Death in Dark Places

by Drew Franzen

  “So, this is where they keep them. I’ve never been,” he said as if speaking of a visit to Walt Disney World. “Did you find anything useful?” Dojcsak continued to eye the stacked containers, placing his face inches away as if only by doing so could he make out the type on the labels.

  “Apparently, Missy Bitson is not the first girl in Church Falls to go missing and turn up dead.”

  “Oh?”

  “Shelly Hayden and Frances Stoops. Do the names mean anything to you, Ed?”

  Dojcsak answered right away. “Shelly Hayden got herself killed by falling off a high cliff. Frances Stoops was murdered. I was in high school.”

  “You didn’t think it was important enough to mention? I mean, after the death of Missy Bitson?”

  “Maybe over a beer.” Dojcsak chuckled, his chest rattling with the effort. He removed a package of cigarettes from his breast pocket and was about to light up when Sara said, “I wouldn’t, Ed. This stuff is as dry as tinder.” Dojcsak replaced the package. He said, “It was thirty years ago, Sara. Over thirty-years. There was never any real evidence to suggest who killed Frances, and as for Shelly, only my cousin ever thought it was anything but an accident.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “Sid Womack.” Dojcsak grinned. “C’mon, Sara. How do you think I got this job?”

  “You inherited it?”

  “Anyway,” he said, referring to the files, “How far along are you?”

  Sara had finally stopped trembling and smiled. “Nineteen seventy-seven. I was planning on working through to seventy-nine when you showed up.”

  “Nineteen seventy-nine,” Dojcsak said. “Year of the Disco Queen.”

  “The disco who?”

  “Donna Summer,” Dojcsak replied. “The Disco Queen. She must have had three, maybe four top ten hits that year. You’re too young to remember. Probably weren’t even born.”

  “I take it you weren’t a fan.”

  Dojcsak acknowledged with a nod of his head. “But she was easy on the eyes.”

  “What about Drew Bitson? He was arraigned.”

  “Released for lack of evidence, Sara. And believe me, back then Jimmy Cromwell was not a champion of the movement for civil rights. If there had been enough to convict, he would have. Drew has made a decent life for himself here, which, after what he went through, is a credit to him.”

  “And his son?”

  “Jordy,” Dojcsak mused, pulling his fingers across his cheeks. “That’s another matter and one we must discuss. You know what they say, Sara: the apple never falls far from the tree.”

  “Don’t know it’s what they say, Ed, but sure is what you’ve been saying lately.”

  “If the answer is staring you in the face, Sara, why make the investigation more difficult than it needs to be?”

  “And you think it is, staring us in the face?”

  “Well,” said Dojcsak, “it isn’t staring out at us from down here.” He gestured toward the files.

  “You don’t think I should I come back Monday?” Sara asked, secretly hoping for a reprieve.

  “I wouldn’t bother. I joined the force right out of high school, in seventy-two. From seventy-nine until now, I’ve been in charge. If there was anything relevant here, I would have let you and Christopher know. Come, Sara, let me buy you a beer; you must be parched from the parchment. The solution to Missy’s death is in the present, not in the past.”

  It was good enough for Sara. She closed the overhead light and pulled the storage room door shut behind her before following Dojcsak to the stairs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  JOEL PATAKI KNEELED on all fours before the toilet, hugging the porcelain fixture, watching as his half-digested breakfast of boiled egg with bacon swirled round and round in the bowl, finally, with this last flush, disappearing down the drain like his life; a real time emulation of some hackneyed cliché.

  Pulling himself to his feet, Joel soaked his face in the sink and ran a toothbrush over his teeth. He rinsed with Listerine before returning to the living room. Anxiety spent, Joel felt the first pangs of hunger. A six-week experiment with the Atkin’s Diet had helped him to neither lose weight or to control his raging appetite. All he had earned for the effort was a foul temper, foul breath, foul farts and a case of constipation that he thought might cause cancer of the bowel in his later years. Joel had read stories of Atkin’s devotees who’d required surgery to scoop out their guts, human waste clogging their intestinal tract like clay. He shuddered at the prospect.

