“That seems to be your usual way of helping criminals into cars,” I said, remembering how he done the same to Frankie Ralston.
“Not officially. But I can tell you it felt damn good.” He paused. “For me, not him. He swore a blue streak at me, and he’s got a nice shiner under his right eye. Oh, and I gave him a ticket for an expired registration on his truck, too.”
Sometimes I wished I were as big as Frank Olney. I would have loved to bounce Dick Metzger’s head off the car door. And maybe slam the door two or three times more on his head while I was at it.
“So when do you have to let him out?”
“I’ll release him in a couple of hours. I just don’t have enough to keep him locked up.”
“What can we do, Frank?”
“I wish I could tell you,” he said. “But can I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you think Dick Metzger killed Darleen?”
I took my time before answering. Not that I was considering the question at all, but I was trying to find an answer that would derail what I assumed Frank was going to say next. Finally I had to admit that, for all the hatred I harbored for him, I did not think Dick Metzger had murdered his stepdaughter.
“Then let me tell you something that I think you should consider. Darleen is gone. Metzger can’t harm her anymore. But there is a murderer on the loose, and we both want to catch him. I suggest you swallow your disgust and disappointment and concentrate on finding something that will stick to Brossard.”
After a suitable pause to digest his advice, I had to admit that it was the most practical course to follow. Dick Metzger may or may not molest another young girl. Maybe he was an opportunistic rapist, who took advantage of Darleen because she was handy. Had there ever been talk of him bothering other children? I didn’t know. But one thing I did know was that Louis Brossard had killed before and probably would again if he weren’t stopped. But how to catch him? The trail had gone cold in the four weeks since December 21, and I didn’t know where to turn for ideas.
“Okay, Frank. For now, I’ll put that pervert to one side. But once we nail Brossard, I’m going to make a nuisance of myself and investigate every last detail of Dick Metzger’s worthless life until I get him.”
At two thirty, I was outside the junior-high-school parking lot again, this time waiting for Gus Arnold and Carol Liswenski. I wanted to retrace my steps and badger the witnesses until one of them gave me something new to go on. Perhaps the bus driver was frightened and holding back what he knew. If he could just place Louis Brossard in the snow hills after four thirty on December 21, I was confident the DA could make a case against him.
And then there was Carol Liswenski, the weak link in the circle of Darleen’s friends. She knew a lot, some of which she’d shared with me, and more still she was keeping to herself. I was sure of it.
The buses had started to arrive, and number 63 pulled into its usual parking space along the wall. I switched off the ignition of my Royal Lancer and climbed out. Gus Arnold was not happy see me.
“I already told you everything,” he whined.
“Come on, Mr. Arnold,” I said. “You were parked behind the snow hills, not fifty yards from where Darleen Hicks was killed. And, it seems, at the exact same time. The sheriff found her gloves right there.”
“But I told you, it was dark. And I was hidden behind those trees. I couldn’t see the car.”
“What?”
“I mean, if there was a car there, I couldn’t have seen it.”
“You saw a car,” I accused.
“I didn’t see nothing.”
I glared at him. “So far, you’re the only person we know who was there that day. You have no alibi, and the sheriff’s getting heat to arrest someone for this crime. If I were you, and if I hadn’t seen a car there, I’d jolly well invent one.”
“I didn’t see a car. I can’t lie and say there was one.” He paused. “But I thought I heard one.”
That was new.
“I went to the back of the bus and opened the pint,” he continued. “I laid down and took my time to drink it. Then I must have fallen asleep for a bit. I thought I heard a car arrive, but I never looked. And I didn’t hear any voices or anything funny.”
This was a dead end. I was getting nowhere with the most recalcitrant, least reliable witness I could imagine. Just then, Carol Liswenski climbed into the bus. Wanting to get her away from her friends, I convinced her to let me give her a lift home.
“I’m sorry about Darleen,” I said as we pulled away from the school. “It must be a difficult time for you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I kind of already accepted that she was gone. One way or another. But it’s sad to know that she’s really dead. And that someone killed her on purpose.”
“Can I ask you a question?” I said.
“I figured you would.”
“Are you and your friends on the outs? Susan and Linda?”
Carol looked away. I took that for a yes.
“Did Darleen ever talk to you about her stepfather?”
“How do you mean?”
“Did she ever tell you anything really personal about him? Like secrets?”
Carol watched me from her seat. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, in part because I had to keep my eyes on the road. She finally said that Darleen had told her and Susan and Linda about her bath time.
“She said he sometimes barged into the bathroom without knocking. She said she didn’t like that, especially if she was undressed.”
“Anything else?” I asked. “Maybe even something more secret, more personal?”
“Like what?”
I needed Carol to give me information without my putting words or ideas into her head. It had to come from her, and I had already tried to steer her to the answer. I changed gears.
“What about other men?” I asked. “Did Darleen ever tell you about men? Older men, not boys.”
Carol shrugged. “Sure. We talked about men sometimes. Elvis, Bobby Darin . . . Darleen had a real thing for Anthony Perkins for a while.”
“No, I meant men from around here.”
