at me or yelled or something. I turned around and came back up. She said, ‘Give me a ride home.’ So, I said, ‘All right.’2

  Marcella swung her feet to the floor and walked around the back of the couch clutching the book, her index finger marking the page. “She asks her little sister to walk with her because she’s afraid of the dark or afraid that a bogeyman’s going to jump out of the bushes or something. But the first car that comes along, she’s waving for a ride? It makes no sense.” She plopped back down at her end of the couch.

  Gavin responded: “She may have recognized the car. Smith borrowed it, maybe from someone she knew. Then, she sees that it’s Smith driving. He offers her a ride. She recognizes him. She gets in the car.”

  “Her sister is coming to meet her,” Marcella said. “She had to be thinking Myrna was just up the road a bit. Why take a ride? Was she thinking it would be uncool to refuse?”

  “She got in the car. What can you say? Nobody’ll ever know exactly what happened,” Gavin said.

  “She made a mistake and trusted the creep,” Marcella added before continuing on:

  POLICE: Did she get in the car?

  SMITH: Yes.

  POLICE: Then what happened?

  SMITH: I headed toward her house. She said to go up and around again, so I turned up West Crescent Avenue, and then down by Fardale. It’s a sandpit there—Sam Braen’s Sandpit. Why or how or anything else, I don’t know.3

  Marcella leaped up from the couch. “Liar! The son of a bitch is kidnapping her. She had to be petrified. What’s this crap: ‘Why or how or anything else, I don’t know.’ Oh right! You don’t know!”

  “Never mind, Marce. He admits he took her to the sandpit,” Gavin said. “That’s huge. I mean, they find Vickie in the sandpit, dead, and Smith’s saying he’s the one who took her there.”

  SMITH: I pulled into the sandpit. To the end of the road. I was smoking a cigarette. She was telling me about she had cut school. The school called up her mother—something like that. I wasn’t concentrating on it at the time. Then, she said something about, ‘I’m going to get out and walk home. I am going to tell my father you are like the rest of the guys’—something like that. I didn’t know what she meant. The first thing I thought of was I couldn’t let her walk home. I had to take her home, because I brought her up there. It would be bad for me. She started getting out of the car.

  She got halfway out and I reached across the seat and grabbed either her arm or her jacket or something. I was holding her arm—off balance.

  I wanted to pull her back in the car and take her home. She started yelling something. I don’t know what she said but she started swinging at me and sort of slapping. After that—

  POLICE: Did she make you upset?

  SMITH: All I remember was letting go of her arm and swinging with my right hand in the direction of her. I don’t know if it was a fist or a slap or what.

  POLICE: Did you hit her?

  SMITH: I don’t know. My hand didn’t hurt. I imagine she hit me. I didn’t feel anything.4

  Marcella marched into the kitchen with the book, muttering to herself. “Can I get you a beer?” she called out.

  “That’d be great,” Gavin called back.

  She came back with two beers clamped to her chest with one hand and the book in the other. “Will you pop these?”

  Gavin snapped the pull tabs on the Molson beer cans and flipped them to the coffee table.

  Marcella settled into her end of the couch. “He doesn’t know if he hit her? It’s ridiculous,” she said.

  SMITH: The next thing I actually realized was getting back into the car. It’s vague to me. I don’t know exactly what it is.

  POLICE: Did you chase her at any time?

  SMITH: I have a feeling of running somewhere.5

  “For Chrissakes,” Marcella said. “What a load.”

  “Face it, he’s not going to admit to anything. Why should he?” Gavin asked.

  “Anyone else would be too embarrassed to say anything so obviously pure crapola,” she said.

  “This is life-and-death. His life,” Gavin said. “He’s never going to sell himself down the river. Nobody would. He didn’t have to say a word, but he did, and the cops didn’t give him a warning. Like, ‘everything you say can be used against you in a court of law.’ Kojak 101.”

  “This is 1957. They didn’t have that then. It was a voluntary statement,” Marcella said.