  On the couch, Jordy Bitson sat counting his money, dark chocolate skin standing out like a stylish accent against the tan leather. His loose fitting denims sagged to Jordy’s hips, blue stripe silk boxers showing underneath. Over a white collarless tee shirt, he wore a Syracuse Orangemen jersey, on his feet powder blue Nike trainers, which he hadn’t bothered to remove at the door. His short-cropped hair glistened, sitting atop his head like a skullcap. Jordy’s fingers shuffled the bills as if he were an expert, a casino cage attendant sorting twenties from tens, and tens from fives. His hands were small, proving to Joel Pataki, they were not a reliable indicator of size.

  “It’s all there,” Pataki said.

  Jordy looked up, all innocence, gullibility and good grace. “I’m not counting, just sorting.”

  Despite everything, Joel was drawn to this fiery young stallion, who even now was in the process of destroying life as Pataki, in a sybaritic buffet, which had yet to escalate to orgy status, had heretofore enjoyed.

  A simple allegation from the boy would be sufficient to ruin his career; proof of the photographs to earn him a stretch of federal hard time with Pataki playing prison bitch to some miscreant’s master in a role Joel was convinced he had neither the spirit nor physical resilience to endure. That Jordy had violated the relationship by surreptitiously snapping the two in flagrante delicto was moot. What was Joel thinking when he made the decision to bed down with a boy not yet half his own age? He wasn’t thinking, Pataki decided, at least not with the part of his anatomy that was capable.

  Joel didn’t regret the death of Missy Bitson. It had been she who first introduced the two, backstage following a Saturday afternoon rehearsal of Lady Be Good. It had been a miserable late autumn day, one in a succession of miserable autumn days. Dusk had come early, a temperature inversion producing an icy fog that settled motionless over the village like a quilt. Missy stayed late, working with Joel on a dance step she had mastered but wished to enhance. Jordy had walked her home through the gloom, returning later. Joel offered hot chocolate. The boy preferred something stronger, the two becoming drunk and ultimately ending up together naked in bed.

  For Joel Pataki it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Since first meeting, Jordy and he had shared the pleasure of each other’s company twice weekly, though Joel marveled wondrously at how much more of Jordy there was to share. Pataki never once considered what the boy might be getting from the relationship, his own better judgment and his libido overtaken by a passion he hadn’t experienced in more than twenty years.

  “There is no more where that came from, Jordy,” he said after Bitson had stopped counting—sorting. “I’m tapped out.”

  Jordy allowed himself to settle back comfortably into the plush sofa cushion as if he were more than merely an invited guest. He surveyed the condominium, the furniture and the contents. Tastefully appointed if neither opulent nor large. Jordy eyed Pataki reproachfully.

  “Firstly, I never asked for more. Secondly, if I did, you’d find a way to get it.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Who made you this way?”

  “What way is this?”

  “Vindictive, manipulative, hateful.”

  “What makes you want to suck the dick of a teenage boy? Can’t be I was just born this way? I mean, I don’t know about you, Joel, but I wasn’t diddled by neither my old lady or old man. Yeah, s
ure, my old lady slapped me around a bit, but no more, probly, than I deserved.”

  “You were planning it all along, weren’t you?” Pataki seemed deflated, as if over the course of their conversation, he’d miraculously shed weight, the extra pounds that with the help of Dr. Atkin’s Diet he’d been unable to lose. Joel recalled a line from the Cole Porter tune Love for Sale…appetizing young love for sale. “To extort me?”

  “Extortion is a strong word, Joel.” Jordy pressed a finger to his temple, as if thinking. “As strong, maybe, as statutory rape. Or sodomy.” Jordy grinned. “Maybe even pedophilia. How old was I when you started licking me; fifteen, maybe?”

  “Who put you up to this, Jordy? Seamus Mcteer?”

  “That bucket of shit? He’s a photographer, not a blackmailer.” Jordy pulled himself from the sofa. “You know, all this time you been playin’ me for a dumb nigger.”

  Joel said, “No.”

