Beneath the Weight of Sadness

by Gerald L. Dodge

  “You have to go, Carly,” Tommy shouted in my ear, alcohol still pungent on his breath. “Carly, Jesus Christ!”

  “Fuck you!” I said. “Go! Fucking go!”

  He did, of course. He had too much to lose. A full ride to the University of Virginia on a baseball scholarship. He had to go and I was glad to see him gone. Steve sat at a patio chair, the towel he was holding soaked with his blood. We had to call an ambulance, because we didn’t know what kind of damage Tommy had done to him. The kid who’d thrown the party didn’t want us to call, but we did. The cops came, finally, but none of us who’d stayed had been drinking, only smoking. They called our parents and we went home. It was the Persia cops and we all came from families who had connections; the cops were being careful about how they treated us. No one gave Tommy’s name. Steve didn’t press charges. He wouldn’t even tell the cops or his parents who’d done it to him. He said he didn’t know, happened too fast. I think he was afraid to say it was Tommy, because he thought Tommy would go after him again.

  After that night, I decided that was it, though. I didn’t want to deal with him. At school he would come up to me in the hallway and try and talk to me, and I’d just keep walking, my eyes straight ahead.

  “I’m not like that, Carly. I’m not. It’s just that I know he was after you. Please, Carly.”

  At night he would Facebook me, or text me, or call me on my cell. I didn’t want anything to do with him. Nothing!

  “I’d apologize to him, Carly. I’d do anything to show him how sorry I am. I know he won’t talk to me. I know he won’t. I can’t blame him. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That wasn’t me that night. My God, Carly, I miss you so much. Please.”

  He said this in the parking lot at school one day. I was going home with Jenny Witherspoon—even though before I’d always gone home with Tommy—and he took me by the arm and walked me away from Jenny’s car.

  “I don’t even know who you are, Tommy.”

  I started to cry.

  “Please, Carly. That wasn’t me. I just couldn’t bear to see you always hanging with him. I don’t know what got into me. I mean, except for the beer, which I definitely should not have been drinking. That was not me. I just saw him with you, the two of you smoking, and I…I just lost it. But that was definitely not me.”

  I tried to look away from him, but he kept coming around so I had to see his face, had to see his eyes. God, his eyes.

  “I miss you so much.”

  “I don’t know, Tommy. I don’t know.”

  But he saw a sliver of possibility. He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, and then all of the days we’d spent together crept in like morning creeps in and takes over night. He put his arms around me, and I felt his tightness, his hard body.

  “Carly,” he whispered.

  I shook my head, but that wasn’t what I was feeling, and Tommy knew it because he took my hand and gently pulled me toward his car. I looked over at Jenny, who was waiting with her car running. I smiled at her, shrugged my shoulders and walked with Tommy to his car.

  Detective Parachuk

  Three days after Truman’s death

  Mayor John Riddle didn’t look up as I entered his spacious office. He was looking down at a newspaper. Like most of what John does—Little John to his friends and enemies—reading the paper and not acknowledging my entrance was deliberate. I chose one of the two seats that faced his desk and sat. The New Jersey and United States flags flanked John on either side, and on the wall in between them was a bookshelf filled with volumes. To my right, even from a sitting position, I could see the Catatunk Stream, and beyond that the main road leading out of the town of Persia. John finally looked up from his paper and nodded to me. I nodded back.

  I grew up in Persia and went to school with Mayor Riddle, so his growling doesn’t bother me much. I was better in school and on the playing field, and had it not been for a certain girl I couldn’t quite get out of my mind when I was at State College playing second base and going to classes free, I probably would’ve been sitting on the other side of that chestnut desk. I came home my sophomore year to marry her. I’m still lucky, though. I married that girl, now Wendy Parachuk, and haven’t regretted a single moment of the time I’ve spent with her since kindergarten. Not many can say that.

