Frank asked for the keys, and Brossard produced them. The sheriff handed them to Deputy Brunello, who unlocked the door. Frank invited Joe Murray to observe with him as a mechanic appeared with a tool box.
“Okay,” said the sheriff. “I want the front seat of the car removed.” He looked at Brossard then Joe Murray. “Very carefully.”
The mechanic stuck his head into the car, first from the driver’s side, then from the passenger’s side. Using a wrench, he unbolted the seat from the floor, and then two deputies helped him slide the bench seat out of the car.
“Lay it down on its back,” said Frank to the men. Then to Joe Murray. “Let’s have a look.”
My heart was galloping, and I thought I might faint from the anticipation and my hunger. This was the moment when I would know if Brossard had slipped the knot and would escape, or if he would pay for his crime.
“What is this circus?” asked Joe Murray as they reached the seat.
Frank stooped to look under the seat. His face betrayed no emotion. Joe Murray scanned the underside from the driver’s end to the passenger’s. He squinted. The first sign that my career might survive another day. Then he reached out to touch the fabric, but the sheriff stopped him.
“Don’t touch it,” he said. “That’s evidence.”
A tingle crawled up my neck. I closed my eyes and stifled a short gasp.
“What is it?” asked Murray.
“That,” said the sheriff, “is gum. Black Jack chewing gum, if I’m not mistaken.”
I actually lost my balance and stumbled. Stan Pulaski was standing nearby and caught me before I hit the ground. I was starving, my blood sugar low again, and I felt overwhelmed by emotions.
“So what’s that prove?” asked the lawyer. “Anyone could have put that there.”
“That’s true,” said Frank. “But whoever put it there left a perfect fingerprint right in the middle.”
Brossard collapsed to the ground. No one caught him.
There really wasn’t much Louis Brossard could say. His lawyer, Joe Murray, was also at a loss for words. His client had just signed a statement, swearing that Darleen Hicks had never been in his car. Not on the day she disappeared and never before then either. Now, with a perfectly preserved fingerprint squashed into a wad of Black Jack gum stuck to the underside of his car’s front seat, Brossard knew it was over. He didn’t try to deny it any longer. Frank told me the whole story after the assistant principal had confessed.
“The guilt was too much for him,” said the sheriff, sipping his coffee. “Once he realized that Darleen had stuck her gum under the car seat, he just wanted to get the whole thing off his chest.”
“What about the St. Winifred’s girl?” I asked.
“Yeah, he copped to that, too. Hudson police are sending a man up to take a confession from him.”
“So how did it all happen?”
“Pretty much like you thought,” said Frank. “Brossard investigated the Ted Russell thing and said he couldn’t stop thinking of the girl. He said she was so cute and mischievous. That’s what gets his motor running, it seems. He likes young girls, but only the ones with the devil in their smile. That’s how he put it.”
“He didn’t like me at all. I was convinced he didn’t like girls, but it turns out I was too old for him.”
Frank shook his head. “I feel sorry for guys like him.”
“What?”
“Not like that,” he said. “A deviant may be able to stop himself from committing these ‘abominations against God,’ as Brossard put it. But he can’t help having the urges in the first place. They just come to him. From Satan, he says.”
“So he was beguiled by a fifteen-year-old temptress,” I said sarcastically. “How did it all play out?”
“Like I said, he became obsessed with her. Tried to talk to her at school, sent some notes asking to meet her, called her down to his office on the slightest pretext, phoned her at home a few times. She asked him for money, and he refused. Then, on the day she disappeared, he saw her from his office window getting off the bus in the parking lot. He watched her talking to a boy, then the bus drove off. She loitered around for a few minutes, and she left the parking lot. He had the idea he could give her a lift home. He swears he had no other intentions but to give her a ride.” Frank wiped his dry mouth. “He saw her get into a taxi on Mill Street, and he followed in his car.”
“Then the cab dumped her on the side of the road, and the vulture swooped in.”
