Death in Dark Places

by Drew Franzen

  Burke tucked in to a steaming serving of Penne a la Vodka while Dojcsak picked cautiously with his fork at his own plate, mistakenly having ordered something with leek he thought from the menu description might contain veal. A generous application of Parmesan and hot chilies had failed to stimulate his appetite.

  “Sara is convinced it’s Jordy Bitson,” Dojcsak was telling Burke as the waiter cleared their plates, offering coffee. Burke accepted, Dojcsak ordered a third pint.

  “And you?” Burke wanted to know.

  “He was seen at the McDonalds on the day Missy disappeared.” No fewer than three eyewitnesses had come forward in response to Sara’s questioning, to confirm it. “The DNA is pretty conclusive. Then there’s the pictures…” he said, as if unable to finish the thought. “I’m inclined to think yes.”

  Dojcsak extracted a package of Camels before being informed by the hostess that dining room policy forbade the smoking of cigars, cigarettes or pipes indoors. “If you need to smoke,” she said, with the smug satisfaction of someone who herself had recently quit, “you’ll need to do it outside.”

  Dojcsak continued. “We don’t a have an eye-witness, but circumstantially, I think we have enough to indict.”

  “It wasn’t the kid who screwed her before she died, Ed; we’ll need to account for that.”

  Burke was not yet totally vested in the notion of Jordy as the only killer. Sara had suggested to him, in a round about way, that Jenny Dojcsak had been involved with Jordy in the killing of Missy Bitson, possibly as a lure. So far neither she nor Burke had mustered sufficient courage to confront Ed. Either way, Burke preferred the notion of a grand statewide conspiracy to account for the murder. In the U.S., kids killed kids everyday with hardly a mention on local newscasts, never mind CNN.

  “Mcteer?” Dojcsak offered.

  “More likely Radigan,” Burke said. “His brother is the security guard picked up in Mineola by the FBI. Sara’s canine friend has confirmed it. The phone records show a lot of chatter from the home in Mineola to Seamus over the last year and we haven’t even started to work back. That connects the dots between the federal investigation, Radigan, Seamus, Missy and the boy. Radigan’s brother will squawk; says he’s innocent and ready to turn State’s evidence in return for immunity from prosecution.”

  Burke pecked at the remains of his meal.

  “Look, Ed. I know you and Sara like the kid for the crime, but don’t dismiss that it’s a much wider conspiracy, is all I’m saying. Seamus is a photographer. He took those photos of Missy, Jordy and those other kids. He filmed the tapes: Mcteer and Radigan and Mineola, New York; do the math, Ed. You don’t need to be Colombo to draw the necessary conclusions. And,” he continued, before Dojcsak could interject, “what about the old man? My money says: he was screwing his daughter? He was screwing the grandkid, too.” Burke’s voice carried, drawing looks. He stared down the curious with his best fuck-you glare.

  Dojcsak said, “Of course, if we could tie her killing to the broader Federal Investigation, it would mean more exposure and greater publicity, wouldn’t it Christopher? It wouldn’t hurt your career prospects.”

  “All I’m saying, Ed, is don’t dismiss other possibilities. Is Bitson a scumbag? You bet, the worst. Was he screwing his cousin? You bet. But just because he was screwing her doesn’t mean he killed her. Hell, Ed, if we believed that about everybody, I’d be doing hard time instead of sitting here talking with you.”

  Dojcsak requested the check and before settling with the waiter ordered another beer. “I need to go, Ed. Sheila’s mother asked me to pick her up from the mall. Don’t mind do you?”

  “Go ahead, Christopher,” Dojcsak said. “I need to process our alternatives. I’ll speak to Sara, but in the meantime, don’t either one of you say or do anything without speaking to me first.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” said Burke, as if, really, he didn’t mean it.

  After lunch, Dojcsak returned to the office.

  “Dr. Henry called,” said Dorothy, “asked you to phone him back right away. Something about a mix-up with the blood sample he took last week.”

  “Whose?”

  “Yours.”

  Dojcsak ignored the request.

  In the office, the telephone was silent. With little else to do, Dorothy and Trinity Van Duesen sat watching Oprah on a small, portable TV, for women of a certain age Oprah being the genesis of all popular wisdom. Dojcsak watched as she interviewed Dennis Leary, who she claimed truly to be an upstanding guy.