  It was Wednesday morning three days after the murder. He and I had both been contacted not only by the local paper, but also the Star Ledger, the New York Times, The Washington Post and even the Boston Globe. This murder had national prominence, and when the mayor had called me late the night before I knew I was in for some cajoling, a habit old John had learned as a lawyer and as a boy spoiled by extravagance.

  He was dressed in a suit and tie. The weather was cold for the last day in March, windy as it often is in that month. The pasty fat that had stayed with him since he was a kid rolled over his buttoned collar. His cheeks were ruddy from his nightly whiskeys; his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, I imagined; and his chubby hands, ringed on both pinkies and on his wedding finger, trembled as he held today’s New York Times up so I could see the article about the murder of a seventeen-year-old boy from Persia, New Jersey.

  Possible Hate Crime Shakes New York Suburb

  “I’ve seen it,” I said. “Read the article this morning.”

  “Got a phone call from this reporter an hour before I called you last night.” He pointed to the byline. “‘No comment’ is what I told her.”

  “I read that part, too.”

  He dropped the paper on his desk and looked at me for any signs of sarcasm. This particular time there wasn’t any. I didn’t blame him for not saying anything. At this point, nobody had a clue why the Engroff boy was killed.

  “Where are we on this?”

  “He more than likely died from blunt-force trauma—which was determined by pre-mortem, peri-mortem and post-mortem bruising to the legs, the stomach, the back and the head. The blows to the head are the ones that killed him and, although the weapon to this point hasn’t been found, the coroner is fairly certain it was a baseball bat. The nature of the contusions, lacerations and fractures all indicate something smaller than a paddle oar, for example, and bigger than a lead pipe.”

  I had memorized parts of the results from the coroner the night before so I could recite them.

  When I was finished, Mayor Riddle looked at me as if I had two heads.

  “I don’t give a goddamn about all this bull, Nelson. I wanna know if this was a hate crime.”

  He slammed his hand down on the paper as if that would blot out the controversy. The article must’ve spoiled his daily breakfast of two eggs (over easy), toast (white), four slices of bacon and a pot of coffee at George’s Restaurant on the town square. I knew he didn’t want to hear any of the autopsy babble. I gave it to him to put him at a slight disadvantage.

  “It seems like most of the kids we’ve talked to at school to this point knew he was gay, teachers as well,” I said. “It also seems they didn’t care. The consensus, John, is that he was widely viewed as a strange kid. People liked him, generally, because he was different without…being offensive to them. He was his own person. I thought we’d go in there and get a sense of some dislike toward him—that there would be this…I don’t know.”

  I stopped, because I wasn’t sure what we’d expected. His Facebook profile was not typical of a kid of that age. He was funny and irreverent, but not just towards authority, which was usually the case with kids, teenagers—including my twin boys Justin and Alex when they were still in high school—but also toward cliques: jocks, nerds, motor heads, hippies, born-again Christians, wastes, druggies and anyone else who had more than one friend who was of the same persuasion. But from what we could tell, the majority of kids respected him and were very shaken by his death. Some wanted to see a counselor or psychologist. Some of them shook their heads in wonder and grief.

  “Well, Nelson, was the kid gay or wasn’t he?” The one vein on his forehead was starting to pop out.

 
; “According to his parents, he was.”

  “Well, I know Ethan and Amy and they’re first-rate folks.”

  When John called people “first-rate” it meant they possessed some form of power he respected and wanted. I understood why he would call the Engroffs first-rate. My slight exposure to them had unsettled me. Interviewing them was like talking to people from some other planet, both because of their enormous wealth and their terrible grief. I had never seen grief on that level before, even though Mr. Engroff’s was not as easily detectable. I don’t think either of them could’ve recounted a single word they’d said to me. But they were rich and John knew it. Old-money rich.

  “We haven’t interviewed the kid we most need to speak to, John.”

  He’d been deep in thought, probably about the various “first-rate” people he knew, but his head jerked up at my words.

  “What the fuck do you mean you haven’t interviewed the kid you need to speak to the most?”

