THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE

by Jason Whitlock

  “Ripe?” Womack said as if he hadn’t heard, rather than simply misunderstood.

  “Aye, you’ve no doubt heard the saying: if she’s old enough to bleed, she’s old enough to do the deed.”

  “Jesus,” Womack blurted, “that’s disgusting.”

  “Be that as it may, son,” Fallon said, “You’ll not have a hope in solving this crime unless you consider it. It’s certainly no time for sensitivity.”

  With that, he turned from the Sheriff to his car, placing his medical bag on the passenger side seat. Referring to his wristwatch, he said, “It’s going on four a.m., Sheriff. Depending on how long they take to clear and transport the body, I may be able to give you a sense on how she died, sometime before noon. I’ll call.” Fallon slid behind the wheel of his vehicle and drove off, leaving Womack to debate with himself the exact and unsavory nature of the human condition.

  The following morning, as Womack washed down a thick slice of Rebecca’s banana bread toast with the last of the coffee he had carried in a thermos from home (not once experiencing guilt over his ever expanding waistline), the telephone rang. It was early, only nine o’clock. Though he knew his optimism was unwarranted, never having investigated a homicide, Sidney Womack was idealistic enough to believe from hereon each phone call represented a potential break in the case, each break in the case possibly leading to its ultimate resolution. As unlikely and unrealistic as it seemed, on this morning, for Sheriff Sid Womack, it proved to be true. The first call was from Ward Fallon and he was telling him, “There’s something you should see.”

  Within forty minutes, Womack was standing with the doctor in a third floor operatory at Albany Memorial Hospital, staring down at Frances Stoops, who now lay on a metal gurney, battered body concealed beneath an oddly incongruent, pristine white sheet.

  To his credit, Fallon asked, “How are the parents?”

  “The mother is devastated,” said Womack, “the father inconsolable.”

  “There’s a difference?” asked Fallon.

  “Only that the wife seems to be taking it better than the husband.”

  “Well, in cases like these there’s always an element of methinks they doth protest too much; I’d watch for crocodile tears. Were they any help in providing you with clues?”

  Womack said, “Seems the child was promiscuous.” His tone suggested disappointment, as if a long held ideal had been shattered. “They didn’t say so, not in so many words, but the inference is clear.”

  To Fallon, Womack appeared distressed to be discussing the victim in such terms. That Womack could not imagine promiscuity in himself, made it difficult for him, Fallon decided, to accept it in anyone else, especially in one so young. During his time in practice, the doctor had been sufficiently disabused of such idealistic notions.

  “Can’t say as she was promiscuous, Sheriff, though she wasn’t a virgin.”

  “Same thing isn’t it?”

  “Don’t be such a Puritan,” Fallon replied. He retrieved a pair of surgical gloves from a cabinet, snapped them over his fingers and returned to the corpse.

  “She’s a kid, Doc. How did she come to be having sex?” Womack wanted to know.

  Fallon seemed to consider before answering. “Children mature differently, at different rates of speed. It may be hormonal—purely physical—it may be environmental: the influence of family, friends or the process of socialization. No one knows for sure, though God knows every clinical psychologist has his—or her—own theory. Some girls at thirteen are playing Barbie; others at thirteen aspire to be Barbie. Typically, in a case like this, you look closer to home.”

  “The father.”

  Fallon shrugged. “It’s no surprise, Sidney. Have you any idea how many youngsters suffer at the hands of a father? More than you’d care to believe. And it’s not only girls, you know, boys too.”

  “You’re suggesting…”

  “It’s the easy answer, but no, no, nothing like that. Not in this case, anyway.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked Womack.

  Fallon brought the sheet covering the victim to waist height, exposing the genital area. Reaching for a magnifying glass, he passed it to Womack and said, “Something called forensics. Have a look, Sheriff. Don’t be shy. It’s no time to be skittish. Besides, you’ll be doing the poor soul a favor.”

  Womack hesitated, and asked, “What am I looking for?”

  “Something that shouldn’t be there.”

  “Don’t be cryptic, Doc. I’m new at this.”

  “And so you are.” Fallon retrieved the glass from Womack, holding it inches from the pubis. “Observe.”

  Womack did as instructed. Through the glass, the child’s hair seemed like down, a fine layer of strawberry feathers. With neither the stomach nor the heart to conduct a thorough inspection, Womack was preparing to pull away when he saw it. Indistinct at first, a closer look made it more noticeable against the victim’s red hair and pale skin: something that shouldn’t be there.

  “A hair,” he said.

  “Not simply a hair,” Fallon elaborated. “A hair that can’t possibly belong to the victim. A pubic hair, if I’m not mistaken. Negroid, if I were to hazard a guess.”

  “Negroid.”

  “Is that a question, Sheriff, or a confirmation?” Fallon replaced the sheet over the corpse. Frances’ hair had become disheveled during the exercise. He now re-arranged it carefully, brushing it from her face in a futile effort to restore her dignity.

  “Her attacker is Negro,” Sidney stated.