  “Okay then, have it your way; a dumb kid. Well, I really been playin’ you.” Jordy pointed.

  “I knew it; it’s why Missy introduced you to me in the first place. You planned it from the beginning, to set me up.” Joel’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m glad she’s dead.”

  Instinctively, Jordy flexed, the muscles in his body becoming taut. He crossed the floor to stand close to Joel, smelling, Pataki thought, faintly of marijuana and cheap after-shave.

  “Ten to fifteen, princess, hard time; really hard time.” Jordy grabbed his crotch, jiving. “They might not all be as big as me in da’ joint, but ya’ gotta’ know they won’t be as gentle wit’ you neither. Wit’ a fiiine booty like ‘dat,” he said, caressing Joel’s buttocks, “they gonna’ pass you ‘round da’ shower like a bar a soap. You’ll be shitting blood for weeks.”

  His eyes were noncommittal, belying the malice of his words. Two minutes later, Jordy was gone, closing the door softly behind him. Pataki hoped a truck—or something—might hit the boy on his way home.

  …

  Later the same afternoon, Jordy met with his friends in the municipal cemetery: that only two weeks ago he considered himself the peerless and self-anointed head of this destructive rabble never occurred to him, Jordy anxious, lately, about being seen in the company of this ragged collection of juvenile delinquents. For now they provided a source of ready if relatively paltry sums of petty cash, Jordy injudiciously dispensing, at liquidation prices, what remained of a dwindling stash of pot, ecstasy, amphetamines and prescription and over-the-counter drugs. It would keep them smiling stupidly well into the following month, by which time Jordy hoped to be trolling the bright light, big city streets of Times Square.

  Among those in attendance was Jenny Dojcsak, ill tempered, acting as if she were on the rag. Jordy said as much.

  “I—we—don’t see you anymore. What’s up?”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Jen,” he said testily. “The cops are all over my case.”

  “What do you expect?”

  “Don’t go down this road, Jen, you won’t like where it takes you.”

  “I’m not saying anything, Jordy. Only that the guys, well, you know. They feel abandoned.”

  Jordy gestured toward the assembly. “They feel abandoned? Them? They’re half fucking conscious. How can they feel anything?”

  Jenny stepped forward. She was as tall as Jordy, but wider. “Okay,” she said. “I feel abandoned. I text, you don’t reply. I call, you don’t answer. Who the fuck do you think you are, bailing on me?”

  Jordy didn’t flinch. Instead, he said, “I haven’t bailed on you. It’s just that everyone’s avoiding me like I stepped in dog shit. They think either Eugene or my old man killed Missy.”

  “I’m not. I don’t care who did it. I may be the last friend you have, Jordy. You’d better not piss me off.” Jennifer slugged Jordy in the shoulder, hard enough to hurt.

  “Has your old man said anything to you? About who he thinks done it?”

  “Ed doesn’t say fuck-all to me about anything. We don’t talk.”

  Jordy shuffled his feet, kicking up the dirt beneath his powder blue sneakers. “What about them?” he asked, referring to the gathering. “What up with them?”

  “Like you said; they can’t think anything,” Jenny said. “Seriously, they’re pissed. At Missy, at you, at everything; especially you.”

  “Why me?”

  “She was your cousin, man, you should have taken care of her.”

  Jordy thought for a moment before replying. “Is that a trick question?”

  “I’m only saying that lately, the two of you were tight, real tight. It doesn’t look so good, you know.”

  Jenny dragged deeply on her cigarette. With her dark eye make-up applied heavily and her oily hair and pale skin, she resembled a corpse. The look was a contradiction of styles: punk, heavy metal and Goth, Jenny as confused about her appearance as she was about her character. She didn’t want to feel for Jordy, but in the absence of any credible alternative had no option. Ed and Rena Dojcsak were too preoccupied with the limited prospects for their dying daughter, had been since Jen could recall. She had never enjoyed the company of an extended family, over time immediate relations becoming disaffected by the oppression of the Dojcsak’s unforgiving circumstances.