  “Carly Rodenbaugh,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Frank said we can talk to her tomorrow, maybe.”

  Frank Rodenbaugh was a prominent lawyer in Manhattan, and he had incredible political connections in New Jersey. His father had been a state legislator and he was best friends with John Corzine.

  “Why ‘maybe?’” Mayor Riddle said meekly.

  “I guess she’s pretty devastated by the death of the kid. I think she’s being treated by a doctor who’s trying to get her feet back on the ground.”

  “How do you feel about that, Nelson?”

  I knew what he meant. He wondered if her reaction to the kid’s death might be deeper than just grief. I didn’t know. The thought had crossed my mind also. But I did know the reputation of Frank Rodenbaugh and it could be that he was just protecting his kid. He had the power to do that, at least for a while.

  “I know she and Truman were close. Both his parents mentioned her pretty early on in the interview I had with them. I don’t know the girl, but she could be really suffering from this, so it’s prudent to use kid gloves. Kids are susceptible to self-destructive tendencies in a situation like this.”

  “Jesus Christ almighty,” Mayor Riddle said. He put both his hands in the air in surrender and leaned back in his swivel chair, exposing a gut that surprised even me. “That cannot fucking happen in this case.”

  He meant, of course, that Carly Rodenbaugh, Frank Rodenbaugh’s daughter, could not be allowed to hurt herself. In Mayor John Riddle’s eyes that would be tantamount to political suicide. Especially if the tragic result was caused by his chief of police.

  “I doubt seriously if it will, but I’m guessing her father is not taking any chances. Or else…”

  “Or else what?”

  “There’s always the possibility she’s somehow involved and her father knows that.”

  “Jesus Christ almighty,” the mayor said again. “Don’t even go there, Nelson. I know the family in some ways and there is no way that girl would be involved in this…this disaster.”

  I knew he meant disaster to him, not to the Engroffs or to the other people who most certainly loved the Engroff boy. I’ve always had a hard time figuring out what motivates people as egocentric as John. For me they don’t seem to have any moral core, and I wonder how far they stray from the personality of a sociopath.

  “So let’s get back to the gay issue. What was the word from kids in school?”

  “Once again, John, most knew it, but I had to be careful about how I broached that topic. There’s the issue of privacy, regardless of the fact that Truman said he was interested in men on his Facebook profile. He was seventeen, after all. Who knows what they are, at seventeen? Plus, his parents have not talked to the press, so I don’t know where they’re getting their information.”

  “Talk to the reporter…what’s his name.” Mayor Riddle picked up the paper and looked at the article. “Her name, actually. Heather Trent.”

  “She may or may not be willing to divulge that information.”

  “Fuck! Why wouldn’t she? It’s not like this has anything to do with privacy, for shit’s sake. We just need to know if they have a source we can use.”

  I had to smile and hoped he didn’t see it. “They might not see it that way, John. They guard their sources pretty strictly.”

  “You need to find out, Nelson. I’ll talk to our lawyers at the same time to see how they view it.”

  This was the mayor’s favorite part of his power, I always thought: the town’s lawyers. He leveraged them when he needed to appear threatening and he knew his own title wasn’t commanding enough. The law was the law. I think he thought all lawyers were like him and, consequently, worked the law in their favor even if it wasn’t exactly legal.

  “Well, Detective Parachuk, maybe we can go at this from a different side.” His arms came back to his desk like an oversized goose making a bad landing. “Now that you’ve had access to his Facebook page—and perhaps other personal sites—is there any indication he had a boyfriend?”

  “He was pretty close to Logan Marsh, a kid who graduated last year and is now attending Columbia. He’s the son of Sam and Becca Marsh.” I knew the mayor knew them. They, too, were first-rate citizens. I wanted to smile again, because I knew everywhere we turned in this case, John Riddle would be up against people he perceived as influential.

  “Were this Marsh kid and the Engroff kid familiar with one another?”