“You already know the stories about Darleen and Mr. Russell.”
“Yes, and I don’t believe they’re true. Anyone else?”
“Wilbur Burch,” she said.
“Not old enough. Try again.”
She shrugged once more. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know of anyone else. Oh, except Paul Newman. Darleen was in love with him after we saw Exodus. As a matter of fact, it was just a few days before she disappeared.”
I pulled over to the side of the road. We were approaching Carol’s house on County Highway 58, and I still needed some answers.
“Carol,” I began, “did Darleen give you a package to hold for her?”
She looked at me, startled.
“Did she give you money to hold for her?”
Carol looked down, her eyes darting from side to side as she searched for an answer.
“That’s how you got the sweater and the hairdo and the charm bracelet, isn’t it?”
Still nothing.
“And that’s why your friends are giving you the cold shoulder. How much money was there?” I asked.
“Twenty dollars,” she said suddenly. “I wouldn’t have spent it, honest, but she was dead. I just knew she was dead.”
“When did she give you the money?” I asked.
“It was the day she disappeared. In Canajoharie at the factory. She gave me an envelope and said to keep it for her, just for a while. She said she was leaving, and she didn’t want her father to find the money.”
“Why not put it in her locker?” I asked.
“Because Mr. Russell gave it to her in the parking lot that morning. Right before she got on the bus.
So much for Ted Russell telling me everything. I still didn’t think he’d killed Darleen, but I wondered why he’d lied to me about not having seen her that day.
Pu
tting that coward’s lie to one side, I had little to go on, other than Mike Palumbo’s sighting of Louis Brossard on the Mill Street Bridge. And I needed more than that to prove he was Darleen’s killer. I tried to imagine what kind of physical evidence might have been created or left behind by Brossard, but I couldn’t come up with anything that would still be present four weeks later. And the sheriff had searched his car already. It was clean. Where else could the evidence be?
I stopped in to see Fadge and have a look at the paper. My story on Darleen’s diary had made the front page after all. Upper right-hand corner. I could get used to this. Charlie had made several edits, removed all references to the molestation except the most clinical descriptions I had managed. But my boss’s one brilliant stroke bowled me over. He included one of the photographs—in fact the one with the most chilling passage I could remember: “Last night he made me do it again.” You could read the date, a few details about her day at school, and the beginning of the heartrending line. Charlie had the lab blur the second half of the sentence, leaving only “Last night he . . .” It was even more powerful without the offending words, as if the reader would make the crime worse in his own mind. In moments like this, I realized how much I still had to learn about the newspaper business.
“When are you going to wrap this up?” asked Fadge, taking a seat with me.
“I don’t know if I will,” I said, shaking my head.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something that’s no longer there.”
I spent the evening thinking about Darleen Hicks. For the thousandth time, I reviewed the details in my head. And I thought about the girl I had grown to know so well in the past weeks. None of it helped me break the logjam.
Having polished off three glasses of whiskey and several crossword puzzles, I trudged off to bed. Within minutes, I was asleep, dreaming of the first time I met Darleen Hicks in the girls’ bathroom at the high school. The particulars were different. She was older, with no braces on her teeth, and we were best friends, planning to steal some liquor from Corky’s. And Ted Jurczyk was there, but none of Darleen’s other friends. We were laughing about something, then a phone rang in the girls’ room.
Late night calls rarely bring good news. I don’t recall ever having appreciated one, and this night was no different. I woke suddenly from my dream and needed a couple of seconds to find my bearings. Disoriented from the drink and the deep sleep, I wasn’t sure where I was until the phone pealed again.
“Hello,” I said into the receiver.
“You dirty, little slut,” came the voice. “I will get you for what you did,” and the line went dead.
In my daze, I couldn’t quite place the voice and, as my wits returned, I realized that I couldn’t be sure who it was. I suspected Dick Metzger, of course. The sheriff had released him earlier in the day, and he must have seen the article in the newspaper by now. But it could have been Louis Brossard, as well. Or Wilbur. Was he still in jail? I wasn’t at all sure, especially in my current state.
I went to the kitchen, checked the bolt, and moved the kitchen table to block the door. But I felt no safer. It was a little past one, and the long night stretched out before me. The prospect terrified me, and no new lock downstairs or furniture in front of the door provided comfort.
Pulling the curtains aside, I looked up and down on Lincoln Avenue from my bedroom. The street lamps glowed in the cold night air. Nothing looked out of place. There were several cars parked along the street, their hoods covered with a dusting of frost, indicating they’d been still for hours. I switched on all the lights and sat in the parlor trying to figure out what to do.
I could call the police or Mike Palumbo or Fadge. But I feared I was becoming a nuisance. I no longer worried about Joey Figlio—or Frankie Ralston, for that matter—and I was pretty sure Wilbur Burch was still locked up. To date, no one other than those three had actually breached my door. But I had never provoked anyone the way I had Dick Metzger and Louis Brossard. And both on the same day.