  POLICE: What was the condition of the ground at the time?

  SMITH: Soft.

  POLICE: Did you have your shoes on?

  SMITH: I have a feeling of running somewhere. I don’t know where I ran or how far or anything. Next thing I actually remember is getting back in the car and my foot being cold.

  POLICE: Were you alone in the car?

  SMITH: Yes. My foot was cold. I backed onto Chapel Road and turned toward the trailer ranch.6

  Marcella turned to the aerial photographs in Counterpoint that showed the area all around the sandpit. It was a lightly wooded expanse with a few houses situated along the narrow, mostly dirt roads. The sandpit was flat and desolate with low scrub pine bushes and trees scattered over the rock strewn ground that was piled up in a few places as high as six or seven feet. It was in the beginning of March—still cold. Patches of snow dotted the ground.

  She imagined the scene looking out through the windshield of the car: headlights playing over dark emptiness as Smith maneuvers the turns in the road that ends in the sandpit. Smith stops the car, cuts the engine, and kills the lights. They both sit silently, looking straight out the windshield into the blackness. At first, it’s quiet—no crickets or anything, it’s March—absolutely silent. Then Victoria starts jabbering again, a mile a minute—as if her prattling will push her worst fears off into the farthest corner of the car. Just keep chattering. Chattering. Smith calmly pulls on his cigarette, relaxes against the back of the seat and releases the smoke into the air.

  SMITH: I got home and I went to the back door of the house. My foot was awfully cold, almost numb. I realized I only had one shoe on.7

  Marcella took a swig of beer. “The pervert was completely panic-stricken. He loses his shoe and doesn’t even realize it. He needs to get as far as he can from the sandpit, as fast as he can. That’s all he can think about.”

  SMITH: I took off the khaki pants—they had blood all over them. I had blood on the socks and took them off.8

  Gavin added, “He can say whatever he wants to say in his book as if it’s the absolute truth. Who’s to say it isn’t?”

  SMITH: I asked my wife to bring me another pair of pants. I told her I had been sick. I imagine I must have associated blood with being sick or something. I put on a pair of gabardine pants and my loafers.

  I got in the car and went back to the sandpit. I brought a big twelve-volt lantern with me—a big spotlight. This part here, I am confused.

  At the end of the road I turned it on and I was almost standing on my shoe that I had lost.

  POLICE: Did you see anything else?

  SMITH: A red glove or red mitten. I kicked it off to the side. I got back in the car.9

  “Can you imagine this scene? He’s come back to the sandpit, fifteen minutes after braining Victoria. She’s lying just over the top of the mound. He had to be shining this big flashlight all over, looking for anything that wou
ld show that he was there. He sees the gloves, the tire tracks, and his shoe. He sees the blood and the brains. He’s fighting this incredibly strong impulse to go to the top of the mound to look at her, maybe hoping she was still alive, maybe hoping she had gotten up—impossibly gotten up, and run away—and was out there in the night somewhere. Then, he knows he can’t linger with this flashlight.

  “He douses it, and waits for his eyes to adjust to the pitch blackness. He’s thinking, thinking. His wife didn’t see anything. Nobody saw anything. There’s no connection to me, except for the pants and the socks, saturated with blood. They’ll find the girl eventually but maybe not for days or weeks, not right away. He’s thinking there can’t be anything here that leads to me. He stumbles to his car.”

  SMITH: Somewhere between the pit and Joe Gilroy’s house I either stopped and threw the khaki pants out or got out and carried them somewhere. All of this is still vague to me. I just don’t understand what was going on.

  What strikes me now, by the time I had gotten into the car I had completely forgotten about the whole thing. It wasn’t in my mind at all. Just like it never happened. I drove back to Ramsey—to the trailer ranch, and got my wife.10

  * * *

  1 Calissi, Counterpoint, 425. Author’s note: the format of the transcript excerpts has been altered for better readability on the page, but the wording remains unchanged.