“That’s about right,” said Frank. “He drove her to the snow hills and tried to get friendly with her. She wasn’t interested. But the devil had taken control of his mind, he said. He touched her, fondled her, reached under her dress and . . .” Frank stopped. “Well, you get the picture. She slapped him hard and called him names, then managed to pull away and jump out of the car. She ran through the woods alongside the hills. That must have been when she lost her gloves. He chased after her, caught her in the woods near the clearing on the other side. She screamed and he put his hand over her mouth to shut her up. When she went limp, he kissed her, and she screamed again. He grabbed her by the neck, and she was dead before he realized what he was doing.”
I listened with horror. I had known that she’d been strangled, of course, but the sheriff’s hoarse-voiced narrative brought it painfully to life. I took a sip of water, cleared my throat, and wiped my eyes.
“Then he buried her in the snow?” I asked.
Frank nodded. “Brossard had the superintendent’s banquet that evening, and it was getting late. He couldn’t dispose of the body at that moment, so he buried her in the snow, thinking he would come back later that night to move her.”
“But he forgot the lunch box.”
“Exactly. He was quite drunk when he returned to the hills after the banquet. ‘The devil had commandeered my soul,’ he kept saying. Over and over. None of it was his fault. It was the devil. He grabbed the body but forgot the lunch box.”
“And then he drove to the Mill Street Bridge?”
“He had the idea of dumping her in the river because the ground was too hard to dig. He knew the snow would melt by spring, exposing the body, and he thought why not flush her down the river instead. She’d end up miles from here by the time someone found her. So he drove down to the river near Lock 11. But the river was frozen, so he doubled back to New Holland. He saw the river running under the Mill Street Bridge and, in his drunken, possessed state, thought that was his best option. It was late. The town was asleep, and it would only take a minute to toss the body over.”
“And that’s when Officer Palumbo came across him.”
“Missed him dumping the body in the river by a couple minutes, according to Brossard.”
We fell silent for a while, both lost in melancholy thoughts or hopeless disgust for all mankind. Finally, Frank spoke.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said. “How did you figure out that Darleen left her gum under the seat?”
“It came to me in a dream. Well, sort of,” I said. “I’d been racking my brain, reviewing the timeline, and thinking of everything I knew about Darleen, including my one meeting with her. Over and over, I went back to that time she’d helped me in the girls’ room at the basketball game, trying to remember every last detail. Then, in the calm of my dream, she was there, smiling at me with the braces and the black gum. Everyone said she was always chewing that black gum: her teachers, her friends, even her mother. And when she was done with it, she would stick it wherever was handy–under desks, mostly. Even under the shelf in her locker. It just occurred to me in a moment of clarity that she was just as likely as not to be chewing gum when Brossard picked her up. It was a guess.”
Frank whistled. “Damn good guess, Ellie.”
“What’s the DA’s plan?” I asked, blushing a bit, but delighting in his praise nonetheless.
“He’s thinking voluntary manslaughter, attempted rape, and battery. Probably a few more. He’s working on i
t.”
“And Dick Metzger?”
Frank shook his head. “Nothing for now. He denies it, and there’s no witness, no victim to level an accusation.”
“Can’t you bash his head into the car door again?”
He smiled sadly, then turned serious. “Listen, Ellie, about Metzger. Brossard says he never called your house.”
“I see. But still no proof to charge Metzger?”
“I’m afraid not. Tell you what, though. I’m going to have one of my boys watch your house for a while.”
“I don’t need babysitting, Frank.”
“Come on, don’t be a hero. Stan will sleep on the landing outside your door. He wants to.”
“Absolutely not. I won’t hear of it.”