  This contradicted, in Dojcsak’s mind, every role he had ever watched the actor play. (Though Dojcsak did enjoy the short-lived television series, The Job, staring the actor.) Millions of viewers who had believed one thing about the man, now were being asked to accept another owing to the mid-morning proclamation of a television talk show host. He wondered idly if women like Oprah were responsible for popularizing the sexuality of children in a way Dojcsak had seen them appear on soda pop commercials. He wondered if Oprah had children herself.

  From the office, Dojcsak telephoned Leland McMaster, requesting Maggie’s father speak with him tomorrow morning. Not asking Dojcsak why, McMaster agreed, suggesting they meet at his home. He would be in the barn tending a finicky mare. Dojcsak should arrive any time after sun-up, early.

  At the Fox ‘n Fiddle later that evening, Dojcsak consumed four pints of a yeasty, Guinness Cream Ale, a dozen suicide hot chicken wings, a platter of French fried potatoes and several handfuls of salted nuts, which were offered at the bar no charge. Given the size of Dojcsak’s fist, it was no wonder the bartender stopped serving after Dojcsak’s third bowl.

  The Fox ‘n Fiddle was smoky and crowded, mostly men, though by nine half a dozen forty-something, worse-for-the wear hausfraus had started to wade in, big hair resting on narrow shoulders, make-up applied too heavily across the cheeks and around the eyes. By last call they would be staggering to remain upright on their fuck-me style pumps, midriff-bulge and middle age spread straining against the fabric of too snug blue jeans made so by too many children and too many beers. Dojcsak regarded them dispassionately. This, he decided, is where the Missys of the world end up if they don’t get themselves killed first.

  He returned home that evening before ten. It was the first time he had done so since the murder. Rena was awake, preoccupied watching re-runs of The West Wing, in which the actor portraying the President is speaking with an actor portraying a psychiatrist.

  Dojcsak wondered how the actual incumbent of the Oval Office would feel about this; that a man occupying such an exalted position as he could be portrayed as being so dependent as to need a shrink? For that matter, how would the American public feel? Dojcsak wondered if the producers of the program might have a hidden political agenda.

  In this episode the President is unable to sleep, tormented by memories of an abusive father. This much Dojcsak could appreciate, though he himself was less tormented than confused by his own father’s behavior toward him.

  Except for sports, Dojcsak watched little commercial television, finding the range of sophisticated emotions displayed by fictional characters to be overblown and insincere, if not totally unlikely. In real life, people didn’t behave this way. To Ed Dojcsak, behavior was never that complicated. People are, people do: simple. Only a method actor could conjure up such bogus motivation.

  After the program, Rena offered tea. Dojcsak declined, accepting a beer instead. Rena settled across from him on the sofa. Dojcsak sat in a wingback chair, stocking feet raised and resting on an ottoman that had been recently reupholstered. The television was on, the volume low. The glare from the picture tube mixed with the light of a low table lamp, creating a pleasing, soft green glow extending as far as Dojcsak and his wife, illuminating their faces as if they were two actors on a stage. Dojcsak immediately recalled certain elements of his dream.

  In the kitchen, the refrigerator hummed. The house settled, as houses will do, otherwise it was silent.
After Rena had sipped from her tea, she said, “Henry was by again today.”

  Dojcsak said, “I see; with a revised prognostication on when Luba will finally die?”

  “Actually,” his wife replied, “he came to see about you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dojcsak said. “I didn’t know.”

  “You’re always sorry for something, Ed” she replied. Dojcsak had yet to taste his beer. Rena sipped more tea and said, “Funny, but you’re never inspired to do much about it.”

  Dojcsak caught himself before saying again, Sorry. “What is Henry’s interest in me?” he asked instead.

  “Your health. He’s concerned for it. Frankly, Ed, so am I.”

  “It’s the investigation, Rena.”

  “It’s more than that, Ed. Our daughter is going to die—soon—and we don’t even talk about it. We haven’t planned for the funeral or for life after she’s gone. It seems to me you’ve already made up your mind that there is no life after she’s gone. If you have, decided that, you owe it to me to say. I won’t bother investing the effort to see this thing through.”