  “Well,” said Fallon, “if we accept she had sex with her attacker and her attacker was the person with whom she had sex, then yes, I suppose her attacker is Negro.”

  “You aren’t convinced?” Womack asked.

  “Sheriff, I deal in fact, not supposition; a different kind of connective tissue drives my conclusions. I’ll test the semen against any suspect you apprehend. Together with a match on the hair, the evidence will be awfully compelling.”

  “We had a death two weeks ago,” Womack offered tentatively.

  “Yes. Shelly Hayden. I do read the newspapers too,” Fallon added in response to the question he knew was forthcoming.

  “She was a redhead, Doc. Shelly Hayden. Like Frances; she was a redhead too. Do you suppose it’s relevant?”

  “Perhaps in the movies, though I wouldn’t consider it insignificant.”

  After leaving the Medical Examiner’s office, Womack spoke next to a Captain at the State Police, over the radio in his car. An examination had been conducted of Frances Stoops’ clothing, he was told. Her blue jeans, halter and underclothes had been found near the body, folded and neatly placed, though saturated with rain, and not forcibly removed. (Womack recalled the naked body of Shelly Hayden, whose clothing had never been found.) In a rear pocket of her jeans they had discovered a photograph, such as one might take in a portable picture booth. In what had been obviously happier times, Frances smiled in the photo, accompanied by a Negro teenager whose over-size teeth gleamed from his dark skin like bits of white ivory in black tar. On the opposite side of the photograph was an inscription, though in whose handwriting they could not say: “Frances and Drew”, it read.

  Within six hours after leaving Albany and with the appropriate paperwork processed, Womack had Drew Bitson, a black and the boy pictured with Frances in the photograph, in custody. Three hours later, Bitson was charged formally with the murder of Frances Stoops. By nine o’clock that evening, Drew had attended the Warren County lock-up, stooped, shivering, and whimpering, bound at the wrists though, Sidney had decided, not behind the back. Over the listless objection of a court appointed defense attorney, he had been refused bail. He would remain in custody and appear before the court thirty days hence, where County Prosecutor Jimmy Cromwell and the defense would each have the opportunity to argue why the case should proceed, be remanded, or be dismissed. Though not entirely satisfied with the result, Womack could not argue the court’s ruling. If not compelling,
the evidence was convincingly circumstantial. Sidney considered the claim made by Leland McMaster that Drew had been in the company of Shelly Hayden on the day she disappeared. Was this a case of possible double homicide?

  Womack returned home late that evening. He consumed a supper of leftover farmer sausage and cold beer, retiring to bed shortly before midnight, falling immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “ARABESQUE PENCHEE, ladies, Arabesque Penchee!”

  Marie Radigan crossed the floor gracefully, toes pointed outward in the pigeon style walk typical to students of ballet. “If I had wanted Allongee, I would have said Allongee and made myself clear about it!”

  Marie approached the bar. Her right hand gripped the wood rail more tightly than was necessary, and more so than she was accustomed to doing. While supporting herself with one leg, Marie extended the other behind her, knee straight, font pointed, torso pivoting on her hips so that the line of her body was roughly parallel to the floor.

  “We’re ballerinas, not middle line backers. Allongee,” she said, explaining.

  Marie then released the bar, extending her arms fully and leaning forward to the floor and back in a fluid, graceful, seesaw movement, all the while keeping her body and raised leg in fixed alignment. From this perspective she was able to note the scuffs on the plank floor, and the errant dust bunnies gathered round the baseboard like a collection of cotton candy. They scattered in response to her draft. Usually so meticulous, Marie hadn’t bothered today to polish or even to sweep, preoccupied as she was with the death of Missy Bitson.

  “Penchee,” Marie croaked, executing the movement and straightening herself. “Now, you,” she said.

  Marie vacated her position by the bar as her students scrambled to take her place. Small in size, the class consisted of half a dozen twelve to fourteen-year-old schoolgirls, exceptional dancers all: jazz, ballet and tap. Each Monday afternoon they were released from the monotony of a weekly gym class to attend the special weekday program. The program had been established in cooperation with the local school authority and in response to a request from the Artistic Director for the Church Falls Theater, Joel Pataki. For years, Joel had bemoaned to Marie the lack of available local, young talent to fill walk-on stage, chorus and even, once or twice, principal roles during the summer theater season. With the help of an acting instructor and vocal coach, Marie had for three years been turning out a troupe of talented young thespians, some of whom she was convinced would ultimately be compelled to pursue adult roles and perhaps even move on eventually to more meaningful fulltime training in New York.

  Marie observed the girls. Normally, they were chatty and keen. Today, they seemed stunned into a dull silence, like survivors of a train wreck for which the full magnitude of the tragedy would come later, only after shock and the guilt at having been spared finally fades. They moved listlessly through their routine, unwilling to engage in idle chatter on the subject of Missy Bitson, lest they be thought callous, yet unable to articulate those thoughts and feelings that even now they knew to be profound but of which, so soon after the tragedy, they were still unsure.