  2 Ibid., 429.

  3 Ibid., 430.

  4 Ibid., 431.

  5 Ibid.

  6 Ibid., 432.

  7 Ibid., 433.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Ibid., 434.

  10 Ibid., 435.

  Chapter 17

  Marcella inched back deeper into the cushion on the couch, and plowed ahead in Calissi’s Counterpoint. The statement related how Smith, his wife, and baby went to his mother-in-law’s house in Ridgewood, watched some television and then at about ten o’clock went to bed. In the morning he told his wife he was sick and would not go to work.

  POLICE: Did you do anything with your clothing at your mother-in-law’s?

  SMITH: I washed the blue jacket and the red flannel shirt. I didn’t have any reason to wash them other than that they were dirty. I had been saying on and off to my wife for quite a while ‘I’m going to wash the jacket one of these days’.1

  Marcella sat up straight and brought her knees up, so she could rest the book against them. She looked across at Gavin. “He’s in a total bind. He’s committed himself to answering the questions. Like, why shouldn’t he? He’s got nothing to hide. Then, he tells things that are incriminating, like washing his clothes. He tells because he knows the police can easily find out if he actually did wash them. There are the facts, and he’s put himself in the position of having to explain them—and the explanation comes off as a complete load of horse manure. It’s laughable if it wasn’t so terrible.”

  SMITH: I turned on the twelve o’clock news to hear what this thing was about.

  For some reason I was curious and I heard the bulletin, the news. It just still was not there in my head. Somehow I was trying to remember. I thought I knew the name and I guess it was later on in the afternoon—one-thirty, two o’clock something like that—when I called Joe Gilroy. I asked him if he had heard anything on the radio and he said no. I remember the exact words I used. I said, ‘Some broad from Ramsey got killed. I said, ‘It sounds like Vickie, but I don’t know, the name on the radio didn’t sound right.’

  That’s when it dawned on me that I had been with her the night before and something snapped in the back of my head that I did it and I know it in back of my head. I couldn’t convince myself.

  Finally, Joe showed up in Ridgewood but, instead of coming in his own car, he came with another fellow from Ramsey—Donald Hommell.

  The first thing I said when I came out of the house, I said to this fellow Don, ‘Was that Vickie that got killed?’ I guess I was actually asking as if I didn’t know myself, and he said, ‘Yeah.’

  He said, ‘The place up there is swarming with cops and they’re checking the registration of every Mercury registered in Bergen County.’2

  Marcella flipped back to the first few pages of Calissi’s Counterpoint to the photographs and diagrams. There was a hand-drawn sketch of the immediate area made by a police officer. It depicted the corner of Fardale Avenue and Chapel Road.

  A dot entitled ‘red glove’ is shown at far end of the driveway 175 feet from Chapel Road. Another dot entitled ‘brains’ is shown 51 feet north of the glove atop a mound. Dots entitled ‘rock’ are shown—5 feet west of the brains—5 feet east of the brains—and 44 feet northeast of the brains. 12 feet southeast of the brains is a dot entitled ‘left shoe’. 10 feet north of the brains and over the edge of the mound is a dot entitled ‘body.’3

  A color photograph of Victoria Zielinski’s corpse shows her lying along the back slope of the mound with her head downward and her body bent at the waist. She’s wearing blue jeans and a reddish sweater. One of her white socks is almost off her foot. The sweater is up around her shoulders. Her bra is down at her waist. Her face is gone. Her hair is soaked with blood. 4

  Marcella stared. A riot of emotion surged up with the bile she tasted. A strange guttural moan came out of her mouth.

  Gavin says it’s not Hannah, but what does he know or anyone know who has not seen the first blood of their child mixed with their own blood, and felt the pain of her coming out, or had her stare into your eyes, the first eyes she’s ever stared into? If it could have been her, it is her.

  Gavin dropped his book on the coffee table, came over, and knelt beside her. He picked up her book and stared at the grisly color picture of Victoria Zielinski.