I wrote a long piece for a special Thursday morning edition, outlining the arrest of, and the evidence against, Louis Brossard. I wrote a second article on the Geraldine Duffy disappearance. Earlier in the week, on Monday, my Girl Friday, Norma, had requested everything the Hudson Star-Register had on the St. Winifred girl’s disappearance, and Wednesday afternoon a box of clippings arrived at the office to my attention. I summarized the details of the case, tying it up with a neat bow and Brossard’s confession. According to Frank, Brossard had indeed sent the boy away first. An hour later, Geraldine Duffy was dead, raped and strangled, buried near the railroad tracks along the Hudson River. Again, the blame went to Satan, who used Brossard as the instrument of his evil. When I reached the Columbia County DA by telephone, he promised a first-degree murder charge. And if Satan didn’t appear to stand trial, Brossard would have to take the rap himself.
I dropped my stories off at the office, along with film of Brossard’s car and the gum under the seat. Charlie worked up the front page and selected the photos, then sent them off to Composition, who were working late for the special edition. I was drained. The long hours, lack of sleep, and emotional beatings I’d endured over the past three weeks had taken their toll. I could barely summon the energy to switch some new keys on George Walsh’s typewriter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 1961
We sat in the City Room Friday morning, watching the Kennedy inauguration on the television, as the torch was passed to a new generation of Americans, to echo the words of the new president. I felt inspired and full of hope as Kennedy stood there in his morning coat, hatless in the frigid cold, and told the nation that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” He moved me when he called upon our fellow citizens of the world to work together for the freedom of man, and I truly believed we were on the cusp of a new era. A better era.
Then I went home, put on a black wool dress and gloves, and drove to the Wilson Funeral Home in the Town of Glen. I wasn’t expecting a warm welcome from the Metzgers, but that couldn’t be helped. I intended to pay my respects to Darleen Hicks.
The funeral parlor was a large, white clapboard colonial house that sat on the shoulder of Route 161. Its paint was cracked and peeling as if it had been baked and frozen again and again for decades. Which it had. There was a small gravel parking area behind the house with a handful of cars and trucks. I noticed Dick Metzger’s green Ford pickup parked near the back of the lot. I climbed out of my warm car and slipped inside the vestibule of the funeral home. A heavy velvet curtain hung half open, and I could see the simple casket and several mourners inside. It was cold, so I kept my coat on and entered.
Dick Metzger saw me, and I fancy his nostrils flared. I took a seat in one of the folding chairs and bowed my head. I recognized Winnie Terwilliger, the lady I’d met at the Metzger farm after Darleen’s body had been found. The Sloans were also there, and a few other locals, too. Susan, Carol, and Linda sat together, and I noticed Ted Jurczyk right behind them, accompanied by Coach Mahoney. Clarence Endicott, principal of the junior high school, had come. Probably the last place he wanted to be, but realistically he had no other choice. Mrs. Nolan, Darleen’s former English teacher, sat alone off to the side, dabbing her nose with a handkerchief.
Joey Figlio was nowhere to be seen. I figured he was probably locked up at Fulton, but I also thought he was the type to disdain formal ceremonies like this one. He was more likely to grieve on his own. Or try to kill someone who’d hurt Darleen.
No Ted Russell. Perhaps that was for the best; the tasteful, if cowardly, thing to do.
“Excuse me, miss,” came a whispered voice in my ear after I’d been sitting there for several minutes. I looked up to see a man in his fifties, poorly shaven, with a black overcoat and tie.
“Yes?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, miss, but the family would like you to leave.”
“I understand,” I said, rising from my chair. I tried to make eye contact with Irene Metzger, but she was weeping into a handkerchief and not looking my way. I felt certain that she was avoiding me on purpose. And I knew that I would never see her again. My role in Irene Metzger’s life had played out, and I’d unwittingly caused the poor woman even more sorrow than she’d expected. She’d known her daughter was gone, but never imagined that she’d lose the man she loved as well.
Her husband, on the other hand, was staring directly into my eyes with his lizard gaze, black eye and all, courtesy of the sheriff. He had demanded that I be thrown out, but I sensed he was daring me to say something, to approach them, anything, just so he could beat me senseless or choke the life out of me. Out of respect for the dead, I said nothing. But Dick Metzger wasn’t satisfied with my quiet departure. He rose to his feet and hollered for me to get out, using the foulest language I’d ever heard outside a navy freighter. I resisted the temptation to answer back, determined that Darleen’s wake should not become a circus. I turned slowly and walked out trying to maintain my dignity as all eyes watched me go. It’s not easy to hold your head high when someone calls you a whore at a wake. But I did.