  “What does your Swami have to say about it?” Dojcsak asked, immediately regretting the remark.

  He avoided her gaze by focusing on the television, where a new show was playing. A man stepped from a room—a bathroom or a closet, Dojcsak couldn’t tell—covered head to toe with shaving cream, while others—two men and a woman, his family Dojcsak presumed—looked on. Dojcsak failed to see the humor, though with the sound low he assumed he had missed something in the visual translation. Through the shave cream Dojcsak detected one button visible on the man’s suit jacket, though he reasoned there must be more, otherwise the jacket would fall open at the knap. The woman wore a short skirt; if there were buttons, Dojcsak couldn’t see.

  Rena finished her tea. She looked at her husband staring blankly at the television screen. He hadn’t touched his beer. Rena wanted to scream, to claw at his eyes with her fingers and to scratch his already painful looking skin with her nails, to dig and discover if there remained beneath the surface a deeper layer of emotion. During the years Luba had been dying, Ed was so self-indulgent and self-possessed as to resentfully and resignedly believe the illness was more about him, than it was about her.

  “My Swami says I have two great burdens in my life, Ed. Though it’s painful to bear, she says in time one will pass. The other will be more difficult to overcome, still more difficult to comprehend. Which are you, Ed?” Insufficiently motivated to discuss what Dr. Henry Bauer had described as her husband’s precarious condition, Rena lifted herself from the sofa. “I’m going to bed.”

  In the kitchen, she rinsed her cup. Shortly thereafter, she climbed the stairs to bed.

  Dojcsak waited until she finished in the bathroom. He listened to Rena as she rinsed her mouth after brushing her teeth, flushed the toilet and washed her hands. He listened to the door of his bedroom as it was quietly pushed shut.

  Without finishing his beer, Dojcsak eventually mounted the stairs himself. Jenny was out. Dojcsak didn’t soon expect her. In the bathroom, he shaved using a dull blade. A sharp edge, he reasoned, might initiate a blood flow he would be unable to staunch.

  Unenthused and foregoing his usual routine, Dojcsak counted only fifty-seven strokes; two fewer on each cheek and on either side of his jaw and finally, one less over the upper lip. As usual, Dojcsak wrapped his blade carefully, discarding it carelessly and in doing so missing the trashcan altogether. Bending to retrieve the cartridge, he faltered, the weight of his torso threatening to act as a cantilever and topple him to the floor. At the last moment, Dojcsak gripped the pedestal sink, lowered his bulk cautiously into a sitting position on the cool tiles, and propped his back against the wall.

  It had been Rena’s idea to install the black and white two-inch by two-inch checkerboard ceramic pattern. All four thousand three hundred twenty, less seventy-seven to account for the toilet and the base of the pedestal sink; a total of four thousand two hundred forty-three tiles in all. Seventy-two rows of sixty, or sixty rows of seventy-two (less seventy-seven); from corner to corner diagonally, one hundred thirty-two on all four points of the compass. From the center along the length, thirty-six either way (not counting the center tile, lest it be counted twice) for a total of seventy-three; from the center along the width, twenty-nine either way (not counting the center tile, lest it be counted twice) for a total of fifty-nine. Dojcsak sat for a moment and struggled to pull himself upright from the floor, careful to avoid eye contact with the black and white two inch by two inch squares lest he be compelled to spend the night reconfirming his previous count of the tiles it had been Rena’s decision to install in the first place.

  Before retiring, Dojcsak entered his youngest daughter’s bedroom. Luba didn’t respond to his presence, but Dojcsak suspected she listened. Listened in the unconditional and non-judgmental way he needed, but from those close to him, he had never received.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  LIKE ED DOJCSAK, Eugene Bitson returned home that evening before ten. He discovered Maggie in the kitchen, surrounded by food. On the stovetop, each of four burners was occupied with a simmering pot. The aroma of cooked beans, tomato, curry and something unpleasant—which Eugene could not immediately identify—wafted toward the kitchen ceiling in a combined puff of steam. Without lids, the contents of each bubbling container overflowed like lava from an erupting volcano, running down the sides onto the electric elements, creating, Eugene now realized, the unidentifiable and unsavory odor.

