Death in Dark Places

by Drew Franzen

  Joel Pataki worried for months afterward over the nature of his relationship with Jordy becoming public. It never did. Pataki lost weight, developed an ulcer and suffered from erectile dysfunction in the year following Jordy’s death, never once regretting or begrudging his various and sundry ailments.

  Marie Radigan had not seen her father since the morning he waved a toodle-oo goodbye to her at the studio, the same day he met with Seamus Mcteer at a rest stop to the on-ramp to the I-87. As the home she shared with Jeremy carried no mortgage and with her modest income from the studio sufficient to meet her monthly requirements, Marie reported her father neither missing nor missed. Eventually, the police questioned Marie, though she offered nothing in the way of meaningful information; she had none to give. In this, Marie was grateful for some aspects of her father’s secretive behavior.

  Neighbors commented that after Jeremy’s departure (disappearance?), Marie left the house more often, doing so with a more vigorous and confident step. She began to apply face make-up and grow out her hair so by midsummer it reached to her shoulders. Strangely, Marie began to look all of her thirty years. Though some would find this distressing in an age fixated on glamour and perpetual youth, for the daughter of Sophie and Roots Radigan it was a singular and necessary relief.

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  THE FOLLOWING OCTOBER, Luba Dojcsak died. One moment, Luba’s disabled lungs labored unsuccessfully to achieve what in most is taken for granted; the next they did not. Doctor Henry Bauer was satisfied, though not pleased, to have been proved correct in at least one of the many best estimates he had made on when Luba Dojcsak might finally die, having advised her mother earlier that morning: “Any day now Rena, any moment perhaps”.

  Rena Dojcsak was obliged to purchase a gown in which to bury her daughter. Never before having had the need, Luba’s wardrobe was limited. Visitation was at the funeral home of Shuttleworth and Brown. Luba wore her new dress, Dojcsak his best suit, Rena a black skirt with navy top.

  Jenny, though she failed to attend visitation on the first evening, arrived on the next composed and attired appropriately in black slacks and a neat, three-quarter length black leather jacket—no patches, no pins. She had removed the earrings from her eyebrow, her lower lip and the nostril, though not from her ears. She had brushed out her hair into a stylish bob. While many thought it an expression of respect for her parents, it was in fact on behalf of her sister that Jenny did so. In those few lucid moments when Luba was capable, she teased her sister good-naturedly over her rugged appearance.

  On the day of the funeral, dawn arrived like a schizophrenic tug-of-war between the seasons, a confused mix of winter and fall. Alternately, the air was warm and then cold, overcast and then bright, breezy and then calm. It was an autumn day on which the sun and the wind disappear and reappear in turn, making it difficult to know how to comfortably dress. If Ed Dojcsak had been hoping for a portent in the weather to mark the passing of his daughter, he found none that day.

  Afterward, there was coffee and sweets at a small reception hosted in the Dojcsak family home. Fifty mourners crowded the small living room and front entrance hall, spilling into the kitchen. Christopher Burke was not among them. He had returned with his wife and his newborn baby daughter to Syracuse, to live temporarily with his in-laws. Burke had been offered, and accepted, a position with the New York State Police as a Traffic Investigator, probing the cause of vehicular mayhem on and about a fifty-mile stretch of Interstate Ninety Five running between Syracuse and Utica, New York.

  “It’s a better opportunity than I have here, Ed,” he said to Dojcsak on the day he announced he would be leaving. “It could be thirty years before this town see’s another homicide,” Burke said in explaining his decision.

  Dojcsak did not disagree. With Seamus Mcteer likely to be sentenced to twenty-five to life, Jeremy Radigan gone, both Leland McMaster and Jordy Bitson dead and Maggie committed to the State Mental Facility in Albany, the population of reasonable murder suspects residing within the community—or those apt to commit one—had been drastically reduced. What remained was hardly sufficient to satisfy the ambition of Christopher Burke.

  “Jennifer looks good,” Sara said to Dojcsak now. She had approached from the bathroom, from behind, without his knowing. Dojcsak sat by himself on the stairs of a second floor landing, smoking and sipping the last of a warm beer.

  “She does,” he replied. “I won’t get my hopes up though. Looks can be deceiving.”

  “Isn’t it about time you gave her the benefit of the doubt, Ed?”

  “You’re young, Sara, you have the luxury of time.”

  Sara sat beside him, the stairs just able to accommodate the two side-by-side together. She had not divulged to Ed the issue of Missy’s telephone call to the Dojcsak home; thankfully, neither had Burke. Sara said, “Tell me, Ed, are you satisfied with the outcome?”

  “It would be better if she hadn’t died so young, but yes, given the state of her health I suppose you could say it’s for the best.”

  “I’m not referring to Luba. I’m talking about the Bitson investigation.”

  Dojcsak shrugged. “Leave it be, Sara. Justice has been done; more importantly, justice is seen to have been done. Smarter people than us have seen to that.”

  “Do we know for certain who killed Missy? It’s all so circumstantial.”

