Death in Dark Places

by Drew Franzen

  Also, they were informed, in healthy people there is a constant flow of mucus over the surfaces of the air passages in the lungs. This removes debris and bacteria.

  “In your daughter,” the specialist elaborated, “this mucus is excessively sticky. It can’t perform this role properly. In fact, this sticky mucus provides an ideal environment for bacterial growth. I’m sorry, but expect her to suffer from persistent cough, an excess production of sputum—both saliva and mucus—wheezing, and shortness of breathe, even with ordinary activities. She may suffer small growths or polyps in the nose and increased roundness of her finger and toenails”—here he illustrated the phenomenon using his own hand—“owing to the loss of the shallow groove between the bottom of the nail and skin. As your daughter grows, both her liver and spleen may enlarge. She will be susceptible to diabetes and (if she should live so long, he intimated but did not say) infertility.”

  Children with CF require daily physiotherapy that involves vigorous massage to help loosen the sticky mucus and Rena and Ed were instructed by hospital staff on how properly to perform this critical task. A vigorous slapping motion, they were told, with cupped hands on the upper back and chest so as not to injure the child. Luba was vaccinated against flu and pneumococcus to help prevent chest infections, to which she would be especially susceptible. The usual childhood vaccinations such as MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) and DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough) were important as well. With each meal or snack, Luba was required to take the capsules that supply the missing pancreatic enzymes and allow for proper digestion.

  As Luba matured and was able to survive, if never to overcome her disability, her fragile system was subject to a variety of treatments, some more invasive than others. Daily oral or inhaled antibiotics to counter lung infection, inhaled anti-asthma therapy, corticosteroid tablets, dietary vitamin supplements, especially A and D, inhalation of a medication called pulmozyme to make her sputum less sticky, medicines to relieve her constipation or to improve the activity of the enzyme supplements, and finally oxygen to help with breathing. In an attempt to mitigate the impact on the family, it was suggested to Rena and Dojcsak to undergo counseling. While helpful to Rena, Dojcsak refused. Increasingly, he became withdrawn from both Jenny and his wife, preferring the company of his ailing daughter, or weekends on his small fishing boat, a sense of fading optimism with one child tilting toward despair over the other. For years and until recently this had been Dojcsak’s pattern.

  Rena’s own family was only marginally helpful, never having approved of Dojcsak in the first place. They attributed Rena’s misfortune to her misguided decision to select Ed from an available pool of eligible bachelors with whom to marry and have children. That her sister, at fifty-two years of age, remained unmarried did not in the least impair the value of her opinion in the eyes of Rena’s mom and dad. With the death of her mother last year, the criticism—mostly—had stopped, though Rena regretted she now would never be able to make amends.

  With a social life in ruins (early on Rena understood that while misery loves company the feeling is not mutual) and with their love life—both physical and emotional—a shambles, the couple was content simply to honor the minimum commitment required of each other under their matrimonial obligation; Dojcsak financial, Rena maternal.

  In addition to his fishing weekends, Dojcsak attended once weekly throughout the year meetings of the local Rotary Club. For distraction, Rena attended a ceramics class, where she took pride in displaying and offering a select few of her pieces for sale. Rena was really very good, the class instructor commented. Secretly, Rena harbored a notion she might expand her hobby into a full-time vocation after Luba’s death, display her wares at local craft shows, the county fair and perhaps, later, open a shop. And there was Angelique, with her quirky and amusing demeanor, her tress of untamable and overflowing dark hair, her eccentric dress, and most significantly, her foresight.

  Rena returned the Hoover to a hall closest. Jenny was up, splashing about in the upstairs bathroom in an attempt to ready for school. She was late for class, but Rena supposed better late than never. Luba would soon wake. The process of medicine and massage would begin once again. Ed would abrogate his responsibility as he had done for years and Rena would not complain, as for years she had not. Just as well he would be busy with a murder investigation, she decided. It would save him the fictitious excuse of complaining that it was work, mostly, which kept him from being home.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE FOG IN THE STREET had lifted, the clouds in the sky dispersed, and the sun had made its debut over the far east horizon by the time the removal service vehicle pulled in from the weather to the morgue that morning. Missy Bitson arrived from the rubbish bin to the mortuary sealed in a translucent plastic sac. A fuzzy image of the child emerged through the opaque material, revealing clearly the contents of the bundle. The zippered opening had been secured while still at the crime scene, the signature of a presiding officer—in this case, Edward Dojcsak—scrawled in black felt marker across a strip of white tape. Later that morning, the medical examiner would supervise its opening in the presence of an official observer assigned, as promised, by District Attorney Jimmy Cromwell.

  Missy was transferred from the removal van to a stainless steel gurney, her presence acknowledged officially with ink in a morgue registry journal. She was wheeled along a well-lit corridor to a spacious walk-in cooler. A half-dozen other trolleys filled the vault this morning, one occupied, five vacant; it had been a quiet Sunday. As a homicide victim, Missy was isolated from the other body in a coffin-sized locker of her own. The unit was locked behind the child and also secured with tape and a patrolman’s signature before the officer departed the scene.