  Jordy and she had begun chumming in grade school, drawn by a common interest in the raucous music that filtered from each of their open bedroom windows and by the spiritual hollow recognizable in some, only to those who experience it themselves.

  Always cautious, for years the relationship served a surrogate purpose to both: until the introduction of Missy Bitson into the triangle. Jordy was clearly smitten with his young cousin, even at an early age, before the girl turned ten. At first, in a protective, almost brotherly fashion, later Jenny suspecting it had evolved into something more. She resented, though didn’t blame, Jordy. Missy? Jenny both blamed and hated her, considering the dead girl to be the sole source of Jordy’s total disaffection.

  “Fuck,” Jordy said now, “I gotta’ get outta’ here.”

  He turned from Jenny, walking along a footpath that led deeper into the wooded seclusion of the graveyard. He ignited his own cigarette, pondered his escalating addiction, though more in terms of its impact on his pocketbook than on his health. Jordy hadn’t been sleeping well lately, or eating. He’d ridiculed Joel Pataki over the prospect of possibly going to prison, but in truth, Jordy was scared shitless himself.

  “My grandmother is buried here,” said Jenny. She pointed to a row of weathered headstones. “Over there, I think.”

  “The one who died last year?”

  “You remember?”

  “Sure,” Jordy said, “you had a party.”

  “Not a party; a wake.”

  “Either way, you didn’t seem too cut up.”

  Jenny laughed. “Yeah, I asked Rena if she’ll have a party when Luba dies.”

  Jordy said, “What did she say?”

  Jenny chuckled. “Smacked me upside the head.”

  Where they walked, the soil was spongy beneath their feet, still saturated from the spring melt. The day was a mix of sun and cloud, though what little sun there was failed to penetrate this deep through the trees. The air smelled like rot. Jenny imagined it would smell this way underground. Suddenly, she regretted the certainty with which she knew Luba would soon die.

  “What will you do?” she asked Jordy.

  “Fucked if I know,” he said. “I got cash.”

  “You run, they’ll suspect you.”

  “Fuck it; I don’t, they will anyway.”

  “You’re right,” she said.

  They had come to a burial plot over which the soil was freshly turned. Jordy stopped walking.

  “Didn’t like her, did you?”

  Why bother to lie? She said, “No.”

  Jordy said, “That’s okay; she never liked you, neither.”

  Jenny crushed her cigarette beneath her heel. “Fuck off, shit-hea
d,” she said. “Fuck off and die.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  THEY FILED INTO the church, alone and in pairs, as couples and in groups, each attending as much from curiosity as to pay their final respects. Family, friends of family, solitary mourners and schoolmates gathered together in clusters, as if unwilling to bear the burden of the proceedings alone.

  As is typically the case with any large assembly and despite the gravity of the circumstances, there seemed that day to be a spontaneous and unexpected atmosphere of almost carnival-like levity. People spoke too loudly, laughed inappropriately or too often and greeted each other as if attending a wedding rather than a funeral. (But in keeping entirely with what the Reverend Cassie McMaster would later in the service describe as an occasion to Celebrate a life! rather than to mourn its passing, as if in her thirteen short years Missy could be said to have had a life.)

  Inside the church, immediately to the left of the altar, two pews had been reserved for the family. Earlier, an assortment of floral tributes had been removed from the Shuttleworth and Brown Funeral Parlor and transported to the chapel. Like oil in water, the sweet scent of roses, carnations and lilies mingled with the indelible odor of candle wax and incense to create an evocative, though not necessarily unpleasant, bouquet. Sunlight filtered like a kaleidoscope through a solitary stained glass window.

  Though most would not be able to name it, the organist played The Dream of Gerontius, an Elgar composition commissioned by the Birmingham England Festival Committee and first performed in October of nineteen hundred. Based on the poem by Cardinal John Newman, it had been the welcoming hymn at the funeral mass at St. Albans for Cardinal Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie, former Archbishop of Canterbury. Cassie McMaster had attended that event, having applied for and received, at the time, a special dispensation to finance the trip from church funds. In both music and words it was a fitting tribute: to Cardinal Runcie, and likewise to her niece.