  Marie’s typically critical assessment moved from the students to a reflection of herself in a floor to ceiling mirror running the length of the studio. Flat of chest, narrow of hip, Marie’s five-foot frame could be mistaken easily for one of her students; many times it had been. Devoid of make-up and with her thin blond hair pulled back from her brow, the lines about her eyes were clearly visible, though not sufficiently so as to mark her true age. From a distance, attired casually in tee shirt and denims and with her pale skin and hair worn in wisps about her face, Marie passed easily for a woman—or woman-child—half her thirty years.

  Outside, the day turned bright. The sun successfully bullied through the last of the remaining cloud, finding its way through a recently installed picture window and reflecting off the floor like a puddle. The window was Marie’s concession to any possibility here for natural light. This past winter it had provided much needed illumination, even if Marie knew in summer it would raise the temperature ten degrees beyond what the air conditioning could comfortably maintain. No bother: the girls perspired lightly. When they did, to Marie they released an aroma both musky and sweet, familiar to her and somehow comforting, unaffected by the falsity of deodorant or strong perfume. Marie neither wore deodorant or perfume of any kind, preferring to shower three times daily: immediately upon rising in the morning, always after dance, and before retiring to bed.

  Marie was an only child, the product of a failed marriage and a mother who abandoned (condemned?) her to her father. (This prior to the child ever having had an opportunity to mature to the point where she would no longer compete with her mother for her father’s affection, which at the time Sophie Radigan could not have known her daughter hadn’t, and wouldn’t do.)

  Marie agonized over the reasons for her mother leaving. Repugnance? Remorse? Through childhood and adolescence and for many years thereafter, she had believed it to be repugnance, repugnance being most consistent at the time with Marie’s own feelings toward herself. Later, when she was older and better able to understand, Marie accepted Sophie’s decision to be from remorse, not for what she had done, but from a deep and irredeemable shame for what she hadn’t and couldn’t.

  Her father did not openly begrudge the premature loss of a wife or a mother for his child. In all ways, Marie stepped in to fill the void. If the relationship was thought odd by neighbors and friends—the Radigans having no immediate family living either near or in Church Falls—it wasn’t said. At least not openly, though had Marie been party to it she would have known it to be a point of gossip among the older women. Working around a full schedule at school and extracurricular activities including jazz-dance and ballet, Marie completed the household chores and the daily preparation of meals with the efficiency and aplomb of a modern day housewife juggling the competing demands of family and a job outside the home. If Marie thought this premature transition from child to homemaker odd, she didn’t say and didn’t complain.

  The police hadn’t yet come, though Marie knew they would. Missy’s connection to the studio, and to Marie, required it.

  Marie had spoken to Missy yesterday, had met with the girl on the day it was her misfortune to die. Marie had been walking, returning home from church alone while her father, as was his custom, slept in. On returning home that day and on each previous Sunday morning going back almost twenty years, it was Marie’s own custom to prepare her father breakfast: three eggs scrambled, pancakes topped with blueberry preserves, four strips of bacon well fried, one slice of Texas Toast, orange juice from frozen concentrate (in the opinion of Jeremy Radigan the Not from Concentrate brand being far too dear) and coffee. (If her father was a creature of anything, it was of habit.) Though she joined him at the table, Marie did not partake of the meal, sipping black coffee instead. There was her weight to consider and besides, the sulfurous odor of cooked egg and bacon was itself enough to send her running for the toilet.

  Walking that day, Marie crossed paths with Missy, by the river, believing at the time the younger woman had purposefully sought her out. Missy did, after all, live on the opposite side of the Hudson from Marie.

  The conversation was civil enough at first, becoming strained as they talked. The more they talked, the more strained was the tone of the conversation, the more strained the conversation the more they were compelled to talk. It was as if the exchange itself had an immutable force of its own, the ultimate conclusion foregone despite, or in spite of, the actual words spoken.

  Though the day was not yet warm, a bead of sweat appeared on Marie’s brow. Her shoulders ached from tension. Marie clenched her small fists, short fingernails making crescent shaped indentations in the palm of her hands. In contrast, Missy displayed no obvious physical manifestation that might reflect the tone of the discussion or the nature of her own contribution, which Marie thought peculiar in the extreme giv
en her own agitation. A full head taller than Marie, Missy’s lanky frame appeared relaxed, her hips slim in form-fitting jeans. Beneath her snug halter, Missy’s breasts were a visible insult to her teacher’s own flat chest. This, she thought, this is the reason for my having become to him an afterthought? A child? Would the little princess do his laundry, cook his meals, clean his toilet?

  Struggling to maintain control of both her emotions and the conversation, Marie succumbed to anxiety by striking Missy with an open right palm on the left cheek, drawing a nominal amount of blood and leaving a minor discoloring of the skin. To Marie’s surprise, Missy hit back: not hard, but enough to surprise, setting Marie back on her heels.

  Recovering, Marie said, “I won’t tell you again, Missy; stay away from my father.”

  “You don’t understand, Marie; it’s not that simple.”