  In death Missy resembled a scarecrow, her limbs stiff, as if stuffed and mounted on a wood frame. Transparent plastic bags covered her footwear and lower legs to mid-shin having been sealed at the crime scene to preserve the integrity of evidence, evidence that in the estimation of Ed Dojcsak would have likely been washed away by the rain. Her hands were wrapped, her head buried beneath a non-biodegradable plastic shroud.

  Missy Bitson crossed a threshold that day, executed a right of passage that for most occurs much later in life. By seven a.m. on the morning after her murder, Missy ceased to be a daughter, a sister, a child or a friend and had become, instead, a collection of tissue, a possible solution to someone’s notion of a curious riddle. Unintentionally, she had become a victim, a victim in that most irrevocable of ways that would preclude her from being perceived by anyone, ever again, as anything else.

  …

  As could be expected in a town of less than ten thousand residents, word of the killing spread quickly through Church Falls. On the morning after the murder, and as they regardless would have otherwise done, mothers quarreled with teenage daughters over skirts that were too short, denims that were too tight, face make-up too heavily applied, Facebook profiles that were too revealing and texting that was too frequent and indiscriminate, though the interplay on this day lacked its customary conviction.

  No parent was willing to send a child off with harsh words, words they might live forever to regret or for which they might never be able to later apologize. It was irony lost that on a day when parents should have been less than lenient in matters relating to appearance and the impression it might rightly or wrongly convey about character, they weren’t.

  The trend toward low-rise Calvin Kleins had inspired in ardent schoolboys, that spring semester, the expectation for a flash of lacy thong, or possibly even a glimpse of butt-crack, prompting the local school board to enact a by-law requiring “opaque leggings to be worn with any skirt cut more than two inches above the knee”, and forbidding the exposure of “any part of the female midriff between belt buckle and blouse”. Though noted by Sara Pridmore that how young girls dress is more reflective of style than behavior, in Church Falls a distinct yet vocal minority wasn’t convinced.

 
The morning after the murder, local school trustees met in camera to discuss details of further revising the code of conduct to govern student behavior online, though none of the fifty year old plus members of the board was informed enough to appreciate how doing so previously might have prevented the killing of the young girl.

  Calls over the area’s wireless network spiked to an all-time high between the hours of eight and ten a.m. that morning. Information passed rapidly from one household to the next like electricity, morphed into an almost enhanced version of the truth by each subsequent re-telling.

  Among men in the workplace, the killing of Missy Bitson replaced “March Madness” as the primary topic of conversation. Among women it overrode grousing over children, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, in-laws and even household finance. Outside Missy’s school, students gathered in tight knots, expressing both feelings of outrage and grief, though at this age they were unable to appreciate the absolute finality of death itself. Inside, teachers planned for what to say to the students. Among male instructors there was a mental inventory being taken for anything that might have been said to the dead girl or done that could be construed by anyone—most especially in a re-counting to the police—as being either remotely inappropriate or suggestive.

  Already a Facebook tribute page had been established, with over fifteen hundred members and as many Likes. A memorial of flowers, teddy bears and personal keepsakes began to pile up at the mouth of the alley where Missy was discovered.

  If speculation were not yet rife among the collective imagination of Church Falls, with sufficient opportunity and communication, it soon would become so. Theory on the killing ranged wildly from the credible to the absurd. Among the former was the belief that the father was responsible, among the latter aliens from outer space. Later, between the two extremes, more reasonable hypotheses would emerge.

  Opinion was split evenly among the populace over whether the killer was transient or a permanent resident living within the community.

  Among those living locally, some of the less enlightened considered Wayne Wable “good for the crime”. Wable (with the unfortunate pronunciation wobbly) suffered from Cerebral Palsy. At forty-six years of age, he lived with his mother, a retired schoolteacher, the two occupying a four-room third floor walk-up on the southern fringe of town. They subsisted on a combination of her social security and retirement benefit, and his contribution of part-time earnings as a bag boy at the local Winn-Dixie. Personable and accommodating, to the uninitiated, Wayne could be nonetheless intimidating. Poor teeth, a speech impediment—making his words sound nasal and slurred, as if delivered from the back of his throat—and a tendency to lean close when speaking combined with his size to make Wayne an imposing if not suspicious man. That he frequented the Exxxotica and had once been discovered lurking within the girls change room at the local swimming pool did not help to ease this characterization. His mother’s explanation that Wayne had difficulty in reading the signs was discredited by his work stocking grocery store shelves: “Never had any trouble with him reading the labels here,” stated the manager when asked.

  In most homes later that day, the killing became the topic of dinnertime conversation. Again, telephone calls within the local exchange spiked, though not to the record levels of that morning. The calls were, however, of greater duration.

  Over a meal of lamb shank stewed with pearl onion, celery, carrot, tarragon spice and red wine, Henry Bauer confessed to his wife, Barbara, “It could be any one of a dozen patients I’m treating right now.”