  On the kitchen counter there was jug milk, fruit juice, bottled water and soda. Soda in screw top glass bottles, soda in pop-top cans, soda in plastic, recyclable containers. Everywhere on the floor meat, chicken and fish thawed, leaving greasy, bloody puddles. Fresh fruit and vegetables were scattered over the linoleum, some still in their clear plastic grocery wrap, others, those that could—like apples, oranges, plums, nectarines—rolling across the tile like hand grenades at a convention of terrorists. Careful to avoid them, Eugene approached his wife.

  Both Cassie and his daughter had cautioned him on what to expect. Eugene had been forewarned at the bank, by the status of his depleted checking account. The grocer, even, had advised him Maggie was behaving oddly, though under the circumstances they were careful to not say strange. Eugene had been cautioned, forewarned and advised, but he had been offered no recommendations and no advice on what to do about it.

  “Maggie?” he said in a nervous voice. His wife had lost weight, just how much he could see now by the way her blouse fell from her shoulders, and the slacks from her protruding hips; Maggie resembled a coat hanger. Canker sores erupted from her lips. Her skin was stretched tight as a lampshade.

  “You’re home,” she replied, without turning.

  “Thought I’d leave early,” he said. “Things have picked up at the store. I’ve hired new staff. Won’t be working as many hours as I have been, unless somebody quits,” he lied. “I’ll be home more often.”

  Maggie did not respond.

  “That would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?” he ventured.

  Maggie surveyed the room, oblivious to the bottles on the countertop, the food on the floor, and the pots bubbling on the stove. “Hungry?” she asked, turning to face him. “It’s not much, but I’m sure I could throw something together.”

  Throughout the course of their marriage, Eugene had either adored his wife or, alternately, he had despised her. More often than once, he had experienced these conflicting emotions concurrently. When Evelyn arrived, their firstborn—Maggie’s firstborn—Eugene had wept, at first with joy then with rage upon realizing the child could not possibly be his. He’d been sick to his stomach in the men’s room, returning later to Maggie’s bedside, compelled both to caress her and to smash her face with his fist, unsure of how he would react until finally at the last moment, he moved to embrace her. He was, after all, a mere boy and in too deep to do otherwise.

  Eugene
loved Evelyn as if she was his own, but was unable to compensate adequately for Maggie’s contempt toward the child. Life was difficult, becoming intolerable for Evelyn after the arrival first of Mandy, and following her, Missy. Eugene both sympathized and resented Maggie’s attitude toward her daughter, even if it was beyond his capacity to understand. Even now, Eugene was unsure if he should feel pity for his wife or cast blame. Eugene believed instinctively that in the manner of their daughter’s passing, it could happen only to a child of hers.

  Unable to face her any longer, he said, “I’m going to bed.” Eugene turned from the kitchen, taking the steps to his bedroom two at a time.

  Later, after Maggie had straightened the kitchen and long after Eugene had fallen into a deep sleep, she herself was ready for bed. She did not take the stairs two at a time like her husband. Maggie attacked them slowly, methodically, as if each were a burden.

  In the bedroom, she spoke to the sleeping Eugene as if he were awake.

  “I know you blame me,” she said. “I understand. I should have done more, for your sake if not hers.” Eugene turned from his stomach to his back, but did not wake. Satisfied that he was listening, Maggie continued. “I’m a terrible mother, Eugene, God knows, I’m unfit. It’s not as if I had someone to take after, is it? Instead, I suppose, I defined myself by him, against him, like a mirror.”

  Slowly, Maggie undressed, discarding her blouse and her slacks in a heap on the floor. She hadn’t bathed in over a week and her underclothes were soiled. “Don’t you see? Without Daddy, who was I? As his reflection, if I shut him out, wouldn’t I myself simply disappear, cease to exist?”

  She looked to Eugene as if for an answer. When he didn’t respond, she said, “I’m really no better than who I was, Eugene, like one of Daddy’s horses. I wish I could, but I can’t rise above my bloodlines. Please understand; please understand and please forgive me. I know I shouldn’t ask; I have no right, but you’re a good man, Eugene, you’re a good, good man. I don’t care anymore if God forgives me; he abandoned me long ago. Still, I’ll pray to him anyway, that you will, forgive me.”