  “God! He—he absolutely obliterated her head,” he said.

  Marcella stood and, in an involuntary spasm, ran to the kitchen and back out again. For all these months she’d been able to pretend that Hannah was alive somewhere. She believed the day would come when she would come back to them. She would never have to stare down at such slaughter. She fell to her hands and knees and fought against vomiting.

  “Marce, come and sit here. Put your head between your knees,” Gavin said. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m afraid. It could’ve happened to Hannah.”

  “It’s not Hannah. Not.”

  “I have to do something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” She breathed in shallow gasps. “It’s killing me,” she said.

  “Come sit down with me,” Gavin said.

  With Hannah’s disappearance, a governor came loose from inside her where it was housed and controlled. And now, she didn’t know any better than he did what it might make her do.

  * * *

  1 Calissi, Counterpoint, 436.

  2 Ibid., 437-438.

  3 Ibid., 21.

  4 Ibid., 32.

  Chapter 18

  Marcella paced around the living room, through the boxes and scattered furniture, and into the kitchen. Gavin was right behind.

  “You’re right. We owe it to her to know what happened,” he said. “And we are doing research—reading books. There’s been a trial—he’s been convicted and sentenced to death.”

  “But the lawyers are getting him out,” Marcella said.

  “Well, they’re trying to get him out. He’s entitled to appeals.”

  “I don’t care about what he’s entitled to. When he did that, his rights went out the window.”

  “It’s fine to say that, and I agree with you a hundred percent, Marce, but that isn’t the way the system works.”

  “I don’t care about the system,” Marcella said. She fumbled in the packing box of silverware and found a sharp knife. She marched back into the living room, attacked the congealed cheese on the pizza, and hacked off a chunk.

  Gavin followed. “Do you want some?” she asked.

  “No. Christ, I thought you were going to stab me. You want to do something. What is it you want to do? ”

&nb
sp; “I wake and find Hannah staring at me. She doesn’t speak even when I talk to her. She’s dressed as she was that morning. She expects me to do something. She waits. But there’s nothing I can do but stand around twisting my fingers. It’s done, it’s over, forever.”

  “You’re—you’re mixing things up. It’s garbled in your head. Now we’re talking about Hannah’s ghost. As if it’s over. It’s not. It’s just that we can’t find her. Yet,” Gavin said.

  “We’re never going to find her,” Marcella said. She dropped the knife onto the coffee table and slumped onto the couch.

  Gavin stood on the other side of the coffee table, cracked his knuckles, and craned his neck as if to relieve a growing stiffness. “Marce, I get the feeling that you think moving here was equivalent to closing the door on Hannah. It wasn’t. The search continues.”

  “Then why did we move?” Marcella asked.

  “You know why. You know goddamned well why. Life goes on,” Gavin said. “I thought we’d turned a corner, Marce. We did say that. Said we’d get on our feet and start mucking it out day-by-day. This doesn’t feel like mucking it out to me.”

  “I’m on my feet. I’m going to do something,” she said, standing again.

  “Well, all right. Let’s talk about it,” Gavin said.

  “I’m not going to be talked out of it. We’ve talked it to death.”

  “For starters, what is it you’re going to do exactly?

  “I don’t know. I do know my brain is racing a hundred miles an hour. I can’t think. I can’t sleep,” she said.

  “Talk to me.”

  “It’s that she goes on suffering.”

  “Now we talking about Victoria, or her ghost, rather,” he said.

  “At first, the facts stand out clean and sharp, but years go by and the dust and the rust set in—the deceit, the lies, the altering of the record. There is no end. No justice. My system will not tolerate it. The bungling alone is enough to—”

  “I’m with you all the way,” Gavin said.

  “Knowing the truth—knowing exactly what happened—to be murdered, it’s horrible. She knows. People need to know too. She deserves that. I’m obsessed. I admit it. I don’t care. She’d be turning twenty-eight this year. I’m going to get him.”