  “Do you really believe that, Henry? Here? I’ve lived in Church Falls all my life; know most everyone who lives here. At one time or another, I’ve checked out books for them at the library.” Between caring for her husband, her household and a quartet of three daughters and a son, Babs Bauer worked part-time at the local branch of the Warren County Library, one of the smaller branches in the system but, owing to Barbara’s initiative, one which shelves contained the most varied selection. “And their children, including Missy and her family.”

  Barbara lowered her head, poking listlessly at her stew, though the recipe was her favorite and most consistently best. Henry had arrived home from the office late. Barbara had allowed the children to eat early, in front of the television, a thing she normally was loath to do but this evening, given the news of Missy’s tragic death, a concession she felt obliged to make. She knew Henry would want to talk, undisturbed. They sat at the dinner table alone.

  “I know what I’m inferring, sweets. That it’s someone we know. Someone I’ve treated, someone you’ve served at the library. God,” he added, forcing a baby roast potato into an already stuffed corner of his mouth, “someone we’ve had over to the house. You’d be surprised what in some families occurs behind closed doors: nasty stuff, unspeakable, and unexplainable. You read enough to know enough, don’t you; books, the newspapers? Besides, just because we live in a community of ten thousand doesn’t mean it’s less likely than if we lived in a city of ten million. In a big city there’s a sense of anonymity, you tend to think of these things as random and abstract; one day it’s front-page news, the next, trash. Here, it’s like it’s personal, you know? That’s the difference. I mean, people do know people who kill, don’t they?”

  “Do you have any ideas?”

  Henry paused, as if he might have and was now going over the possibilities in his mind. He removed his eyeglasses, placing them at the side of his dinner plate. With one hand, he pressed what little remained of his thinning hair flat to his scalp; with the other, he pinched the bridge of his nose, as if hoping to exorcise the demon behind his eyes. Henry continued to grind his dinner between his teeth, like an automaton, chewing but not tasting.

  “You know I shouldn’t say. There’s…any one of a number…” Then, “I shouldn’t say. Besides, it may be a transient, a seasonal worker from out of town. We can hope, can’t we? I’m more concerned that Dojcsak will have a heart attack or a stroke before he has a chance to complete his investigation.”

  “The man is a wreck,” Bab’s replied.

  Bauer contemplated only fleetingly whether to reveal more about the victim to his wife, decided against it knowing in the short run it would be salacious, in the long term it would all come out anyway. They finished their meal in silence, retiring early to bed shortly after a mindless but still amusing episode of the sitcom Modern Family.

  …

  As chance would have it, on the morning following the murder, rumor obviated the need to inform Missy’s closest next of kin. Leland McMaster—grandfather on her mother’s side—learned of the murder from an automobile mechanic arriving early for the morning shift at McMaster’s Chevrolet-Oldsmobile dealership.

  “It’s all over the internet,” he’d said to Leland.

  “I didn’t even know she was missing,” McMaster replied in response to the man’s expression of regret.

  “Perhaps they didn’t want to worry you, Lee,” the man said, distressed at having inadvertently related the news this way.

  “That must be it,” said McMaster, knowing this was not it at all. “Helen isn’t well,” he continued. “The girls understand that.” In a gesture of condolence, the man laid a hand on Leland’s shoulder before turning away.

  Afterward, from his office, McMaster telephoned his wife. Without preamble, he informed her, “Missy is dead, Helen.”

  “Dead? Was there an accident?”

  “She was killed, Helen.”

  “Killed? Was there an accident?”

  “You don’t understand. She was killed. Someone killed her.”

  McMaster sensed rather than heard the shallow intake of her breath. He imagined Helen sitting, hand to her chest, gripping the fabric of a loose cardigan in her gnarled fist. To keep from falling to the floor, she would claw with the other at the armrest of her wheelchair, bony fingers clutching like the talons of a greedy bird seeking purchase on a tree branch. Leland imagined her odor. Not ra
nk, as she was forced by a home care worker to bathe daily, but somehow musty, as if the smell of old age had attached itself to her skin and now was impossible to wash away. At only sixty-three years of age, Helen’s physical and mental condition resembled that of a woman much, much older.

  “Who would want to do such a thing?” she wanted to know.

  “Is Sandy there?” he asked, knowing the day nurse would be in the house but perhaps not by her side. “Have her fetch you a drink, Helen; brandy would be best.”

  Thank God for the nurse, he thought. Without her, he would be otherwise compelled to return home to care for Helen, be forced to cut his workday short and to miss today what would be the busiest in a three-day “Red Tag Sales Extravaganza”.

  Over the years Leland had become resigned to Helen’s physical disposition and the resulting confinement, in time encouraged to view her disability as a gift, allowing for a guilt-free transfer of responsibility for her care to an emotionally disinterested third party. Though still robust, Leland was himself approaching seventy-seven years of age and unable to cook, clean and tend to the most intimate and shameless of her bodily needs. In truth, he had never been sufficiently inclined. The marriage was never a happy one. What had compelled him at the age of almost thirty to mindlessly and impetuously marry the compliant sixteen year-old? Leland couldn’t say or wouldn’t admit (though in his most private moments, fist wrapped tight around his swollen penis, thumbing through early black-and-white photographs he had taken of Helen as a very young girl, he was able to recall).