  “Yes, that’s why we’ve found him to be a person of interest. Truman’s mother and father mentioned they were good friends, although Mr. Engroff couldn’t remember Logan’s name.”

  “You know what I fucking meant, Nelson! Don’t be obtuse with me.” He gave me a menacing stare.

  “Did you mean were they lovers?” I liked saying the word “lovers” out loud. I knew he wanted to avoid the idea of homosexuality. Mayor Riddle wanted all of this to go away or, if that didn’t happen, he wanted the crime to be solved so the spotlight would no longer rest on the people allegedly responsible for law and order. The burden was on me, of course, but it also rested rather heavily on the broad shoulders of the mayor, and he knew that. He did what I expected him to do. He winced at the question.

  “Yes, that’s what I meant. You know goddamn well that’s what I meant.”

  “I don’t think they were, John. I think they were just good friends. But I can’t say for sure. They could’ve been. Truman went into the city quite frequently. Logan will be one of the people we’ll interview very soon. On the other hand, I don’t know if Truman actually had an active sex life. We haven’t had anyone volunteer that kind of information, which normally happens in a case of this nature. If he had a lover, that person, unless they were involved in the murder, would more than likely come forward. They would want to help find who was responsible. Of course, if that person hadn’t come out, then that would change it, too. There are problems with this case because the kid was so private. Even his parents stressed that part.”

  The mayor looked down at the paper and then up at me.

  “What you need to do now is interview that Rodenbaugh girl. It sounds as if she’s gonna be a big help in this case. She’s the one person that might give you some answers.”

  “I intend to do just that, John. If her father stalls tomorrow, I’m going to take her into custody for questioning. I don’t think he’ll like that.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, Nelson, don’t resort to that! If he still stalls tomorrow, then I’ll get some people I know to call him and tell him it’s in the best interest of the child. But for Christ’s sake don’t piss him off. I can’t afford to have a guy like that taking aim at me. I’ve been thinking about a run at the state legislature next term and I don’t want…I need people like him on my side.”

  “I have the law to uphold, too, John. I’m trying to take it easy with the girl. I know she’s probably genuinely upset about this whole thing, but I bet she can help us. We need to be able to talk to her.”

  “Well
, if Frank gives you a hard time about questioning her, before you do anything else will you come to me?”

  “I can’t promise I’ll do that. I’ll try, but if this looks like it’s headed in her direction, I can’t promise anything. Like I said, I have the law to uphold.”

  The way he looked at me made me think of the times he’d sat in his pew with his step-father and mother and thrown tantrums in the middle of a service. But one of the things the mayor knew was that I was an elected official just as he was. He didn’t write my paychecks, and he couldn’t fire me, although I did, in an indirect way, work for him. But I wasn’t about to let him hamper my work because of his political aspirations. I’d seen the pain Truman’s parents were going through. I knew that there was a good chance their marriage would suffer because of what had happened to their only son. I’d taken enough psychology courses to know that some people had to grieve alone, and it seemed to me—though I wasn’t certain—that each of the Engroffs were on a lone journey to deal with their devastating loss. I also knew that if the person or persons responsible for the murder of Truman Engroff were found, it might help them heal, maybe together. I’d seen it happen before.

  “Well,” Mayor Riddle said. “Hopefully this will be solved before anyone else is damaged by this tragedy. I can’t imagine the pain those parents are going through right now. My heart goes out to them. I expect finding who did this will lessen their grief.”

  I expected this was Mayor Riddle practicing for what ultimately might be cameras trained on his face. I knew him well enough to know that whatever the Engroffs were suffering, he was not sympathetic, unless it was somehow to his advantage.

  I stood to leave. He eyed me for a moment. It was clear there was something more on his mind.

  “Should we call in the state police, Nelson? I mean, should they take over the entire case? They certainly have greater resources.” He folded his hands together and leaned forward conspiratorially. “I have a feeling this is going to get out of hand.”