  Dojcsak deposited his cigarette butt into his empty beer bottle, immediately igniting another.

  “Jordy is dead,” he replied, as if this were as satisfactory a conclusion as any. “Seamus will go to prison for a long and, I imagine, a very difficult time. He may have had something to do with Jeremy Radigan’s disappearance; he may not have. Either way, it’s no great loss to the community. As for Maggie, she’s where she belongs—has belonged—for some time,” Dojcsak reasoned.

  “And Leland McMaster?” asked Sara.

  “Don’t expect me to shed any tears. You’ve seen the photographs: his granddaughter, and only thirteen. This saves us the cost of a trial, Sara. He got what he deserved, probably his wife too.”

  “Do they ever?”

  “What?”

  “Get what they deserve, the Leland McMasters of the world.”

  “They do a lot of damage in the meantime, but ultimately, yes, I suppose they do. It’s a question of guilt, isn’t it, that certain justice that comes with living with the guilt?”

  “You sound as if you speak from experience, Ed.”

  “Look at my life, Sara,” he said with a nod, indicating the many who had come to pay Luba their last respects. “There’s more than one way to wreck a family.”

  “Recognizing a problem may be the first step.”

  “Knowing it and doing something about it are two different things. And you?” Dojcsak asked now. “What are your plans?”

  Sara considered her response.

  “I’ve been accepted to begin training with the State Police,” she said.

  “I know,” Dojcsak replied. “Congratulations.”

  She was unable to know if he was pleased. She said, “It’s gratifying to know they want me, to know I qualify. It may be fine for Christopher, but me? I don’t see myself scraping human road-kill up off the Interstate as a particularly rewarding career opportunity.”

  “You’re satisfied they asked, but you’ll stay,” said Dojcsak.

  “I’m satisfied, and I’ll stay,” Sara agreed, even though, coming from Dojcsak, it had not been a question.

  “How long?” he asked.

  Sara shrugged. “Until something better comes along, I suppose.”

  Dojcsak drew a lung full of smoke. “Well, you may not have long to wait.” He raised his beer bottle to his lips and realizing it was empty said, “I need another,” before leaving Sara alone, sitting on the step, to make sense of his reaction.

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  CONSCIOUSLY UNAWARE of doing so, Ed Dojcsak quoted Yogi Bera: “It’s like déjà vu al
l over again”. The phrase repeated over and over and over in his head.

  It was after midnight. It was Sara on the telephone informing him the child was no longer missing but dead; on lifting the receiver, Ed Dojcsak knew as much.

  Again Dojcsak lamented the weather. Again he regretted his decision to delay filling a renewed—though now much dated—eyeglass prescription. It was a short drive to the body, but tonight it was snow—blowing and drifting—and not fog that would conspire with his neglect to obliterate the florescent yellow markings on the roadway and upcoming curves he would encounter on his way there.

  Before leaving the bedroom that evening, Dojcsak did not throw a glance over the shoulder at his wife sleeping beside him. Rena had left, taking Jennifer with her, shortly after the death of Luba. Dojcsak reached for the St. Jude Medallion dangling at his chest; finding it missing, he pulled only hair. He wondered briefly where he’d misplaced it.

  In the bathroom, Dojcsak shaved carelessly, brushed his teeth, rinsed his mouth and didn’t bother to comb his hair.

  Pridmore was waiting by her vehicle when he arrived at the crime scene, off to one side of the road, roof lights and four-way emergency signals flashing a losing battle against the driving snow. She pointed, mumbling something made unintelligible by the wind. She began walking toward the river, motioning for him to follow.

  The snow traveled across the surface of the water in a horizontal gust, pricking at the surface of his skin like shrapnel as Dojcsak crossed the open field in Pridmore’s footsteps. On her head, Sara wore a Cossack-style fur cap with the side flaps drawn tightly down over her ears and cheeks, the front flap pinned up over her forehead with her police badge showing. In her left hand, she carried an oversize police-issue flashlight. With each step, Sara’s legs burrowed in the snow to mid-shin, for her making the journey to the river from the road a modest struggle. For Dojcsak, it was a monumental task. His heart pounded. Beneath his coat and hat he perspired heavily. He’d dropped almost forty pounds since spring, become stooped, and his head of thick sandy brown turning silver hair had begun to thin noticeably.

  The body was protected from the worst of the elements by a makeshift poly-vinyl barrier erected by the State Police, who earlier had arrived on the scene. Dojcsak recognized the yellow cover as the kind used to conceal from curious onlookers the remains of traffic fatalities, when bodies are not easily or immediately extracted from a twisted and tangled wreck. The Troopers had yet to erect an enclosure or the halogen arc lamps that would illuminate the scene. The body was obscured by darkness and swirling snow.

  Forced to compete with the wind, Dojcsak yelled. “Is it her?”