Arming myself with the longest knife in my drawer, I went back to bed and tried to sleep. But the tension was too great, and I struggled to calm myself. Time passed. After what seemed like hours, I checked the clock: two thirty. Then the noises began. I thought I heard a car in the street, but nothing was visible from my window. Next, the house creaked, and I got up to investigate, knife at the ready. Nothing. At three fifteen, the wind blew a branch or something off a tree onto the roof. At least that’s what I assumed and prayed it was.
At four, I made myself some tea, thinking it might soothe my nerves, and returned to bed. I laid my head on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. My eyes felt heavy, and Darleen was helping me to the sink in girls’ bathroom. She patted my back and smiled at me. She was wearing braces again.
The noise that woke me was in my dream, I realized soon enough. It was a bang. A gunshot, perhaps, but I woke with a start, and the carving knife fell to the floor with a great clatter. Mrs. Giannetti would surely give me an earful in the morning.
But on the bright side, as I sat up in my bed, I had my answer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1961
The fear must have cleared my head. Or perhaps it was like a crossword puzzle after all. Eventually, even the toughest word falls. Even the hardest puzzle can be solved.
It was still dark, but morning wasn’t far off. I couldn’t call the sheriff at this hour, so I plotted out what needed to be done. Frank would need to arrest Brossard and get him to sign a statement in the presence of his lawyer. That would take several hours, I figured, but it couldn’t be helped. It was essential to the integrity of my plan, which was still just a hunch and almost a shot in the dark. But I had nothing else. And if this didn’t pan out, Brossard would be in the clear. Without witnesses and with no physical evidence, he may have achieved the perfect murder. For the second time. But only if I was wrong. The other help I needed from the sheriff was a second search of Brossard’s car.
At seven, I dialed Frank Olney’s home number and told him my idea. It took a few minutes to convince him that there was no harm in trying it and that the alternative was to do nothing at all. In the end, he thought he could get Brossard and his lawyer to give a statement by early afternoon.
“There’s one more thing, Frank,” I said hesitantly. “Last night I got a threatening phone call. I’m not sure if it was Brossard or Dick Metzger, though I’m leaning toward Metzger.”
“What did he say?”
“He called me a dirty, little slut and said he was going to get me for what I did.”
“Holy hell,” he said. “I’ll post someone to watch your place tonight. In the meantime, get a locksmith and a carpenter in this morning and replace your kitchen door with something more secure. Will your landlady let you do that?”
“Not likely,” I said.
“Well, put it in and ask for forgiveness later.”
I phoned Charlie Reese next and told him my plans. He, too, was uncertain, but agreed it was the only option at the moment. He also thought I should secure my kitchen door, and he recommended Milchiore’s Hardware on Main.
I soon realized that a new door was out of the question on such short notice, but by noon, Dave Milchiore had installed a big brass Segal deadbolt on my kitchen door. He told me Segal had gone out of business, but this was still the best lock on the market. He lost me when he started talking about pins and cylinders. I just wanted something to keep people out.
“Of course a professional lock picker could open this,” he said. “But we don’t have any of those in New Holland.”
“I thought you said it was the best on the market.”
“Well, the best in the store, anyway,” he said. “But don’t worry. This will keep people out. And the bars on the window and the three surface bolts I put in make this door the safest in the city.”
It did appear to be secure. Burglar bars on the kitchen window, a new deadbolt, and three surfac
e bolts anchoring the door to the head, the jamb, and the threshold.
“Thank you, Mr. Milchiore,” I said. “Just one more thing. Could you come back after dark and sleep on the landing?”
Looking both ways as I stepped off the porch, I could see no green Ford pickup truck anywhere on the street. I wasn’t worried about Louis Brossard’s red-and-white Chevy; Frank Olney had phoned me at ten thirty to say the assistant principal was safely in custody. He phoned again at eleven to tell me Joe Murray had showed up to spring him. Frank played his part well, saying he was going to hold Brossard no matter what Murray said, but in the end agreed to let him go after he gave and signed a statement.
In the meantime, Don Czerulniak had managed to secure a second search warrant for Brossard’s car. The judge was disinclined to grant it, but finally agreed, stipulating that this was the last search he would authorize. The State could not continue harassing the man without good cause.
I showed up at the sheriff’s office, just as Brossard was being released to his lawyer. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, and he said nothing. That’s when Don and Frank emerged from Frank’s office and broke the news to Joe Murray that they were going to have one more look at Brossard’s car.
“Go ahead,” said Murray, once he’d given the warrant the once over. “You’re spinning your wheels.”
Brossard seemed confident this was a fishing expedition. Still, he was eager to get the search over with. He’d been dragged out of the junior high by the sheriff in front of his colleagues, his boss, and dozens of students, and he was itching to return as soon as possible to flaunt his innocence.
Frank announced to everyone present that the car had already been towed to the jail by a wrecker and was sitting in the impound garage out back. Murray told him to get on with it. Brossard looked impatient.
I, on the other hand, was a bundle of nerves. It was one thing to come up with a clever guess, but quite another to prove it. And what if I was dead wrong? This could end up a major embarrassment for me and the sheriff. My empty stomach growled as we stepped outside and circled around to the garage.
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