The New Holland Bucks tipped off in Johnstown at eight. Ted Jurczyk played the finest game of his short career, scoring thirty-two points with ten assists and five steals. He was masterful, and New Holland won going away, 76–58. I congratulated him after the game, and he smiled.
“One last question for my profile, Ted,” I said. He nodded. “How do you do it? How do you manage to play so beautifully on such a sad day?”
He wiped his sweaty brow with a towel and sighed. “It’s hard,” he said. “Until the whistle blows. Just like my butterflies, everything else disappears. My nerves, Darleen, Patricia’s leg braces, my mom . . . The court is a sanctuary for me. The most peaceful place on earth.”
I knew I would end my feature with that line.
“You showed a lot of courage this afternoon at the funeral parlor,” he said. “Gosh, I admire you, Miss Stone.”
Outside the gym, I fumbled for my keys in the cold. The door nearly wouldn’t open, again the residual effect of the dunking the poor car had taken in Winandauga Lake. I drove off, heading for the office to finish my story on Ted and to write the summary of the game as well. I wanted to be free of work responsibilities the next day. There was my big date with Mike Palumbo, after all.
I was cruising east along Route 67, through the desolate farm country between Johnstown and New Holland, when I first noticed the thumping of my right rear tire. A flat, damn it. I pulled over to the shoulder and cursed my bad luck. It was bitterly cold, but the tire needed to be changed.
I climbed out, nearly breathless from the frozen air, and retrieved the jack and spare from the trunk. Positioning the jack carefully, I began to crank it up. A motorist slowed and pulled over to give me a hand. That was welcome. I stared back into the burning headlights behind me, squinting to see. Why didn’t the idiot switch them off? Then he did, and I dropped the tire iron and ran.
I raced for my life as I sensed the man gaining on me. My legs felt leaden, and it seemed the harder I pushed, the slower and more palsied my movements became. It was like running in
water. The icy air seared my throat and lungs, but I couldn’t stop, I knew that much. The steps drew closer, terrifyingly near, and I could hear his breath and the pounding of his boots behind me.
Dick Metzger corralled me after about thirty yards, grabbing me by the neck and nearly yanking me off my feet. He dragged me back to his truck as I kicked and screamed, losing both my shoes, but we were in the middle of nowhere, and no one heard. Once we reached his pickup, perhaps tiring of my resistance, he reared back and plowed his fist into my face. I saw stars. I went limp, and he opened the tailgate and threw me into the flatbed. I wanted to climb over the side immediately, but I couldn’t move; my head was still swimming from his punch. He seized my ankles and pulled me into position atop a heavy tarpaulin, which, to my horror, he began rolling up on me like a cocoon. He turned me over and over until I was trapped tight, rendered immobile and unable to escape. My head hurt, but my senses returned. There was not much air, and I feared I would be smothered if I continued to struggle. Somehow, even in that desperate moment, I couldn’t shake the image of an old cartoon from the New Yorker. Two men in pith helmets up to their shoulders in quicksand, and one says to the other, “Quicksand or not, Barclay, I’ve half a mind to struggle.” I tried to steady my breath and think and, of course, resist the urge to struggle. Wrapped in the tarp, I heard Metzger climb into the cab and drive off.
It was a cold, bumpy ride, and I rolled from side to side whenever the truck turned sharply. From time to time, I yelled for help, but my screams were suffocated by the heavy, foul-smelling canvas. I doubted there was anyone near to hear me anyway. We drove for about thirty minutes, and I thought he intended to freeze me to death. I tried to think of a way to extricate myself from the tightly wrapped tarpaulin but realized that the only chance I had was to roll, and there wasn’t enough space in the flatbed to unravel the canvas.
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