  Sara simply nodded, as if her tongue had frozen to the roof of her mouth. The missing child, now victim, was reported as such when she failed to return home the previous evening, from a skating party organized by her school. Breanne Tauser was slight of build, though tall for her age. Thirteen years old going on fourteen, she was scheduled to attend the local high school in September of the following year. No one suggested she was promiscuous, but as he had in the case of Missy Bitson, Dojcsak suspected.

  The body lay frozen in the snow, fully clothed; heavy winter parka, fur lined hood pulled tight around her face, blue jeans, black knee-high boots and, though she was not now wearing them, a pair of blue mittens beside her body, half buried in ice. A pair of boys’ ice-skates lay off to the side of the body, as if thrown carelessly. Dojcsak fixed Pridmore with a questioning glance.

  “Doesn’t mean a thing,” Sara said now, speaking finally, as if her lips had just thawed. “They belong to her. Girls wear them all the time.” She looked skyward, through the driving snow. “Just like Missy Bitson, Ed.”

  “The ice skates?”

  “The weather,” Pridmore explained. “Only that day it was rain, remember?”

  Dojcsak kneeled by the body, out of the wind, in much the way Doctor Ward Fallon had done more than thirty-years previous, over the body of Frances Stoops. He raised his light to the victim’s face. Her expression was clear and unperturbed; as if this was destiny and all that passed before simply prelude to a final destination. Dojcsak did not search for vital signs; it was pointless. Pridmore, the State Police or both would have done so earlier. Still, Dojcsak touched his palm gently to the girl’s forehead, as if checking for fever.

  “Has anyone touched her, conducted a body search?” he asked Pridmore without turning to her.

  “No,” was the muted reply. “We’re waiting for the ME.”

  Dojcsak focused the flashlight beam on the girl’s bare hands. They were frozen solid into small, tightly clenched fists. Unable to defend herself, Breanne had made a show of it nonetheless. Dojcsak pried at the knuckles of her left hand. Nothing. Next, he forced the index and middle finger to her right, moving them slightly. The others were impossibly constricted in a death-grip he was unable to loosen. In the palm of the child’s hand, something glittered like a snowflake in the powerful beam of the flashlight. Dojcsak detected a metallic object: a valuable piece of material evidence? He looked more closely. There, embedded in the skin and dusted with a fringe of dry and frozen blood, was what Dojcsak feared, yet knew with certainty he would find; his St. Jude Medallion.

  He tore at the victim’s grasp, earnestly, though not desperately, trying to loosen the dead girl’s fingers. He began to shiver, to sweat even more heavily in his parka, if it was possible for him to do so. His heartbeat became irregular: thump, then thumpity, thump, thump, then thump again, then finally skipping a beat altogether, as if his internal engine had stalled. Dojcsak’s lungs burned, the ailing tissue flash-frozen by the bitter wind.

  He continued to struggle. Dead people, he imagined.

  “Anything?” Pridmore asked from over his shoulder, her face half hidden in the fur collar lining her jacket.

  Sure, Dojcsak almost burst out, I see dead people.

  “Ed, what is it?” asked Pridmore, moving closer.

  Shelly Hayden, Frances Stoops, Lisa Diorio, Missy Bitson; other girls whose names he could not recall or had never known. Jordy Bitson, though he did not fit the profile: the first time ever Dojcsak could recall being motivated by pure self-interest. (Or was it shame, at what Jordy had witnessed in the alley and threatened to reveal?) No remorse, Dojcsak thought, none of them: no remorse, no shame and no guilt. While me? I am burdened with all three.

  “What have you found, Ed?”

  But Breanne Tauser would not relinquish her precious treasure so easily. Sensing the futility, Dojcsak stood finally to his feet, unsteady against the pounding wind. Resigned, he said to Sara, “Nothing. I need a smoke.”

  Ed Dojcsak walked from the crime scene then, away from the body and through the snow.

  He did not hear Sara Pridmore when she called out, “Ed, Ed! Where are you going?” He did not hear Sara when she muttered under her breath, “Jesus, Ed, I thought you’d stopped smoking.”

  Dojcsak turned his back to Pridmore, the Troopers and the body. He walked slowly but purposefully toward the river, along a footpath to the dam and a barrier that had been erected years earlier in an effort to keep curious visitors and reckless teens from wandering too far along the break-wall. In summer, when the water was low and conditions dry, it wasn’t so dangerous. But in the early spring and late fall, when water levels became elevated, the drop in temperature caused a thin film of ice to accumulate on the concrete, making the surface treacherous.

  Standing alone in the snow, Dojcsak wondered at the number of suicides here who had been classified mistakenly as accidental death. After all, he knew a walk along the break wall at any time between December and March guaranteed, to someone looking, virtually the same result.

  Dojcsak mused, imagining himself a novelist tying up loose ends. As the author, he was quite satisfied with the outcome. If given the opportunity to rewrite, some things he would change but mostly leave unaltered, like the Ten Commandments carved indelibly in a tablet of hard stone. As with many
things in his life and despite his best effort, Ed Dojcsak was locked into a pattern of simple behavior of which he was unaware and powerless to change.

  END